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Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

• thr0waway1239 10y ago
  TLDR#1: The investigation still didn't reveal exactly how this happened. TLDR#2: The recommendation to "prevent" these issues on the individuals side is, "Lisa’s medical community has started recommending that patients concerned about privacy not log into Facebook or other social media accounts at medical offices, or even leave their phones in their cars during appointments. " This is about as practical as recommending people just figure out how to fly and occasionally levitate into the upper atmosphere to go out of the cell tower's range, move a few kilometers west, and then fly back down to earth to scramble all these tracking algorithms.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • TheCoreh 10y ago
    Or just disable location access for the Facebook app.
    • throwanem 10y ago
      Which works fine for iPhone owners, and on the 15% of Android devices running Marshmallow, in the relatively rare case where someone knows this can be done and acts upon that knowledge. Everybody else is hosed.
      • jakub_g 10y ago
        You can disable the location access entirely on Android, and enable temporarily only for the short moments when you really need it. Most Androids have a slide-from-top quick menu when you can toggle it with one click. Honestly, Google Maps is the only app on my phone that really needs location access.
        • drcross 10y ago
          Just because you turn it off doesnt mean it's not tracking you. Have a look at google location history, it doesn't use GPS but it can still pinpoint you very closely using cell tower triangulation. Stallman was right, we carry the worlds most advanced tracking device in our pockets.
  • throwanem 10y ago
    Especially since odds are the data being correlated comes from the contact lists in her patients' phones. Even successfully confounding geolocation won't solve that.
    • daemin 10y ago
      The other tricky thing is, even a single lapse in forgetting to turn the phone off, or bringing it with you is enough to undo all vigilance ever. I don't see it as feasibly, especially for people that are anxious or distracted by something more important on their mind.
      • throwanem 10y ago
        You know, it really says something about our industry that our preeminent modern accomplishment requires everyone to choose, blindly and unaware, among effective social nonexistence, espionage-grade opsec, or the kind of radical transparency that no one but maybe a performance artist would even have contemplated just a few years ago.
        • daemin 10y ago
          Yeah, I know this can get brought out a lot in these circumstances, but remember how everyone thought Richard Stallman / rms was crazy for being so disconnected from the Internet? Somehow that doesn't seem the case anymore.
          • throwanem 10y ago
            Keep in mind, when you consider that, that Stallman is also almost entirely disconnected from the world, as well. Granted, that's by choice, and it seems to suit him. But it casts a great deal of doubt on the value of his perspective, especially his perspective on those people who choose otherwise. It's sort of infuriating, if I'm honest. He has a lot of insight with regard to, for example, the extent to which Facebook abuses people who use it. But the best he can muster by way of response is "Well, don't do that, then, and if you do, then to hell with you." Which is, to say the least, not helpful. Edit: And on further reflection, the insight he does have is hardly unique. The more I consider what I've heard and read him to say, the less I find myself able to see what he actually has to add to the kind of nuanced conversation which needs to take place on this subject. Further edit: So your response, while of value, kind of misses the point I set out to make, in that Stallman's situation falls neatly into the "effective social nonexistence" category. The question I'm asking is larger, and more along the lines of: How the hell did we let our industry become something of which Facebook is the exemplar, and is this really something with which we're okay?
  • Fuxy 10y ago
    So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if you value your privacy. It's sad that we are at this stage but it's mostly our fault for being so complacent with companies doing these kinds of things. If people stopped using their service when they did these kinds of things they would change their behaviour really quickly but most people don't know or care that this is happening.
    • wtbob 10y ago
      > So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if you value your privacy. I've been doing this for years now, and you know what? I don't miss it at all. I use the Facebook website from my computer, and that's A-OK.
      • sverige 10y ago
        I don't use Facebook at all and don't miss it.
        • throwanem 10y ago
          Neither do I, but as I've described at tedious length here a couple of times recently, I do miss the social life I had a few years back, and which opting not to sign up for Facebook cost me. It would be really great if the choice not to use Facebook did not often entail serious negative consequences. For one thing, I'd be a lot less annoying on the subject. Unfortunately, that happy state of affairs does not appear to obtain in either case.
