6 ms·

> "Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich "social graph"" These aren't algorithms. This is a sea

> "Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich "social graph"" These aren't algorithms. This is a search engine - what you put into it is up to you. It can be anywhere from the silliness seen in the link, to "friends who live in London" before you take a trip. This is just handing people another tool - the uses, and misuses, of said tool are entirely on the users. > " If you think about who the average Facebook employee is, you'd realize that you probably wouldn't want them to be in charge of designing a system meant to model the intricacies of human interaction." A snarky and mean-spirited stereotyping of all nerds as socially inept! How clever.

psbp 14y ago
This tool is part of a much larger machine that may actually affect society more than it serves it.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  What exactly do you mean by that?
  - pyre 14y ago
    I assume something like: The social implications (for good or ill) are greater than the immediate, personal benefits are (in aggregate).
  - psbp 14y ago
    I think socialization under the umbrella of a facebook type environment will eventually create predictable and malleable identities which are inherently the consequence of a mix of various societal pressures which are in turn constricted through the lens of the facebook environment. Combine that with facebook's transparent use of corporate cohabitation with people's relationships, and I think you quickly have a society which is much more determined and artificial.
    - corporalagumbo 14y ago
      I think "socialisation under the umbrella of a facebook type environment" was inevitable one way or another. The advantages of an efficient system for socialising with a centralised online persona system are just too huge to forgo. I'd be interested to hear what you consider might have been alternatives, but personally, I think the economics lead inexorably to a free-to-play ad-supported system such as Facebook. Show me the day when you can convince a couple hundred million people to sign up for a paid social network product and I'll eat my hat. Show me the day that an open-source community can compete with a for-profit business in terms of attracting the best talent willing and able to slave away for hours to build great products, and I'll eat my hat. I don't think it means the end of individuality as we know it. We've had ad-supported newspapers for hundreds of years now and people seemed to manage okay.
      - psbp 14y ago
        I think you can create services which achieve the same function as facebook while making a dispersion of self and novelty apparent to its users. I'm not arguing monetization, but the means and consequences of exploiting users responsibly.
        corporalagumbo 14y ago
        Yet again, I struggle to make sense of what exactly you're trying to say. You're using a lot of big words, but not necessarily making your point clear. What does "making a dispersion of self and novelty apparent" mean?
        psbp 14y ago
        The ability to express your self uniquely among different groups of people without residual consequences, and the ability to explore disparate interests in the same way.
        boboblong 14y ago
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
zaidf 14y ago
This is a tool that lets you search data, some of which was collected on a false(or dishonest) expectation set by facebook that the data will not be searchable in this manner. That is a violation of trust. I say this as a huge fan and user of facebook's privacy features. In most cases, I am arguing on the other side telling people how misinformed they are when they complain about a lack of privacy features. But this feature even has me blindsided and I am someone who uses almost all facebook privacy features very carefully(I have posts visible to Public to posts visible to only selected people, for example). I fully expect a new set of privacy controls from facebook specifically around this feature.
- achompas 14y ago
  The Facebook Graph Search article making the rounds mentions that (a) posts are not searchable at this time, and (b) FB is launching a suite of new privacy settings for Graph Search. Here's a link: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/the-inside-story-of-graph-search-facebooks-weapon-to-challenge-google/all/ http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/the-inside-story-of-gr...
pyre 14y ago
| This is just handing people another tool - the uses, | and misuses, of said tool are entirely on the users. The same applies to building hand-held nuclear weapons and handing them out on a street corner. The same could be said of convincing people to put CCTVs in their houses and then hooking them all up chatroullete-style. That doesn't mean that it's a good idea. | A snarky and mean-spirited stereotyping of all | nerds as socially inept! How clever. I see it more as Mark Zuckerberg having lived a rather sheltered life. E.g., his view that people having different 'faces' with different people as being disingenuous is laughable. Many people only show selected parts of themselves to certain peer groups, while showing other parts to different peer groups. That, and I assumed the 'average Facebook employee' part was assuming that they were all 20-somethings from (on average) middle-class or above backgrounds (i.e. possibly sheltered and lacking in life experience).
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- nemothekid 14y ago
  Maybe because I am also a "20-something", but I do not see how Zuckerburg/facebook employees being "sheltered" (I don't know why you asserted that, unless you went to high school with him) has anything to do with Social Graph. 1.) The fact that they had this information is not surprising at all. Again maybe because I am a 20-something, I think its pretty obvious that if you had terabytes of data you would want to search it. 2.) While many people do show different parts of themselves to certain peer groups, the data Facebook has was posted to Facebook. Facebook did not install a CCTV in anyones home and log their guilty pleasures. This gets parroted a lot, but if you don't want someone to find out you love Lifetime originals, don't post it on facebook. It won't end up in the graph, and you can continue playing your identity game.
  - speik 14y ago
    GuiA answered your question above: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5101237 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5101237
  - 14y ago
GuiA 14y ago
>A snarky and mean-spirited stereotyping of all nerds as socially inept! How clever. Not at all. I'm just willing to bet that the average Facebook employee has never had to hide his sexuality/political/religious beliefs for fear of execution/incarceration/abuse to his family/etc. Yet a non-negligible part of Facebook's user base are people precisely in this situation. That being said, the very fact that you call what the link demonstrates "silliness" speaks for itself.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  I think by 'silliness' he's referring to "Girls who live nearby who are single and like Getting drunk!" Fair call in my opinion. I made this point in another post: the take-away from this link shouldn't be how bad it was of Facebook to not realise that making available powerful search tools for already-public data might put some people in an unfortunate spotlight. The real take-away is that we shouldn't live in a world where people should be scared to be openly gay in Iran, or openly a Falun Gong member in China. Those are the things we should focus on and try and change. And we should appreciate, rather than chastise, the tools which make us realise that there are things we need to improve in the world.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > we shouldn't live in a world where people should be scared to be openly gay in Iran, or openly a Falun Gong member in China. Those are the things we should focus on and try and change. Right. Wonderful. How?
    - corporalagumbo 14y ago
      How should I know?
      - fusiongyro 14y ago
        You could watch The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski.

