13 ms·

Facebook announces privacy-enhancing technologies

100 points by doitLP 5y ago

elliekelly 5y ago
I’d sooner trust Bernie Madoff to manage my money honestly than trust Facebook to manage my personal information honestly.
AlphaCharlie 5y ago
TL;RD: Facebook wants to announce in the future some privacy enhancing ideas, nothing concrete yet. But don’t worry, they still want to track you enough to tailor ads to users (their words).
- sergiotapia 5y ago
  I won't ever browse the web without an adblocker, so this doesn't really affect me at all. Stay safe out there bros
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ignoramous 5y ago
  > Facebook wants to announce in the future some privacy enhancing ideas The post does point out that by next year one such privacy-enhancing tech would be made broadly available. > ...they still want to track you enough to tailor ads to users (their words). Yes, but using MPC (multi-party computation) and other (zero-knowledge) techniques gathering steam as of late: "These technologies will help us minimize the amount of personal information we process, while still allowing us to show people relevant ads and measure ad effectiveness for advertisers." I dislike Facebook's data handling practices as much as the next guy, but: Whats proposed is better than what we have today, though it isn't absolutely the best they could do. That's the price to pay for free, I guess. After all, advertisers are their paying customers.
- akomtu 5y ago
  "Tailor ads to users" is such a newspeak. Only two industries call their consumers users: advertisers and drug dealers. So it's fair to compare FB with a broker between drug dealers (advertisers) and drug users (or just users). The users don't really want drugs, but they've become addicts and can't stop themselves. The broker's caring about its users privacy is cute. Apple's and Google's recent stance on privacy is basically protecting the territory from a competing broker (FB).
BlueGh0st 5y ago
This link may be more relevant: What Are Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) and How Will They Apply to Ads? https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technologies-and-ads/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technolo...
forgotmypw17 5y ago
What's next, Purdue announces Life-Saving Technologies for chickens?
Syonyk 5y ago
> Without personalized advertising, businesses would be harder to start and grow, new products and services would be harder to discover and would cost more, and people would see less relevant, less timely and less interesting ads. The years prior to 2010 or whenever they jumped into advertising would argue "You're wrong, Facebook." > We are optimistic that new privacy-enhancing technologies will prove that personalization remains possible and effective as our industry evolves to become less reliant on individual third-party data. "Evolves"? Or "Was shoved off the cliff when people actually found out what you were doing and were given the option to push?" > We’re also exploring applications for on-device learning, a technology that could improve a person’s ad experience by processing data locally on their device rather than sending individual data to a remote server or cloud. And back around to the PC era (local computation) from the mainframe era (most recently cloud datacenters)... and the cycle continues... > As we work with the industry to answer these questions, we know businesses — especially small businesses — are counting on us to help them navigate through these changes. Many of them don’t have large marketing budgets — or even marketing teams — so they use our tools to deliver and measure their ad campaigns efficiently. Would these be the small businesses that, during the pandemic, figured out that "paying to get someone to your site when they search for your company name is more expensive than people simply finding your site as the first hit when they search for your company name"? The whole "Facebook, we care about small businesses!" shtick is getting pretty old and transparent. Facebook in advertising trouble? "Oh, but this will hurt small businesses!" Bravo Sierra. > New technologies take time to develop, but we’re confident that through our ongoing work and engagement with the broader industry, we can build solutions that will support a free and open internet. Uh huh. Long as you sit in the middle, profit, and make sure that people think "free and open internet" means "Load Facebook." I admit I was hoping that the article was just a redirect to the "Delete your account" page. :(
- marketingtech 5y ago
  > The years prior to 2010 or whenever they jumped into advertising would argue "You're wrong, Facebook." For better and for worse, we've seen pretty significant shifts in advertising over the last decade that has led to the collapse of brand names' domination over certain categories. There are over 1 million tiny ecommerce businesses on Shopify that could never afford or rationalize a mass-market TV, print, or radio commercial but they can still be generate meaningful profits with only $100 worth of digital ads that are delivered to the right people. It's undeniable that small businesses are benefiting from these types of ads, though you're welcome to question the macro-economic implications of that.
baal80spam 5y ago
Needs a /sarcasm tag.
dakial1 5y ago
Basically Facebook wants to lead the privacy conversation to steer it away from their cash-cow or/and their future positioning strategy.
websites2023 5y ago
> With Apple and Google continuing to make changes via their browsers and operating systems, and with the changing privacy regulatory landscape, it’s important to acknowledge that digital advertising must evolve to become less reliant on individual third-party data. Nothing in there about the users at all. Just “we’ve been forced to do this by others.” Facebook truly believes privacy is just an obstacle to their revenue, not something good for the people who use their product. If there were any signal that Facebook is really, truly a net negative for humanity it’s that opening paragraph. Christ.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  I agree with you but there were so many cases already in the past, that its for a long time just a fact of life that won't change, nothing revealing. Trying to spin their amoral business setup in any other way is just an exercise in (self)lying.
