7 ms·

You would be surprised just how few people know Facebook owns WhatsApp. When I mention it to my non-tech friends, they are first surprised, and then nod their h

You would be surprised just how few people know Facebook owns WhatsApp. When I mention it to my non-tech friends, they are first surprised, and then nod their heads like its no big deal, and then a few weeks later exclaim utter surprise at some new privacy intrusion. Someone should start a project with the sole purpose of mining all kinds of personal data about FB employees from Facebook/Google and publish it as a Kaggle dataset for mining. Wonder how they would feel about that?

throwanem 10y ago
I'm not sure what you see that helping.
- thr0waway1239 10y ago
  The main issue, which you and I both see, is the sheer asymmetry of the whole thing. We are in this weird situation where the individual, the typical cognitive miser who even on his/her best day cannot possibly take all the preventive actions, is up against tireless machines with perfect memory and ability to generate extraordinary pattern recognition working all day to mine just that little bit more information to then hand out to the advertisers. But I see your point, and certainly would like to see more constructive suggestions than mine.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    I see so many potential ways of aggregating this kind of information in massively privacy intrusive ways on a day to day basis. And it's terrifying how many of them are just stopped by my lack of willingness to sacrifice my morals over it. Because I know very well how easy it is for people to think "oh, well, but that one little thing isn't so bad, when faced with bills to pay, or a raging boss. Many of which really aren't all that bad in isolation. Except it doesn't take all that many "one little things" before you have a total privacy disaster.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      It is easy to imagine that the people who build and maintain Facebook conceive of their behavior as immoral. I'm not sure it is accurate or helpful.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      If employees are having trouble saying "no" to unsafe, unethical, or unlawful projects, then a professional association or union is needed. A professional association can create duty requirements external to a company; it's easier to say no to your boss is have the excuse that "as a member of $ORG, I have follow $ETHICS_RULE". Alternatively a union can put pressure companies to never ask for certain things or to meet a standard for any privacy issues. Unions are usually seen with hostility in the tech industry, but they are just another tool; a union can be made for specific purposes, and ignore e.g. wage or anything else.
      - arielb1 10y ago
        If there is one thing our world does not lack, it's amoral people. Would you prefer that Facebook only hire them?
        pdkl95 10y ago
        How often do you see doctors being hired that are not members of the AMA (or similar professional associations)? Their Code Of Medical Ethics[1] isn't perfect and certainly there individuals that have ignored it for $REASONS, but at least they have created a culture where it is expected that doctors will at least try to avoid unethical behavior. > only hire them? I suspect this is the knee-jerk hostility toward unions I was referring to. If a strong union was created that only addressed ethical behavior, how long would Facebook be able to hire from a dwindling pool of non-members? The entire point of a union is that it's a way to put pressure against specific business practices.
        Cpoll 10y ago
        I see a few problems. Dwindling pool of non-members: Facebook is an especially bad example here, because they have enough money and clout to get around this. How often do you see doctors being hired that are not members of the AMA: Doctors need to be on location, but this restriction doesn't apply to software. Facebook can always find talent in a country that doesn't have an 'AMA.'
  - throwanem 10y ago
    I would like to have more constructive suggestions to offer, too. It's not a simple problem, though, and it will not be quickly solved. Threatening Facebook employees (doxing people is a threat) does not seem likely to make anything better.
    - daxorid 10y ago
