Why, "F%$# the Cable Companies," Is Such a Good Campaign Slogan

Because they are really horribly awful entities:

While people remain exclusively fixated on the telecom industry's attacks on net neutrality, the reality is companies like Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon are busy trying to eliminate nearly all federal and state oversight of their businesses. And while deregulation has its uses in healthy markets as part of an effort to protect innovation, you may have noticed that the telecom market isn't particularly healthy. As such, the end result of eliminating most meaningful regulatory oversight without organic market pressure in place is only likely to make existing problems worse.

This battle is getting particularly heated on the state level. After the Trump administration dismantled net neutrality and consumer privacy protections, states began flexing their muscle and attempting to pass their own privacy and net neutrality rules. ISP lobbyists, in turn, tried to head those efforts off at the pass by lobbying the FCC to include (legally untested) language in its net neutrality repeal "pre-empting" states from being able to protect broadband consumers in the wake of federal apathy.

And in the wake of the net neutrality repeal, companies like Charter (Spectrum) are trying to claim that states have no legal authority to hold them accountable for failed promises, slow speeds, or much of anything else.

For example, Charter is already trying to use the FCC net neutrality language to wiggle out of a lawsuit accusing it of failing to deliver advertised speeds. And the New York Public Service Commission also recently stated it found that Charter has been effectively lying to regulators about meeting conditions affixed to its $89 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. As part of the deal, Charter was supposed to deploy broadband to a set number of additional homes and businesses, but regulators found (pdf) several instances where Charter actively misled regulators.

Last week Charter replied to these allegations by again claiming that states have no authority over them. As part of that effort the company is already citing the FCC's preemption language buried in its net neutrality repeal:

Seriously.  If Democrats are running for office, and not mentioning this sh%$, they, and their high priced consultants, are engaging in political and electoral malpractice.

And the House Will Never Allow a Vote, and Trump Will Veto It

Still, the fact that Democrats managed to peel off a few votes and overturn the repeal of net neutrality is good policy and good politics:

The US Senate today voted to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules, with all members of the Democratic caucus and three Republicans voting in favor of net neutrality.

The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would simply undo the FCC's December 2017 vote to deregulate the broadband industry. If the CRA is approved by the House and signed by President Trump, Internet service providers would have to continue following rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has scheduled his repeal to take effect on June 11. If Congress doesn't act, the net neutrality rules and the FCC's classification of ISPs as common carriers would be eliminated on that date.

Democrats face much longer odds in the House, where Republicans hold a 236-193 majority. Republicans have a slim majority in the Senate, but Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) broke ranks in order to support net neutrality and common carrier regulation of broadband providers.

The vote was 52-47.

The optimist in me celebrates this.

They cynic in me wonders how many Democrats in the Senate would have voted yes if there was any possibility of it actually being passed.

All Your Base Are Belong to Us!

It appears that the the most effective ad in 2016 from the Russian troll farms was from Blue Lives Matter.

Who could have known that the police union, the PBA, and its "Blue Lives Matter" campaign were Putin's stooges?

Of course, this is sarcasm. The Police Benevolent Association does not support the efforts of a Russian authoritarian with no respect for human rights, it supports the efforts of a number of American authoritarians with no respect for human rights:

The most-viewed Facebook message secretly created by a St. Petersburg-based Russian troll farm was one that allegedly backed American cops.

“Back The Badge” appeared to be an authentically American community on Facebook rallying support for police officers. In fact it was Russian, a creation of the Internet Research Agency, an online propaganda mill that special counsel Robert Mueller indicted in February on conspiracy charges.

The ad itself was nondescript, a simple portal to Back The Badge’s Facebook page. It showed the group’s logo, an officer’s shield, over a background image of a cop car’s flashing blue and red lights. “Community of people who support our brave police officers,” the ad read.

That ad, released on Thursday by Democrats on the House intelligence committee, ran on Oct. 19, 2016, less than a month before the election. According to material turned over to the committee by Facebook, it appears to be the most influential single ad the troll farm is ever know to have concocted.

There is no way to decisively determine the impact of any particular advertisement or other piece of propaganda. But more people saw the Back The Badge ad than any other inauthentic account, page, or advertisement that the Internet Research Agency concocted. Facebook’s data tools, in the hands of the Internet Research Agency, ensured that it appeared in the Facebook feeds of over 1.3 million users, a fact first noted by NBC. Over 73,000 people clicked on it.

This this has always seemed more like trolling for clicks and revenue than it does a sophisticated covert intelligence operation.

