13 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Down to Users and Misses the Point

344 points by panarky 8y ago

kakaorka 8y ago
Facebook will not change anything until it is forced to. It simply is in their best interest to disregard their users privacy just like they currently are doing.
- est31 8y ago
  Yup. It's their business model. The "users want relevant ads" is just a convenient lie that they can tell... with much less data you can do ads that are still highly relevant. But maybe you can't sell them any more, and maybe that's where Facebook is making a lot of money from. Of course, officially they claim to be not in the selling business, but that's a lie. They happily rent out their ad space to people who use the ads to collect those data.
  - throwaway123mmm 8y ago
    It's not a lie. You have to understand that the majority does not think like you and actually appreciates targetted ads (me included).
    - asdff 8y ago
      >the majority I really wonder if that is the case. Here are some numbers from popular adblockers on the chrome extension store: "Adblocker for Chrome - NoAds" - 6,545,443 users "AdGuard AdBlocker" - 5,611,340 users "Adblocker Genesis Plus" - 236,373 users "Fair AdBlocker" - 1,922,094 users "Adblock Plus - free ad blocker" - 10,000,000+ users (Google stopped counting, apparently, but their page description boasts over 500m users) "Ublock origin" - 10,000,000+ users These are all huge numbers of people who are going out of their way to install software to never see an ad on the internet. There are probably many more people who share the same disdain for ads but don't know about adblockers, and there is likely a chunk of users who might not care very much either way. I think it's safe to say that the proportion of people who genuinely appreciate targeted advertising on the internet is pretty small.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
This is a man who regards his users as "Dumb fucks". No one should be surprised.
- dylan604 8y ago
  Zuck: "There's not such thing as privacy any more" Zuck: Buy all of the houses in my neighborhood so I can have privacy.
  - anticensor 8y ago
    Said in different times, taken out of context. He realised he needs privacy after he married and had children.
- WilliamEdward 8y ago
  Cannot believe this is being downvoted. "Dumb fucks" is a direct quote from Zuckerberg that he said himself.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    1) The quote gets repeated every time Zuckerberg is discussed. There's just nothing new or interesting about it. 2) How do you think you'd fare if you were held accountable - with or without the full context being understood - for every casual private utterance you made at the age of 19? If you think you'd come out well, you'd have to be an extreme outlier, given that neuroscience tells us the parts of the brain that control rational decision-making don't fully develop until about age 25. Criticise Zuckerberg and Facebook all you like, but let's do it based on current behaviour, not that of someone who was barely more than a child.
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
      It doesn't have to be new, it doesn't have to be interesting, it has to be enough, in context of something that matters enough. And it's not just any old random private utterance, either. Did he ever own up to it? If not, it's still relevant. We're not talking about something that someone since acknowledged and made right, but which is still brought up even though they totally changed. > Criticise Zuckerberg and Facebook all you like, but let's do it based on current behaviour Feel free to, it's not like there isn't plenty of material there. But don't say "let's X" because you can't make the case that someone "shouldn't not-X". > the brain that control rational decision-making don't fully develop until about age 25 What does rational decision-making have to do with any of this? That might help someone who is a scumbag with not hiding it better, but the criticism has to to with empathy and moral development, which starts at early age. And "fully developed" is just a weasel word in this context either way, "sufficiently developed" I could see. But if you seriously want to claim everybody has in their life said things of that caliber (rather than first generalizing it into "things we would be ashamed to repeat"), I for one would take you up on that in a heartbeat. I hated people who exploit the ignorance or stupidity of others since I can remember, since grade school at least. I still said nasty things during my life I would be ashamed to repeat, but never from a position of actually deceiving or exploiting someone, not to mention dozens or even hundreds of people. Either that's true for most people, then you're utterly wrong, or I'm an exception, then I should get a prize for being such an exceptionally decent person. "Talking shit" about people is not the same as mocking them during, after and before you actually do victimize them, and forgiving people things they didn't even repent of isn't that noble either.
diogenescynic 8y ago
The real question is whether Facebook is the worst invention of all time, or just of the past 100 years.
dkkdjfjdjfjj 8y ago
Lol. I don’t want relevant ads. I want no ads.
thoughtstheseus 8y ago
Users prefer no ads... these business models are crazy, why would anyone want to use a platform where every minute someone is trying to sell you something.
- briandear 8y ago
  Try to get normal people to pay to use Facebook and your theory would be disproven. Of course users prefer no ads! But most users prefer free a whole lot more.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    I think there was an article about someone out bidding the ad placement slots so they could browse in peace, seems like that might work.
- SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
  Most of the US still buys cable TV, even though ad free streaming sites are cheaper and widely known. The average person really doesn’t care about ads.
  - dylan604 8y ago
    How many use their DVR to skip those ads vs watching live?
    - SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
      The statistics I've seen indicate only about half of households that have a TV have a DVR. (And of course, not all households that have a DVR will fast forward through every ad.)
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    US consumers were initially sold on cable TV when they were told that because they'd be paying for it, there wouldn't be any ads. That was forgotten quickly, proving that collectively consumers are about as smart as a box of rocks.
kfkdkfkfn 8y ago
I wonder how many Facebook employees are lurking on hacker new, ready to downvote people that speak badly of facebook. I once had a comment on Facebook that got flagged that ended up with a ton of upvotes after it was clear it a genuine comment.
- delhanty 8y ago
