9 ms·

I Would Rather Die Than Let Facebook Monitor My Heart Rate

KaiserPro 5y ago
> I’m well aware that if you want your health data to remain private, smartwatches are certainly risky. But we’re way past that now. These devices can and have saved lives, and despite some early skepticism, wearables aren’t going anywhere. So the main thrust is: wearables are shit and leaky, but they save lives [citation needed] you can be as insecure as you like, unless you're facebook. I mean surly the scum that make crappy adware riddled android phones are worse? or is it not as fashionable to dunk on them? Especially as only poor people buy those?
- ashleyn 5y ago
  Really not a fan of the trendy and fairly recent idea that anything justifies "saving lives" (regardless of whether or not it actually does so).
nabilhat 5y ago
It's been a long time since the big news about psychological experiments performed on users without their consent [0]. However, intentional emotional manipulation unquestionably remains a core goal for the mainstays of Facebook - marketing, advertising, propaganda, and politics. Heart rate is a visceral emotional indicator that would add value in the context of Facebook, in ways that aren't as accessibly exploitable from the ecosystems of Apple. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_emotional_manipulation_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_emotional_manipulatio...
- adolph 5y ago
  You could replace Facebook with a lot of different things and the song remains the same. intentional emotional manipulation unquestionably remains a core goal for the mainstays of [political parties|junkfood manufacturers|movie industry|religion|auto-energy-highway combine|...] - marketing, advertising, propaganda, and politics
- ahahahahah 5y ago
  There's a lot of influential, intelligent people who believe that showing like counts in apps like Instagram are bad for people's mental health. There's other that think that it's actually good for mental health. If you are a company with such an app, and you care about doing the right thing, how would you figure out whether or not showing those like counts affects users in that way? How would you figure out how to do things in ways that don't affect users negatively?
  - ahahahahah 5y ago
    I'm not saying that running a test of the two and measuring how it affects users is necessarily the best way, but, honestly, it's not clearly wrong to me. If you are worried that your current thing is bad for users mental health and that this other approach is better, isn't it, in fact, the morally right thing to check that?
danaris 5y ago
> I’m well aware that if you want your health data to remain private, smartwatches are certainly risky. But we’re way past that now. These devices can and have saved lives, and despite some early skepticism, wearables aren’t going anywhere. The Apple Watch is right there. Apple is very clearly committed to user privacy, to the fullest extent reasonably possible in the current climate. Indeed, they've even doubled down on privacy harder than ever before as of the WWDC keynote this week—one particular item of note being that where the hardware will support it, they'll be moving Siri processing on-device, rather than requiring it to go to their servers. At this point, any FUD alleging that they might still be taking your data, or might want to at some future date, is founded in no actual evidence whatsoever, and is actively detrimental to the cause of privacy as it causes people to think that they "might as well" get something from FB or Google because they're "no different". If you want a smartwatch, and want your data to remain private, just get an Apple Watch.
- adolph 5y ago
  >If you want a smartwatch, and want your data to remain private Pick one.
  - danaris 5y ago
    And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have a perfect example of the kind of person I was describing in my post above. Note the utter lack of nuance or reading comprehension. To the point: No, you do not have to "pick one," for the reasons I just stated. If you have any evidence that your data will not be kept private by an Apple Watch, then by all means, present some! It would certainly be a scandal for the company, given how hard they've been pushing the privacy angle! If all you have is a) a general feeling that All Tech Companies Are The Same, or b) a seething hatred of Apple and all that they do, then kindly keep them to yourself, because they are emphatically unhelpful in this context.
    - adolph 5y ago
      No need to push together so much straw. I think the folks at Apple now are doing great things that push things like differential privacy and other techniques in a direction I agree with and I think is better than many other companies. I’ve personally sought out their products since running System 6.0.8 on a PB100’s persisting RAM disk. At the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_photos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_phot...
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
reading the article I feel there is some disconnect between the text of the article and the headline and the writer may not actually want to die instead of letting Facebook monitor their heart rate. I guess I wouldn't rather die either. I would just rather buy an Apple Smartwatch, but I guess that's pragmatism for you.
- fooperdupes 5y ago
  I would rather die than be more dependent on technocrats than medieval peasants were on their lords. Quantity != quality.
  - lallysingh 5y ago
    .. hyperbole much?
- grantc 5y ago
  TL;DR: the author is super committed to wearing a timepiece.
- mikestew 5y ago
  For the general case, no one is going to die if they don't buy whatever Facebook craps out as a watch. I'd say it's more a false dichotomy, bordering on hyperbole. Not "wear this or die", but "wear this, and if you have bad genetics and/or lifestyle, you might be one of the small percentage of people who are prompted to make a life-saving trip to the cardiologist." But you imply a good point: Apple has already set FB's price ceiling. A Series 3 is, what, US$300 now? Another $100 gets you latest-and-greatest. I'm guessing competing on price is going to be tough, so what outstanding feature will the FB watch have to make it competitive? Oh, and don't forget that Apple isn't the only one to worry about. My bet on who is in 2nd place on wearables is probably Garmin, and Garmin will come and nibble on you at the other end. It'll be interesting to watch (thanks, I'll be here all week...).
