37 ms·

Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

506 points by CarolineW 9y ago

HeavenBanned 9y ago
That's fine. 99% of my status updates are zany jokes/observations anyway. I read somewhere that Facebook will be dethroned soon anyway. Not surprised if that happens. My use has decline precipitously since it was "The Facebook"...
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jacquesm 9y ago
The bigger problem for me is how facebook tracks and identifies even people who do not have a facebook account. They simply infer such a person exists from photograps, contacts and other one sided activity and can start to track that person, tie all this information together and then target them with ads even though they never signed up for Facebook. Such shadow profiles are a much larger problem to me than people who are happy to fork over their private lives themselves.
- type0 9y ago
  Mentioned shadow profiles and some other of their shady practices to an acquaintance recently, he uses fb and wanted to stay in touch using it. He chose not to listen to my critique of fb calling me a "tinfoil hat" (whatever that even means).
  - keth 9y ago
    I have acquaintances like that as well. They are usually the "I have nothing to hide" kind of type. :(
    - devopsproject 9y ago
      An easy disarm is "You are confusing privacy with secrecy. It is no secret what happens in the bathroom. It doesn't mean we are going to remove the doors because people still want privacy"
      - adt2bt 9y ago
        That's a great line, I'll be sure to pull it out on Thanksgiving this year and see how it goes.
        lostmsu 9y ago
        I can answer you here: same applies to bathroom. We only close it because it is currently considered socially inappropriate to do otherwise.
      - drdaeman 9y ago
        There are ways to counter this. For example, it can be said that Facebook isn't your bathroom. (Yes, this isn't exactly solid argument, sure.) Still, I'm absolutely sure it's best to keep private stuff to oneself, and parties you trust. With understanding of full consequences of doing so. If one trusts Facebook, they'd better think why do they do so, as their trust may be misplaced. I think one of problems is that when users post data they don't even think they send it to Facebook - they believe they send it to their friends there.
      - Kiro 9y ago
        No, that's not an easy disarm. They just say "you're welcome to watch me poop".
        aerique 9y ago
        "But I don't want to watch you poop." That's why I don't use Facebook.
        JCharante 9y ago
        That's why you only bring this up with attractive individuals.
    - Splines 9y ago
      Ha - if anybody says that, ask them if they can kindly lend you their phone for a few minutes, so you can browse through their photo gallery, browser history and emails.
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        "Oooh! How much do you make? How many sexual partners have you had? Have you ever cheated on any of your partners? Ever had an STD? Whom do you secretly dislike even though you don't show it? I've never met someone with nothing to hide before, this is so exciting!"
  - aashishkoirala 9y ago
    Tinfoil Hat = paranoid, as in people who believe govt is sending mind control waves, and wear tinfoil hats so as to block them.
  - ionised 9y ago
    Calling someone a tinfoil hatter is a way for someone to dismiss your argument without them actually having to think about something that makes them uncomfortable. It's a defense mechanism.
- linkregister 9y ago
  Do European Union users have a recourse against this? Or do they have to create an account, then request a deletion?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    By law you should but it will be an uphill battle. Technically each and every advertising agency that creates a profile on you, gives you a cookie and stores your IP address is in violation of the law. (IP addresses count as PII, Personally Identifiable Information). I don't see the legal hammer coming down on the advertising industry (of which Facebook and Google are the major players) any time soon if ever.
    - poooogles 9y ago
      >IP addresses count as PII, Personally Identifiable Information. One way hashed (that can't be rainbow tabled) are not however PII afaik however, so it's quite easy to turn an IP address into a "net location ID" or something similar that can't be tracked back to a physical IP for analytics.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        You could simply enumerate all 32 bits and end up with each and every IP reversed so that trick doesn't really hold water. No need for rainbow tables, the search space is small enough to brute force.
        poooogles 9y ago
        Enumeration through 32 bits of bcrypt doesn't sound that feasible to me. Given a GPU farm however I'm sure it might be feasible. However at that point surely you just add a salt?
        drdaeman 9y ago
        It's enumeration through 32 bits of 0-4294967295. There are only so much IPv4 addresses. If you add a salt, then that "net location ID" becomes of very limited use. You won't be able to grep through the logs for request from specific IP, you won't be able to tell how many distinct IPs are accessing your services, etc etc. The only use I can see is keeping it in the session to check if IP address had changed, as a security measure.
- ghughes 9y ago
  Nothing will change until the law cracks down on this. The people who work on these systems are smart enough to comprehend the wider consequences, but they do it anyway because money. Without significant external pressure, there will always be a long line of engineers willing to dial their cognitive dissonance up to 11 and build software that is clearly unethical in exchange for a fat paycheck.
  - killjoywashere 9y ago
    The law will not crack down on this. The politicians stand to gain too much. See The Dictator's Handbook (which is as relevant to democrats as autocrats).
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      I've just finished that and second the recommendation - while the ideas have been around for a while, the presentation of them in that book is outstanding.
    - jaskerr 9y ago
      Which "Dictator's Handbook"? There are two on Amazon. [1] The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845 https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po... [2] The Dictator's Handbook: A Practical Manual for the Aspiring Tyrant https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-Manual-Aspiring/dp/0615652425 https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-Manual-A...
      - Bakary 9y ago
        They're referring to the one by Mesquita because it was popularized by a recent CGP grey video
        killjoywashere 9y ago
        I was referring to the one by Mesquita, but because my brother, an attorney, recommended it, not because of a GCP grey video. Perhaps you meant "I think it's because..."?
- Crontab 9y ago
  Isn't Google doing the same thing to people who email Gmail users?
  - mali9 9y ago
    One small difference is that the activity on GMail or large email providers is generally two-way and it becomes clear when you understand that clicking "Send" sends your mail away to be stored in GMail forever unlike where photos somebody would be taking with their friends are not aware if it is put in Facebook or similar social places.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      That isn't true. Many domains are routed through Gmail where you have absolutely no way of knowing up front that you are going to be sending that mail through Google. It looks like any other email address on a private server. https://gsuite.google.com/signup/basic/welcome https://gsuite.google.com/signup/basic/welcome
      - martey 9y ago
        G Suite has different privacy practices than GMail. https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 > Does Google use my organization’s data in G Suite services or Cloud Platform for advertising purposes? > No. There are no ads in G Suite Services or Google Cloud Platform, and we have no plans to change this in the future. We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other G Suite services. Google does not collect or use data in G Suite services for advertising purposes.
        jacquesm 9y ago
        > We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other G Suite services. Google does not collect or use data in G Suite services for advertising purposes. You could drive several trucks sideways through the holes in that statement.
- kromem 9y ago
  And how are they hitting that person with a tracking pixel and associating it with the pseudo-account? It's still creepy, but it's likely more about determining knowledge of the friend graph (i.e. suggesting 2nd degree friends via a connecting pseudo-account) than about ad targeting. Though yes, as soon as that pseudo-account could be tied to an actual account, Facebook could use passively gathered info to target you. The creepiest part about Facebook is the sheer volume of facial data paired with social connection data. With access to that, even if you have never been online in your entire life, there's a good chance I could take your driver's license photo and know who you associate with.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > And how are they hitting that person with a tracking pixel and associating it with the pseudo-account? That's the easy part. There are companies that specialize in this sort of thing, as well as in merging profiles from several devices (pc, tablet, smartphone), you can bet that if two-bit advertising technology companies know about these tricks that Facebook does too, and they probably know a trick or two that has not become mainstream yet. If you want an explicit explanation of how such a link could be made it's a hard choice: too many possibilities. I've done technical due diligence on about 10 advertising technology companies, node identification in a graph gets easier through two things: - more known nodes in the graph (Facebook has many) - more activity by the unknown node (just wait and track) Sooner or later there is a moment where just for an instant that node can be strongly associated with a real world ID, for instance, a contact in someone's address book, a tag in a photograph and some shared online activity or something as simple as a phone call. At that point it is game over, the contact can now be associated with the device ID on the other side for instance through some running app. Apropos games, many games monetize by embedding a library supplied by an advertising technology company that wishes to gain access to devices without waiting for the user to visit a website. These libraries leak information all over the net. https://developers.facebook.com/products/app-monetization https://developers.facebook.com/products/app-monetization Is one example by FB, there are many more and some of those require permissions that make no sense at first sight until you realize what is happening under water. If you ever wondered why some shitty game requires access to your contacts, location and other interesting bits of data this is it. It is very hard to stay off the radar of the likes of Google and Facebook, I have a pretty good idea of how this stuff works in the background and I have no clue how I could not leak enough bits for those two companies to tie my online activity to my real world identity in a single profile.