  >that got flagged that ended up with a ton of upvotes after it was clear it a genuine comment. That happened to me too! I'm happy that HN has the flagging feature, but I suspect that feature is being abused in an organized way by rings to hide comments that run counter to certain vested interests.
- 6cd6beb 8y ago
  An important thing to note is that whether facebook has employees doing this or not, there's no shortage of services for hire that will do this for anyone. Literally any social media site that's popular is guaranteed to have accounts whose influence is for sale.
  - ppod 8y ago
    While this is true, just for a second consider on which side the groupthink in these comments falls. The mentality that anyone who disagrees with you must be "brigading" or a paid shill is very dangerous. It's also a consistent sign of the lowest quality debate on both sides --- everyone thinks everyone else is a Soros/Mercer/Russian/Clinton shill or bot.
    - kekrjfjd 8y ago
      While I agree with your premise, I don’t think it applies in this case. It is good that people are more weary of what they read online. For one, the internet is rarely the source of truth. There are too many bad actors around. Second, if someone disagrees with a comment, they should reply to that comment with another well thought out comment. Downvoted and flagging require no effort and is an emotional reaction more than a logical argument. This can be gamed easily. Upvotes and downvotes are unhelpful in that herd mentality can easily game the system. Flagging people’s genuine comment is bad faith and has nothing to do with disagreement.
falcor84 8y ago
> Over a quarter of respondents said the categories “do not very or at all accurately represent them.” Wow, I actually find this to be much more impressive on Facebook's side than what I had imagined. So that means that Facebook has personalized ads categories so accurate that 3 out of 4 users themselves rate them as very accurately representing them 3. That's close to 2 billion users being precisely targeted, right? I find this to be extremely disconcerting.
- kbsletten 8y ago
  That's generally not how things go. I don't know the details of this exact thing, but generally there will be two "very yes" responses, a "kinda yes", a "kinda no", and to "very no". You throw out all the "kinda"s and pay attention to the "very"s. 25% "very no" is a serious black eye, it's probably like 60% "kinda"s.
  - Deimorz 8y ago
    The breakdown is here: http://www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-algorithms-and-personal-data/pi_2019-01-16_facebook-algorithms_0-04/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-algorithms-an... 13% "Very accurately" 46% "Somewhat accurately" 22% "Not very accurately" 5% "Not at all accurately" (and 3% Refused, 11% Not assigned categories)
    - falcor84 8y ago
      As someone who studied some formal logic and some psychology, I have to say that providing the "Not very accurately" option is both bad logic and bad research methodology.
crazygringo 8y ago
> He starts with one of his greatest hits: “People consistently tell us that if they’re going to see ads, they want them to be relevant.” This perpetuates the ad industry’s favorite false dichotomy: either consumers can have “relevant” ads—targeted using huge collections of sensitive behavioral data—or they can be bombarded by spam for knock-off Viagra and weight-loss supplements. The truth is that ads can be made “relevant” and profitable based on the context in which they’re shown, like putting ads for outdoor gear in a nature magazine. I disagree, it's not a false dichotomy, it's a real one. Most Internet content isn't nearly as "contextual" as a nature magazine. Probably 99% of the content I read won't help target ads much at all, because it's mostly NYT news articles and the like. I'm probably in a tiny minority here on HN, but I accept that ads are currently necessary to fund companies (even though I wish it weren't true), and I genuinely prefer ads targeted towards my interests (I've gone so far as to customize my interests on Google to help it serve me more relevant ads -- most of them were accurate but there were a handful that weren't). Targeting obviously isn't always perfect -- they still don't have the kink ironed out where I keep seeing ads for something on Amazon even after I bought the thing or a similar thing -- but it really does benefit users, if they've got to put up with ads in the first place.
- cobookman 8y ago
  +100 I love ads that give me relevant new information. Linus tech tips is a great example of this. Some of his reviews are paid sponsorships, however the info is still relevant. Same goes for Casey neistats review of the diji drones.
  - beezischillin 8y ago
    The thing is that Linus has been pretty visionary about when it comes to the state of the internet and creators and when YouTube first started shafting creators he began to look for an alternative way to monetise his content. That's why he weathered the whole BS-carousel around advertising on YouTube pretty well. He's built a brand based on sponsorships inside the tech industry, a brand where they take care to only lend their name to brands and products that are worth it. I would wager they put a lot of work into selecting what paid product features to do or not. There still is a bit of a difference between sponsored spots in their videos and general upset about the internet advertising industry, however. I will always gave him a lot of credit for that. It's not possible for all creators to do the same, but the ones that can should follow his example for everyone's benefit.
rixrax 8y ago
Lawmakers should probably ban and break up FB as harmful, just like we do with some controlled substances and other things. But the scary thought is that in this unlikely scenario (or in bankruptcy), what would happen to all the data they hoard? Sold to highest bidder maybe? Published under Creative Commons license? #toomuchdatatofail?
- tyfon 8y ago
  One of the problems with that is that the politicians are now dependant on facebook to promote themselves. Where I live there is a ban on political ads on TV and I hope it's extended to facebook pages and general internet ads too. But since those in charge are addicted it's probably not going to happen until facebook shafts them directly in some way.
  - ardy42 8y ago
    > But since those in charge are addicted it's probably not going to happen until facebook shafts them directly in some way. I think the 2016 US presidential election actually started to do that: Democrats have become critical of Facebook due to Russian trolls and pro-Trump fake news, and Republicans have become critical due to the perception that "California liberals" may start deciding to suppress conservative idea on one of the widest-reaching mass media platforms.
- jasonlfunk 8y ago
  Nonsense. Why should the government ban Facebook? Unlike a lot of industries that consumers must use, Facebook is 100% optional. If you don't like what Facebook does, close your account and tell your friends to do the same. But if others want to use the services that Facebook offers, who are you to tell them that they can't?
