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FB ads engineer here. Every time I read these threads, I'm 1. Flattered by how sophisticated HN thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart.

FB ads engineer here. Every time I read these threads, I'm 1. Flattered by how sophisticated HN thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart. FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago) 2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.) Hypertargeting doesn't work. Targeting small audiences doesn't provide marketing scale and is extremely expensive. The goal is to have the biggest possible audience, while still applying one or two critical filters. You could hit all 1000 people in a pool for $100 each, or you can hit 1000 people in a pool of 1 million for 50 cents each. The main priority here is to enable "Show ads to people who own an Oculus" level targeting. This means that people selling VR-adjacent services, products, and content can reliably advertise to their core market without wasting money on non-users. Or maybe they can filter out that segment to show different ads to non-users that convince them to buy their first device. I know most on HN hate any level of targeting, but this has a massive benefit to the VR ecosystem because it allows VR companies to reach their customers much more effectively and sell more products. FB is actually stripping away features from our targeting system and removing inputs because we spend too much compute power ($$) driving optimizations that don't have any material impact on delivery value. Basic is better. There's no meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in your home. Also, ethics. We do actually think about that a lot these days - it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago.

fhood 7y ago
Is there a name for this phenomena? Where we know that everybody blunders around like a caveman at our workplaces but assume infinite sophistication for everyone elses.
- awinter-py 7y ago
  novelist michael crichton named it 'gell-mann amnesia' in a news-reading context
- tripzilch 7y ago
  well there's this great quote from the movie "Cube" (1997): There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.
  - krapp 7y ago
    And a greater one by Alan Moore: “The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”
corndoge 7y ago
I don't care My $500 device should not be exploiting me Full stop
- paride5745 7y ago
  Let me play Devil's Advocate here. Without these Ads plans, your device would probably cost $1000, as the Valve Index shows us. My 2 cents.
  - sli 7y ago
    So then why are other, non-Oculus, non-Steam VR setups cheaper than $1000 without ads? The Index is premium-level, it's not entry-level.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    > Without these Ads plans, your device would probably cost $1000, as the Valve Index shows us. Good. Let me decide if the full cost without ads is worth buying the device. Hint: if it doesn't send my data then it might be. Double-dipping is egregiously wrong.
  - tjoff 7y ago
    Closer to $500.02. Seriously.
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    Uh, no. Lenovo and Samsung manage to make better HMDs than the Rift S for 250$. The only disadvantage they have is slightly smaller tracking area, but that's not cost, the cameras are like 2$ each. The only reason the Index costs 1000$ is because its absolutely cutting edge and its controllers and tracking systems are expensive. If it had inside out tracking and normal controllers it would be around the price of the Index.
aphextron 7y ago
>FB ads engineer here. Just wanted to stop by and say that your work is actively making the world a worse place to live, and you should feel bad about it. I hope those RSUs are worth your soul.
- adgineer 7y ago
  Feels pretty good to subsidize internet access in the developing world and serve as the primary growth engine for millions of small businesses who wouldn't otherwise be able to reach their customers at such a low cost.
  - fred_is_fred 7y ago
    What about all the misinformation, conspiracy theories, bad medical information (which can get people killed), and false political ads? Does the "primary growth engine" marketing speak make it all better?
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    What about the fact that ads are the only reason garbage such as clickbait and misinformation exists? A lot of that garbage wouldn't exist if its only revenue stream wasn't there. What about the countless scams or dubious products advertised in Facebook ads while you look the other way because they're still making money for company? If you have the power to broadcast content to a major part of the world's population, this should also involve some responsibility and strict controls on the content, aka thorough human reviews. I don't care if it makes the prices of the ads go up; legitimate brands will still be able to afford it, and the market will become a better place for everyone (plus maybe with less crap in the ads people will actually like them a bit more). Finally, if you want to do ads, why not just ask the users what products they're interested in, categories they belong to, etc and use that for targeting instead of stalking their every move to try and infer this information? I suggest you read this regarding the negative impacts of advertising on society: http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
  - zwerdlds 7y ago
CJefferson 7y ago
With regards your last paragraph, is there any evidence of this? Any place Facebook says "we do not, and will not, use information X for ad targeting"?
- adgineer 7y ago
  Not sure if there's a public document as granular as "information X", but that $5b FTC settlement came with a bunch of policies. Also, the "clear history" feature should be rolling out (or maybe it already rolled out in your country) that lets you dissociate any 3rd party info from your profile.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    > the "clear history" feature should be rolling out Your company has proven it cannot be trusted and will do anything it can get away with and has already crossed the line of "lying is totally OK, and if we're caught we're just gonna publish a bullshit PR-speak fake apology". Why should anyone trust it this time?
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    BTW I was wondering about that, I have a recurring reminder to check it every week and months after it was "launched" it still says I'm not eligible (I live in the USA). Do you know when it is actually going live?