          • DavideNL 10y ago
            > I do miss the social life I had a few years back, and which opting not to sign up for Facebook cost me You don't know if it was "opting not to use Facebook" that lead to decline in your social life, because you didn't test whether "being on Facebook" would not have lead to decline in your social life. (I've seen many articles that state exactly the opposite - that people who have less social interactions spent more time on Facebook.)
  • chiph 10y ago
    Or have the office assistant provide a metal tin container to use as a Faraday shield. "Put your phone in the box to prevent it reporting that you're here today."
    • pdkl95 10y ago
      That would create very conspicuous network exit/entry points at the office. According to Zoz's DEFCON 22 talk[1] about modern OPSEC, these are specifically targeted by various agencies, so I'm sure Facebook finds entry/exit data points just as interesting. [1] (warning: strong language) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1q4Ir2J8P8#t=2291 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1q4Ir2J8P8#t=2291
      • MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
        Or, more interesting even. It is clearly someone taking the initiative to take their phone off the network at specific times in a specific place.
  • SixSigma 10y ago
    Don't use the Facebook App, use the website Don't share location via the web browser Still poor substitutes but ....
• throwanem 10y ago
  "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Granted, that's Schmidt, rather than Zuckerberg. The attitude seems to be the same, though.
  • petra 10y ago
    Until of course some journalist started digging deep into Schmidt, than the tune was completely different.
    • throwanem 10y ago
      Well, of course. He did say "you", after all.
      • thr0waway1239 10y ago
        Classic.
  • tonfa 10y ago
    By the way anyone has a link to the full transcript/video? I can only find the cut version (and iirc there was something else between the trusted friend question and the quote, but all videos online have a cut/voiceover in between which is kinda suspicious). (I seem to remember the "it" in the quote meant putting information online / publicly available, no the "something" that you don't want anyone to know)
    • cryptoz 10y ago
      The "it" in the quote meant, "if you're going to commit a crime, don't tell Google about it. If you tell a big company all about your plans to commit crimes, don't be surprised when the cops come knocking." Schmidt has a way of saying reasonable things using the most offensive and misinterpreted language ever.
      • type0 10y ago
• phn 10y ago
  Talk about blowing something simple out of proportion. All these people have one friend in common with this person, maybe they know each other as well? Being a psychiatrist or whatever has nothing to do with it. EDIT: I stand corrected. Not so simple regarding where they get the "potential friendship" data from. Diagonal reading mistake on my part.
  • throwanem 10y ago
    You might want to take another look at the article; your understanding appears to include a severe oversimplification.
    • phn 10y ago
      You're right, I stand corrected. The technique is still simple, the way they get the data is not so transparent to the user.
      • throwanem 10y ago
        I'm not sure how they get it at all, except via contact list mining. It makes sense that the doctor's phone number is part of her Facebook account. It does not make sense that her patients, who have not added her as a "friend" there, would nonetheless have explicitly told Facebook her number from their end. (I don't even think that's a thing you can do.)
        • ubernostrum 10y ago
          Facebook will happily slurp your entire contact list even if you're not FB friends with all of them. And the algorithms almost certainly know and take into account having someone in your contacts as a way to build a graph of relationships.
          • throwanem 10y ago
            Exactly. And, of course, there is not even a way to flag some contacts as private, or otherwise to be excluded from social graph analysis. I mean, I guess you could keep those contacts in a note or some other record outside your contacts list, and just tap to call or email or whatever. But that only works as long as the Facebook app doesn't decide it needs access to that kind of record, too. And when you find yourself going that far out of your way to circumvent something that's installed on your phone, maybe it's time to think about whether that thing is more trouble than it's worth.
• untilHellbanned 10y ago
  > “Without additional information from the people involved, we’re not able to explain why one person was recommended as a friend to another.” Such a terrible excuse. FB you only have one job! Fail.