  - rixrax 8y ago
    So is using crack cocaine and meth. And somehow we chose to ban their use. And probably should tell our friends be highly suspicious of using them. This is age old conversation about how much government should protect people from themselves.
makecheck 8y ago
At this point it’s safe to say that much of the data Facebook has was acquired in ways that are questionable, and that between their treasure troves and data leaks from other companies it’s impossible to get the cat back in the bag. Simply put, your data, in current formats, is out there and it’s not under control at all. After breaking up Facebook and punishing credit agencies whose job it was to secure data, the only path forward I see is to introduce new data formats for all the things we took for granted and push hard for the adoption of those replacements. (Facebook has all your pictures; well, do they have them in $NEW_KEYED_IMAGE_FORMAT that has your new revocable authorized keys injected by modern cameras? Facebook has your phone number; well, do they have a new 2nd-factor token that makes the phone number useless without the token? Facebook has your full name; too bad, the government has moved on to a new system that requires several new government-issued identity tokens that Facebook can’t have, making them unable to correlate your name with other aspects of your modern identity. And so forth.) Ruin it all. Make every single spec of data useless.
- floe 8y ago
  >Facebook has your phone number; well, do they have a new 2nd-factor token that makes the phone number useless without the token? Useless? They already used it to infer my social graph by correlating it with my friends' contact lists. They don't really care if now there's a new token needed to actually call me. I guess I'm saying that we can patch our problems with ID and authorization, like you're suggesting, but privacy harms go way beyond just that.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
Ok, let's talk about the business model involved in detail, starting with the decision process of a typical ad buyer. It starts with the value of a sale or conversion - say, your company makes $100 with each mattress they sell. You can then extrapolate based off past data how many people you need to do specific upstream events in order to get that sale. Say, 100 people need to view your website. Something like that. So you turn around to some web advertising platform and buy an ad, and you spend something like $30 dollars to buy however many website visits it takes to drive one sale, and after adding a generous fudge factor to take into account all the uncertainty and mis-attribution you expect you wind up with a profit. There's both cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand-impressions pricing, but both end up feeding into "buy $X of advertising, which flows through our sale funnel resulting in $Y of profit, and $X is much less than $Y" at the end of the day. Why do these advertising platforms collect data? So that instead of a generic "show this ad to whoever visits the website", you can break viewers into different categories and sell those instead. If it takes 100 website visits from a generic user to drive a sale, maybe it takes 50 instead if they just performed a search for a mattress. Or if it takes 200 impressions to get a click-through, maybe it takes 100 if it's done from a specific geographic area. Or if you end up selling to a specific job title, the SaaS contract tends to be more expensive. Whatever it is, certain slices of traffic are more valuable to the ad buyer, so this ends up flowing through to the advertiser's return-on-ad-spend math, which flows into higher ad bids. And so the advertising platforms collect a lot of data, so that when a user can be shown an ad, the platform can figure out what targeting options allow them to make the most money. If you follow the math again back the other way through, it implies that there's a pretty powerful constraint on how relevant advertising can be to you. Specifically, the pure relevancy metric will get skewed by the producer surplus for converting a sale to you: doubling how likely you are to convert is just as relevant to the business math as doubling how much money is made off your conversion. A system that maximizes relevance of ads will not maximize advertising platform income, since it would fail to prefer a five-figure programming job placement fee over a $10 tee-shirt, and the difference in conversion value flows through to a difference in advertising bids. From a public policy perspective, I'm pretty pessimistic about preventing these privacy issues. There's simply too much of an incentive to section out users into specific cohorts and sell access to them to the highest bidder. In other words, privacy-violating targeting is such a big deal because targeting works - it reliably convinces people to take courses of action that result in more producer surplus in the hands of the producer of the good advertised. The only saving grace is that for certain products, it'd only change which company gets the producer surplus, rather than convincing you to push more producer surplus into corporate pockets.
3xblah 8y ago
"People consistently tell us that if they're going to see ads, they want them to be relevant." "If". This is a conditional sentence. What if the condition is not met? What if they want to avoid ads? What do they tell FB when asked "Ads or no ads, free or small fee, which would you prefer?" I suspect the participants in Facebook's questioning were not asked that question. Or, if they were, FB is not going to use the results in their PR and lobbying efforts. There is a slogan one might see on the FB homepage, something like: "Facebook is free and always will be." As if the user's primary concern would be that they would sometime have to pay for using FB. (Not privacy or the security of their personal information.) The slogan raises more questions than it answers. If FB is "free" forever, then who covers the operating costs of FB? Where does Zuckerberg's fortune come from? Who finances the next FB acquisition of a perceived competitor or their risky bets chasing "the next big thing"? If it isn't you the user who is about to sign up or sign in, then how much does your opinion matter to FB? Wouldn't it stand to reason that FB would be catering to whomever is paying the bills for FB? (Not you.) FB is not free for them. Of course investors and advertisers paying FB expect something in return for their payments. They are not paying into FB's accounts just to keep FB afloat. They are not paying FB simply to sustain a website and apps for people to share photos, video, messages. (And that is probably all users want or need. They certainly never told FB they wanted data collection, monitoring and manipulation of their online behaviour, nor advertisements.) Assuming FB has covered its operating costs, then whatever it is that FB must then deliver -- i.e. not the webpage and apps to help people to communicate, but the data collection, monitoring, manipulation, etc. -- comes at a further cost, not necessarily a monetary one. The question is, "Who bears it?" I think it is becoming clear that this "cost" is more than simply "attention" or "time". There are serious impacts FB's work is having on an enormous number of people. The jury is still out on whether this is a net positive or a net negative.
