8 ms·

Facebook admits 18% of Research spyware users were teens, not 5%

265 points by vinnyglennon 8y ago

darkpuma 8y ago
The damage is already done though. This update will be seen by fewer people than saw the original story and facebook will face no meaningful consequences for deceiving people yet again. It's no wonder they lie so often; it pays off for them to lie. Another lie that doesn't even get the signal boost of being in the headline: > Facebook had also told reporters on January 29th regarding teens’ participation, “All of them with signed parental consent forms.” Yet in its response to Senator Warner, Facebook admitted that “Potential participants were required to confirm that they were over 18 or provide other evidence of parental consent, though the vendors did not require a signed parental consent form for teen users.” In some cases, underage users merely had to check a box to claim they had parental consent, and there was no verification of users’ ages or that their parents actually approved.
- ok_coo 8y ago
  IMHO they are practically begging to be regulated. It's too bad nothing has happened yet because some guard rails need to be put in place or this type of questionable behavior will never stop.
cheeze 8y ago
> Whoops, apparently we misestimated before. We're sorry. This is Facebooks MO. Is anyone surprised at this point?
- minikites 8y ago
  I've been told it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
- odorousrex 8y ago
  I'm surprised it's only 18%.
  - yumraj 8y ago
    Wait for the next revision of numbers.
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    18% of participants admitted to being under 18. I know when I was under 18 I lied on every single internet form and said I was 18+
    - tracker1 8y ago
      To contrast, when the XBOX first released, IIRC you couldn't even create an online account if you were under 18... I'm pretty sure most of the accounts were lying at that time.
diogenescynic 8y ago
Facebook repeatedly lies and faces no consequences. No wonder it keeps happening.
- rhacker 8y ago
  The story has been around for 1 hour on HN and only 3 comments. This is already a dead story. There's no consequence for follow ups. It's better to lie in the first round. Save the truth for later when the rage dips.
- devoply 8y ago
  CIA FBI FB... are very important government agencies. They will never face consequences.
  - Abutere 8y ago
    Yes, Facebook is a government agency. An important one too. This is correct.
  - TaylorGood 8y ago
    In Q Tel did invest in Facebook pre-IPO.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
moosey 8y ago
Of course it was. From a future revenue perspective, it absolutely makes sense that facebook would focus on young people, so any research done into the future of facebook and its revenue _must_ include a decent number of young people. I imagine that they are having little success in getting young people to join and interact on facebook, especially because it is being heavily leveraged for international political pressure. Given current social and political realities, though, and a series of deeply troubling news stories coming out of facebook, I think it might have lost a very large segment of young people that will never join or return. I watch my 15 yo daughter interact with people online, and she has no interest at all in facebook, and her interest in instragram is waning. Currently, her primary interaction space is discord. I've heard semi-private chat rooms are what is going to be popular, and I expect that we're going to see that kind of thing in facebook soon. I wish them luck (not really) building a revenue model on it that matches what they currently expect.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  I used to teach a course at a local university. I asked the kids every year about facebook. Starting in 2015 the female students basically stopped using it. It wasn't politics or even advertising. They said the "creep factor" just got too high. Everyone one of them had a story about an unwanted stranger suddenly appearing on their or their friend's facebook. The next wave of political manipulation is those "private chats". Facebook/Google/Apple can crack down on the adverts. They cannot so easily police invite-only chats that are often end-to-end encrypted.
  - Qwertystop 8y ago
    On the other hand, private chats are harder to get into; someone has to actually get invited, by the very nature of things. Manipulation that way is going to be harder (though not impossible, especially when they get bigger than everyone-knows-everyone size).
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      You just need to generate memes that people will willingly copypasta into their private groups.
r00fus 8y ago
users or victims? How can a teen be held culpable for understanding their choice? This is a clear case of predation. So so glad Apple kicked them out of the iOS App Store and revoked their cert.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Jesus Christ. Enough with the paternalism. I look at the way I slowly worked my way to America, taking on odd jobs on the Internet, making a dollar here and there and now I'm here making lots of money. And I wouldn't have had the bloody chance if you guys had had your way. All you guys want is to be able to say you did something nice. "Oh their privacy is protected. Of course I'm blocking off opportunities for them but that's really a failure of their government". Man, maybe I want to take the damned risk because by the time you get around to fixing my life (which, let's be clear, is never) I'm gone. Why don't you go talk to these people and see if they'd rather have the buck or their data? I know which I would have chosen, because I chose it in the past. The buck. And that's why I'm here and to hell with all those new-age internet hippies who would have tried to stop me "for my own good".
  - gdulli 8y ago
