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see, you snuck in an entirely legitimate and factually true criticism in there: they sell our data. let's unpack that for a minute so we can put this "facebook

see, you snuck in an entirely legitimate and factually true criticism in there: they sell our data. let's unpack that for a minute so we can put this "facebook criticisms are unreasonable" meme into its grave. there's nothing non-constructive about faulting their core business practice of stealing user data and selling it against their consent and often without their knowledge whatsoever. nobody would opt into any of it if there was not the carrot of a social network provided to people well before they understood the consequences. criticizing FB in this way is a propositional statement: IF a company sells my data, THEN that company is undesirable for me to interact with. that is a 100% actionable piece of information for FB. there is no higher form of constructive criticism. FB has all the information about what people don't like. it's their job to have the information. they don't care what the users like, is the thing. they don't sell to you, you are their product. so yeah, it isn't that the constructive criticism isn't out there. it's that they rely on not hearing it and not putting it into practice.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
That’s not remotely “factually true”. Please tell me, where can I buy this user data you speak of? Do you have a Facebook URL you can share where I can spend money to buy user data? I’m especially interested in buying stolen user data from Facebook, too. So please, if you can point me to somewhere that I can buy a giant zip file of stolen user data from Facebook, that’d be awesome. I suspect what you actually mean is that I can run ads that are targeted based on aggregate user data, but that’s not even remotely the same as buying user data. It’s not even close. I can’t run ads against small audiences either, so if someone clicks on my ads I know some general stuff about them based on my campaign targeting, but I’m certainly not getting a data dump about them, there’s no way for me to identify them, etc. And none of that targeting data is “stolen”, either. It’s all provided voluntarily by the user to Facebook in accordance with their privacy policy. Your contention is probably that people would never provide that data if they knew it was going to be sold, so it’s basically “stolen”. My response would be that: a) it isn’t sold, as we established, and b) people actually don’t care that much about this. If they did, they’d actually read the damn privacy policy they agreed to. But no one does, because they don’t really care enough to be bothered.
- throwawayg6kx23 8y ago
  It's certainly true that Facebook sells access to user data! Though you're right there's no API. Facebook doesn't make it easy, the technical resourcefulness of a grey/black adtech company are required. Much of this is non-obvious, even to web-savvy technical people. > I suspect what you actually mean is that I can run ads that are targeted based on aggregate user data ... so if someone clicks on my ads I know some general stuff about them based on my campaign targeting > but I’m certainly not getting a data dump about them, there’s no way for me to identify them, etc. An effective way to personally identify someone who follows a link and loads a page (and nothing else) is through browser fingerprinting [0]. Fingerprinting is more powerful and ubiquitous than many on this site realize. So, if a greyhat adtech company has data on a person's browser fingerprint history, then the Facebook targeting data can be _easily_ associated. Browser fingerprints should really, REALLY be considered as PII because that is how they are used. The data is relatively limited, but invaluable for future ad-targeting off the Facebook platform. And, if there's already substantial information in the database on a person, the high quality Facebook data can be used for quality control for other data sources. It's a tricky problem for Facebook to solve, but they have zero incentive to try. So they don't (that I've seen). ...and then there's the data they were selling via the developer interface. If anyone thinks Cambridge Analytica is the only example of this, I have a startup to sell them. One might notice that even Facebook is now branding the CA scandal as a 'breach' rather than 'system operating as expected', because of this criticism. Facebook may not have sold access directly, but by giving developers (and dark adtech companies) such unrestricted access to the data, Facebook pumped up their platform numbers which had a relative positive effect on the company's share price. This has all been conscious on the part of Facebook leadership -- there's enough smart people at Facebook, you can bet some of them raised red flags over the years. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/now-sites-can-fingerprint-you-online-even-when-you-use-multiple-browsers/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/now-s...
- cryoshon 8y ago
  lol a) yes, it is sold, sorry. refer to the other responding comment for a concise explanation. b) irrelevant to my objection and muddying the waters of the issue. was there consent? no, not genuine consent. end of story, data was stolen.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

That’s not remotely “factually true”. Please tell me, where can I buy this user data you speak of? Do you have a Facebook URL you can share where I can spend money to buy user data? I’m especially interested in buying stolen user data from Facebook, too. So please, if you can point me to somewhere that I can buy a giant zip file of stolen user data from Facebook, that’d be awesome. I suspect what you actually mean is that I can run ads that are targeted based on aggregate user data, but that’s not even remotely the same as buying user data. It’s not even close. I can’t run ads against small audiences either, so if someone clicks on my ads I know some general stuff about them based on my campaign targeting, but I’m certainly not getting a data dump about them, there’s no way for me to identify them, etc. And none of that targeting data is “stolen”, either. It’s all provided voluntarily by the user to Facebook in accordance with their privacy policy. Your contention is probably that people would never provide that data if they knew it was going to be sold, so it’s basically “stolen”. My response would be that: a) it isn’t sold, as we established, and b) people actually don’t care that much about this. If they did, they’d actually read the damn privacy policy they agreed to. But no one does, because they don’t really care enough to be bothered.

throwawayg6kx23 8y ago
It's certainly true that Facebook sells access to user data! Though you're right there's no API. Facebook doesn't make it easy, the technical resourcefulness of a grey/black adtech company are required. Much of this is non-obvious, even to web-savvy technical people. > I suspect what you actually mean is that I can run ads that are targeted based on aggregate user data ... so if someone clicks on my ads I know some general stuff about them based on my campaign targeting > but I’m certainly not getting a data dump about them, there’s no way for me to identify them, etc. An effective way to personally identify someone who follows a link and loads a page (and nothing else) is through browser fingerprinting [0]. Fingerprinting is more powerful and ubiquitous than many on this site realize. So, if a greyhat adtech company has data on a person's browser fingerprint history, then the Facebook targeting data can be _easily_ associated. Browser fingerprints should really, REALLY be considered as PII because that is how they are used. The data is relatively limited, but invaluable for future ad-targeting off the Facebook platform. And, if there's already substantial information in the database on a person, the high quality Facebook data can be used for quality control for other data sources. It's a tricky problem for Facebook to solve, but they have zero incentive to try. So they don't (that I've seen). ...and then there's the data they were selling via the developer interface. If anyone thinks Cambridge Analytica is the only example of this, I have a startup to sell them. One might notice that even Facebook is now branding the CA scandal as a 'breach' rather than 'system operating as expected', because of this criticism. Facebook may not have sold access directly, but by giving developers (and dark adtech companies) such unrestricted access to the data, Facebook pumped up their platform numbers which had a relative positive effect on the company's share price. This has all been conscious on the part of Facebook leadership -- there's enough smart people at Facebook, you can bet some of them raised red flags over the years. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/now-sites-can-fingerprint-you-online-even-when-you-use-multiple-browsers/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/now-s...
cryoshon 8y ago
lol a) yes, it is sold, sorry. refer to the other responding comment for a concise explanation. b) irrelevant to my objection and muddying the waters of the issue. was there consent? no, not genuine consent. end of story, data was stolen.