- tchaffee 8y ago
  "If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. You are the product."
  - anticensor 8y ago
    We are not a product either. We are just a subject as in a kingdom. Our behaviour is the product.
Meekro 8y ago
Google is in a great position here-- if the EFF gets everything they want in terms of privacy, Google can still show ads relevant to my current search query without remembering my search history. But what would they suggest Facebook do instead of tracking? What ads are they supposed to show me if they're not allowed to remember things about me? There's nothing analogous to "outdoor gear in a nature magazine" that they could do instead. I just looked through my Facebook Ad Preferences as the article suggested, and there's nothing there that would shock me. Yes, they know that I have an older model iPhone because I've used it to access their website. They know I'm a frequent traveler because they remember what IPs I've accessed their website from. They know that I'm recently married, and which zip code I live in because I told them those things. Using my zip code and some public records that anyone could Google, they can make a good guess about my race and income level. None of this is very scary because they only know what my friends and I told them about me. They can't read my email or listen to my phone calls. Speaking of which, does anyone remember Edward Snowden? Remember when we were (rightfully) angry about NSA surveillance, the thing that does read your email and listen to your phone calls whether you consent or not, and the thing that you can't opt out of by deleting an app on your phone? They never stopped spying on us when the outrage machine moved on, and all this Facebook stuff seems petty by comparison.
- floe 8y ago
  >But what would they suggest Facebook do instead of tracking? Why do they need to care whether Facebook is successful?
  - dralley 8y ago
    They don't. Facebook can join the club everyone else is in - having to get by on standard ads... or pioneer a new business model that makes it possible. I'm not going to cry over Facebook making a few billion less considering the degree to which traditional journalism has been demolished by the reduced margins on internet advertising, and how much they encourage spreading clickbait and misinformation. I'm not sure Twitter needs to exist, either.
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
Zuck knows the average Facebook use is a "fucking dumbass", hence this is nothing more than his way of pacifying the herds. To give up precise targeting is to leave a lot of money on the table and a drop in share value. There won't be any drastic changes any time soon.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  I see the FB drones are out in waves downvoting comments. Pathetic.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
I honestly don't care about certain tracking- if Facebook knows that I talk about tea with someone, I do not mind receiving ads about tea. I strongly mind ads that are targeted for demographics, especially real estate or insurance ads whose targeted demographics explicitly exclude minorities or something. That really worries me, and the amount of data Facebook has about a person really opens up the door for discriminatory advertising.
- ams6110 8y ago
  There are many legitimate reasons to target ads demographically, e.g. I'm trying to sell certain hair care products to people of African descent, or any number of feminine products to younger women, or Viagra to older men. Even in something like real estate it can be valid, e.g. advertising a condo in a retirement community to people over age 50.
- nhqt 8y ago
  I live in a white country so I don't know how this works, but why is this that important in the US? Isn't it normal that realtors don't want to bring prices down by inviting non-whites? How is it their fault?
Barrin92 8y ago
You know the thing I don't get about this is, Mark says that he didn't plan to build a global company and wants to connect the world and serve people and all of that, but he could do that right now. All the things that people don't like about Facebook, he could get flatout rid of it. If he really cares about making the world a better place and cut some profits, that can happen right now. I find it comical that Mark thinks targeted ads are even the controversial part. We have children gambling their parents money away, data landing in the hands of Russian psyops campaigns, political violence in the developing world being organised etc.. If targeted advertisement was the most concerning thing coming out of Facebook that'd be a great improvement. And yet they're not even able to get rid of 'friendly fraud'.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  Wait, why are you taking what he says at face value? Why is anybody? He doesnt care. He. Does. Not. Care. He's just saying what he needs to, just like anybody else in his position trying to protect his business.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    I mean, throwing our arms up and walking out of the room isn't going to make companies like Facebook better either. So instead of being just cynical I think everyone who works in tech, or has some influence in tech should just keep pressuring people to live up to their word. I don't think all tech leaders are evil and I do think Facebook has legitimate use cases, so might as well advocate to at least get rid of the worst aspects than just skip the debate altogether.
    - jplayer01 8y ago
      I'm not saying we shouldn't hold Zuckerberg accountable. We absolutely should. But we shouldn't be measuring him by what he says. What he says is just a bunch of hot air. There are plenty of values worth protecting that doesn't rely on him being true to his word (which is worth less than zero, it's actively harmful).
  - 8y ago
johnchristopher 8y ago
> The truth is that ads can be made “relevant” and profitable based on the context in which they’re shown, like putting ads for outdoor gear in a nature magazine. The other truth is that a nature magazine that relies on outdoor gear ads to operate is a conflict of interest. I remember talking with a chief-editor of a 90's video game magazine: "It's better for us and our readers to see ads for shampoo, cars or food than video game ads. Less pressure.".
0xfffff 8y ago
I uninstalled all Facebook appps but WhatsApp so far - but with recent happenings and announcements around WhatsApp, it needs to go too. Its a bummer, since i always liked it a lot.
rblion 8y ago
The media is relentless. What if they are projecting their fears?
mathdog 8y ago
sdfsd