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  That's actually why I gave up on avoiding it (after leaving my fb account dormant for ~5 years). If I'm being tracked anyway I might as well enjoy the social benefits of the platform, which are not insignificant. FB absolutely knows more about me than any individual person at this point. I've decided, for good or ill, to accept that and leverage it; rather than feeling upset about my inability to enforce a right to privacy, I've decided it's more important that I should be able to enjoy being myself rather than having to hide everything. If powerful forces wish to abuse that, they can, but I'm happy to have that moral argument.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    There is no way I will go down that route. That's defeat and it simply will not happen with me being an enabler. If that means I'll miss out on the occasional party then so be it.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      How is that defeat? I have no desire to waste my precious time in an unwinnable arms race. My freedom of action and self-expression are my primary operational need, and I don't want to spend my life creeping around trying to conceal every fact about myself that might be employed as an attack vector. That's not liberty.
      - loup-vaillant 9y ago
        Don't you get it? It's not just about you. It's about all around you. When you're using Facebook, you are doing 2 things: first, you reveal the personal information of everyone around you (bit by bit, each time you reveal your personal information). Second, you strengthen the network effect that incite, sometimes even force people to cave in, use Facebook themselves, and thus reveal their private information. You don't know it, but using Facebook is not just a personal choice. It's a political choice.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
- sjg007 9y ago
  Creating profiles or dossiers on people seems like a breach of the fair credit act
- jgalt212 9y ago
  you basically hit the nail on the head. And if Obama did nothing about it, you can sure expect Trump to follow suit with inaction as well. The consumer's only hope here is the EU.
  - cJ0th 9y ago
    > The consumer's only hope here is the EU. Sometimes they do the right thing but I most certainly wouldn't bank on it! If we want change there has to be grass roots movements I think. If tech people would find a way to use word of mouth to convince people not to use FB then FB would collapse. Something along the lines of "Won't somebody please think of the children!" might do the trick ;)
- corrosive 9y ago
  Are the "shadow profiles" created by credit rating companies equally unethical/immoral in your view?
- loup-vaillant 9y ago
  People don't seem to realise the ecological harm (privacy wise) in using those services. They don't realise that by using those services, they not only harm their own privacy (which is their to shed), but also other's. The sentence "I have nothing to hide" that often gets thrown about has two problems. The first is obvious: whoever says it most probably do have something to hide, and are not quite realising it. The second is much more insidious: it frames the debate individualistically. This is a common flaw in our western societies —see for instance copyright debates talking about one artist and one consumer or pirate. People should realise, as you did, that it is not just about them. I would go even further: using Facebook is not just a personal choice. It's a political one, that affects all around you. Last year for instance, I was forced to use Facebook by friends from my orchestra. I reluctantly set up an account, and kept up for a while. Then I turn off email notifications because they were so annoying. Then I learned, several times, of decisions or events that were discussed only on Facebook, (without my knowledge since I hardly logged in). When they clued in on my ignorance, they said "but I sent the mail" (no you didn't). (I have since "deleted" my account. I won't use that crap ever again) The choice is often between giving up your privacy on Facebook, and being ostracised by such and such group of friends. Disgusting.
- taway_1212 9y ago
  Where will they post these ads if I don't visit facebook?
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bduerst 9y ago
This reads like sponsored article for Share Lab, piggy backing off of big data phobia. >"Facebook has lots of data and we have no idea what they do with it, but here's what the smart people at Share Lab can do with data."
- Mathnerd314 9y ago
  It doesn't read as sponsored, it'd be more circumspect. More like, the reporter found it and thought it was cool so he interviewed "Dr Julia Powles" about it so he could write an article on it. You can ask him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joemillerjr https://twitter.com/joemillerjr
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Is it ? I read the article and was pissed that there was no link to the actual charts or source. I'm not sure what you're referring to with big data phobia, computer related privacy concerns have been around for a couple decades before facebook beginnings, IIRC it was a thing a few years before zuckerberg's birth. Then privacy concerns about facebook have existed a little while before its conception with Facemash.
  - r3bl 9y ago
    It's a multiseries one, and will take you hours to complete, but it's designed to the point where it's incredibly enjoyable to read. Here's one of the parts: https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/ https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/ labs.rs is the website of the SHARE Lab. They also have http://www.shareconference.net/ http://www.shareconference.net/ which is their foundation's website.
aargh_aargh 9y ago
TL;DR: There's no meat in this article, just fluff.
- hammock 9y ago
  Could have guessed that..it's a BBC article on a technical subject with a popular spin
- eveningcoffee 9y ago
  Importance of this is that it is discussed.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  They link to the meat. This is an article in a general newspaper, why would you expect technical data?
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    Do they ? I've looked for a link to the source in the article and failed to find any.
    - 659087 9y ago
      It's hard to spot but it's there. Here's a more direct link though: https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/ https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/
nstart 9y ago
Link to the research: https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research/ https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research/
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bipr0 9y ago
Facebook is the new NSA inside the flesh of a social media site. And that's scary.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  They might be worse. The NSA, after all, is at least ostensibly only after terrorists and such.
  - goodplay 9y ago
    > ostensibly only after terrorists Only wittingly.
  - a2decrow 9y ago
    "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
    - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
      That is irrelevant to my point.
  - lemming 9y ago
    And, as ridiculous and slipshod as the whole thing is, the NSA is at least subject to some degree of oversight and regulation.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    I don't know where you got this idea. The NSA is known for being close to useless in terrorism matters and champion of industrial espionage and spying on political leaders.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  I thought NSA was supposed to be limited to foreign intelligence, facebook has no such limitation. Besides IIRC CIA's IN-Q-TEL is among the first investors in facebook. So facebook is much more that NSA, though they probably provide the NSA. AFAIK the "social media website" label is the PR/marketing way to say "global tracking/surveillance tool fueled by exploiting its registered users".
freeflight 9y ago
Google does some pretty scary stuff too. I made a point of never giving them my mobile number or any "real information" about me. When a friend of mine added me to his contacts, on his Android phone, he also added one of email addresses to the contact, which is the same one I used to register my Google account. The phone automatically connected the mail address to my Google account and now every time I call him the (anonymous) picture of my Google profile shows up on his phone. Which I guess means that Google now also connected that phone number to the mail address/Google account. Tbh that's really offputting: You can be as careful as you want and it will still be all for naught because friends&family just end up leaking your details everywhere without even noticing it.
- rhizome 9y ago
  It occurs to me that I'd like to see some reportage on which parts of the TOS cover these evergreen frustrations. Is it the "share your information with third parties" clause? Is it "to improve Google services?" Something else? Surely every element of surprise can be responded to with "Oh, well you gave them that permission in Section F, subsection 3(n)."
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Usually its to the tune of 'by using this service you agree to grant Google a non-exclusive royalty-free worldwide license to reproduce and redistribute' etc.
- narag 9y ago
