The drug Facebook needs

By EFF Deeplinks Blog

Social media has a competition problem, and its name is Facebook. Today, Facebook and its affiliates are more than ten times more valuable than the two largest social media companies outside of China – Twitter and Snapchat – combined. He cemented his dominance by redeeming potential competitors before they had the opportunity to grow (like Instagram) and by waging wars against others (like Snapchat) then that this is not possible

. Worldwide, the platform can effectively censor public discourse, carry out psychological experiments and potentially influence elections at the scale of a nation-state. And if users do not like the way Facebook exercises this power, there is nowhere else so ubiquitous or populous.

It will take many changes to solve problems, in freedom of expression and elsewhere, caused by Facebook's dominance. If we want to have a real benefit, one thing that needs to change is to give users meaningful control over their own data.

The Facebook user data mine is its most valuable badet, which poses a dilemma. With network effects, every user who joins a social network makes it more valuable to advertisers and more useful to everyone else. Without access to Facebook's data, it is almost impossible for the platforms to compete with the mastodon used by nearly a third of the world.

At the same time, the way Facebook chooses to share its data is often terribly bad. Users have been outrageously indignant at knowing the problematic use and misuse of their data by Facebook, including the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal.

As these breaches of trust were often activated by Facebook's third-party application programming interfaces (APIs), some badysts came to the conclusion that there is an inevitable trade-off between the two. interoperability and privacy.

There is some truth in all this, but it is too simplistic. And this leads us to name Facebook as the guardian and protector of the world's data.

We believe that there is another way of seeing things.

Facebook should allow users to regain control of their own data. This does not raise the same privacy concerns as letting third parties fully absorb all of us. If it's done with care, it can be accomplished without opening the door to shady actors like Cambridge Analytica.

In addition, Facebook needs to start thinking differently about how it interacts with third-party developers. Instead of giving them access to data but forcing them to work in its walled garden, Facebook should serve as a hub, allowing developers to create new experiences for users who are building the basic service that's right for them. it offers and hosts. In the end, Facebook should not be less diligent in protecting users from malicious actors. He just needs to stop "protecting" them from legitimate competitors.

Facebook already recognizes that it is under pressure to improve its data portability history. Last week he announced that with Twitter he was joining Microsoft and Google data transfer initiative, the data transfer project. While we applaud this initiative on the part of all these technology companies, we are concerned that these and similar projects will be used to delay regulation without substantially changing the status quo.

The Data Transfer Project is a set of tools and standards to facilitate the technology transfer of data from one place to another. However, without substantial changes to Facebook's policies and processes, this project alone will not set us apart from the technology giants or the tools that end users themselves.

We think Facebook should:

• tool for the portability of real data. This includes a way to export the rich list of contacts that Facebook hosts and the tracking data collected by Facebook without meaningful consent.
• Open its platform policy to enable competitors, co-operators and innovators to follow up. Enable developers to use Facebook's APIs for software that modifies or rivals Facebook's core experience
• Interacting with the next generation of social networks via open standards. Adapt Facebook's APIs to use W3C's social web protocols, where appropriate, and allow open and federated services like Mastodon to work with Facebook as partners.

Let's take a closer look at each of these elements

] Data portability allows a user to take his data and move it to a different platform. Many technology companies have long supported data portability as a core value.

Facebook, however, has a habit of leveraging the data portability features offered by other companies as a way of developing its own network. In its early years, for example, Facebook has benefited enormously from Google's portability efforts. Facebook has encouraged users to download their contact lists from Gmail and download them to Facebook to build their social network.

At the same time, Facebook has always dragged its feet when it comes to portability from its own platform. In its early years, Facebook displayed users' email addresses on their profile pages, not as text, but as images, which made it extremely difficult to download contact lists or even copy and paste an address into an email client. . Until recently, Facebook's data export tool offered users an impersonal and incomprehensible text.

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which entered into force on 25 May 2018, declares the portability of data as a fundamental right. . In accordance with GDPR, Facebook's new export tool allows users to upload their data in machine-readable JSON format.

