21 ms·

Facebook is terrifying

468 points by jitbit 10y ago

azinman2 10y ago
Article says nothing new and barely had a coherent story arc. Wish I could downvote articles. This is click bait.
- grzm 10y ago
  For submissions, you can flag them.
conradev 10y ago
Would Facebook's facial recognition work as well in an airport or train station scenario? It is definitely an easier problem to recognize one face out of a few hundred or few thousand (your friends) than it is to globally match across their entire database.
- jitbit 10y ago
  Well, considering all the computing power they have (more than 100k servers across dozens of datacenters - and that data is from 2010) this is not a problem. Hell, they can even quickly detect copyright infringement a posted video right? Ever posted a video with some background music? I don't think computing power is a problem...
  - DennisP 10y ago
    The problem isn't computing power, it's algorithm accuracy. If there are thousands of people who are a close-enough match to your face, then when they see your face in a random crowd at a train station, they don't know which of those people you are. To fix this they'd probably need other heuristics, which for all I know they're already using. An easy one would be to narrow it down by location, though sometimes that'd be wrong. A more sophisticated method would be to build a model of human movement, keep track of locations where they have high confidence it's you (e.g. in pics of you in small groups with your friends) and combine these into an estimate of the probability of each candidate match being at the train station.
    - dreamfactory2 10y ago
      There are companies who are selling tech that will recognise a person rapidly walking past in a conference crowd (had it demoed to me), so yes the tech is definitely capable now
      - DennisP 10y ago
        That's still a small population to choose from.
- Terribledactyl 10y ago
  They wouldn't have to match globally across their entire dataset. Check your messages before/after landing, maybe post something like "lol, guess I'm going to Madrid". Governments know you flight and boarder activity, financial institutions would know your purchase history. You've just eliminated a large amount of possible faces.
thomyorkie 10y ago
> Even if you’re extremely cautious, even if you never post anything on Facebook, even if you have “location services” disabled on your phone at all times etc. etc. Facebook still knows where you are. You can’t stop other people from taking selfies in an airport. This seems a bit over the top. What are the odds I'll end up in the background of someone's selfie that they post on Facebook? I imagine the chances are incredibly small. And if I choose to take a picture with someone, I just have to be aware that it may end up on social media and be OK with the baggage that comes with that.
- OJFord 10y ago
  > What are the odds I'll end up in the background of someone's selfie that they post on Facebook Uh, pretty high? Depending where you live, I suppose. I frequently find myself in front of someone seemingly 'selfy-ing', and always feel slightly uncomfortable since it looks exactly as if they're taking an ordinary photograph of me. I'd have only to be behind instead of in front of them in order to be in their 'selfie' (assuming that is what they're doing!) - and I'd have thought that would happen even more often than being in front, assuming some of them feel just a modicum of embarrassment at the ridiculousness of the activity.
- dreamfactory2 10y ago
  Another org with a network of surveillance cameras just has to do a deal with FB
hacker_9 10y ago
"If you're not paying, you are the product" It used to be that the law couldn't catch up with the fast change in technology, now it's us the people that can't keep up. All my friends using Facebook don't comprehend what is going on, it's just pictures right? The idea that FB is creating highly detailed profiles of every user, and selling them to anyone who will pay, is just dismissed as a joke. What good can come from this I wonder.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  >> "It used to be that the law couldn't catch up with the fast change in technology, now it's us the people that can't keep up." And I think that, in turn, is holding the law back further. If people don't understand why something is a problem, they don't care and nobody is going to waste time evolving the law to protect them from harms they don't even know are occurring.
- jasonlotito 10y ago
  > "If you're not paying, you are the product" Even if you are paying, you are still the product. More-so if the company is a startup waiting for a buyout.
- ohstopitu 10y ago
  That's because they are not selling those very pictures to anyone who'll pay. They (facebook) are the middle men - people who have money come to them to sell their product, and facebook knows who to show those products too. your friends (and mine, and a huge percentage of facebook's userbase) trust facebook enough for that to happen. And it does not help anyone's cause when people say "X company (be it Google, Facebook etc.) are selling your info".
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Yeah, as someone who has used Facebook for advertising, what they're doing is pretty obvious and not really that nefarious IMO. When I set an ad, I get to say "I want people within 10 miles of this zip code who like dogs, shopping, sports, and breweries" and Facebook limits my ads to only that subset of people. I don't get a list of their names, I don't even know who they are. They just see my ad and I'm charged $1. Whenever someone asks "what nefarious thing is this company doing with my data?" the answer is rarely "something really, really bad!". Rather, it's almost always "trying to sell you something".
wellpast 10y ago
Anyone know this technology well enough to know if sunglasses and a scarf of some sort would prevent my being recognized if not making me look somewhat silly or suspicious.
- hacker_9 10y ago
  You may be interested in the movement against facial recognition [1]. [1] https://cvdazzle.com/ https://cvdazzle.com/
  - mrtksn 10y ago
    My iPhone camera face detection was able to detect some of the camouflaged examples instantly.
    - confounded 10y ago
      Worth making the distinction between a human face in general, and the face of a specific human.
  - moonshinefe 10y ago
    The irony here is that if you look like the people in the photos, i.e. a 80-90s era post-modernist hipster in the year 2017, you'll probably draw far more attention to yourself than you would otherwise.
- OJFord 10y ago
  > Anyone know ... if sunglasses and a scarf of some sort would prevent my being recognized Not really, it's a classic example (at least, one I've seen several times) to show recognition even when obscured. That said, I just searched for an example, and found this paper [0] claiming highly effective tortoiseshell glasses to block recognition or deceive to be another. Though it certainly doesn't satisfy your other requirement of: > not making me look somewhat silly [0] - https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf
- drvdevd 10y ago
slothguy72 10y ago
I have often thought about tagging pictures of someone else as me on a consistent basis. Maybe request others to do it as well. Say, always tag me as a friend, and my friend as me. Has anyone done any sort of experiment/testing to see if this would have an impact on their face recognition accuracy?
BigChiefSmokem 10y ago
I've been using Facebook since college (circa 2005). Never "hidden" my profile from anyone or the public. Never deactivated anything or deleted a post. Recruiters and acquaintances look up my profile all the time. Still, I have never had the data I've given them come back to haunt me. I still trust Facebook leadership very much in this regard. Maybe it's because I trust myself and how I utilize the technology. Or maybe it's because I am cut from the same cloth as them when it comes to technology and I understand it at a very instinctive level. In light of the recent election, at this point I wouldn't trust any other entity with that kind of data (like Amazon, who seems to use my data to raise prices on me, frequently). In fact, I would wish Facebook to contract with and take over identity management systems (ie. social security, drivers license) away from local and federal government - not to dictate policy but just to dictate infrastructure. I really don't care about privatization or policy in a general sense, just progress in this regard. 10 years later I still don't get the point of these articles besides fear mongering and at most to provide a technological challenge to engineers and developers on "the other side". I understand ad-blocker companies are fighting a messy war right now with both content and ad providers. I guess that is another way, albeit much slower, way to achieve progress. Hacking goes both ways.
- xapata 10y ago
