12 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

135 points by pdog 9y ago

Waterluvian 9y ago
Is that so surprising? You're asking him to talk about the one thing that makes Facebook a viable revenue generator. I also feel like the use of "admit" in the headline is disingenuous. I have zero expertise in this field but my intuition is that Facebook runs on an incredibly sensitive business model. Like an animal specialised to a specific biome. Adjust the conditions a bit and it might perish in a few generations. Meaningful legislative change to data collection or advertising laws might out them at risk.
- cryptoz 9y ago
  Well, yes that is surprising. I can't think of any other CEO who would have even the slightest problem talking about their revenue generation capabilities.
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  > I also feel like the use of "admit" in the headline is disingenuous. Yet you seem to be saying that Zuckerberg is trying to hide his business model to protect it from legislators. Doesn't that make the word "admit" appropriate? What other word would you use for something someone doesn't want to say during a hearing?
  - Waterluvian 9y ago
    Admit implies wrongdoing. I'm not. I think it can be perfectly fair to want to be guarded about your secret sauce if that's what you believe it to be.
    - daveFNbuck 9y ago
      Admit doesn't imply wrongdoing, except insofar as hiding the truth is wrongdoing. The phrase "admit you like him" is in common enough use to have 101,000 results in a Google search, similar to "admit you were wrong" or "admit you did it". Having a crush isn't wrongdoing. If admit is the wrong word to use here, what do you think the right word should be?
- neffy 9y ago
  Exactly. What real time advertising network markets have done, is effectively incentivized Facebook, and anybody else selling internet ad space to create a Big Brother database in order to maximise revenue from any source that's prepared to pay. Whilst I suspect this probably wasn't exactly what Marx meant when he said that Capitalism inevitably sews the seeds of its own destruction... combine it with a political system funded predominantly by private money, and I guess the only thing saving the US at the moment is that the oil price is so low. "My reality was post-apocalyptic and it wasn't this fucked up" Penny Adiyodi, The Magicians.
justinzollars 9y ago
I think the questions were also horrible. Watching two days of testimony it seemed only Congresswoman Dingell from Michigan had any grasp of how tracking technology works. My big takeaway is that we need more engineers in congress.
- thisisit 9y ago
  Or maybe more engineers becoming aides or staff to these politicians?
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    Or maybe just spend more time with aides trying to grasp the technical issues? I'm going to send some letters to my Senators and Representative asking them to work closely with the EFF, EPIC, etc. to formulate any regulation on this, rather than Facebook itself.
    - daveFNbuck 9y ago
      Or maybe just smarter politicians. Politicians aren't elected based on their ability to understand a wide range of technical issues. A lot of people in Congress campaigned on not understanding basic facts about reality.
  - acgIssues 9y ago
    Well yeah, engineers should participate; not only as senators.
  - dboreham 9y ago
    I suspect the problem runs deeper than this. There is no shortage of clueful people willing to advise senators for free (I have personally offered to do so, for example). Also I spent 1/2 day in the company of a staffer for one of our senators last year. Based on that experience they are not really short of technology savvy. Somehow their business model depends on appearing to not understand technology.
- gringoDan 9y ago
dlandis 9y ago
> Zuckerberg claimed not to know what "shadow profiles" are Did he really claim outright to not know what they are? Anyone have that quote from the testimony?
- warent 9y ago
  I do recall hearing live that he said he wasn't familiar with the term "shadow profiles." This may have been honest, I hadn't heard it before this hearing either, but then again I'm not the CEO of Facebook, so his answer is certainly troubling
  - inlined 9y ago
    Given that employees are told they can no longer use the word "shadow profile" to describe them, I suspect he knew what they meant.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
      > Given that employees are told they can no longer use the word "shadow profile" What's the source of this information?
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - sorokod 9y ago
    It may be called "preliminary profile" or similar internally. That would allow him to be "unfamiliar".
  - OrganicMSG 9y ago
    >In 2011, Schrems created Europe versus Facebook, which published the documents Facebook had sent him and flagged up where they didn't comply with EU law. He got in touch with the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) -- Facebook Ireland is the "data controller" for its European users -- and sent 22 detailed complaints showing how Facebook wasn't compliant, five relating to it allegedly not deleting data. He also complained about "shadow profiles", where Facebook collects contact information relating to non-users when users sync their contacts from other services. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/privacy-versus-facebook https://www.wired.co.uk/article/privacy-versus-facebook
kurthr 9y ago
Does he just have some cognitive dissonance, is he covering up, or does he really not understand how his business operates? I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -Upton Sinclair
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  > Does he just have some cognitive dissonance, is he covering up, or does he really not understand how his business operates? He's covering up. He has an history of doing that.
- kristianc 9y ago
  It would seem pretty nigh-on inconceivable that someone could build a business as successful as Facebook in hoovering up ad budgets, but to have no idea how they did it.
common_ 9y ago
Here's how Zuckerberg's testimony works: 1. When he says he doesn't know, he actually knows. 2. When he says he knows, and that the answer is "more AI," he doesn't actually know.
- fixermark 9y ago