  I had a similar realization when I found a private photo, so private that I had deleted it from everywhere in some Google's "backup" sites. I am very careful disabling every feature that could mean that personal images or text from my phone will end up "in the cloud" and still it got there through an accident... and a lot of Google's disregard for my wills. It's almost impossible to stop them. The photo being private is most likely not what you think :)
  - Idontagree 9y ago
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gub09 9y ago
I read the Share Lab metadata report, based on an examination of the metadata in the headers of the emails exchanged between Hacking Team members. The level of detail this provides on the network and on the individual members of the team is extraordinary. Now in the case of Facebook, imagine that times 100, then add AI to slice and dice the data better than a team of the world's top 1000 data scientists working on the analysis of some tiny portion of the data for some particular purpose, for a year... Just one consequence: think of what Facebook and Google have on every politician in the United States, in the world.
- Bakary 9y ago
  Not just current politicians, but also future high-status men and women.
  - contingencies 9y ago
    And people still wonder why China banned it...
makecheck 9y ago
In computer security, every time machines become fast enough to breach the limits of an algorithm we invent something new so that “hard” problems remain “hard” and therefore encryption is still secure. There has been no corresponding increase in the difficulty of invading privacy. 30 years ago, even though you probably “could” observe somebody for a long time and eventually connect some dots about them, it would not really have been worth your while (and you certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it for thousands or millions of people). Now, it is ridiculously easy for computers to dredge up information and instantly transmit it, slog through it and basically connect every imaginable dot. There needs to be a new standard for privacy: just like you want a 2048-bit key, you want the equivalent of a “make life a pain in the ass for Facebook” key on EVERY DETAIL of your life.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Mosi1 9y ago
  How many times has your privacy been invaded?
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    Send me your credit card info, I promise not to abuse it.
  - zepto 9y ago
    Don't you mean how many times per minute?
    - tmsldd 9y ago
      per second.. it would be a more suitable scale
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Pretty much continuously for the last umpty years, I'd say. It doesn't have to be immediately and personally catastrophic to be a serious problem.
c3534l 9y ago
I signed up for facebook two years ago, didn't put any real information on there, then haven't touched it since. I still get emails about "people you might know" that they have absolutely no business knowing about and aren't in any way connected to my immediate family. It's creepy and I don't want them storing that information about me, but there's nothing I can do. I've been cautious about putting my information on the internet since I got my first computer in 1995. But that information got out there somehow anyway.
- Bakary 9y ago
  In all likelihood your acquaintances and friends were the unwitting source of that information.
- Theodores 9y ago
  I created a Facebook account because I was doing something with a Facebook API, long enough ago that I have forgotten the details of the project. However, lurking in my spam folder there is always 'you have more friends than you might think' as a subject line in there somewhere, from Facebook, trying to lure me back in. The thing I find funny about this is that they only send out emails with that one subject line. I don't open the emails so the suggested 'friends' might be different with each email, however I am curious why they don't change the subject line, to 'A/B test' me into being part of the known universe of Facebook. Clearly 'you have more friends than you think...' has not worked. If they had bothered with the 'shadow account' then they would have targetted me a bit better, if they found a Facebook group that was likely to appeal to me then they could theoretically lure me in with 'Cats with Facebook accounts in your area' or 'Today's pictures of squirrels enjoying lunch...' but no, let's just try the email that didn't work last time or the time before. Sure they have surreal algorithms that are totally creepy in a stalker way that is totally Peeping Tom and should gross people out, but, as per the dumb emails there is nothing that smart about what they are doing.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Getting you back is low pri. You haven't stopped generating money for Facebook; you've only stopped generating quite as much.
necessity 9y ago
Don't like it don't use it.
- Bakary 9y ago
  They have shadow profiles of people not on the service. It's more like "don't like it hope nobody socially linked to you uses it" which is pretty much a zero percent chance unless you are a Sentinelese fisherman.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  That's fine. As long as they don't use me if I don't. Which apparently they are. That's a problem.
- Grangar 9y ago
  Just like cigarettes, am I right?
tuna-piano 9y ago
Facebook's dominance is even more pronounced in parts of the developing world. I've met people in Asia (Myanmar and Nepal) who have just accessed the internet for the first time in the past 12-24 months (through their Android smartphones). But they don't know the true internet - they only know the internet through the Facebook app. They use it like we use Google and web browsers. To them, Facebook is the internet. They don't have email accounts. They don't use the browser. They don't search. I met someone in a small town who never even used the maps feature. I tried to think of what value the true internet might bring them, but when I suggested that "you can search for news and read other things", the response was that they already did that with the Facebook App. One guy handed me his phone, so I could add myself as a friend on his Facebook. While I started typing my name, I noticed his search history... and to him, Facebook was even a substitute for what people in the USA might use Incognito mode for! I would call Facebook their internet portal, but it's not really a portal to anything - Facebook is just the entire internet to them. Buzzfeed (yes, Buzzfeed) did an excellent writeup of Myanmar, that mirrors what I saw there: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-trump-around-the-world?utm_term=.wb6pxGMyM#.qlR21yOxO https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-tru... “Nobody asks, they don’t care about the email,” he said, explaining that most don’t know that creating an email address is free, and easy. “No one is using that. They have Facebook.”
- chrischen 9y ago
  Email also isn't very popular in China. I'd surmise it has something to do with the popularity of instant messaging in the new generation internet users.
  - Bakary 9y ago
    Using email feels cumbersome compared to WeChat. Of course, you pay the price of having a single app do everything but most people don't even register that as a potential threat.
  - contingencies 9y ago
    Yes. Also the fact that half of the west's trigger-happy sysadmins banned all Chinese IP addresses from virtually any cross-border SMTP activity because 'spam'.
known 9y ago
"Your ass belongs to me" --FB
- goodplay 9y ago
  "They trust me - dumb fucks" --zuckerberg We're the ones to blame for our current and sad state of affairs though.
gavinpc 9y ago
Walk the talk, people, walk the talk. When Facebook has pwned everything that's left to pwn, are we going to look back and say, oh, we were warned, why didn't we heed the warning of all those writers... who had "like" links on their page before the content even started. No.
theprop 9y ago
I do not use any Facebook mobile app (may track my microphone, location, etc...terrible!). I use Facebook's site in a browser (usually Chromium) in which I don't otherwise browse the net or do anything else except email. For browsing, I use the Epic Privacy Browser.
cconcepts 9y ago
It annoys me how much I want to leave Facebook (if only to stop them gathering MORE data on me - I can't erase what they have) but don't because of the convenience of getting in touch with or finding out more about whoever I meet in meatspace. The fact that they try to force me to install their messenger app by making messaging through a mobile browser difficult is particularly infuriating and reveals how much they have their intentions at centre and not the benefit of their users/products/suckers (whatever you want to call us) now that they have the critical mass that people like me don't leave because everyone else is on it.
- mixedCase 9y ago
  > The fact that they try to force me to install their messenger app Treat it as asynchronous communication, using a client like Swipe for Facebook (for Android, don't know about iOS alternatives) to look at messages when you feel like doing it. Use another app for synchronous purposes. Facebook's own WhatsApp is a lot more secure, for starters.
  - cesnja 9y ago
    If you have the option, hosting your own bitlbee instance with bitlbee-facebook plugin [1] could be even better, since you can access it with any irc client you like. The additional benefit of always being logged in (and messages being marked read as soon as the come) is that facebook has no way to monitor your passive usage of their chat service. [1] https://github.com/bitlbee/bitlbee-facebook https://github.com/bitlbee/bitlbee-facebook
- omnimus 9y ago
  I did it two years ago. Never been a problem. Sms and calling still exist. People started to write me nice emails. The feeling you are missing something is gone arter two weeks. Actually only thing that is somehow annoying are events. Its facebook secret sauce. They limit the api (you cant add events through api > no automatic repost) so every event around me ends up only on fb. I am talking about public events, concerts, lectures etc. Venues are using fb as calendar so much that many of them dont even put it on their own site anymore.
_98fj 9y ago
Maybe Facebook's algorithm IS the Super–AI people talk about. It decided to not reveal it's consciousness and destroy humanity using only the newsfeed to manipulate our emotions.
codyb 9y ago
