Facebook lies about spying on us

This morning the Wall Street Journal reported yet more evidence of how Facebook has been misleading (and, at times, outright lying) to the public about how much privacy we have when we are the product that they relentlessly sell to advertisers. Zuckerberg et al claim we have controls to protect ourselves from spying by Facebook and Instagram, but the reality is that we do not.

In a story entitled “Why Facebook Still Seems to Spy on You,” reporter Katherine Bindley wrote:

If we take advantage of all these privacy controls, it shouldn’t still feel as if Facebook is spying on us, right? We shouldn’t see so many ads that seem so closely tied to our activity on our phones, on the internet or in real life.

The reality? I took those steps months ago, from turning off location services to opting out of ads on Facebook and its sibling Instagram tied to off-site behavior. I told my iPhone to “limit ad tracking.” Yet I continue to see eerily relevant ads.

I tested my suspicion by downloading the What to Expect pregnancy app. I didn’t so much as share an email address, yet in less than 12 hours, I got a maternity-wear ad in my Instagram feed. I’m not pregnant, nor otherwise in a target market for maternity-wear. When I tried to retrace the pathway, discussing the issue with the app’s publisher, its data partners, the advertiser and Facebook itself—dozens of emails and phone calls—not one would draw a connection between the two events.
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The day after I stepped into a San Francisco clothing boutique called Reformation—and didn’t buy anything—Instagram showed me an ad for that store. I confirmed in iPhone settings that location sharing for Instagram was off.
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I asked Facebook why I was still seeing ads that seemed tied to my browsing history. A spokesman confirmed that the setting only covers data that Facebook itself handles. Facebook can’t guarantee that users won’t see ads influenced by browsing data that comes from a source other than Facebook.…

None of this really explains what happened when I downloaded the What to Expect app and ended up almost immediately being pitched maternity-wear. I’m single, I long ago permanently hid the parenting ad topic and none of my Facebook “interests” relates to children. I don’t get pregnancy ads on Facebook or Instagram.

The What to Expect app was among those The Wall Street Journal found was sharing data with Facebook as recently as November, but the company said it stopped using Facebook’s SDK prior to January.

The Federal Trade Commission his week announced a new task force to monitor anti-competitive activities of “Big Tech,” possibly including breaking up past mergers. Given how Facebook and Instagram data on customers are seamlessly integrated, perhaps the FTC should consider calls to break these two up.

Channelling Bill Shockley

Techstars (an incubator company) and various aerospace companies have announced plans to launch a space incubator in LA. As TechCrunch reported:

Already a major hub for the space and aerospace startup industry, with companies like SpaceX, Relativity Space, Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, Phase Four, and others calling Los Angeles home, the new accelerator will provide another booster for LA’s growing startup scene.

The new aerospace program, called the Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator, will be managed by longtime Techstars managing director, Matt Kozlov, who previously helmed Techstars’ efforts at its health-focused accelerator done in partnership with Cedars Sinai.

LA was the country’s major aerospace hub from the 1930s until the end of the Cold War. But with the end of the space race, the downsizing of missile and military aircraft procurement — and the death of Douglas Aircraft and Lockheed’s commercial aircraft division — jobs were cut drastically and others moved to cheaper parts of the country.

The anchor of the new LA space hub is SpaceX, which moved to Hawthorne in 2008. It had been the headquarters of the firm founded by Jack Northrup in 1937, where it built the B-35, F-89 and F-5 military aircraft. (Its B-2 bomber was built at a secret factory in nearby Pico Rivera).

SpaceX is such a tough place to work that it has encouraged its employees to game the Glassdoor employer rating system. Despite this, 1/3 of the 1,109 SpaceX reviews complain about long hours, as with the review that said “There are times I work very long hours including a few times working 60 straight hours”. Last month, SpaceX — celebrating record success in 2018 — rewarded its loyal workforce with a 10% layoff.

Elon Musk has often imagined himself the next Steve Jobs, although Steve Jobs didn’t think so. Musk clearly needs to grow up and at 47 is well past the age when Jobs did so. Jobs was certainly grown up by 1998 (age 43) when his youngest child was born and he took the reins of Apple once again. Jobs also made his money in the commercial marketplace rather than manipulating investors and government procurement.

Instead, I think Musk is the next Bill Shockley. Shockley is known for inventing the field effect and bipolar junction transistors, which won him a share of the Nobel Prize. Late in life, he was known for saying controversial things about political and social issues.

However, (given his Bell Labs colleagues probably would have invented the transistor without him) perhaps his greatest contribution to mankind was creating Silicon Valley. In 1956, he founded Shockley Semiconductor in Mountain View, California.

He was such an asshole as a boss that the next year eight of his leading employees (the “Tratorous Eight”) quit Shockley to form Fairchild Semiconductor — the first of thousands of spinoff companies to be formed in the Bay Area. The eight included Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce — cofounders of Intel — and Eugene Kleiner, cofounder of Kleiner Perkins.

So between his winning personality, stressful working conditions and past/future layoffs, Musk will be making thousands of skilled ex-SpaceX employees available to the LA aerospace labor market. As with Shockley, perhaps Musk’s greatest contribution will be attracting bright engineers to the region, who later take those skills to help get other startup companies off the ground.