8 ms·

As someone that has spent a sizable amount of my career in ad products, the outrage here is kind of (sadly) funny. A conversion pixel? Hah, if you only had an i

• arkitaip 5y ago
  "I don't know why you are upset that I'm stabbing you when I've been poisoning your all these years ha ha ha".
  • wy35 5y ago
    Not really accurate analogy. More like “you’re only finding out today that I’ve been poisoning you the entire time?”
    • mtgx 5y ago
      In other words, victim blaming.
      • refulgentis 5y ago
        No. Lol.
    • bhch 5y ago
      pedantic
• tentacleuno 5y ago
  The amount of client-side JavaScript code that inconspicuous Like button loads is unnerving.
  • calvinmorrison 5y ago
    Doesn't matter much. Now it'll just happen server side where the server sends the same types of data directly to facebook. See the facebook CAPI. Basically a server side implementation of DataLayer and such...
    • tentacleuno 5y ago
      I'm not particularly surprised. I always knew this day would come. In fact, I've been wondering why they haven't done this for a while. Maybe it's time to invest in a good VPN / Tor.
• dralley 5y ago
  What happened in 2017?
  • jimmygrapes 5y ago
    I would guess that's when the Cambridge Analytics thing became well known, where they were using Facebook's network/data graphs to compile their own compiled and targeted data.
  • Apocryphon 5y ago
    GDPR maybe
    • amelius 5y ago
      What does it say about TikTok's tracking pixels in UberEats?
      • briandilley 5y ago
        Nothing. Because TikTok didn't put the tracking pixel there, UberEats did. It's from an advertising campaign that UberEats is running on TikTok. The need to related "conversions" (ie: people ordering/buying shit) on their system with whichever ad they were given on the TikTok side.
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• deleted 5y ago
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• axiosgunnar 5y ago
  [flagged]
  • droptablemain 5y ago
• 1_player 5y ago
  > As someone that has spent a sizable amount of my career in ad products, the outrage here is kind of (sadly) funny Imagine gloating and being proud of such a career.
  • refulgentis 5y ago
    • starsep 5y ago
      Ads themselves might be fine to you (I disagree). Breaking privacy laws, spying on users, and dark patterns to trick user into "consent" is not.
      • pc86 5y ago
        And one need have the other so I can't imagine what exactly it is you're talking about in the context of a reply to the statement "Ads are fine."
        • timando 5y ago
          Ads targeted based on the content they are placed next to don't need to track anybody. While they might be annoying (i.e. take up space / time) they don't have any privacy concerns.
          • d110af5ccf 5y ago
            > they don't have any privacy concerns Depending on how they're served to the end user.
      • Humdeee 5y ago
        Alas, the modern ad industry
    • Nicksil 5y ago
      >Ads are fine You work for Google; of course you find them fine.
• paulcole 5y ago
  What PII laws are there in the US?
  • mistrial9 5y ago
    https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/privacy-laws https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/privacy-laws # California State summary
    • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      But when was that enacted and put into force?
• Gunax 5y ago
  Well I am ready for my hairs to stand up. What did the data faucet contain?
  • kbelder 5y ago
    Not OP, but somewhere around 2010 I tinkered with creating a game for Facebook. I signed up for a developer account, spent some time with the docs and built a toy app. It was a straightforward call to get info about the user, including name, email, interests, etc. Their friends list. Info about all their friends, including all the same details. And so on. There was a EULA where the developer had to promise to delete all the info when the user signed out of the game, and not to share the info. That was the only security. The project fizzled, but when the Cambridge Analytica news broke, it confused me, because my recollection is EVERYBODY had all those lists of user info. Seriously, tens of thousands of different companies, with the only thing stopping them was a pinky promise.
    • snowwrestler 5y ago
      This is all true, but to get that data you had to run an app on Facebook. To my recollection, you could not grab this level of data with a Facebook JavaScript tag on 3rd party websites. Facebook offered this data on-platform to convince organizations to drive their audiences to Facebook.com instead of their own site.
  • Atsuii 5y ago
    We used to have access to individual demographic data for breaking down your analytics and ad targeting, as well as being able to target users based on their specific email address or phone number. We could also target your friends. From memory this has now all been rolled up into cohort demographics and 'look-a-like' audiences so you can no longer break your data down by specific users demographic attributes or target ads by say an email list unless they are already your users (and it's used for specific types of ads; retargeting). From memory some of the more unsettling breakdown/targets were - Ethnicity - Life events - Politics - Pages (so other businesses) they had liked I worked for a pure play furniture retailer you used to be able to do things like buy email lists from price comparators of gas/eletricity/home insurance with additional data like your postcode and then upload it to facebook and specifically target everyone with a FB account under that email/phone number with furniture ads. As the assumption is that if your looking for gas/eletricity/home insurance your likely to be moving home or at least be a person who had some need for furniture. Now they just use the facebook pixel to put you into look a like audiences because they can see you went to the home insurance website and the real estate website (they all have the pixel installed) and make the same broad assumptions we were previously making but on the cohort and not your specific unique identifier.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Hah, if you only had an idea of what the Facebook data faucet looked like in 2007-2017, your hairs would stand. I really don’t understand the goal with vague statements like this that can’t even provide even the slightest hint of specifics. What specific data? Even a single example would make this anecdote useful. Instead it feels more like a brag. “I know something but I’m not telling” but in this case the commenter doesn’t claim to have worked at Facebook (just the industry in general) so I suspect it’s hearsay anyway. > Pretty sure they were breaking all kinds of PII laws. Given the way Facebook has been under the microscope and dragged in front of Congress, I’m going to assume that their corporate counsel was very careful to provide at least a best-effort attempt to comply with every law available at the time. It may not be popular, but I really doubt Facebook was violating laws for a decade straight as the largest player in the space.