  > When he says he doesn't know, he actually knows I don't think we have reason to believe the CEO is deeply familiar with all the strategies FB uses for session unification and user tracking. It's a fast-moving field with a lot of technical detail that a CEO doesn't actually need to keep day-to-day tabs on.
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    Except this CEO has an engineering/development background, and I'd expect him to be deeply familiar with the criticisms on his company.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  You forgot: 3) Run down the 4 minute clock each representative had to ask questions by talking as much as possible so as to avoid a meaningful exchange. Representative Marsha Blackburn was the only one that actually called him out on this BS: BLACKBURN: And where does privacy rank as a corporate value for Facebook? ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman, giving people control of their information and how they want to set their privacy is foundational to the whole service. It's not just a — kind of an add-on feature, something we have to... BLACKBURN: Okay. ZUCKERBERG: ... comply with. BLACKBURN: Well... ZUCKERBERG: The reality is, if you have a photo — if you just think about this in your day-to-day life... BLACKBURN: No, I can't let you filibuster right now. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11/transcript-of-zuckerbergs-appearance-before-house-committee/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mfoy_ 9y ago
I think the biggest thing is the HUGE disconnect with what people think Facebook is doing, and what Facebook is actually doing. I think the whole point of this is to raise awareness about of the scope of Facebook's data collection-- It's unfathomably enormous. If more average people had a better understanding of what Facebook was tracking, they'd be outraged. Zuckerberg's goal in this was to keep the wool pulled over their eyes. That's why he kept conflating post-visibility settings with privacy / tracking settings.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  > That's why he kept conflating post-visibility settings with privacy / tracking settings. Interesting. That's pretty clever, which gives me confidence that's exactly what he was doing.
- inlined 9y ago
  And what's worse is that privacy controls explicitly don't control ad targeting. Years ago I had a long term relationship end. We hid our relationship status and only ended the status a year later. Immediately after changing a status marked "only me" in privacy settings I got bombarded with dating ads. I complained that this was a huge privacy violation and they said "we didn't share your relationship status with them. We matched you to them because of the relationship status"
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    > "we didn't share your relationship status with them. We matched you to them because of the relationship status" Which I'm sure is acurate, that's how advertising targeting normally works. Some years ago I read an essay about how the words we have limit the kind of phenomena we think about. I think the example at the time was about piracy and "stealing". Before computers existed it was impossible to make exact copies of something at zero cost. Therefore, stealing was morally wrong because if you take one of something, the person you took it from will have one less of that something. With computers the situation is less obvious. If you make a copy of something (say a movie) A) you're not really taking one copy of a movie from them; instead you created a copy of a movie for yourself, B) it's not clear that you're damaging their revenues either, as not all people who make copies of movies would've bought the movies in the absense of the possibility of making copies. Probably a more acurate picture is something in the middle, but the point here was that anti-piracy lobbies knowingly conflated "making copies" with "stealing". We entered the computer era without a morally charged word to describe an activity that used to be impossible, and instead they used one that misrepresents the new situation of things. I think when it comes to privacy we're in a similar situation. Pre-computers, "privacy" meant that (phrase A) "people won't know attributes of you", and that is absolutely equivalent to (phrase B) "people (in this case advertisers) aren't able to take actions that depend on attributes of you". Post-computers the two phrases are not equivalent: Facebook didn't tell advertisers attributes of you, but it gave them the possibility to make decisions which depend on attributes of you. Conveniently, Facebook understands privacy to mean the former. I suspect the reason for why Facebook got away with it for so long is that we don't have two words that differenciate between the two phrases. We need to once and for all decide if we want the word "privacy" to mean phrase A, phrase B, or phrase A AND phrase B. To be absolutely clear, I'm not saying "advertisers can only target you, they aren't being given your data, and therefore all is good". The only thing I'm saying is that the word "privacy" is lacking in a post-computers world.
fixermark 9y ago
""" Zuckerberg reluctantly acknowledged that Facebook gathers information on people who aren't signed up for Facebook for what he said were "security purposes." """ That's a pretty disingenuous way to phrase Zuckerberg's response to a question of whether Facebook uses cookie tracking for logged-out users. Which of course it does, and it's of course used for security purposes; one has to be able to unify sessions from people with multiple accounts to do the most basic of bad-actor tracking against the most basic of attack scenarios.
- gsich 9y ago
  No. There is no need to be able to do this.
  - Arnt 9y ago
    Please elaborate.
    - ynniv 9y ago
      A competent adversary won't carry cookies between sessions, so there is no security afforded by it. These cookies are solely to track the general population.
      - fixermark 9y ago
        I agree, but I also note you may be underestimating the number of competent adversaries in the world and the cost / benefit analysis of doing something like this to eliminate a large-percentage case of bad behavior.
        gsich 9y ago
        The cost is immense (tracking of non-users) the benefit is low (being able to detect multi accounts).
        ynniv 9y ago
shmerl 9y ago