    Where children are involved, acting "paternal" is appropriate and using that term in a derogatory manner doesn't make sense. A kid's entire browsing history could end up compromised on a Facebook server and go public and affect them for life. Even most adults don't fully understand that risk.
    - scarejunba 8y ago
      Nah, fuck that. I was a teenager. I knew what I was doing and so did the rest of us there. You guys are just pulling the same "think of the children" crap you did trying to get kids to stop playing Doom when they were _perfectly fine_ with it. God, it's not like any of you would have given us a chance to progress. We had to take it and you will put all these damned walls in the way. The anti-abortion protestors of the Internet. Actually unsurprising considering how protectionist HNers are. You act like it's the end of the world to lose your data. But you know what? I'm in my 30s now, if I'd had to have had my entire browsing history monitored it would still have been worth it because the alternative would have been languishing in never having the experiences I do now in the First World.
liquidise 8y ago
I don't understand the uproar around these numbers. Saying that 18% represents a clear intent to target teenagers strikes me as intentionally misunderstanding the math. Teens, i would imagine, represent at least 18% of recreational internet usage. If anything 18% feels like it risks under-representing the group if i were designing research on the topic. There are plenty of reasons to be upset with facebook (deceit, privacy, bs marketing, etc) about this very issue. All this hullabaloo about 5 vs 18% feels like manufactured outrage to me.
- Ensorceled 8y ago
  Well, other than the fact that Facebook lied about the number. The reason Facebook tried to initially downplay the number indicates that even they thought this was an issue so I’m not sure why you think this is manufactured outrage.
- moosey 8y ago
  I guarantee that when all is said and done, that a part of this project, or whatever it is, will be attempts to alter human behavior in various ways. Basically, a continuation on the human experimentation that facebook has been allowed to get away with as long as I can remember. People have gotten so used to Facebook changing the news feed on a whim to try to change human behavior and interaction on the site, that we don't think of it as what it is. Basically, I believe that a curated feed that isn't completely controlled by end-user rules will be declared illegal at some point in the near future.
  - taurath 8y ago
    What is advertising if not an attempt to alter human behavior? When a 4 year old sees 10 candy commercials an hour they are gonna want candy
burlesona 8y ago
April 2019 update: “Facebook admits 49% of Research spyware users were teens, not 18%.”
- beatgammit 8y ago
  April Fool's! Not...
HenryBemis 8y ago
Facebook is cheating and lying in every twist and every turn.. every piece of news that comes out is worse than the previous one. They are evolving to a true cancer for humanity. That is a pitty and a shame.
- malloreon 8y ago
  The trouble is their employees don't seem particularly bothered by the evil they do every day. if they did, they'd leave.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    If HN comments are any indicator, they think Facebook is being unfairly bullied for nothing more than standard industry practices.
    - lapnitnelav 8y ago
      Have a friend that was at Facebook for a conference where Miss Sandberg was speaking and she told the tone used felt quite infantilising. Ztockholm's syndrome? Drinking the Book-Aid? Pardon the terrible puns but it seems like strange coming from a company full of well educated & reasonably smart people. At least folks in Google and Microsoft seem to have a bit more backbone.
  - Taylor_OD 8y ago
    Relevant The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/facebook-employees-explain-daily-struggle-of-trying-to-1825147978 https://www.theonion.com/facebook-employees-explain-daily-st...
  - kartan 8y ago
    > The trouble is their employees don't seem particularly bothered by the evil they do every day. if they did, they'd leave. What does this have to do with employees? This is the leadership of the company that is morally corrupt. Most people at the ground level is going to see just a small piece of the picture without realising how everything adds together. Concerned employees leaving a company makes it worse, not better. Employees are paid at market value. Employees do not profit directly from these tactics. Ask Activision-Blizzard employees fired a year of increasing profits and morally dubious micro-transactions in their games. Better regulations and enforcing them is what the industry needs. You need to remove bad incentives for the people at the top. Corporations should be held accountable for the pains that they inflict.
gordon_freeman 8y ago
There are various ways to lie using statistics. Let's assume that Facebook's goal was to reach a total of 1 million teens between 13-18 years old. Now they definitely don't want to come into regulators' crosshairs by only targetting these Teens using Onavo/FB Research app so they opened it to everyone including adults. Now let's say, Facebook got a total of 20 million users for participation through this VPN app. So they are now saying "Ohh, don't worry...only 5% of these users were Teens." which is true but on the other end Facebook did achieve its goal to target 1 million (5% of 20 million) Teens with this app. Not saying that this is what happened here but this may be the way they want to defend their act here PR wise.
WhuzzupDomal 8y ago
I’ve expressed my thoughts on this already. And now it wasn’t 5% teens, but 18%?!?! That changes….nothing. Look through the letter from Facebook and see how many times they were notified they’d be collecting your data. They knew what they signed up for and they got paid to do it. This is such a non-issue, it’s insane. What terrible thing has happened as a result of this app? A few teens made a little extra money by letting Facebook see how they use their phone? Let’s do another 15 stories on it please TC.