At Least They Wiill Be On Record

Democrats have managed to force a motion of disapproval of the FCC's repeal of net neutrality.

I do not expect it to pass, but forcing the Republicans to line up in favor of Comcast and AT&T is horrible politics for the 'Phants:

The Democratic push to restore net neutrality took another step today with the official filing of a petition, under the Congressional Review Act, to force a vote on whether to repeal the FCC’s unpopular new rules. The effort may be doomed in the end, but it’s still extremely important.

The CRA is a way of reversing rules recently instated by federal agencies; it’s simple and effective, though, until this administration, rarely used (but they made up for lost time, all right). Its expedited process and low bar to entry — only 30 senators are needed to bring a vote, and the vote generally happens quite quickly — have made it an ideal tool for Congress to undo Obama-era regulations, but the shoe is on the other foot now.

Democrats in the Senate are using the CRA as a potential method of removing the rules the FCC voted for in December and returning to 2015’s Open Internet Order and strong net neutrality rules. Today they filed the actual petition to force the vote.

………

Right now there are 50 senators supporting the measure, including one Republican. The Democrats are hoping to make this issue extremely visible in order to put pressure on other, perhaps undecided, Republicans who might cross the aisle with enough prodding from their constituency.

As I’ve written before, and as Senators themselves have admitted, the chance of this actually rolling back the rules is low, since it would have to also pass through the House, where Democrats are at a more serious disadvantage, then be signed by the president, which is unlikely, to say the least.

But by forcing a vote, they force everyone in the Senate to take a position for or against the rules, including those who have attempted to stay “neutral” through silence.

This is actually something that Democrats can run on, that is both good policy and good politics.  (Net neutrality is favored by Republicans by something like 2 to 1.)

More of this.

Conservative Butthurt

John McCain is planning his funeral, which is probably sensible, given that the prognosis for glioblastoma is NOT good.

McCain has made it clear that he does not want Donald Trump at his funeral, and  the right wing twittersphere has erupted into major butthurt.

I'm not a fan of John McCain.  I think that he's one of the most overrated politicians in America.

That being said, it's literally his funeral.  These delicate snowflakes need to shut the f%$# up.

More of This

A group of "Techno Anarchists" in New York City have set up a mesh network to allow for broadly available low cost broadband:

It's a promise that seems almost too good to be true: super-fast internet that's cheap, and free of the contracts and hassles that come with major service providers.

That's not a pipe dream for Brian Hall, it's his goal.

The lead volunteer behind the community group NYC Mesh aims to bring affordable internet with lightning-quick downloads to everyone in New York, one building at a time.

"Our typical speeds are 80 to 110 megabits a second," Hall says, pointing out that streaming something like Netflix only requires about 5 Mbps.

CBC News joined him one afternoon on a roof in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Greenpoint. Hall was installing the latest addition to the mesh network that will deliver his vision.

The worksite is one of the group's latest customers, a converted warehouse that houses a video production company. The regular commercial internet providers were going to charge tens of thousands of dollars to get them online.

NYC Mesh took on the job for a small installation fee of a few hundred dollars and a monthly donation.

Mesh networks explained

So what is a mesh network?

Picture a spiderweb of wireless connections. The main signal originates from what's called the Supernode. It's a direct plugin to the internet, via an internet exchange point — the same place Internet Service Providers get their connection.

The signal from the supernode, sent out wirelessly via an antenna, covers an area of several kilometres.

From there, a mesh of smaller antennas spread out on rooftops or balconies receive that signal. They're connected to Wi-Fi access points that allow people to use the internet.

Each supernode can connect thousands of users.

And the access points talk to the others around them, so if one goes down for some reason the rest still work.

"Mesh networks are an alternative to standard ISP hookups. You're not provided with an internet connection through their cable, but through — in our case —Wi-Fi networks," says Jason Howard, a programmer and actor who's helping with the latest installation.

NYC Mesh bought an industrial-strength connection to the internet right at an Internet Exchange Point (IXP), in this case a futuristic-looking tower in downtown Manhattan. It's the same place that internet service providers (ISPs) like Verizon and Spectrum connect to the internet, accessing massive amounts of wired bandwidth.

NYC Mesh then installed an antenna on the roof of the IXP. That became the supernode, the heart of its mesh network.

From there it beams out and receives Wi-Fi signals, connecting to receivers on rooftops spread through the East Village and Chinatown, and across the river into parts of Brooklyn.