  - websites2023 5y ago
    I would have settled for an acknowledgement that users are demanding this change. No need to fake believing it’s a good thing for users or Facebook’s business, even. Simply: “Users are becoming increasingly concerned with how their data is processed. To meet this concern, and maintain personalization that benefits them, we…” But they couldn’t muster that.
- akomtu 5y ago
  Btw, when FB and the like say "we value our users" they really mean "we maximize average lifetime value of our users".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- smoldesu 5y ago
  > Just “we’ve been forced to do this by others.” Well, because they were. Apple poked them with a stick, Facebook responds in the most blithe, un-entertaining fashion possible. No surprise there, since everyone in the privacy community knew this was a pissing contest from the start. If we want real change, we should be holding people accountable and forcing transparency everywhere possible. Until then, it looks like the corporate interests-that-be are more concerned with slowly destroying one another using their liquid assets than improving the "user experience".
fuzzylightbulb 5y ago
"World-renowned arsonist announces new squirt guns for personal fire safety" Really Facebook sees the writing on the wall that Apple and Google are about to cut off the firehose of data Facebook collects via mobile devices, and is scrambling to find a way around this by pretending to give a damn about your privacy.
- bogomipz 5y ago
  I was aware of Apple's recent moves to "cut off the firehose" for FB but I hand't heard of a similar move by Google. Is there an Android update coming will have the same effect? I feel like I may have missed this.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    Android begun this effort with 9 and turning it up a notch with 11. All indications are, Google would continue to harden restrictions. See: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/search/label/Security https://android-developers.googleblog.com/search/label/Secur...
  - lancesells 5y ago
    It's similar to iOS from what I can tell: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-privacy-dashboard-1233846/ https://www.androidauthority.com/android-privacy-dashboard-1...
    - bogomipz 5y ago
      Thanks. It's interesting that this hasn't gotten as much attention as the Apple update.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        Googs being Googs, even if they did make more hay about this, my outlook would be that they are devising ways to keep FB from gathering that data while the Googs continues to hoover up all they data they do. It's a win-win for Googs: they get to pretend to be good guys protecting mobile users privacy while at the same time putting pressure on a competitor so their product is more attractive.
dsr_ 5y ago
This is a distraction to wash their reputation after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28063637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28063637 (Facebook bans researchers who were investigating Facebook ads)
- dylan604 5y ago
  Sure, but I don't think it's a 1:1 correlation though. FB is constantly getting berated about privacy. This is just part of their on going campaign to make themselves look less vile.
smsm42 5y ago
That sounds like "Philip-Morris announcing Health-Enhancing brands".
carabiner 5y ago
> Without personalized advertising, businesses would be harder to start and grow, new products and services would be harder to discover and would cost more, and people would see less relevant, less timely and less interesting ads. What about having control over our own minds? What about spending our moments in the present? When did life become about discovering "new products" and not just living in the world? Here's a city that banned advertising: https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/04/london-before-after-ads.jpg https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/04/london-be... Are we seriously going to claim that the citizens are deprived now that those ads like barnacles are not covering these historical buildings? Think of the products they could be discovering! It's time to realize that ads are a net negative for society.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  Ads are fine in a certain, very limited scope. For example, the newspaper, back when it held a prominent role in society, had an "ads" section. You could go directly to it to "discover new products" Whether or not we want to admit it or not, we've all had a a product we have bought as a result of advertising that has provided us a good amount of value/joy/utility. There is clearly some utility for society in companies, especially newer ones, being able to reach new audiences, especially if they are making good products/trying to do it in a more sustainable way/changing the status quo in some net positive way. You can't rely on just word of mouth alone.
- jnwatson 5y ago
  They didn't ban advertising. They banned billboards and certain signage. There's a huge difference.
  - lokedhs 5y ago
    Whenever I visit a country where billboards are legal, I'm always surprised how horrible they are and how the completely destroy the look of a city. Banning them is such a no-brainer, and it only takes visiting a country which allows them vs. a country who don't to see why.
- 5y ago
LightG 5y ago
LOL
tpush 5y ago
Does every post about Facebook have to result in a massive circle jerking of comments? These get tiring to read every time. Almost none of the comments right now offer any substance at all, just mindless sound bites and jokes.
- ramesh31 5y ago
  Given that the headline itself is a punchline, I wouldn't expect much more.
- agar 5y ago
  Apparently. Similarly, the top comment on any article about VR seemingly must also be about hating Facebook.
- bogomipz 5y ago
  And yet we can invert that question as well. Does nearly every post by Facebook lately have to be an attempt for them to convince us that pervasive surveillance and personal add targeting is actually in our best interests? Further, do these same posts also require them to cast themselves as some great champion of personal privacy? I think one could argue that the constant gas-lighting by FB is tiresome.