344 points by panarky 8y ago

Facebook will not change anything until it is forced to. It simply is in their best interest to disregard their users privacy just like they currently are doing.

est31 8y ago
Yup. It's their business model. The "users want relevant ads" is just a convenient lie that they can tell... with much less data you can do ads that are still highly relevant. But maybe you can't sell them any more, and maybe that's where Facebook is making a lot of money from. Of course, officially they claim to be not in the selling business, but that's a lie. They happily rent out their ad space to people who use the ads to collect those data.
- throwaway123mmm 8y ago
  It's not a lie. You have to understand that the majority does not think like you and actually appreciates targetted ads (me included).
  - asdff 8y ago
    >the majority I really wonder if that is the case. Here are some numbers from popular adblockers on the chrome extension store: "Adblocker for Chrome - NoAds" - 6,545,443 users "AdGuard AdBlocker" - 5,611,340 users "Adblocker Genesis Plus" - 236,373 users "Fair AdBlocker" - 1,922,094 users "Adblock Plus - free ad blocker" - 10,000,000+ users (Google stopped counting, apparently, but their page description boasts over 500m users) "Ublock origin" - 10,000,000+ users These are all huge numbers of people who are going out of their way to install software to never see an ad on the internet. There are probably many more people who share the same disdain for ads but don't know about adblockers, and there is likely a chunk of users who might not care very much either way. I think it's safe to say that the proportion of people who genuinely appreciate targeted advertising on the internet is pretty small.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

This is a man who regards his users as "Dumb fucks". No one should be surprised.

dylan604 8y ago
Zuck: "There's not such thing as privacy any more" Zuck: Buy all of the houses in my neighborhood so I can have privacy.
- anticensor 8y ago
  Said in different times, taken out of context. He realised he needs privacy after he married and had children.
WilliamEdward 8y ago
Cannot believe this is being downvoted. "Dumb fucks" is a direct quote from Zuckerberg that he said himself.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  1) The quote gets repeated every time Zuckerberg is discussed. There's just nothing new or interesting about it. 2) How do you think you'd fare if you were held accountable - with or without the full context being understood - for every casual private utterance you made at the age of 19? If you think you'd come out well, you'd have to be an extreme outlier, given that neuroscience tells us the parts of the brain that control rational decision-making don't fully develop until about age 25. Criticise Zuckerberg and Facebook all you like, but let's do it based on current behaviour, not that of someone who was barely more than a child.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    It doesn't have to be new, it doesn't have to be interesting, it has to be enough, in context of something that matters enough. And it's not just any old random private utterance, either. Did he ever own up to it? If not, it's still relevant. We're not talking about something that someone since acknowledged and made right, but which is still brought up even though they totally changed. > Criticise Zuckerberg and Facebook all you like, but let's do it based on current behaviour Feel free to, it's not like there isn't plenty of material there. But don't say "let's X" because you can't make the case that someone "shouldn't not-X". > the brain that control rational decision-making don't fully develop until about age 25 What does rational decision-making have to do with any of this? That might help someone who is a scumbag with not hiding it better, but the criticism has to to with empathy and moral development, which starts at early age. And "fully developed" is just a weasel word in this context either way, "sufficiently developed" I could see. But if you seriously want to claim everybody has in their life said things of that caliber (rather than first generalizing it into "things we would be ashamed to repeat"), I for one would take you up on that in a heartbeat. I hated people who exploit the ignorance or stupidity of others since I can remember, since grade school at least. I still said nasty things during my life I would be ashamed to repeat, but never from a position of actually deceiving or exploiting someone, not to mention dozens or even hundreds of people. Either that's true for most people, then you're utterly wrong, or I'm an exception, then I should get a prize for being such an exceptionally decent person. "Talking shit" about people is not the same as mocking them during, after and before you actually do victimize them, and forgiving people things they didn't even repent of isn't that noble either.

diogenescynic 8y ago

The real question is whether Facebook is the worst invention of all time, or just of the past 100 years.

dkkdjfjdjfjj 8y ago

Lol. I don’t want relevant ads. I want no ads.

thoughtstheseus 8y ago

Users prefer no ads... these business models are crazy, why would anyone want to use a platform where every minute someone is trying to sell you something.

briandear 8y ago
Try to get normal people to pay to use Facebook and your theory would be disproven. Of course users prefer no ads! But most users prefer free a whole lot more.
- chillacy 8y ago
  I think there was an article about someone out bidding the ad placement slots so they could browse in peace, seems like that might work.
SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
Most of the US still buys cable TV, even though ad free streaming sites are cheaper and widely known. The average person really doesn’t care about ads.
- dylan604 8y ago
  How many use their DVR to skip those ads vs watching live?
  - SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
    The statistics I've seen indicate only about half of households that have a TV have a DVR. (And of course, not all households that have a DVR will fast forward through every ad.)
- darkpuma 8y ago
  US consumers were initially sold on cable TV when they were told that because they'd be paying for it, there wouldn't be any ads. That was forgotten quickly, proving that collectively consumers are about as smart as a box of rocks.

kfkdkfkfn 8y ago

I wonder how many Facebook employees are lurking on hacker new, ready to downvote people that speak badly of facebook. I once had a comment on Facebook that got flagged that ended up with a ton of upvotes after it was clear it a genuine comment.