265 points by vinnyglennon 8y ago

The damage is already done though. This update will be seen by fewer people than saw the original story and facebook will face no meaningful consequences for deceiving people yet again. It's no wonder they lie so often; it pays off for them to lie. Another lie that doesn't even get the signal boost of being in the headline: > Facebook had also told reporters on January 29th regarding teens’ participation, “All of them with signed parental consent forms.” Yet in its response to Senator Warner, Facebook admitted that “Potential participants were required to confirm that they were over 18 or provide other evidence of parental consent, though the vendors did not require a signed parental consent form for teen users.” In some cases, underage users merely had to check a box to claim they had parental consent, and there was no verification of users’ ages or that their parents actually approved.

ok_coo 8y ago
IMHO they are practically begging to be regulated. It's too bad nothing has happened yet because some guard rails need to be put in place or this type of questionable behavior will never stop.

cheeze 8y ago

> Whoops, apparently we misestimated before. We're sorry. This is Facebooks MO. Is anyone surprised at this point?

minikites 8y ago
I've been told it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
odorousrex 8y ago
I'm surprised it's only 18%.
- yumraj 8y ago
  Wait for the next revision of numbers.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  18% of participants admitted to being under 18. I know when I was under 18 I lied on every single internet form and said I was 18+
  - tracker1 8y ago
    To contrast, when the XBOX first released, IIRC you couldn't even create an online account if you were under 18... I'm pretty sure most of the accounts were lying at that time.

diogenescynic 8y ago

Facebook repeatedly lies and faces no consequences. No wonder it keeps happening.

rhacker 8y ago
The story has been around for 1 hour on HN and only 3 comments. This is already a dead story. There's no consequence for follow ups. It's better to lie in the first round. Save the truth for later when the rage dips.
devoply 8y ago
CIA FBI FB... are very important government agencies. They will never face consequences.
- Abutere 8y ago
  Yes, Facebook is a government agency. An important one too. This is correct.
- TaylorGood 8y ago
  In Q Tel did invest in Facebook pre-IPO.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

moosey 8y ago

Of course it was. From a future revenue perspective, it absolutely makes sense that facebook would focus on young people, so any research done into the future of facebook and its revenue _must_ include a decent number of young people. I imagine that they are having little success in getting young people to join and interact on facebook, especially because it is being heavily leveraged for international political pressure. Given current social and political realities, though, and a series of deeply troubling news stories coming out of facebook, I think it might have lost a very large segment of young people that will never join or return. I watch my 15 yo daughter interact with people online, and she has no interest at all in facebook, and her interest in instragram is waning. Currently, her primary interaction space is discord. I've heard semi-private chat rooms are what is going to be popular, and I expect that we're going to see that kind of thing in facebook soon. I wish them luck (not really) building a revenue model on it that matches what they currently expect.

sandworm101 8y ago
I used to teach a course at a local university. I asked the kids every year about facebook. Starting in 2015 the female students basically stopped using it. It wasn't politics or even advertising. They said the "creep factor" just got too high. Everyone one of them had a story about an unwanted stranger suddenly appearing on their or their friend's facebook. The next wave of political manipulation is those "private chats". Facebook/Google/Apple can crack down on the adverts. They cannot so easily police invite-only chats that are often end-to-end encrypted.
- Qwertystop 8y ago
  On the other hand, private chats are harder to get into; someone has to actually get invited, by the very nature of things. Manipulation that way is going to be harder (though not impossible, especially when they get bigger than everyone-knows-everyone size).
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    You just need to generate memes that people will willingly copypasta into their private groups.

r00fus 8y ago

users or victims? How can a teen be held culpable for understanding their choice? This is a clear case of predation. So so glad Apple kicked them out of the iOS App Store and revoked their cert.

scarejunba 8y ago
Jesus Christ. Enough with the paternalism. I look at the way I slowly worked my way to America, taking on odd jobs on the Internet, making a dollar here and there and now I'm here making lots of money. And I wouldn't have had the bloody chance if you guys had had your way. All you guys want is to be able to say you did something nice. "Oh their privacy is protected. Of course I'm blocking off opportunities for them but that's really a failure of their government". Man, maybe I want to take the damned risk because by the time you get around to fixing my life (which, let's be clear, is never) I'm gone. Why don't you go talk to these people and see if they'd rather have the buck or their data? I know which I would have chosen, because I chose it in the past. The buck. And that's why I'm here and to hell with all those new-age internet hippies who would have tried to stop me "for my own good".
- gdulli 8y ago
  Where children are involved, acting "paternal" is appropriate and using that term in a derogatory manner doesn't make sense. A kid's entire browsing history could end up compromised on a Facebook server and go public and affect them for life. Even most adults don't fully understand that risk.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    Nah, fuck that. I was a teenager. I knew what I was doing and so did the rest of us there. You guys are just pulling the same "think of the children" crap you did trying to get kids to stop playing Doom when they were _perfectly fine_ with it. God, it's not like any of you would have given us a chance to progress. We had to take it and you will put all these damned walls in the way. The anti-abortion protestors of the Internet. Actually unsurprising considering how protectionist HNers are. You act like it's the end of the world to lose your data. But you know what? I'm in my 30s now, if I'd had to have had my entire browsing history monitored it would still have been worth it because the alternative would have been languishing in never having the experiences I do now in the First World.