So why should anyone trust him? People should use open source social networks that can be audited.
- fixermark 9y ago
  The most fascinating thing about human behavior is that in spite of what people know, they still trust Facebook. Hell, I've been a Facebook app developer. I'm deeply familiar with the breadth and depth of information Facebook allowed an app to harvest ca. 2008 or so. I still use FB multiple times a day because I don't care about my privacy vis-a-vis the things I post there and that my friends post there.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    I do care, that's why I don't use FB. Problem in using it is the network effect itself multiplied by the untrustworthy, closed and centralized foundation. I.e. you don't just harm yourself by using it, you are harming others by proliferating its use, because by using it, you are encouraging others to use it too.
    - fixermark 9y ago
      That's if you're already approaching it from the point of view that it's a bad thing. I believe that question is unsettled.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        It's pretty much settled that exploiting lack of privacy is a bad thing. Potential of such practice misuse was clearly demonstrated in the recent history.
        thaladred 9y ago
        Can you give us the specific case in history that you are referring to? You can get back to met later if you don't have that information with you right now.
lukeschlather 9y ago
> (Zuckerberg reluctantly acknowledged that Facebook gathers information on people who aren't signed up for Facebook for what he said were "security purposes.") This sort of information gathering is necessary for DDoS/Spam/Fraud prevention and so on. I'm not saying I trust Zuckerberg wasn't hiding something else, but also I understand why he didn't want to publicly comment on the heuristics they use to combat attackers. Although at this point I don't know why Zuckerberg would be obfuscating if they really have detailed advertising profiles on logged-out users. (What would said advertising profiles be used for? Selling them to other advertisers?)
alex_young 9y ago
"I'll have my team get back to you on that" sounds so much nicer than "I plead the fifth" doesn't it though?
kristianc 9y ago
>Make the most of every campaign with these four strategies. Unlike display ads which target people based on cookies, Facebook lets you define and reach the exact target audience you want. You'll get the right eyes on your ads, while maximizing your time, budget and growth potential. Zuckerberg is going to lose his shit when he sees what his Digital Ads team has done behind his back. Facebook is brazen about being a grossly invasive advertising company, just not when they're talking to their users. [1] [1] https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-strategies https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-st...
- tzahola 9y ago
  "behind his back"
TekMol 9y ago
Is lying in front of congress a crime? If I was a senator, I would have asked these two questions: When I look at a product in an onlineshop like Amazon, afterwards I see adverts for this product on Facebook. How does this work? When I visit a physical store, afterwards I see adverts for this store on Facebook. Even on my desktop computer. Even though I don't have any facebook apps on my phone. How does this work? If he lies and says he don't know, from then on he would be at the mercy of many employees at FB whith whom he has talked about this type of data collection and sharing.
- gringoDan 9y ago
  Zuckerberg was not under oath, but even so, lying to Congress is a federal crime. Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-will-not-be-under-oath-during-senate-hearing-2018-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-will-not-be-u... More info on "under oath": https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/penalty-for-lying-to-congress/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/penalty-for-lying-to...
- thaladred 9y ago
  1. Since Amazon uses Facebook for advertising, they can feed their data to both Google and Facebook ads. It's easy to do with cookies. 2. If you don't have Facebook app on your phone or if you did not open your Facebook app when you are in store, you won't see ads for that store. Unless you have a loyalty program with the store or the store decides to target advertise you based on your payment info, etc. In any case, it is the physical store that shares those information.
  - TekMol 9y ago
    1: How is that easy? If I had a cookie on Amazons domain, how would that enable Amazon to show me personalized ads on FB? I don't keep cookies though. So the targeting must use other types of user identification. 2: I don't have a FB app nor do I use FB on my phone. But I see ads related to the places I went to. So the flow of information must be via other channels. One part is probably Google (I use Android).
thisisit 9y ago
Given how things are taken out of context in today's media, giving a resounding Yes to an answer which requires a detailed answer is a bade idea. Congress/Senate hearings are not exactly CS101 class. So, it is better to be keeping answers short and maybe it comes off vague. Politician clue-ness on the issue also doesn't help.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Zuckerburg is in the unenviable position of having to defend the entire ad-tech industry. If he describes in granular detail how user profiling and ad serving works on Facebook, then Facebook is going to take the hit on practices that are basically industry standards. If he obfuscates, and focuses on FB controls then he seems like a liar. If he explained how ad-tech works across the internet then it would look like whataboutism and him invoking the bandwagon fallacy. At the end of the day it seems like someone/some company is eventually going to take the fall for the whole ad-tech industry and cause major reform - is Facebook the one who's going to take the arrow?
- tzahola 9y ago
  Good. The whole ad-tech "industry" should be burned to the ground; the sooner the better.
  - icantgoogle 9y ago
    The internet will be very different if the whole ad tech industry disappears. It will be driven largely by subscription, but I believe that is the model that Apple is encouraging.
subdane 9y ago
