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It sounds like the issue here is that Facebook won't share all the data it collects on its product (i.e. Facebook users) with the Australian government? My und

It sounds like the issue here is that Facebook won't share all the data it collects on its product (i.e. Facebook users) with the Australian government? My understanding is that since the Cambridge Analytical issue, Facebook now manages all its data access in-house, so if you want to buy targeted advertising access from Facebook, you don't get to buy the product lists/categorizations directly, you have to submit your ad content to the Facebook advertising department, who then serves them directly to the product? I rather doubt Facebook is actually planning on implementing end-to-end encryption of the kind that would allow Facebook's product to hide their own data profiles from the Facebook advertising department, as that would defeat the whole purpose of the site. Targeted advertising based on Facebook's internal library of product data is the bread-and-butter of that outfit, isn't it? However, the product wants at least the illusion of privacy and Facebook wants more product, so it appears to be saying to the Australian government that it won't allow them to snoop on the product's data profiles. However, the whole thing could just be public posturing for PR purposes, and in reality they may have maintained backdoor access to product data for the NSA/GHCQ/FiveEyes etc. as per Snowden revelations about the PRISM program, which anyone can look up.

pbalau 5y ago
> My understanding is that since the Cambridge Analytical issue, Facebook now manages all its data access in-house That was the case since, at least, I joined FB via an ad-tech acquisition, mid 2010s. We had a feature that allowed customers to host their own assets. That was the first thing that we had to remove after integrating with the FB stack. /edit: the CA scandal was ~ mid 2010s, my statement doesn't help. We joined before the scandal, by quite some time.
whimsicalism 5y ago
> My understanding is that since the Cambridge Analytical issue, Facebook now manages all its data access in-house, so if you want to buy targeted advertising access from Facebook, you don't get to buy the product lists/categorizations directly, you have to submit your ad content to the Facebook advertising department, who then serves them directly to the product? I think the Cambridge Analytica issue is orthogonal to this - what you describe is standard supply-side advertising practice for much longer than since then.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Yes. CA got all that data through the API. They paid users to take a mechanical turk survey that requested large fb perms. which the time included a lot of data on their friends, beyond their own single profile data. That has been shut down.
philliphaydon 5y ago
> I rather doubt Facebook is actually planning on implementing end-to-end encryption of the kind that would allow Facebook's product to hide their own data profiles from the Facebook advertising department, as that would defeat the whole purpose of the site. Targeted advertising based on Facebook's internal library of product data is the bread-and-butter of that outfit, isn't it? Well they might claim to add e2e encryption. But it won’t be true e2e. Will be fake like WhatsApp. They will still read the messages for advertising.

pbalau 5y ago

> My understanding is that since the Cambridge Analytical issue, Facebook now manages all its data access in-house That was the case since, at least, I joined FB via an ad-tech acquisition, mid 2010s. We had a feature that allowed customers to host their own assets. That was the first thing that we had to remove after integrating with the FB stack. /edit: the CA scandal was ~ mid 2010s, my statement doesn't help. We joined before the scandal, by quite some time.

whimsicalism 5y ago

> My understanding is that since the Cambridge Analytical issue, Facebook now manages all its data access in-house, so if you want to buy targeted advertising access from Facebook, you don't get to buy the product lists/categorizations directly, you have to submit your ad content to the Facebook advertising department, who then serves them directly to the product? I think the Cambridge Analytica issue is orthogonal to this - what you describe is standard supply-side advertising practice for much longer than since then.

dillondoyle 5y ago
Yes. CA got all that data through the API. They paid users to take a mechanical turk survey that requested large fb perms. which the time included a lot of data on their friends, beyond their own single profile data. That has been shut down.

philliphaydon 5y ago

> I rather doubt Facebook is actually planning on implementing end-to-end encryption of the kind that would allow Facebook's product to hide their own data profiles from the Facebook advertising department, as that would defeat the whole purpose of the site. Targeted advertising based on Facebook's internal library of product data is the bread-and-butter of that outfit, isn't it? Well they might claim to add e2e encryption. But it won’t be true e2e. Will be fake like WhatsApp. They will still read the messages for advertising.