Lawmakers want Facebook's help providing rural broadband

[Fasterthannothing]

During the joint Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committee hearing today several lawmakers wanted Facebook to help them bring Internet to rural areas. 

 

https://www.cnet.com/news/lawmakers-want-facebooks-help-providing-rural-broadband/ 

Quote

The more than 10 hours of testimony largely focused on privacy concerns and how Facebook handles users' data. But several lawmakers representing rural regions followed Capito's lead Wednesday during the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Rep. Morgan Griffith, a Republican from Virginia, said he'd also like to talk to Zuckerberg about bringing high-speed connectivity to parts of his state.  

"My district is very similar to West Virginia as it borders it," he said. "We have a lot of rural areas. Can you also agree, yes or no, to update me on that when the information is available?" ... At least two other congressman during the hearing -- Bill Johnson, a Republican from Ohio, and Dave Loebsack, a Democrat from Iowa -- also expressed interest in getting more information from Zuckerberg about bringing broadband to hard reach areas of their states.

Now lets just take a second to soak in the irony here. Here Zuckerberg is testifying about the abuse of peoples data on his site and then lawmakers turn around and ask him to provide internet for their states. Why is this bad well lets just say you don't want Facebook controlling your internet too. 

 

 

An article by The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-free-basics-developing-markets: 

Quote

Free Basics, Facebook’s free, limited internet service for developing markets, is neither serving local needs nor achieving its objective of bringing people online for the first time....However, the Global Voices report identifies a number of weaknesses in the service, including not adequately serving the linguistic needs of local populations; featuring a glut of third-party services from private companies in the US; harvesting huge amounts of metadata about users and violating the principles of net neutrality.....“The program has created substantial new avenues for Facebook to gather data about the habits and interests of users in countries where they aspire to have a strong presence, as more users come online,” said Global Voices.

So yeah lets just hand over our data to Facebook by the fistful by allowing them to set up internet in rural areas. Why do they even care if Facebook used peoples data wrongly if they just want to give them more access to it. 

[Canada EH]

Facebook would sell ALL your internet data to the highest bidder.

[Ryujin2003]

This has been a thing (not including Facebook) since President Obama. There was an act I thought, but I'm having issues finding the exact reference, though I remember it being a hot topic around November-December time frame... Think it was him trying to push FCC to enact Title II under the Telecommunications Act.

 

But Obama saw internet access as essentially a right, and was pushing to get ISP's to get internet to rural areas. Critics thought he was trying to control the internet..... So, not much ever happened from it... And NOW law makers want to try and do something? How about 3 years too fucking late?! The government is freaking slow. I don't get it... And why ask Facebook to do it? They aren't an ISP... I remember them wanting to use drones in 3rd world countries to beam internet to the masses....

 

A day late and a buck short...

 

But this is dumb. Asking Facebook because they have the information.. That they sell to anyone who asks. Amazing....

 

But for anyone interested, here are some references from the Obama administration:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/14/obama-wants-expanded-access-to-fast-internet.html

https://www.nrtc.coop/rural-connect/president-calls-for-title-ii-regulation-of-the-internet

https://www.zdnet.com/article/obama-wants-you-to-have-cheaper-faster-internet-by-removing-protectionist-laws/

 

[Ryujin2003]

34 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

Facebook would sell ALL your internet data to the highest bidder.

I'm not even sure they would limit it to the highest bidder.... I'm pretty sure it would be anyone. Heck, they might even setup a subscription service... They'd make bank on that.

[Fasterthannothing]

4 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

I'm not even sure they would limit it to the highest bidder.... I'm pretty sure it would be anyone. Heck, they might even setup a subscription service... They'd make bank on that.

Could you imagine a subscription service. I could just see it now...

 

You can see everything your neighbors do on the internet for only  $5.99 or get the UHD plan for $10.99 (Adds the ability to spy on them through their webcams and other IoT devices)

[Tellos]

Simple most politicans dont udnerstand how the interent works and have no concept of infastructure required or its costs. They just sort of assume because you work on the internet you have the internet to hand out. Netwoks in general have become the new mystical magic to the massies. Working for an ISP and having a degree in the subject I can tell you most people have no clue.  People dont grasp how it works on even the basic leverl often enough I find and it makes them prone to dumb things. for isntance in skyfall the james bond film.

