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I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. If you've ever developed anything in messenger even to

I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. If you've ever developed anything in messenger even today, it's amazing how much information is given. We know all these sites track everything you do outside of Facebook too. Everyone has been trying to get them to stop, we know it's illegal to build a profile on someone but Facebook gets around that by building a profile but not assigning it to your direct name. Regulations should have sprouted in Obama years, but the admin and tech execs were too buddy buddy and no way Trump promotes this because it makes him look like he is accepting Russia interfered and it's not politically expedient for him to do so. Same thing with Harvey Weinstein and all the metoo that was known by everyone. I mean I'm happy with all of this coming out, but why now? How is it so coordinated? Usually these guys pay journalists for fluff pr counter views or to shut down stories. Weinstein did. Is this Data just a metoo thing? Is google next?

coolso 9y ago
> I don't get what changed? What changed is it helped the current President get elected. The only people who really used to care about Facebook's behavior were people in niche online tech circles like HN. But then the election happened, and the media has been beating the "Facebook is evil" drum very loudly ever since.
justboxing 9y ago
> We've knows Facebook tracks everything Not disputing this, but when you say 'we' I think you mean the < 5% (maybe even < 1%) of techies and lawyers and journalists in the world who really really care about their data and privacy. The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid"). Many of my friends in India (where I was raised) and elsewhere used to freely post their phone # and home address on my wall asking me to call them / send them stuff from US. I don't think this 95% population really cares or gives a sh*t.
- walrus01 9y ago
  > The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid"). pretty much exactly my experience with Canadian and American family. People didn't give one iota of a fuck when the Snowden revelations came out because they just assumed that it was the case already. I think the average techie underestimates how important platform lockin + user interface design + ubiquity are. Once something like Facebook Messenger has reached a critical market share trying to get people to stop using it, no matter how privacy violating FB may be, is about as effective as trying to get people in the year 1985 to disconnect their house's analog telephone line.
  - mysterypie 9y ago
    > People didn't give one iota of a fuck when the Snowden revelations came out because they just assumed that it was the case already. It's more complex than that. The tracking and surveillance are not visible to the average person. Point your camera at someone in a coffee shop or bar and take their picture. They'll be coming over to ask you why you took their photo. The fact that the coffee shop or bar is brimming with overhead cameras is completely lost on them because it is mostly invisible (or least no longer noticed). Just wait until someone does a massive leak of actual personal data, photos, and videos, as opposed to abstract technical reports and Powerpoint slides that Snowden leaked. The average person will be screaming like a banshee when they can look up all the personal info and private pics of themselves and their neighbors and friends on some public webserver.
    - SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
      The true data apocalypse will come when ISP logs are compromised and leaked (urls visited, dns lookups, tied to ip or even subscriber ids, etc), and there is enough leaked PII floating it out there to join it to people records.
      - 9y ago
adamnemecek 9y ago
Up until now the bug was known but it wasn't clear it's exploitable. Now there's an exploit and everyone's getting exploited so people are freaking out.
skybrian 9y ago
How do you know Google does the same thing? What can you get out of Google by writing an app? Off the top of my head, I don't think Google even has most people's friends lists (outside Orkut back in the day, and Google+, which isn't so popular). They do have contact lists in Gmail, which is a bit different. There is address book spamming via mobile apps, but again, there are permissions. How good are they? It seems like it's "the same thing" only if you ignore all technical detail. We should be able to do better than that!
- HenryBemis 9y ago
  Google absolutely harvests all info they can get. They scan gmails, they monitorig everything on all Android phones, even when you disable something [1]. It's just that Google maybe be a bit hesitant to sell data to 3rd parties, since they abuse them themselves :) (and this is the price of a 'free' service). [1]: https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/google-tracking-user-location-data-on-android-even-when-disabled-report-1778542 https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/google-tracking-user-loca...
  - skybrian 9y ago
    Isn't selling or just giving data to third parties what we're talking about today?
  - untog 9y ago
    > It's just that Google maybe be a bit hesitant to sell data to 3rd parties Which is the entire point. I know Google is taking data when I use Google products. The problem arises when Google freely gives my data to a random third party company I neither know nor trust, without my knowledge.
    - earenndil 9y ago
      Why is it better that google has your data than that another company has your data?
      - 9y ago
4684499 9y ago
To be honest, if things like this has to happen, I think Google should be the first. https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...
danjayh 9y ago
What's more, I suspect that if this exact same thing had been done by a company working for Obama's or Hillary's campaigns, nobody would have batted an eyelash. PS - the reason that the regs wont happen during the trump years has nothing to do with the collusion investigation. He's put a mandate in place that for every reg to go into the federal register, two have to come out. His administration is in general very anti-regulation. Therefore, yes, absolutely no way he would ever regulate it ... but not for the reason you hypothesized.
- bb88 9y ago
  > nobody would have batted an eyelash. Doubtful, considering the number of scandals from this list that made major media attention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_...
  - cmac2992 9y ago
    Quite literally his campaign invented the tactic of scraping your friends list as a way to persuade voters. The important difference was CA used data that was gathered under the misleading guise of a personality quiz. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campai...
    - culturestate 9y ago
      They were the first to deploy it on such a massive scale, but I can assure you they did not invent that concept.
      - ahtu123 9y ago
        Cambridge Analytica had 200 clients. Now not all of those are major elections but CA is also not the only player who's been doing this. Governments and shady organizations have been perfecting media-based mass manipulation for decades/centuries.
spacehome 9y ago