delhanty 8y ago
>that got flagged that ended up with a ton of upvotes after it was clear it a genuine comment. That happened to me too! I'm happy that HN has the flagging feature, but I suspect that feature is being abused in an organized way by rings to hide comments that run counter to certain vested interests.
6cd6beb 8y ago
An important thing to note is that whether facebook has employees doing this or not, there's no shortage of services for hire that will do this for anyone. Literally any social media site that's popular is guaranteed to have accounts whose influence is for sale.
- ppod 8y ago
  While this is true, just for a second consider on which side the groupthink in these comments falls. The mentality that anyone who disagrees with you must be "brigading" or a paid shill is very dangerous. It's also a consistent sign of the lowest quality debate on both sides --- everyone thinks everyone else is a Soros/Mercer/Russian/Clinton shill or bot.
  - kekrjfjd 8y ago
    While I agree with your premise, I don’t think it applies in this case. It is good that people are more weary of what they read online. For one, the internet is rarely the source of truth. There are too many bad actors around. Second, if someone disagrees with a comment, they should reply to that comment with another well thought out comment. Downvoted and flagging require no effort and is an emotional reaction more than a logical argument. This can be gamed easily. Upvotes and downvotes are unhelpful in that herd mentality can easily game the system. Flagging people’s genuine comment is bad faith and has nothing to do with disagreement.

falcor84 8y ago

> Over a quarter of respondents said the categories “do not very or at all accurately represent them.” Wow, I actually find this to be much more impressive on Facebook's side than what I had imagined. So that means that Facebook has personalized ads categories so accurate that 3 out of 4 users themselves rate them as very accurately representing them 3. That's close to 2 billion users being precisely targeted, right? I find this to be extremely disconcerting.

kbsletten 8y ago
That's generally not how things go. I don't know the details of this exact thing, but generally there will be two "very yes" responses, a "kinda yes", a "kinda no", and to "very no". You throw out all the "kinda"s and pay attention to the "very"s. 25% "very no" is a serious black eye, it's probably like 60% "kinda"s.
- Deimorz 8y ago
  The breakdown is here: http://www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-algorithms-and-personal-data/pi_2019-01-16_facebook-algorithms_0-04/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-algorithms-an... 13% "Very accurately" 46% "Somewhat accurately" 22% "Not very accurately" 5% "Not at all accurately" (and 3% Refused, 11% Not assigned categories)
  - falcor84 8y ago
    As someone who studied some formal logic and some psychology, I have to say that providing the "Not very accurately" option is both bad logic and bad research methodology.

crazygringo 8y ago

> He starts with one of his greatest hits: “People consistently tell us that if they’re going to see ads, they want them to be relevant.” This perpetuates the ad industry’s favorite false dichotomy: either consumers can have “relevant” ads—targeted using huge collections of sensitive behavioral data—or they can be bombarded by spam for knock-off Viagra and weight-loss supplements. The truth is that ads can be made “relevant” and profitable based on the context in which they’re shown, like putting ads for outdoor gear in a nature magazine. I disagree, it's not a false dichotomy, it's a real one. Most Internet content isn't nearly as "contextual" as a nature magazine. Probably 99% of the content I read won't help target ads much at all, because it's mostly NYT news articles and the like. I'm probably in a tiny minority here on HN, but I accept that ads are currently necessary to fund companies (even though I wish it weren't true), and I genuinely prefer ads targeted towards my interests (I've gone so far as to customize my interests on Google to help it serve me more relevant ads -- most of them were accurate but there were a handful that weren't). Targeting obviously isn't always perfect -- they still don't have the kink ironed out where I keep seeing ads for something on Amazon even after I bought the thing or a similar thing -- but it really does benefit users, if they've got to put up with ads in the first place.

cobookman 8y ago
+100 I love ads that give me relevant new information. Linus tech tips is a great example of this. Some of his reviews are paid sponsorships, however the info is still relevant. Same goes for Casey neistats review of the diji drones.
- beezischillin 8y ago
  The thing is that Linus has been pretty visionary about when it comes to the state of the internet and creators and when YouTube first started shafting creators he began to look for an alternative way to monetise his content. That's why he weathered the whole BS-carousel around advertising on YouTube pretty well. He's built a brand based on sponsorships inside the tech industry, a brand where they take care to only lend their name to brands and products that are worth it. I would wager they put a lot of work into selecting what paid product features to do or not. There still is a bit of a difference between sponsored spots in their videos and general upset about the internet advertising industry, however. I will always gave him a lot of credit for that. It's not possible for all creators to do the same, but the ones that can should follow his example for everyone's benefit.

rixrax 8y ago

Lawmakers should probably ban and break up FB as harmful, just like we do with some controlled substances and other things. But the scary thought is that in this unlikely scenario (or in bankruptcy), what would happen to all the data they hoard? Sold to highest bidder maybe? Published under Creative Commons license? #toomuchdatatofail?

tyfon 8y ago
One of the problems with that is that the politicians are now dependant on facebook to promote themselves. Where I live there is a ban on political ads on TV and I hope it's extended to facebook pages and general internet ads too. But since those in charge are addicted it's probably not going to happen until facebook shafts them directly in some way.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > But since those in charge are addicted it's probably not going to happen until facebook shafts them directly in some way. I think the 2016 US presidential election actually started to do that: Democrats have become critical of Facebook due to Russian trolls and pro-Trump fake news, and Republicans have become critical due to the perception that "California liberals" may start deciding to suppress conservative idea on one of the widest-reaching mass media platforms.
jasonlfunk 8y ago
Nonsense. Why should the government ban Facebook? Unlike a lot of industries that consumers must use, Facebook is 100% optional. If you don't like what Facebook does, close your account and tell your friends to do the same. But if others want to use the services that Facebook offers, who are you to tell them that they can't?
- rixrax 8y ago
  So is using crack cocaine and meth. And somehow we chose to ban their use. And probably should tell our friends be highly suspicious of using them. This is age old conversation about how much government should protect people from themselves.