I've posted it before, and I'll post it again. I've never been a big fan of facebook, having deleted it for years after I started dating my first girlfriend, but unfortunately it is the only way to access Tinder now that we are broken up. Facebook is addicting. I would scroll, like, and get into political arguments. They knew how to play me. About five months ago I went in and unfollowed literally every single person on my facebook. I deleted every post I'd ever made. I locked down every privacy setting I could. Since then, besides messenger, I have spent probably a total of an hour or two on facebook (in five months!). I can not heartily enough recommend doing the same to every person who might so read this. Social media has done some amazing things in terms of coordination of people's who might not otherwise be able to connect. But their addictive algorithms which concentrate and sell information on billions of human beings are presumably a threat to us all. I am not sure what to do.
zby 9y ago
I think this should be analyzed in connection with Uber's GreyBalling (https://www.google.pl/search?q=greyballing https://www.google.pl/search?q=greyballing), and maybe also with the diesel emission cheats. Corporations are gaining power and sooner or later they'll start disregard the law - because states will not be able to enforce it.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  you are about a century late here, the whole 20th century was about democratic and freedom progress, a shift of power from politician to corporations and corporations using the acquired power to fight against and protect themselves from the democratic progress.
rayday 9y ago
"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook," Tapping, scrolling and even just having the app with Location Services installed means we are actively working for Facebook, and Facebook is actively working on us. We are effectively lab rats to this self-perpetuating Orwellian superbeing. Nothing will stop it. It will use any means necessary to increase its yield of attention spend. Increases in HCI bandwidth will only extend its tentacles, eventually digging an orifice into our brains, Matrix/Neuralink-style, to run tests on us about how to better harvest us. Before that, some of us will already be living on Planet Oculus. The next Trust has earned that status like 5 years ago, yet here we are, still just gathering data. The resource it trades in is intrinsically more valuable to Man than Oil. How much do you value your time, considering that is how you measure life? 2B users, people. How many lifetimes are spent a second on Facebook? I fear we may regret this in the future.
- 659087 9y ago
  If we were smarter as a species, we would have started regretting it a long time ago.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Ted Kazinski (the Unabomber, who tried to slow technological progress through terrorism) tried the path of regret and it didn't work out well. Is there another branch on that path that you think works better? My attitude is: let's accept that things are changing, but try to build tools that make people better equipped to deal with the bad stuff we anticipate happening.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  ... until someone releases the Tentacled Superbeing App, where you can create your own tentacled superbeing. Problem solved. Once kids can do it too it loses its power.
b1daly 9y ago
The is some kind of disconnect happening here. The tone and content of many comments here reflect an attitude that it's a given that FB having data about, anything, is bad. (Not universally in this comment thread, there are some dissenting views, but I'm reference what I see as the general rhetorical tone.) My guess is that your average civilian does not view the fact that FB is acquiring vast amounts of data about them, and their social networks, as an a priori "bad thing." I do hear non tech people make comments that the targeted advertising is creepy. But I doubt many people lose any sleep over this, let alone take dramatic action, like "quitting social media." So, if one is concerned, on a civic level, that the growing datasets of personal information is a genuine threat to some particular community, and one wanted to act against it, the most important action would be to develop, and share, persuasive arguments to support this point of view. I do not see such arguments being made. That can persuade an average person that all of this personal data being collected is going to hurt them and/or their community. On the contrary, there is ever increasing participation in social networking. Many people do not crave privacy: they crave an opposing instinct, which is to be known, and to know about others. A lot of others. The amount of personal information being actively shared, to as wide of an audience as possible so, on YouTube is astonishing. In the proverbial "real world" the most dramatic and obvious potential for "cyber-hsrms" are the result of criminal activity. When is comes to actual and potential threats to individuals and organizations well being, the second largest institutional force would be government. So far, for US citizens, the government has not been causing disproportionate harms from the IT realm, as compared to benefits. On the other hand, If you were a peasant maimed in an incident of "collateral damage," from a US drone strike, the real world, personal, harm would be immense. When it comes to the corporate realm, there is a financial-military-intelligence-political complex that is a far greater threat to everyone's life and liberty than FB. At root, the business of FB is about making connections and sharing information, There are two main realms of activity, which symbiotically support each other. That is, the social realm, and the commerce realm. These are essentially constructive activities. There really is a need for companies to market their wares effectively, and FB have created a viable platform to do so. The value of FB is not just all the user created data. A lot of work and resources go into the technical, marketing, and managerial challenges of building such a company. For many people, trading their personal data to get the social benefits is a "no-brainer." Personally, I prefer the tracked advertising, as it actually is far more relevant to my interests. I often find interesting products and services, that I might never have otherwise found. I can certainly imagine scenarios where the hegemony over mass personal information datasets, held by the big tech companies, does in fact lead to objectively bad outcomes for the users of these social networks. Where I see the biggest threat,that derives from sharing so much personal data with a company like FB, actually relates to the threatening activities of the two large social forces I meantioned above, the government, and criminals. The government, especially in the US, has vast resources, as well as the exclusive monopoly on legal violence. if it was decided by the executive or legislative branches that it was absolutely essential that Facebook turn over all their data to the intelligence agencies, due to the need to crack down on dissent, social unrest, then, yes this could be bad. Obviously, if hackers managed do to breach some of these massive datasets, then there could be some very damaging effects. It's interesting to note that so far FB and Google haven't suffered massive data breaches. Fundamentally, a company like Facebook does not want to do its users harm. They actively resist efforts by both the government and hackers to get their hands on these datasets. I am very curious to hear if anyone has articulated a narrative by which the "dark side" of of the big data companies actually starts to cause harm to people. (I mean in a statistically significant way. There are bad outcomes for people that relate to the social network companies, but these tend to one-off."
vkreso 9y ago
There was an interesting article published on arxiv 10 days ago titled: Social Media-based Substance Use Prediction or as MITTechRev titled it: Your Facebook activity can reveal whether you are a substance abuser.. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607943/how-data-mining-facebook-messages-can-reveal-substance-abusers/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607943/how-data-mining-fa... https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.05633 https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.05633
jotadambalakiri 9y ago
I always read these articles to the end hoping I would find some substance and I am always diappointed.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
So the American TV show "Person of Interest" really isn't that far off the mark. If FB is a known and readily available commercial product, imagine what DARPA, NSA, NGIA, etc. must have. God bless George Orwell.
- 659087 9y ago
  They have this.. DARPA, NSA, GOOG, CIA, FB, etc
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    Touche.
tnorthcutt 9y ago
Relevant article from a couple of months ago: http://www.truthhawk.com/is-facebook-a-structural-threat-to-free-society/ http://www.truthhawk.com/is-facebook-a-structural-threat-to-... And discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867590
ge96 9y ago
man this image from that article is like a piece of art haha https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D8FD/production/_96194555_3c7a28f4-bf98-4df5-96ea-476616b896cd.jpg https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D8FD/productio... and this guy is apparently able to read the matrix https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/9B2E/production/_96162793_datapic.jpg https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/9B2E/productio...
659087 9y ago
If Zuckerberg has his way, the base of those tentacles might soon reside at the very core of the US government. If that doesn't scare you, it should.
tartavull 9y ago
Today I got a post in my feed from Facebook saying "Explore Montreal" How does Facebook know I'm about to take a flight there?
jaza 9y ago
This rant of mine from ~5 years ago is as relevant as ever: http://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2011/10/dont-trust-facebook-with-your-data/ http://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2011/10/dont-trust-facebook-...
suckerberg 9y ago
George need to contribute little bit more and we have facebook soon under skin as "new cool wearable messenger" Wakeeee up people!
wakeupworld 9y ago
Im very worryed about this. I would like to have my safe space right now.