  • mrweasel 10y ago
    Facebook must understand how weird that sounds. How can they not know why people are recommended to each other? They really do need to dig into the issue, if in fact they don't know. Because something seriously need to be excluded from their recommendation algorithm if the article is true.
    • vidarh 10y ago
      In fact, they can expect very serious investigations throughout Europe if someone complains about it to their local information commissioners or equivalent here. If they are in fact sucking in contact details from users phones and using them for matching and recommendations, that would seem to be something that would be serious enough to likely require express consent (in other words: users taking an explicit action, rather than being "opted in" implicitly by agreeing to a TOS or similar) under EU data protection regulations. Not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if there isn't one or more data protection violations lurking in there somewhere.
    • brianfitz 10y ago
      She can't reveal the patients to them, so Facebook wouldn't be in a position to give a specific reason -- only generically how the algorithm is calculated.
    • tudorw 10y ago
      not surprising really, I have often written software, returned a decade later and had to unravel why it does what it does, even though I am one person and it's just a few thousand lines of code, I can well imagine the FB system is too complex for any individual to inspect, and if the record keeping and documentation on the whys as well as the hows is incomplete then we are we are...
    • 10y ago
• wtbob 10y ago
  Note that everyone's favourite privacy-respecting app (mine too!), Signal, also does contacts-sharing, although it doesn't do friends discovery (so the server knows one's contacts, but one's contacts don't). If Open Whisper Systems wanted to be evil, though, they could do this form of analysis. Back in March I laid out how they could use a private set intersection protocol to enable any pair of users to privately share their contacts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289223 (I'm not posting this to shame them or something: March wasn't that long ago for developing a feature like this, and of course it's open source; I could develop it myself and submit it to them). I think it's something they care about; they've just not found a solution they're comfortable with yet.
  • laktak 10y ago
    > I think it's something they care about so did you get a reply?
    • wtbob 10y ago
      > so did you get a reply? No, I've not. If I wanted to brush up on my Java, I'd take a look at submitting a PR. But Java is the opposite of fun.
  • glitcher 10y ago
    Yet another daunting issue in our modern world: No matter how good a given company or product is at privacy-respecting, what happens to all that data if they are bought out by someone else?
    • wtbob 10y ago
      Well, that's the good thing about PIR — with the protocol I discussed, OWS wouldn't have access to one's list of contacts. They'd still know with whom one spoke (anonymising that is a hard problem), but at least they wouldn't know everyone one knows.
• WhitneyLand 10y ago
  There should be a way to turn off "Peole you may know". I actually hate this feature.
  • nitrogen 10y ago
    If it has a consistent ID, you could add a custom stylesheet to your browser (or use an element hiding ad blocker) to hide it.
• iamben 10y ago
  I assume the connector is the doctor - why doesn't she have a work phone with the patient's numbers that she doesn't use Facebook on? Then the chance of patients being connected to one another is dramatically lower.
  • joveian 10y ago
    But will that actually help? I could easily imagine Facebook matching people who have shared contact numbers, even if the contact number shared is not associated with an account. Possibly they don't do that to try to avoid this situation. I think this issue requires action from Facebook. The minimum they should do is allow numbers to be registered to be not used for making connections. Much better would be for them to be more explicit about what information they are collecting (with sufficient guidance that the user understands that medical privacy can be affected) and allow users to not send them that information in the first place. I can't imagine them doing that voluntarily, though.
  • erroneousfunk 10y ago
    If she is allowing Facebook to view patient's phone numbers in her own phone, this may be a punishable HIPAA violation, and is obviously completely inappropriate. What's also just as likely is that patients are allowing Facebook to view the contents of their own phonebooks (which they are certainly free to do, unless of course, they're medical professionals with patient information as well...). Facebook sees that these dozen people have the same contact number, and recommends that they all friend each other.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• dunkelheit 10y ago
  The phonebook hypothesis seems most plausible to me (especially considering that WhatsApp is owned by facebook). All those apps gaining access to a phonebook is a privacy disaster.