  Yeah, I always get annoyed at standing in line for building security needing to take yet another photo of me and stare at my license. Let's just be friends on Facebook so their security cameras can identify me when I walk in the door.
  - javra 10y ago
    I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
    - xapata 10y ago
      Nope, not sarcastic. I understand that my comment might sound like a parody to folks that share the sentiment of the article author.
xapata 10y ago
It's not just Facebook. As more images become publicly accessible on the internet, that capability will be available to many organizations and individuals. If that scares you, you should think about how we can protect ourselves from tyranny without anonymity.
- psyc 10y ago
  I wonder what will happen when it becomes possible to search the entire corpus of nude selfies on the whole internet, by name.
  - 56854639846346 10y ago
    Last year facial recognition was used [1] to out porn stars in Russia. Today Google Image Search will return real names (or alleged real names in cases of mistaken identity) for many selfies of people who were doxxed at some point. We're not that far from this. [1] https://advox.globalvoices.org/2016/04/22/facial-recognition-service-becomes-a-weapon-against-russian-porn-actresses/ https://advox.globalvoices.org/2016/04/22/facial-recognition...
saycheese 10y ago
Would it be possible to provide a link to your public FB profile? EDIT: Nevermind, found it: https://m.facebook.com/BigChiefSmoke https://m.facebook.com/BigChiefSmoke EDIT-2: https://pipl.com/search/?q=BigChiefSmokem https://pipl.com/search/?q=BigChiefSmokem EDIT-N: You start asking why I would post everything I am able to find on you (and anyone you know) and ask me to stop; or at least that is what the average person would do.
- BigChiefSmokem 10y ago
  Facebook profile you posted doesn't match any of the other profiles you posted. Try again, young (old?) hacker :)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - r1chard5mith 10y ago
    Oscar Renzo Guiulfo. There is a great deal of information available about you online. Your HN posts alone reveal information which you may one day wish to conceal.
    - dang 10y ago
      That counts as a personal attack. We've banned this account. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll behave civilly on HN in the future. Edit: that happened, so we unbanned the account.
- hacker_9 10y ago
  Oh dear I hope that isn't him, rather embarrassing.
- spookyuser 10y ago
  Nevermind facebook, that website is terrifying.
- 10y ago
skywhopper 10y ago
Agreed with the general thrust of the article, but the oft cited stat that Facebook's algorithm beats a person's mother is misleading. The test was very narrowly defined and in any case it does not reveal how often false positives happen when you are matching more than one person, which anecdotally in my experience happens way more often than the stats suggest.
pimeys 10y ago
And people are always wondering why I ask them to delete pictures of me if they take them without me stopping them first. Been doing that for years just because I don't want my face to Facebook or Instagram...
mmjaa 10y ago
Its not just faces .. me and a friend had a little jam session recently and posted a picture of our cool little setup, consisting of a few pocket-sized machines (synthesizers and controllers) on our table in front of us. Just an innocent little picture of our jam setup. Within seconds of posting this picture of the machines, my friend was getting targeted ads from the manufacturers of those devices - within seconds! This was a watershed moment for us. We won't be posting much to Facebook in the future .. far too scary for us!
- jraines 10y ago
  For the sake of discussion, why is that scary rather than kind of nice? Unless you take the AdBlock route, aren't well targeted ads better than irrelevant ones?
  - zo7 10y ago
    It's scary because the system learned something about you automatically from an innocuous photo and told others about it, all without a human in the loop. Ads are pretty harmless, but you can imagine what might happen in a surveillance system or if a more malicious actor was behind the system.
    - xapata 10y ago
      Ok, so I'd like some way to get the benefits but protect from the harm. I don't want to throw out the convenience if that's possible.
  - toyg 10y ago
    That's my wife's position, and IMHO it's a wrong one. It's the same argument about letting them store your search history: everything about you ends up in a database that someone can look up whenever s/he wants. Where you shop, where you eat, where you go on holiday, all about your family and friends, what you like, your health... it's a treasure trove for all sort of nefarious activities that could target you, from ID theft to fraud, framing, entrapment, you name it. But of course it will never happen to you, right?
bastawhiz 10y ago
What is the proposed recourse? Ban Facebook from analyzing data that users give it? I use Facebook's automatic tagging because I find it useful. Should it be illegal for me to use this feature because someone might unintentionally be identified in a photo that I took? Is the argument that Facebook--or any other company--should never be allowed to develop software that could process data that could identify folks, even when the data was willingly provided by a user that's complying with the law? I'm not arguing in defense of Facebook, I just don't understand what someone that's privacy-minded would want. If I can legally take a photo, should I not have the right to have a company analyze that photo on my behalf?
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  The alternative is that when you share something with your friends, it goes from you to your friends without being decrypted by anyone in the middle. > If I can legally take a photo, should I not have the right to have a company analyze that photo on my behalf? They have algorithms analyzing your photo. The solution is to run the algorithms on your computer.
  - bastawhiz 10y ago
    > They have algorithms analyzing your photo. The solution is to run the algorithms on your computer. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? The whole reason Facebook is able to do what they do is that they have existing tagged photos that I may not have access to. I don't need to train Facebook to know what my friends look like. If I have to do extra work to tag my photos, I'd might as well be manually tagging them.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      Except that you do have a bunch of tagged photos with your friends in them, because they're your friends. And the idea that someone who I haven't shared my photos with can still use them to tag me in other photos is not something that I would describe as a feature.
- lutusp 10y ago
kordless 10y ago
I deleted my Facebook account in 2010 after appearing in the Times regarding technology addiction. It was my most time consuming social media application at the time. For the article, they had me install an application tracker to see how much time I spent in focus on a particular app. I was alarmed at how often I checked Facebook chat. Today, after much investigation, I've come to a hypothesis that technology's purpose is to gently erode the concept of "self" as it grows in power and scope. We drive this growth, but at the same time more than a few of us worry about how the growth is affecting our "right" or "natural state" of privacy to be who we want to be without blame or for someone speaking (in aggregate) to what our actions may hold in the future. It seems obvious privacy is a good thing, because as long as privacy exists someone can't take your information and do things in private with it as they see fit. The more tech they have, the more they can do with your data and the more they can "invade" your privacy. Facebook's accumulation of information is concerning, not so much from the standpoint of the addiction that causes us to contribute to the quantity of data, but from the standpoint of collective thinking that arises from it. I don't want to be part of a collection or be told to think with the collection. I want to be me and think about things that are important to myself. I want to do that without anyone else telling me how to think about it or speaking for what I know at a later date without knowing me.
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  I've come to a hypothesis that technology's purpose is to gently erode the concept of "self" Exactly, although it's being done in a roundabout and non-obvious way. There are millions of tech folks, all (in my mind) honestly trying to create technology to empower folks to do things they've never done before. But the beauty of tech is generalization, creating cookie-cutter choices. Everything we do, and in ever way we interact with tech, it's more and more leading us down pre-canned behavioral pathways. Even when completely unintended, the place where tech is taking us unless we drastically change our ways is something like the commodification of the species. It's a freaking horror show. The Borg are going to go from sci-fi super villains to an accurate description of our great-grandkids in just a generation. Amazing. Will the last human please go outside and do something unique?
