Facebook

“ I started Facebook when I was in college. We've come a long way since then. We now serve more than 2 billion people around the world. And, every day, people use our services to stay connected with the people that matter to them most.
I believe deeply in what we are doing. And I know that, when we address these challenges we'll look back and view helping people connect and giving more people a voice as a positive force in the world.
I realize the issues we're talking about today aren't just issues for Facebook and our community. They're issues and challenges for all of us as Americans. ”

“ Web 2.0 is a wild and crazy place. Let’s just look at just one part of the new social media dynamic: Facebook. Some 300,000 businesses in the U.S. are on Facebook, including the Federal Government. The White House has nearly 500,000 fans, the National Guard nearly 400,000, the U.S. Army 200,000 and the Centers for Disease Control over 54,000. Facebook is spreading quickly. It took radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million; television reached the saturation point in 13 years; the Internet in 4 years; and the iPod in 3 years. In less than 9 months, Facebook added 100 million users. ”

“ Zuckerberg in 2004, Facebook has exploded over the past 14 years. Facebook currently has over 2 billion monthly active users across the world, over 25,000 employees, and offices in 13 U.S. cities and various other countries.
Like their expanding user base, the data collected on Facebook users has also skyrocketed. They have moved on from schools, likes and relationship statuses. Today, Facebook has access of data points, ranging from ads that you've clicked on, events you've attended and your location, based upon your mobile device. ”

“ This hearing is an opportunity to speak to those who believe in Facebook and those who are deeply skeptical about it. We are listening, America is listening and quite possibly the world is listening, too. ”

“ ZUCKERBERG: Well, Senator, I think in this case, people certainly didn't expect this developer to sell the data to Cambridge Analytica. In general, there are two types of data that Facebook has.
The vast majority -- and then the first category, is content that people chose to share on the service themselves. So that's all the photos that you share, the posts that you make, what you think of as the Facebook service, right? That's -- everyone has control every single time that they go to share that. They can delete that data any time they want; full control, the majority of the data. ”

“ As they become more accepted as part of the mainstream, then we would expect to see their uptake in broader society, in much the same way that Facebook moved from being a site used by a technological elite to a tool for the mass population. ”

“ What we don't understand exactly, because both as a matter of practice and as a matter of not being able to decipher those terms of service and the privacy policy is what exactly are you doing with the data and do you draw a distinction between data collected in the process of utilizing the platform, and that which we clearly volunteer to the public to present ourselves to other Facebook users?
ZUCKERBERG: Senator, I'm not sure I -- I fully understand this. In -- in general, you -- your -- you -- people come to Facebook to share content with other people. ”

“ In Facebook [...] account holders build and participate in virtual communities by choosing who are to be their ‘friends’—who are in effect the people who are permitted to see and interact with their presence on the site. In the same way, ELAR provides a channel for users to find and approach depositors to request access to materials, and for depositors to decide who will be their ‘subscribers’. ”

“ So this hearing is important, and I appreciate the conversation we had yesterday. And I believe that Facebook, through your presence here today and the words you're about to tell us, will indicate how strongly your industry will regulate and/or reform the platforms that they control.
FEINSTEIN: I believe this is extraordinarily important. You lead a big company with 27,000 employees, and we very much look forward to your comments. ”

“ QZone—the equivalent of Facebook in China—has 300 million users.
More than 1.5 million pieces of information are shared on Facebook each day. Generation Y—who just this year blew past the Baby Boomers in terms of overall population share—uses this stuff the way our generation relied on the daily mail and the newspaper. The whole commerce of information has changed permanently. The transactions between organizations—including the federal government—and users will continue to spread and grow. ”

“ Facebook collects massive amounts of data from consumers, including content, networks, contact lists, device information, location, and information from third parties, yet your data policy is only a few pages long and provides consumers with only a few examples of what is collected and how it might be used. ”

“ Can you -- can you give me a couple of examples, maybe two examples, of ways in which data is collected by Facebook, in a way that people are not aware of? Two examples of types of data that Facebook collects that might be surprising to Facebook users? ZUCKERBERG: Well, Senator, I would hope that what we do with data is not surprising to people. ”

“ MARK ZUCKERBERG: Chairman Grassley, Chairman Thune, Ranking Member Feinstein, Ranking Member Nelson and members of the committee, we face a number of important issues around privacy, safety and democracy. And you will rightfully have some hard questions for me to answer. Before I talk about the steps we're taking to address them, I want to talk about how we got here.
Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all of the good that connecting people can do. ”

“ They certainly know within the Facebook pages who their friends are, but they may not know as has happened -- and you've conceded this point in the past, that sometimes that information is going way beyond there friends, and sometimes people have made money off of sharing that information, correct? ”

“ I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here.
So, now, we have to go through our -- all of our relationship with people and make sure that we're taking a broad enough view of our responsibility.
It's not enough to just connect people. We have to make sure that those connections are positive. It's not enough to just give people a voice. We need to make sure that people aren't using it to harm other people or to spread misinformation. And it's not enough to just give people control over their information. ”