makecheck 8y ago

At this point it’s safe to say that much of the data Facebook has was acquired in ways that are questionable, and that between their treasure troves and data leaks from other companies it’s impossible to get the cat back in the bag. Simply put, your data, in current formats, is out there and it’s not under control at all. After breaking up Facebook and punishing credit agencies whose job it was to secure data, the only path forward I see is to introduce new data formats for all the things we took for granted and push hard for the adoption of those replacements. (Facebook has all your pictures; well, do they have them in $NEW_KEYED_IMAGE_FORMAT that has your new revocable authorized keys injected by modern cameras? Facebook has your phone number; well, do they have a new 2nd-factor token that makes the phone number useless without the token? Facebook has your full name; too bad, the government has moved on to a new system that requires several new government-issued identity tokens that Facebook can’t have, making them unable to correlate your name with other aspects of your modern identity. And so forth.) Ruin it all. Make every single spec of data useless.

floe 8y ago
>Facebook has your phone number; well, do they have a new 2nd-factor token that makes the phone number useless without the token? Useless? They already used it to infer my social graph by correlating it with my friends' contact lists. They don't really care if now there's a new token needed to actually call me. I guess I'm saying that we can patch our problems with ID and authorization, like you're suggesting, but privacy harms go way beyond just that.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago

Ok, let's talk about the business model involved in detail, starting with the decision process of a typical ad buyer. It starts with the value of a sale or conversion - say, your company makes $100 with each mattress they sell. You can then extrapolate based off past data how many people you need to do specific upstream events in order to get that sale. Say, 100 people need to view your website. Something like that. So you turn around to some web advertising platform and buy an ad, and you spend something like $30 dollars to buy however many website visits it takes to drive one sale, and after adding a generous fudge factor to take into account all the uncertainty and mis-attribution you expect you wind up with a profit. There's both cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand-impressions pricing, but both end up feeding into "buy $X of advertising, which flows through our sale funnel resulting in $Y of profit, and $X is much less than $Y" at the end of the day. Why do these advertising platforms collect data? So that instead of a generic "show this ad to whoever visits the website", you can break viewers into different categories and sell those instead. If it takes 100 website visits from a generic user to drive a sale, maybe it takes 50 instead if they just performed a search for a mattress. Or if it takes 200 impressions to get a click-through, maybe it takes 100 if it's done from a specific geographic area. Or if you end up selling to a specific job title, the SaaS contract tends to be more expensive. Whatever it is, certain slices of traffic are more valuable to the ad buyer, so this ends up flowing through to the advertiser's return-on-ad-spend math, which flows into higher ad bids. And so the advertising platforms collect a lot of data, so that when a user can be shown an ad, the platform can figure out what targeting options allow them to make the most money. If you follow the math again back the other way through, it implies that there's a pretty powerful constraint on how relevant advertising can be to you. Specifically, the pure relevancy metric will get skewed by the producer surplus for converting a sale to you: doubling how likely you are to convert is just as relevant to the business math as doubling how much money is made off your conversion. A system that maximizes relevance of ads will not maximize advertising platform income, since it would fail to prefer a five-figure programming job placement fee over a $10 tee-shirt, and the difference in conversion value flows through to a difference in advertising bids. From a public policy perspective, I'm pretty pessimistic about preventing these privacy issues. There's simply too much of an incentive to section out users into specific cohorts and sell access to them to the highest bidder. In other words, privacy-violating targeting is such a big deal because targeting works - it reliably convinces people to take courses of action that result in more producer surplus in the hands of the producer of the good advertised. The only saving grace is that for certain products, it'd only change which company gets the producer surplus, rather than convincing you to push more producer surplus into corporate pockets.

3xblah 8y ago

"People consistently tell us that if they're going to see ads, they want them to be relevant." "If". This is a conditional sentence. What if the condition is not met? What if they want to avoid ads? What do they tell FB when asked "Ads or no ads, free or small fee, which would you prefer?" I suspect the participants in Facebook's questioning were not asked that question. Or, if they were, FB is not going to use the results in their PR and lobbying efforts. There is a slogan one might see on the FB homepage, something like: "Facebook is free and always will be." As if the user's primary concern would be that they would sometime have to pay for using FB. (Not privacy or the security of their personal information.) The slogan raises more questions than it answers. If FB is "free" forever, then who covers the operating costs of FB? Where does Zuckerberg's fortune come from? Who finances the next FB acquisition of a perceived competitor or their risky bets chasing "the next big thing"? If it isn't you the user who is about to sign up or sign in, then how much does your opinion matter to FB? Wouldn't it stand to reason that FB would be catering to whomever is paying the bills for FB? (Not you.) FB is not free for them. Of course investors and advertisers paying FB expect something in return for their payments. They are not paying into FB's accounts just to keep FB afloat. They are not paying FB simply to sustain a website and apps for people to share photos, video, messages. (And that is probably all users want or need. They certainly never told FB they wanted data collection, monitoring and manipulation of their online behaviour, nor advertisements.) Assuming FB has covered its operating costs, then whatever it is that FB must then deliver -- i.e. not the webpage and apps to help people to communicate, but the data collection, monitoring, manipulation, etc. -- comes at a further cost, not necessarily a monetary one. The question is, "Who bears it?" I think it is becoming clear that this "cost" is more than simply "attention" or "time". There are serious impacts FB's work is having on an enormous number of people. The jury is still out on whether this is a net positive or a net negative.

tchaffee 8y ago
"If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. You are the product."
- anticensor 8y ago
  We are not a product either. We are just a subject as in a kingdom. Our behaviour is the product.