      Your aversion to threatening employees reminds me a bit of the old "just following orders" canard. Developers are not sweatshop workers beholden to the company store. They have a plethora of employment options. If they willingly choose to work for such a company, the case could be made that they have made themselves legitimate targets for having made this choice.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        That case could indeed be made. It has been in the past, many times, with results whose nature I do not find an endorsement. But perhaps you feel differently. If so, I would urge you to consider the possibility that immoral actions, in response to immoral actions, do not themselves become more moral. There's also the more utilitarian concern that to threaten people in this fashion is not likely to engender sympathy among the undecided, or those who have simply not considered the question, and it most certainly will not engender sympathy among those whom you choose to target. I might also counsel a certain restraint in your rhetoric, such that you fight shy of hyperbole such as likening Facebook to the NSDAP; ideally that would be your lookout and no one else's, but since we're arguing at least nominally on the same side of the issue, your statements reflect somewhat on mine, and I would prefer they not do so negatively.
      - kafkaesq 10y ago
        Your aversion to threatening employees reminds me a bit of the old "just following orders" canard. It's not that. It's that in this very short life we have, it's not only not helpful (in the longer run) to pursue actions which knowingly hurt people for the sake of some perceived greater good (unless absolutely necessary) -- it leads one down a very dark path. My solution? I'd prefer to educate people about the simple fact that most of these social media sites just don't do very much to improve our lives, are a huge soul-suck and time sink generally, and basically not worth the gargantuan amounts of time and emotional energy we invest in them. So that eventually FB, WhatsApp and all the others will hopefully just die of starvation without a single shot fired (or employee being threatened or doxxed).
- FeepingCreature 10y ago
  It's a moral hazard¹, or possibly an externality; the people writing the algorithms that violate people's privacy are not themselves the victims. Normally in a market system you want to keep the chain between cause and damage short enough to be comprehensible for the people causing it; otherwise, there's no good way to make them avoid it. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Aren't they? How common do you imagine it to be, among Facebook employees, not to have a Facebook account?
    - firethief 10y ago
      Air pollution is an externality even when caused by people who breathe.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      Of course they have FB accounts. That isn't the point. The authors of these algorithms introduce - often without conscious intent - their own biases. They bring their own background, morals, etc when they design an algorithm. This is a general problem with creating an algorithm to supplement or replace anything previously done by humans. Even if the algorithm is given accurate and unbiased data (which is rare), the choice itself to use an algorithm in the first place and the design of the algorithm also contain bias. Sometimes this bias is intentional such as "redlining" where housing loans were denied to blacks using various proxies for race. I suspect that in most cases the bias is accidental, which is why it is very important to check the results carefully for any unintended bias. In situations like Facebook, simply asking their users first (opt-in) if they would like to participate in "local friend discovery" would be a great start.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        You're not wrong. Does it seem likely, though? I mean, at this point you're asking Facebook to do something which is directly inimical to its interests, in that people opting out of "local friend discovery" truncates its social graph, or at least reduces the weights it can put on some edges, and thus makes its information less valuable for targeted advertising. It would be nice to imagine that the people who make such decisions would make that one out of the goodness of their hearts. I do not think this likely. In the absence of a strong financial incentive to do otherwise, I would expect to see things go on pretty much as they have been, i.e., getting gradually worse over time. Threatening Facebook employees with physical harm seems like a severely counterproductive strategy toward applying such an incentive, but I'm not sure what to suggest in its place, because I've tended more in the direction of finding ways to convince people the problem actually exists - itself a regrettable necessity.