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >so what outstanding feature will the FB watch have to make it competitive? it's going to cost less and sell all your location data, what you're doing day to day when not online data to advertisers.
ortusdux 5y ago
I would buy an oculus quest 2 today if they removed the Facebook account requirement.
- nickthegreek 5y ago
  There is corporate version for around $700 that does just that.
  - slipheen 5y ago
    This seems interesting - Is there a way to buy this? I looked on their site, and only saw forms to be connected to their sales department. At this price, how do you feel it competes with the Vive Pro 2 and other headsets in that price bracket?
    - vimacs2 5y ago
      It also has a bs annual "support" cost of $180 so short of robbing one of them, you're better off waiting for the root method for the Quest 2 becoming publicly available or if you like to live a little dangerously, just use the workaround for the login that I did (search it on Youtube, I'd rather not detail it on this site). Every time you violate the tos of a company like Facebook, you're making the world a better place and I'm only half joking.
      - marak830 5y ago
        "Every time you violate the tos of a company like Facebook, you're making the world a better place and I'm only half joking. " I'm sorry but every time you purchase something, while disagreeing with the ToS, and work around it instead of just not buying it, your making the world a worse place.
        vimacs2 5y ago
        That's assuming there is a viable alternative for the same price point - and no, I don't consider abstinence as a valid alternative.
MattGaiser 5y ago
I admittedly find this attitude perplexing. My pulse is far less private to me than my email or messages. Same with my medical history. I get that there would be situations where someone might want to hide certain conditions or histories, but for the average person, wouldn't having one's medical data leaked be a lot less harmful than having one's messages leaked?
- im3w1l 5y ago
  Maybe if you consider the heartrate in isolation, but imagine that they corrrelate it with other things. For instance using it to figure out which ads you are responsive to.
- obenn 5y ago
  The issue is in the combination of data. Could you imagine the value of knowing if your heart rate went up after reading a certain message, or seeing a certain ad?
  - reader_mode 5y ago
    >Could you imagine the value of knowing if your heart rate went up after reading a certain message, or seeing a certain ad? No, I'm guessing it's worth a couple of cents ?
    - throwaway3699 5y ago
      Perhaps. But this kind of psychographic profiling is used in labs to craft better adverts. Video games are another example. The Left 4 Dead director was trained on player emotions and designed to improve the game, which was a huge success. Having access to it in the field has real applications.
  - lupire 5y ago
    I don't care about the value. What's the cost?
    - 5y ago
Hippocrates 5y ago
>clearly there’s a market for Facebook hardware—look at the success of its smart display, Portal. Is that a joke? I haven’t heard of anyone buying that. Only people balking at the mere idea of it.
- nickthegreek 5y ago
  Agreed about Portal, but Oculus is FB hardware and is pretty popular.
- fireball_blaze 5y ago
  If this device was truly selling well or exceeding Facebook's expectations, they'd be yelling it from the PR department constantly. That one 10X data point they mentioned has zero context and is unsubstantiated enough to be ignored entirely.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  35-60 year old women drove that segment. They are actually really good(if you can get past the facebook part). Far better than the really expensive cisco board room systems.
- izacus 5y ago
  What does "you personally hearing" about anything have to do with a success of a major corpo product? I mean, media is reporting it as a success: https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-portal-is-a-hit-during-the-coronavirus-lockdown-thanks-to-your-grandparents/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-portal-is-a-hit-during-th... What does your personal experience mean here? Or to Facebook as a whole? Bubbles are a thing you know and it's good to get rid of this bubble-restricted thinking.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Much of what the media, particularly the tech media "reports" on is really just paid advertising. >Numbers on Portal sales are hard to come by. That's buried in the article. If the sales numbers are hard to come by, how do they know it's a hit? Because Facebook says so? Questionable.
newbie578 5y ago
I love how people are vilify Facebook like they are almost hiring forced labour and willfully collaborate with authoritarian regimes... Oh wait that is Apple which people follow like a cult... Color me shocked.... I am not going to defend Facebook, but this is ridiculous how people here are willing to look through pink-eyed glasses for their "favorite" companies. Downvote away, that is the best counter-argument :)
- ssklash 5y ago
  Changing the subject with a "whataboutism" about Apple adds nothing to the discussion and is still a sort defense of Facebook, despite you saying you weren't going to defend them.
  - kbelder 5y ago
    Asking "what about" is not always a fallacy. If somebody says we shouldn't buy Facebook watches because they track you, asking "what about the other smart watches that track you" is relevant and sensible.
jchonphoenix 5y ago
Yawn. No, you wouldn't rather die.
igetspam 5y ago
I don't feel like reading the article but I support the statement in the headline. I wouldn't give any of the faang companies access to my health information unless they paid my salary and I block those recruiters.
bnix 5y ago
I'd trust FB with my data over say.. Equifax, and they have way more important data than my pulse. But they also got hacked for bad software maintenance and no one is constantly shitting on them. Not that I use it, but idk FB is a scapegoat if anything. ...Also I know it's whataboutism but common lol. People are so entitled with their privacy when it means nothing to their actual safety. Comes off so weak and whiny.