> Regulations Is more government the solution to every problem? Just let people make their choice of whether the product Facebook offers is worth the privacy tradeoff.
- rhcom2 9y ago
  What if you can't judge the privacy tradeoff because it's a complete black box?
  - spacehome 9y ago
    Nothing black box about it. If you send data to a company, they have that data.
    - switch007 9y ago
      Except...there is data that is not explicitly sent. My mum doesn't know what an IP address is and therefore wouldn't know it's used for location tracking.
      - spacehome 9y ago
        I guess. If I send a letter requesting information to a company with my return address on the envelope and the company sends back a package, is it so shocking that they have recorded your address at the end of the transaction?
- germinalphrase 9y ago
  My mother/family/friends are not even aware there is a trade off. They only privacy 'problem' they know about is accidentally posting something personal in the wrong spot. There's no understanding of the extensive data collection, connection, and trade that's happening behind the scenes.
- dylan604 9y ago
  My problem with this argument is that I cannot surf the web without being tracked even if I have chosen not to use their platform. Even if I stopped using the web completely, their platform would still gather info about me from anyone else that has my contact info and has decided to share info with the platform.
LarryDarrell 9y ago
Sometimes everything is OK until it isn't. Critical Mass can take awhile to build.
- pyjammas 9y ago
  The 'why is this news' sentiment is understandable, but people underestimate how much this kind of public /mainstream attention can matter when it comes to action being taken. The only analogy I can think of is smoking. IIRC there was already a consensus about their dangers in the fifties, but it took decades, in part by strong lobbying efforts, before the public accepted/internalized this truth. Similarly, the #metoo thing might cause shrugs among those who were in the know for a while, but I'm sure the public outrage will have lasting effects. I mean, Cosby's crimes were an open secret until suddenly it wasn't (a comedian went viral, or something like that?).
kbos87 9y ago
I think the mistake is assuming that time that passes means people are ok with a certain amount of sharing, that it’s a safe investment, whether in cash or in investment in building on their platform or with their data. The reality is that we all know that what Facebook does is unsavory. When the privacy concerns eclipse the Value, whether its in year 11 or year 111, the wrath of society will be severe, as it should be.
jasonlotito 9y ago
The issue isn't the data collection. It's campaign finance laws potentially being broken. It just so happens that data collection was at the center of that.
simonh 9y ago
>but why now? The two things catalysing the latest media frenzy are first the recent Facebook Russian interference scandal increasing interest in Facebook data stories generally. That’s just a tip king issue. The second is the Channel 4 undercover recording of CA execs advising on the use of corrupt practices in a Sri Lankan political campaign. Of course the US angle is getting all the press in the US, but this is what triggered a Renewed journalistic interest in the company. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/19/cambridge-analytica-execs-boast-dirty-tricks-honey-traps-elections https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...
thirdsun 9y ago
To be honest I was not aware that Facebook invited anyone to take out that data merely asking them to delete it shortly after. That's the part that's new and offending to me. Meanwhile I tolerate political campaigns using targetted advertising. I just wish people were showing more competence when it comes to media consumption and the ability to distinguish between truthful reporting and obvious lies. The media illiteracy is the real problem I see with this issue.
- specialist 9y ago
  It's not incompetence. It's an exploit of our evolutionary psychology. Fake news, keep people spun up, etc. We've always known these things about ourselves. "A lie is half-way around the world before the truth even gets its pants on" -- Mark Twain (probably) Our susceptibility to manufactured outrage and refined sugars are the same thing. Former survival traits are being exploited for profit.
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Is media literacy something that can solve this though? A society can educate its citizens (and should do so), but a large group of people simply can't reach the level of critical thinking necessary to fully grasp the nudging and political weaselling they are submitted to.
  - thirdsun 9y ago
    > but a large group of people simply can't reach the level of critical thinking necessary to fully grasp the nudging and political weaselling they are submitted to. Isn't that exactly the kind of problem that education can solve? Of course that's a decade long process which doesn't happen over night.
    - Freak_NL 9y ago
      Education can somewhat increase the percentage of people we would consider media literate, but there will always be a group of voters who simply can't reach that level of media literacy — some of whom are literally illiterate (a couple of percent in most modern democracies) and some who are literate, but can't (or won't) fully grasp the subtleties of media manipulation. Those are still a lot of voters.
JohnTClark 9y ago
The thing is that now people see a real consequence of that data harvesting, like voting manipulation.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Do people realise they're being manipulated though?
  - thousandautumns 9y ago
    I think people have become acutely aware that there are lots of people being manipulated through online disinformation and propaganda campaigns. But I also think just about everyone assumes that its others who are being manipulated and not themselves. By definition, you can't be manipulated if you know you are being manipulated.
mtgx 9y ago
This is similar to how revolutions happen. The government does something bad, many are frustrated by it, but they are still overall happy with the government, and only a few speak out. Then the government does more bad stuff. More are frustrated, only a few speak out. And on, and on, for decades. It seems like nothing will ever change. And one day "something happens" that makes all of that frustration come up, and the people are furious like nothing else, and you may even see riots and whatnot. And the people on the sidelines, who have no clue about how life was in that country wonder "why would people be so violent, and destroy things?! It doesn't make sense!" Yes, it does make sense. It's just not pretty. And yes, it will happen to Google, too. I've tried to warn them and other tech companies many times in the past on HN, that they can't just screw over their users and piss them off, thinking only a few spoke out, so it must not be such a big deal the evil thing they've just done. Many more people are usually frustrated about that thing, but they usually keep that frustration inside because they would like to continue using Google. So, yes. Google is definitely next. Just maybe not tomorrow, or next year. Maybe in a few years. My guess is it will be something around how they use their AI, especially now that they've become a war contractor. Maybe they'll sell their AI tech to US law enforcement to target American citizens in various ways. It's probably inevitable. A Facebook exodus was never going to be linear. It will be drastic, and it will "surprise" people, even at the company, just as this surprises you now (although I wouldn't say that exodus will happen now, but this is definitely a one of the big final steps before that exodus, at the very least).