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      How does one check it?
      - chipperyman573 7y ago
        I've just been checking the help page (https://www.facebook.com/help/2207256696182627 https://www.facebook.com/help/2207256696182627) and waiting for the "The off-Facebook activity setting isn't currently available to you right now." thing to go away
mokash 7y ago
Maybe you don't have the capabilities to make meaningful predictions that you can sell to marketing departments at the moment however, you still have all of the data that you collect and free reign to do with it as you wish. The problem we have is less about what you're doing right now and more about what you could do in the future. Let's face it, Facebook (and other surveillance capitalists) don't exactly have a track record for respecting privacy rights.
hanniabu 7y ago
> FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago What are they working on now?
- mcast 7y ago
  Instagram and personalization feeds if I had to guess
Nextgrid 7y ago
Your systems are sophisticated enough to make people believe their phones are listening to them in the background even when that's not the case. So even if you think they are primitive, a lot of people thinks they're more than sophisticated enough to be creepy.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Facebook's not helping this conspiracy theory with their "why did I see this ad?" dialog. I'll see a clearly hyper-targeted ad (for example, a psoriasis medication) and click that button and it'll say "they wanted to reach people in the United States between 18-65!" I know I was targeted by that ad. I know they're just showing me the most general bit of the targeting info that was used to put that ad in front of me. The dialog even obnoxiously says "There could also be more factors not listed here." Yes, I know, that's fairly obvious. I clicked the dialog to figure out what those were.
  - strombofulous 7y ago
    >I know I was targeted by that ad. I know they're just showing me the most general bit of the targeting info that was used to put that ad in front of me. How do you know this? I get ads for male pattern baldness all the time but I'm not even genetically at risk. Half my ads on hulu are for tampons, and no woman lives in my house. Ads really aren't that good. Facebook might've just gotten lucky...
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      > How do you know this? Because if I head to https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/, they have a wide variety of bits of info on me that permit this exact sort of targeting, and it'd be really dumb of them not to use them. If I head to Facebook's ads manager and create a custom audience, typing "psoriasis" in the box gets me "psoriasis awareness", which consists of 19,402,670 "People who have expressed an interest in or like Pages related to Psoriasis Awareness". Chances are good I'm one of them.
throwaway77384 7y ago
Just wanted to chime in and say kudos for speaking up. That sure is a risky thing to do. Unless, of course, this is just more smoke and mirrors. I like to believe it is not.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  I agree. I have no reason to believe what they say is true, but even if it's all lies it's nice to see their perspective and be able to talk to them.
- jammygit 7y ago
  It isn’t smoke and mirrors, it might just be idealism or trolling.
  - abraae 7y ago
    I wondered about trolling too. There are examples in the comments of people taking it at face value. If it's not trolling then there would be something to learn from it for sure for successful trolling.
  - tripzilch 7y ago
    Now that you mention it, it would be a magnificent troll, new account, top comment, huge thread of replies. But it could very well not be.
thdrdt 7y ago
"2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.)" I'm sorry but this sounds so naive to me. As you say in your last paragraph Facebook was tracking a ton of info about everyone. This is why a lot of people distrust Facebook. You might find this entertaining but this happens when you spy on people. We can't know what Facebook does with the data. There are also people who targeted a friend as prank and succeeded. So it is possible to target very specific people. With enough money you can do a lot of evil with this (Cambride Analytica). Because we don't know how they use the data a lot of people now actively block requests to Facebook when they visit a website. I don't think this is very entertaining.
- iwintermute 7y ago
  You might want to look up what was up with Cambridge Analytica - Michael Lewis has one of episodes in Against the Rules (podcast) - it's a good place to start. There was nothing at all. No predictive power. Total waste of money and it's funny this example keeps coming up
  - thdrdt 7y ago
    That it didn't help CA doesn't matter. What matters is that you can target specific people when you have a lot of money because Facebook gathers/gathered that data.
orbifold 7y ago
I mean sure, that is why Computer Vision research at Facebook doesn’t have multiple papers on scene segmentation and understanding, where they take kitchen scenes for illustration. Your all in one home appliance spying device surely wouldn’t be used in such a way. Of course. Not to mention that in all likelyhood both the microphone and camera are hot while using WhatsApp or Facebook.
- wizzwizz4 7y ago
  Instagram activates the camera on Windows 10 laptops when the app isn't even open, if the app is given camera access. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but that's valid because this isn't a statistic.
deleted 7y ago
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throwawaymanbot 7y ago
> Also, ethics HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... having a laugh aint ya!
troquerre 7y ago
Having spoken with people who have worked on the FB ads team, and having heard stories of how extensive FB's tracking is, this post seems disingenuous and personally I wouldn't be surprised if the account is sponsored by FB.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Please don’t suggest people are astroturfing here. It’s against the site guidelines.
  - FussyZeus 7y ago
    That may be true, but this is also the sole comment from this account, made to defend the ad policies of a company known to take veeeeeery large liberties with the data of it's userbase, both to enhance features and to sell ad targeting. Like if it's HN's policy to not call things astroturfing, fine, I'll accept that. But if it talks like a duck, walks like a duck, and posts in it's own defense for no apparent reason like a duck...