- jayajay 10y ago
65827 10y ago
If only there were some way to avoid Facebook's nightmarish hellscape of intimate monetization. Hmmm, I can't think of any, guess that's it let's just throw in the towel boys.
aeturnum 10y ago
I agree with the jitbit that we should consider the impacts of the growing global facial recognition system, but I find the focus on Facebook puzzling. Facebook is one of the companies that seems like the best keepers of this data. They are committed to keeping their data private - because that's how they make money. They make much more though building accurate profiles and selling ads to demographics than giving away the goose. A state actor can demand access to Facebook's database - just like they can demand access to anyone else's. I think Facebook is a fairly mundane company using a terrifying new technology in distinctly benign ways. They've given us a glimpse of the power of the tech while not obviously abusing it. On balance, I'm pretty happy about that.
- thinkloop 10y ago
  There aren't many companies that have the capability of doing this. You not only need billions of images (which not many companies have access to), but the accurate and active tagging of those images - of which Facebook is one of an extreme few.
arjie 10y ago
Yo, how do you guys survive with all of these things being terrifying and scary? Do you live in a world with a perpetual fear response and adrenalin running all the time? Like, you walk down the street and there's a security camera and you're terrified? I can't imagine someone lying in bed terrified at the thought that someone somewhere took a selfie with them in the background. That doesn't sound normal at all.
- zeroer 10y ago
  You're right; it's not normal. That's the problem.
shahocean 10y ago
The data accuracy is terrifying, really. Also, I visited shopping centre last week and in the next morning, I got Facebook Notif asking me if I would like to review the visit. I felt very annoying. The problem is real.
- CommanderData 10y ago
  Annoying? That's terrifying and I'd feel terrified.
buro9 10y ago
I am not on Facebook. But that doesn't mean that I believe I am not on Facebook. I am pretty sure that Facebook are able to construct most of the shell of me from fragments provided by less careful friends or just strangers. I imagine, and do not believe I am wrong, that Facebook have a ghost profile already with photographs of me already associated, some preferences and interests already in place. A montage almost indistinguishable from the whole, or perhaps in some respects better... have they got to 3d models for their Oculus universe yet? They probably know my name, am I even a necessary part of that picture? What's missing?
- junto 10y ago
  Any friends of yours who have installed any FB application will have uploaded your contact details. All FB needs to do is merge all of those profiles of you from each of your friends and they will have a pretty accurate informational profile. Since many people have also added a photo of you to their phone contact entry, FB gets that too. Any time you visit a website that uses an FB Plugin, for commenting or sharing, FB drop a ghost profile cookie against you. If at any point you somehow leak your email address or cell number on one of those sites, they can now tie that ghost profile to a real person, thanks to your friends using FB, even when you don't.
- giancarlostoro 10y ago
  It's not just Facebook, Amazon? Google? Microsoft? They all advertise too, and many others. I've deleted my Facebook profile a couple of times, I've only kept it this long for family. I may change that soon enough too. Especially if anyone ever asks me for my password for it that will be the end of that.
Animats 10y ago
Once things get rolling, any visa overstayer who shows up in a Facebook photo should expect a visit from ICE.[1][2] [1] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/14/illegal-immigrants-who-overstay-visas-almost-never/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/14/illegal-immi... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-vows-crackdown-on-immigrants-who-overstay-visas_us_57c329aee4b085c1ff29d437 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-vows-crackdown-on-...
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Gonna be tricky when people peaceably assemble to block all the entrances and exists of every building ICE operates out of.
  - scaryspooky 10y ago
    If you're blocking an enteance or exit that is not being peaceful and does result in arrest.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      Sez you. Try convincing a crowd of thousands backed by the local authorities.
      - PeterisP 10y ago
        Why convince a crowd? They can simply visit you at home or work a day after the protest, device location tracking and face recognition works well enough and they don't need to detain everyone, just enough for deterrence to work.
  - sbierwagen 10y ago
    https://theintercept.com/2017/01/19/republican-lawmakers-in-five-states-propose-bills-to-criminalize-peaceful-protest/ https://theintercept.com/2017/01/19/republican-lawmakers-in-... Republicans in Washington state have proposed a plan to reclassify as a felony civil disobedience protests that are deemed “economic terrorism.” Similar laws are being proposed in multiple states. You can protest, but don't imagine you're immune from prosecution by a sufficiently annoyed DA.
deleted 10y ago
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lettergram 10y ago
That's why I ask my friends to tag themselves as me periodically and I tag myself as them. The neural network is all confused and now it tries to tag the wrong people.
- aedron 10y ago
  More people should do this. And be thorough, agree to consistently tag the same people with the same wrong tags.
daadaa 10y ago
Facebook had blocked peoples account if they have different opinions and thats just is big no no. I prefer services where I don't have to be thinking what facebook is thinking of my post. People please get out of these internet ghettos where they restrict your "freedom of speech" to zero. Facebook, so gone!
daadaa 10y ago
Facebook, rogue money grabbing service.
adrianlmm 10y ago
"Facebook is terrifying... for my bussiness" Google.
samirillian 10y ago
I like how he doesn't get around to actually suggesting that you get rid of Facebook.
spectrum1234 10y ago
I expected this article to be with all the political garbage that is posted now that Trump is president.
digi_owl 10y ago
Facebook, Google, and likely others (observe Amazon with their Echo for instance) are effectively trying to build an electronic Jeeves. But in the process they are building up a dataset on every user that would make STASI look like the keystone cops.
kleanestcannest 10y ago
I truly wonder what the net value or profit is for the average Internet user, at least, in it's current form. Will all this tracking, suggesting, snooping and profiling really improve our world?
jgalt212 10y ago
Every claims to not use facebook anymore (in no small part due to posts like this), but at every quarterly earnings report the daily and monthly active users continue to grow. So where's the disconnect?
- doctorshady 10y ago
  Part of that is probably Facebook getting into more emerging markets that previously had limited connectivity - probably why they're getting into the infrastructure business. But you certainly don't hear people talking about Facebook any less in the States, yeah. Maybe the demographics that use it most don't read the sources that put out these sorts of pieces?
chappi42 10y ago
There is a '/etc/hosts' blocklist here: https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio... in case you do not want facebook on your computer...
- chrisper 10y ago
  But that doesn't address the issue mentioned in the article, unless everyone around you uses that hosts file.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
codecamper 10y ago
sounds like the plan then is to confuse facebook's deepface. Just mis-tag everybody you know & care about.
l33tbro 10y ago
I can't get into my Facebook account right now because it's prompting me with a request to provide government-issued ID (eg, drivers license, passport) to verify me. Suffice it to say, I am no longer on Facebook.
- ndesaulniers 10y ago
  Mine is asking for a DNA sample.
- pravda 10y ago
  How did that happen? I have a 'fake' Facebook account (the only kind I'd ever have!) and I wonder what it would take for Facebook to ask for 'verification'.
  - l33tbro 10y ago
    The handle I used was a reverse of my real name (surname is a Christian name), and I tried to log-in one day and was prompted with this request.
  - rxlim 10y ago