  • notyourwork 5y ago
    I think you’re giving Meta a break with best intention operation. I really think web tracking is much more nefarious than you are giving credit to.
    • DwnVoteHoneyPot 5y ago
      I really don’t understand the goal with vague statements like this that can’t even provide even the slightest hint of specifics. What specific data? Even a single example would make this anecdote useful.
      • kekkidy 5y ago
      • askura 5y ago
        A lot of people talk in broad strokes because if you use their marketing platforms you can see exactly what data is being mined. You can posit their ideological, political, and personal stances. Their friends, family, and pay more to reach people that are shown to influence them. You can choose their region, their income, their habits, hobbies, and kinks. You can quickly create an account and look at their self-serve ads. There's no reason why anyone needs to try and "guess" what these tracking tools can do. You can just go to the endpoint of that collected data and just see what you can target. It's better now but before you could do EVEN more. But better in the sense that someone who needs a limb amputating to stop gangrene setting in is better.
• andrewjl 5y ago
  The solution to this is simple though by no means easy: treat ones digital data as private property.
  • anchpop 5y ago
    I don’t see why that would solve the issue. your browser is communicating with facebook’s servers, so if they log your communication it’s not exactly a violation of your private property rights
    • andrewjl 5y ago
      In principle, sending your data in a way that's decipherable to the backend isn't in principle required. WhatsApp encrypts (or at least used to, not sure about now) messages. And no doubt it's not compatible with their current business model. Which is the point, it's a model that exploits property that isn't theirs for unfair gain.
• dillondoyle 5y ago
  I used to tell people if they know how ad tech worked it would be banned tomorrow. I doubt it's on FB during that period though? I would guess though that a bunch of health tech sent (perhaps accidentally just not understanding) a bunch of patient data though. Seems they are the responsible party. There's been other examples beyond FB of 'auto track' too. devs just don't know or forget to turn it off. Not to mention for some reason at that time putting a FB like button on all the porn. Who clicks that?!?!
  • Nextgrid 5y ago
    > I would guess though that a bunch of health tech sent I worked for a "healthtech" company in London at the beginning of the pandemic. They had the Facebook SDK malware embedded in the app that people were supposed to use for GP consultations. I don't believe any explicit health data was sent (there was no intent to do so, and I’m not sure if that would even be possible), but merely the fact that I'm talking to a doctor (and the current time, location, device fingerprint, etc) is not something I'd like Facebook to know. I know breaching the GDPR is basically the norm in any tech company but I thought that being involved in healthcare would make them super risk-averse and make an extra effort to comply. They were not alone in this - PatientAccess and a bunch of other sites - that you can use to book GP consultations (including through the NHS - UK’s socialised healthcare system) had a shit ton of such trackers too, obviously loaded before any GDPR consent could even be obtained.
    • dillondoyle 5y ago
      I don't know as much about the app SDK, but from the pixel it used to auto detect things like form fill ins, clicks, url params, urls etc. So there is potential it incidentally collected something bad!
• HWR_14 5y ago
  > if you only had an idea of what the Facebook data faucet looked like in 2007-2017, your hairs would stand. I'm pretty sure everyone of technical aptitude knew Facebook's data faucet. But maybe I missed something. As far as I know, Facebook: a) Had all the freely provided data, PII/likes/social graph/etc. b) On Facebook's site or mobile app, the were fingerprinting your device, examining your scrolling/mouse/clicking/other inputs to determine attention on a page c) Could recreate most nonuser's social graphs just by seeing them as endpoints in registered people's contacts c) On the web, had "like" buttons or ads and their code pretty much everywhere. Therefore they could track most people to most sites. d.1) Sites could directly provide more information to allow retargeting d.2) Sites could directly provide more information through a host of other services FB offered to the developers e) On mobile, in the background, scrapped your contacts, GPS, nearby devices (other phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, although tower information may or not be included). Also, had installed by default on a lot of phones f) On mobile, provided libraries people could import into their apps, mostly but not exclusively for ads. This let them get similar insights into usage patterns as on the web. Also, if people didn't install the FB app, let them get (e) g) Used your real identity to purchase information about you from the various realworld data merchants Which did I miss?
  • tedmiston 5y ago
    This is an excellent summary. I don't think you missed anything substantial... but I'll add two extensions: (1) Social graphs change slowly. And they still own Instagram, so for many users they have a live social graph still. (2) Facebook Pixel is dead. Long live Facebook Pixel! The Facebook Pixel is now (or at least nearing) effectively dead on modern up-to-date devices running ad blockers. Of course that leaves plenty of desktop machines where people aren't running ad blockers. But more importantly, Facebook has acknowledged the elephant in the room and moved from client side to server side with Conversions API (CAPI) (aka the new "Facebook Pixel"). And there's nothing ad blockers can do about server-side analytics...
    • HWR_14 5y ago
      I left out Facebook Login. That may be a help as well, although I don't think they get much from that they don't get from the other integrations in mobile apps/websites already.