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Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How
- decentralised 9y agoI haven't used my Facebook account in years, ever since they recommended I connected with a person I'd known for 20+ years but with whom I shared no connections or commonalities apart from our nationality. As I remember it, neither of us had listed schools, jobs or interests in our profiles. Maybe it was a coincidence but it made me very anxious so I left the platform.
- agotterer 9y agoIt's possible that one of you connected Facebook to a service along the way that provided access to contact information like email or phone number and they used that to make the connection.
- decentralised 9y agoCould be, but by and large I've always been a late adopter of social media so apart from a hotmail / messenger account, I think FB was the only common service.
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoMaybe it was a coincidence but it made me very anxious so I left the platform. What were you anxious about happening as a result?
- dredmorbius 9y ago"In practice, the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable. People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment." -- Yonatan Zunger, former chief architect, Google+ https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq There are further historical lines of reasoning. Hacker News and its editors don't care to see them discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15105784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15105784
- graeme 9y agoIf someone looks at your facebook account they will suggest that person as a connection. Frequently as simple as that. Of course, in the background they likely knew you were more connected through mutual friends, contacts, etc
- Cozumel 9y agoWorking link https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/facebook-figured-out-my-family-secrets-and-it-wont-tell-me-how/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/facebook-figured-out-my-f...
- sctb 9y agoThanks, updated!
- monkeyprojects 9y agoAnd that is why I only have 1 friend on Facebook - my wife
- damnfine 9y agoThen why use it?
- monkeyprojects 9y agoI don’t except for signing on to other sites (its easier than creating and remembering a password) and for Wi-fi in Barbados (I’m not paying their mobile data rates).
- Grazester 9y agoFacebook has free Wi-fi in Barbados? Hey what happen to the other Caribbean >:(
- Simon_says 9y agoFunnily enough, I'm not FB friends with my wife, and she never comes up on my "People You May Know". I spend more time with her than anyone, so maybe FB's algorithm isn't so great?
- tyingq 9y agoMaybe she's clever? https://m.facebook.com/help/290450221052800/ https://m.facebook.com/help/290450221052800/
- Simon_says 9y agoHa!
- haffi112 9y agoOr it is just a chance event? As it is not a controlled experiment and the story concerns a single individual I find the conclusion to be rather shaky.
- maxerickson 9y agoThere are roughly 300 million people in the US. A given person has, let's say, ~10,000 tenuous connections. How often would a random selection of 1000 people from the 300 million be expected to intersect with the 10,000?
- devilsavocado 9y agoNapkin math: For just 1 person to intersect: Each of those 10000 people have a (10000/30000000)/100 % chance to get selected, or .00000033%. Multiply that by a thousand selections = 0.00033% chance. Those selections are refreshed maybe 100 times a year so 0.033% chance per year. There are billions of facebook users, so this should be happening all the time by pure chance. But of course it's not pure chance. Facebook will be selecting from a pool much much smaller than 300 million, and the selections won't be random.
- celticninja 9y agoI'm getting a 404 This link seems to be working https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/facebook-figured-out-my-family-secrets-and-it-wont-tell-me-how/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/facebook-figured-out-my-f...
- sctb 9y agoThanks, we updated the link from https://www.gizmodo.com/2017/08/facebook-figured-out-my-family-secrets-and-it-wont-tell-me-how/ https://www.gizmodo.com/2017/08/facebook-figured-out-my-fami... but kept the .com site.
- kuschku 9y agoAnd this is why under German law the BDSG §34 exists, which allows every citizen to request, once every 12 months, for free, from every company a list of all data the company has on the citizen, how they got it, whom they gave it to, and all statistical models that were derived from the data, or that had an influence on the data. It’d be interesting to make a BDSG §34 request about "People you may know", just to see how Facebook responds (and if you have to pull them through court)
- criddell 9y agoHow does Facebook report inferred connections or connections deduced by looking at a larger graph? Their obligation to tell you what they know about you shouldn't infringe on my privacy.
- DataWorker 9y agoBut it does impact your privacy, that's the whole point.
- jerf 9y agoIf a German HN reader would be so kind as to make that request and report back on what they get, I can absolutely positively guarantee that they will be the happy recipient of One Internet Point from me when they submit the story to HN.