    I have found these ways for Facebook to require verification: 1. Created a fake account in one country and used it a few times, then many many months later I tried to login from another country and Facebook promptly required government-issued ID. 2. Created another fake account and changed the E-mail address after a few days and Facebook promptly required government-issued ID. It makes me really happy that so many are deleting their Facebook account, or at least trying to use it less.
  - dest 10y ago
    I created an account on clearnet, then I connected from Tor site facebookcorewwwi.onion. Account got locked with ID verification.
- Inconel 10y ago
  I don't have a FB account and I'm not very savvy when it comes to photoshop, but wouldn't it be pretty easy to create a fake ID to email them? FB might not be worth the trouble for you, but assuming someone really wanted to continue using it under a fake name, isn't this a viable option?
LyalinDotCom 10y ago
I'm almost 100% positive that some of your best and brightest employees working in critical divisions at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. are NSA moles. I have zero proof but it's what I'd setup if I was part NSA leadership. Just think about what that means for our data.
- nerflad 10y ago
  Think about being one of the best and brightest hackers out there... why would you want to work for the NSA? What incentive do you have, other than a boatload of money? Isn't the regular, guilt-free FB boatload enough?
  - tmnvix 10y ago
    FB pay plus the substantial NSA bonus perhaps? Maybe also the added benefit of access to NSA career networking (even assistance to land those top jobs in the first place)? All supposition on my part of course.
Girlang 10y ago
Facebook also uses this to see if people have accounts under a second name. I've determined this because they caught me.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
And the article is not advising us all to quit Facebook as soon as possible? In a way, this is even more terrifying than the content of this article.
reddytowns 10y ago
Maybe a photo app should be created that pretended to be the camera and would mash up faces, mix parts of old photos and recorded images of deep learning "dreams" and passed them off as photos to help poison the fb database
nojvek 10y ago
Google is not any better either. I see a website about loan rates and it's blasting me with bank loans. Everything I do on the Internet is being tracked. A profile of me is developed and I get precision targeted. It's like they have an AI that will do anything to make you click an ad. Nothing you do is safe on the Internet. I sometimes get a feeling that may be Chrome itself is tracking every website you visit and what you click.
deleted 10y ago
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myrandomcomment 10y ago
How many people here have a Facebook account? I never have. I tried and liked G+ because it was more focused, but that died. My wife has a FB account and it is funny I hear updates about my friends that live out of state from her! I have a number of friends that work there. They keep trying to get me to join. The running joke is that I ask "does it require me to use Facebook?" Them: "Yes" Me: "Sorry that's a deal breaker." :) FB is doing some really cool stuff in the networking space with OCP.
Sami_Lehtinen 10y ago
If they're unsure about the identity being provided, they'll just suspend your account until you provide copy of legal official government issued identification. That's a way to make sure that identities aren't getting mis-presented and users can't utilize pseudonyms. Note: A generic comment about these spy (social) networks.
makecheck 10y ago
What made me stop caring about Facebook is how damn sneaky they try to be to keep you from logging out or turning pretty much anything off. It's really easy to accidentally leave things on, and stuff like chat can decide to turn itself back on. Awhile back I noticed that fewer and fewer Facebook pages offered any of the top menu items (including "log out"), requiring you to be more and more explicit about which Facebook page you were viewing to even see a way to log out. I am sure the idea is to have you "accidentally" stay logged-in and then view half the Internet so they can track you. The final straw for me is that now I see no log-out link AT ALL, not even if I reenter the root facebook.com into my browser to go to the home page (which used to restore the links on top). There is now no apparent way to log out without killing my browser so I am done with them.
godelski 10y ago
For Android you can use Firefox and ublock origin. FF allows you to use add-ons.
uranian 10y ago
I am still totally amazed by what people share from their private life FOR FREE on Facebook. If you want to beat Facebook you only have to make a similar platform that actually pay people for posting their private stuff. Would be a nice startup :)
- grzm 10y ago
  That's one way to look at it. I think you'd admit that this isn't how a lot (if not most) people look at it. Facebook and other platforms provide them a convenient way to share their parts of their lives with their friends and family. Reasonable people can view this same situation differently. You're almost assuredly right that there are still opportunities out there in this space. I do think paying people to post would change the dynamic: it would change what and how often people would post. It's definitely an interesting problem!
togg 10y ago
I use facebook.com as a tool for networking just as I would LinkedIn, no app, no messenger, just the site. I know people who don't need facebook at all, I know others that use it to share their creative content and others that just post useless articles. However it is still a tool for many, if you don't want it to collect a massive profile of yourself either limit the amount of posts you share online or don't use it at all. I don't understand the massive fallout of facebook on HN, the 'collective think' mentioned earlier and companies like Cambridge Analytica seem like bigger issues than the data facebook collects itself.
- intopieces 10y ago
  Facebook collects information about you whether you use it or not.
jeffrey-sean 10y ago
It's not as easy for many to just delete their Facebook account. For instance, people use it for their jobs, to find work, or even to use the Facebook Workplace app. For some, it's a cheap and efficient way to communicate with friends or family. However, I agree that it's critical to mind what data you share on Facebook. People post so many things, and they don't realize how the data is being interpreted, or how it could be taken out of context and viewed the wrong way. For people who do decide to use Facebook, check out this app to find any posts you might not want to be associated with your account: https://wwwrepnup.com https://wwwrepnup.com
BoringAsian 10y ago
Facebook is terrifying. Bit of a leading statement...
lyra_comms 10y ago
Try Lyra instead! We're a nonprofit focussing on control and a respect for language and conversation. www.hellolyra.com
newscracker 10y ago
> a little privacy tip: use Facebook in mobile Safari, with an adblocker, and delete the iOS native app — helps a lot AND saves you from tons of ads and 3rd party cookie tracking. Not to mention wonders for the battery. I’m sure there’s a similar solution for Android. This is how I use it on my phone. I don't use the app because the app cannot be trusted with any specific permissions I provide with the belief that it won't be misused or that more data won't be collected. > On a desktop — use an extension like Disconnect to block 3rd party cookie tracking. On a desktop/laptop, I have it a lot better. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and a few more extensions (like removing the Facebook link redirector PHP script from links within FB).
given 10y ago
I can tell you what is wrong with the world and Facebook. It is that you all think that you are a bunch of animals waiting to die. And all you can do is to squeeze that tomato to get as much pulp as possible until you hit the fan. It is your faith or lack thereof that makes you worry about everything because you feel so helpless facing a world that is trying to rip you off on every possible level.
DeAndre222 10y ago
Contact ecodatasolutions@dr.com for any type of hacking /database services they offer different services on different range of hacking issues and also helps to retrieve accounts that have been taken by hackers The way he did it I have no idea but he did.call me a genius later
newtorob 10y ago
I don't have facebook, not since 2009. But my wife has facebook... Therefore, I basically have facebook.
randomsearch 10y ago
Everyone on HN should read "To Save Everything: Click Here": https://www.amazon.com/Save-Everything-Click-Here-Technological/dp/1610393708 https://www.amazon.com/Save-Everything-Click-Here-Technologi... I don't entirely agree with it, but it's a much needed contrarian viewpoint.

