How a Twitter user ripped apart Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook's data privacy
While most of us slept peacefully on Tuesday night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress for a five-hour-long hearing, facing tough questions in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal. During this long-awaited appearance, Zuckerberg was interrogated by as many as 44 US senators about concerns over data privacy policies followed by the social networking website.
The general consensus is that Zuckerberg managed to tiptoe his way around the televised minefield where he handled some posers and tactfully evaded others. However, Twitter user Alp Ozcelik, in a series of tweets ripped apart the facade that Zuckerberg put forth during his hearing.
Ozcelik hit at what is rightly the core issue. Raising concerns over Facebook's ability to create massive, in-depth profiles of users and the ownership of that data, he said:
Interesting distinction to dig into imo: Zuckerberg says that you own the content and data you put onto the site. But what if the company can glean information about you from the actions you take on the site without disclosing anything yourself? What about that data's ownership?
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
It's not data you can take back. It's not content you can remove. It's just data being put together looking at the way you're spending time on Facebook. One would argue that's Facebook's data on you and your habits cause they put it together in the first place.
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
He further went on to expose the loopholes in Zuckerberg's statement in front of the senators on its ad-tracking algorithm. Pixel tracking is a piece of code installed on a website to track Facebook users who visit the site.
When you browse a website with the pixel installed, it triggers your Facebook ID and records your on-site activity. If there is a Facebook ad campaign in progress, you will see commercials in places where advertisers have requested them, either Facebook, Instagram or Audience Network.
As Ozcelik explains, the process is problematic:
Don't forget that, thanks to Facebook pixel tracking, Facebook can learn about your browsing habits outside of Facebook as well. And if someone who has your number shares their contacts with FB, now they have your contact info too! *You* don't have any agency in these instances.
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
Ultimately, a *lot* of companies do this in various forms. We need to get to the heart of the issue: How much freedom should companies have in terms of putting together profiles of you based on your actions and habits without your conscious decision to disclose information?
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
Zuckerberg's talk on surveillance and how it's all consensual does not ring true to me at all. Facebook can track you across sites without your active consent! We know this! He is being very very disingenuous here with his statements.
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
He also called out Facebook for its inability to clamp down on the spread of fake news and hate speech through its platform. During the hearing, Zuckerberg said that the company would step up efforts to block hate messages in countries like Myanmar, where the minority Rohingyas are escaping a genocide.
Zuckerberg explained: "Hate speech – I am optimistic that over a five-to-10-year period we will have AI tools that can get into some of the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate, to be flagging things to our systems, but today we’re just not there on that."
However, Ozcelik pointed out one big loophole in this argument.
Zuckerberg's response to automation of the removal of inappropriate content misses the point in my opinion: should companies have this unmitigated scale in the first place? What if the technology doesn't evolve fast enough? What if we can *never* fully automate? What then?
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
That wasn't all. In his series of tweets, Ozcelik also commented on how woefully unprepared most senators looked during the marathon hearing.
Calling out the US senators for their level of unpreparedness, he raised an important point and argued that while data and consumer privacy are important topics of discussion, what also needs to be talked about is Facebook's irresponsible collation of user data and how it creates in-depth profiles on users in the first place.
The preparedness of Zuckerberg is clearly much higher than the Congress.
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
Ultimately, the questions from the Congresspeople are falling short of the problem at hand: Facebook is a major surveillance tool at its core, further weaponized with the ability to hyper-target individuals based on this close surveillance.
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018