Facebook has to infer intent, unlike, say Google Search, which can get it directly from your keywords. FB has built a data halo around its users to try and infer that intent. Hard to imagine them ever giving you control over that additional data they collect around you, since it's their competitive advantage. But also proving to be a double edged sword because it's creeping out their users and other actors are starting to exploit it for political ends.
redleggedfrog 9y ago
Okay, I guess I'm the contrarian here, but I'm not sure why any of this is surprising, or even a problem. Facebook users signed up for a free service that allows them to communicate with other people in an enjoyable manner. Facebook even went so far as to make it so enjoyable it's addictive. Free online crack. Facebook users, you're having your fun. What would you expect Facebook to do to finance all this? They're selling the shit out of you. They sell you sideways to Sunday, then sell your Mom, too. Why would you be upset, or even surprised? Facebook should be able to do whatever they want with your data if you're gullible enough to use their free service.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Yeah, I can't figure it out either ... what could possibly be wrong with giving drugs to an addict? They agreed to becoming an addict, so why shouldn't I profit from their inability to protect themselves?
- babygoat 9y ago
  You're clearly satisfied with yourself for not being a Facebook user, but your comment has no bearing on the article. Do you have an opinion on Zuckerberg refusing to admit any of this?
- mindslight 9y ago
  So while your point was apt at the beginning of Faceboot's existence, at this point in time most everybody has been "gullible enough to use their free service". So the only current applicability of your point that anything Faceboot does is fine based on the idea that their users have consented in perpetuity. Your point also does nothing to address the surveillance that Faceboot performs on people without accounts, or data they glean from sources other than explicit Faceboot usage.
- pwinnski 9y ago
  So-called "shadow profiles" are built for people who are not even Facebook users. I do not have a Facebook account, and yet my friends and family members have been prompted to tag photos of me with my name. I did not sign up for a free service. I am not a Facebook user, I'm not "having my fun." And yet Facebook has collected enough of a profile on me to recognize my face in photos and know who my friends and family are.
kerng 9y ago
Even Zuckerberg doesn't seem to know, he appears to have lost control of what's going on. Unfortunately, the hearing didn't dive into details to better demonstrate that he can't tell why somebody sees what they see, and who uses the data (inside and outside of Facebook). Also, the whole collecting data "for security purposes" is pretty unbelievable. Does that mean they share information with governments around the world? This can be interpreted as anything.
- xaedes 9y ago
  Well.. He did look uneasy when asked about Palantir.
Mc_Big_G 9y ago
If you're still using FB/IG/WA you're complicit.
candybar 9y ago
This particular article from Bloomberg loads (for me this time, it likely varies from one pageload to another) javascript files from these (and more, I stopped after reaching m, alphabetically) domains, many of whom are likely tracking users across sites and Bloomberg is doing so despite having no affirmative consent from me whatsoever: a.quora.com action.media6degrees.com ad.crwdcntrl.net ads.pubmatic.com ak.sail-horizon.com amplify.outbrain.com amplifypixel.outbrain.com analytics.twitter.com assets.bwbx.io bat.bing.com bcp.crwdcntrl.net cdn.perfdrive.com cdn.taboola.com cdn.teads.tv cdn.tinypass.com connect.facebook.com consent.truste.com dt.adfaceprotected.com horizon.sailthru.com in.ml314.com insight.adsrvr.org js-sec.indexww.com ml314.com ... It's important to blame the right party here - pubmatic doesn't have a relationship with you and taboola doesn't have a relationship with you - it's Bloomberg that is sending your usage data to them. The same is true when Facebook or Google pixels are loaded (I'm sure they are there) - they are not tracking you directly, the publishers that are loading those pixels are sharing your browsing information with them. The media companies, that are manufacturing lots of faux outrage of how the internet works, largely because they mistakenly believe that if not for large tech companies, they'd make more money, which is unlikely to be true, are not only complicit here, but they are far worse about their blatant misuse of user data. So however you feel about Facebook or Google or whoever happens to be on the hot seat at the moment, this is just how the internet works today and says more about the advertising ecosystem at large. The data collection also includes offline entities that are selling or at least "sharing" purchase data, gym check-in data, and so on. It's also important to realize that trying to stop this through regulations likely kills smaller publishers that cannot directly monetize their inventory with advertisers (because they are too small and cannot prove their trustworthiness) while benefiting larger entities that advertisers can reach directly. Google and Facebook don't need to load all these third-party JS because they can sell directly to advertisers. Google also happens to be an ad-tech intermediary but they don't need to be. So be careful what you wish for here - while some of these privacy regulations are, in spirit, the right path forward but the articles currently bashing Facebook largely come from writers whose salaries are paid for by selling user data without affirmative consent to anyone who's willing to pay. It's likely that the publishing world won't be able to support the same number of writers once of some of the ad-tech data pipelines are broken. It's also likely that lots of people here and elsewhere who are currently complaining about privacy are likely complicit in many ways. Salesforce? It's a tracking tool where a lot of this sensitive data ends up. Oracle? Same (through their marketing cloud). Verizon? It's also an ad-tech vendor. Random Fortune 500? They are probably both selling/sharing whatever user data while their marketing teams are busy acquiring data for their campaigns. Small technology consulting firm? If you deal with lots of data, at least some of the data you're dealing was harvested this way.