- fsociety 5y ago
  Because the union of people who use and enjoy Facebook and people who read HN is very small. But the union of people who read HN and people who would hit a button to erase Facebook and all of its employees off the face of the planet is probably larger than one might expect.
herunan 5y ago
privacy washing
sidcool 5y ago
> With Apple and Google continuing to make changes via their browsers and operating systems, and with the changing privacy regulatory landscape, it’s important to acknowledge that digital advertising must evolve to become less reliant on individual third-party data. Wow, facebook kinda admits that it hates the privacy measures, but are helpless and will have to abide.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ouid 5y ago
Privacy-enhancing here means that your privacy has been changed in some way.
nepthar 5y ago
I've been digging through this in an effort to understand exactly how it preserves user privacy. I'm at a bit of a loss, probably because I lack domain expertise. From digging through their docs[1]: > This adds a new privacy concern, however. Revealing that a person is in a treatment or control group is just a random value, but revealing the fact that they had an opportunity could reveal much more information, such as demographics used for targeting of the advertising campaign. (Note: revealing a person’s treatment/control group assignment isn’t entirely private, as it could reveal membership in a group, which we often want to avoid in general. Opportunity logging, though, can reveal much more information.) I understand that if I were to see that Johnny Individual was served ad campaign X, and X was targeted towards 35 year old male identifying individuals in Colorado, I would know that Johnny Individual fit the bill according to the ad network. What I can't understand is: Who are we trying to keep this info from? The ad network needs to know this to properly run the campaign. In the example they provide, I believe the ad network is running the lift test and reporting aggregate results. Could someone please point out what I'm missing? [1] https://github.com/facebookresearch/fbpcf/blob/master/docs/PrivateRCT.md https://github.com/facebookresearch/fbpcf/blob/master/docs/P...
- ouid 5y ago
  it doesn't preserve user privacy, it enchances it.
- nepthar 5y ago
  ... If I had dug just a bit deeper before posting :) > Today, this type of reporting requires at least one party to learn which specific people made a purchase after seeing a specific ad. With MPC, say one party has the information about who saw an ad and another party has information on who makes a purchase. MPC and encryption make it possible for both parties to learn insights about how an ad is performing, without the need to entrust a single party with both data sets. https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technologies-and-ads/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technolo...
cblconfederate 5y ago
Please call it "Spying-reduction" . Although i somehow doubt that's what's happening
slumdev 5y ago
"OPEC Pivots To Renewable Energies"
rexreed 5y ago
Facebook's entire business model is completely dependent on mining your personal data for the benefit of advertisers. There is no other major component to their business. From that perspective alone, it would be utter lunacy to believe that they have your "privacy" in mind. If so, then the definition of privacy has become so perverted as to not mean what it actually is meant to mean: keeping things to one's self that are not meant to be shared with anyone. Then again, people freely share on Facebook that which should remain private in any case. We've devolved to the point that we're now worrying about privacy on a platform that depends on sharing things that shouldn't be shared and we're worried that it will get shared beyond what we want. Social media is such a rats nest.
lawwantsin17 5y ago
Facebook replaces tracking with literal voodoo so it can continue to sell ad targeting to suckers.
kgantchev 5y ago
How about they go and f** right off with that BS!?
atkailash 5y ago
Maybe they should fix their community “standards” first. Rampant transphobia is acceptable to them, but god forbid you call someone a boomer
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
In other news, foxes announce hen-enhancing technologies.
swayvil 5y ago
The mouse offers to guard the cheese.
suyash 5y ago
Under the false justification of 'personalization' they want to capture all your data and sell it to advertisers. Don't buy into their false narrative folks.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
Oh no, ads shown to me might be “less interesting.” How could I live in such a world??
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
If you could subscribe to Facebook for $10/month in exchange for being shown no ads in their app, and not being tracked by them across the internet, would you do it?
- cwkoss 5y ago
  > and not being tracked by them across the internet How could they selectively disable trackers for paying users without tracking when paying users are on third party sites? Seems like a an impossible service. I might pay $1/mo if facebook stopped all third party tracking and ads within the service, but that is such an outlandish hypothetical I'm not even sure it's worth entertaining.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- freediver 5y ago
  No, because their product as it is now would add negative value to my life. As such they would have to pay me to be a user.
petercooper 5y ago
I know it's a tangential thing but I was surprised by a privacy feature I encountered on Facebook earlier. I went to sell something on Facebook Marketplace as everyone uses it around here and I noticed it had a toggle to "not show the item to your friends". After taking a few seconds to think about why this feature existed, it struck me as a kinda clever real life application of when we might want privacy.. when we're selling gifts we don't like :-)
whoomp12342 5y ago
In other news, the fox has declared the hen house to be a very safe place indeed.