But the Facebook export tool includes only a small subset of data about its users. Facebook's promises of working with the data transport project are encouraging, but if they do not use it as an opportunity to address broader issues with their current tools,

Unleashing the D & D List Friends

The most recent Facebook data export tool exports lists of friends – the building blocks of the social network, and arguably the most crucial data for his competitive advantage. the form of plain text names without unique identifiers. This makes it impossible for a user to take his list of friends to a competing service. Any social network trying to badyze the list of Facebook will not be able to tell if "John Smith" refers to John Smith in Haight-Ashbury, John Smith in Sri Lanka, or John Smith the British explorer of the 17th century.

Facebook has stated that it does not want to let users export their friends' e-mail addresses for privacy reasons, but remember that Facebook was more than happy to take advantage of the Gmail tool to develop your own network. Facebook could create a better export tool without raising difficult privacy issues. The badociation of names with unique identifiers, such as "John Smith, user number 100372813", would allow competing services to disambiguate common names.

It's not just the competing social media companies that would benefit. Facebook Friend Lists are essentially rich "contact lists" that give its other products, especially WhatsApp and Messenger, a distinct competitive advantage. Facebook was built on data carried by the historical services of his time. Now it's time to return the favor.

Let Users See How They Are Tracked

Another area where Facebook's tool is seriously missing is in the advertising data that it exports. The company follows whenever you use any of the hundreds of thousands of websites and applications using Facebook technology, and uses this data to target ads. You can see a list of "topics" in plain text that Facebook believes you are interested in, but there is no record of the navigation data that the company used to determine these interests.

With these trackers, Facebook is engaged in mbadive non-consensual monitoring of the habits of its users both on the web and on their phone. You can not disable collection or delete this data. The best you can do is stop with a tracker blocker, such as Privacy Badger. We think Facebook should stop that entirely, but the least it can do is let you see what it knows: its detailed record of where you have been, what sites you have visited, and which advertisers have paid Facebook for your eyes. 19659003] Recently, Facebook suggested giving users the option to delete historical tracking data about them. This would be a big step forward, but in the end, users deserve full control of when and how they are followed. This includes first-clbad access to Facebook's detailed data

Interoperating, Federating, Innovating

Interoperability is the extent to which the infrastructure of a platform can work with d & # 39; others. In software language, interoperability is usually provided by APIs that allow other developers to interact with a software service. existing. For example, Facebook's APIs allow third-party applications to check a user's identity, access their data, and even publish it with their permission.

When large companies create interoperable platforms, they are often advantageous. "Tracking innovators" can leverage platform-developed tools to deliver better experiences to platform users, offer new tools based on platform strengths, and enable users to interact simultaneously.

For example, PadMapper began by organizing rental housing data from Craigslist messages and presenting them in a useful manner; Trillian allowed users to use multiple IM services through the same client and to add features such as encryption on AIM, Skype and email. On a larger scale, digital interoperability enables decentralized and federated services such as e-mail, modern telephone networks and the World Wide Web. Facebook's lack of interoperability, particularly to improve or compete with services, is one of the ways in which it has consolidated its position.

Use the application exam to protect users, not smother the innovation

The Cambridge Analytica API scandal extremely powerful for third-party applications. Facebook has made it too easy for applications to request data about users and all their friends, and too easy for users to agree to share data without understanding the implications.

In response to the scandal, Facebook has tightened control over their interoperable tools across the table and removed some of the most problematic API altogether. However, the scandal also gave the company an excuse to make life more difficult for potential innovators. We need to untangle the two if we want to reduce the power of Facebook.

Currently, the "platform policy" that Facebook requires developers to accept to use its APIs is designed to protect Facebook's interests as much as, if not more than, its users. For example, section 4.2 precludes offering "experiences that change the way Facebook looks and works."