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      It doesn’t matter. One is still claiming astroturfing with nothing but circumstantial evidence. If you have actual evidence that this account is a troll, post it. Regarding the “new account” argument: HN encourages throwaways. Maybe OP didn’t want to lose karma on their main account. Maybe they don’t want people knowing who he is? It doesn’t matter.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - pavel_lishin 7y ago
        > One is still claiming astroturfing with nothing but circumstantial evidence. And adgineer is claiming various things without any evidence at all.
caconym_ 7y ago
It's documented fact that certain political entities have made heavy use of microtargeting in Facebook ads. Such entities would seem to be less sensitive to traditional ROI concerns, regardless of whether your bit about microtargeting never being worth it is actually true (spoilers: it is not true. maybe for some advertisers, but not for all).
- disgruntledphd2 7y ago
  It potentially works for un-measured outcomes. Nonetheless, even if you have a very specific audience, you would be better served (from a conversion optimisation perspective, at least) by creating a lookalike from your small, valuable audience.
jiofih 7y ago
Honestly, it doesn’t matter what you think or how cozy you feel with your employer. Fact is it will now be requiring users to cede their identity and data, where it was not required before. Whether FB uses the data or not is irrelevant. Selling my Oculus as soon as the Index comes down in price a bit. Thanks for the ride.
acjohnson55 7y ago
Please. Ads are Facebook's core business. I don't have any reason to believe you're not telling the truth about basic facts, but the "aw shucks" part is a bit insulting to my intelligence. If the A-Team isn't working on ads, that actually concerns me. When I think of mediocre performers, I think of people who respond most strongly to short-term incentives, not people making nuanced ethical decisions involving a lot of foresight.
- aylmao 7y ago
  > FB is actually stripping away features from our targeting system and removing inputs because we spend too much compute power ($$) driving optimizations that don't have any material impact on delivery value. > Also, ethics. We do actually think about that a lot these days - it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago. I mean, it sounds to me like the A-Team were the ones motivated enough by the technical challenge to not care about cost, ethics or the "big picture". I know plenty of "A-team" engineers like that— they're in it for the technical challenge and to prove themselves, not to be "slowed down".
liquidise 7y ago
I appreciate you posting this as it flies in the face of the generally accepted opinion among HN regulars and privacy-oriented technologists (both groups i am included in). The value of HN for me is, in part, getting critical views from multiples sides of an issue and your comment is more earnest and believable than hours of Zuck's congressional hearings.
throwaway48544 7y ago
Who is "we"? Thinking big picture here, from a corporate POV, it's entirely possible that the discussions of ethics around handling and retention of data is way outside of the engineering core. Furthermore, while it's interesting to read about this good intent, that doesn't change the reality of the situation. Your post actually bothers me more than pure maliciousness or opaqueness, because I know it's entirely possible these systems and workflows could be out of control... which is reflected extremely well today in the major complaints and scrutiny of the platform. The tinfoil hat side of me does not believe this is a genuine account, but eh, there's no way to know here, and at least it opened up an interesting discussion
rchaud 7y ago
> there's no meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in your home. Also, ethics. And that'll be the company line, until there is 'business value'. FB is just investing in facial recognition technology to "help protect you from a stranger using your photo to impersonate you" [1] Regarding ethics, have their been any meaningful changes since the FTC handed down the $5bn fine for data privacy violations? Or was it just an unfortunate set of actions taken by individuals and aren't representative of the company's philosophy? Will there be any changes forthcoming when the Illinois class lawsuit alleging illegal collection of biometric data without user consent goes to trial? [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/technology/facebook-facial-recognition-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/technology/facebook-facia... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/09/facebook-facial-recognition-lawsuit-can-proceed-us-court https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/09/facebook-...
- tripzilch 7y ago
  Well, to be completely fair to anyone who isn't a criminal, ethics usually means changing your behaviour before you get slapped by the law over it ...
deleted 7y ago
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grawprog 7y ago
>Every time I read these threads, I'm 1. Flattered by how sophisticated HN thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart. FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago) Facebook's money comes primarily from it's ads. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-facebook-fb-make-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-fac... What you're saying seems unlikely >2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.) That's odd, then why does Facebook show me targetted ads based on my whatsapp and messenger conversations, youtube videos I watch, websites I browse, and places and people that are nearby me when I'm signed into Facebook on my phone Not to be rude, but your post seems like a lot of bullshit just based on things i've seen Facebook do too many times to call it a coincidence. >There's no meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in your home. This is just straight bullshit. Those things are a direct window into finding out exactly what people buy, pretty much the solid gold, diamond encrusted wet dream of advertisers.
- iscoelho 7y ago