  • nroets 10y ago
    I recommend that we all add the office number of a health care professional we don't need to our phone book. It will muddy the water just a little bit.
    • mrweasel 10y ago
      It would be better if Facebook didn't hoover up data not explicitly entered into their app or website. In fact I think that should be the basis of privacy laws everywhere: You can only use data that the user personally entered into your application or website. Data should only be available across your different "properties" it they are branded as being part of a single platform. It would be much more in tune with the average persons understanding of something like Facebook.
      • thr0waway1239 10y ago
        Your suggestion might actually lead to something very interesting. Once a day when someone logs into FB, they should be presented with a word problem asking if the data they have thus far submitted to Facebook can be used to mine such-and-such fact about them. If they cannot answer correctly, FB should not do said type of mining. As their understanding of the potential for mining info increases, FB is also allowed to add that type of mining. This would be a win-win. People would actually understand what is going on, and FB itself has something to fall back on when the day comes when people turn this into an inquest (more a question of when than if in my view). And I wish all the big tech companies would do something like that.
        • mrweasel 10y ago
          >People would actually understand what is going on I don't think that's in the interest of companies like Facebook or Google. If people understood how their data can be used, many would close their accounts immediately. Data mining companies, and their customers are best served by keeping the public in the dark as much as possible. Revealing how much they actually know about us would cause trouble, if nothing else then simply because it's creepy as hell to many of us. The funny thing is that while I think all this data mining is creepy, I also believe it's useless in most cases. The only thing I've seen work well over time is Amazons recommendation of books.
• 0xmohit 10y ago
  WhatsApp (now) shares data with Facebook. Now imagine if Facebook, Google, LinkedIn were also to share data with each other. Imagine the possibilities [0]. What a wonderful world! [0] If this were to come true, then the word "possibilities" would be replaced by "synergies" :)
• webosdude 10y ago
  I think it's also quite likely that the psychiatrist's patients are searching for her profile just to checkout how's her personal life on FB which might give FB some clue as these people might know each other hence a friend suggestion. I do that sometimes to see some of my not-so-close friends.
  • dougmccune 10y ago
    I have a number of psychologist FB friends and every one that I know of has changed their name on FB to make it harder for patients to find them. Many go with FirstName MiddleName, some make up a last name, etc. That's not to say that it's impossible to find your therapist on FB, but I'd be really surprised if it's easy.
    • webosdude 10y ago
      Interesting.
• woliveirajr 10y ago
  > Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads. [whatsaap privacy policy] Many possibilities here: 1 - whatsapp connection with messages exchanged 2 - contact list loaded by whatsapp 3 - psychiatrist secretary number in whatsapp 4 - friends in common 5 - places in common
  • dev_256 10y ago
    Or 10 people checked psychiatrist’s facebook profile, facebook found common interest, saw that none of these people are fb friends and suggested to become friends, because hey, you all have something in common, you are all interested in this person.
    • raverbashing 10y ago
      Yes, I believe this is what happened Fb will suggest you know person X if a) you looked at person X's profile or b) person X looked at your profile
• S_Daedalus 10y ago
  But I'm still a paranoid lunatic because I don't want to smear my picture all over the web and give my every scrap of data away for the dubious benefits of Facebook or Twitter...
  • astazangasta 10y ago
    Hear, hear! I'd suggest some sort of paranoid lunatics' support group, but none of us would show up.
• ensignavenger 10y ago
  She lives in a small town, she specializes in treating a small subset of that population. It is quite possible the patients were recommended as friends as coincidence, not having anything to do with her.
  • ChoGGi 10y ago
    "Most of her patients are senior citizens or people with serious health or developmental issues, but she has one outlier: a 30-something snowboarder. Usually, Facebook would recommend he friend people his own age, who snowboard and jump out of planes. But Lisa told me that he had started seeing older and infirm people, such as a 70-year-old gentleman with a walker and someone with cerebral palsy."
    • ensignavenger 10y ago
      One outlier hardly establishes a pattern, it is still reasonable that the connection to Lisa had nothing to do with these suggestions, and that there was something else in play.