 

We get a laptop "encryption" that works via security by obsecurity which doesn ot makes sense also it means it's relying on peole not takign time to look hence Q breaks it fairly easy hoenstly. Because it's not truely encrypted it's just jumbled to look hard to understand. But hollywood thinks this sound awsome and makes it sound super coo. Meanwhile people like me are still shouting at how bad the cable management was in Silva's little island network. [who made this cable set up for your switches and routers? no labels who is respnosible for this mess?) 

[Tsuki]

but.. facebook isnt an isp... they dont do that..

thats not how this works, thats not how any of this works....

[GoldenLag]

Id rather have Facebook or Google controling and providing my internett, rather than an american ISP. Then again thats probably just me 

[captain_to_fire]

I'd stick to SpaceX satellite internet if I'm in a place where wired broadband isn't available https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17178126/spacex-satellite-broadband-internet-fcc-approval-license-starlink-spectrum

[Tellos]

@GoldenLag why? they will do much the same or wrose, they will control more of your information and clearly cant secure it. Now I work for an ISP one people liek to dump on hell I even used to before. I also actually have a degree on this subject so I am EXTREMELY curious what we do thats so bad,

[divito]

7 hours ago, Canada EH said:

Facebook would sell ALL your internet data to the highest bidder.

They don't sell your data; Zuckerberg had to repeat this 100 times over the hearings to the silly politicians.

[Tellos]

@divito They do sell SOME data to advertisers all of your data however no, but they do sell certain habits to adverts on the site. How do you think they make money?

[divito]

1 minute ago, Tellos said:

@divito They do sell SOME data to advertisers all of your data however no, but they do sell certain habits to adverts on the site. How do you think they make money?

"There is a very common misconception that we sell data to advertisers, and we do not sell data to advertisers. What we allow is for advertisers to tell us who they want to reach and then we do the placement. So, if an advertiser comes to us and says, ‘Alright, I’m a ski shop and I want to sell skis to women,’ then we might have some sense because people shared skiing related content or said they were interested in that. They shared whether they’re a woman. And then we can show the ads to the right people without that data ever changing hands and going to the advertiser. That’s a very fundamental part of how our model works and something that is often misunderstood." 

[Tellos]

@divito all done via algorithums they dont do this manually.

[divito]

7 minutes ago, Tellos said:

@divito all done via algorithums they dont do this manually.

Clearly, but if they're to be taken at face value, they're controlling the process and not giving out the information.

So, outside of the loophole in which CA and other such companies/projects accessed some information, they're not actually doing most of the evil things people think they're doing, in the way people assume they're doing it.

[Tellos]

@divito My cmpany gets lbamed for doign shit we aitn doign all the times. Facebook I knwo does sell stuff to advertisers, mike may be sure they dont but i can promise you they sell information.  think more likely it's trends they sell or habits more than persanol data as those are very desirible bits of data. I dobut their handing out birthdays or names too many FCC regs on that. My point is their not an angel of a company. But people act like they are. and osme here say they woudl trust it with their internet. I sure as hell would not. My bias towards my own company aside they are not built to handle it. They lack the infanstructure the people the field teams and maintence crews or the investors willing to accept waiting 5 to 10 years for an ROI.Google learned this hence stopping expanding google fiber.

[Tellos]

Oh also this is the guy who claimned no issue exsisted then had to admit it did. So his credability is less than amazing!

[divito]

5 minutes ago, Tellos said:

@divito My cmpany gets lbamed for doign shit we aitn doign all the times. Facebook I knwo does sell stuff to advertisers, mike may be sure they dont but i can promise you they sell information.  think more likely it's trends they sell or habits more than persanol data as those are very desirible bits of data. I dobut their handing out birthdays or names too many FCC regs on that. My point is their not an angel of a company. But people act like they are. and osme here say they woudl trust it with their internet. I sure as hell would not. My bias towards my own company aside they are not built to handle it. They lack the infanstructure the people the field teams and maintence crews or the investors willing to accept waiting 5 to 10 years for an ROI.Google learned this hence stopping expanding google fiber.