This explicitly prevents application developers from trying to improve the User interface, or even allow users to customize it. Other clauses, such as "respect the limits we have placed on Facebook's functionality," also reflect Facebook's desire to maintain strict control over how its users interact with their data on the platform.

"This allows the company to reject any competitive social network that federates its service with Facebook.

The review of applications is an important practice, and Facebook should continue to work to prevent malicious developers from leveraging its platform to harm users. However, the company should allow others to build on and differ from what it has created significantly. A platform as vast and powerful as Facebook should be a starting point for innovators, not a way for the company to impose a unique experience to everyone in its network.

Interface with the next generation of federated social networks

The successful interoperability is almost always powered by open standards. Email is a good example. Using widely adopted protocols like SMTP and IMAP, you can create an account on FastMail and send messages to your friends who use Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft seamlessly. E-mail is a federated service : it includes many independent and decentralized service providers that communicate with a set of common open standards. As a result, users can choose both the company they trust to host their messages and the software they use to access them.

Facebook should adapt its APIs to work with social web protocols recently developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. ActivityStreams and ActivityPub. This would give developers a stable and flexible interface to the Facebook platform and allow Facebook to interact with the next generation of federated services like Mastodon.

In the future, Facebook could become one of many independent social networks. Users could choose to host their data on the service with the features and policies that they preferred and still be able to interact with their friends on Facebook and elsewhere.

This is not just Facebook

It was a time when data portability Mark Zuckerberg said recently – with some regret – that it was something that Facebook engineers were considering, several years ago:

I think that very early on the platform we had this very idealistic vision around how the data portability would allow all these different new experiences, and I think the comments we have received from our community and the world is that privacy and data lock is more important to people than perhaps easier

We do not agree on how Facebook's comments from the part of users and legislators should be interpreted. What users want is both security and real control of their experience – and they do not want to give in to what Mark Zuckerberg deems appropriate

But, to be clear, the choice of Facebook your needs are, or Google or Twitter or Microsoft, can not be enough either. When we talk about nearly 8 billion people, it is inconceivable that a handful of (largely American) companies will be able to provide this balance for everyone.

With initiatives like the data transfer project, we fear acting already as if the most important portability lay between their own shared understanding of what is an internet service. The data transfer project will allow users to transfer data directly between two services, but it remains to be seen what data Facebook allows you to transfer and where they allow this data. We know that there is more on the internet than this decade's version of a successful West Coast venture that is funded by venture capital. All of these companies have to put back people's data control, so we can decide what we want to do with it.

How We Do It

Facebook has the power to make all these changes by itself. This would mean a more socially responsible company, a better experience for its users and a fairer playing field for its competitors. If the company is unwilling to help, governments may have to intervene. Congress can enact laws that impose real data portability, as GDPR is already doing in Europe. Such laws should require that data such as a user's friend list be accessible to that user in a useful format. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the power to impose "behavioral remedies" on companies that illegally maintain market power. Patches for portability and interoperability of data could be part of an antitrust remedy or settlement negotiated with the FTC.

And while some politicians are reluctant to regulate the technology industry, there is still work to be done to solve the problem. – setting laws that prevent users from recovering their data. Facebook and other technology giants are closing their data, even end-user data, through their narrow service conditions that seek to limit what users – or their tools – can do on a site or service. Users should not have to worry about losing access to their account just because they decided to download or retrieve their own data. And no one in the Internet ecology should be afraid of being sued by laws like the CFAA to allow users to move, delete or review the data that big techs have on them.

None of these solutions is a panacea. Facebook has other types of market power that small businesses might not be able to overcome, and that we may have to deal in other ways. But portability and interoperability of data could help turn Facebook into an obstacle to innovation. If it was more feasible for users to take their data and move elsewhere, Facebook would need to compete on the strength of its product rather than the difficulty of starting over again. And if the platform were more interoperable, small businesses could work with the infrastructure already created by Facebook to build new innovative experiences and open new markets. Users are trapped in a stagnant and sick system. Releasing their data and giving them control are the first steps towards a cure.

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