      • throwanem 10y ago
        An outlier like that destroys the pattern you're arguing must exist.
        • ensignavenger 10y ago
          I'm not arguing that any pattern exists- I am merely arguing that we don't have enough information to demonstrate conclusively that Facebook is recommending these people as friends simply because they are all Lisas patients. Such a pattern may be probable, but there simply isn't enough information to come to a conclusion.
          • throwanem 10y ago
            I don't suppose I feel it necessary to reach absolute incontrovertibility on this matter, given Facebook's longstanding history of doing things very like it, but find mere strong preponderance of likelihood to suffice. But I understand that some may feel otherwise.
• cbsmith 10y ago
  LinkedIn has had similar issues. Not news.
• amaks 10y ago
  Sounds like a solid ground for a class action suite.
• maxxxxx 10y ago
  That's why I am getting more and more reluctant to share anything. It's starting to be impossible to predict how your data will be used and what is private and what isn't.
• kej 10y ago
  I wonder if there is an open WiFi access point in the vicinity. I noticed that I had several coworkers suggested as friends shortly after I connected my phone to the office WiFi. It makes sense that people using the same access point or connecting to Facebook from the same external IP would likely know each other.
  • wavefunction 10y ago
    It's quite an assumption that they would want to 'friend' each other on facebook or even be presented with another's facebook profile.
    • kej 10y ago
      Sure, I'm just tossing out another hypothesis beyond tracking locations or everyone importing their contact lists containing the doctor.
• tptacek 10y ago
  This is a real problem. My sister is a legal clinic domestic violence attorney, and apparently there are concerns about DV clients unwittingly friending their legal clinic advisors, not realizing that by doing so they're outing themselves to their abusive partners.
• watmough 10y ago
  "People You May Know is based on a variety of factors, including mutual friends, work and education information, networks you’re part of, contacts you’ve imported and many other factors,” said the spokesperson by email. “Without additional information from the people involved, we’re not able to explain why one person was recommended as a friend to another." Facebook is full of shit. Of course they are using locations, why else would I get suggestion to friend the guy that cuts my Mother in Law's yard - he stops by for a check from my wife.
  • laksjd 10y ago
    Isn't it more likely he has your mother in law's/your wife's/your phone number programmed into his phone and shared his contacts with Facebook? It seems like that is the source of 99% of 'creepy' Facebook recommendations: Facebook doesn't realize that while 'has phone number' is a great indicator of 'knowing somebody' it has poor transitive properties.
  • Domenic_S 10y ago
    ...because the gardener has MIL's number in his phonebook, you have your MIL's number in your phonebook, and MIL has both numbers in her phonebook. See the network?
  • mgcross 10y ago
    Yeah, I don't buy it either. I only use FB in a browser (Android) but have had multiple friend suggestions of people I do not know but have seen out at a bar or party a couple of days afterwards. They aren't in my contact list, pretty damn sure I'm not in their contacts either. I wasn't tagged and didn't check in, but probably did log in to FB at some point while at the location.
• tacostakohashi 10y ago
  Amazed that this 'feature' hasn't been killed yet. At this stage of Facebook's maturity, everybody finished adding their real friends about five years ago, and suggesting non-friends with tenuous connections to the user serves only to remind everyone what a privacy disaster Facebook is and generate bad press.
  • noer 10y ago
    The other side of that argument is: You don't stop making friends & meeting people, why should Facebook stop suggesting people you might know? I moved out of state three years ago, most of the people I see & spend most of my time with a completely different than the people I did five years ago.
    • tacostakohashi 10y ago
      It's true - "people who may not be your friend any more" would be more useful at this point.
    • corobo 10y ago
      > You don't stop making friends & meeting people, why should Facebook stop suggesting people you might know? If we've agreed to become Facebook friends then we've done it outside Facebook. If I use the "People you may know" feature I look like a stalker.
      • NamTaf 10y ago
        There's many younger people for which this isn't the norm.