- teamhappy 9y agoYou don't have to be German. Anyone outside the US and Canada has the right to access their FB data. See http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data_.html http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_...
- contingencies 9y agoCool. If someone figures out the process let's all do it. I quit FB yeaaaaaaaaaaars ago (~2008?) but would be keen to check the shadow profile. I wonder if you can do that? Incidentally I am German by third citizenship.
- dayjah 9y agoI've just assumed this is through whatsapp. I've logged into whatsapp with my phone number, fb know my phone number (2fa codes), and they've slurped my address book from my phone and then show me connections on fb that are a few degrees of separation. This is the only way I can think that neighbours I barely know show up on the "people you may know" feature -- we're connected through neighbours I know far better.
- manmal 9y agoThey probably know your neighbors because you both have the same SSIDs in your vicinity.. I don't see FB not knowing this. Or if you allowed GPS, and neighbors did too, then it's even easier to make the connection.
- Jdam 9y agoMy co-workers from the office are frequently recommended to me on FB. Since I don't have their number, it must be location based.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoYou don't need to have their number, if someone else has both of your numbers and has uploaded their contacts list then you're linked in that third party's list. Equally likely it's linked via the wifi SSID or GPS?
- Buge 9y agoIf you both use the same wifi, then it could see you as the same IP address and recommend you to each other.
- kylemclaren 9y agoYou are 100% correct about this. People have appeared on "People you may know" when I have absolutely zero connection to them other than I have chatted to the on What's App... I'm afraid I may have to stop using the service soon... was great until FB bought it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- whipoodle 9y agoSo do we think Facebook and Amazon are just figuring out every relation between things in the world and they'll work out how to monetize it later? Or, what exactly is the hypothesis here? I have seen them accused of some pretty impressive leaps of inference lately.
- micheljones 9y agoRe: Amazon: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-d...
- whipoodle 9y agoCool link.
- throwaway81122 9y agoI once had an escort girl from Whatsapp showing up on my fb. This was when they said they won't integrate the data. Pffff.
- phkahler 9y agoI would imagine Facebook keeps placeholders for people you know that are not on Facebook. His father had made a contact with one of the relatives not on FB but with the other name. Perhaps the great aunt had him in her contacts as well. A name and/or phone number can represent a person in the graph without being a FB user. Why they made a suggestion so many degrees away is a little curious, but I think they mix those in with the more obvious ones just to check. TL;DR: I think their graph includes non-FB-using people.
- micheljones 9y agoThis is well known, and it's called 'shadow profiles'.
- glenstein 9y agoIf non-FB/shadow profiles can be derived from phone numbers, or assumed relationships (e.g. "this person probably has parents"), might they also be derived from the contents of private messages?
- dredmorbius 9y agoFacebook do maintain shaadow profiles: https://www.dailydot.com/news/facebook-shadow-profiles-privacy-faq/ https://www.dailydot.com/news/facebook-shadow-profiles-priva...
- immad 9y agoThis seems like a fairly obvious and good explanation. Also one of the other relatives could have since joined Facebook to make this a little simpler.
- kdot 9y agoNo way to remove PII data that your friends gave to Facebook? I see a lawsuit somewhere in here. This means a person can never really be "off Facebook"
- josephjrobison 9y agoPerhaps it's well known in the HN circle, but essentially all FB users are just free labor, helping give signals to the machine learning algorithm.
- gaius 9y agoThis is what ReCaptcha is too
- dredmorbius 9y agoThe history of Jews in the Netherlands during the Nazi Holocaust, many of whom were identified through census records, comes to mind. https://ww2gravestone.com/holocaust-in-the-netherlands/ https://ww2gravestone.com/holocaust-in-the-netherlands/ For contemporary instances, consider that the present U.S. administration openly supports racist, neo-Nazi, White Supremecist, and similar organisations. Social-graph association of undocumented immigrants, Muslims, gang- (or non-gang-) members, or similar inferences, all come readily to mind.
- mythrwy 9y agoIt would be much appreciated if you could leave the political hyperbole somewhere else. You can make a point without stooping to tenuous, politically motivated, and controversial accusations.