  > whatsapp ... conversations You seriously believe that the encrypted communications platform that the US government desperately wants a backdoor in is secretly backdoored by Facebook for ads? Something that mundane? The platform (WhatsApp) that is subject to huge public skepticism, who's source code is so limited in scope that it's probably been audited by every security researcher that is interested in posting a "I found Facebook being evil" blog post? And you believe they are using this data for ads? The most obvious thing ever to see if you audit/monitor the app? This is why theories like this borderline paranoia. FUD. Nothing more. Statements like that discredit your entire argument. -- And yes, of course Facebook uses trackers on sites to figure out what sites you've been to. Of course they use unencrypted data available to them to target ads. Your data is already in their database. Just because it's in another table to allow the "big bad ad agencies" to target you (data the ad agencies can not even see) does not make it any different. Everyone does this. Everyone will continue doing this. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with that status quo. The only part that can be morally wrong, is if a human themselves inspects the database without respect for privacy. And this is why we have laws for dealing with malicious employees, robberies, house break-ins, etc. Things happen whether it's online or offline. All of this was possible (arguably even more so) before Facebook. It's just more centralized now. This paranoia simply needs to stop. EDIT: Adding, it makes complete sense that Facebook's A-team is not working on ads. Taking a page from Google: Diversification. Ads are auto-pilot income, have hit their tech ceiling, and Facebook's longevity depends on investment outside of their core business. I am unaware how this is so unbelievable to some.
bpicolo 7y ago
I primarily get ads for my employer on Facebook properties, always first / second on the feed. I imagine I'm a tremendously bad target for those.
greggman2 7y ago
If I want to run porn apps on my VR devices what right does FB have to vacuum up that knowledge? If the porn app has a specific sexual orientation why should Facebook get to know that? Facebook should not be collecting this data IMO. Microsoft and Apple should be working to make it impossible to collect and governments should work to make it illegal to collect and extremely high fines if caught collecting.
danShumway 7y ago
> The main priority here is to enable "Show ads to people who own an Oculus" level targeting. From the article: > Your photos and related content like captions, likes and comments if you use the “share photos” feature to share photos from VR to your Facebook Timeline But don't worry! An engineer has told me I can just ignore that part of privacy policy because Facebook doesn't even care about my photos. They're utterly irrelevant. It really takes a load off my chest. Sure, Facebook is collecting info about what apps people use, what people message, and what photos people take, but that's just going into a database somewhere that will never be monetized or read or used against them. And I can definitely trust that, because when Facebook says its going to silo data, it always keeps that promise, and definitely doesn't change its privacy policy to remove that silo 4-5 years down the road. > FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago I'm relieved to hear it, because its very concerning to hear about a technical team building infrastructure to collect individual app usage when all that anyone at the company cares about is whether or not I own an Oculus. It's wasted effort. Y'all need to learn to tighten your sprint scope, why are you building all these features that aren't being used anywhere? > it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago. And don't worry, the CEOs that made those decisions have all retired, and they definitely won't make them again in the future. It's just old, outdated stories that keep resurfacing. Like in 2017 when Facebook experimented on how depressed teenagers would respond to ads[0], or like in 2016 when Facebook started trying to intuit people's race based on their behavior[1]. See? Decades ago! ---- In actual seriousness, I don't have any reason to doubt the author's intention, but I think this is a type of gaslighting, whether purposeful or not. I've brought this issue up before in regards to privacy debates -- but the conversations around surveillance have a habit of suddenly shifting. Before Snowden, people who worried about the NSA were paranoid, and the response was, 'we're not doing any of that, and we don't care about your data anyway.' After Snowden, the comments became 'why is anyone surprised, and it's not even a big deal anyway because it's just metadata and metadata has always been fine to collect.' Before the Alexa/Google Home contractor scandals, it would not have been hard to find people on HN that argued that 'the controls are perfect, and it's just a computer listening to you, and people who worry about this are just paranoid.' After the scandals broke, it was 'of course you need human reviewers to train AI, this is a nothingburger that everyone already knew about.' So try to remember adgineer's comment, because a few years from now when it turns out Facebook is doing microtargeting based on really invasive Oculus data, the story is suddenly going to be, 'this was consistent with our privacy policy, of course everyone knew what they were getting into, it's not a big deal.' [0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/facebook-helped-advertisers-target-teens-who-feel-worthless/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/faceb... [1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/facebooks-ad-platform-now-guesses-at-your-race-based-on-your-behavior/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/faceb...
tripzilch 7y ago
> Also, ethics. Oh really? Can you give me an example of a decision actually driven by ethics? That is the decision was NOT made based on how much compute it spends, the material impact on delivery value, or because of meaningful business value, or whatever. Because I find it hard to believe that FB makes decisions based on ethics, instead of merely highlighting otherwise motivated decisions that seemingly happen to align with ethical values. Like, that the ethical aspect actually caused the decision to be different than what it had been if it were made purely based on business, money or resources. I mean I could be wrong, and you could give a single example of FB being motivated by ethics, and I would be wrong.