throwanem 10y ago

I'm not sure what you see that helping.

thr0waway1239 10y ago
The main issue, which you and I both see, is the sheer asymmetry of the whole thing. We are in this weird situation where the individual, the typical cognitive miser who even on his/her best day cannot possibly take all the preventive actions, is up against tireless machines with perfect memory and ability to generate extraordinary pattern recognition working all day to mine just that little bit more information to then hand out to the advertisers. But I see your point, and certainly would like to see more constructive suggestions than mine.
- vidarh 10y ago
  I see so many potential ways of aggregating this kind of information in massively privacy intrusive ways on a day to day basis. And it's terrifying how many of them are just stopped by my lack of willingness to sacrifice my morals over it. Because I know very well how easy it is for people to think "oh, well, but that one little thing isn't so bad, when faced with bills to pay, or a raging boss. Many of which really aren't all that bad in isolation. Except it doesn't take all that many "one little things" before you have a total privacy disaster.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    It is easy to imagine that the people who build and maintain Facebook conceive of their behavior as immoral. I'm not sure it is accurate or helpful.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    If employees are having trouble saying "no" to unsafe, unethical, or unlawful projects, then a professional association or union is needed. A professional association can create duty requirements external to a company; it's easier to say no to your boss is have the excuse that "as a member of $ORG, I have follow $ETHICS_RULE". Alternatively a union can put pressure companies to never ask for certain things or to meet a standard for any privacy issues. Unions are usually seen with hostility in the tech industry, but they are just another tool; a union can be made for specific purposes, and ignore e.g. wage or anything else.
    - arielb1 10y ago
      If there is one thing our world does not lack, it's amoral people. Would you prefer that Facebook only hire them?
      - pdkl95 10y ago
        How often do you see doctors being hired that are not members of the AMA (or similar professional associations)? Their Code Of Medical Ethics[1] isn't perfect and certainly there individuals that have ignored it for $REASONS, but at least they have created a culture where it is expected that doctors will at least try to avoid unethical behavior. > only hire them? I suspect this is the knee-jerk hostility toward unions I was referring to. If a strong union was created that only addressed ethical behavior, how long would Facebook be able to hire from a dwindling pool of non-members? The entire point of a union is that it's a way to put pressure against specific business practices.
        Cpoll 10y ago
        I see a few problems. Dwindling pool of non-members: Facebook is an especially bad example here, because they have enough money and clout to get around this. How often do you see doctors being hired that are not members of the AMA: Doctors need to be on location, but this restriction doesn't apply to software. Facebook can always find talent in a country that doesn't have an 'AMA.'
- throwanem 10y ago
  I would like to have more constructive suggestions to offer, too. It's not a simple problem, though, and it will not be quickly solved. Threatening Facebook employees (doxing people is a threat) does not seem likely to make anything better.
  - daxorid 10y ago
    Your aversion to threatening employees reminds me a bit of the old "just following orders" canard. Developers are not sweatshop workers beholden to the company store. They have a plethora of employment options. If they willingly choose to work for such a company, the case could be made that they have made themselves legitimate targets for having made this choice.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      That case could indeed be made. It has been in the past, many times, with results whose nature I do not find an endorsement. But perhaps you feel differently. If so, I would urge you to consider the possibility that immoral actions, in response to immoral actions, do not themselves become more moral. There's also the more utilitarian concern that to threaten people in this fashion is not likely to engender sympathy among the undecided, or those who have simply not considered the question, and it most certainly will not engender sympathy among those whom you choose to target. I might also counsel a certain restraint in your rhetoric, such that you fight shy of hyperbole such as likening Facebook to the NSDAP; ideally that would be your lookout and no one else's, but since we're arguing at least nominally on the same side of the issue, your statements reflect somewhat on mine, and I would prefer they not do so negatively.
    - kafkaesq 10y ago
      Your aversion to threatening employees reminds me a bit of the old "just following orders" canard. It's not that. It's that in this very short life we have, it's not only not helpful (in the longer run) to pursue actions which knowingly hurt people for the sake of some perceived greater good (unless absolutely necessary) -- it leads one down a very dark path. My solution? I'd prefer to educate people about the simple fact that most of these social media sites just don't do very much to improve our lives, are a huge soul-suck and time sink generally, and basically not worth the gargantuan amounts of time and emotional energy we invest in them. So that eventually FB, WhatsApp and all the others will hopefully just die of starvation without a single shot fired (or employee being threatened or doxxed).
FeepingCreature 10y ago
It's a moral hazard¹, or possibly an externality; the people writing the algorithms that violate people's privacy are not themselves the victims. Normally in a market system you want to keep the chain between cause and damage short enough to be comprehensible for the people causing it; otherwise, there's no good way to make them avoid it. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
- throwanem 10y ago
  Aren't they? How common do you imagine it to be, among Facebook employees, not to have a Facebook account?
  - firethief 10y ago
    Air pollution is an externality even when caused by people who breathe.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    Of course they have FB accounts. That isn't the point. The authors of these algorithms introduce - often without conscious intent - their own biases. They bring their own background, morals, etc when they design an algorithm. This is a general problem with creating an algorithm to supplement or replace anything previously done by humans. Even if the algorithm is given accurate and unbiased data (which is rare), the choice itself to use an algorithm in the first place and the design of the algorithm also contain bias. Sometimes this bias is intentional such as "redlining" where housing loans were denied to blacks using various proxies for race. I suspect that in most cases the bias is accidental, which is why it is very important to check the results carefully for any unintended bias. In situations like Facebook, simply asking their users first (opt-in) if they would like to participate in "local friend discovery" would be a great start.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      You're not wrong. Does it seem likely, though? I mean, at this point you're asking Facebook to do something which is directly inimical to its interests, in that people opting out of "local friend discovery" truncates its social graph, or at least reduces the weights it can put on some edges, and thus makes its information less valuable for targeted advertising. It would be nice to imagine that the people who make such decisions would make that one out of the goodness of their hearts. I do not think this likely. In the absence of a strong financial incentive to do otherwise, I would expect to see things go on pretty much as they have been, i.e., getting gradually worse over time. Threatening Facebook employees with physical harm seems like a severely counterproductive strategy toward applying such an incentive, but I'm not sure what to suggest in its place, because I've tended more in the direction of finding ways to convince people the problem actually exists - itself a regrettable necessity.