6 ms·

What Facebook Knows

67 points by llambda 14y ago

Evbn 14y ago
Facebook is giving new meaning to the word "social scientist", and has perhaps the cleanest data set in the world for doing actual science.
- Estragon 14y ago
  The published social science they have produced so far is unimpressive, though. I attended a talk by a Facebook Data Group employee a little while ago, and it was a bit sad.
- gipsies 14y ago
  While facebook has access to a vast amount of data, there are also a few disadvantages of doing research on their dataset: 1. You only have data of people capable of buying a computer and having internet access. And then having the time and willingness to use facebook. This places a bais in the information and obtained research. 2. The profile of users don't reflect who they truly are. It represent what they want to be, or at least how they want to be percieved by others. Admittingly this problem is also present when doing surveys. It certainly provides a lot more information and would aid social scientist, but it's not perfect. Then again they passively collect a huge pile of information too (e.g. using their like buttons all over the internet).
  - orijing 14y ago
    While I agree with 2, I'm not convinced by 1--where can you get data that is unbiased without FORCING random sets of people to participate in a study in the way you want them to? Even FDA-mandated experiments are biased by the fact that it requires volunteers.
  - vph 14y ago
    >2. The profile of users don't reflect who they truly are. It represent what they want to be, or at least how they want to be percieved by others. Admittingly this problem is also present when doing surveys. Do you realize that you are saying what you think people are? Which is which? who they really are and what they really want to be. Is Clark Kent real or Superman real? This is why sociologists have day jobs.
  - BoldAsAnEagle 14y ago
    1. Sheep herders in the mountains of Bosnia have a facebook profile. They go down the 15km to town and get on the local internet caffe, to catch up with relatives from abroad, their "internet" is the facebook.
novum 14y ago
Private conversations, family photos, and records of road trips, births, marriages, and deaths all stream into the company's servers and lodge there. Facebook has collected the most extensive data set ever assembled on human social behavior. Some of your personal information is probably part of it. There are some positives that come from this — the article gives the example of improving organ donor registrations — but they lost my trust long ago. It feels wrong for any one private entity to have so much data on so many people. Then again, I'm not sure whether I'd prefer it to be any one government either. Is it not the case that having a Facebook account, even a sparsely populated one, is incompatible with maintaining any semblance of control over your online identity, PII, privacy? Plus FB creating "shadow profiles" for non-members[0] would suggest they're tracking me even 18 months after deleting my account. They've closed the catch-22 loop. [0] http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/1429223/facebook-is-building-shadow-profiles-of-non-users http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/1429223/facebook-is-b...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- spindritf 14y ago
  People don't object because providing Facebook with personal data is voluntary and directly related to the service it provides. Facebook cannot store or display your private photos without having a copy, it cannot let you contact anyone without knowing whom you want to contact, etc.
  - T-hawk 14y ago
    > Is it not the case that having a Facebook account, even a sparsely populated one, is incompatible with maintaining any semblance of control over your online identity, PII, privacy? > People don't object because providing Facebook with personal data is voluntary Yes, it's incompatible, because providing the data to Facebook can be involuntary. The existence of an account (even a shadow) means that your friends can inject data without your approval. A tag in any picture, a mention by name at any kind of event or location, or even the existence of the friend link are all pieces of data that contribute towards profiling your behavior and determining advertisements that you might respond to. This all occurs even if you yourself didn't provide any of it. (Good luck telling your friends to never tag or mention you on Facebook.) Facebook lets you think that you can delete or undo any of the above, but you still rely solely on Facebook's ethics as to whether they actually cease using the "deleted" data. The only force that can restrict Facebook from keeping and using such data is legislation, and that and its implications would probably be a greater evil.
  - sp332 14y ago
    Most of the volume of data that Facebook collects is just logging the "Like" buttons on other sites. Most people have no idea that info is being collected.
alex_g 14y ago
Everything.
jboggan 14y ago
I'm nearly salivating at the thought of writing graph algorithms at that scale . . . and actually having the outcome mean something and be acted upon in a timely fashion. It sounds like a dream job to me. That scale and depth of information is a very powerful tool, no doubt, and it should be wielded for a good purpose. This article at least encourages me that people are thinking beyond the bottom line on these issues. Awesome.
- jman1 14y ago
  Agreed on the salivation and the opportunity in terms of a dream job. But to think that just because the data science team thinks more about social science than Facebook prOducts the corporation will change its tune and stop being creepy is naive or myopic at best.
bokonist 14y ago
Man, I wish Facebook would just charge $25 a year and then focus on making the actual user the customer, rather than making the end user the product and advertisers the customer. If they did that, there would be no more advertising, no more creepy selling of personal data, no more spamming my feed with "Susie likes Walmart" messages. On the plus side, if they fail to make the end user the customer, maybe a business opportunity will open up for someone to create a social network that isn't evil ...
- ryanwaggoner 14y ago
  No one (or close enough to make no difference) would pay. Seriously, people may complain about ads but they have almost always proven that they prefer ads to paying, hence the reason the vast majority of media channels (tv, print, web, etc) are free with ads, or cheap and ad-subsidized. And not having 80-99% of people I want to friend (because they dont want to pay) would be death for a social network.
  - Estragon 14y ago
    Now you mention it, it's kind of surprising that they don't offer premium accounts with no ads and strong privacy guarantees. I might even get back on facebook if they did that.
    - ryanwaggoner 14y ago
      Selling both of those benefits draws a lot of attention to the fact that Facebook is making money from selling your attention and your data.
    - bishnu 14y ago
      The problem with this is the people buying premium accounts are precisely the people advertisers are trying to target.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Why do most people pay for cable when the free channels provide more than enough content to occupy their time?
ams6110 14y ago
If Facebook were a country ... it would far outstrip any regime past or present in how intimately it records the lives of its citizens. Let's hope the government doesn't one day decide to seize it. I wonder if they (Facebook) have any kind of self-destruct mechanism should that ever come to pass. No, actually, I don't really wonder, I'm sure they don't.
- pm90 14y ago
  I bet they have layers and layers of redundancy. Remember Digital Fortress? It will take some time before they can shut down the goddamn thing completely
jman1 14y ago
What Facebook knows: too much. What it has: too much squared.

