4 ms·

tl;dr Guy who had researched Soylent got targeted by ads for one of their competitors, called Ample, and uses that as a basis as to why you should delete Facebo

tl;dr Guy who had researched Soylent got targeted by ads for one of their competitors, called Ample, and uses that as a basis as to why you should delete Facebook. Really? My guess is that he wound up on a page with the FB pixel as a result of a Soylent search. Ample was likely running a Lookalike audience ad. It doesn't take any sort of deep knowledge, illegal/immoral data processing, or any other of the nefarious things he is implying to make that connection. Let's remember that Ample didn't actually ever have this guy's data. An algorithm on Facebook's side said "this guy lives in San Franscisco, has lots of friends in startups, and has searched for articles related to Soylent before" and showed him an ad based on targeting parameters setup by Ample. This is all data that he voluntarily gave to Facebook. Unless he clicked on the ad and then voluntarily entered his personal information into the Ample's site, Ample does not and will never know anything about him, including whether or not he ever was shown their ad. If you want to avoid this kind of thing, unfortunately deleting Facebook is just the beginning. You'll have to never search the internet (all sites that you click on from any search engine know what you were searching for when you click over), turn off all cookies (which means you can never log in, anywhere), and disable javascript. That doesn't even begin to address the elephant in the room: your ISP knows just about everything you do. The genie is out of the bottle. Referrers are sent by browsers. The Internet works by first connecting to a network provider, which means they know everything you do. Even in the world of SSL everywhere, DNS queries provide a very telling map of your behavior. Almost all sites rely on cookies at least for login purposes, and those can be used to track your behavior. Just want to disable third party cookies? Go ahead. How long will it be until a service shows up for sites to band together and correlate their first party cookies with info about your IP and achieve the same mission? So if you're worried enough about your privacy to delete Facebook, then it's hypocritical of you to be reading this message on the Internet at all. You should not be accessing the Internet if you do not want to be tracked.

bertil 9y ago
You don’t seem to consider the possibility of having control over that data -- knowing and editing who knows what about you. I’ve been actively filtering any ad not coming from a network where I had a good knowledge and detailed access over my profile (Google and Facebook); filtering any cookie not justified by my direct usage, and it hasn’t really hampered my usage. I can’t read things on Forbes and Business Insider, but that’s hardly a loss. It doesn’t mean my information doesn’t get leaked, but it means that, starting next month (I’m in the EU) if I see an advertiser in my Spam box, or on https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ I will be able to ask how they got around our agreements and not be given evasive answers.
- downandout 9y ago
  I think you're putting far too much faith in regulation of companies outside of the EU. It hasn't yet been tested whether or not a given entity (in the US for example) will be able to be fined by the EU and actually have it enforced. While it's theoretically possible, even then, there are ways to avoid the enforcement of any such judgment. The GDPR experts I have spoken to have said that if we don't block EU traffic, as a US entity, we should simply have an LLC setup that actually owns each site we run, and have those LLCs pay 100% of their profits as a license fee to a different LLC for its content and domain. The LLC that technically operates the website can then be fined to death and the website will still exist with no actual lost revenue. There are even more effective shell games that can be played in other countries, and there many countries where no such games have to be played because they will simply not enforce EU judgments for fines under the GDPR. At this point, we've just decided to block EU traffic entirely, but others will likely just proceed as normal and not worry about these heavy-handed regulations, knowing that it is unlikely that penalties can ever actually be enforced against them.
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    > and have those LLCs pay 100% of their profits as a license fee to a different LLC for its content and domain. I think courts have ways around it if it is that clear cut : ) > There are even more effective shell games that can be played in other countries, It seems even the Irish sandwich is failing now. I'm no expert but my understanding is we have reason to be somewhat optimistic in this case.
    - downandout 9y ago
      I think courts have ways around it if it is that clear cut : ) You'd be amazed at how difficult it is to pierce the corporate veil in the most popular states for LLCs and corporations (Nevada, Delaware, etc.).
  - bertil 9y ago
    I have already reached out quite a bit, independently of legislation. When people were calling my phone in the name of a company, it’s often very ham-fisted and counter-productive for the brand; typically, they would have stale info like the name of the occupant from more than a decade prior. I generally push to ask how they got my number and if they actually work directly for them. So far, they never actually answer that one. Then, I search for the name of their Chief Marketing Officers on LinkedIn and write tho explain how I got such a bad experience. They often respond by saying that they never would cold-call people, especially not with such terrible information, so I detail that I suspect it’s a third party who they pay to bring traffic, or a local store who took the initiative. More often than not, they act on it because they realise the cost for their brand those have. I’ve been able to stop a lot of repetitive calls that way. I suspect that, if I can add up who is behind my data leaking, I can warn executive at the original company; it’s quite likely that they were not expecting the information to be sold, or re-used so transparently, or even to be confronted with it -- so I expect them to fight it internally, which should be a lot easier to enforce. Typically, for Google and Facebook Ad network, I don’t even have to do that: both let me black-list advertisers. I can only encourage everyone to do the same if some advertisers are acting suspiciously.
gaius 9y ago
My guess is that he wound up on a page with the FB pixel The existence of Facebook Pixel means there was a meeting where someone said we need to track people without them knowing, and everyone in the room nodded
- downandout 9y ago
  Do you have any idea how many third party trackers exist in the world? They were there long before Facebook, and will be there long after GDPR.