- kingkongjaffa 9y ago
  as the internet has matured, platform exodus has become harder, the 99% tech illiterate will not exodus a platform with years of family conversations and photo albums on there.
bla2 9y ago
Old Media ist publishing negative articles about tech at any chance they have, due to them losing all their advertising dollars to online ads. It's just that this time the message finds some traction.
DanielBMarkham 9y ago
It's weird. Almost surreal. We've known all this stuff for ages. People say that a lot of what you read is just reporters not understanding what they're talking about, flitting from one subject to another with the herd, and perhaps that's true. But hell, anybody that's paid more than a modicum of attention to this issue should know that BigTech tracks people like lab rats. (Small tech too, they just don't have the user base) I'm all for getting the word out. It's just an odd way that change is happening. It feels a lot like the internet has turned us all into one big mob, carrying our pitchforks and torches from one outrage to the next. That's probably a problem much bigger than what to do with Google/Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Comcast
- aptwebapps 9y ago
  It's not that tracking that finally put the fox among the chickens, it's the use to which the data was put. I think to the extent that most people thought about it at all they assumed that they'd just get more invasive advertising. Maybe the read about a girl's parents finding out she was pregnant or something like that.
  - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
    I agree, but I think you're stopping well short of the natural conclusion here that seems inevitable for anybody thinking more than 10 seconds about the issue. Data is (mostly) free, ubiquitous, and permanent. When you capture data for any reason, it's logically impossible for you to be able to know or control what to what use that data will be put. I keep seeing situations where extreme examples are used to make the case that data collection is good, healthy, and makes our world a better place. If you were kidnapped, wouldn't you want police to know where you were based on tracking associated with your cell phone? But for every one good example, the universe is literally the limit for the number of ways that same data capture can be used in bad and harmful ways. Over my lifetime I've consumed a lot of fiction around how people interact with tech. There are a lot of good people who have instrumented up the general public in ways science fiction writers would have never dreamed of only a few decades ago. It seems to me that anybody who's watched The Matrix would think that all of this has gotta have more societal impact than more intrusive advertising. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps even though they realized what was being captured, they never put together the deep implications, instead thinking it was just about better dancing iphone ads. I don't understand how that could be so, but people seem to have an incredible ability not to see things they don't want to see -- and they love something for nothing.
pteredactyl 9y ago
Yea "we've" known about it for ages. "We've" even known or suspected it well before the Snowden leaks ( 2013 ). But the general ( non-thinking, sadly ) public really has no idea. And is ironically now catching on because the media's been cramming the whole Russian thing down their throats since the election. On the subject of the media and general public, has anyone recently heard anything about the southern statue madness from last year, or of police shootings? No, because the general public follows whatever the media says. And forgets about whatever they said the minute they stop talking about it. 2 biggest issues in America: 1) current mainstream media 2) uneducated populace
3ribal 9y ago
>"developed anything in messenger even today" I have developed several, your statement is misleading. Messenger user profile API gives, first_name, last_name, profile_pic, locale, timezone (non precise), gender, is_payment_enabled, last_ad_referral, Which IMO is much safer than using direct Facebook Graph API. My point being Messenger apps are in-fact better than apps which uses Facebook login when it comes to privacy i.e if you have to use Facebook platform.
qaq 9y ago
One thing I am confused with all the data collection that is going on (and it obviously costing them $ and some reputational risks) is not really helping them to produce decent ad targeting. I am not even surprised by how bad FB ads are most of the time but even Amazon that has 20 years of my purchase history is amazingly bad: I already bought 4 Elixir programming books and looking to buy new books when they come out and yet if I search for Elixir it will keep showing me guitar strings WTF? In 20 years I've never bought a single music related item and I bought a ton of programming books and yet ...
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  You actually want Amazon to show you different search results? If I'm starting a new hobby or wanted to buy a present for someone with different interests, I would be very annoyed if results were hidden from me because of a name clash with a product from my purchase history. A good product search isn't personalized, and doesn't try to predict what I want. It just shows the results in a sensible manner, and lets me use categories and keywords (in addition to user reviews, price, availability, etcetera) to filter the results.
  - qaq 9y ago
    I want it to show me Elixir programming books in addition to strings not 50 string products and 0 books.
    - Freak_NL 9y ago
      Then you may have found a bug in their search algorithm. On Amazon.de I get guitar string and books (and some sort of cologne), and when I click on 'Fremdsprachige Bücher' (for example), I get only books on programming in Elixir. Surely that's fine?
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  The Elixir strings people are paying to be in those search results presumably - even when you don't buy they're getting paid. Amazon's infective is to profit, that doesn't always assign with your desire to buy. Also, they might find that people who aren't searching for what they're shown keep looking and that it didn't reduce purchases. It's like the supermarkets moving products around to make sure you see other stuff - people don't leave the store, they keep looking and get exposed to more products in unfamiliar positions that make them notice more. I mean, heck, you just talked about a couple of products and gave a product endorsement because they didn't show the results you expected; seems like the system is working.
MasterScrat 9y ago
> I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. This reminds me of the OkCupid scandal: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/12/11666116/70000-okcupid-users-data-release https://www.vox.com/2016/5/12/11666116/70000-okcupid-users-d... A researcher released a dump of 70K dating profiles and people were horrified. But this data was already accessible to anyone (just had to create a free profile) and you can be sure it was already used for analytics purpose.