67 points by llambda 14y ago

Evbn 14y ago

Facebook is giving new meaning to the word "social scientist", and has perhaps the cleanest data set in the world for doing actual science.

Estragon 14y ago
The published social science they have produced so far is unimpressive, though. I attended a talk by a Facebook Data Group employee a little while ago, and it was a bit sad.
gipsies 14y ago
While facebook has access to a vast amount of data, there are also a few disadvantages of doing research on their dataset: 1. You only have data of people capable of buying a computer and having internet access. And then having the time and willingness to use facebook. This places a bais in the information and obtained research. 2. The profile of users don't reflect who they truly are. It represent what they want to be, or at least how they want to be percieved by others. Admittingly this problem is also present when doing surveys. It certainly provides a lot more information and would aid social scientist, but it's not perfect. Then again they passively collect a huge pile of information too (e.g. using their like buttons all over the internet).
- orijing 14y ago
  While I agree with 2, I'm not convinced by 1--where can you get data that is unbiased without FORCING random sets of people to participate in a study in the way you want them to? Even FDA-mandated experiments are biased by the fact that it requires volunteers.
- vph 14y ago
  >2. The profile of users don't reflect who they truly are. It represent what they want to be, or at least how they want to be percieved by others. Admittingly this problem is also present when doing surveys. Do you realize that you are saying what you think people are? Which is which? who they really are and what they really want to be. Is Clark Kent real or Superman real? This is why sociologists have day jobs.
- BoldAsAnEagle 14y ago
  1. Sheep herders in the mountains of Bosnia have a facebook profile. They go down the 15km to town and get on the local internet caffe, to catch up with relatives from abroad, their "internet" is the facebook.