468 points by jitbit 10y ago

azinman2 10y ago

Article says nothing new and barely had a coherent story arc. Wish I could downvote articles. This is click bait.

grzm 10y ago
For submissions, you can flag them.

conradev 10y ago

Would Facebook's facial recognition work as well in an airport or train station scenario? It is definitely an easier problem to recognize one face out of a few hundred or few thousand (your friends) than it is to globally match across their entire database.

jitbit 10y ago
Well, considering all the computing power they have (more than 100k servers across dozens of datacenters - and that data is from 2010) this is not a problem. Hell, they can even quickly detect copyright infringement a posted video right? Ever posted a video with some background music? I don't think computing power is a problem...
- DennisP 10y ago
  The problem isn't computing power, it's algorithm accuracy. If there are thousands of people who are a close-enough match to your face, then when they see your face in a random crowd at a train station, they don't know which of those people you are. To fix this they'd probably need other heuristics, which for all I know they're already using. An easy one would be to narrow it down by location, though sometimes that'd be wrong. A more sophisticated method would be to build a model of human movement, keep track of locations where they have high confidence it's you (e.g. in pics of you in small groups with your friends) and combine these into an estimate of the probability of each candidate match being at the train station.
  - dreamfactory2 10y ago
    There are companies who are selling tech that will recognise a person rapidly walking past in a conference crowd (had it demoed to me), so yes the tech is definitely capable now
    - DennisP 10y ago
      That's still a small population to choose from.
Terribledactyl 10y ago
They wouldn't have to match globally across their entire dataset. Check your messages before/after landing, maybe post something like "lol, guess I'm going to Madrid". Governments know you flight and boarder activity, financial institutions would know your purchase history. You've just eliminated a large amount of possible faces.

thomyorkie 10y ago

> Even if you’re extremely cautious, even if you never post anything on Facebook, even if you have “location services” disabled on your phone at all times etc. etc. Facebook still knows where you are. You can’t stop other people from taking selfies in an airport. This seems a bit over the top. What are the odds I'll end up in the background of someone's selfie that they post on Facebook? I imagine the chances are incredibly small. And if I choose to take a picture with someone, I just have to be aware that it may end up on social media and be OK with the baggage that comes with that.

OJFord 10y ago
> What are the odds I'll end up in the background of someone's selfie that they post on Facebook Uh, pretty high? Depending where you live, I suppose. I frequently find myself in front of someone seemingly 'selfy-ing', and always feel slightly uncomfortable since it looks exactly as if they're taking an ordinary photograph of me. I'd have only to be behind instead of in front of them in order to be in their 'selfie' (assuming that is what they're doing!) - and I'd have thought that would happen even more often than being in front, assuming some of them feel just a modicum of embarrassment at the ridiculousness of the activity.
dreamfactory2 10y ago
Another org with a network of surveillance cameras just has to do a deal with FB

hacker_9 10y ago

"If you're not paying, you are the product" It used to be that the law couldn't catch up with the fast change in technology, now it's us the people that can't keep up. All my friends using Facebook don't comprehend what is going on, it's just pictures right? The idea that FB is creating highly detailed profiles of every user, and selling them to anyone who will pay, is just dismissed as a joke. What good can come from this I wonder.

k-mcgrady 10y ago
>> "It used to be that the law couldn't catch up with the fast change in technology, now it's us the people that can't keep up." And I think that, in turn, is holding the law back further. If people don't understand why something is a problem, they don't care and nobody is going to waste time evolving the law to protect them from harms they don't even know are occurring.
jasonlotito 10y ago
> "If you're not paying, you are the product" Even if you are paying, you are still the product. More-so if the company is a startup waiting for a buyout.
ohstopitu 10y ago
That's because they are not selling those very pictures to anyone who'll pay. They (facebook) are the middle men - people who have money come to them to sell their product, and facebook knows who to show those products too. your friends (and mine, and a huge percentage of facebook's userbase) trust facebook enough for that to happen. And it does not help anyone's cause when people say "X company (be it Google, Facebook etc.) are selling your info".
- freehunter 10y ago
  Yeah, as someone who has used Facebook for advertising, what they're doing is pretty obvious and not really that nefarious IMO. When I set an ad, I get to say "I want people within 10 miles of this zip code who like dogs, shopping, sports, and breweries" and Facebook limits my ads to only that subset of people. I don't get a list of their names, I don't even know who they are. They just see my ad and I'm charged $1. Whenever someone asks "what nefarious thing is this company doing with my data?" the answer is rarely "something really, really bad!". Rather, it's almost always "trying to sell you something".

wellpast 10y ago

Anyone know this technology well enough to know if sunglasses and a scarf of some sort would prevent my being recognized if not making me look somewhat silly or suspicious.

hacker_9 10y ago
You may be interested in the movement against facial recognition [1]. [1] https://cvdazzle.com/ https://cvdazzle.com/
- mrtksn 10y ago
  My iPhone camera face detection was able to detect some of the camouflaged examples instantly.
  - confounded 10y ago
    Worth making the distinction between a human face in general, and the face of a specific human.
- moonshinefe 10y ago
  The irony here is that if you look like the people in the photos, i.e. a 80-90s era post-modernist hipster in the year 2017, you'll probably draw far more attention to yourself than you would otherwise.
OJFord 10y ago
> Anyone know ... if sunglasses and a scarf of some sort would prevent my being recognized Not really, it's a classic example (at least, one I've seen several times) to show recognition even when obscured. That said, I just searched for an example, and found this paper [0] claiming highly effective tortoiseshell glasses to block recognition or deceive to be another. Though it certainly doesn't satisfy your other requirement of: > not making me look somewhat silly [0] - https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf
drvdevd 10y ago

slothguy72 10y ago

I have often thought about tagging pictures of someone else as me on a consistent basis. Maybe request others to do it as well. Say, always tag me as a friend, and my friend as me. Has anyone done any sort of experiment/testing to see if this would have an impact on their face recognition accuracy?

