A busy week for corporate bullshit

After months of keeping low profiles while COVID-19 dominated the headlines, the tech industry has apparently decided to make up for lost time with a one-week barrage of bullshit to close out October. Because who doesn't want to slide into the busiest sales season of the year on a slick of one's own mess, and associated consumer ill will? What do you mean, "Nobody with any sense?"

Anyway, here's a roundup of my favourites from yesterday, complete with pithy snarky commentary.

Facebook’s disclosures under scrutiny by the FBI, SEC, FTC, and DOJ

When the extent of the Cambridge Analytica scandal was first breaking back in March, I wrote this:

There are people at Facebook who signed off on a business plan that involved collecting legally protected information about people with neither their knowledge nor their consent, and selling that data to third parties; people who then decided not to notify users when it was crystal clear that the whole shady business had gone very, very wrong. Those people will not just be facing lawsuits; those people will be facing jail time... in addition to the lawsuits.

Some readers (all two of you 😃) may have thought that I was being somewhat hyperbolic with that  statement. And, in fairness, apart from a few relatively uneventful appearances before lawmakers in the U.S. and EU, Facebook was looking like they might have escaped the worst of the possible outcomes that they could have been facing. But appearances can deceive, and Facebook themselves are now confirming that they've been under investigation, by multiple U.S. federal agencies, since at least May.

As reported by the Washington Post:

A federal investigation into Facebook’s sharing of data with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica has broadened to focus on the actions and statements of the tech giant and now involves three agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the official inquiries.

Representatives for the FBI, the SEC and the Federal Trade Commission have joined the Department of Justice in its inquiries about the two companies and the sharing of personal information of 71 million Americans, suggesting the wide-ranging nature of the investigation, said five people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a probe that remains incomplete.

[...]

The questioning from federal investigators centers on what Facebook knew three years ago and why the company didn’t reveal it at the time to its users or investors, as well as any discrepancies in more recent accounts, among other issues, according to these people.The Capitol Hill testimony of Facebook officials, including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, also is being scrutinized as part of the probe, said people familiar with the federal inquiries.

Facebook confirmed that it had received questions from the federal agencies and said it was sharing information and cooperating in other ways. “We are cooperating with officials in the US, UK and beyond," said Facebook spokesman Matt Steinfeld.

This puts yesterday's revelations (from last Friday's midnight document dump) in a different light. Who wants to bet that Facebook's 747-page infodump will be mostly information that investigators already know? Who else thinks that they were trying to get out ahead of the narrative on investigative heat that's about to get way hotter, in addition to burying as many juicy details as possible in the Friday night news graveyard?

Who else thinks that they might not get away with either of those things, this time around?