I am generally dubious of techno-libertarian solutions to problems, I tend to favor regulation and public ownership, but this seems to be doing pretty well, though one does have to wonder about how well it might scale as its popularity increases.  (New York City is a perfect laboratory for investigating these issues)

I would think that the use of directional antennas would allow broader usage, if just by providing geographical separation between the data streams when frequency separation is no longer available.

In any case, anything that discommodes the incumbent telco and cable providers is to my mine an independent good.

Cuck Fomcast

There is a reason why Comcast is consistently one of the most despised businesses in the United States.

Case in point, the cable giant is refusing to upgrade lines for customers fho don't shell out big bucks for cable TV in addition to internet service:

As we've often noted, Comcast has been shielded from the cord cutting trend somewhat thanks to its growing monopoly over broadband. As users on slow DSL lines flee telcos that are unwilling to upgrade their damn networks, they're increasingly flocking to cable operators for faster speeds. When they get there, they often bundle TV services; not necessarily because they want it, but because it's intentionally cheaper than buying broadband standalone.

And while Comcast's broadband monopoly has protected it from TV cord cutting somewhat, the rise in streaming competition has slowly eroded that advantage, and Comcast is expected to see see double its usual rate of cord cutting this year according to Wall Street analysts.

Comcast being Comcast, the company has a semi-nefarious plan B. Part of that plan is to abuse its monopoly over broadband to deploy arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees. These restrictions are glorified rate hikes applied to non competitive markets, with the added advantage of making streaming video more expensive. It's a punishment for choosing to leave Comcast's walled garden.

But Comcast appears to have discovered another handy trick that involves using its broadband monopoly to hamstring cord cutters. Reports emerged this week that the company is upgrading the speeds of customers in Houston and parts of the Pacific Northwest, but only if they continue to subscribe to traditional cable television. The company's press release casually floats over the fact that only Comcast video customers will see these upgrades for now:

"Speed increases will vary based on the Xfinity Internet customers' current speed subscriptions. Those receiving the speed boost will benefit from an increase of 30 to 40 percent in their download speeds. Existing Xfinity Internet and X1 video customers subscribing to certain packages can expect to experience enhanced speeds this month."

As is usually the case, Comcast simply acted as if this was all just routine promotional experimentation (an argument that only works if you're unfamiliar with Comcast's other efforts to constrain emerging video competition):

Comcast is, using the immortal words of Douglas Adams, are, "A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

Tweet of the Day

And as regards Britain, the facts are EU rules impede Corbyn’s program: you can’t properly nationalise if you can’t abolish internal markets, you can’t build public industry with its state aid rules, you can’t renationalise the NHS with its public procurement rules, etc, etc

— Ronan Burtenshaw (@ronanburtenshaw) April 30, 2018

The EU is an antidemocratic and neoliberal project, and until this is fixed, and until the Krauts hegemony of the union is ended, the problems of the EU are going to continue to get worse.

This Guy Just Cost Himself a Billion Dollars on Principle

WhatsApp founder and CEO Jan Koum has left the company and Facebook over its policies which would reveal customer data:

The billionaire chief executive of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, is planning to leave the company after clashing with its parent, Facebook, over the popular messaging service’s strategy and Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption, according to people familiar with internal discussions.

Koum, who sold WhatsApp to Facebook for more than $19 billion in 2014, also plans to step down from Facebook’s board of directors, according to these people. The date of his departure isn’t known.

………

The independence and protection of its users’ data is a core tenet of WhatsApp that Koum and his co-founder, Brian Acton, promised to preserve when they sold their tiny start-up to Facebook. It doubled down on its pledge by adding encryption in 2016. The clash over data took on additional significance in the wake of revelations in March that Facebook had allowed third parties to mishandle its users’ personal information.

………

Koum’s exit is highly unusual at Facebook. The inner circle of management, as well as the board of directors, has been fiercely loyal during the scandals that have rocked the social media giant. In addition, Koum is the sole founder of a company acquired by Facebook to serve on its board. Only two other Facebook executives, Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, are members of the board.

………

Acton left the company in November. He has joined a chorus of former executives critical of Facebook. Acton recently endorsed a #DeleteFacebook social media campaign that has gained force in the wake of the controversy over data privacy sparked by Cambridge Analytica, a political marketing firm tied to the Trump campaign that had inappropriately obtained the private information of 87 million Facebook users.