BigChiefSmokem 10y ago

I've been using Facebook since college (circa 2005). Never "hidden" my profile from anyone or the public. Never deactivated anything or deleted a post. Recruiters and acquaintances look up my profile all the time. Still, I have never had the data I've given them come back to haunt me. I still trust Facebook leadership very much in this regard. Maybe it's because I trust myself and how I utilize the technology. Or maybe it's because I am cut from the same cloth as them when it comes to technology and I understand it at a very instinctive level. In light of the recent election, at this point I wouldn't trust any other entity with that kind of data (like Amazon, who seems to use my data to raise prices on me, frequently). In fact, I would wish Facebook to contract with and take over identity management systems (ie. social security, drivers license) away from local and federal government - not to dictate policy but just to dictate infrastructure. I really don't care about privatization or policy in a general sense, just progress in this regard. 10 years later I still don't get the point of these articles besides fear mongering and at most to provide a technological challenge to engineers and developers on "the other side". I understand ad-blocker companies are fighting a messy war right now with both content and ad providers. I guess that is another way, albeit much slower, way to achieve progress. Hacking goes both ways.

xapata 10y ago
Yeah, I always get annoyed at standing in line for building security needing to take yet another photo of me and stare at my license. Let's just be friends on Facebook so their security cameras can identify me when I walk in the door.
- javra 10y ago
  I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Nope, not sarcastic. I understand that my comment might sound like a parody to folks that share the sentiment of the article author.

xapata 10y ago

It's not just Facebook. As more images become publicly accessible on the internet, that capability will be available to many organizations and individuals. If that scares you, you should think about how we can protect ourselves from tyranny without anonymity.

psyc 10y ago
I wonder what will happen when it becomes possible to search the entire corpus of nude selfies on the whole internet, by name.
- 56854639846346 10y ago
  Last year facial recognition was used [1] to out porn stars in Russia. Today Google Image Search will return real names (or alleged real names in cases of mistaken identity) for many selfies of people who were doxxed at some point. We're not that far from this. [1] https://advox.globalvoices.org/2016/04/22/facial-recognition-service-becomes-a-weapon-against-russian-porn-actresses/ https://advox.globalvoices.org/2016/04/22/facial-recognition...

saycheese 10y ago

Would it be possible to provide a link to your public FB profile? EDIT: Nevermind, found it: https://m.facebook.com/BigChiefSmoke https://m.facebook.com/BigChiefSmoke EDIT-2: https://pipl.com/search/?q=BigChiefSmokem https://pipl.com/search/?q=BigChiefSmokem EDIT-N: You start asking why I would post everything I am able to find on you (and anyone you know) and ask me to stop; or at least that is what the average person would do.

BigChiefSmokem 10y ago
Facebook profile you posted doesn't match any of the other profiles you posted. Try again, young (old?) hacker :)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- r1chard5mith 10y ago
  Oscar Renzo Guiulfo. There is a great deal of information available about you online. Your HN posts alone reveal information which you may one day wish to conceal.
  - dang 10y ago
    That counts as a personal attack. We've banned this account. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll behave civilly on HN in the future. Edit: that happened, so we unbanned the account.
hacker_9 10y ago
Oh dear I hope that isn't him, rather embarrassing.
spookyuser 10y ago
Nevermind facebook, that website is terrifying.
10y ago

skywhopper 10y ago

Agreed with the general thrust of the article, but the oft cited stat that Facebook's algorithm beats a person's mother is misleading. The test was very narrowly defined and in any case it does not reveal how often false positives happen when you are matching more than one person, which anecdotally in my experience happens way more often than the stats suggest.

pimeys 10y ago

And people are always wondering why I ask them to delete pictures of me if they take them without me stopping them first. Been doing that for years just because I don't want my face to Facebook or Instagram...

mmjaa 10y ago

Its not just faces .. me and a friend had a little jam session recently and posted a picture of our cool little setup, consisting of a few pocket-sized machines (synthesizers and controllers) on our table in front of us. Just an innocent little picture of our jam setup. Within seconds of posting this picture of the machines, my friend was getting targeted ads from the manufacturers of those devices - within seconds! This was a watershed moment for us. We won't be posting much to Facebook in the future .. far too scary for us!

jraines 10y ago
For the sake of discussion, why is that scary rather than kind of nice? Unless you take the AdBlock route, aren't well targeted ads better than irrelevant ones?
- zo7 10y ago
  It's scary because the system learned something about you automatically from an innocuous photo and told others about it, all without a human in the loop. Ads are pretty harmless, but you can imagine what might happen in a surveillance system or if a more malicious actor was behind the system.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Ok, so I'd like some way to get the benefits but protect from the harm. I don't want to throw out the convenience if that's possible.
- toyg 10y ago
  That's my wife's position, and IMHO it's a wrong one. It's the same argument about letting them store your search history: everything about you ends up in a database that someone can look up whenever s/he wants. Where you shop, where you eat, where you go on holiday, all about your family and friends, what you like, your health... it's a treasure trove for all sort of nefarious activities that could target you, from ID theft to fraud, framing, entrapment, you name it. But of course it will never happen to you, right?

bastawhiz 10y ago

What is the proposed recourse? Ban Facebook from analyzing data that users give it? I use Facebook's automatic tagging because I find it useful. Should it be illegal for me to use this feature because someone might unintentionally be identified in a photo that I took? Is the argument that Facebook--or any other company--should never be allowed to develop software that could process data that could identify folks, even when the data was willingly provided by a user that's complying with the law? I'm not arguing in defense of Facebook, I just don't understand what someone that's privacy-minded would want. If I can legally take a photo, should I not have the right to have a company analyze that photo on my behalf?

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
The alternative is that when you share something with your friends, it goes from you to your friends without being decrypted by anyone in the middle. > If I can legally take a photo, should I not have the right to have a company analyze that photo on my behalf? They have algorithms analyzing your photo. The solution is to run the algorithms on your computer.
- bastawhiz 10y ago
  > They have algorithms analyzing your photo. The solution is to run the algorithms on your computer. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? The whole reason Facebook is able to do what they do is that they have existing tagged photos that I may not have access to. I don't need to train Facebook to know what my friends look like. If I have to do extra work to tag my photos, I'd might as well be manually tagging them.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    Except that you do have a bunch of tagged photos with your friends in them, because they're your friends. And the idea that someone who I haven't shared my photos with can still use them to tag me in other photos is not something that I would describe as a feature.
lutusp 10y ago

kordless 10y ago

I deleted my Facebook account in 2010 after appearing in the Times regarding technology addiction. It was my most time consuming social media application at the time. For the article, they had me install an application tracker to see how much time I spent in focus on a particular app. I was alarmed at how often I checked Facebook chat. Today, after much investigation, I've come to a hypothesis that technology's purpose is to gently erode the concept of "self" as it grows in power and scope. We drive this growth, but at the same time more than a few of us worry about how the growth is affecting our "right" or "natural state" of privacy to be who we want to be without blame or for someone speaking (in aggregate) to what our actions may hold in the future. It seems obvious privacy is a good thing, because as long as privacy exists someone can't take your information and do things in private with it as they see fit. The more tech they have, the more they can do with your data and the more they can "invade" your privacy. Facebook's accumulation of information is concerning, not so much from the standpoint of the addiction that causes us to contribute to the quantity of data, but from the standpoint of collective thinking that arises from it. I don't want to be part of a collection or be told to think with the collection. I want to be me and think about things that are important to myself. I want to do that without anyone else telling me how to think about it or speaking for what I know at a later date without knowing me.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
I've come to a hypothesis that technology's purpose is to gently erode the concept of "self" Exactly, although it's being done in a roundabout and non-obvious way. There are millions of tech folks, all (in my mind) honestly trying to create technology to empower folks to do things they've never done before. But the beauty of tech is generalization, creating cookie-cutter choices. Everything we do, and in ever way we interact with tech, it's more and more leading us down pre-canned behavioral pathways. Even when completely unintended, the place where tech is taking us unless we drastically change our ways is something like the commodification of the species. It's a freaking horror show. The Borg are going to go from sci-fi super villains to an accurate description of our great-grandkids in just a generation. Amazing. Will the last human please go outside and do something unique?
jayajay 10y ago