- dredmorbius 9y agoThose are in fact the most relevant elements of this question. They are elements which, as in the case of the Netherlands, don't matter at all, until they mean everything.
- mythrwy 9y agoAccusing the current administration of openly supporting neo-nazi groups is political flamebait. You are certainly entitled to your opinion on how "serious" the situation is but I, (and probably others) would appreciate it if you kept the hyperbole and rhetoric minimized. Your original point stands fine without it, and in fact that accusation weakens your entire post and makes it appear little more than a simple troll.
- dredmorbius 9y agoSometimes the truth is flamebait. Doesn't make it any less true. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865686908/Sen-Mike-Lee-reacts-strongly-to-Trumps-remarks-on-Charlottesville.html http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865686908/Sen-Mike-Lee-re... http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/346348-hatch-my-brother-didnt-die-fighting-hitler-for-nazis-to-go-unchallenged-today http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/346348-hatch-my-brother-d...
- JulienSchmidt 9y agoLikely she searched for the name "porter" at some point suggesting that she is interested in people with that name. Combined with 2nd and 3rd degree phone and email connections that might be a strong indicator for FBs algorithm.
- takeda 9y agoYep, the article totally ignores it. The fact that she immediately said that they are related, makes me believe she was looking at his profile earlier, and FB just picked up on it.
- throwaway209344 9y agothe answer is: what phone numbers you import from your contacts, and who imports your phone number through there contacts. whatsapp is just a lucky because you have to add a phone numbers to youre phone's contacts to talk on whatsapp.
- jpalomaki 9y agoThere's at least a theoretical possibility that even Facebook does not exactly know why they make certain recommendations. This could be just a machine doing all the work. All kinds of data goes in, predictions are made. Facebook users give feedback by accepting/rejecting the recommendations and algorithms learn and adjust accordingly.
- cat199 9y agoAnd who builds this machine and how do they tune/debug/improve it? Pretty sure any given computation could be traced, though it might take a bit of work and need to be captured fairly quickly...
- MiddleEndian 9y agoI've been to machine learning talks where the presenters freely admitted they weren't exactly sure how what they made works. Reminds me of this comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2460#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2460#comic
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- squarefoot 9y agoI'm loving this comic, thanks for the link!
- Buge 9y agoI was thinking this one https://xkcd.com/1838/ https://xkcd.com/1838/
- MiddleEndian 9y agoAlso a good one, which reminds me of devs saying it's really hard to write tests for ML algorithms.
- 9y ago
- gcb0 9y agofacebook does nothing besides match tons of contact list that idiots upload to their servers when they install any facebook app. why does people think this is rocket science? even the supposedly clever people here try to imagine complex algorithms. geez. its 1:1 text match on phone numbers. their genius move was getting enough idiots uploading their entire phone address book for free.
- micheljones 9y agoI do agree with your sentiment, but Facebook does a lot more than just that. They put a lot of effort into tracking sites you browse, their phone app slurps up any possible data to improve your profile, starting with location info, and going all the way to uploading photos from your camera gallery to Facebook, to be analyzed for face recognition.
- slightparanoid 9y agoIf the facebook app can identify unique phones in your vicinity -- IE MAC assesses, then it could form links without facebook being installed on the middle devices.
- wdr1 9y agoAlice searches for Bob but does not add him. Facebook shows Bob a suggestion to add Alice. It doesn't explain all cases, but it does explain quite a few.
- leo_mck 9y agoI see all kind of theories about the misterious nature of facebook recommendations. I believe that they use all kind of complex things but most of those unexpected recommendations could be explained by assuming that facebook recommend you people that have being cheking you out. If you saw someone on the street and that person check your facebook, they are recommended to you and it looks like magic because you did nothing. I do not know if this is the case but it is simple and seems to explain a lot of those strange recommendations.
