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And nowhere in the article it's said that they use sensitive health information.

• danpalmer 5y ago
  A distinction without a difference. I suspect that this is how Facebook justify some of these things. They don't explicitly provide data, anything that advertisers choose to intuit from data is up to them. But I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding (or unwillingness to understand) privacy. Privacy needs to be treated like a security concern. It basically is one. In security any place where more information is disclosed than intended is considered to be a security flaw in some sense. If there's a correlation between likes and health concerns that allows for statistical inferences about users health, that's a security flaw. The thing about security like this is that it takes active work to solve these sorts of problems. Facebook are only doing the "passive" work of not giving advertisers the exact data. A counter example is Apple's "differential privacy" which does a lot more work to only preserve very specific tracking information and statistical properties.
  • Uberphallus 5y ago
    > They don't explicitly provide data Because first and foremost, FB doesn't have explicit health data. > If there's a correlation between likes and health concerns that allows for statistical inferences about users health, that's a security flaw. Then any information is a security flaw. Just being male/female or age alone allows for significant inferences about users' health. Not many 18 year old women are gonna click on those prostate exam ads. Similarly, those interested in body building probably won't be interested in "fat burning" pills, and those following transgender-themed pages are gonna be more interested in HRT ads.