65827 10y ago

If only there were some way to avoid Facebook's nightmarish hellscape of intimate monetization. Hmmm, I can't think of any, guess that's it let's just throw in the towel boys.

aeturnum 10y ago

I agree with the jitbit that we should consider the impacts of the growing global facial recognition system, but I find the focus on Facebook puzzling. Facebook is one of the companies that seems like the best keepers of this data. They are committed to keeping their data private - because that's how they make money. They make much more though building accurate profiles and selling ads to demographics than giving away the goose. A state actor can demand access to Facebook's database - just like they can demand access to anyone else's. I think Facebook is a fairly mundane company using a terrifying new technology in distinctly benign ways. They've given us a glimpse of the power of the tech while not obviously abusing it. On balance, I'm pretty happy about that.

thinkloop 10y ago
There aren't many companies that have the capability of doing this. You not only need billions of images (which not many companies have access to), but the accurate and active tagging of those images - of which Facebook is one of an extreme few.

arjie 10y ago

Yo, how do you guys survive with all of these things being terrifying and scary? Do you live in a world with a perpetual fear response and adrenalin running all the time? Like, you walk down the street and there's a security camera and you're terrified? I can't imagine someone lying in bed terrified at the thought that someone somewhere took a selfie with them in the background. That doesn't sound normal at all.

zeroer 10y ago
You're right; it's not normal. That's the problem.

shahocean 10y ago

The data accuracy is terrifying, really. Also, I visited shopping centre last week and in the next morning, I got Facebook Notif asking me if I would like to review the visit. I felt very annoying. The problem is real.

CommanderData 10y ago
Annoying? That's terrifying and I'd feel terrified.

buro9 10y ago

I am not on Facebook. But that doesn't mean that I believe I am not on Facebook. I am pretty sure that Facebook are able to construct most of the shell of me from fragments provided by less careful friends or just strangers. I imagine, and do not believe I am wrong, that Facebook have a ghost profile already with photographs of me already associated, some preferences and interests already in place. A montage almost indistinguishable from the whole, or perhaps in some respects better... have they got to 3d models for their Oculus universe yet? They probably know my name, am I even a necessary part of that picture? What's missing?

junto 10y ago
Any friends of yours who have installed any FB application will have uploaded your contact details. All FB needs to do is merge all of those profiles of you from each of your friends and they will have a pretty accurate informational profile. Since many people have also added a photo of you to their phone contact entry, FB gets that too. Any time you visit a website that uses an FB Plugin, for commenting or sharing, FB drop a ghost profile cookie against you. If at any point you somehow leak your email address or cell number on one of those sites, they can now tie that ghost profile to a real person, thanks to your friends using FB, even when you don't.
giancarlostoro 10y ago
It's not just Facebook, Amazon? Google? Microsoft? They all advertise too, and many others. I've deleted my Facebook profile a couple of times, I've only kept it this long for family. I may change that soon enough too. Especially if anyone ever asks me for my password for it that will be the end of that.

Animats 10y ago

Once things get rolling, any visa overstayer who shows up in a Facebook photo should expect a visit from ICE.[1][2] [1] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/14/illegal-immigrants-who-overstay-visas-almost-never/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/14/illegal-immi... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-vows-crackdown-on-immigrants-who-overstay-visas_us_57c329aee4b085c1ff29d437 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-vows-crackdown-on-...

anigbrowl 10y ago
Gonna be tricky when people peaceably assemble to block all the entrances and exists of every building ICE operates out of.
- scaryspooky 10y ago
  If you're blocking an enteance or exit that is not being peaceful and does result in arrest.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Sez you. Try convincing a crowd of thousands backed by the local authorities.
    - PeterisP 10y ago
      Why convince a crowd? They can simply visit you at home or work a day after the protest, device location tracking and face recognition works well enough and they don't need to detain everyone, just enough for deterrence to work.
- sbierwagen 10y ago
  https://theintercept.com/2017/01/19/republican-lawmakers-in-five-states-propose-bills-to-criminalize-peaceful-protest/ https://theintercept.com/2017/01/19/republican-lawmakers-in-... Republicans in Washington state have proposed a plan to reclassify as a felony civil disobedience protests that are deemed “economic terrorism.” Similar laws are being proposed in multiple states. You can protest, but don't imagine you're immune from prosecution by a sufficiently annoyed DA.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

lettergram 10y ago

That's why I ask my friends to tag themselves as me periodically and I tag myself as them. The neural network is all confused and now it tries to tag the wrong people.

aedron 10y ago
More people should do this. And be thorough, agree to consistently tag the same people with the same wrong tags.

daadaa 10y ago

Facebook had blocked peoples account if they have different opinions and thats just is big no no. I prefer services where I don't have to be thinking what facebook is thinking of my post. People please get out of these internet ghettos where they restrict your "freedom of speech" to zero. Facebook, so gone!

daadaa 10y ago

Facebook, rogue money grabbing service.

adrianlmm 10y ago

"Facebook is terrifying... for my bussiness" Google.

samirillian 10y ago

I like how he doesn't get around to actually suggesting that you get rid of Facebook.

spectrum1234 10y ago

I expected this article to be with all the political garbage that is posted now that Trump is president.

digi_owl 10y ago

Facebook, Google, and likely others (observe Amazon with their Echo for instance) are effectively trying to build an electronic Jeeves. But in the process they are building up a dataset on every user that would make STASI look like the keystone cops.

kleanestcannest 10y ago

I truly wonder what the net value or profit is for the average Internet user, at least, in it's current form. Will all this tracking, suggesting, snooping and profiling really improve our world?

jgalt212 10y ago

Every claims to not use facebook anymore (in no small part due to posts like this), but at every quarterly earnings report the daily and monthly active users continue to grow. So where's the disconnect?

doctorshady 10y ago
Part of that is probably Facebook getting into more emerging markets that previously had limited connectivity - probably why they're getting into the infrastructure business. But you certainly don't hear people talking about Facebook any less in the States, yeah. Maybe the demographics that use it most don't read the sources that put out these sorts of pieces?

chappi42 10y ago

There is a '/etc/hosts' blocklist here: https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio... in case you do not want facebook on your computer...

chrisper 10y ago
But that doesn't address the issue mentioned in the article, unless everyone around you uses that hosts file.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

codecamper 10y ago

sounds like the plan then is to confuse facebook's deepface. Just mis-tag everybody you know & care about.

l33tbro 10y ago

I can't get into my Facebook account right now because it's prompting me with a request to provide government-issued ID (eg, drivers license, passport) to verify me. Suffice it to say, I am no longer on Facebook.

ndesaulniers 10y ago
Mine is asking for a DNA sample.
pravda 10y ago
How did that happen? I have a 'fake' Facebook account (the only kind I'd ever have!) and I wonder what it would take for Facebook to ask for 'verification'.
- l33tbro 10y ago
  The handle I used was a reverse of my real name (surname is a Christian name), and I tried to log-in one day and was prompted with this request.
- rxlim 10y ago
  I have found these ways for Facebook to require verification: 1. Created a fake account in one country and used it a few times, then many many months later I tried to login from another country and Facebook promptly required government-issued ID. 2. Created another fake account and changed the E-mail address after a few days and Facebook promptly required government-issued ID. It makes me really happy that so many are deleting their Facebook account, or at least trying to use it less.
- dest 10y ago
  I created an account on clearnet, then I connected from Tor site facebookcorewwwi.onion. Account got locked with ID verification.
Inconel 10y ago
I don't have a FB account and I'm not very savvy when it comes to photoshop, but wouldn't it be pretty easy to create a fake ID to email them? FB might not be worth the trouble for you, but assuming someone really wanted to continue using it under a fake name, isn't this a viable option?