fhood 7y ago

Is there a name for this phenomena? Where we know that everybody blunders around like a caveman at our workplaces but assume infinite sophistication for everyone elses.

awinter-py 7y ago
novelist michael crichton named it 'gell-mann amnesia' in a news-reading context
tripzilch 7y ago
well there's this great quote from the movie "Cube" (1997): There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.
- krapp 7y ago
  And a greater one by Alan Moore: “The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”

corndoge 7y ago

I don't care My $500 device should not be exploiting me Full stop

paride5745 7y ago
Let me play Devil's Advocate here. Without these Ads plans, your device would probably cost $1000, as the Valve Index shows us. My 2 cents.
- sli 7y ago
  So then why are other, non-Oculus, non-Steam VR setups cheaper than $1000 without ads? The Index is premium-level, it's not entry-level.
- inetknght 7y ago
  > Without these Ads plans, your device would probably cost $1000, as the Valve Index shows us. Good. Let me decide if the full cost without ads is worth buying the device. Hint: if it doesn't send my data then it might be. Double-dipping is egregiously wrong.
- tjoff 7y ago
  Closer to $500.02. Seriously.
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  Uh, no. Lenovo and Samsung manage to make better HMDs than the Rift S for 250$. The only disadvantage they have is slightly smaller tracking area, but that's not cost, the cameras are like 2$ each. The only reason the Index costs 1000$ is because its absolutely cutting edge and its controllers and tracking systems are expensive. If it had inside out tracking and normal controllers it would be around the price of the Index.

aphextron 7y ago

>FB ads engineer here. Just wanted to stop by and say that your work is actively making the world a worse place to live, and you should feel bad about it. I hope those RSUs are worth your soul.

adgineer 7y ago
Feels pretty good to subsidize internet access in the developing world and serve as the primary growth engine for millions of small businesses who wouldn't otherwise be able to reach their customers at such a low cost.
- fred_is_fred 7y ago
  What about all the misinformation, conspiracy theories, bad medical information (which can get people killed), and false political ads? Does the "primary growth engine" marketing speak make it all better?
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  What about the fact that ads are the only reason garbage such as clickbait and misinformation exists? A lot of that garbage wouldn't exist if its only revenue stream wasn't there. What about the countless scams or dubious products advertised in Facebook ads while you look the other way because they're still making money for company? If you have the power to broadcast content to a major part of the world's population, this should also involve some responsibility and strict controls on the content, aka thorough human reviews. I don't care if it makes the prices of the ads go up; legitimate brands will still be able to afford it, and the market will become a better place for everyone (plus maybe with less crap in the ads people will actually like them a bit more). Finally, if you want to do ads, why not just ask the users what products they're interested in, categories they belong to, etc and use that for targeting instead of stalking their every move to try and infer this information? I suggest you read this regarding the negative impacts of advertising on society: http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
- zwerdlds 7y ago

CJefferson 7y ago

With regards your last paragraph, is there any evidence of this? Any place Facebook says "we do not, and will not, use information X for ad targeting"?

adgineer 7y ago
Not sure if there's a public document as granular as "information X", but that $5b FTC settlement came with a bunch of policies. Also, the "clear history" feature should be rolling out (or maybe it already rolled out in your country) that lets you dissociate any 3rd party info from your profile.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  > the "clear history" feature should be rolling out Your company has proven it cannot be trusted and will do anything it can get away with and has already crossed the line of "lying is totally OK, and if we're caught we're just gonna publish a bullshit PR-speak fake apology". Why should anyone trust it this time?
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  BTW I was wondering about that, I have a recurring reminder to check it every week and months after it was "launched" it still says I'm not eligible (I live in the USA). Do you know when it is actually going live?
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    How does one check it?
    - chipperyman573 7y ago
      I've just been checking the help page (https://www.facebook.com/help/2207256696182627 https://www.facebook.com/help/2207256696182627) and waiting for the "The off-Facebook activity setting isn't currently available to you right now." thing to go away

mokash 7y ago

Maybe you don't have the capabilities to make meaningful predictions that you can sell to marketing departments at the moment however, you still have all of the data that you collect and free reign to do with it as you wish. The problem we have is less about what you're doing right now and more about what you could do in the future. Let's face it, Facebook (and other surveillance capitalists) don't exactly have a track record for respecting privacy rights.