And I totally get that. While they might not be angels, given how they've grown and turned their platform into a business, they're still not as conniving as people are attempting to label them as.

And in terms of the topic at hand, it is a little strange that they're being asked to help in such an area as broadband deployment. While they do have their ideas and projects, they need to approach it differently for sure, and not try to rely on Facebook. While Facebook could turn around and pour resources into it, I don't like further fragmentation that will arise, especially without said infrastructure as you've mentioned.

[Tellos]

@divito Mostp eople especially in government do not understand technolgoy. We are becomming literally magicians to people.  And the gaps only getting wider. Some people actually think wifi signals are jsut in the air no moem or router needed. it just gets broadcast from the ether! People become uninterested in understanding it seems. I liek to but i also went to college for studying computer sciences and specvificly networks. But that is turnign me into a strangely scary person to some people or some weird tyrant somehow in their minds.

 

The media then uses words poorly and now people think they got buzzwords to throw at me and "catch me" in something. Peoples internet slows they think it's throttling, it's usualy any nubmer of things they are doing or that is caused by QoS systems for network management trying to prevent a lock up on all channels.So these government morons think facebook uses the internet thus can somehow "provide" it.

[TacoSenpai]

So lawmakers want to get the company that was supposedly trying to illegally get health information on its users to provide internet services?  Sounds genius! /s

[Ryujin2003]

1 hour ago, divito said:

"There is a very common misconception that we sell data to advertisers, and we do not sell data to advertisers. What we allow is for advertisers to tell us who they want to reach and then we do the placement. So, if an advertiser comes to us and says, ‘Alright, I’m a ski shop and I want to sell skis to women,’ then we might have some sense because people shared skiing related content or said they were interested in that. They shared whether they’re a woman. And then we can show the ads to the right people without that data ever changing hands and going to the advertiser. That’s a very fundamental part of how our model works and something that is often misunderstood." 

Except in the privacy section in your account info, there's a list of advertisers on FB with access to your information. So this doesn't make sense.

[divito]

12 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

Except in the privacy section in your account info, there's a list of advertisers on FB with access to your information. So this doesn't make sense.

Where is that? I took a quick look but I don't think I'm looking at the right spot.

[Ryujin2003]

39 minutes ago, divito said:

Where is that? I took a quick look but I don't think I'm looking at the right spot.

Log into Facebook, go to settings, and on the first page, near the bottom of the center box, there is an option to download your data..... You'll be surprised what is there...

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/personaltech/i-downloaded-the-information-that-facebook-has-on-me-yikes.html

 

This journalist did the same thing, but has a platform to try and make others aware of how creepy it is. There isn't an expiration to your data. No we keep it for 5 years then discard. Once it's on FB, your data isn't yours any longer.. really freaky.

[divito]

8 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

Log into Facebook, go to settings, and on the first page, near the bottom of the center box, there is an option to download your data..... You'll be surprised what is there...

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/personaltech/i-downloaded-the-information-that-facebook-has-on-me-yikes.html

 

This journalist did the same thing, but has a platform to try and make others aware of how creepy it is. There isn't an expiration to your data. No we keep it for 5 years then discard. Once it's on FB, your data isn't yours any longer.. really freaky.

I downloaded my data. Went through some of it so far, and nothing really surprising just yet. Will try to take a deeper look tonight.

[Trik'Stari]

Right, because Facebooks closed off censored version of the internet is a better option than my 10/1 connection that costs $70-$80 a month, from an ISP who is being sued by several states for billing fraud, and claims to have no customers as a defense.

 

Need to write that state representative of mine and tell him to fuck off. Facebook is the last company that should function as an ISP. He'll I'd sooner see EA become an ISP.