Meekro 8y ago

Google is in a great position here-- if the EFF gets everything they want in terms of privacy, Google can still show ads relevant to my current search query without remembering my search history. But what would they suggest Facebook do instead of tracking? What ads are they supposed to show me if they're not allowed to remember things about me? There's nothing analogous to "outdoor gear in a nature magazine" that they could do instead. I just looked through my Facebook Ad Preferences as the article suggested, and there's nothing there that would shock me. Yes, they know that I have an older model iPhone because I've used it to access their website. They know I'm a frequent traveler because they remember what IPs I've accessed their website from. They know that I'm recently married, and which zip code I live in because I told them those things. Using my zip code and some public records that anyone could Google, they can make a good guess about my race and income level. None of this is very scary because they only know what my friends and I told them about me. They can't read my email or listen to my phone calls. Speaking of which, does anyone remember Edward Snowden? Remember when we were (rightfully) angry about NSA surveillance, the thing that does read your email and listen to your phone calls whether you consent or not, and the thing that you can't opt out of by deleting an app on your phone? They never stopped spying on us when the outrage machine moved on, and all this Facebook stuff seems petty by comparison.

floe 8y ago
>But what would they suggest Facebook do instead of tracking? Why do they need to care whether Facebook is successful?
- dralley 8y ago
  They don't. Facebook can join the club everyone else is in - having to get by on standard ads... or pioneer a new business model that makes it possible. I'm not going to cry over Facebook making a few billion less considering the degree to which traditional journalism has been demolished by the reduced margins on internet advertising, and how much they encourage spreading clickbait and misinformation. I'm not sure Twitter needs to exist, either.
emiliobumachar 8y ago

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

Zuck knows the average Facebook use is a "fucking dumbass", hence this is nothing more than his way of pacifying the herds. To give up precise targeting is to leave a lot of money on the table and a drop in share value. There won't be any drastic changes any time soon.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
I see the FB drones are out in waves downvoting comments. Pathetic.

SolaceQuantum 8y ago

I honestly don't care about certain tracking- if Facebook knows that I talk about tea with someone, I do not mind receiving ads about tea. I strongly mind ads that are targeted for demographics, especially real estate or insurance ads whose targeted demographics explicitly exclude minorities or something. That really worries me, and the amount of data Facebook has about a person really opens up the door for discriminatory advertising.

ams6110 8y ago
There are many legitimate reasons to target ads demographically, e.g. I'm trying to sell certain hair care products to people of African descent, or any number of feminine products to younger women, or Viagra to older men. Even in something like real estate it can be valid, e.g. advertising a condo in a retirement community to people over age 50.
nhqt 8y ago
I live in a white country so I don't know how this works, but why is this that important in the US? Isn't it normal that realtors don't want to bring prices down by inviting non-whites? How is it their fault?

Barrin92 8y ago

You know the thing I don't get about this is, Mark says that he didn't plan to build a global company and wants to connect the world and serve people and all of that, but he could do that right now. All the things that people don't like about Facebook, he could get flatout rid of it. If he really cares about making the world a better place and cut some profits, that can happen right now. I find it comical that Mark thinks targeted ads are even the controversial part. We have children gambling their parents money away, data landing in the hands of Russian psyops campaigns, political violence in the developing world being organised etc.. If targeted advertisement was the most concerning thing coming out of Facebook that'd be a great improvement. And yet they're not even able to get rid of 'friendly fraud'.

jplayer01 8y ago
Wait, why are you taking what he says at face value? Why is anybody? He doesnt care. He. Does. Not. Care. He's just saying what he needs to, just like anybody else in his position trying to protect his business.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  I mean, throwing our arms up and walking out of the room isn't going to make companies like Facebook better either. So instead of being just cynical I think everyone who works in tech, or has some influence in tech should just keep pressuring people to live up to their word. I don't think all tech leaders are evil and I do think Facebook has legitimate use cases, so might as well advocate to at least get rid of the worst aspects than just skip the debate altogether.
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    I'm not saying we shouldn't hold Zuckerberg accountable. We absolutely should. But we shouldn't be measuring him by what he says. What he says is just a bunch of hot air. There are plenty of values worth protecting that doesn't rely on him being true to his word (which is worth less than zero, it's actively harmful).
- 8y ago

johnchristopher 8y ago

> The truth is that ads can be made “relevant” and profitable based on the context in which they’re shown, like putting ads for outdoor gear in a nature magazine. The other truth is that a nature magazine that relies on outdoor gear ads to operate is a conflict of interest. I remember talking with a chief-editor of a 90's video game magazine: "It's better for us and our readers to see ads for shampoo, cars or food than video game ads. Less pressure.".

0xfffff 8y ago

I uninstalled all Facebook appps but WhatsApp so far - but with recent happenings and announcements around WhatsApp, it needs to go too. Its a bummer, since i always liked it a lot.

rblion 8y ago

The media is relentless. What if they are projecting their fears?

mathdog 8y ago

sdfsd