hanniabu 7y ago

> FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago What are they working on now?

mcast 7y ago
Instagram and personalization feeds if I had to guess

Nextgrid 7y ago

Your systems are sophisticated enough to make people believe their phones are listening to them in the background even when that's not the case. So even if you think they are primitive, a lot of people thinks they're more than sophisticated enough to be creepy.

ceejayoz 7y ago
Facebook's not helping this conspiracy theory with their "why did I see this ad?" dialog. I'll see a clearly hyper-targeted ad (for example, a psoriasis medication) and click that button and it'll say "they wanted to reach people in the United States between 18-65!" I know I was targeted by that ad. I know they're just showing me the most general bit of the targeting info that was used to put that ad in front of me. The dialog even obnoxiously says "There could also be more factors not listed here." Yes, I know, that's fairly obvious. I clicked the dialog to figure out what those were.
- strombofulous 7y ago
  >I know I was targeted by that ad. I know they're just showing me the most general bit of the targeting info that was used to put that ad in front of me. How do you know this? I get ads for male pattern baldness all the time but I'm not even genetically at risk. Half my ads on hulu are for tampons, and no woman lives in my house. Ads really aren't that good. Facebook might've just gotten lucky...
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > How do you know this? Because if I head to https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/, they have a wide variety of bits of info on me that permit this exact sort of targeting, and it'd be really dumb of them not to use them. If I head to Facebook's ads manager and create a custom audience, typing "psoriasis" in the box gets me "psoriasis awareness", which consists of 19,402,670 "People who have expressed an interest in or like Pages related to Psoriasis Awareness". Chances are good I'm one of them.

throwaway77384 7y ago

Just wanted to chime in and say kudos for speaking up. That sure is a risky thing to do. Unless, of course, this is just more smoke and mirrors. I like to believe it is not.

Nextgrid 7y ago
I agree. I have no reason to believe what they say is true, but even if it's all lies it's nice to see their perspective and be able to talk to them.
jammygit 7y ago
It isn’t smoke and mirrors, it might just be idealism or trolling.
- abraae 7y ago
  I wondered about trolling too. There are examples in the comments of people taking it at face value. If it's not trolling then there would be something to learn from it for sure for successful trolling.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  Now that you mention it, it would be a magnificent troll, new account, top comment, huge thread of replies. But it could very well not be.

thdrdt 7y ago

"2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.)" I'm sorry but this sounds so naive to me. As you say in your last paragraph Facebook was tracking a ton of info about everyone. This is why a lot of people distrust Facebook. You might find this entertaining but this happens when you spy on people. We can't know what Facebook does with the data. There are also people who targeted a friend as prank and succeeded. So it is possible to target very specific people. With enough money you can do a lot of evil with this (Cambride Analytica). Because we don't know how they use the data a lot of people now actively block requests to Facebook when they visit a website. I don't think this is very entertaining.

iwintermute 7y ago
You might want to look up what was up with Cambridge Analytica - Michael Lewis has one of episodes in Against the Rules (podcast) - it's a good place to start. There was nothing at all. No predictive power. Total waste of money and it's funny this example keeps coming up
- thdrdt 7y ago
  That it didn't help CA doesn't matter. What matters is that you can target specific people when you have a lot of money because Facebook gathers/gathered that data.

orbifold 7y ago

I mean sure, that is why Computer Vision research at Facebook doesn’t have multiple papers on scene segmentation and understanding, where they take kitchen scenes for illustration. Your all in one home appliance spying device surely wouldn’t be used in such a way. Of course. Not to mention that in all likelyhood both the microphone and camera are hot while using WhatsApp or Facebook.

wizzwizz4 7y ago
Instagram activates the camera on Windows 10 laptops when the app isn't even open, if the app is given camera access. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but that's valid because this isn't a statistic.

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throwawaymanbot 7y ago

> Also, ethics HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... having a laugh aint ya!

troquerre 7y ago

Having spoken with people who have worked on the FB ads team, and having heard stories of how extensive FB's tracking is, this post seems disingenuous and personally I wouldn't be surprised if the account is sponsored by FB.

colejohnson66 7y ago
Please don’t suggest people are astroturfing here. It’s against the site guidelines.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  That may be true, but this is also the sole comment from this account, made to defend the ad policies of a company known to take veeeeeery large liberties with the data of it's userbase, both to enhance features and to sell ad targeting. Like if it's HN's policy to not call things astroturfing, fine, I'll accept that. But if it talks like a duck, walks like a duck, and posts in it's own defense for no apparent reason like a duck...
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    It doesn’t matter. One is still claiming astroturfing with nothing but circumstantial evidence. If you have actual evidence that this account is a troll, post it. Regarding the “new account” argument: HN encourages throwaways. Maybe OP didn’t want to lose karma on their main account. Maybe they don’t want people knowing who he is? It doesn’t matter.
    - deleted 7y ago
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    - pavel_lishin 7y ago
      > One is still claiming astroturfing with nothing but circumstantial evidence. And adgineer is claiming various things without any evidence at all.