135 points by pdog 9y ago

Is that so surprising? You're asking him to talk about the one thing that makes Facebook a viable revenue generator. I also feel like the use of "admit" in the headline is disingenuous. I have zero expertise in this field but my intuition is that Facebook runs on an incredibly sensitive business model. Like an animal specialised to a specific biome. Adjust the conditions a bit and it might perish in a few generations. Meaningful legislative change to data collection or advertising laws might out them at risk.

cryptoz 9y ago
Well, yes that is surprising. I can't think of any other CEO who would have even the slightest problem talking about their revenue generation capabilities.
daveFNbuck 9y ago
> I also feel like the use of "admit" in the headline is disingenuous. Yet you seem to be saying that Zuckerberg is trying to hide his business model to protect it from legislators. Doesn't that make the word "admit" appropriate? What other word would you use for something someone doesn't want to say during a hearing?
- Waterluvian 9y ago
  Admit implies wrongdoing. I'm not. I think it can be perfectly fair to want to be guarded about your secret sauce if that's what you believe it to be.
  - daveFNbuck 9y ago
    Admit doesn't imply wrongdoing, except insofar as hiding the truth is wrongdoing. The phrase "admit you like him" is in common enough use to have 101,000 results in a Google search, similar to "admit you were wrong" or "admit you did it". Having a crush isn't wrongdoing. If admit is the wrong word to use here, what do you think the right word should be?
neffy 9y ago
Exactly. What real time advertising network markets have done, is effectively incentivized Facebook, and anybody else selling internet ad space to create a Big Brother database in order to maximise revenue from any source that's prepared to pay. Whilst I suspect this probably wasn't exactly what Marx meant when he said that Capitalism inevitably sews the seeds of its own destruction... combine it with a political system funded predominantly by private money, and I guess the only thing saving the US at the moment is that the oil price is so low. "My reality was post-apocalyptic and it wasn't this fucked up" Penny Adiyodi, The Magicians.

justinzollars 9y ago

I think the questions were also horrible. Watching two days of testimony it seemed only Congresswoman Dingell from Michigan had any grasp of how tracking technology works. My big takeaway is that we need more engineers in congress.

thisisit 9y ago
Or maybe more engineers becoming aides or staff to these politicians?
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  Or maybe just spend more time with aides trying to grasp the technical issues? I'm going to send some letters to my Senators and Representative asking them to work closely with the EFF, EPIC, etc. to formulate any regulation on this, rather than Facebook itself.
  - daveFNbuck 9y ago
    Or maybe just smarter politicians. Politicians aren't elected based on their ability to understand a wide range of technical issues. A lot of people in Congress campaigned on not understanding basic facts about reality.
- acgIssues 9y ago
  Well yeah, engineers should participate; not only as senators.
- dboreham 9y ago
  I suspect the problem runs deeper than this. There is no shortage of clueful people willing to advise senators for free (I have personally offered to do so, for example). Also I spent 1/2 day in the company of a staffer for one of our senators last year. Based on that experience they are not really short of technology savvy. Somehow their business model depends on appearing to not understand technology.
gringoDan 9y ago

dlandis 9y ago

> Zuckerberg claimed not to know what "shadow profiles" are Did he really claim outright to not know what they are? Anyone have that quote from the testimony?

warent 9y ago
I do recall hearing live that he said he wasn't familiar with the term "shadow profiles." This may have been honest, I hadn't heard it before this hearing either, but then again I'm not the CEO of Facebook, so his answer is certainly troubling
- inlined 9y ago
  Given that employees are told they can no longer use the word "shadow profile" to describe them, I suspect he knew what they meant.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
    > Given that employees are told they can no longer use the word "shadow profile" What's the source of this information?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- sorokod 9y ago
  It may be called "preliminary profile" or similar internally. That would allow him to be "unfamiliar".
- OrganicMSG 9y ago
  >In 2011, Schrems created Europe versus Facebook, which published the documents Facebook had sent him and flagged up where they didn't comply with EU law. He got in touch with the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) -- Facebook Ireland is the "data controller" for its European users -- and sent 22 detailed complaints showing how Facebook wasn't compliant, five relating to it allegedly not deleting data. He also complained about "shadow profiles", where Facebook collects contact information relating to non-users when users sync their contacts from other services. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/privacy-versus-facebook https://www.wired.co.uk/article/privacy-versus-facebook

kurthr 9y ago

Does he just have some cognitive dissonance, is he covering up, or does he really not understand how his business operates? I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -Upton Sinclair

fwdpropaganda 9y ago
> Does he just have some cognitive dissonance, is he covering up, or does he really not understand how his business operates? He's covering up. He has an history of doing that.
kristianc 9y ago
It would seem pretty nigh-on inconceivable that someone could build a business as successful as Facebook in hoovering up ad budgets, but to have no idea how they did it.

common_ 9y ago

Here's how Zuckerberg's testimony works: 1. When he says he doesn't know, he actually knows. 2. When he says he knows, and that the answer is "more AI," he doesn't actually know.