………

WhatsApp executives were comfortable sharing some data with Facebook to measure who was using the service, according to the people. But they opposed using WhatsApp’s data to create a user profile that was unified across Facebook’s multiple platforms, which also include Instagram and Facebook Messenger, and that could be used for ad-targeting or for Facebook’s data-mining.

………

Another point of disagreement was over WhatsApp’s encryption. In 2016, WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption, a security feature that scrambles people’s messages so that outsiders, including WhatsApp’s owners, can’t read them. Facebook executives wanted to make it easier for businesses to use its tools, and WhatsApp executives believed that doing so would require some weakening of its encryption.

Here is the link about him leaving a 10 figure payday on the table.

I'm not sure if it's really possible to make privacy profitable without charging users, but you sure as hell can't do it at Facebook.

A Donation Request from Twitter

The Democrats are suing @WikiLeaks and @JulianAssange for revealing how the DNC rigged the Democratic primaries. Help us counter-sue. We've never lost a publishing case and discovery is going to be amazing fun:https://t.co/E1QbYJL4bB

More options:https://t.co/MsNZhrTzTL pic.twitter.com/VbPp7FTNq3

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 20, 2018

I am well aware that the DNC sued CREEP in the 1970s and got a settlement, but Wikileaks did not hack the DNC, the GRU did.

Wikileaks plays the role of the Washington Post, though they lack the charm of Woodward and Bernstein, in this drama.

About F%$#ing Time

The International Standards Organization (ISO) has rejected an encryption standard promulgated by the National Security Agency because they believe that they have back-doored the method:

For three years, International Standards Organization has been wrangling over which cryptographic algorithms will be incorporated into a standard for interoperability in "Internet of Things" gadgets; at issue has been the NSA's insistence that "Simon" and "Speck" would be the standard block cipher algorithms in these devices.

The NSA has a history of sabotaging cryptographic standards; most famously, documents provided by Edward Snowden showed that the NSA had sabotaged NIST security standards, but the story goes farther back than that: I have been told by numerous wireless networking exercises that the weaknesses in the now-obsolete Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP) were deliberately introduced by NSA meddling. And of course, the NSA once classified working cryptography as a munition and denied civilians access to it, until EFF got a court to declare code to be a form of protected speech under the First Amendment.

Now, the NSA has been defeated at ISO, with its chosen ciphers firmly rejected by the committee members, who were pretty frank about their reason for rejecting Simon and Speck: they don't trust the NSA.

Good.  I don't trust the NSA either, and I do not want them in my home appliances.

Sing It, Brother

I wholeheartedly agree that the world of deceptive user agreements used to arbitrarily punish customers 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag:

Mark Zuckerberg says it doesn't matter how creepy and terrible his company is, because you agreed to let him comprehensively f%$# you over from asshole to appetite by clicking "I agree" to a tens of thousands of words' worth of "agreements" spread out across multiple webpages; when questioned about this in Congress, Zuck grudgingly admitted that "I don’t think the average person likely reads that whole document." But as far as Zuck is concerned, it doesn't matter whether you've read it, whether you understand it, whether it can be understood -- you still "agreed."

Facebook is far from the worst offender: Paypal has been cutting off the accounts of users who signed up before they were 18, which violated their 50,000+ word ToS (spread across 21 web-pages!); it doesn't matter if those users are now well over the age of consent, more than a decade later, their failure to read all those terms is a hanging offense.

The self-replicating plague of bullsh%$ "agreements" is finally getting a reckoning, as users wake up to the fact that companies were actually serious when they said that they expected hold us to these absurd legal documents. What's more, the looming spectre of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, with its mandate for plain language agreements that users have to understand, is calling into question whether it's possible to even have a business that can only exist if users agree to terms that put the US tax-code to shame.

That is to say, businesses are being told that they are obliged to obtain detailed, informed consent to every single term in their contracts before they can start interacting with their users. The businesses say that undertaking such a process could take hours and that no one would ever use their services if a precondition for their usage is to actually understand what they're giving away.

To which the EU answers: exactly.

The EU is doing the right thing here.  (I cannot believe that I just said that)

Seriously, the ecology of the commercial internet resembles nothing so much as a petty bunco operation.

Thoughts on Barbara Bush Upon Her Passing

Not a whole bunch, except to note that she got a rather weird compliment from Nixon in the White House tapes, that, "She knows how to hate."

I think that there is a pretty good chance that, had she been born 2 or 3 decades later, she would have been the first major party woman candidate for US President.

I've always felt that she was both the smartest and tough member of the Bush family.