caconym_ 7y ago

It's documented fact that certain political entities have made heavy use of microtargeting in Facebook ads. Such entities would seem to be less sensitive to traditional ROI concerns, regardless of whether your bit about microtargeting never being worth it is actually true (spoilers: it is not true. maybe for some advertisers, but not for all).

disgruntledphd2 7y ago
It potentially works for un-measured outcomes. Nonetheless, even if you have a very specific audience, you would be better served (from a conversion optimisation perspective, at least) by creating a lookalike from your small, valuable audience.

jiofih 7y ago

Honestly, it doesn’t matter what you think or how cozy you feel with your employer. Fact is it will now be requiring users to cede their identity and data, where it was not required before. Whether FB uses the data or not is irrelevant. Selling my Oculus as soon as the Index comes down in price a bit. Thanks for the ride.

acjohnson55 7y ago

Please. Ads are Facebook's core business. I don't have any reason to believe you're not telling the truth about basic facts, but the "aw shucks" part is a bit insulting to my intelligence. If the A-Team isn't working on ads, that actually concerns me. When I think of mediocre performers, I think of people who respond most strongly to short-term incentives, not people making nuanced ethical decisions involving a lot of foresight.

aylmao 7y ago
> FB is actually stripping away features from our targeting system and removing inputs because we spend too much compute power ($$) driving optimizations that don't have any material impact on delivery value. > Also, ethics. We do actually think about that a lot these days - it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago. I mean, it sounds to me like the A-Team were the ones motivated enough by the technical challenge to not care about cost, ethics or the "big picture". I know plenty of "A-team" engineers like that— they're in it for the technical challenge and to prove themselves, not to be "slowed down".

liquidise 7y ago

I appreciate you posting this as it flies in the face of the generally accepted opinion among HN regulars and privacy-oriented technologists (both groups i am included in). The value of HN for me is, in part, getting critical views from multiples sides of an issue and your comment is more earnest and believable than hours of Zuck's congressional hearings.

throwaway48544 7y ago

Who is "we"? Thinking big picture here, from a corporate POV, it's entirely possible that the discussions of ethics around handling and retention of data is way outside of the engineering core. Furthermore, while it's interesting to read about this good intent, that doesn't change the reality of the situation. Your post actually bothers me more than pure maliciousness or opaqueness, because I know it's entirely possible these systems and workflows could be out of control... which is reflected extremely well today in the major complaints and scrutiny of the platform. The tinfoil hat side of me does not believe this is a genuine account, but eh, there's no way to know here, and at least it opened up an interesting discussion

rchaud 7y ago

> there's no meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in your home. Also, ethics. And that'll be the company line, until there is 'business value'. FB is just investing in facial recognition technology to "help protect you from a stranger using your photo to impersonate you" [1] Regarding ethics, have their been any meaningful changes since the FTC handed down the $5bn fine for data privacy violations? Or was it just an unfortunate set of actions taken by individuals and aren't representative of the company's philosophy? Will there be any changes forthcoming when the Illinois class lawsuit alleging illegal collection of biometric data without user consent goes to trial? [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/technology/facebook-facial-recognition-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/technology/facebook-facia... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/09/facebook-facial-recognition-lawsuit-can-proceed-us-court https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/09/facebook-...

tripzilch 7y ago
Well, to be completely fair to anyone who isn't a criminal, ethics usually means changing your behaviour before you get slapped by the law over it ...

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grawprog 7y ago

>Every time I read these threads, I'm 1. Flattered by how sophisticated HN thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart. FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago) Facebook's money comes primarily from it's ads. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-facebook-fb-make-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-fac... What you're saying seems unlikely >2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.) That's odd, then why does Facebook show me targetted ads based on my whatsapp and messenger conversations, youtube videos I watch, websites I browse, and places and people that are nearby me when I'm signed into Facebook on my phone Not to be rude, but your post seems like a lot of bullshit just based on things i've seen Facebook do too many times to call it a coincidence. >There's no meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in your home. This is just straight bullshit. Those things are a direct window into finding out exactly what people buy, pretty much the solid gold, diamond encrusted wet dream of advertisers.