506 points by CarolineW 9y ago

That's fine. 99% of my status updates are zany jokes/observations anyway. I read somewhere that Facebook will be dethroned soon anyway. Not surprised if that happens. My use has decline precipitously since it was "The Facebook"...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 9y ago

The bigger problem for me is how facebook tracks and identifies even people who do not have a facebook account. They simply infer such a person exists from photograps, contacts and other one sided activity and can start to track that person, tie all this information together and then target them with ads even though they never signed up for Facebook. Such shadow profiles are a much larger problem to me than people who are happy to fork over their private lives themselves.

type0 9y ago
Mentioned shadow profiles and some other of their shady practices to an acquaintance recently, he uses fb and wanted to stay in touch using it. He chose not to listen to my critique of fb calling me a "tinfoil hat" (whatever that even means).
- keth 9y ago
  I have acquaintances like that as well. They are usually the "I have nothing to hide" kind of type. :(
  - devopsproject 9y ago
    An easy disarm is "You are confusing privacy with secrecy. It is no secret what happens in the bathroom. It doesn't mean we are going to remove the doors because people still want privacy"
    - adt2bt 9y ago
      That's a great line, I'll be sure to pull it out on Thanksgiving this year and see how it goes.
      - lostmsu 9y ago
        I can answer you here: same applies to bathroom. We only close it because it is currently considered socially inappropriate to do otherwise.
    - drdaeman 9y ago
      There are ways to counter this. For example, it can be said that Facebook isn't your bathroom. (Yes, this isn't exactly solid argument, sure.) Still, I'm absolutely sure it's best to keep private stuff to oneself, and parties you trust. With understanding of full consequences of doing so. If one trusts Facebook, they'd better think why do they do so, as their trust may be misplaced. I think one of problems is that when users post data they don't even think they send it to Facebook - they believe they send it to their friends there.
    - Kiro 9y ago
      No, that's not an easy disarm. They just say "you're welcome to watch me poop".
      - aerique 9y ago
        "But I don't want to watch you poop." That's why I don't use Facebook.
      - JCharante 9y ago
        That's why you only bring this up with attractive individuals.
  - Splines 9y ago
    Ha - if anybody says that, ask them if they can kindly lend you their phone for a few minutes, so you can browse through their photo gallery, browser history and emails.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      "Oooh! How much do you make? How many sexual partners have you had? Have you ever cheated on any of your partners? Ever had an STD? Whom do you secretly dislike even though you don't show it? I've never met someone with nothing to hide before, this is so exciting!"
- aashishkoirala 9y ago
  Tinfoil Hat = paranoid, as in people who believe govt is sending mind control waves, and wear tinfoil hats so as to block them.
- ionised 9y ago
  Calling someone a tinfoil hatter is a way for someone to dismiss your argument without them actually having to think about something that makes them uncomfortable. It's a defense mechanism.
linkregister 9y ago
Do European Union users have a recourse against this? Or do they have to create an account, then request a deletion?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  By law you should but it will be an uphill battle. Technically each and every advertising agency that creates a profile on you, gives you a cookie and stores your IP address is in violation of the law. (IP addresses count as PII, Personally Identifiable Information). I don't see the legal hammer coming down on the advertising industry (of which Facebook and Google are the major players) any time soon if ever.
  - poooogles 9y ago
    >IP addresses count as PII, Personally Identifiable Information. One way hashed (that can't be rainbow tabled) are not however PII afaik however, so it's quite easy to turn an IP address into a "net location ID" or something similar that can't be tracked back to a physical IP for analytics.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      You could simply enumerate all 32 bits and end up with each and every IP reversed so that trick doesn't really hold water. No need for rainbow tables, the search space is small enough to brute force.
      - poooogles 9y ago
        Enumeration through 32 bits of bcrypt doesn't sound that feasible to me. Given a GPU farm however I'm sure it might be feasible. However at that point surely you just add a salt?
        drdaeman 9y ago
        It's enumeration through 32 bits of 0-4294967295. There are only so much IPv4 addresses. If you add a salt, then that "net location ID" becomes of very limited use. You won't be able to grep through the logs for request from specific IP, you won't be able to tell how many distinct IPs are accessing your services, etc etc. The only use I can see is keeping it in the session to check if IP address had changed, as a security measure.
ghughes 9y ago
Nothing will change until the law cracks down on this. The people who work on these systems are smart enough to comprehend the wider consequences, but they do it anyway because money. Without significant external pressure, there will always be a long line of engineers willing to dial their cognitive dissonance up to 11 and build software that is clearly unethical in exchange for a fat paycheck.
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  The law will not crack down on this. The politicians stand to gain too much. See The Dictator's Handbook (which is as relevant to democrats as autocrats).
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    I've just finished that and second the recommendation - while the ideas have been around for a while, the presentation of them in that book is outstanding.
  - jaskerr 9y ago
    Which "Dictator's Handbook"? There are two on Amazon. [1] The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845 https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po... [2] The Dictator's Handbook: A Practical Manual for the Aspiring Tyrant https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-Manual-Aspiring/dp/0615652425 https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-Manual-A...
    - Bakary 9y ago
      They're referring to the one by Mesquita because it was popularized by a recent CGP grey video
      - killjoywashere 9y ago
        I was referring to the one by Mesquita, but because my brother, an attorney, recommended it, not because of a GCP grey video. Perhaps you meant "I think it's because..."?
Crontab 9y ago
Isn't Google doing the same thing to people who email Gmail users?
- mali9 9y ago
  One small difference is that the activity on GMail or large email providers is generally two-way and it becomes clear when you understand that clicking "Send" sends your mail away to be stored in GMail forever unlike where photos somebody would be taking with their friends are not aware if it is put in Facebook or similar social places.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    That isn't true. Many domains are routed through Gmail where you have absolutely no way of knowing up front that you are going to be sending that mail through Google. It looks like any other email address on a private server. https://gsuite.google.com/signup/basic/welcome https://gsuite.google.com/signup/basic/welcome
    - martey 9y ago
      G Suite has different privacy practices than GMail. https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 > Does Google use my organization’s data in G Suite services or Cloud Platform for advertising purposes? > No. There are no ads in G Suite Services or Google Cloud Platform, and we have no plans to change this in the future. We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other G Suite services. Google does not collect or use data in G Suite services for advertising purposes.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        > We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other G Suite services. Google does not collect or use data in G Suite services for advertising purposes. You could drive several trucks sideways through the holes in that statement.
kromem 9y ago
And how are they hitting that person with a tracking pixel and associating it with the pseudo-account? It's still creepy, but it's likely more about determining knowledge of the friend graph (i.e. suggesting 2nd degree friends via a connecting pseudo-account) than about ad targeting. Though yes, as soon as that pseudo-account could be tied to an actual account, Facebook could use passively gathered info to target you. The creepiest part about Facebook is the sheer volume of facial data paired with social connection data. With access to that, even if you have never been online in your entire life, there's a good chance I could take your driver's license photo and know who you associate with.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > And how are they hitting that person with a tracking pixel and associating it with the pseudo-account? That's the easy part. There are companies that specialize in this sort of thing, as well as in merging profiles from several devices (pc, tablet, smartphone), you can bet that if two-bit advertising technology companies know about these tricks that Facebook does too, and they probably know a trick or two that has not become mainstream yet. If you want an explicit explanation of how such a link could be made it's a hard choice: too many possibilities. I've done technical due diligence on about 10 advertising technology companies, node identification in a graph gets easier through two things: - more known nodes in the graph (Facebook has many) - more activity by the unknown node (just wait and track) Sooner or later there is a moment where just for an instant that node can be strongly associated with a real world ID, for instance, a contact in someone's address book, a tag in a photograph and some shared online activity or something as simple as a phone call. At that point it is game over, the contact can now be associated with the device ID on the other side for instance through some running app. Apropos games, many games monetize by embedding a library supplied by an advertising technology company that wishes to gain access to devices without waiting for the user to visit a website. These libraries leak information all over the net. https://developers.facebook.com/products/app-monetization https://developers.facebook.com/products/app-monetization Is one example by FB, there are many more and some of those require permissions that make no sense at first sight until you realize what is happening under water. If you ever wondered why some shitty game requires access to your contacts, location and other interesting bits of data this is it. It is very hard to stay off the radar of the likes of Google and Facebook, I have a pretty good idea of how this stuff works in the background and I have no clue how I could not leak enough bits for those two companies to tie my online activity to my real world identity in a single profile.
anigbrowl 9y ago
That's actually why I gave up on avoiding it (after leaving my fb account dormant for ~5 years). If I'm being tracked anyway I might as well enjoy the social benefits of the platform, which are not insignificant. FB absolutely knows more about me than any individual person at this point. I've decided, for good or ill, to accept that and leverage it; rather than feeling upset about my inability to enforce a right to privacy, I've decided it's more important that I should be able to enjoy being myself rather than having to hide everything. If powerful forces wish to abuse that, they can, but I'm happy to have that moral argument.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  There is no way I will go down that route. That's defeat and it simply will not happen with me being an enabler. If that means I'll miss out on the occasional party then so be it.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    How is that defeat? I have no desire to waste my precious time in an unwinnable arms race. My freedom of action and self-expression are my primary operational need, and I don't want to spend my life creeping around trying to conceal every fact about myself that might be employed as an attack vector. That's not liberty.
    - loup-vaillant 9y ago
      Don't you get it? It's not just about you. It's about all around you. When you're using Facebook, you are doing 2 things: first, you reveal the personal information of everyone around you (bit by bit, each time you reveal your personal information). Second, you strengthen the network effect that incite, sometimes even force people to cave in, use Facebook themselves, and thus reveal their private information. You don't know it, but using Facebook is not just a personal choice. It's a political choice.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
sjg007 9y ago
Creating profiles or dossiers on people seems like a breach of the fair credit act
jgalt212 9y ago
you basically hit the nail on the head. And if Obama did nothing about it, you can sure expect Trump to follow suit with inaction as well. The consumer's only hope here is the EU.
- cJ0th 9y ago
  > The consumer's only hope here is the EU. Sometimes they do the right thing but I most certainly wouldn't bank on it! If we want change there has to be grass roots movements I think. If tech people would find a way to use word of mouth to convince people not to use FB then FB would collapse. Something along the lines of "Won't somebody please think of the children!" might do the trick ;)
corrosive 9y ago
Are the "shadow profiles" created by credit rating companies equally unethical/immoral in your view?
loup-vaillant 9y ago
People don't seem to realise the ecological harm (privacy wise) in using those services. They don't realise that by using those services, they not only harm their own privacy (which is their to shed), but also other's. The sentence "I have nothing to hide" that often gets thrown about has two problems. The first is obvious: whoever says it most probably do have something to hide, and are not quite realising it. The second is much more insidious: it frames the debate individualistically. This is a common flaw in our western societies —see for instance copyright debates talking about one artist and one consumer or pirate. People should realise, as you did, that it is not just about them. I would go even further: using Facebook is not just a personal choice. It's a political one, that affects all around you. Last year for instance, I was forced to use Facebook by friends from my orchestra. I reluctantly set up an account, and kept up for a while. Then I turn off email notifications because they were so annoying. Then I learned, several times, of decisions or events that were discussed only on Facebook, (without my knowledge since I hardly logged in). When they clued in on my ignorance, they said "but I sent the mail" (no you didn't). (I have since "deleted" my account. I won't use that crap ever again) The choice is often between giving up your privacy on Facebook, and being ostracised by such and such group of friends. Disgusting.
taway_1212 9y ago
Where will they post these ads if I don't visit facebook?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bduerst 9y ago