TheArcane 9y ago
> Is google next? I think Facebook has nothing on Google. One trip to the MyActivity console on Google is enough to creep anyone out.
specialist 9y ago
Scandals don't matter until they do. The bad stuff is an open secret. But people choose to discount the bad so long as it appears outweighed by the good. Eventually the grace period runs out. Voila: Scandal. Also, scandals are manufactured distraction. There's no shortage of things to be upset about. What percolates up is governed by the politics of attention. -- I can't quickly refind the Ellsberg paper about the structure of presidential scandals. But this one is close enough. Obviously, they study presidential scandals, but the lessons apply to all scandals. The Timing of Presidential Scandals: The Role of Economics, Divided Government and the Media http://file.scirp.org/pdf/OJPS_2016012915363533.pdf http://file.scirp.org/pdf/OJPS_2016012915363533.pdf The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems http://a.co/dTmg3WC http://a.co/dTmg3WC
swebs 9y ago
The general public and mainstream media do not really care about big tech companies harvesting personal data and using it for marketing. Every now and then you'd see someone bringing it up in an article of Ars or Popular Science, but they never gained much traction. The difference is now there is an example of it helping Trump. And if you can find any story that puts Trump in a bad light, it's almost guaranteed that it will hit the front page of HuffingtonPost/WashingtonPost/NYTimes/Salon/etc.
- ntsplnkv2 9y ago
  More than anything it's tied to an existing scandal with Trump-Russian collusion. If the other scandals weren't there no one would care about this, you are right.
r3vo 9y ago
Nothing has changed at all as far as I can tell. It's such a media event right now simply because it was taken advantage of by the President to win the election. Anything that can potentially cast Trump in a bad light is bound to get a lot of media attention. This is all ignoring the fact that President Obama used almost the same Facebook app analytics tactics to win his campaign (albeit less deceptively). Regardless of why it is getting attention now, let's be optimistic that the dangers of the silicon valley surveillance apparatus are starting to seep into the public consciousness. I for one would welcome a changing attitude towards how we view and sell our private information to these companies.
- gdilla 9y ago
  https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/21/no-obama-didnt-employ-the-same-strategies-as-cambridge-analytica/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/21/no-obama-didnt-empl...
  - CptJamesCook 9y ago
    https://ijr.com/2018/03/1077083-ex-obama-campaign-director-fb/ https://ijr.com/2018/03/1077083-ex-obama-campaign-director-f...
  - r3vo 9y ago
    I wasn't trying start a political flamewar. I noted in parenthesis that Obama's use of this sort of analytics was less deceptive. I think that the link that CptJamesCook posted validates my original comment on this.
acdha 9y ago
One big factor is that Facebook knew about the problem and lied about it for two years. It’s one thing to know that data is mined and another to learn that what should be a trusted third party is actively trying to keep you from learning about abuse.
noetic_techy 9y ago
Its purely Trump hatred driving this. Because Obama doing this in 2012 = Genius. Trump doing this in 2016 = Scandal. I'm a libertarian and yes I threw my vote away on Gary Johnson, but looking at the media landscape, there truly is a backlash against conservatives going on in social media, and this is just part of that. Donald Trump won because fake news... no wait, it was Russia and their abysmal social media spending... no wait, its because he gamed facebook! They want to put more pressure on facebook to "do something about this" now that the coin has flipped. I have a feeling though this is going to get out of hand and drag facebook into the gutter.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  I suppose Trump hatred plays a role. But superpowers interfering with elections is a big deal, it's the kind of thing that could lead to another extinction level event. Any of the mechanisms leveraged in this propaganda campaign should receive extra scrutiny.
  - ensignavenger 9y ago
    "superpowers interfering with elections is a big deal" Which has been going on since... forever? (at least, since elections and superpowers have been a thing, anyway)
    - ianamartin 9y ago
      It's only a big deal when it's not us or our allies doing it.
- matchbok 9y ago
  What Obama did was very, very different. The fact that you don't know this (or ignored it) tells a lot about how biased you are. And yes, there should be backlash against conservatives. They just elected a Nazi in Illinois.
  - take4 9y ago
jonbarker 9y ago
What changed is awareness. I would like them to provide a resource which allows users to know which microsegments of facebook audience network they are showing up in, without spending any money.
jkFeiwi 9y ago
> I don't get what changed? Momentum. Sometimes people won't do stuff unless they know everyone else is too. If you quit Facebook and your friends still use it, you're missing out. But if all your friends delete it as part of the #deletefacebook trend, it'll be easier for you to do the same thing.
efuquen 9y ago
> I don't get what changed? He made his billions. I know you mean in a more general sense, but I can't let go of the hypocrisy of this. He sold out millions of users to Facebook, basically the most anti-privacy thing you could possibly do other then just dumping all that information out in the open, becomes incredibly wealthy and now he gives a small amount of that to Signal and is all like #deletefacbook and it's fine? Give me a break.
sandov 9y ago
>Regulations should have sprouted in Obama years If people voluntarily want to give away their data, who are we to stop them from doing it?. I don't use facebook, because I value my privacy more than I value "being connected" or whatever facebook is using to convince people these days, but if my neighbor is happy giving away is data, that's fine, it's his data.
tripzilch 9y ago
People didn't want to believe that FB and Google (and the rest) tracking and collecting all that data would really cause harm. Denial (because something is really useful and/or a large part of communication with all your friends+family runs through it) is a strong force. What changed is that this breach made it harder for people to pretend all that tracking and data harvesting "will probably turn out fine".
calvinbhai 9y ago
I feel this is just an opportunity for the conventional media to bring down social media, because the latter has certainly hurt the former's powers to control narratives and agenda, affecting and this affecting the ad revenues. (any surprise why $TWTR and $SNAP took a hit along with $FB?) Facebook has eaten into Mainstream Media ad revenues, and literally is controlling how news is published, because its platform is so powerful. When Cambridge Analytica stories first broke out, even I had the same reaction. I hope people stop overreacting as if this never happened earlier.

