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Just to make me understand this: This is about storing data in the form of "Facebook user XYZ looked at a page about travel to Antarctica" and the reason Faceb

Just to make me understand this: This is about storing data in the form of "Facebook user XYZ looked at a page about travel to Antarctica" and the reason Facebook wants to store such data is to show them travel offers when they read their Facebook feed? If so, can I download this data about me? Is there a way to download everything Facebook stores about me and then I will see all the websites and pages I visited that Facebook knows about?

Someone 3y ago
Possibly. https://facebook.com/help/212802592074644 https://facebook.com/help/212802592074644 allows you to download “a copy of your information on Facebook”. https://facebook.com/help/930396167085762/ https://facebook.com/help/930396167085762/ isn’t clear on whether that is included, though. I would guess that Facebook considers the “about travel to Antarctica” not part of your information on Facebook, though. They’ll tell you you visited a specific page, but not what they tagged that page with, even if it is your page (as I said, that’s a guess)
sofixa 3y ago
> If so, can I download this data about me? Is there a way to download everything Facebook stores about me and then I will see all the websites and pages I visited that Facebook knows about? If you live in the EU, you have the legal right to ask for all information Facebook has on you. https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/my-rights/how-can-i-access-my-personal-data-held-company-organisation_en https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > If you live in the EU, you have the legal right to ask for all information Facebook has on you. Which Facebook will promptly ignore and get away with it: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/
belorn 3y ago
It is about so much more. It is any personal data that facebook store that is not strictly necessary to provide the core products (such as messaging or sharing content). You bought some medicine online and the store shared that with Facebook. It can be location data from images. In theory it could also be things like "you messaged a person who leans towards a particular political side". All is data that can be data mined and used to calculate the highest revenue advertisement at any specific time you load a Facebook page. Two high profit questions that historically advertisement networks want to find out is when someone is expecting children, and when they are most likely to go to Disneyland.
mattlondon 3y ago
I think that getting a list of all the data a company holds on you is allowed as part of the GDPR yes. In my experience of such things (and I have no direct experience of Facebook specifically), but often this is very, very dull. You say "travel to Antartica" (i.e. something meaningful and interesting to a human), but the computer says "ID:2sb374k44nmdld7394m44na7a63bba73hha3" (i.e. something meaningful to a computer) So instead of seeing a human-readable list of things you've looked at, you get a totally unintelligible list of primary keys that are used in some embedding-space in some algorithm somewhere that is used to pick the most salient ad to show you at that moment in time. Like I said, I have no idea how Facebook does this but I would be amazed if there was anything human-readable about the profile they've built on you. Its just too high-maintenance (and frankly pointless) to have human-readable labels for everything.
- hiatus 3y ago
  The data has a meaning to Facebook, whether it is stored in human-readable format or not. If there is a translation map or other data required to interpret your data, that should be included in a data export.
  - mattlondon 3y ago
    That is my point, there is likely no translation map. It's an ID for some data-point/vector/embedding used in an algorithm and likely has no meaningful human interpretation or translation. It is not secret code for "looks at Antarctica travel pages", it is a computer generated value for some intersection of thousands/millions of variables.

Someone 3y ago

Possibly. https://facebook.com/help/212802592074644 https://facebook.com/help/212802592074644 allows you to download “a copy of your information on Facebook”. https://facebook.com/help/930396167085762/ https://facebook.com/help/930396167085762/ isn’t clear on whether that is included, though. I would guess that Facebook considers the “about travel to Antarctica” not part of your information on Facebook, though. They’ll tell you you visited a specific page, but not what they tagged that page with, even if it is your page (as I said, that’s a guess)

sofixa 3y ago

> If so, can I download this data about me? Is there a way to download everything Facebook stores about me and then I will see all the websites and pages I visited that Facebook knows about? If you live in the EU, you have the legal right to ask for all information Facebook has on you. https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/my-rights/how-can-i-access-my-personal-data-held-company-organisation_en https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...

Nextgrid 3y ago
> If you live in the EU, you have the legal right to ask for all information Facebook has on you. Which Facebook will promptly ignore and get away with it: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/

belorn 3y ago

It is about so much more. It is any personal data that facebook store that is not strictly necessary to provide the core products (such as messaging or sharing content). You bought some medicine online and the store shared that with Facebook. It can be location data from images. In theory it could also be things like "you messaged a person who leans towards a particular political side". All is data that can be data mined and used to calculate the highest revenue advertisement at any specific time you load a Facebook page. Two high profit questions that historically advertisement networks want to find out is when someone is expecting children, and when they are most likely to go to Disneyland.

mattlondon 3y ago

I think that getting a list of all the data a company holds on you is allowed as part of the GDPR yes. In my experience of such things (and I have no direct experience of Facebook specifically), but often this is very, very dull. You say "travel to Antartica" (i.e. something meaningful and interesting to a human), but the computer says "ID:2sb374k44nmdld7394m44na7a63bba73hha3" (i.e. something meaningful to a computer) So instead of seeing a human-readable list of things you've looked at, you get a totally unintelligible list of primary keys that are used in some embedding-space in some algorithm somewhere that is used to pick the most salient ad to show you at that moment in time. Like I said, I have no idea how Facebook does this but I would be amazed if there was anything human-readable about the profile they've built on you. Its just too high-maintenance (and frankly pointless) to have human-readable labels for everything.

hiatus 3y ago
The data has a meaning to Facebook, whether it is stored in human-readable format or not. If there is a translation map or other data required to interpret your data, that should be included in a data export.
- mattlondon 3y ago
  That is my point, there is likely no translation map. It's an ID for some data-point/vector/embedding used in an algorithm and likely has no meaningful human interpretation or translation. It is not secret code for "looks at Antarctica travel pages", it is a computer generated value for some intersection of thousands/millions of variables.