    • ramblenode 10y ago
      I feel like most users can perform a basic search and add or can exchange contact information elsewhere. When the ratio of weird/unsettling/awkward suggestions to helpful suggestions is high then the feature is not working as intended.
  • hansjorg 10y ago
• huehehue 10y ago
  So, I deactivated my account maybe 6 months ago, and uninstalled the app long ago. Since then, I moved halfway across the country and, using a brand new laptop, a fake name and number, and a throwaway email address, created another profile so I could use their API. People You May Know still had old high school friends, my old real estate broker (??), and someone I starred on GitHub. I have absolutely no idea how they connected that account to my old one, considering Google Mail is the only other service I've used on that laptop.
  • rukuu001 10y ago
    You're not using some kind of mobile router/dongle thing for network access are you? Otherwise all that's left is you - how you type, click & otherwise use FB. Edit: and the 1st thing the goddamn site shows me is a pop-up begging for a Like :\
    • Florin_Andrei 10y ago
      > Otherwise all that's left is you - how you type, click & otherwise use FB. Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Welcome to the post-privacy era, I guess.
    • huehehue 10y ago
      I'm not, in fact I'm using a different ISP entirely. You really think my behavior patterns are uniquely identifiable at FB's scale? I can't imagine how many other users must have similar typing/clicking/resting/etc. patterns.
      • rukuu001 10y ago
        Interestingly, my comment's getting down-voted without refutation. C'mon, let's talk :) Anyway, no, I don't know if FB can do that at scale. What I do know is that sites, especially complex ones like FB, like to track user interaction to evaluate UX (hover targets, click targets, time it takes to find call-out etc). If I were a data science type at FB, and knew FB was collecting that stuff, I think I'd like to find out what other questions I could answer with it. Or more banal - did you use your laptop as a wifi endpoint and connect your phone & WhatsApp to it?
• blackflame7000 10y ago
  Facebook is probably using geo-location to determine if two people are in the same vicinity for extended periods of time over time.
• justinlardinois 10y ago
  I regularly have people show up on my "People You May Know" that have no mutual friends with me, and I don't know them so they certainly don't have my email address or phone number. Oftentimes it's people who went to the same university as me, so I wonder if they base it on friends of friends of friends and other less direct connections.
• grandalf 10y ago
  This is one of the many dark patterns that Facebook uses. It simply does not respect any boundaries the user might wish to have in place... Install it on your phone? Anyone you have in your phone's address book gets to see your picture under "people you may know". Someone in your family joins Facebook and friends you? Now everyone you are friends with gets prompted about whether or not they know your family member. Want to delete some pictures you uploaded to Facebook? It's extremely difficult and they must be deleted one by one. Other than LinkedIn, I'd say FB is the prime innovator of UI dark patterns that exploit users' unwitting behavior for profit. The youngest generation of internet users gets this which is why they largely do not use Facebook. Soon they will realize that IG and Whatsapp are connected, and will avoid those too. What's interesting to me is that the recommendations are fundamentally not useful. It's easy to look someone up by searching for their name without the privacy-invading helpful suggestions.
  • rando444 10y ago
    I know it's seems like it's 'dark pattern' week on HN, but not everything is a dark pattern. Dark Patterns are user interfaces that are designed to trick users. Facebook requests the permission to go through your stuff and if you read their data use policy, they go so far as to tell you in detail exactly the information they're taking from you, as well as how they use it. Sure, it's a little bothersome when the information that you've given them goes farther than your personal preference, but it's not a 'dark pattern', it's just a feature that you don't like.
    • dmix 10y ago
      Indeed, I don't believe the problem here was that Facebook was tricking their users here into handing over their phones/emails contact information (aka this persons client lists). FB is explicit about permissions in this sense, although most users agree to everything without thinking twice. The real problem is how the information was utilized by the recommendation engine, which is known to be creepily effective at matching people (people who just met for the first time, for example). FB is investing heavily in AI here so this is the natural outcome - where the results are very effective but has some unintended side effects. The side effects are largely due to the fact this connectivity happens in the background, outside of a place where the user can control privacy settings on particular contacts. So I'm not sure there is an easy solution here. Mining contacts and social information is Facebook's business. It's what you hand over to use the service and why many people stop using Facebook voluntarily - or carefully limit what information they allow access to. I never allow FB to access my phones contacts, for instance, and their mobile app still works fine.