100 points by doitLP 5y ago

I’d sooner trust Bernie Madoff to manage my money honestly than trust Facebook to manage my personal information honestly.

AlphaCharlie 5y ago

TL;RD: Facebook wants to announce in the future some privacy enhancing ideas, nothing concrete yet. But don’t worry, they still want to track you enough to tailor ads to users (their words).

sergiotapia 5y ago
I won't ever browse the web without an adblocker, so this doesn't really affect me at all. Stay safe out there bros
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ignoramous 5y ago
> Facebook wants to announce in the future some privacy enhancing ideas The post does point out that by next year one such privacy-enhancing tech would be made broadly available. > ...they still want to track you enough to tailor ads to users (their words). Yes, but using MPC (multi-party computation) and other (zero-knowledge) techniques gathering steam as of late: "These technologies will help us minimize the amount of personal information we process, while still allowing us to show people relevant ads and measure ad effectiveness for advertisers." I dislike Facebook's data handling practices as much as the next guy, but: Whats proposed is better than what we have today, though it isn't absolutely the best they could do. That's the price to pay for free, I guess. After all, advertisers are their paying customers.
akomtu 5y ago
"Tailor ads to users" is such a newspeak. Only two industries call their consumers users: advertisers and drug dealers. So it's fair to compare FB with a broker between drug dealers (advertisers) and drug users (or just users). The users don't really want drugs, but they've become addicts and can't stop themselves. The broker's caring about its users privacy is cute. Apple's and Google's recent stance on privacy is basically protecting the territory from a competing broker (FB).

BlueGh0st 5y ago

This link may be more relevant: What Are Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) and How Will They Apply to Ads? https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technologies-and-ads/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technolo...

forgotmypw17 5y ago

What's next, Purdue announces Life-Saving Technologies for chickens?