fixermark 9y ago
> When he says he doesn't know, he actually knows I don't think we have reason to believe the CEO is deeply familiar with all the strategies FB uses for session unification and user tracking. It's a fast-moving field with a lot of technical detail that a CEO doesn't actually need to keep day-to-day tabs on.
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  Except this CEO has an engineering/development background, and I'd expect him to be deeply familiar with the criticisms on his company.
bogomipz 9y ago
You forgot: 3) Run down the 4 minute clock each representative had to ask questions by talking as much as possible so as to avoid a meaningful exchange. Representative Marsha Blackburn was the only one that actually called him out on this BS: BLACKBURN: And where does privacy rank as a corporate value for Facebook? ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman, giving people control of their information and how they want to set their privacy is foundational to the whole service. It's not just a — kind of an add-on feature, something we have to... BLACKBURN: Okay. ZUCKERBERG: ... comply with. BLACKBURN: Well... ZUCKERBERG: The reality is, if you have a photo — if you just think about this in your day-to-day life... BLACKBURN: No, I can't let you filibuster right now. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11/transcript-of-zuckerbergs-appearance-before-house-committee/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mfoy_ 9y ago

I think the biggest thing is the HUGE disconnect with what people think Facebook is doing, and what Facebook is actually doing. I think the whole point of this is to raise awareness about of the scope of Facebook's data collection-- It's unfathomably enormous. If more average people had a better understanding of what Facebook was tracking, they'd be outraged. Zuckerberg's goal in this was to keep the wool pulled over their eyes. That's why he kept conflating post-visibility settings with privacy / tracking settings.

fwdpropaganda 9y ago
> That's why he kept conflating post-visibility settings with privacy / tracking settings. Interesting. That's pretty clever, which gives me confidence that's exactly what he was doing.
inlined 9y ago
And what's worse is that privacy controls explicitly don't control ad targeting. Years ago I had a long term relationship end. We hid our relationship status and only ended the status a year later. Immediately after changing a status marked "only me" in privacy settings I got bombarded with dating ads. I complained that this was a huge privacy violation and they said "we didn't share your relationship status with them. We matched you to them because of the relationship status"
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  > "we didn't share your relationship status with them. We matched you to them because of the relationship status" Which I'm sure is acurate, that's how advertising targeting normally works. Some years ago I read an essay about how the words we have limit the kind of phenomena we think about. I think the example at the time was about piracy and "stealing". Before computers existed it was impossible to make exact copies of something at zero cost. Therefore, stealing was morally wrong because if you take one of something, the person you took it from will have one less of that something. With computers the situation is less obvious. If you make a copy of something (say a movie) A) you're not really taking one copy of a movie from them; instead you created a copy of a movie for yourself, B) it's not clear that you're damaging their revenues either, as not all people who make copies of movies would've bought the movies in the absense of the possibility of making copies. Probably a more acurate picture is something in the middle, but the point here was that anti-piracy lobbies knowingly conflated "making copies" with "stealing". We entered the computer era without a morally charged word to describe an activity that used to be impossible, and instead they used one that misrepresents the new situation of things. I think when it comes to privacy we're in a similar situation. Pre-computers, "privacy" meant that (phrase A) "people won't know attributes of you", and that is absolutely equivalent to (phrase B) "people (in this case advertisers) aren't able to take actions that depend on attributes of you". Post-computers the two phrases are not equivalent: Facebook didn't tell advertisers attributes of you, but it gave them the possibility to make decisions which depend on attributes of you. Conveniently, Facebook understands privacy to mean the former. I suspect the reason for why Facebook got away with it for so long is that we don't have two words that differenciate between the two phrases. We need to once and for all decide if we want the word "privacy" to mean phrase A, phrase B, or phrase A AND phrase B. To be absolutely clear, I'm not saying "advertisers can only target you, they aren't being given your data, and therefore all is good". The only thing I'm saying is that the word "privacy" is lacking in a post-computers world.

fixermark 9y ago

""" Zuckerberg reluctantly acknowledged that Facebook gathers information on people who aren't signed up for Facebook for what he said were "security purposes." """ That's a pretty disingenuous way to phrase Zuckerberg's response to a question of whether Facebook uses cookie tracking for logged-out users. Which of course it does, and it's of course used for security purposes; one has to be able to unify sessions from people with multiple accounts to do the most basic of bad-actor tracking against the most basic of attack scenarios.

gsich 9y ago
No. There is no need to be able to do this.
- Arnt 9y ago
  Please elaborate.
  - ynniv 9y ago
    A competent adversary won't carry cookies between sessions, so there is no security afforded by it. These cookies are solely to track the general population.
    - fixermark 9y ago
      I agree, but I also note you may be underestimating the number of competent adversaries in the world and the cost / benefit analysis of doing something like this to eliminate a large-percentage case of bad behavior.
      - gsich 9y ago
        The cost is immense (tracking of non-users) the benefit is low (being able to detect multi accounts).
      - ynniv 9y ago

shmerl 9y ago

So why should anyone trust him? People should use open source social networks that can be audited.