On the other hand, I have seen the discussions on Twitter regarding her, and I've alternately felt that they were crass and callous, and felt guilty for not understanding the mockery, and felt that they were very funny, and felt guilty for not being offended that they were crass and callous.

Basically, it's all guilt.

That is so Jewish.

Least Surprising News of the Day

Elizabeth Pierce, who has been working for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been arrested for fraud.

Not a surprise, as deceit seems to be a central tenet of the Pai regime:

A broadband adviser selected by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to run a federal advisory committee was arrested last week on claims she tricked investors into pouring money into a multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The adviser, Elizabeth Pierce, is the former chief executive of Quintillion, an Alaska-based fiber optic cable provider operating out of Anchorage. In her capacity as CEO, Pierce allegedly raised more than $250 million from two New York-based investment companies using forged contracts with other companies guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue. Pierce resigned from Quintillion in August of last year, and she stepped down from her role in Pai’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) the following month.

As it turned out, those sales agreements were worthless because the customers had not signed them,” US attorney Geoffrey Berman said in prepared remarks, as reported by the WSJ. “Instead, as alleged, Pierce had forged counter-party signatures on contract after contract. As a result of Pierce’s deception, the investment companies were left with a system that is worth far less than Pierce had led them to believe.” Pierce was trying to raise money to help build out a fiber optic system that would wire Alaska with high-speed internet and better help connect it to networks in other US states. Pierce was charged with wire fraud last Thursday and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Seeing as how sucking up to corrupt telco executives is Ajit Pai's mutant power, this should come as no suprise.

Textbook (Facebook) Racism

This is a direct solicitation for ad buyers to racially discriminate using Facebook's tools. It is on Facebook's site right now. pic.twitter.com/9f43WLmmKF

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) April 10, 2018

Certainly, there are plenty of advertisers who could look at this ad, and not see any racism.

These are the same people who have lily white office staff, and don't see any racism either.

You see this all the time in real estate listings and job listings, and most of the time, the attempts to discourage differently pigmented people are a LOT subtler than this.

FWIW, my guess is that this sort of data mining is used a lot more for age discrimination than it is for race discrimination, but much of the allure to some advertisers is the ability to indulge in bigotry and not get caught.

Facebook knows exactly what they are doing here.

Snark of the Day

In response to this tweet about an internet connected condom:

Here's a "smart condom" that tracks thrust speed and velocity and lets you share the data. But hey, no pressure! 🍆 https://t.co/zgFCsnQF1S pic.twitter.com/kpDF5bhcb1

— CNET (@CNET) March 2, 2017

Chrissy Teigen responded with the following:

“Hello name’s rob, id like to purchase a pack of “very bad at sex” condoms please” https://t.co/KMMIFh3ySa

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) April 9, 2018

I have a feeling that this company's prospect just took a major hit, because now their technology is associated with coital training wheels.

Cable Companies Suck

And it appears that the worst of them is Centurylink.

In their latest escapade, the cable company is defending itself against highly credible accusations that it is charging customers for accounts and services that they never ordered, the cable company is claiming that it cannot be sued by its customers because it has no customers:

CenturyLink is trying to force customers into arbitration in order to avoid a class-action lawsuit from subscribers who say they've been charged for services they didn't order. To do so, CenturyLink has come up with a surprising argument—the company says it doesn't have any customers.

While the customers sued CenturyLink itself, the company says the customers weren't actually customers of CenturyLink. Instead, CenturyLink says they were customers of 10 subsidiaries spread through the country.

CenturyLink basically doesn't exist as a service provider—according to a brief CenturyLink filed Monday.

"That sole defendant, CenturyLink, Inc., is a parent holding company that has no customers, provides no services, and engaged in none of the acts or transactions about which Plaintiffs complain," CenturyLink wrote. "There is no valid basis for Defendant to be a party in this Proceeding: Plaintiffs contracted with the Operating Companies to purchase, use, and pay for the services at issue, not with CenturyLink, Inc."

CenturyLink says those operating companies should be able to intervene in the case and "enforce class-action waivers," which would force the customers to pursue their claims via arbitration instead of in a class-action lawsuit. By suing CenturyLink instead of the subsidiaries, "it may be that Plaintiffs are hoping to avoid the arbitration and class-action waiver provisions," CenturyLink wrote.