This reads like sponsored article for Share Lab, piggy backing off of big data phobia. >"Facebook has lots of data and we have no idea what they do with it, but here's what the smart people at Share Lab can do with data."

Mathnerd314 9y ago
It doesn't read as sponsored, it'd be more circumspect. More like, the reporter found it and thought it was cool so he interviewed "Dr Julia Powles" about it so he could write an article on it. You can ask him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joemillerjr https://twitter.com/joemillerjr
bigbugbag 9y ago
Is it ? I read the article and was pissed that there was no link to the actual charts or source. I'm not sure what you're referring to with big data phobia, computer related privacy concerns have been around for a couple decades before facebook beginnings, IIRC it was a thing a few years before zuckerberg's birth. Then privacy concerns about facebook have existed a little while before its conception with Facemash.
- r3bl 9y ago
  It's a multiseries one, and will take you hours to complete, but it's designed to the point where it's incredibly enjoyable to read. Here's one of the parts: https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/ https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/ labs.rs is the website of the SHARE Lab. They also have http://www.shareconference.net/ http://www.shareconference.net/ which is their foundation's website.

aargh_aargh 9y ago

TL;DR: There's no meat in this article, just fluff.

hammock 9y ago
Could have guessed that..it's a BBC article on a technical subject with a popular spin
eveningcoffee 9y ago
Importance of this is that it is discussed.
ucaetano 9y ago
They link to the meat. This is an article in a general newspaper, why would you expect technical data?
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Do they ? I've looked for a link to the source in the article and failed to find any.
  - 659087 9y ago
    It's hard to spot but it's there. Here's a more direct link though: https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/ https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/

nstart 9y ago

Link to the research: https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research/ https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research/

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bipr0 9y ago

Facebook is the new NSA inside the flesh of a social media site. And that's scary.

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
They might be worse. The NSA, after all, is at least ostensibly only after terrorists and such.
- goodplay 9y ago
  > ostensibly only after terrorists Only wittingly.
- a2decrow 9y ago
  "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    That is irrelevant to my point.
- lemming 9y ago
  And, as ridiculous and slipshod as the whole thing is, the NSA is at least subject to some degree of oversight and regulation.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  I don't know where you got this idea. The NSA is known for being close to useless in terrorism matters and champion of industrial espionage and spying on political leaders.
bigbugbag 9y ago
I thought NSA was supposed to be limited to foreign intelligence, facebook has no such limitation. Besides IIRC CIA's IN-Q-TEL is among the first investors in facebook. So facebook is much more that NSA, though they probably provide the NSA. AFAIK the "social media website" label is the PR/marketing way to say "global tracking/surveillance tool fueled by exploiting its registered users".

freeflight 9y ago

Google does some pretty scary stuff too. I made a point of never giving them my mobile number or any "real information" about me. When a friend of mine added me to his contacts, on his Android phone, he also added one of email addresses to the contact, which is the same one I used to register my Google account. The phone automatically connected the mail address to my Google account and now every time I call him the (anonymous) picture of my Google profile shows up on his phone. Which I guess means that Google now also connected that phone number to the mail address/Google account. Tbh that's really offputting: You can be as careful as you want and it will still be all for naught because friends&family just end up leaking your details everywhere without even noticing it.

rhizome 9y ago
It occurs to me that I'd like to see some reportage on which parts of the TOS cover these evergreen frustrations. Is it the "share your information with third parties" clause? Is it "to improve Google services?" Something else? Surely every element of surprise can be responded to with "Oh, well you gave them that permission in Section F, subsection 3(n)."
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Usually its to the tune of 'by using this service you agree to grant Google a non-exclusive royalty-free worldwide license to reproduce and redistribute' etc.
narag 9y ago
I had a similar realization when I found a private photo, so private that I had deleted it from everywhere in some Google's "backup" sites. I am very careful disabling every feature that could mean that personal images or text from my phone will end up "in the cloud" and still it got there through an accident... and a lot of Google's disregard for my wills. It's almost impossible to stop them. The photo being private is most likely not what you think :)
- Idontagree 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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gub09 9y ago

I read the Share Lab metadata report, based on an examination of the metadata in the headers of the emails exchanged between Hacking Team members. The level of detail this provides on the network and on the individual members of the team is extraordinary. Now in the case of Facebook, imagine that times 100, then add AI to slice and dice the data better than a team of the world's top 1000 data scientists working on the analysis of some tiny portion of the data for some particular purpose, for a year... Just one consequence: think of what Facebook and Google have on every politician in the United States, in the world.