coolso 9y ago

> I don't get what changed? What changed is it helped the current President get elected. The only people who really used to care about Facebook's behavior were people in niche online tech circles like HN. But then the election happened, and the media has been beating the "Facebook is evil" drum very loudly ever since.

justboxing 9y ago

> We've knows Facebook tracks everything Not disputing this, but when you say 'we' I think you mean the < 5% (maybe even < 1%) of techies and lawyers and journalists in the world who really really care about their data and privacy. The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid"). Many of my friends in India (where I was raised) and elsewhere used to freely post their phone # and home address on my wall asking me to call them / send them stuff from US. I don't think this 95% population really cares or gives a sh*t.

walrus01 9y ago
> The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid"). pretty much exactly my experience with Canadian and American family. People didn't give one iota of a fuck when the Snowden revelations came out because they just assumed that it was the case already. I think the average techie underestimates how important platform lockin + user interface design + ubiquity are. Once something like Facebook Messenger has reached a critical market share trying to get people to stop using it, no matter how privacy violating FB may be, is about as effective as trying to get people in the year 1985 to disconnect their house's analog telephone line.
- mysterypie 9y ago
  > People didn't give one iota of a fuck when the Snowden revelations came out because they just assumed that it was the case already. It's more complex than that. The tracking and surveillance are not visible to the average person. Point your camera at someone in a coffee shop or bar and take their picture. They'll be coming over to ask you why you took their photo. The fact that the coffee shop or bar is brimming with overhead cameras is completely lost on them because it is mostly invisible (or least no longer noticed). Just wait until someone does a massive leak of actual personal data, photos, and videos, as opposed to abstract technical reports and Powerpoint slides that Snowden leaked. The average person will be screaming like a banshee when they can look up all the personal info and private pics of themselves and their neighbors and friends on some public webserver.
  - SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
    The true data apocalypse will come when ISP logs are compromised and leaked (urls visited, dns lookups, tied to ip or even subscriber ids, etc), and there is enough leaked PII floating it out there to join it to people records.
    - 9y ago

adamnemecek 9y ago

Up until now the bug was known but it wasn't clear it's exploitable. Now there's an exploit and everyone's getting exploited so people are freaking out.

skybrian 9y ago

How do you know Google does the same thing? What can you get out of Google by writing an app? Off the top of my head, I don't think Google even has most people's friends lists (outside Orkut back in the day, and Google+, which isn't so popular). They do have contact lists in Gmail, which is a bit different. There is address book spamming via mobile apps, but again, there are permissions. How good are they? It seems like it's "the same thing" only if you ignore all technical detail. We should be able to do better than that!

HenryBemis 9y ago
Google absolutely harvests all info they can get. They scan gmails, they monitorig everything on all Android phones, even when you disable something [1]. It's just that Google maybe be a bit hesitant to sell data to 3rd parties, since they abuse them themselves :) (and this is the price of a 'free' service). [1]: https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/google-tracking-user-location-data-on-android-even-when-disabled-report-1778542 https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/google-tracking-user-loca...
- skybrian 9y ago
  Isn't selling or just giving data to third parties what we're talking about today?
- untog 9y ago
  > It's just that Google maybe be a bit hesitant to sell data to 3rd parties Which is the entire point. I know Google is taking data when I use Google products. The problem arises when Google freely gives my data to a random third party company I neither know nor trust, without my knowledge.
  - earenndil 9y ago
    Why is it better that google has your data than that another company has your data?
    - 9y ago

4684499 9y ago

To be honest, if things like this has to happen, I think Google should be the first. https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...

danjayh 9y ago

What's more, I suspect that if this exact same thing had been done by a company working for Obama's or Hillary's campaigns, nobody would have batted an eyelash. PS - the reason that the regs wont happen during the trump years has nothing to do with the collusion investigation. He's put a mandate in place that for every reg to go into the federal register, two have to come out. His administration is in general very anti-regulation. Therefore, yes, absolutely no way he would ever regulate it ... but not for the reason you hypothesized.

bb88 9y ago
> nobody would have batted an eyelash. Doubtful, considering the number of scandals from this list that made major media attention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_...
- cmac2992 9y ago
  Quite literally his campaign invented the tactic of scraping your friends list as a way to persuade voters. The important difference was CA used data that was gathered under the misleading guise of a personality quiz. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campai...
  - culturestate 9y ago
    They were the first to deploy it on such a massive scale, but I can assure you they did not invent that concept.
    - ahtu123 9y ago
      Cambridge Analytica had 200 clients. Now not all of those are major elections but CA is also not the only player who's been doing this. Governments and shady organizations have been perfecting media-based mass manipulation for decades/centuries.

spacehome 9y ago

> Regulations Is more government the solution to every problem? Just let people make their choice of whether the product Facebook offers is worth the privacy tradeoff.

rhcom2 9y ago
What if you can't judge the privacy tradeoff because it's a complete black box?
- spacehome 9y ago
  Nothing black box about it. If you send data to a company, they have that data.
  - switch007 9y ago
    Except...there is data that is not explicitly sent. My mum doesn't know what an IP address is and therefore wouldn't know it's used for location tracking.
    - spacehome 9y ago
      I guess. If I send a letter requesting information to a company with my return address on the envelope and the company sends back a package, is it so shocking that they have recorded your address at the end of the transaction?
germinalphrase 9y ago
My mother/family/friends are not even aware there is a trade off. They only privacy 'problem' they know about is accidentally posting something personal in the wrong spot. There's no understanding of the extensive data collection, connection, and trade that's happening behind the scenes.
dylan604 9y ago
My problem with this argument is that I cannot surf the web without being tracked even if I have chosen not to use their platform. Even if I stopped using the web completely, their platform would still gather info about me from anyone else that has my contact info and has decided to share info with the platform.