“ At the same time, these stories touch on the very foundation of the internet economy and the way the websites that drive our internet economy make money. Some have professed themselves shocked -- shocked that companies like Facebook and Google share user data with advertisers.
Did any of these individuals ever stop to ask themselves why Facebook and Google didn't -- don't change -- don't charge for access? Nothing in life is free. Everything involves trade-offs. ”

“ Because previously, or earlier in the past, we've been told that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the like are neutral platforms, and the people who own and run those for profit -- and I'm not criticizing doing something for profit in this country. ”

“ Now, Facebook is an edge provider on the other hand. It is my understanding that many edge providers, such as Facebook, may not support that effort, because edge providers have different business models than the ISPs and should not be considered like services.
So, do you think we need consistent privacy protections for consumers across the entire internet ecosystem that are based on the type of consumer information being collected, used or shared, regardless of the entity doing the collecting, reusing or sharing? ”

“ Data Access and Protection Rules DAPR-V2, see Online Sources.↑ See Online Sources for The Archive of the Indigenous Language of Latin America.↑ Although Facebook is used here to exemplify social networking, the newly released Google+ better resembles ELAR’s model because it distributes a user’s friends into “circles” just as an ELAR deposit provides various user roles; Facebook treats all a user’s friends as a single group, see Online Sources.↑ See, e.g. ”

“ In fact, Facebook claims that advertising makes it easy to find the right people, capture their attention and get results and you recognize that an ad-supported service is, as you said earlier today, best aligned with your mission and values. ”

“ We have strong opinions. We love to hear ourselves talk. And as long as there's something to be fixed on the Internet...well...we're not quite ready to move on to something else.
While you ponder what data the NSA, or Facebook or your insurance agent is collecting -- and wondering why or whom they might share it with -- don't worry about Wikipedia. Wikipedia doesn't require its readers or its 100,000 volunteer contributors to reveal a shred of personal information – let alone store or sell that information.
And in transparency, Wikipedia truly has no equal among large publications. ”

“ Yes, it -- Senator, in order to -- for people to share that information with Facebook, I believe that almost everything that you just said would be opt in.
FISCHER: And the privacy settings, it's my understanding that they limit the sharing of that data with other Facebook users, is that correct?
ZUCKERBERG: Senator, yes. Every person gets to control who gets to see their content. ”

“ ZUCKERBERG: Senator, yes. There are other -- there are controls that determine what Facebook can do as well. So for example, people have a control about face recognition. If people don't want us to be able to help identify when they are in photos that their friends upload, then they can turn that off. ”

“ Facebook generates -- generated $40 billion in revenue in 2017, with about 98 percent coming from advertising across Facebook and Instagram.
Significant data collection is also occurring at Google, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon. And even -- an ever-expanding portfolio of products and services offered by these companies grant endless opportunities to collect increasing amounts of information on their customers.
As we get more free or extremely low-cost services, the tradeoff for the American consumer is to provide more personal data. ”

“ But one thing that has really completely changed American politics is that anybody can become a political activist now. Because of access to social media, because of access to Facebook and Twitter and Vine and Instagram and all these other programs, anyone can now take action and speak out. Anyone can now connect with like-minded people halfway across the country or halfway around the world and begin a cause. ”

“ Most of us understand that whether you are using Facebook or Google or some other online services, we are trading certain information about ourselves for free or low-cost services. But for this model to persist, both sides of the bargain need to know the stakes that are involved. ”

“ But the technical mechanism by which Facebook and Google provide that faster reading experience happens to incidentally displace most of the third-party advertising platforms — the ones that aren’t provided by Facebook and Google themselves. Facebook publishers who use these new distribution channels are incentivized to use Facebook’s advertising platform, where payment rates and profit margins can be unilaterally changed at any time. ”

“ From what you've said today, and from previous statements made by you and other officials at your company, data is at the center of your business model. It's how you make money. Your ability to run your business effectively, given that you don't charge your users, is based on monetizing data.
And so the real issue, it seems to me, really comes down to what you tell the public, what you tell users of Facebook, about what you're going to do with the data. ”

“ People could share what they wanted, and then, if someone in the community found it to be offensive or against our policies, they'd flag it for us, and we'd look at it reactively. Now, increasingly, we're developing A.I. tools that can identify certain classes of bad activity proactively and flag it for our team at Facebook. ”

“ That helps make the experience more relevant and better for -- for people, who are getting more relevant ads, and better for the businesses because they perform better.
You also have control completely of that second type of data. You can turn off the ability for Facebook to collect that -- your ads will get worse, so a lot of people don't want to do that. But you have complete control over what you do there as well. ”

“ This is also great to see that the political will to keep people in front of their computers - for them not to start a revolution - can be defeated by giant and spontaneous happy hours [in Europe, through Facebook] with thousands of people who want to see - and speak with - each other in person. There will always be unexpected developments to new inventions. When I started using the internet [in 1999, to create the bookstore's website] , I really didn't expect to become a publisher. ”

“ ELAR prominently signposts protocol throughout the website not only to guide users through the new interface [28] , but also to embody a commitment to depositors’ protocol choices.
Sometimes things play out in unpredictable but serendipitous ways. Recently a researcher described a West African community’s responses to some archive websites. The community has only recently been connected to the Internet, and they mainly use sites such as Facebook, for social purposes. ”