Syonyk 5y ago

> Without personalized advertising, businesses would be harder to start and grow, new products and services would be harder to discover and would cost more, and people would see less relevant, less timely and less interesting ads. The years prior to 2010 or whenever they jumped into advertising would argue "You're wrong, Facebook." > We are optimistic that new privacy-enhancing technologies will prove that personalization remains possible and effective as our industry evolves to become less reliant on individual third-party data. "Evolves"? Or "Was shoved off the cliff when people actually found out what you were doing and were given the option to push?" > We’re also exploring applications for on-device learning, a technology that could improve a person’s ad experience by processing data locally on their device rather than sending individual data to a remote server or cloud. And back around to the PC era (local computation) from the mainframe era (most recently cloud datacenters)... and the cycle continues... > As we work with the industry to answer these questions, we know businesses — especially small businesses — are counting on us to help them navigate through these changes. Many of them don’t have large marketing budgets — or even marketing teams — so they use our tools to deliver and measure their ad campaigns efficiently. Would these be the small businesses that, during the pandemic, figured out that "paying to get someone to your site when they search for your company name is more expensive than people simply finding your site as the first hit when they search for your company name"? The whole "Facebook, we care about small businesses!" shtick is getting pretty old and transparent. Facebook in advertising trouble? "Oh, but this will hurt small businesses!" Bravo Sierra. > New technologies take time to develop, but we’re confident that through our ongoing work and engagement with the broader industry, we can build solutions that will support a free and open internet. Uh huh. Long as you sit in the middle, profit, and make sure that people think "free and open internet" means "Load Facebook." I admit I was hoping that the article was just a redirect to the "Delete your account" page. :(

marketingtech 5y ago
> The years prior to 2010 or whenever they jumped into advertising would argue "You're wrong, Facebook." For better and for worse, we've seen pretty significant shifts in advertising over the last decade that has led to the collapse of brand names' domination over certain categories. There are over 1 million tiny ecommerce businesses on Shopify that could never afford or rationalize a mass-market TV, print, or radio commercial but they can still be generate meaningful profits with only $100 worth of digital ads that are delivered to the right people. It's undeniable that small businesses are benefiting from these types of ads, though you're welcome to question the macro-economic implications of that.

baal80spam 5y ago

Needs a /sarcasm tag.

dakial1 5y ago

Basically Facebook wants to lead the privacy conversation to steer it away from their cash-cow or/and their future positioning strategy.

websites2023 5y ago

> With Apple and Google continuing to make changes via their browsers and operating systems, and with the changing privacy regulatory landscape, it’s important to acknowledge that digital advertising must evolve to become less reliant on individual third-party data. Nothing in there about the users at all. Just “we’ve been forced to do this by others.” Facebook truly believes privacy is just an obstacle to their revenue, not something good for the people who use their product. If there were any signal that Facebook is really, truly a net negative for humanity it’s that opening paragraph. Christ.

saiya-jin 5y ago
I agree with you but there were so many cases already in the past, that its for a long time just a fact of life that won't change, nothing revealing. Trying to spin their amoral business setup in any other way is just an exercise in (self)lying.
- websites2023 5y ago
  I would have settled for an acknowledgement that users are demanding this change. No need to fake believing it’s a good thing for users or Facebook’s business, even. Simply: “Users are becoming increasingly concerned with how their data is processed. To meet this concern, and maintain personalization that benefits them, we…” But they couldn’t muster that.
akomtu 5y ago
Btw, when FB and the like say "we value our users" they really mean "we maximize average lifetime value of our users".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
smoldesu 5y ago
> Just “we’ve been forced to do this by others.” Well, because they were. Apple poked them with a stick, Facebook responds in the most blithe, un-entertaining fashion possible. No surprise there, since everyone in the privacy community knew this was a pissing contest from the start. If we want real change, we should be holding people accountable and forcing transparency everywhere possible. Until then, it looks like the corporate interests-that-be are more concerned with slowly destroying one another using their liquid assets than improving the "user experience".

fuzzylightbulb 5y ago

"World-renowned arsonist announces new squirt guns for personal fire safety" Really Facebook sees the writing on the wall that Apple and Google are about to cut off the firehose of data Facebook collects via mobile devices, and is scrambling to find a way around this by pretending to give a damn about your privacy.