LarryDarrell 9y ago

Sometimes everything is OK until it isn't. Critical Mass can take awhile to build.

pyjammas 9y ago
The 'why is this news' sentiment is understandable, but people underestimate how much this kind of public /mainstream attention can matter when it comes to action being taken. The only analogy I can think of is smoking. IIRC there was already a consensus about their dangers in the fifties, but it took decades, in part by strong lobbying efforts, before the public accepted/internalized this truth. Similarly, the #metoo thing might cause shrugs among those who were in the know for a while, but I'm sure the public outrage will have lasting effects. I mean, Cosby's crimes were an open secret until suddenly it wasn't (a comedian went viral, or something like that?).

kbos87 9y ago

I think the mistake is assuming that time that passes means people are ok with a certain amount of sharing, that it’s a safe investment, whether in cash or in investment in building on their platform or with their data. The reality is that we all know that what Facebook does is unsavory. When the privacy concerns eclipse the Value, whether its in year 11 or year 111, the wrath of society will be severe, as it should be.

jasonlotito 9y ago

The issue isn't the data collection. It's campaign finance laws potentially being broken. It just so happens that data collection was at the center of that.

simonh 9y ago

>but why now? The two things catalysing the latest media frenzy are first the recent Facebook Russian interference scandal increasing interest in Facebook data stories generally. That’s just a tip king issue. The second is the Channel 4 undercover recording of CA execs advising on the use of corrupt practices in a Sri Lankan political campaign. Of course the US angle is getting all the press in the US, but this is what triggered a Renewed journalistic interest in the company. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/19/cambridge-analytica-execs-boast-dirty-tricks-honey-traps-elections https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...

thirdsun 9y ago

To be honest I was not aware that Facebook invited anyone to take out that data merely asking them to delete it shortly after. That's the part that's new and offending to me. Meanwhile I tolerate political campaigns using targetted advertising. I just wish people were showing more competence when it comes to media consumption and the ability to distinguish between truthful reporting and obvious lies. The media illiteracy is the real problem I see with this issue.

specialist 9y ago
It's not incompetence. It's an exploit of our evolutionary psychology. Fake news, keep people spun up, etc. We've always known these things about ourselves. "A lie is half-way around the world before the truth even gets its pants on" -- Mark Twain (probably) Our susceptibility to manufactured outrage and refined sugars are the same thing. Former survival traits are being exploited for profit.
Freak_NL 9y ago
Is media literacy something that can solve this though? A society can educate its citizens (and should do so), but a large group of people simply can't reach the level of critical thinking necessary to fully grasp the nudging and political weaselling they are submitted to.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  > but a large group of people simply can't reach the level of critical thinking necessary to fully grasp the nudging and political weaselling they are submitted to. Isn't that exactly the kind of problem that education can solve? Of course that's a decade long process which doesn't happen over night.
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    Education can somewhat increase the percentage of people we would consider media literate, but there will always be a group of voters who simply can't reach that level of media literacy — some of whom are literally illiterate (a couple of percent in most modern democracies) and some who are literate, but can't (or won't) fully grasp the subtleties of media manipulation. Those are still a lot of voters.

JohnTClark 9y ago

The thing is that now people see a real consequence of that data harvesting, like voting manipulation.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Do people realise they're being manipulated though?
- thousandautumns 9y ago
  I think people have become acutely aware that there are lots of people being manipulated through online disinformation and propaganda campaigns. But I also think just about everyone assumes that its others who are being manipulated and not themselves. By definition, you can't be manipulated if you know you are being manipulated.

mtgx 9y ago

This is similar to how revolutions happen. The government does something bad, many are frustrated by it, but they are still overall happy with the government, and only a few speak out. Then the government does more bad stuff. More are frustrated, only a few speak out. And on, and on, for decades. It seems like nothing will ever change. And one day "something happens" that makes all of that frustration come up, and the people are furious like nothing else, and you may even see riots and whatnot. And the people on the sidelines, who have no clue about how life was in that country wonder "why would people be so violent, and destroy things?! It doesn't make sense!" Yes, it does make sense. It's just not pretty. And yes, it will happen to Google, too. I've tried to warn them and other tech companies many times in the past on HN, that they can't just screw over their users and piss them off, thinking only a few spoke out, so it must not be such a big deal the evil thing they've just done. Many more people are usually frustrated about that thing, but they usually keep that frustration inside because they would like to continue using Google. So, yes. Google is definitely next. Just maybe not tomorrow, or next year. Maybe in a few years. My guess is it will be something around how they use their AI, especially now that they've become a war contractor. Maybe they'll sell their AI tech to US law enforcement to target American citizens in various ways. It's probably inevitable. A Facebook exodus was never going to be linear. It will be drastic, and it will "surprise" people, even at the company, just as this surprises you now (although I wouldn't say that exodus will happen now, but this is definitely a one of the big final steps before that exodus, at the very least).

kingkongjaffa 9y ago
as the internet has matured, platform exodus has become harder, the 99% tech illiterate will not exodus a platform with years of family conversations and photo albums on there.

bla2 9y ago

Old Media ist publishing negative articles about tech at any chance they have, due to them losing all their advertising dollars to online ads. It's just that this time the message finds some traction.

