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I honestly don't get it. This isn't 'Hacker News', at least, this 'Hacker News' forum is no longer occupied by 'Hackers'. Incidentally, this reminds me -- late

by selmnoo 12y ago

I honestly don't get it. This isn't 'Hacker News', at least, this 'Hacker News' forum is no longer occupied by 'Hackers'. Incidentally, this reminds me -- later Summer this year, I had the chance to meet a lot Linux kernel developers. At some point a handful were speaking casually about Facebook -- and guess what, each and every one of them were 20 times more paranoid about Facebook and its intent than I am (and I'm pretty skeptical of everything FB does). I'm honestly very confused. I don't want to make the jump and say "astroturfing" -- but I don't know, maybe we have some Facebook developers here who probably work on some engineering tasks and never are exposed to the questionable side of things and genuinely think FB is up to only good. In real world, every true hacker that I personally know greatly distrusts Facebook and all that Facebook touches. edit: ok, I think I may have said that a little too soon. Posts doubting Poitras are now more toward the bottom than the top, and my two posts are no longer negatively scored.

qq66 12y ago
You don't have to be paranoid about Facebook's intent to realize that it's a huge storehouse of personal data. Nobody with a brain thinks that Facebook strategizes every morning about how to collect the most data for intelligence agencies. However, a side effect of their business model makes it an unprecedented treasure trove of data about hundreds of millions of people and their relationships/interactions with each other.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
  "Nobody with a brain thinks that Facebook strategizes every morning about how to collect the most data for intelligence agencies." I disagree, and I don't think I've forgotten my brain somewhere. Why I disagree? Because facebook, for all intents and purposes, is an intelligence agency. Doesn't mean that they welcome other agencies having a look at their data, but it certainly is more than a side effect.
  - qq66 12y ago
    hah, OK, three-letter agency.
xnull2guest 12y ago
No. I wish we were just paranoid. This stuff really happens. ""Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial of political mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 US congressional elections. The results show that the messages directly influenced self-expression, information seeking, and real world voting behavior of millions of people. Furthermore the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users' friends, and friends of friends." - Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Jason J. Jones, Adam D. I. Kramer, Cameron Marlow, Jaime E. Settle & James H. Fowler https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476106

by selmnoo 12y ago

qq66 12y ago

You don't have to be paranoid about Facebook's intent to realize that it's a huge storehouse of personal data. Nobody with a brain thinks that Facebook strategizes every morning about how to collect the most data for intelligence agencies. However, a side effect of their business model makes it an unprecedented treasure trove of data about hundreds of millions of people and their relationships/interactions with each other.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
"Nobody with a brain thinks that Facebook strategizes every morning about how to collect the most data for intelligence agencies." I disagree, and I don't think I've forgotten my brain somewhere. Why I disagree? Because facebook, for all intents and purposes, is an intelligence agency. Doesn't mean that they welcome other agencies having a look at their data, but it certainly is more than a side effect.
- qq66 12y ago
  hah, OK, three-letter agency.

xnull2guest 12y ago

No. I wish we were just paranoid. This stuff really happens. ""Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial of political mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 US congressional elections. The results show that the messages directly influenced self-expression, information seeking, and real world voting behavior of millions of people. Furthermore the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users' friends, and friends of friends." - Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Jason J. Jones, Adam D. I. Kramer, Cameron Marlow, Jaime E. Settle & James H. Fowler https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476106