What about this … just heard about it this morning.
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postulative I totally agree with you!
I use an add-on called Fluff Busting Purity, or F.B Purity when looking at Facebook. This is the most wonderful tool I have come across for Facebook. It prevents ads from popping up when I am reading, stops certain things happening if I do not want them to, and shows me people who have “unfriended” me etc. It is totally free and Facebook have been trying to shut them down to no avail, as it controls the View that you want to see of Facebook, and allows the user to make Facebook more “user-friendly”.
It actually helps the User to “Clean Up and Customize Facebook”… a wonderful tool to make life easier.
Here is the link: https://www.fbpurity.com/
Check it out for yourself - you will be totally impressed!
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I have that installed to all my computer based browsers. It is brilliant. Alas, I mostly am using ipads, these days, and there just is not much of an option. Weblock is one, but you end up breaking lots of other sites. It requires a huge amount of configuration to get it just right. I usually end up giving up and uninstalling it.
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Scandal-ridden social network giant Facebook has owned up to accidentally storing hundreds of millions of user passwords in clear text, but says they were not exposed externally.
… that they know of, or are admitting to …
From FB …
Worth a read if you have a cynical sense of humour …
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Is there a need to be asking a different question from that of the topic?
DO WE NEED FACEBOOK OR GOOGLE?
Are they replaceable and what might the better alternatives be?
It might just be simpler for everyone to just walk away from both of them than ever imagine we can manage them through regulation.
At least in an open society that is! China might be the one exception, however it is reasonable to also expect China as an authority has equal access to the inner workings of both on home soil, and perhaps further afield? 
Ps I survive ok agnostic to facebook and now do all I can to minimise any need for Googles assistance!
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Short answer “no”. A longer answer is: “just try getting your friends to stop using it and communicate with you by phone or face to face”. My old work mob organise lunches twice a year, usually 50 or more old girls and boys attending… and its all done on facebook. Its the only reason I rejoined after having left early last year. I missed getting notifications for two of the lunches because they stopped using email to send them out.
I’ve been on gmail since the beta program and have been trying to extricate myself for about a year. I keep finding new software registrations or website registrations to change info for, but until I get all that done… there it is. And I can’t wait to get rid of yahoo, too, when smugmug finally releases us from the necessity of having a yahoo account, in order to access Flickr.
That said, I have managed to get some of my friends to switch to Telegram for messaging at least, if they dont have iphones for iMessage.
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No surprises here …
or here …
I found this part amusing …
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was deemed a figure who continually “fails to show the levels of leadership and personal responsibility that should be expected from someone who sits at the top of one of the world’s biggest companies.”
The investigation will likely make uncomfortable reading for the social networking giant, as a large section of the report focuses on how Facebook handled the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as well as the dubious relationship between the company and app developers over the last decade.
UK regulators say that Facebook has deliberately sought to “frustrate” the committee during the investigation by “giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times misleading answers to our questions,” and the report even goes so far to say that Zuckerberg has shown “contempt” towards the governing body.
He does, however, seem to ‘show the levels of leadership and personal responsibility that should be expected from’ a petulant child … 
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There is some positive news on the Facebook/Google/Amazon front, from one of the likely leading contenders in next year’s US presidential election.
On the downside, any such legislation would end up with the US Supreme Court, which is currently dominated by old white men who believe in the sanctity of business.
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Makes for some interesting reading …
… there is a lot in there, and the exchange repeats on replies;
As discussed yesterday, we can now provide the first breakdown for Australia to your Office with confidence, although please note this figure may change as our investigation progresses. Our engineering and data science teams have been working round the clock to make this information available as the data set of affected accounts was not a pre-defined term which we could query on the system, and therefore needed to be built. We expedited this work to ensure production of these figures as quickly as possible.
Our priority however needed to be, and remains, securing the accounts. For the accounts in respect of which we have reset the access tokens as a precaution, the process was commenced on Friday morning (Syd time), and we have prioritised the numbers breakdown on completion of this process.
We are simultaneously working to determine whether these accounts were misused or any information accessed by the attacker, as well as assessing the potential risk to data subjects. We would be happy to continue to update you with more information as it becomes available, but we need to set expectations that obtaining clarity on what data was accessed is a considerably time- consuming process to ensure accuracy and complete analysis. We appreciate you will keep this information confidential as we continue to work on this analysis. Please note that our preliminary investigation indicates that credit card information would not have been visible to the attackers as we do not display the full credit card numbers in any account — not even to the account holder.
This number does not make any statement regarding whether accounts were subsequently accessed by the attacker, what data (if any) was exposed to the attacker, or other actions of the attacker in respect of the tokens. Our analysis of this continues.