DanielBMarkham 9y ago

It's weird. Almost surreal. We've known all this stuff for ages. People say that a lot of what you read is just reporters not understanding what they're talking about, flitting from one subject to another with the herd, and perhaps that's true. But hell, anybody that's paid more than a modicum of attention to this issue should know that BigTech tracks people like lab rats. (Small tech too, they just don't have the user base) I'm all for getting the word out. It's just an odd way that change is happening. It feels a lot like the internet has turned us all into one big mob, carrying our pitchforks and torches from one outrage to the next. That's probably a problem much bigger than what to do with Google/Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Comcast

aptwebapps 9y ago
It's not that tracking that finally put the fox among the chickens, it's the use to which the data was put. I think to the extent that most people thought about it at all they assumed that they'd just get more invasive advertising. Maybe the read about a girl's parents finding out she was pregnant or something like that.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  I agree, but I think you're stopping well short of the natural conclusion here that seems inevitable for anybody thinking more than 10 seconds about the issue. Data is (mostly) free, ubiquitous, and permanent. When you capture data for any reason, it's logically impossible for you to be able to know or control what to what use that data will be put. I keep seeing situations where extreme examples are used to make the case that data collection is good, healthy, and makes our world a better place. If you were kidnapped, wouldn't you want police to know where you were based on tracking associated with your cell phone? But for every one good example, the universe is literally the limit for the number of ways that same data capture can be used in bad and harmful ways. Over my lifetime I've consumed a lot of fiction around how people interact with tech. There are a lot of good people who have instrumented up the general public in ways science fiction writers would have never dreamed of only a few decades ago. It seems to me that anybody who's watched The Matrix would think that all of this has gotta have more societal impact than more intrusive advertising. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps even though they realized what was being captured, they never put together the deep implications, instead thinking it was just about better dancing iphone ads. I don't understand how that could be so, but people seem to have an incredible ability not to see things they don't want to see -- and they love something for nothing.

pteredactyl 9y ago

Yea "we've" known about it for ages. "We've" even known or suspected it well before the Snowden leaks ( 2013 ). But the general ( non-thinking, sadly ) public really has no idea. And is ironically now catching on because the media's been cramming the whole Russian thing down their throats since the election. On the subject of the media and general public, has anyone recently heard anything about the southern statue madness from last year, or of police shootings? No, because the general public follows whatever the media says. And forgets about whatever they said the minute they stop talking about it. 2 biggest issues in America: 1) current mainstream media 2) uneducated populace

3ribal 9y ago

>"developed anything in messenger even today" I have developed several, your statement is misleading. Messenger user profile API gives, first_name, last_name, profile_pic, locale, timezone (non precise), gender, is_payment_enabled, last_ad_referral, Which IMO is much safer than using direct Facebook Graph API. My point being Messenger apps are in-fact better than apps which uses Facebook login when it comes to privacy i.e if you have to use Facebook platform.

qaq 9y ago

One thing I am confused with all the data collection that is going on (and it obviously costing them $ and some reputational risks) is not really helping them to produce decent ad targeting. I am not even surprised by how bad FB ads are most of the time but even Amazon that has 20 years of my purchase history is amazingly bad: I already bought 4 Elixir programming books and looking to buy new books when they come out and yet if I search for Elixir it will keep showing me guitar strings WTF? In 20 years I've never bought a single music related item and I bought a ton of programming books and yet ...

Freak_NL 9y ago
You actually want Amazon to show you different search results? If I'm starting a new hobby or wanted to buy a present for someone with different interests, I would be very annoyed if results were hidden from me because of a name clash with a product from my purchase history. A good product search isn't personalized, and doesn't try to predict what I want. It just shows the results in a sensible manner, and lets me use categories and keywords (in addition to user reviews, price, availability, etcetera) to filter the results.
- qaq 9y ago
  I want it to show me Elixir programming books in addition to strings not 50 string products and 0 books.
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    Then you may have found a bug in their search algorithm. On Amazon.de I get guitar string and books (and some sort of cologne), and when I click on 'Fremdsprachige Bücher' (for example), I get only books on programming in Elixir. Surely that's fine?
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
The Elixir strings people are paying to be in those search results presumably - even when you don't buy they're getting paid. Amazon's infective is to profit, that doesn't always assign with your desire to buy. Also, they might find that people who aren't searching for what they're shown keep looking and that it didn't reduce purchases. It's like the supermarkets moving products around to make sure you see other stuff - people don't leave the store, they keep looking and get exposed to more products in unfamiliar positions that make them notice more. I mean, heck, you just talked about a couple of products and gave a product endorsement because they didn't show the results you expected; seems like the system is working.

MasterScrat 9y ago

> I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. This reminds me of the OkCupid scandal: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/12/11666116/70000-okcupid-users-data-release https://www.vox.com/2016/5/12/11666116/70000-okcupid-users-d... A researcher released a dump of 70K dating profiles and people were horrified. But this data was already accessible to anyone (just had to create a free profile) and you can be sure it was already used for analytics purpose.