LyalinDotCom 10y ago

I'm almost 100% positive that some of your best and brightest employees working in critical divisions at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. are NSA moles. I have zero proof but it's what I'd setup if I was part NSA leadership. Just think about what that means for our data.

nerflad 10y ago
Think about being one of the best and brightest hackers out there... why would you want to work for the NSA? What incentive do you have, other than a boatload of money? Isn't the regular, guilt-free FB boatload enough?
- tmnvix 10y ago
  FB pay plus the substantial NSA bonus perhaps? Maybe also the added benefit of access to NSA career networking (even assistance to land those top jobs in the first place)? All supposition on my part of course.

Girlang 10y ago

Facebook also uses this to see if people have accounts under a second name. I've determined this because they caught me.

loup-vaillant 10y ago

And the article is not advising us all to quit Facebook as soon as possible? In a way, this is even more terrifying than the content of this article.

reddytowns 10y ago

Maybe a photo app should be created that pretended to be the camera and would mash up faces, mix parts of old photos and recorded images of deep learning "dreams" and passed them off as photos to help poison the fb database

nojvek 10y ago

Google is not any better either. I see a website about loan rates and it's blasting me with bank loans. Everything I do on the Internet is being tracked. A profile of me is developed and I get precision targeted. It's like they have an AI that will do anything to make you click an ad. Nothing you do is safe on the Internet. I sometimes get a feeling that may be Chrome itself is tracking every website you visit and what you click.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

myrandomcomment 10y ago

How many people here have a Facebook account? I never have. I tried and liked G+ because it was more focused, but that died. My wife has a FB account and it is funny I hear updates about my friends that live out of state from her! I have a number of friends that work there. They keep trying to get me to join. The running joke is that I ask "does it require me to use Facebook?" Them: "Yes" Me: "Sorry that's a deal breaker." :) FB is doing some really cool stuff in the networking space with OCP.

Sami_Lehtinen 10y ago

If they're unsure about the identity being provided, they'll just suspend your account until you provide copy of legal official government issued identification. That's a way to make sure that identities aren't getting mis-presented and users can't utilize pseudonyms. Note: A generic comment about these spy (social) networks.

makecheck 10y ago

What made me stop caring about Facebook is how damn sneaky they try to be to keep you from logging out or turning pretty much anything off. It's really easy to accidentally leave things on, and stuff like chat can decide to turn itself back on. Awhile back I noticed that fewer and fewer Facebook pages offered any of the top menu items (including "log out"), requiring you to be more and more explicit about which Facebook page you were viewing to even see a way to log out. I am sure the idea is to have you "accidentally" stay logged-in and then view half the Internet so they can track you. The final straw for me is that now I see no log-out link AT ALL, not even if I reenter the root facebook.com into my browser to go to the home page (which used to restore the links on top). There is now no apparent way to log out without killing my browser so I am done with them.

godelski 10y ago

For Android you can use Firefox and ublock origin. FF allows you to use add-ons.

uranian 10y ago

I am still totally amazed by what people share from their private life FOR FREE on Facebook. If you want to beat Facebook you only have to make a similar platform that actually pay people for posting their private stuff. Would be a nice startup :)

grzm 10y ago
That's one way to look at it. I think you'd admit that this isn't how a lot (if not most) people look at it. Facebook and other platforms provide them a convenient way to share their parts of their lives with their friends and family. Reasonable people can view this same situation differently. You're almost assuredly right that there are still opportunities out there in this space. I do think paying people to post would change the dynamic: it would change what and how often people would post. It's definitely an interesting problem!

togg 10y ago

I use facebook.com as a tool for networking just as I would LinkedIn, no app, no messenger, just the site. I know people who don't need facebook at all, I know others that use it to share their creative content and others that just post useless articles. However it is still a tool for many, if you don't want it to collect a massive profile of yourself either limit the amount of posts you share online or don't use it at all. I don't understand the massive fallout of facebook on HN, the 'collective think' mentioned earlier and companies like Cambridge Analytica seem like bigger issues than the data facebook collects itself.

intopieces 10y ago
Facebook collects information about you whether you use it or not.

jeffrey-sean 10y ago

It's not as easy for many to just delete their Facebook account. For instance, people use it for their jobs, to find work, or even to use the Facebook Workplace app. For some, it's a cheap and efficient way to communicate with friends or family. However, I agree that it's critical to mind what data you share on Facebook. People post so many things, and they don't realize how the data is being interpreted, or how it could be taken out of context and viewed the wrong way. For people who do decide to use Facebook, check out this app to find any posts you might not want to be associated with your account: https://wwwrepnup.com https://wwwrepnup.com

BoringAsian 10y ago

Facebook is terrifying. Bit of a leading statement...

lyra_comms 10y ago

Try Lyra instead! We're a nonprofit focussing on control and a respect for language and conversation. www.hellolyra.com

newscracker 10y ago

> a little privacy tip: use Facebook in mobile Safari, with an adblocker, and delete the iOS native app — helps a lot AND saves you from tons of ads and 3rd party cookie tracking. Not to mention wonders for the battery. I’m sure there’s a similar solution for Android. This is how I use it on my phone. I don't use the app because the app cannot be trusted with any specific permissions I provide with the belief that it won't be misused or that more data won't be collected. > On a desktop — use an extension like Disconnect to block 3rd party cookie tracking. On a desktop/laptop, I have it a lot better. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and a few more extensions (like removing the Facebook link redirector PHP script from links within FB).

given 10y ago

I can tell you what is wrong with the world and Facebook. It is that you all think that you are a bunch of animals waiting to die. And all you can do is to squeeze that tomato to get as much pulp as possible until you hit the fan. It is your faith or lack thereof that makes you worry about everything because you feel so helpless facing a world that is trying to rip you off on every possible level.

DeAndre222 10y ago

Contact ecodatasolutions@dr.com for any type of hacking /database services they offer different services on different range of hacking issues and also helps to retrieve accounts that have been taken by hackers The way he did it I have no idea but he did.call me a genius later

newtorob 10y ago

I don't have facebook, not since 2009. But my wife has facebook... Therefore, I basically have facebook.

randomsearch 10y ago

Everyone on HN should read "To Save Everything: Click Here": https://www.amazon.com/Save-Everything-Click-Here-Technological/dp/1610393708 https://www.amazon.com/Save-Everything-Click-Here-Technologi... I don't entirely agree with it, but it's a much needed contrarian viewpoint.