bertil 9y ago

You don’t seem to consider the possibility of having control over that data -- knowing and editing who knows what about you. I’ve been actively filtering any ad not coming from a network where I had a good knowledge and detailed access over my profile (Google and Facebook); filtering any cookie not justified by my direct usage, and it hasn’t really hampered my usage. I can’t read things on Forbes and Business Insider, but that’s hardly a loss. It doesn’t mean my information doesn’t get leaked, but it means that, starting next month (I’m in the EU) if I see an advertiser in my Spam box, or on https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ I will be able to ask how they got around our agreements and not be given evasive answers.

downandout 9y ago
I think you're putting far too much faith in regulation of companies outside of the EU. It hasn't yet been tested whether or not a given entity (in the US for example) will be able to be fined by the EU and actually have it enforced. While it's theoretically possible, even then, there are ways to avoid the enforcement of any such judgment. The GDPR experts I have spoken to have said that if we don't block EU traffic, as a US entity, we should simply have an LLC setup that actually owns each site we run, and have those LLCs pay 100% of their profits as a license fee to a different LLC for its content and domain. The LLC that technically operates the website can then be fined to death and the website will still exist with no actual lost revenue. There are even more effective shell games that can be played in other countries, and there many countries where no such games have to be played because they will simply not enforce EU judgments for fines under the GDPR. At this point, we've just decided to block EU traffic entirely, but others will likely just proceed as normal and not worry about these heavy-handed regulations, knowing that it is unlikely that penalties can ever actually be enforced against them.
- reitanqild 9y ago
  > and have those LLCs pay 100% of their profits as a license fee to a different LLC for its content and domain. I think courts have ways around it if it is that clear cut : ) > There are even more effective shell games that can be played in other countries, It seems even the Irish sandwich is failing now. I'm no expert but my understanding is we have reason to be somewhat optimistic in this case.
  - downandout 9y ago
    I think courts have ways around it if it is that clear cut : ) You'd be amazed at how difficult it is to pierce the corporate veil in the most popular states for LLCs and corporations (Nevada, Delaware, etc.).
- bertil 9y ago
  I have already reached out quite a bit, independently of legislation. When people were calling my phone in the name of a company, it’s often very ham-fisted and counter-productive for the brand; typically, they would have stale info like the name of the occupant from more than a decade prior. I generally push to ask how they got my number and if they actually work directly for them. So far, they never actually answer that one. Then, I search for the name of their Chief Marketing Officers on LinkedIn and write tho explain how I got such a bad experience. They often respond by saying that they never would cold-call people, especially not with such terrible information, so I detail that I suspect it’s a third party who they pay to bring traffic, or a local store who took the initiative. More often than not, they act on it because they realise the cost for their brand those have. I’ve been able to stop a lot of repetitive calls that way. I suspect that, if I can add up who is behind my data leaking, I can warn executive at the original company; it’s quite likely that they were not expecting the information to be sold, or re-used so transparently, or even to be confronted with it -- so I expect them to fight it internally, which should be a lot easier to enforce. Typically, for Google and Facebook Ad network, I don’t even have to do that: both let me black-list advertisers. I can only encourage everyone to do the same if some advertisers are acting suspiciously.

gaius 9y ago

My guess is that he wound up on a page with the FB pixel The existence of Facebook Pixel means there was a meeting where someone said we need to track people without them knowing, and everyone in the room nodded

downandout 9y ago
Do you have any idea how many third party trackers exist in the world? They were there long before Facebook, and will be there long after GDPR.