236,000 is the number of accounts of Australian users that were the target of a URL call to “view as” during the window of 14 September 2018 – 28 September 2018 where we discovered an unexpected spike in ‘view as’ traffic (the “Accounts viewed in ‘view as’ mode between 14 to 28 September 2018”). For these accounts, we have reset the access tokens and as a result these users will have to log back in to Facebook, starting 29 September 2018. Again, at this stage of our investigation it is not possible to determine whether or not the attacker took any action on these accounts such as to access their information.
The date of 14 September 2018 is relevant, as that is when we believe this attack commenced, based on our investigations to date. Our analysis showed a large and unexpected spike in ‘view as’ traffic which we investigated and discovered this attack to obtain tokens.
For context in providing this information to you, we previously announced that the total number of accounts worldwide reflected in Accounts viewed in ‘view as’ mode between 14 to 28 September 2018 is approximately 50m.
We believe these figures to be an upper bound on the number of user Accounts viewed in ‘view as’ mode between 14 to 28 September 2018 that could have been affected. The numbers affected by the attack could indeed be significantly lower; we have sought to deploy an abundance of caution and adopted a conservative approach in order to maximise the safety of our users.
These numbers may change, and we would be happy to continue to update you with material further information. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.
Kind regards,
Almost sounds like it’s from the legal department 
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Why wouldn’t it be, I am sure it was gone through by a team of legal experts before it was approved for release. It isn’t so much about the customer it is about protecting the business before all else. You can sell bird droppings (a nicer description than the word I was going to use) if you package it as fertiliser.
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Wow. Mark Zuckerberg calls on Governments to regulate Facebook.
What next. Honest politicians?
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Perhaps not so likely either, @Fred123?
Why would Zuckerberg want to make his problem, some one else’s problem?
Could I suggest that to date what is published and shared has little control over it because there are no rules. Zuckerberg may be quietly saying, ‘don’t blame us for what gets shared, but if you would like us to manage and censor content please help us, what rules of censorship does your law require?’
Given every nation has different standards and even systems for assessment or enforcement it would seem unlikely there will ever be an outcome. Eg Will world wide Christmas images be censored to ensure Brunei agrees, or will video of legal stonings be permitted because they are public events, and of public interest?
Will it be that each nation will have different requirements, and each their own firewalls and censorship arrangements of all content all under the direct control of the government of the day? If China can do it, it can’t be that hard? This also says that Facebook for it to be totally effective will need to ensure all content is accessible. No closed or secret groups to share hate or other nasties.
How many would continue to use Facebook etc under those conditions?
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… the next instalment in ‘careful what you wish for’ …
A rose by any other name …
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Freedom of communication vs the risks of state censorship of social media is a powerful topic.
Emotionally, Is the obvious target still missing in all this discussion, Colt?
The manufactuer of the AR-15 assault rifle, sorry sporting rifle!
It is suggested the Australia Govt will take a positon on the streaming of content by social media platforms to the G20 summit?
It could be suggested it is also appropriate for the Australian Govt to take a position on gun control to the G20 at the same time? It can’t require too much extra effort. They already have one.
Better to address the root causes.
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Indeed it is, yet rights and freedoms in this country on the surface are rather vague and seem more often than not to be misunderstood. Additionally, countries touted to have solid foundations layed on rights and freedoms don’t always seem to be overwhelming success stories on either count … Somewhat of a mess it seems to me, and ‘strangely’ I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy when any level of government rushes in to protect me or save me from the next evil …
After 23 years of ‘reforms’ they have at least half a dozen - maybe they should take them all ? So-called ‘gun control’ is probably OT for this forum …
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If you know you’re losing a yes/no argument, then change sides and make sure the regulations are written to suit you.
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Facebook data that included 540 million accounts/records has been found on Amazon public Cloud servers. It has now been secured but how much damage was done before the exposure was found?
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Facebook:
The company said it will inform users if they find evidence that the data was misused.
So if you don’t hear from Facebook, there is nothing to fear?
Trust Facebook?
Would you want to know if any of it was your data, just in case and exactly what data is involved?
Just in case it gets misused sometime soon!
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Yeah … the stable is now secure - location of horses? unknown - there were only 540 million of them … surely one would hear the beat of the hooves as they ride on?
… you sound dubious?
The folks at NordVPN had this to say …
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When you read what data was “leaked” the worry must set in. The detail “including comments, likes, reactions, account names, Facebook IDs and more” is a scary amount of “private” info to have sitting openly for anyone to take and abuse. “Leaked” just isn’t what happened, it was displayed rather than leaked.
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