- aleem 9y agoThough very uncanny, this is rather easy to extrapolate even using the basic facets FB has available. But the most overlooked is photos. They are offline beacons and are to offline tracking what websites are to online tracking. For example you and a group of 10 other people took photos at the same location which FB sees as a small gathering of intimate friends. It will need to qualify the location is not a public restaurant to be sure its an intimate gathering. The chances of you connecting with that person are then really high. And if you are and the other person are in each others photos, then it's almost a certainty you will end up connecting on FB should FB recommend the connection. The more connected FB's network is, the more it can extrapolate based on commonalities from the first degree graph of your network. It's also the reason why Google is betting so heavy on photos and offering free unlimited storage -- remember, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Google wants to build a social network graph based on location and facial recognition to draw on proximity. With AI this will get even more uncanny. For example a wedding will have a certain photography profile (number of pics taken, the time of day, the location and venue based on Google Maps or past photographing histroy, the lighting in the photos, etc). Once you throw AI into the mix you realize Google doesn't need to draw out any conclusions. It can throw all these parameters into the AI engine and draw up proximity. In this case, Google or FB will not be able to tell you how they drew the connection, because even they won't know. All you can assume is the AI engine will take dozens of parameters today and hundreds tomorrow. Google's deep investment in AI infrastructure is a bigger testament to this.
- mathattack 9y agoProfound. I don't think this explains the connection in the original post, but everything else you say makes a lot of sense.
- aleem 9y agoI thought that was fairly obvious. As per the author's aritcle it is definitely not a direct connection. FB relies heavily on first-degree connection analysis. If you and I end up in the same phonebook (which the author mentions) or the same photograph and FB connects us, we'll never know why. The not knowing why part makes it uncanny. Facebook is to people what Google is to websites. It is in the business of enriching its social graph in every way possible and then running profiling algorithms on that graph. Google by contrast crawls and pageranks the crawled graph. FB has literally hundreds of data sources to enrich their social graph and profile data. A good start is their list of acquisitions [1] in the space of offline applications, social networking aggregators, contact importers, photo management, private conversations, travel recommendations, check-ins/status updates, etc. Then consider the FB partnerships with ride hailing services, retail apps, music apps, etc. Then consider it's own apps and features around events, calendering, photos and instant messaging. Also consider the state of technology in NLP, AI and image recognition. Also consider the FB integrations with tens of thousands of apps for social auth, share buttons and advertising. Writing this post, I have surprised even myself as to how much data they have access to. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
- altern8tif 9y agoNot entirely relevant to the original story, but Facebook does use machine learning to identify faces as well (similar technology to how Google or Apple uses in their Photo apps). So even if you've never been tagged in a photo or checked into a location, there is a possibility that just by appearing in a random stranger's Facebook photo, they would be able to place you in the vicinity of said stranger at a particular time, and make more conclusions/connections from there.
- Havoc 9y agoIt definitely hooked into Whatsapp. Was chatting to a girl from tinder on there didn't even have last name...next day FB suggested her. Although on second thoughts that might be via FB messenger app having access to contacts. Either way it figures out the person via the phone number.
- gweinberg 9y agoFacebook once suggested I friend my dentist. We've never had any online correspondence.
- nebabyte 9y ago> It was not a very convincing excuse. Facebook gets people to hand over information about themselves all the time; by what principle would it be unreasonable to sometimes hand some of that information back? You are not "handing" them anything with an expectation of reciprocity, you (in most cases) willingly give up information about yourself to them in exchange for their free service. They don't need an "excuse" - you were as free to say "no" as they are to you. I agree that in cases where others give up information about people they know there's no consent from the person (necessarily) but even that is between the person and their peers. There are people in my life who I don't share information with because I know how fast that information will spread if they know it; the kind of privacy etiquette required to respect people's privacy wishes will likely become more commonplace as it's made clear indexing organizations only know what people tell them. I've been against facebook for some time yet even I don't agree with writers of sensationalist pieces like this. You have what's coming to you when you use third party services like facebook then complain about the imbalance of power they imply. Turns out the reason people who adamantly don't use those services do so other than just 'hipsterism' or whatever you thought were their reasons.
- codemac 9y ago> You are not "handing" them anything with an expectation of reciprocity, you (in most cases) willingly give up information about yourself to them in exchange for their free service. They don't need an "excuse" - you were as free to say "no" as they are to you. You are not free to say no to facebook. You do not hand your information to them, they take it. There's a reason they buy information from "data brokers", and it's because it include information you are not willingly giving to them.