iscoelho 7y ago
> whatsapp ... conversations You seriously believe that the encrypted communications platform that the US government desperately wants a backdoor in is secretly backdoored by Facebook for ads? Something that mundane? The platform (WhatsApp) that is subject to huge public skepticism, who's source code is so limited in scope that it's probably been audited by every security researcher that is interested in posting a "I found Facebook being evil" blog post? And you believe they are using this data for ads? The most obvious thing ever to see if you audit/monitor the app? This is why theories like this borderline paranoia. FUD. Nothing more. Statements like that discredit your entire argument. -- And yes, of course Facebook uses trackers on sites to figure out what sites you've been to. Of course they use unencrypted data available to them to target ads. Your data is already in their database. Just because it's in another table to allow the "big bad ad agencies" to target you (data the ad agencies can not even see) does not make it any different. Everyone does this. Everyone will continue doing this. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with that status quo. The only part that can be morally wrong, is if a human themselves inspects the database without respect for privacy. And this is why we have laws for dealing with malicious employees, robberies, house break-ins, etc. Things happen whether it's online or offline. All of this was possible (arguably even more so) before Facebook. It's just more centralized now. This paranoia simply needs to stop. EDIT: Adding, it makes complete sense that Facebook's A-team is not working on ads. Taking a page from Google: Diversification. Ads are auto-pilot income, have hit their tech ceiling, and Facebook's longevity depends on investment outside of their core business. I am unaware how this is so unbelievable to some.

bpicolo 7y ago

I primarily get ads for my employer on Facebook properties, always first / second on the feed. I imagine I'm a tremendously bad target for those.

greggman2 7y ago

If I want to run porn apps on my VR devices what right does FB have to vacuum up that knowledge? If the porn app has a specific sexual orientation why should Facebook get to know that? Facebook should not be collecting this data IMO. Microsoft and Apple should be working to make it impossible to collect and governments should work to make it illegal to collect and extremely high fines if caught collecting.

danShumway 7y ago

> The main priority here is to enable "Show ads to people who own an Oculus" level targeting. From the article: > Your photos and related content like captions, likes and comments if you use the “share photos” feature to share photos from VR to your Facebook Timeline But don't worry! An engineer has told me I can just ignore that part of privacy policy because Facebook doesn't even care about my photos. They're utterly irrelevant. It really takes a load off my chest. Sure, Facebook is collecting info about what apps people use, what people message, and what photos people take, but that's just going into a database somewhere that will never be monetized or read or used against them. And I can definitely trust that, because when Facebook says its going to silo data, it always keeps that promise, and definitely doesn't change its privacy policy to remove that silo 4-5 years down the road. > FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago I'm relieved to hear it, because its very concerning to hear about a technical team building infrastructure to collect individual app usage when all that anyone at the company cares about is whether or not I own an Oculus. It's wasted effort. Y'all need to learn to tighten your sprint scope, why are you building all these features that aren't being used anywhere? > it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago. And don't worry, the CEOs that made those decisions have all retired, and they definitely won't make them again in the future. It's just old, outdated stories that keep resurfacing. Like in 2017 when Facebook experimented on how depressed teenagers would respond to ads[0], or like in 2016 when Facebook started trying to intuit people's race based on their behavior[1]. See? Decades ago! ---- In actual seriousness, I don't have any reason to doubt the author's intention, but I think this is a type of gaslighting, whether purposeful or not. I've brought this issue up before in regards to privacy debates -- but the conversations around surveillance have a habit of suddenly shifting. Before Snowden, people who worried about the NSA were paranoid, and the response was, 'we're not doing any of that, and we don't care about your data anyway.' After Snowden, the comments became 'why is anyone surprised, and it's not even a big deal anyway because it's just metadata and metadata has always been fine to collect.' Before the Alexa/Google Home contractor scandals, it would not have been hard to find people on HN that argued that 'the controls are perfect, and it's just a computer listening to you, and people who worry about this are just paranoid.' After the scandals broke, it was 'of course you need human reviewers to train AI, this is a nothingburger that everyone already knew about.' So try to remember adgineer's comment, because a few years from now when it turns out Facebook is doing microtargeting based on really invasive Oculus data, the story is suddenly going to be, 'this was consistent with our privacy policy, of course everyone knew what they were getting into, it's not a big deal.' [0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/facebook-helped-advertisers-target-teens-who-feel-worthless/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/faceb... [1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/facebooks-ad-platform-now-guesses-at-your-race-based-on-your-behavior/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/faceb...

tripzilch 7y ago

> Also, ethics. Oh really? Can you give me an example of a decision actually driven by ethics? That is the decision was NOT made based on how much compute it spends, the material impact on delivery value, or because of meaningful business value, or whatever. Because I find it hard to believe that FB makes decisions based on ethics, instead of merely highlighting otherwise motivated decisions that seemingly happen to align with ethical values. Like, that the ethical aspect actually caused the decision to be different than what it had been if it were made purely based on business, money or resources. I mean I could be wrong, and you could give a single example of FB being motivated by ethics, and I would be wrong.