………

Customers from 14 US states are involved in the putative class action against CenturyLink in US District Court in Minnesota. Nine lawsuits filed last year were consolidated into one, and the consolidated complaint says:

[C]ustomers have routinely reported: (1) being promised one rate during the sales process but being charged a higher rate when actually billed; and (2) being charged unauthorized fees, including billing for services not ordered, for fake or duplicate accounts, for services ordered but never delivered, for services that were canceled, for equipment that was properly returned, and for early termination fees.

When customers complained—and many thousands have—CenturyLink not only encouraged but rewarded its agents to deny remedying the wrongful charges and keep as much of the overcharges in the Company as possible.

Why I support municipal broadband, part MCXXVII.

Yeah, This Is Horrifying

It turns out that in addition to promiscuously sharing user data with anyone who would pay, Facebook was planning to use health data from hospitals for further refine their profiles of their users:

Facebook has asked several major U.S. hospitals to share anonymized data about their patients, such as illnesses and prescription info, for a proposed research project. Facebook was intending to match it up with user data it had collected, and help the hospitals figure out which patients might need special care or treatment.

The proposal never went past the planning phases and has been put on pause after the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal raised public concerns over how Facebook and others collect and use detailed information about Facebook users.

"This work has not progressed past the planning phase, and we have not received, shared, or analyzed anyone's data," a Facebook spokesperson told CNBC.

But as recently as last month, the company was talking to several health organizations, including Stanford Medical School and American College of Cardiology, about signing the data-sharing agreement.

Let's be clear about this:  The data would not have been meaningfully anonymized, because you COULD NOT meaningfully anonymize the data.

The data itself would indicate who the individuals in question were, and in fact HAD TO, because otherwise it would serve no use, because it had to be target at SPECIFIC PATIENTS who might, "Need special care or treatment."

The business plan here was to take the data, merge it with other data to get personalized medical information, and then sell it back to doctors and hospitals.

If that does not chill you, figure that the next step would have been making it available to businesses to allow them to pre-screen applicants to exclude those who would likely have expensive health problems.

Think of it as a FICO score for your life.

Are you horrified yet?

A Feature, Not a Bug

Facebook is now saying that its saving deleted user videos was the unfortunate result of a bug.

I'm calling bullsh%$. Every time something like this happens, it ALWAYS results in more data collection.

It was policy:

Facebook has been caught archiving videos users thought they had deleted. The New York Magazine flagged the problem to the company last week, after a user downloaded their Facebook archive and was surprised to discover multiple takes of a video they had thought had been discarded at the time the recording was made, years earlier.

Facebook has now apologized for failing to delete the videos, saying “a bug” prevented draft videos from being deleted. It adds that it’s in the process of deleting the content now.

A company spokesperson told us: “We investigated a report that some people were seeing their old draft videos when they accessed their information from our Download Your Information tool. We discovered a bug that prevented draft videos from being deleted. We are deleting them and apologize for the inconvenience.”

They had previously been caught storing unposted status updates, so I am fairly sure that only regret that they got caught.

Facebook Might Be the Best of the Social Media Companies

Case in point, LGBT dating site Grindr is sharing the HIV status of its users with other companies:

The gay hookup app Grindr, which has more than 3.6 million daily active users across the world, has been providing its users’ HIV status to two other companies, BuzzFeed News has learned.

The two companies — Apptimize and Localytics, which help optimize apps — receive some of the information that Grindr users choose to include in their profiles, including their HIV status and “last tested date.”

Because the HIV information is sent together with users’ GPS data, phone ID, and email, it could identify specific users and their HIV status, according to Antoine Pultier, a researcher at the Norwegian nonprofit SINTEF, which first identified the issue.

“The HIV status is linked to all the other information. That’s the main issue,” Pultier told BuzzFeed News. “I think this is the incompetence of some developers that just send everything, including HIV status.”

Grindr was founded in 2009 and has been increasingly branding itself as the go-to app for healthy hookups and gay cultural content. In December, the company launched an online magazine dedicated to cultural issues in the queer community. The app offers free ads for HIV-testing sites, and last week, it debuted an optional feature that would remind users to get tested for HIV every three to six months.

But the new analysis, confirmed by cybersecurity experts who analyzed SINTEF’s data and independently verified by BuzzFeed News, calls into question how seriously the company takes its users’ privacy.

………

Gee, you think?

“To then have that data shared with third parties that you weren’t explicitly notified about, and having that possibly threaten your health or safety — that is an extremely, extremely egregious breach of basic standards that we wouldn’t expect from a company that likes to brand itself as a supporter of the queer community."

Yeah pretty much.

If you know anyone who used Grindr, you should warn them.