> I’m well aware that if you want your health data to remain private, smartwatches are certainly risky. But we’re way past that now. These devices can and have saved lives, and despite some early skepticism, wearables aren’t going anywhere. So the main thrust is: wearables are shit and leaky, but they save lives [citation needed] you can be as insecure as you like, unless you're facebook. I mean surly the scum that make crappy adware riddled android phones are worse? or is it not as fashionable to dunk on them? Especially as only poor people buy those?

ashleyn 5y ago
Really not a fan of the trendy and fairly recent idea that anything justifies "saving lives" (regardless of whether or not it actually does so).

nabilhat 5y ago

It's been a long time since the big news about psychological experiments performed on users without their consent [0]. However, intentional emotional manipulation unquestionably remains a core goal for the mainstays of Facebook - marketing, advertising, propaganda, and politics. Heart rate is a visceral emotional indicator that would add value in the context of Facebook, in ways that aren't as accessibly exploitable from the ecosystems of Apple. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_emotional_manipulation_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_emotional_manipulatio...

adolph 5y ago
You could replace Facebook with a lot of different things and the song remains the same. intentional emotional manipulation unquestionably remains a core goal for the mainstays of [political parties|junkfood manufacturers|movie industry|religion|auto-energy-highway combine|...] - marketing, advertising, propaganda, and politics
ahahahahah 5y ago
There's a lot of influential, intelligent people who believe that showing like counts in apps like Instagram are bad for people's mental health. There's other that think that it's actually good for mental health. If you are a company with such an app, and you care about doing the right thing, how would you figure out whether or not showing those like counts affects users in that way? How would you figure out how to do things in ways that don't affect users negatively?
- ahahahahah 5y ago
  I'm not saying that running a test of the two and measuring how it affects users is necessarily the best way, but, honestly, it's not clearly wrong to me. If you are worried that your current thing is bad for users mental health and that this other approach is better, isn't it, in fact, the morally right thing to check that?