psbp 14y ago

This tool is part of a much larger machine that may actually affect society more than it serves it.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
What exactly do you mean by that?
- pyre 14y ago
  I assume something like: The social implications (for good or ill) are greater than the immediate, personal benefits are (in aggregate).
- psbp 14y ago
  I think socialization under the umbrella of a facebook type environment will eventually create predictable and malleable identities which are inherently the consequence of a mix of various societal pressures which are in turn constricted through the lens of the facebook environment. Combine that with facebook's transparent use of corporate cohabitation with people's relationships, and I think you quickly have a society which is much more determined and artificial.
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    I think "socialisation under the umbrella of a facebook type environment" was inevitable one way or another. The advantages of an efficient system for socialising with a centralised online persona system are just too huge to forgo. I'd be interested to hear what you consider might have been alternatives, but personally, I think the economics lead inexorably to a free-to-play ad-supported system such as Facebook. Show me the day when you can convince a couple hundred million people to sign up for a paid social network product and I'll eat my hat. Show me the day that an open-source community can compete with a for-profit business in terms of attracting the best talent willing and able to slave away for hours to build great products, and I'll eat my hat. I don't think it means the end of individuality as we know it. We've had ad-supported newspapers for hundreds of years now and people seemed to manage okay.
    - psbp 14y ago
      I think you can create services which achieve the same function as facebook while making a dispersion of self and novelty apparent to its users. I'm not arguing monetization, but the means and consequences of exploiting users responsibly.
      - corporalagumbo 14y ago
        Yet again, I struggle to make sense of what exactly you're trying to say. You're using a lot of big words, but not necessarily making your point clear. What does "making a dispersion of self and novelty apparent" mean?
        psbp 14y ago
        The ability to express your self uniquely among different groups of people without residual consequences, and the ability to explore disparate interests in the same way.
        boboblong 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