bogomipz 5y ago
I was aware of Apple's recent moves to "cut off the firehose" for FB but I hand't heard of a similar move by Google. Is there an Android update coming will have the same effect? I feel like I may have missed this.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  Android begun this effort with 9 and turning it up a notch with 11. All indications are, Google would continue to harden restrictions. See: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/search/label/Security https://android-developers.googleblog.com/search/label/Secur...
- lancesells 5y ago
  It's similar to iOS from what I can tell: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-privacy-dashboard-1233846/ https://www.androidauthority.com/android-privacy-dashboard-1...
  - bogomipz 5y ago
    Thanks. It's interesting that this hasn't gotten as much attention as the Apple update.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Googs being Googs, even if they did make more hay about this, my outlook would be that they are devising ways to keep FB from gathering that data while the Googs continues to hoover up all they data they do. It's a win-win for Googs: they get to pretend to be good guys protecting mobile users privacy while at the same time putting pressure on a competitor so their product is more attractive.

dsr_ 5y ago

This is a distraction to wash their reputation after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28063637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28063637 (Facebook bans researchers who were investigating Facebook ads)

dylan604 5y ago
Sure, but I don't think it's a 1:1 correlation though. FB is constantly getting berated about privacy. This is just part of their on going campaign to make themselves look less vile.

smsm42 5y ago

That sounds like "Philip-Morris announcing Health-Enhancing brands".

carabiner 5y ago

> Without personalized advertising, businesses would be harder to start and grow, new products and services would be harder to discover and would cost more, and people would see less relevant, less timely and less interesting ads. What about having control over our own minds? What about spending our moments in the present? When did life become about discovering "new products" and not just living in the world? Here's a city that banned advertising: https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/04/london-before-after-ads.jpg https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/04/london-be... Are we seriously going to claim that the citizens are deprived now that those ads like barnacles are not covering these historical buildings? Think of the products they could be discovering! It's time to realize that ads are a net negative for society.

dimitrios1 5y ago
Ads are fine in a certain, very limited scope. For example, the newspaper, back when it held a prominent role in society, had an "ads" section. You could go directly to it to "discover new products" Whether or not we want to admit it or not, we've all had a a product we have bought as a result of advertising that has provided us a good amount of value/joy/utility. There is clearly some utility for society in companies, especially newer ones, being able to reach new audiences, especially if they are making good products/trying to do it in a more sustainable way/changing the status quo in some net positive way. You can't rely on just word of mouth alone.
jnwatson 5y ago
They didn't ban advertising. They banned billboards and certain signage. There's a huge difference.
- lokedhs 5y ago
  Whenever I visit a country where billboards are legal, I'm always surprised how horrible they are and how the completely destroy the look of a city. Banning them is such a no-brainer, and it only takes visiting a country which allows them vs. a country who don't to see why.
5y ago

LightG 5y ago

LOL

tpush 5y ago

Does every post about Facebook have to result in a massive circle jerking of comments? These get tiring to read every time. Almost none of the comments right now offer any substance at all, just mindless sound bites and jokes.

ramesh31 5y ago
Given that the headline itself is a punchline, I wouldn't expect much more.
agar 5y ago
Apparently. Similarly, the top comment on any article about VR seemingly must also be about hating Facebook.
bogomipz 5y ago
And yet we can invert that question as well. Does nearly every post by Facebook lately have to be an attempt for them to convince us that pervasive surveillance and personal add targeting is actually in our best interests? Further, do these same posts also require them to cast themselves as some great champion of personal privacy? I think one could argue that the constant gas-lighting by FB is tiresome.
fsociety 5y ago
Because the union of people who use and enjoy Facebook and people who read HN is very small. But the union of people who read HN and people who would hit a button to erase Facebook and all of its employees off the face of the planet is probably larger than one might expect.

herunan 5y ago

privacy washing

sidcool 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ouid 5y ago

Privacy-enhancing here means that your privacy has been changed in some way.