- will_brown 9y agoI have a Facebook account With literally zero friends (created only to create business pages). On 08/05 I was randomly kidnapped at gunpoint when out of town and wouldn't you know Facebook recommended friending my kidnapper (and some of his family members). Because he took my iPad and connected it to wifi he was located and arrested only 1 day later, before the friend suggestions, but I'd love to know if sans iPad location I would have gotten the recommendation from FB and been able to identify him that way. Separately I'm getting all kinds of people from that town, I can only imagine why, but it's pretty damn scary. And of course I have to wonder who I'm being recommended to and/or my family is being recommended to.
- mathrawka 9y ago"Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer" in real life, thanks to FB.
- mythrwy 9y agoFacebook attempting to induce Stockholm Syndrome. Craziest FB story ever though. Glad you are ok.
- mcast 9y agoIt’s possible the kidnapper looked your name up on Facebook after stealing your iPad. Just searching for someone’s name is enough for a recommendation. This has happened with some of my coworkers who I have no mutual friends with and live in a completely different city (didn’t connect to work internet or have GPS permissions on FB either).
- superobserver 9y agoFacebook is a monolithic threat by inducing the world into accepting the relinquishment of privacy for convenience. The abiding thought that all should remember is it is a marketing (ad) platform. Furthermore, given it limits social outreach to 5000 "friends" (with no such limits on "follows", which still prove difficult to utilize), it is assuredly not intended to facilitate social outreach.
- krallja 9y agoWell, if Facebook won't tell you how, you need to go figure out the connection you have with the other N thousand people it recommended to you. You might be able to find the common links, and do some valuable reporting in the process.
- mathrawka 9y agoIf you search for a person and look at their profile, you will show up on their PYMK list. I've noticed that, but not sure if the author of the article had it that way as the other person said she didn't know her.
- oelmekki 9y agoFacebook is going way too far in many ways. The other day, I had a couple of friends at my place. At some point, we decided to order pizzas. We did so online, at my usual pizzeria. 30 minutes later (not sure of the delay, but it was before pizzas were delivered), one of my friend check her facebook on her mobile and see ... an ad for that pizzeria. She said she's never seen the ad before, nor ever ordered at that pizzeria. The best I could guess about it would probably make use of phones gps, detecting we were close and what I was doing on the net, through social share buttons tracking. Anyway, that's outrageous. Facebook use of personal data is that creepy thing we were all afraid Google would do. It really feels like having a glass of wine in your sofa, and the telephone rings and someone unknown says : "cheers!".
- oelmekki 9y agoBy the way, a follow up : after that, I installed Disconnect in my browser, removed facebook app from my phone, used a dedicated chrome profile for facebook, installed firefox on my mobile and made it my default browser, and installed disconnect and adblock on it. We'll see if that's enough.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoActually, it seems like much simpler than that. Possible, but unlikely: the pizzeria was using a tracking pixel with a purchase event and was targeting ads to friends of purchasers. I don't think you can do this exact kind of targeting (but not sure) and it's pretty sophisticated for some random pizza place. By far the most likely scenario is a mix of coincidence and confirmation bias. The pizzeria was just running geo and time of day ads and your friend did not notice or remember until this event made it seem significant.
- mcguire 9y ago"What information had Facebook used, then? The company would not tell me what triggered this recommendation, citing privacy reasons." Their privacy, not yours.
- notdang 9y agoI deleted my FB account 6 years ago. A couple of weeks ago I bought on Amazon a kit to connect the dish-washing machine (I have uBlock and Ghostery). I told my wife about the purchase and 10 minutes later she sees the exact same kit that I bought in her FB ads. Does this mean that Amazon sells/shares this data or I am too paranoid? However it's hard to believe in such a coincidence.
- ec109685 9y agoYour credit card or email provider may sell data to Facebook.
- dingo_bat 9y ago> I told the spokesperson that it might be in the search giant’s interest to be more transparent about how this feature works so that users are less creeped out by it. Facebook is a "search giant" now?
- eveningcoffee 9y agoPerhaps they have acquired one of these heritage database websites?