novum 14y ago

Private conversations, family photos, and records of road trips, births, marriages, and deaths all stream into the company's servers and lodge there. Facebook has collected the most extensive data set ever assembled on human social behavior. Some of your personal information is probably part of it. There are some positives that come from this — the article gives the example of improving organ donor registrations — but they lost my trust long ago. It feels wrong for any one private entity to have so much data on so many people. Then again, I'm not sure whether I'd prefer it to be any one government either. Is it not the case that having a Facebook account, even a sparsely populated one, is incompatible with maintaining any semblance of control over your online identity, PII, privacy? Plus FB creating "shadow profiles" for non-members[0] would suggest they're tracking me even 18 months after deleting my account. They've closed the catch-22 loop. [0] http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/1429223/facebook-is-building-shadow-profiles-of-non-users http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/1429223/facebook-is-b...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

spindritf 14y ago
People don't object because providing Facebook with personal data is voluntary and directly related to the service it provides. Facebook cannot store or display your private photos without having a copy, it cannot let you contact anyone without knowing whom you want to contact, etc.
- T-hawk 14y ago
  > Is it not the case that having a Facebook account, even a sparsely populated one, is incompatible with maintaining any semblance of control over your online identity, PII, privacy? > People don't object because providing Facebook with personal data is voluntary Yes, it's incompatible, because providing the data to Facebook can be involuntary. The existence of an account (even a shadow) means that your friends can inject data without your approval. A tag in any picture, a mention by name at any kind of event or location, or even the existence of the friend link are all pieces of data that contribute towards profiling your behavior and determining advertisements that you might respond to. This all occurs even if you yourself didn't provide any of it. (Good luck telling your friends to never tag or mention you on Facebook.) Facebook lets you think that you can delete or undo any of the above, but you still rely solely on Facebook's ethics as to whether they actually cease using the "deleted" data. The only force that can restrict Facebook from keeping and using such data is legislation, and that and its implications would probably be a greater evil.
- sp332 14y ago
  Most of the volume of data that Facebook collects is just logging the "Like" buttons on other sites. Most people have no idea that info is being collected.

alex_g 14y ago

Everything.

jboggan 14y ago

I'm nearly salivating at the thought of writing graph algorithms at that scale . . . and actually having the outcome mean something and be acted upon in a timely fashion. It sounds like a dream job to me. That scale and depth of information is a very powerful tool, no doubt, and it should be wielded for a good purpose. This article at least encourages me that people are thinking beyond the bottom line on these issues. Awesome.

jman1 14y ago
Agreed on the salivation and the opportunity in terms of a dream job. But to think that just because the data science team thinks more about social science than Facebook prOducts the corporation will change its tune and stop being creepy is naive or myopic at best.

bokonist 14y ago

Man, I wish Facebook would just charge $25 a year and then focus on making the actual user the customer, rather than making the end user the product and advertisers the customer. If they did that, there would be no more advertising, no more creepy selling of personal data, no more spamming my feed with "Susie likes Walmart" messages. On the plus side, if they fail to make the end user the customer, maybe a business opportunity will open up for someone to create a social network that isn't evil ...

ryanwaggoner 14y ago
No one (or close enough to make no difference) would pay. Seriously, people may complain about ads but they have almost always proven that they prefer ads to paying, hence the reason the vast majority of media channels (tv, print, web, etc) are free with ads, or cheap and ad-subsidized. And not having 80-99% of people I want to friend (because they dont want to pay) would be death for a social network.
- Estragon 14y ago
  Now you mention it, it's kind of surprising that they don't offer premium accounts with no ads and strong privacy guarantees. I might even get back on facebook if they did that.
  - ryanwaggoner 14y ago
    Selling both of those benefits draws a lot of attention to the fact that Facebook is making money from selling your attention and your data.
  - bishnu 14y ago
    The problem with this is the people buying premium accounts are precisely the people advertisers are trying to target.
- jrockway 14y ago
  Why do most people pay for cable when the free channels provide more than enough content to occupy their time?

ams6110 14y ago

If Facebook were a country ... it would far outstrip any regime past or present in how intimately it records the lives of its citizens. Let's hope the government doesn't one day decide to seize it. I wonder if they (Facebook) have any kind of self-destruct mechanism should that ever come to pass. No, actually, I don't really wonder, I'm sure they don't.

pm90 14y ago
I bet they have layers and layers of redundancy. Remember Digital Fortress? It will take some time before they can shut down the goddamn thing completely

jman1 14y ago

What Facebook knows: too much. What it has: too much squared.