nepthar 5y ago

I've been digging through this in an effort to understand exactly how it preserves user privacy. I'm at a bit of a loss, probably because I lack domain expertise. From digging through their docs[1]: > This adds a new privacy concern, however. Revealing that a person is in a treatment or control group is just a random value, but revealing the fact that they had an opportunity could reveal much more information, such as demographics used for targeting of the advertising campaign. (Note: revealing a person’s treatment/control group assignment isn’t entirely private, as it could reveal membership in a group, which we often want to avoid in general. Opportunity logging, though, can reveal much more information.) I understand that if I were to see that Johnny Individual was served ad campaign X, and X was targeted towards 35 year old male identifying individuals in Colorado, I would know that Johnny Individual fit the bill according to the ad network. What I can't understand is: Who are we trying to keep this info from? The ad network needs to know this to properly run the campaign. In the example they provide, I believe the ad network is running the lift test and reporting aggregate results. Could someone please point out what I'm missing? [1] https://github.com/facebookresearch/fbpcf/blob/master/docs/PrivateRCT.md https://github.com/facebookresearch/fbpcf/blob/master/docs/P...

ouid 5y ago
it doesn't preserve user privacy, it enchances it.
nepthar 5y ago
... If I had dug just a bit deeper before posting :) > Today, this type of reporting requires at least one party to learn which specific people made a purchase after seeing a specific ad. With MPC, say one party has the information about who saw an ad and another party has information on who makes a purchase. MPC and encryption make it possible for both parties to learn insights about how an ad is performing, without the need to entrust a single party with both data sets. https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technologies-and-ads/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/privacy-enhancing-technolo...

cblconfederate 5y ago

Please call it "Spying-reduction" . Although i somehow doubt that's what's happening

slumdev 5y ago

"OPEC Pivots To Renewable Energies"

rexreed 5y ago

Facebook's entire business model is completely dependent on mining your personal data for the benefit of advertisers. There is no other major component to their business. From that perspective alone, it would be utter lunacy to believe that they have your "privacy" in mind. If so, then the definition of privacy has become so perverted as to not mean what it actually is meant to mean: keeping things to one's self that are not meant to be shared with anyone. Then again, people freely share on Facebook that which should remain private in any case. We've devolved to the point that we're now worrying about privacy on a platform that depends on sharing things that shouldn't be shared and we're worried that it will get shared beyond what we want. Social media is such a rats nest.

lawwantsin17 5y ago

Facebook replaces tracking with literal voodoo so it can continue to sell ad targeting to suckers.

kgantchev 5y ago

How about they go and f** right off with that BS!?

atkailash 5y ago

Maybe they should fix their community “standards” first. Rampant transphobia is acceptable to them, but god forbid you call someone a boomer

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

In other news, foxes announce hen-enhancing technologies.

swayvil 5y ago

The mouse offers to guard the cheese.

suyash 5y ago

Under the false justification of 'personalization' they want to capture all your data and sell it to advertisers. Don't buy into their false narrative folks.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

Oh no, ads shown to me might be “less interesting.” How could I live in such a world??

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

If you could subscribe to Facebook for $10/month in exchange for being shown no ads in their app, and not being tracked by them across the internet, would you do it?

cwkoss 5y ago
> and not being tracked by them across the internet How could they selectively disable trackers for paying users without tracking when paying users are on third party sites? Seems like a an impossible service. I might pay $1/mo if facebook stopped all third party tracking and ads within the service, but that is such an outlandish hypothetical I'm not even sure it's worth entertaining.
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freediver 5y ago
No, because their product as it is now would add negative value to my life. As such they would have to pay me to be a user.

petercooper 5y ago

I know it's a tangential thing but I was surprised by a privacy feature I encountered on Facebook earlier. I went to sell something on Facebook Marketplace as everyone uses it around here and I noticed it had a toggle to "not show the item to your friends". After taking a few seconds to think about why this feature existed, it struck me as a kinda clever real life application of when we might want privacy.. when we're selling gifts we don't like :-)

whoomp12342 5y ago

In other news, the fox has declared the hen house to be a very safe place indeed.