• gjolund 10y ago
  This happened to me after attending NA. I got friend recommendations from FB for other members of the support group.
• tapatio 10y ago
  And that's one of the reasons I stopped using Facebook. Fuck'em.
• dcw303 10y ago
  The funny thing is that this would be very easy for Facebook to fix - just a line of text under each friend request explaining the suggestion: * "You're both friends of Duffman McPartyDude" * "We found Psycho Ex Boss's phone number in your contacts" * "Location Services confirms you were both frequenting a dubious drinking establishment at 4am three Saturdays ago" Would they do it though? Of course not. It would scare the hell out of their users if they knew how this algo actually worked.
• malz 10y ago
  Ironically, before it lets me read this story the site pops up a "LIKE US ON FACEBOOK!" prompt. I'm pretty sure once I do that all you fellow article-readers will be my next friends.
• EGreg 10y ago
  tl;dr "When Lisa looked at her Facebook profile, she was surprised to see that she had, at some point, given Facebook her cell phone number. It’s a number that her patients could also have in their phones."
• econnors 10y ago
  After three accidental ad-clicks and a scrolling ad on mobile, I gave up on reading the article.
• zxcvgm 10y ago
  Actually wayyy before WhatsApp announced [0] that they were going to share data with Facebook, Facebook had already started suggesting me to add friends. These are people whom I have no mutual friends with, but after more suggestions popped up, I realized they were all people I added to my address book and contacted before on WhatsApp. I definitely did not consent to sharing my address book contacts with Facebook, and frankly nor would I want to. Now WhatsApp is offering an "opt-out" option, but I'm not sure how that will help. Isn't it a little too late for that now? [0]: https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000627/Looking-ahead-for-WhatsApp https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000627/Looking-ahead-for-WhatsAp...
• wslh 10y ago
  Hopefully it was no Tinder.
• kendallpark 10y ago
  I uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone when it kept trying to push Messenger on me. I only use the webclient these days. This bolsters my resolve to keep that app off my phone. You know, it doesn't bother me too much to have companies like Google analyzing my email to send targeted ads because I assume that information is not going to get out to the public. Facebook is a different case because there's a bidirectional flow of private information. It is a HUGE privacy concern (especially as someone that will be a physician in a few years).
  • dasboth 10y ago
    I succumbed to the Messenger app and the first thing it did was message a random handful of my friends to say I've joined Messenger... instant uninstall. Now I also just use the web client and if I want to read my messages on my phone I can do that by requesting the desktop site.
    • NoGravitas 10y ago
      You can also request the mobile site (m.facebook.com), but with a desktop user interface. This seems to be the most practical way of reading Facebook messages on mobile at this time.
      • kendallpark 10y ago
        Yup, this is exactly what I do.
• jordigh 10y ago
  > It’s a massive privacy fail, I can't believe "fail" has become the standard noun instead of failure. It started as a lolcatism and now is standard.
• anonu 10y ago
  "Unfortunately, due to health privacy reasons, Lisa was not able to put me in touch with her patients directly" You mean: "Fortunately..."
• adw7677 10y ago
  I know for a fact that Facebook uses my phone contacts to suggest friends. When I started at a new job and was exchanging numbers with coworkers, they would appear as a suggested friend within 24 hours. My doctor also showed up as a suggestion. I figured either the office phone number was linked to his FB page, or FB was scanning my calendar events and linked me to him that way.
• codingmyway 10y ago
  It should be a lot easier for everyone to collectively sue Facebook and other social networks for violation of privacy. This is just one of the economic asymmetries where small annoyances to everyone, but not enough to individually do anything about it, aggregate to billions for a few in power. The only social network we need is a collective legal one.