danaris 5y ago

> I’m well aware that if you want your health data to remain private, smartwatches are certainly risky. But we’re way past that now. These devices can and have saved lives, and despite some early skepticism, wearables aren’t going anywhere. The Apple Watch is right there. Apple is very clearly committed to user privacy, to the fullest extent reasonably possible in the current climate. Indeed, they've even doubled down on privacy harder than ever before as of the WWDC keynote this week—one particular item of note being that where the hardware will support it, they'll be moving Siri processing on-device, rather than requiring it to go to their servers. At this point, any FUD alleging that they might still be taking your data, or might want to at some future date, is founded in no actual evidence whatsoever, and is actively detrimental to the cause of privacy as it causes people to think that they "might as well" get something from FB or Google because they're "no different". If you want a smartwatch, and want your data to remain private, just get an Apple Watch.

adolph 5y ago
>If you want a smartwatch, and want your data to remain private Pick one.
- danaris 5y ago
  And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have a perfect example of the kind of person I was describing in my post above. Note the utter lack of nuance or reading comprehension. To the point: No, you do not have to "pick one," for the reasons I just stated. If you have any evidence that your data will not be kept private by an Apple Watch, then by all means, present some! It would certainly be a scandal for the company, given how hard they've been pushing the privacy angle! If all you have is a) a general feeling that All Tech Companies Are The Same, or b) a seething hatred of Apple and all that they do, then kindly keep them to yourself, because they are emphatically unhelpful in this context.
  - adolph 5y ago
    No need to push together so much straw. I think the folks at Apple now are doing great things that push things like differential privacy and other techniques in a direction I agree with and I think is better than many other companies. I’ve personally sought out their products since running System 6.0.8 on a PB100’s persisting RAM disk. At the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_photos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_phot...

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

reading the article I feel there is some disconnect between the text of the article and the headline and the writer may not actually want to die instead of letting Facebook monitor their heart rate. I guess I wouldn't rather die either. I would just rather buy an Apple Smartwatch, but I guess that's pragmatism for you.

fooperdupes 5y ago
I would rather die than be more dependent on technocrats than medieval peasants were on their lords. Quantity != quality.
- lallysingh 5y ago
  .. hyperbole much?
grantc 5y ago
TL;DR: the author is super committed to wearing a timepiece.
mikestew 5y ago
For the general case, no one is going to die if they don't buy whatever Facebook craps out as a watch. I'd say it's more a false dichotomy, bordering on hyperbole. Not "wear this or die", but "wear this, and if you have bad genetics and/or lifestyle, you might be one of the small percentage of people who are prompted to make a life-saving trip to the cardiologist." But you imply a good point: Apple has already set FB's price ceiling. A Series 3 is, what, US$300 now? Another $100 gets you latest-and-greatest. I'm guessing competing on price is going to be tough, so what outstanding feature will the FB watch have to make it competitive? Oh, and don't forget that Apple isn't the only one to worry about. My bet on who is in 2nd place on wearables is probably Garmin, and Garmin will come and nibble on you at the other end. It'll be interesting to watch (thanks, I'll be here all week...).
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >so what outstanding feature will the FB watch have to make it competitive? it's going to cost less and sell all your location data, what you're doing day to day when not online data to advertisers.

ortusdux 5y ago

I would buy an oculus quest 2 today if they removed the Facebook account requirement.

nickthegreek 5y ago
There is corporate version for around $700 that does just that.
- slipheen 5y ago
  This seems interesting - Is there a way to buy this? I looked on their site, and only saw forms to be connected to their sales department. At this price, how do you feel it competes with the Vive Pro 2 and other headsets in that price bracket?
  - vimacs2 5y ago
    It also has a bs annual "support" cost of $180 so short of robbing one of them, you're better off waiting for the root method for the Quest 2 becoming publicly available or if you like to live a little dangerously, just use the workaround for the login that I did (search it on Youtube, I'd rather not detail it on this site). Every time you violate the tos of a company like Facebook, you're making the world a better place and I'm only half joking.
    - marak830 5y ago
      "Every time you violate the tos of a company like Facebook, you're making the world a better place and I'm only half joking. " I'm sorry but every time you purchase something, while disagreeing with the ToS, and work around it instead of just not buying it, your making the world a worse place.
      - vimacs2 5y ago
        That's assuming there is a viable alternative for the same price point - and no, I don't consider abstinence as a valid alternative.