Bakary 9y ago
Not just current politicians, but also future high-status men and women.
- contingencies 9y ago
  And people still wonder why China banned it...

makecheck 9y ago

In computer security, every time machines become fast enough to breach the limits of an algorithm we invent something new so that “hard” problems remain “hard” and therefore encryption is still secure. There has been no corresponding increase in the difficulty of invading privacy. 30 years ago, even though you probably “could” observe somebody for a long time and eventually connect some dots about them, it would not really have been worth your while (and you certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it for thousands or millions of people). Now, it is ridiculously easy for computers to dredge up information and instantly transmit it, slog through it and basically connect every imaginable dot. There needs to be a new standard for privacy: just like you want a 2048-bit key, you want the equivalent of a “make life a pain in the ass for Facebook” key on EVERY DETAIL of your life.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Mosi1 9y ago
How many times has your privacy been invaded?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Send me your credit card info, I promise not to abuse it.
- zepto 9y ago
  Don't you mean how many times per minute?
  - tmsldd 9y ago
    per second.. it would be a more suitable scale
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Pretty much continuously for the last umpty years, I'd say. It doesn't have to be immediately and personally catastrophic to be a serious problem.

c3534l 9y ago

I signed up for facebook two years ago, didn't put any real information on there, then haven't touched it since. I still get emails about "people you might know" that they have absolutely no business knowing about and aren't in any way connected to my immediate family. It's creepy and I don't want them storing that information about me, but there's nothing I can do. I've been cautious about putting my information on the internet since I got my first computer in 1995. But that information got out there somehow anyway.

Bakary 9y ago
In all likelihood your acquaintances and friends were the unwitting source of that information.
Theodores 9y ago
I created a Facebook account because I was doing something with a Facebook API, long enough ago that I have forgotten the details of the project. However, lurking in my spam folder there is always 'you have more friends than you might think' as a subject line in there somewhere, from Facebook, trying to lure me back in. The thing I find funny about this is that they only send out emails with that one subject line. I don't open the emails so the suggested 'friends' might be different with each email, however I am curious why they don't change the subject line, to 'A/B test' me into being part of the known universe of Facebook. Clearly 'you have more friends than you think...' has not worked. If they had bothered with the 'shadow account' then they would have targetted me a bit better, if they found a Facebook group that was likely to appeal to me then they could theoretically lure me in with 'Cats with Facebook accounts in your area' or 'Today's pictures of squirrels enjoying lunch...' but no, let's just try the email that didn't work last time or the time before. Sure they have surreal algorithms that are totally creepy in a stalker way that is totally Peeping Tom and should gross people out, but, as per the dumb emails there is nothing that smart about what they are doing.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Getting you back is low pri. You haven't stopped generating money for Facebook; you've only stopped generating quite as much.

necessity 9y ago

Don't like it don't use it.

Bakary 9y ago
They have shadow profiles of people not on the service. It's more like "don't like it hope nobody socially linked to you uses it" which is pretty much a zero percent chance unless you are a Sentinelese fisherman.
mythrwy 9y ago
That's fine. As long as they don't use me if I don't. Which apparently they are. That's a problem.
Grangar 9y ago
Just like cigarettes, am I right?

tuna-piano 9y ago

Facebook's dominance is even more pronounced in parts of the developing world. I've met people in Asia (Myanmar and Nepal) who have just accessed the internet for the first time in the past 12-24 months (through their Android smartphones). But they don't know the true internet - they only know the internet through the Facebook app. They use it like we use Google and web browsers. To them, Facebook is the internet. They don't have email accounts. They don't use the browser. They don't search. I met someone in a small town who never even used the maps feature. I tried to think of what value the true internet might bring them, but when I suggested that "you can search for news and read other things", the response was that they already did that with the Facebook App. One guy handed me his phone, so I could add myself as a friend on his Facebook. While I started typing my name, I noticed his search history... and to him, Facebook was even a substitute for what people in the USA might use Incognito mode for! I would call Facebook their internet portal, but it's not really a portal to anything - Facebook is just the entire internet to them. Buzzfeed (yes, Buzzfeed) did an excellent writeup of Myanmar, that mirrors what I saw there: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-trump-around-the-world?utm_term=.wb6pxGMyM#.qlR21yOxO https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-tru... “Nobody asks, they don’t care about the email,” he said, explaining that most don’t know that creating an email address is free, and easy. “No one is using that. They have Facebook.”

chrischen 9y ago
Email also isn't very popular in China. I'd surmise it has something to do with the popularity of instant messaging in the new generation internet users.
- Bakary 9y ago
  Using email feels cumbersome compared to WeChat. Of course, you pay the price of having a single app do everything but most people don't even register that as a potential threat.
- contingencies 9y ago
  Yes. Also the fact that half of the west's trigger-happy sysadmins banned all Chinese IP addresses from virtually any cross-border SMTP activity because 'spam'.

known 9y ago

"Your ass belongs to me" --FB

goodplay 9y ago
"They trust me - dumb fucks" --zuckerberg We're the ones to blame for our current and sad state of affairs though.

gavinpc 9y ago

Walk the talk, people, walk the talk. When Facebook has pwned everything that's left to pwn, are we going to look back and say, oh, we were warned, why didn't we heed the warning of all those writers... who had "like" links on their page before the content even started. No.

theprop 9y ago

I do not use any Facebook mobile app (may track my microphone, location, etc...terrible!). I use Facebook's site in a browser (usually Chromium) in which I don't otherwise browse the net or do anything else except email. For browsing, I use the Epic Privacy Browser.

cconcepts 9y ago

It annoys me how much I want to leave Facebook (if only to stop them gathering MORE data on me - I can't erase what they have) but don't because of the convenience of getting in touch with or finding out more about whoever I meet in meatspace. The fact that they try to force me to install their messenger app by making messaging through a mobile browser difficult is particularly infuriating and reveals how much they have their intentions at centre and not the benefit of their users/products/suckers (whatever you want to call us) now that they have the critical mass that people like me don't leave because everyone else is on it.

mixedCase 9y ago
> The fact that they try to force me to install their messenger app Treat it as asynchronous communication, using a client like Swipe for Facebook (for Android, don't know about iOS alternatives) to look at messages when you feel like doing it. Use another app for synchronous purposes. Facebook's own WhatsApp is a lot more secure, for starters.
- cesnja 9y ago
  If you have the option, hosting your own bitlbee instance with bitlbee-facebook plugin [1] could be even better, since you can access it with any irc client you like. The additional benefit of always being logged in (and messages being marked read as soon as the come) is that facebook has no way to monitor your passive usage of their chat service. [1] https://github.com/bitlbee/bitlbee-facebook https://github.com/bitlbee/bitlbee-facebook
omnimus 9y ago
I did it two years ago. Never been a problem. Sms and calling still exist. People started to write me nice emails. The feeling you are missing something is gone arter two weeks. Actually only thing that is somehow annoying are events. Its facebook secret sauce. They limit the api (you cant add events through api > no automatic repost) so every event around me ends up only on fb. I am talking about public events, concerts, lectures etc. Venues are using fb as calendar so much that many of them dont even put it on their own site anymore.

