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After reading some more of the transcript, I think the article does such a bad job of describing what was being asked for that it makes the court seem incompete

After reading some more of the transcript, I think the article does such a bad job of describing what was being asked for that it makes the court seem incompetent and Facebook actually rather reasonable. My original comment is below: Government contracted construction workers: We Have No Idea Where Your Tax Money Goes When tasked with answering the simple question "Which specific bricks did my tax money buy this year", the two veteran construction workers looked confused and tried to explain that that's not really how taxes work. The special master at times seemed in disbelief, as when he questioned the engineers over whether any invoices existed for a particular road building contract. “Someone must have a receipt that says this is who the money came from that bought these bricks” I'm not sure the analogy fits 100%, but it's the closest I could think of. This reads like the author thinks the Facebook algorithm is a human-readable decision tree that only takes into account the data of a single user at a time. As usual, the problem is not data "collection" or "retention" or "privacy", but "creation". Regulation will always remain woefully inadequate to control such organizations, and the only solution is to adopt systems that don't spew user data everywhere in the first place.

twanvl 4y ago
Money is fungible, personal data is not.
- jtbayly 4y ago
  Ha! “Fungible” is the word I settled on, too.
- guywithahat 4y ago
  You'd think that but personal data piles up quickly and the individuals who make it up dispensary. It's a little like saying any particular dollar is unique; I suppose it is but if you get enough of them nobody cares. I think expecting Facebook to treat all of their data as if it's ITAR is unfortunately unrealistic, we're not all that unique or special and if you use the internet your data has already been leaked or is otherwise public
jtbayly 4y ago
That’s an absurd analogy that doesn’t fit at all. FB uses the data it can’t find or tell you anything about to successfully sell ad space to third parties targeted back at you. Let’s make it concrete. We know FB keeps track of which webpages you visit. We also know they use that data as a way to help target ads. That data isn’t in the data export they give you, as far as I can tell from a brief search. Is there data coming in about which Instagram profiles you follow and what pics you clicked and liked? Is there other data they keep track of? Undoubtedly. I’m not surprised nobody knows the answer to what all it might be. But pretending that data is fungible like money is just misdirection.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Exactly. If Facebook can target ads at specific users to begin with, then how can they possibly claim they don't know where the data is or how to find it? Then how do they know the users are being targeted "correctly" or at all? It's a ridiculous argument that falls apart under any scrutiny. Their entire business model relies on them knowing how to target specific users using huge graphs of information.
  - closeparen 4y ago
    Engineers know how to find a service or a data store that meets a particular need. If extraordinarily skilled, they might even know how to find the best one. Wizards know how to go exploring in the wilderness beyond an API boundary to track down particular problems. A god’s eye view of all services, all data stores, all relationships, and all flows can at best be machine generated. Only extreme zoom levels of tiny regions are of any meaning to a human reader. It’s the difference between going shopping and accounting for all the flows of goods and services in an economy.
- handity 4y ago
  Agreed, Facebook definitely has the ability to provide timestamped interaction events as part of "Download my Data". Maybe legislation will force them to provide that information at some point, but that won't really have any effect on user privacy. The hearing seems to want to get more to the heart of the issue, but is inept to do so. The stored data isn't the concern, it's the predictive capability of models built on it. The decision of a predictive model isn't any more traceable to a single piece of data than a brick in a road is traceable to a given taxpayer, which is what I was trying to get at with the analogy. After reading some of the transcript, the special masters seem very on the ball, and it's more the spin of the article I take issue with.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Government contracted construction workers: We Have No Idea Where Your Tax Money Goes I think it would be a more meaningful analogy if you had posited two government accountants.

twanvl 4y ago

Money is fungible, personal data is not.

jtbayly 4y ago
Ha! “Fungible” is the word I settled on, too.
guywithahat 4y ago
You'd think that but personal data piles up quickly and the individuals who make it up dispensary. It's a little like saying any particular dollar is unique; I suppose it is but if you get enough of them nobody cares. I think expecting Facebook to treat all of their data as if it's ITAR is unfortunately unrealistic, we're not all that unique or special and if you use the internet your data has already been leaked or is otherwise public

jtbayly 4y ago

That’s an absurd analogy that doesn’t fit at all. FB uses the data it can’t find or tell you anything about to successfully sell ad space to third parties targeted back at you. Let’s make it concrete. We know FB keeps track of which webpages you visit. We also know they use that data as a way to help target ads. That data isn’t in the data export they give you, as far as I can tell from a brief search. Is there data coming in about which Instagram profiles you follow and what pics you clicked and liked? Is there other data they keep track of? Undoubtedly. I’m not surprised nobody knows the answer to what all it might be. But pretending that data is fungible like money is just misdirection.

nathanaldensr 4y ago
Exactly. If Facebook can target ads at specific users to begin with, then how can they possibly claim they don't know where the data is or how to find it? Then how do they know the users are being targeted "correctly" or at all? It's a ridiculous argument that falls apart under any scrutiny. Their entire business model relies on them knowing how to target specific users using huge graphs of information.
- closeparen 4y ago
  Engineers know how to find a service or a data store that meets a particular need. If extraordinarily skilled, they might even know how to find the best one. Wizards know how to go exploring in the wilderness beyond an API boundary to track down particular problems. A god’s eye view of all services, all data stores, all relationships, and all flows can at best be machine generated. Only extreme zoom levels of tiny regions are of any meaning to a human reader. It’s the difference between going shopping and accounting for all the flows of goods and services in an economy.
handity 4y ago
Agreed, Facebook definitely has the ability to provide timestamped interaction events as part of "Download my Data". Maybe legislation will force them to provide that information at some point, but that won't really have any effect on user privacy. The hearing seems to want to get more to the heart of the issue, but is inept to do so. The stored data isn't the concern, it's the predictive capability of models built on it. The decision of a predictive model isn't any more traceable to a single piece of data than a brick in a road is traceable to a given taxpayer, which is what I was trying to get at with the analogy. After reading some of the transcript, the special masters seem very on the ball, and it's more the spin of the article I take issue with.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Government contracted construction workers: We Have No Idea Where Your Tax Money Goes I think it would be a more meaningful analogy if you had posited two government accountants.