zaidf 14y ago

This is a tool that lets you search data, some of which was collected on a false(or dishonest) expectation set by facebook that the data will not be searchable in this manner. That is a violation of trust. I say this as a huge fan and user of facebook's privacy features. In most cases, I am arguing on the other side telling people how misinformed they are when they complain about a lack of privacy features. But this feature even has me blindsided and I am someone who uses almost all facebook privacy features very carefully(I have posts visible to Public to posts visible to only selected people, for example). I fully expect a new set of privacy controls from facebook specifically around this feature.

achompas 14y ago
The Facebook Graph Search article making the rounds mentions that (a) posts are not searchable at this time, and (b) FB is launching a suite of new privacy settings for Graph Search. Here's a link: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/the-inside-story-of-graph-search-facebooks-weapon-to-challenge-google/all/ http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/the-inside-story-of-gr...

pyre 14y ago

| This is just handing people another tool - the uses, | and misuses, of said tool are entirely on the users. The same applies to building hand-held nuclear weapons and handing them out on a street corner. The same could be said of convincing people to put CCTVs in their houses and then hooking them all up chatroullete-style. That doesn't mean that it's a good idea. | A snarky and mean-spirited stereotyping of all | nerds as socially inept! How clever. I see it more as Mark Zuckerberg having lived a rather sheltered life. E.g., his view that people having different 'faces' with different people as being disingenuous is laughable. Many people only show selected parts of themselves to certain peer groups, while showing other parts to different peer groups. That, and I assumed the 'average Facebook employee' part was assuming that they were all 20-somethings from (on average) middle-class or above backgrounds (i.e. possibly sheltered and lacking in life experience).

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nemothekid 14y ago
Maybe because I am also a "20-something", but I do not see how Zuckerburg/facebook employees being "sheltered" (I don't know why you asserted that, unless you went to high school with him) has anything to do with Social Graph. 1.) The fact that they had this information is not surprising at all. Again maybe because I am a 20-something, I think its pretty obvious that if you had terabytes of data you would want to search it. 2.) While many people do show different parts of themselves to certain peer groups, the data Facebook has was posted to Facebook. Facebook did not install a CCTV in anyones home and log their guilty pleasures. This gets parroted a lot, but if you don't want someone to find out you love Lifetime originals, don't post it on facebook. It won't end up in the graph, and you can continue playing your identity game.
- speik 14y ago
  GuiA answered your question above: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5101237 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5101237
- 14y ago

GuiA 14y ago

>A snarky and mean-spirited stereotyping of all nerds as socially inept! How clever. Not at all. I'm just willing to bet that the average Facebook employee has never had to hide his sexuality/political/religious beliefs for fear of execution/incarceration/abuse to his family/etc. Yet a non-negligible part of Facebook's user base are people precisely in this situation. That being said, the very fact that you call what the link demonstrates "silliness" speaks for itself.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
I think by 'silliness' he's referring to "Girls who live nearby who are single and like Getting drunk!" Fair call in my opinion. I made this point in another post: the take-away from this link shouldn't be how bad it was of Facebook to not realise that making available powerful search tools for already-public data might put some people in an unfortunate spotlight. The real take-away is that we shouldn't live in a world where people should be scared to be openly gay in Iran, or openly a Falun Gong member in China. Those are the things we should focus on and try and change. And we should appreciate, rather than chastise, the tools which make us realise that there are things we need to improve in the world.
- derleth 14y ago
  > we shouldn't live in a world where people should be scared to be openly gay in Iran, or openly a Falun Gong member in China. Those are the things we should focus on and try and change. Right. Wonderful. How?
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    How should I know?
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      You could watch The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski.