8 ms·

We Built a Facebook Inspector

282 points by atg_abhishek 6y ago

gotem 6y ago
We get mad at FB for spying and then we spy on FB? Fighting fire with fire?
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  Opting to relinquish one's data to a principled, accountable, and transparent organization driven by clear objectives and beholden to a strict privacy policy, is very different to what one does when they sign up to Facebook.
- peteretep 6y ago
  Truly baffled to how you think there’s an equivalence here
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  A company is not a person.
- pjc50 6y ago
  "sousveillance": the watching of the powerful by the less powerful.
dddddaviddddd 6y ago
Have they published any results of their study yet?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
throwawaysea 6y ago
Slightly off-topic, but if you're looking to clear your Facebook history, there's an extension for that: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...
wbobeirne 6y ago
The national averages for race they posted add up to 116.33%. I wonder where they messed it up? Edit: They also only have 77.77% for national average age, though that might be explained by those under 18.
- jeffchien 6y ago
  The problem might be "Hispanic or Latino" row, which is 16.4%. On (US or state) government forms that's usually a different question from race. See the second image here: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/18/census-considers-new-approach-to-asking-about-race-by-not-using-the-term-at-all/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/18/census-cons...
  - apizzimenti 6y ago
    Yep, this is exactly it. "Hispanic or Latino" is a question of ethnicity according to the Census Bureau: > "People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian” and “White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race." Basically it boils down to "Hispanic" or "Latino" being designations for country of origin, where Hispanic refers to anyone from a Spanish-speaking country, and Latino refers to anyone from Mexico or a Central- or South-American country. They're often used interchangeably in the US, though.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    Wow. Is that from the current admin? We are one human race. The origin of the word racism is from people who think there is more than one race which is scientifically incorrect. The question about this should only ask about ethnicity. Kindly explain your downvotes.
    - detaro 6y ago
      the link is from 2015.
      - 6y ago
tjpnz 6y ago
Is this the same study involving the open source browser plugin that Facebook were up in arms about?
- djmips 6y ago
  No, but it is mentioned in the article.
ccorda 6y ago
An example of what they used the data for is this investigation into feed changes in Georgia ahead of the runoff: https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/01/05/in-georgia-facebooks-changes-brought-back-a-partisan-news-feed https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/01/05/in-georgia-... Raw data available here: https://github.com/the-markup/citizen-browser-georgia https://github.com/the-markup/citizen-browser-georgia
- toper-centage 6y ago
  Those ad spending values are mind blowing... No wonder Facebook doesn't want to change anything.
  - netsharc 6y ago
    It seems media companies have a different interest in political races: if they call it a tight race, the candidates will pay them to run ads. And indirectly, if they report that it's tight, people will keep tuning in, and they can sell these eyeballs for a better price to their advertisers. For example the 2008 Dem primaries with Obama vs Hillary. Obama was sure to win it months before the Dem conference, but I can recall CNN still calling it a race...
    - rchaud 6y ago
      > if they call it a tight race, the candidates will pay them to run ads. All the spending happens well before news channels start reporting ballot counts. Multi-million dollar political campaigns do not rely on the news media to tell them how they should spend their ad budget over a months-long election cycle. By the time news orgs start reporting actual ballot counts, it's too late to spend any more money. A good chunk of votes have already been cast via mail. Poll stations have either closed or are at best a few hours away from closing.
      - netsharc 6y ago
        What, and the news doesn't report poll numbers of "likely voters" before the election? Who'd be frontrunner, who's surging, etc, etc?
typeiierror 6y ago
The sample selection / non-response bias highlighted in this write-up is a _Big Idea_ problem I've been thinking about recently: Limitations...*Trust in surveys and political leanings:* About 95 percent of people contacted for the panel chose not to participate because of lack of trust in having a third-party application installed on their computer or other concerns for privacy. Think about that - a reputable, privacy-first organization asked people to opt-in to fully consented, voluntary, compensated research and ~95% declined! I can't even imagine what hidden skews are present in the 5% that agreed. This issue is systemic in consumer research and impacts both public (e.g. election polling, U.S. census) and private (pharmaceutical trials, media/advertising research, voluntary AI/ML training daat) polling. Governments and businesses make biased, potentially discriminatory decisions if a non-random segment of the population chooses to never be counted. The ad industry attempts to circumvent this through non-voluntary passive tracking, which trades off non-response bias with bulldozing user privacy. The headwinds are only growing too, as consumer awareness of privacy lapses and the politicization of polling continues to reduce who participates in opt-in research. Finding a solution to this that doesn't resort to privacy-eroding tactics is a moonshot level problem in terms of the size-of-the-prize if solved.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Is it a problem that should be solved? Shouldn't people have the right to live in peace and not be forced to participate in some survey? I also don't really see the problem with 95% of people declining; they made the smart choice. If I was a regular Facebook user I would also decline because the account would contain tons of very sensitive data such as DMs and running an untrusted, unknown application on my main computer is also a major dealbreaker.
  - typeiierror 6y ago
    Try applying the problem to other issues to see the impact: * An advertiser wants to place ads on sites / tv networks that have an audience that is more likely to buy their product upon seeing their ads. If they don't want to violate privacy, they run a survey. What if the response rate among a historical disenfranchised group (e.g. African Americans) is terrible? The modern "data driven" marketer would see little reason to advertise on Black media properties. This isn't a fictious example - it's a current problem in the media planning / agency industry. * A local government has to decide between investing in more ESL resources in public education vs. other competing budget needs. They look at census / community survey data (which some Hispanic and immigrant populations are fearful of responding to d/t politicization) and decide to prioritize other asks due to undercounted demand. The data could also be skewed in other ways that warp their decision, like allocating budget to school zones that only represent specific immigrant communities that haven't historically been disenfranchised. The big picture issue here is governments/businesses making decisions with bias information leading to incorrect conclusions, and the only know recourse currently is to scrap privacy.
luplex 6y ago
Note that facebook has all this data freely available. They probably run very similar analyses. But they don't act on them, or publish their results. Lack of access to this data is a big problem for social media researchers that needs to be solved.
- Etheryte 6y ago
  While I see where you're coming from, I don't really see how this could be addressed without very fat NDAs and a serious risk of leaking personal data. For comparison, you wouldn't expect say Apple to give researches access to their proprietary intellectual property. I very much agree with you that it could be very beneficial, I struggle to construct an argument for why Facebook should do this.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    One difference is that Apple generated their own intellectual property. Facebook lays claim on other people's data.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  People working at facebook would love to publish this data, and let other researchers take a look... But the simple fact is that any high profile analysis of this data will simply further fuel debate about facebook overreach and harm facebook's business.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    > People working at facebook would love to publish this data, and let other researchers take a look... Why would they love to do so considering this will end up being detrimental to Facebook's profitability and thus their compensation and/or promotion opportunities?
    - d0100 6y ago
      Because they would love to do it, if it didn't affect their careers detrimentally. Any study on Facebook data would generate several papers in good publications, great for the more scholarly inclined working at Facebook
KaiserPro 6y ago
This is a good project, especially as the subjects are paid. I'm interested to see what the outcome would be. I'm not sure that advertising is the worst part of FB, I strongly suspect its other users. I am very interested in the "recommended" findings. I think that for all but a few, they reflect their own world view. However that's a hunch
koreanguy 6y ago
in no time, they themarkup.org will sell the scraped data , just another data mining nobody who try to make money out of users.
makach 6y ago
How did you find my pin-code? (9003)?!
- ballenf 6y ago
  Presumably meant for another front page story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656827 (Simulating Terminator PIN code hacking scene)
Hnsukka 6y ago
Facebook this and Facebook that... It is the best
jacinabox 6y ago
This is the facebook inspector, please disclose your nudes....

282 points by atg_abhishek 6y ago

gotem 6y ago

We get mad at FB for spying and then we spy on FB? Fighting fire with fire?

h0l0cube 6y ago
Opting to relinquish one's data to a principled, accountable, and transparent organization driven by clear objectives and beholden to a strict privacy policy, is very different to what one does when they sign up to Facebook.
peteretep 6y ago
Truly baffled to how you think there’s an equivalence here
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
A company is not a person.
pjc50 6y ago
"sousveillance": the watching of the powerful by the less powerful.

dddddaviddddd 6y ago

Have they published any results of their study yet?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

throwawaysea 6y ago

Slightly off-topic, but if you're looking to clear your Facebook history, there's an extension for that: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...

wbobeirne 6y ago

The national averages for race they posted add up to 116.33%. I wonder where they messed it up? Edit: They also only have 77.77% for national average age, though that might be explained by those under 18.

jeffchien 6y ago
The problem might be "Hispanic or Latino" row, which is 16.4%. On (US or state) government forms that's usually a different question from race. See the second image here: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/18/census-considers-new-approach-to-asking-about-race-by-not-using-the-term-at-all/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/18/census-cons...
- apizzimenti 6y ago
  Yep, this is exactly it. "Hispanic or Latino" is a question of ethnicity according to the Census Bureau: > "People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian” and “White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race." Basically it boils down to "Hispanic" or "Latino" being designations for country of origin, where Hispanic refers to anyone from a Spanish-speaking country, and Latino refers to anyone from Mexico or a Central- or South-American country. They're often used interchangeably in the US, though.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  Wow. Is that from the current admin? We are one human race. The origin of the word racism is from people who think there is more than one race which is scientifically incorrect. The question about this should only ask about ethnicity. Kindly explain your downvotes.
  - detaro 6y ago
    the link is from 2015.
    - 6y ago

tjpnz 6y ago

Is this the same study involving the open source browser plugin that Facebook were up in arms about?

djmips 6y ago
No, but it is mentioned in the article.

ccorda 6y ago

An example of what they used the data for is this investigation into feed changes in Georgia ahead of the runoff: https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/01/05/in-georgia-facebooks-changes-brought-back-a-partisan-news-feed https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/01/05/in-georgia-... Raw data available here: https://github.com/the-markup/citizen-browser-georgia https://github.com/the-markup/citizen-browser-georgia

toper-centage 6y ago
Those ad spending values are mind blowing... No wonder Facebook doesn't want to change anything.
- netsharc 6y ago
  It seems media companies have a different interest in political races: if they call it a tight race, the candidates will pay them to run ads. And indirectly, if they report that it's tight, people will keep tuning in, and they can sell these eyeballs for a better price to their advertisers. For example the 2008 Dem primaries with Obama vs Hillary. Obama was sure to win it months before the Dem conference, but I can recall CNN still calling it a race...
  - rchaud 6y ago
    > if they call it a tight race, the candidates will pay them to run ads. All the spending happens well before news channels start reporting ballot counts. Multi-million dollar political campaigns do not rely on the news media to tell them how they should spend their ad budget over a months-long election cycle. By the time news orgs start reporting actual ballot counts, it's too late to spend any more money. A good chunk of votes have already been cast via mail. Poll stations have either closed or are at best a few hours away from closing.
    - netsharc 6y ago
      What, and the news doesn't report poll numbers of "likely voters" before the election? Who'd be frontrunner, who's surging, etc, etc?

typeiierror 6y ago

The sample selection / non-response bias highlighted in this write-up is a _Big Idea_ problem I've been thinking about recently: Limitations...*Trust in surveys and political leanings:* About 95 percent of people contacted for the panel chose not to participate because of lack of trust in having a third-party application installed on their computer or other concerns for privacy. Think about that - a reputable, privacy-first organization asked people to opt-in to fully consented, voluntary, compensated research and ~95% declined! I can't even imagine what hidden skews are present in the 5% that agreed. This issue is systemic in consumer research and impacts both public (e.g. election polling, U.S. census) and private (pharmaceutical trials, media/advertising research, voluntary AI/ML training daat) polling. Governments and businesses make biased, potentially discriminatory decisions if a non-random segment of the population chooses to never be counted. The ad industry attempts to circumvent this through non-voluntary passive tracking, which trades off non-response bias with bulldozing user privacy. The headwinds are only growing too, as consumer awareness of privacy lapses and the politicization of polling continues to reduce who participates in opt-in research. Finding a solution to this that doesn't resort to privacy-eroding tactics is a moonshot level problem in terms of the size-of-the-prize if solved.

Nextgrid 6y ago
Is it a problem that should be solved? Shouldn't people have the right to live in peace and not be forced to participate in some survey? I also don't really see the problem with 95% of people declining; they made the smart choice. If I was a regular Facebook user I would also decline because the account would contain tons of very sensitive data such as DMs and running an untrusted, unknown application on my main computer is also a major dealbreaker.
- typeiierror 6y ago
  Try applying the problem to other issues to see the impact: * An advertiser wants to place ads on sites / tv networks that have an audience that is more likely to buy their product upon seeing their ads. If they don't want to violate privacy, they run a survey. What if the response rate among a historical disenfranchised group (e.g. African Americans) is terrible? The modern "data driven" marketer would see little reason to advertise on Black media properties. This isn't a fictious example - it's a current problem in the media planning / agency industry. * A local government has to decide between investing in more ESL resources in public education vs. other competing budget needs. They look at census / community survey data (which some Hispanic and immigrant populations are fearful of responding to d/t politicization) and decide to prioritize other asks due to undercounted demand. The data could also be skewed in other ways that warp their decision, like allocating budget to school zones that only represent specific immigrant communities that haven't historically been disenfranchised. The big picture issue here is governments/businesses making decisions with bias information leading to incorrect conclusions, and the only know recourse currently is to scrap privacy.

luplex 6y ago

Note that facebook has all this data freely available. They probably run very similar analyses. But they don't act on them, or publish their results. Lack of access to this data is a big problem for social media researchers that needs to be solved.

Etheryte 6y ago
While I see where you're coming from, I don't really see how this could be addressed without very fat NDAs and a serious risk of leaking personal data. For comparison, you wouldn't expect say Apple to give researches access to their proprietary intellectual property. I very much agree with you that it could be very beneficial, I struggle to construct an argument for why Facebook should do this.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  One difference is that Apple generated their own intellectual property. Facebook lays claim on other people's data.
londons_explore 6y ago
People working at facebook would love to publish this data, and let other researchers take a look... But the simple fact is that any high profile analysis of this data will simply further fuel debate about facebook overreach and harm facebook's business.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  > People working at facebook would love to publish this data, and let other researchers take a look... Why would they love to do so considering this will end up being detrimental to Facebook's profitability and thus their compensation and/or promotion opportunities?
  - d0100 6y ago
    Because they would love to do it, if it didn't affect their careers detrimentally. Any study on Facebook data would generate several papers in good publications, great for the more scholarly inclined working at Facebook

KaiserPro 6y ago

This is a good project, especially as the subjects are paid. I'm interested to see what the outcome would be. I'm not sure that advertising is the worst part of FB, I strongly suspect its other users. I am very interested in the "recommended" findings. I think that for all but a few, they reflect their own world view. However that's a hunch

koreanguy 6y ago

in no time, they themarkup.org will sell the scraped data , just another data mining nobody who try to make money out of users.

makach 6y ago

How did you find my pin-code? (9003)?!

ballenf 6y ago
Presumably meant for another front page story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656827 (Simulating Terminator PIN code hacking scene)

Hnsukka 6y ago

Facebook this and Facebook that... It is the best

jacinabox 6y ago

This is the facebook inspector, please disclose your nudes....