liquidise 8y ago

I don't understand the uproar around these numbers. Saying that 18% represents a clear intent to target teenagers strikes me as intentionally misunderstanding the math. Teens, i would imagine, represent at least 18% of recreational internet usage. If anything 18% feels like it risks under-representing the group if i were designing research on the topic. There are plenty of reasons to be upset with facebook (deceit, privacy, bs marketing, etc) about this very issue. All this hullabaloo about 5 vs 18% feels like manufactured outrage to me.

Ensorceled 8y ago
Well, other than the fact that Facebook lied about the number. The reason Facebook tried to initially downplay the number indicates that even they thought this was an issue so I’m not sure why you think this is manufactured outrage.
moosey 8y ago
I guarantee that when all is said and done, that a part of this project, or whatever it is, will be attempts to alter human behavior in various ways. Basically, a continuation on the human experimentation that facebook has been allowed to get away with as long as I can remember. People have gotten so used to Facebook changing the news feed on a whim to try to change human behavior and interaction on the site, that we don't think of it as what it is. Basically, I believe that a curated feed that isn't completely controlled by end-user rules will be declared illegal at some point in the near future.
- taurath 8y ago
  What is advertising if not an attempt to alter human behavior? When a 4 year old sees 10 candy commercials an hour they are gonna want candy

burlesona 8y ago

April 2019 update: “Facebook admits 49% of Research spyware users were teens, not 18%.”

beatgammit 8y ago
April Fool's! Not...

HenryBemis 8y ago

Facebook is cheating and lying in every twist and every turn.. every piece of news that comes out is worse than the previous one. They are evolving to a true cancer for humanity. That is a pitty and a shame.

malloreon 8y ago
The trouble is their employees don't seem particularly bothered by the evil they do every day. if they did, they'd leave.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  If HN comments are any indicator, they think Facebook is being unfairly bullied for nothing more than standard industry practices.
  - lapnitnelav 8y ago
    Have a friend that was at Facebook for a conference where Miss Sandberg was speaking and she told the tone used felt quite infantilising. Ztockholm's syndrome? Drinking the Book-Aid? Pardon the terrible puns but it seems like strange coming from a company full of well educated & reasonably smart people. At least folks in Google and Microsoft seem to have a bit more backbone.
- Taylor_OD 8y ago
  Relevant The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/facebook-employees-explain-daily-struggle-of-trying-to-1825147978 https://www.theonion.com/facebook-employees-explain-daily-st...
- kartan 8y ago
  > The trouble is their employees don't seem particularly bothered by the evil they do every day. if they did, they'd leave. What does this have to do with employees? This is the leadership of the company that is morally corrupt. Most people at the ground level is going to see just a small piece of the picture without realising how everything adds together. Concerned employees leaving a company makes it worse, not better. Employees are paid at market value. Employees do not profit directly from these tactics. Ask Activision-Blizzard employees fired a year of increasing profits and morally dubious micro-transactions in their games. Better regulations and enforcing them is what the industry needs. You need to remove bad incentives for the people at the top. Corporations should be held accountable for the pains that they inflict.

gordon_freeman 8y ago

There are various ways to lie using statistics. Let's assume that Facebook's goal was to reach a total of 1 million teens between 13-18 years old. Now they definitely don't want to come into regulators' crosshairs by only targetting these Teens using Onavo/FB Research app so they opened it to everyone including adults. Now let's say, Facebook got a total of 20 million users for participation through this VPN app. So they are now saying "Ohh, don't worry...only 5% of these users were Teens." which is true but on the other end Facebook did achieve its goal to target 1 million (5% of 20 million) Teens with this app. Not saying that this is what happened here but this may be the way they want to defend their act here PR wise.

WhuzzupDomal 8y ago

I’ve expressed my thoughts on this already. And now it wasn’t 5% teens, but 18%?!?! That changes….nothing. Look through the letter from Facebook and see how many times they were notified they’d be collecting your data. They knew what they signed up for and they got paid to do it. This is such a non-issue, it’s insane. What terrible thing has happened as a result of this app? A few teens made a little extra money by letting Facebook see how they use their phone? Let’s do another 15 stories on it please TC.