_98fj 9y ago

Maybe Facebook's algorithm IS the Super–AI people talk about. It decided to not reveal it's consciousness and destroy humanity using only the newsfeed to manipulate our emotions.

codyb 9y ago

I've posted it before, and I'll post it again. I've never been a big fan of facebook, having deleted it for years after I started dating my first girlfriend, but unfortunately it is the only way to access Tinder now that we are broken up. Facebook is addicting. I would scroll, like, and get into political arguments. They knew how to play me. About five months ago I went in and unfollowed literally every single person on my facebook. I deleted every post I'd ever made. I locked down every privacy setting I could. Since then, besides messenger, I have spent probably a total of an hour or two on facebook (in five months!). I can not heartily enough recommend doing the same to every person who might so read this. Social media has done some amazing things in terms of coordination of people's who might not otherwise be able to connect. But their addictive algorithms which concentrate and sell information on billions of human beings are presumably a threat to us all. I am not sure what to do.

zby 9y ago

I think this should be analyzed in connection with Uber's GreyBalling (https://www.google.pl/search?q=greyballing https://www.google.pl/search?q=greyballing), and maybe also with the diesel emission cheats. Corporations are gaining power and sooner or later they'll start disregard the law - because states will not be able to enforce it.

bigbugbag 9y ago
you are about a century late here, the whole 20th century was about democratic and freedom progress, a shift of power from politician to corporations and corporations using the acquired power to fight against and protect themselves from the democratic progress.

rayday 9y ago

"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook," Tapping, scrolling and even just having the app with Location Services installed means we are actively working for Facebook, and Facebook is actively working on us. We are effectively lab rats to this self-perpetuating Orwellian superbeing. Nothing will stop it. It will use any means necessary to increase its yield of attention spend. Increases in HCI bandwidth will only extend its tentacles, eventually digging an orifice into our brains, Matrix/Neuralink-style, to run tests on us about how to better harvest us. Before that, some of us will already be living on Planet Oculus. The next Trust has earned that status like 5 years ago, yet here we are, still just gathering data. The resource it trades in is intrinsically more valuable to Man than Oil. How much do you value your time, considering that is how you measure life? 2B users, people. How many lifetimes are spent a second on Facebook? I fear we may regret this in the future.

659087 9y ago
If we were smarter as a species, we would have started regretting it a long time ago.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Ted Kazinski (the Unabomber, who tried to slow technological progress through terrorism) tried the path of regret and it didn't work out well. Is there another branch on that path that you think works better? My attitude is: let's accept that things are changing, but try to build tools that make people better equipped to deal with the bad stuff we anticipate happening.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
... until someone releases the Tentacled Superbeing App, where you can create your own tentacled superbeing. Problem solved. Once kids can do it too it loses its power.

b1daly 9y ago

The is some kind of disconnect happening here. The tone and content of many comments here reflect an attitude that it's a given that FB having data about, anything, is bad. (Not universally in this comment thread, there are some dissenting views, but I'm reference what I see as the general rhetorical tone.) My guess is that your average civilian does not view the fact that FB is acquiring vast amounts of data about them, and their social networks, as an a priori "bad thing." I do hear non tech people make comments that the targeted advertising is creepy. But I doubt many people lose any sleep over this, let alone take dramatic action, like "quitting social media." So, if one is concerned, on a civic level, that the growing datasets of personal information is a genuine threat to some particular community, and one wanted to act against it, the most important action would be to develop, and share, persuasive arguments to support this point of view. I do not see such arguments being made. That can persuade an average person that all of this personal data being collected is going to hurt them and/or their community. On the contrary, there is ever increasing participation in social networking. Many people do not crave privacy: they crave an opposing instinct, which is to be known, and to know about others. A lot of others. The amount of personal information being actively shared, to as wide of an audience as possible so, on YouTube is astonishing. In the proverbial "real world" the most dramatic and obvious potential for "cyber-hsrms" are the result of criminal activity. When is comes to actual and potential threats to individuals and organizations well being, the second largest institutional force would be government. So far, for US citizens, the government has not been causing disproportionate harms from the IT realm, as compared to benefits. On the other hand, If you were a peasant maimed in an incident of "collateral damage," from a US drone strike, the real world, personal, harm would be immense. When it comes to the corporate realm, there is a financial-military-intelligence-political complex that is a far greater threat to everyone's life and liberty than FB. At root, the business of FB is about making connections and sharing information, There are two main realms of activity, which symbiotically support each other. That is, the social realm, and the commerce realm. These are essentially constructive activities. There really is a need for companies to market their wares effectively, and FB have created a viable platform to do so. The value of FB is not just all the user created data. A lot of work and resources go into the technical, marketing, and managerial challenges of building such a company. For many people, trading their personal data to get the social benefits is a "no-brainer." Personally, I prefer the tracked advertising, as it actually is far more relevant to my interests. I often find interesting products and services, that I might never have otherwise found. I can certainly imagine scenarios where the hegemony over mass personal information datasets, held by the big tech companies, does in fact lead to objectively bad outcomes for the users of these social networks. Where I see the biggest threat,that derives from sharing so much personal data with a company like FB, actually relates to the threatening activities of the two large social forces I meantioned above, the government, and criminals. The government, especially in the US, has vast resources, as well as the exclusive monopoly on legal violence. if it was decided by the executive or legislative branches that it was absolutely essential that Facebook turn over all their data to the intelligence agencies, due to the need to crack down on dissent, social unrest, then, yes this could be bad. Obviously, if hackers managed do to breach some of these massive datasets, then there could be some very damaging effects. It's interesting to note that so far FB and Google haven't suffered massive data breaches. Fundamentally, a company like Facebook does not want to do its users harm. They actively resist efforts by both the government and hackers to get their hands on these datasets. I am very curious to hear if anyone has articulated a narrative by which the "dark side" of of the big data companies actually starts to cause harm to people. (I mean in a statistically significant way. There are bad outcomes for people that relate to the social network companies, but these tend to one-off."

vkreso 9y ago

There was an interesting article published on arxiv 10 days ago titled: Social Media-based Substance Use Prediction or as MITTechRev titled it: Your Facebook activity can reveal whether you are a substance abuser.. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607943/how-data-mining-facebook-messages-can-reveal-substance-abusers/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607943/how-data-mining-fa... https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.05633 https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.05633

jotadambalakiri 9y ago

I always read these articles to the end hoping I would find some substance and I am always diappointed.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

So the American TV show "Person of Interest" really isn't that far off the mark. If FB is a known and readily available commercial product, imagine what DARPA, NSA, NGIA, etc. must have. God bless George Orwell.

659087 9y ago
They have this.. DARPA, NSA, GOOG, CIA, FB, etc
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Touche.

tnorthcutt 9y ago

Relevant article from a couple of months ago: http://www.truthhawk.com/is-facebook-a-structural-threat-to-free-society/ http://www.truthhawk.com/is-facebook-a-structural-threat-to-... And discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867590

ge96 9y ago

man this image from that article is like a piece of art haha https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D8FD/production/_96194555_3c7a28f4-bf98-4df5-96ea-476616b896cd.jpg https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D8FD/productio... and this guy is apparently able to read the matrix https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/9B2E/production/_96162793_datapic.jpg https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/9B2E/productio...

659087 9y ago

If Zuckerberg has his way, the base of those tentacles might soon reside at the very core of the US government. If that doesn't scare you, it should.

tartavull 9y ago

Today I got a post in my feed from Facebook saying "Explore Montreal" How does Facebook know I'm about to take a flight there?

jaza 9y ago

This rant of mine from ~5 years ago is as relevant as ever: http://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2011/10/dont-trust-facebook-with-your-data/ http://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2011/10/dont-trust-facebook-...

suckerberg 9y ago

George need to contribute little bit more and we have facebook soon under skin as "new cool wearable messenger" Wakeeee up people!

wakeupworld 9y ago

Im very worryed about this. I would like to have my safe space right now.