MattGaiser 5y ago

I admittedly find this attitude perplexing. My pulse is far less private to me than my email or messages. Same with my medical history. I get that there would be situations where someone might want to hide certain conditions or histories, but for the average person, wouldn't having one's medical data leaked be a lot less harmful than having one's messages leaked?

im3w1l 5y ago
Maybe if you consider the heartrate in isolation, but imagine that they corrrelate it with other things. For instance using it to figure out which ads you are responsive to.
obenn 5y ago
The issue is in the combination of data. Could you imagine the value of knowing if your heart rate went up after reading a certain message, or seeing a certain ad?
- reader_mode 5y ago
  >Could you imagine the value of knowing if your heart rate went up after reading a certain message, or seeing a certain ad? No, I'm guessing it's worth a couple of cents ?
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    Perhaps. But this kind of psychographic profiling is used in labs to craft better adverts. Video games are another example. The Left 4 Dead director was trained on player emotions and designed to improve the game, which was a huge success. Having access to it in the field has real applications.
- lupire 5y ago
  I don't care about the value. What's the cost?
  - 5y ago

Hippocrates 5y ago

>clearly there’s a market for Facebook hardware—look at the success of its smart display, Portal. Is that a joke? I haven’t heard of anyone buying that. Only people balking at the mere idea of it.

nickthegreek 5y ago
Agreed about Portal, but Oculus is FB hardware and is pretty popular.
fireball_blaze 5y ago
If this device was truly selling well or exceeding Facebook's expectations, they'd be yelling it from the PR department constantly. That one 10X data point they mentioned has zero context and is unsubstantiated enough to be ignored entirely.
KaiserPro 5y ago
35-60 year old women drove that segment. They are actually really good(if you can get past the facebook part). Far better than the really expensive cisco board room systems.
izacus 5y ago
What does "you personally hearing" about anything have to do with a success of a major corpo product? I mean, media is reporting it as a success: https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-portal-is-a-hit-during-the-coronavirus-lockdown-thanks-to-your-grandparents/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-portal-is-a-hit-during-th... What does your personal experience mean here? Or to Facebook as a whole? Bubbles are a thing you know and it's good to get rid of this bubble-restricted thinking.
- Clubber 5y ago
  Much of what the media, particularly the tech media "reports" on is really just paid advertising. >Numbers on Portal sales are hard to come by. That's buried in the article. If the sales numbers are hard to come by, how do they know it's a hit? Because Facebook says so? Questionable.

newbie578 5y ago

I love how people are vilify Facebook like they are almost hiring forced labour and willfully collaborate with authoritarian regimes... Oh wait that is Apple which people follow like a cult... Color me shocked.... I am not going to defend Facebook, but this is ridiculous how people here are willing to look through pink-eyed glasses for their "favorite" companies. Downvote away, that is the best counter-argument :)

ssklash 5y ago
Changing the subject with a "whataboutism" about Apple adds nothing to the discussion and is still a sort defense of Facebook, despite you saying you weren't going to defend them.
- kbelder 5y ago
  Asking "what about" is not always a fallacy. If somebody says we shouldn't buy Facebook watches because they track you, asking "what about the other smart watches that track you" is relevant and sensible.

jchonphoenix 5y ago

Yawn. No, you wouldn't rather die.

igetspam 5y ago

I don't feel like reading the article but I support the statement in the headline. I wouldn't give any of the faang companies access to my health information unless they paid my salary and I block those recruiters.

bnix 5y ago

I'd trust FB with my data over say.. Equifax, and they have way more important data than my pulse. But they also got hacked for bad software maintenance and no one is constantly shitting on them. Not that I use it, but idk FB is a scapegoat if anything. ...Also I know it's whataboutism but common lol. People are so entitled with their privacy when it means nothing to their actual safety. Comes off so weak and whiny.