fixermark 9y ago
The most fascinating thing about human behavior is that in spite of what people know, they still trust Facebook. Hell, I've been a Facebook app developer. I'm deeply familiar with the breadth and depth of information Facebook allowed an app to harvest ca. 2008 or so. I still use FB multiple times a day because I don't care about my privacy vis-a-vis the things I post there and that my friends post there.
- shmerl 9y ago
  I do care, that's why I don't use FB. Problem in using it is the network effect itself multiplied by the untrustworthy, closed and centralized foundation. I.e. you don't just harm yourself by using it, you are harming others by proliferating its use, because by using it, you are encouraging others to use it too.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    That's if you're already approaching it from the point of view that it's a bad thing. I believe that question is unsettled.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      It's pretty much settled that exploiting lack of privacy is a bad thing. Potential of such practice misuse was clearly demonstrated in the recent history.
      - thaladred 9y ago
        Can you give us the specific case in history that you are referring to? You can get back to met later if you don't have that information with you right now.

lukeschlather 9y ago

> (Zuckerberg reluctantly acknowledged that Facebook gathers information on people who aren't signed up for Facebook for what he said were "security purposes.") This sort of information gathering is necessary for DDoS/Spam/Fraud prevention and so on. I'm not saying I trust Zuckerberg wasn't hiding something else, but also I understand why he didn't want to publicly comment on the heuristics they use to combat attackers. Although at this point I don't know why Zuckerberg would be obfuscating if they really have detailed advertising profiles on logged-out users. (What would said advertising profiles be used for? Selling them to other advertisers?)

alex_young 9y ago

"I'll have my team get back to you on that" sounds so much nicer than "I plead the fifth" doesn't it though?

kristianc 9y ago

>Make the most of every campaign with these four strategies. Unlike display ads which target people based on cookies, Facebook lets you define and reach the exact target audience you want. You'll get the right eyes on your ads, while maximizing your time, budget and growth potential. Zuckerberg is going to lose his shit when he sees what his Digital Ads team has done behind his back. Facebook is brazen about being a grossly invasive advertising company, just not when they're talking to their users. [1] [1] https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-strategies https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-st...

tzahola 9y ago
"behind his back"

TekMol 9y ago

Is lying in front of congress a crime? If I was a senator, I would have asked these two questions: When I look at a product in an onlineshop like Amazon, afterwards I see adverts for this product on Facebook. How does this work? When I visit a physical store, afterwards I see adverts for this store on Facebook. Even on my desktop computer. Even though I don't have any facebook apps on my phone. How does this work? If he lies and says he don't know, from then on he would be at the mercy of many employees at FB whith whom he has talked about this type of data collection and sharing.

gringoDan 9y ago
Zuckerberg was not under oath, but even so, lying to Congress is a federal crime. Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-will-not-be-under-oath-during-senate-hearing-2018-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-will-not-be-u... More info on "under oath": https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/penalty-for-lying-to-congress/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/penalty-for-lying-to...
thaladred 9y ago
1. Since Amazon uses Facebook for advertising, they can feed their data to both Google and Facebook ads. It's easy to do with cookies. 2. If you don't have Facebook app on your phone or if you did not open your Facebook app when you are in store, you won't see ads for that store. Unless you have a loyalty program with the store or the store decides to target advertise you based on your payment info, etc. In any case, it is the physical store that shares those information.
- TekMol 9y ago
  1: How is that easy? If I had a cookie on Amazons domain, how would that enable Amazon to show me personalized ads on FB? I don't keep cookies though. So the targeting must use other types of user identification. 2: I don't have a FB app nor do I use FB on my phone. But I see ads related to the places I went to. So the flow of information must be via other channels. One part is probably Google (I use Android).

thisisit 9y ago

Given how things are taken out of context in today's media, giving a resounding Yes to an answer which requires a detailed answer is a bade idea. Congress/Senate hearings are not exactly CS101 class. So, it is better to be keeping answers short and maybe it comes off vague. Politician clue-ness on the issue also doesn't help.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

Zuckerburg is in the unenviable position of having to defend the entire ad-tech industry. If he describes in granular detail how user profiling and ad serving works on Facebook, then Facebook is going to take the hit on practices that are basically industry standards. If he obfuscates, and focuses on FB controls then he seems like a liar. If he explained how ad-tech works across the internet then it would look like whataboutism and him invoking the bandwagon fallacy. At the end of the day it seems like someone/some company is eventually going to take the fall for the whole ad-tech industry and cause major reform - is Facebook the one who's going to take the arrow?

tzahola 9y ago
Good. The whole ad-tech "industry" should be burned to the ground; the sooner the better.
- icantgoogle 9y ago
  The internet will be very different if the whole ad tech industry disappears. It will be driven largely by subscription, but I believe that is the model that Apple is encouraging.

subdane 9y ago

Facebook has to infer intent, unlike, say Google Search, which can get it directly from your keywords. FB has built a data halo around its users to try and infer that intent. Hard to imagine them ever giving you control over that additional data they collect around you, since it's their competitive advantage. But also proving to be a double edged sword because it's creeping out their users and other actors are starting to exploit it for political ends.

