Link to post here.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has taken a wishy-washy stance on news and its roll on the Threads platform. He's mentioned “over promising” and “under delivering” at least a couple of times. Whatever the hell that means, I don't buy it.

Meta does not like posts that take you off its app, like ones with URLs. Like news. They never have. That's really the crux of this news situation.

Facebook learned that bullying news outlets into publishing natively on Instant Articles does not work. If it did work, and Threads could keep everyone on the app while offering breaking news coverage, the folks at Meta would be singing a different tune.

Mosseri says he won't “amplify” news. He has yet to, as far as I'm aware, define what “news” is and isn't. He has not announced what “amplify” means, or if the opposite of that means “suppress.”

This whole news thing is a convenient problem for Meta because now they can flag all URLs as “news” and suppressed it in their algorithm. Are cooking blogs considered news? Who knows.

Anyway, let's all be good little users and creators who exist only to amplify Fortune 500 companies and produce content for Meta's large language models.

Type: #Note Re: #Meta #SocialMedia

Meta also did not use private chats on its messaging services as training data for the model and took steps to filter private details from public datasets used for training, said Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, speaking on the sidelines of the company's annual Connect conference this week.

Emphasis mine.

This is a neat little trick. A reasonable reader, or someone not completely cynical, may think the term “private chat” just means chats, which are private in nature.

But Facebook / Meta doesn't believe chats are inherently private. Privacy is an opt-in feature on Messenger. You must explicitly switch on the end-to-end encryption. Only then will Meta agree to keep out of your user data.

From Facebook's help center:

A secret conversation in Messenger is encrypted end to end, which means the messages are intended just for you and the other person – not anyone else, including us.

So, when Nick Clegg, Meta's President of Global Affairs, goes on record to say the company's AI doesn't train on “private chats,” it reads like a benign statement. But, it's impossible to decipher how Clegg is using the term— as an adjective, or part of a noun with a precise technical meaning.

It's possible that the term belongs to Reuters, as “private chat” isn't directly quoted. But I find that to be a weird liberty for a journalist to take in a published interview.

Okay, I know it sounds like I'm splitting hairs but, in five years when an exposé breaks, and Zuck is invited to another congressional hearing over privacy concerns, that phrasing gives him an out.

Zuck can be like “we didn't mean private, we meant Private™. Then some congressperson with a hundred grand in Meta stock can throw up their hands and be like “who's to say, case closed.”

I know of at least one other situation where this type of wordplay occurs.

Ever been pulled over by a cop and they ask “mind if I search your car?” They specifically ask like this because you're likely to respond with “yes” or “no.” And because of the way the question is phrased, both potential answers can imply consent to search.

“Mind if I search your car?” “No.”

You may've meant “no you can't search my car,” but a cop can argue to a judge that they thought you meant “no, I don't mind.” The reverse is true with the answer yes. “Yes I mind” and “yes I give you consent” are both plausible interpretations.

It's a neat little trick.

Type: #Note Re: #Meta #Privacy #Technology