TheArcane 9y ago

> Is google next? I think Facebook has nothing on Google. One trip to the MyActivity console on Google is enough to creep anyone out.

specialist 9y ago

Scandals don't matter until they do. The bad stuff is an open secret. But people choose to discount the bad so long as it appears outweighed by the good. Eventually the grace period runs out. Voila: Scandal. Also, scandals are manufactured distraction. There's no shortage of things to be upset about. What percolates up is governed by the politics of attention. -- I can't quickly refind the Ellsberg paper about the structure of presidential scandals. But this one is close enough. Obviously, they study presidential scandals, but the lessons apply to all scandals. The Timing of Presidential Scandals: The Role of Economics, Divided Government and the Media http://file.scirp.org/pdf/OJPS_2016012915363533.pdf http://file.scirp.org/pdf/OJPS_2016012915363533.pdf The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems http://a.co/dTmg3WC http://a.co/dTmg3WC

swebs 9y ago

The general public and mainstream media do not really care about big tech companies harvesting personal data and using it for marketing. Every now and then you'd see someone bringing it up in an article of Ars or Popular Science, but they never gained much traction. The difference is now there is an example of it helping Trump. And if you can find any story that puts Trump in a bad light, it's almost guaranteed that it will hit the front page of HuffingtonPost/WashingtonPost/NYTimes/Salon/etc.

ntsplnkv2 9y ago
More than anything it's tied to an existing scandal with Trump-Russian collusion. If the other scandals weren't there no one would care about this, you are right.

r3vo 9y ago

Nothing has changed at all as far as I can tell. It's such a media event right now simply because it was taken advantage of by the President to win the election. Anything that can potentially cast Trump in a bad light is bound to get a lot of media attention. This is all ignoring the fact that President Obama used almost the same Facebook app analytics tactics to win his campaign (albeit less deceptively). Regardless of why it is getting attention now, let's be optimistic that the dangers of the silicon valley surveillance apparatus are starting to seep into the public consciousness. I for one would welcome a changing attitude towards how we view and sell our private information to these companies.

gdilla 9y ago
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/21/no-obama-didnt-employ-the-same-strategies-as-cambridge-analytica/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/21/no-obama-didnt-empl...
- CptJamesCook 9y ago
  https://ijr.com/2018/03/1077083-ex-obama-campaign-director-fb/ https://ijr.com/2018/03/1077083-ex-obama-campaign-director-f...
- r3vo 9y ago
  I wasn't trying start a political flamewar. I noted in parenthesis that Obama's use of this sort of analytics was less deceptive. I think that the link that CptJamesCook posted validates my original comment on this.

acdha 9y ago

One big factor is that Facebook knew about the problem and lied about it for two years. It’s one thing to know that data is mined and another to learn that what should be a trusted third party is actively trying to keep you from learning about abuse.

noetic_techy 9y ago

Its purely Trump hatred driving this. Because Obama doing this in 2012 = Genius. Trump doing this in 2016 = Scandal. I'm a libertarian and yes I threw my vote away on Gary Johnson, but looking at the media landscape, there truly is a backlash against conservatives going on in social media, and this is just part of that. Donald Trump won because fake news... no wait, it was Russia and their abysmal social media spending... no wait, its because he gamed facebook! They want to put more pressure on facebook to "do something about this" now that the coin has flipped. I have a feeling though this is going to get out of hand and drag facebook into the gutter.

wyldfire 9y ago
I suppose Trump hatred plays a role. But superpowers interfering with elections is a big deal, it's the kind of thing that could lead to another extinction level event. Any of the mechanisms leveraged in this propaganda campaign should receive extra scrutiny.
- ensignavenger 9y ago
  "superpowers interfering with elections is a big deal" Which has been going on since... forever? (at least, since elections and superpowers have been a thing, anyway)
  - ianamartin 9y ago
    It's only a big deal when it's not us or our allies doing it.
matchbok 9y ago
What Obama did was very, very different. The fact that you don't know this (or ignored it) tells a lot about how biased you are. And yes, there should be backlash against conservatives. They just elected a Nazi in Illinois.
- take4 9y ago

jonbarker 9y ago

What changed is awareness. I would like them to provide a resource which allows users to know which microsegments of facebook audience network they are showing up in, without spending any money.

jkFeiwi 9y ago

> I don't get what changed? Momentum. Sometimes people won't do stuff unless they know everyone else is too. If you quit Facebook and your friends still use it, you're missing out. But if all your friends delete it as part of the #deletefacebook trend, it'll be easier for you to do the same thing.

efuquen 9y ago

> I don't get what changed? He made his billions. I know you mean in a more general sense, but I can't let go of the hypocrisy of this. He sold out millions of users to Facebook, basically the most anti-privacy thing you could possibly do other then just dumping all that information out in the open, becomes incredibly wealthy and now he gives a small amount of that to Signal and is all like #deletefacbook and it's fine? Give me a break.

sandov 9y ago

>Regulations should have sprouted in Obama years If people voluntarily want to give away their data, who are we to stop them from doing it?. I don't use facebook, because I value my privacy more than I value "being connected" or whatever facebook is using to convince people these days, but if my neighbor is happy giving away is data, that's fine, it's his data.

tripzilch 9y ago

People didn't want to believe that FB and Google (and the rest) tracking and collecting all that data would really cause harm. Denial (because something is really useful and/or a large part of communication with all your friends+family runs through it) is a strong force. What changed is that this breach made it harder for people to pretend all that tracking and data harvesting "will probably turn out fine".

calvinbhai 9y ago

I feel this is just an opportunity for the conventional media to bring down social media, because the latter has certainly hurt the former's powers to control narratives and agenda, affecting and this affecting the ad revenues. (any surprise why $TWTR and $SNAP took a hit along with $FB?) Facebook has eaten into Mainstream Media ad revenues, and literally is controlling how news is published, because its platform is so powerful. When Cambridge Analytica stories first broke out, even I had the same reaction. I hope people stop overreacting as if this never happened earlier.