redleggedfrog 9y ago

Okay, I guess I'm the contrarian here, but I'm not sure why any of this is surprising, or even a problem. Facebook users signed up for a free service that allows them to communicate with other people in an enjoyable manner. Facebook even went so far as to make it so enjoyable it's addictive. Free online crack. Facebook users, you're having your fun. What would you expect Facebook to do to finance all this? They're selling the shit out of you. They sell you sideways to Sunday, then sell your Mom, too. Why would you be upset, or even surprised? Facebook should be able to do whatever they want with your data if you're gullible enough to use their free service.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
Yeah, I can't figure it out either ... what could possibly be wrong with giving drugs to an addict? They agreed to becoming an addict, so why shouldn't I profit from their inability to protect themselves?
babygoat 9y ago
You're clearly satisfied with yourself for not being a Facebook user, but your comment has no bearing on the article. Do you have an opinion on Zuckerberg refusing to admit any of this?
mindslight 9y ago
So while your point was apt at the beginning of Faceboot's existence, at this point in time most everybody has been "gullible enough to use their free service". So the only current applicability of your point that anything Faceboot does is fine based on the idea that their users have consented in perpetuity. Your point also does nothing to address the surveillance that Faceboot performs on people without accounts, or data they glean from sources other than explicit Faceboot usage.
pwinnski 9y ago
So-called "shadow profiles" are built for people who are not even Facebook users. I do not have a Facebook account, and yet my friends and family members have been prompted to tag photos of me with my name. I did not sign up for a free service. I am not a Facebook user, I'm not "having my fun." And yet Facebook has collected enough of a profile on me to recognize my face in photos and know who my friends and family are.

kerng 9y ago

Even Zuckerberg doesn't seem to know, he appears to have lost control of what's going on. Unfortunately, the hearing didn't dive into details to better demonstrate that he can't tell why somebody sees what they see, and who uses the data (inside and outside of Facebook). Also, the whole collecting data "for security purposes" is pretty unbelievable. Does that mean they share information with governments around the world? This can be interpreted as anything.

xaedes 9y ago
Well.. He did look uneasy when asked about Palantir.

Mc_Big_G 9y ago

If you're still using FB/IG/WA you're complicit.

candybar 9y ago

This particular article from Bloomberg loads (for me this time, it likely varies from one pageload to another) javascript files from these (and more, I stopped after reaching m, alphabetically) domains, many of whom are likely tracking users across sites and Bloomberg is doing so despite having no affirmative consent from me whatsoever: a.quora.com action.media6degrees.com ad.crwdcntrl.net ads.pubmatic.com ak.sail-horizon.com amplify.outbrain.com amplifypixel.outbrain.com analytics.twitter.com assets.bwbx.io bat.bing.com bcp.crwdcntrl.net cdn.perfdrive.com cdn.taboola.com cdn.teads.tv cdn.tinypass.com connect.facebook.com consent.truste.com dt.adfaceprotected.com horizon.sailthru.com in.ml314.com insight.adsrvr.org js-sec.indexww.com ml314.com ... It's important to blame the right party here - pubmatic doesn't have a relationship with you and taboola doesn't have a relationship with you - it's Bloomberg that is sending your usage data to them. The same is true when Facebook or Google pixels are loaded (I'm sure they are there) - they are not tracking you directly, the publishers that are loading those pixels are sharing your browsing information with them. The media companies, that are manufacturing lots of faux outrage of how the internet works, largely because they mistakenly believe that if not for large tech companies, they'd make more money, which is unlikely to be true, are not only complicit here, but they are far worse about their blatant misuse of user data. So however you feel about Facebook or Google or whoever happens to be on the hot seat at the moment, this is just how the internet works today and says more about the advertising ecosystem at large. The data collection also includes offline entities that are selling or at least "sharing" purchase data, gym check-in data, and so on. It's also important to realize that trying to stop this through regulations likely kills smaller publishers that cannot directly monetize their inventory with advertisers (because they are too small and cannot prove their trustworthiness) while benefiting larger entities that advertisers can reach directly. Google and Facebook don't need to load all these third-party JS because they can sell directly to advertisers. Google also happens to be an ad-tech intermediary but they don't need to be. So be careful what you wish for here - while some of these privacy regulations are, in spirit, the right path forward but the articles currently bashing Facebook largely come from writers whose salaries are paid for by selling user data without affirmative consent to anyone who's willing to pay. It's likely that the publishing world won't be able to support the same number of writers once of some of the ad-tech data pipelines are broken. It's also likely that lots of people here and elsewhere who are currently complaining about privacy are likely complicit in many ways. Salesforce? It's a tracking tool where a lot of this sensitive data ends up. Oracle? Same (through their marketing cloud). Verizon? It's also an ad-tech vendor. Random Fortune 500? They are probably both selling/sharing whatever user data while their marketing teams are busy acquiring data for their campaigns. Small technology consulting firm? If you deal with lots of data, at least some of the data you're dealing was harvested this way.