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When reading the article, was your instinctive response: "cool use of technology" or "ooooh, creepy"? This is a very large international corporation deriving a
by gerdesj 8y ago
When reading the article, was your instinctive response: "cool use of technology" or "ooooh, creepy"?
This is a very large international corporation deriving additional information about you based on something that you have shared. This is of course a major part of the very modus operandi of FB n Co. We are all dimly aware of things like shadow profiles and the like and that our mobile (cell) contacts are mined routinely and cross referenced. Our browsers spew personally identifiable info. and so do our browsing habits.
This is all very new (15 years or so) and very odd (hasn't happened before). FB, Google and all the other data miners for ads for cash pushers are a new phenomenon. These companies are massive, international and seemingly insensitive to anything that doesn't adversely affect their bottom line. Now we have an example of FB proudly attempting to patent a creepy (my term) process because it is now considered normal.
I'm not sure I like the kind of environment that allows FB to consider that sort of process as being potentially patentable. Actually I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that that sort of process being patentable is normal.
I'm going to tentatively label that sort of environment as toxic.
- buboard 8y agoI 'd say mildly cool use of technology, considering the current state of machinelearning this doesnt seem groundbreaking. the creepiness depends on how it is going to be used. As I am not a facebook user, this FB-phobia seems a little bizarre to me. I am certainly not for throwing out all tech because of possible creepiness.
- gerdesj 8y agoI'm not exactly a Luddite myself (my 4.19 Linux kernel is compiling right now) but I'm old enough to see a few trends come and go (47). I'm CREST accredited, MD with two partners and 20 employees. I do have a FB account (named as per my name here) and don't get me wrong, it is quite handy for keeping in touch and having ads blasted at me in return. OK, I use Privacy Badger, uBlock O and a few other tricks to attempt to tame the tsunami of crap. As you say, it is very much: "mildly cool use of tech." but it is also insidious and corrosive when you look at the effect it has. I am not advocating throwing out all tech (I'm fitting up Home Assistant at home right now, carefully) but I am pointing out that what is seen as normal today is not what was seen as normal a few years ago.
- titzer 8y agoA multi-national corporation should not have the technical capability to know who is and isn't in my house. Period. Same goes for foreign and domestic governments.
- buboard 8y agothe only way to not have the technical capacity is if you don't upload pictures to them.
- llampx 8y agoIf you ever have a guest who takes a photo of other guests with a family picture in the background, Facebook's algorithms can correlate all the relevant metadata automatically. Your consent is not needed.
- throwawaymath 8y agoI don't work at Facebook and I don't have a Facebook profike. But my instinctive response was, "Oh that's interesting, I wonder if they have a paper I can read about it."