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Ask HN: Invited by Facebook for privacy roundtable. What questions should I ask?

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Re: Ask HN: Invited by Facebook for privacy roundtable. What questions should I ask?

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I am guessing they are trying to say that the distinction between "you pay facebook and they give you a database full of private data" and "you pay facebook and they give you API access to a database of private data and allow you to query it in myriad ways leading to you creating your own database of highly accurate private data" is not as important a distinction as Facebook would have you believe. Or…

But Facebook doesn’t let advertisers query their database of private data. I agree that if they did, it would not be very different from selling data, but they don’t.

But.. they do, though. You can (and people do) make a very targeted ad, then query what users matched with it, and so on until you've sufficient data for your purposes. Plus you can use their public APIs to then match their ad data with the users public information. Facebook knows this, and does not prevent it (by hiding user identifiers for instance) because it's part of their strategy.

Re: Ask HN: Invited by Facebook for privacy roundtable. What questions should I ask?

#116

You should go. But be aware that they're likely using you to look like they legitimately care about their user's privacy. So just don't let yourself be used in that way unless you want to be. The question I've always wanted to ask Facebook is how much is their data worth? No discussion of privacy at Facebook is interesting unless the discussion concerns money and their bottom line. They undoubtably have people inside…

80% of their money will come from big advertisers like Unilever and Coke who target everyone and anyone. It's only the small advertisers who want their adverts targeted at people in their country and topic, thats it. That sort of targeting can be done simply by what country is their ip from whats the topic of the content Im sending them. The whole targeted advertising thing is 100% a gimmick that advertisers don't ca…

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Re: Ask HN: Invited by Facebook for privacy roundtable. What questions should I ask?

#117

You should go. But be aware that they're likely using you to look like they legitimately care about their user's privacy. So just don't let yourself be used in that way unless you want to be. The question I've always wanted to ask Facebook is how much is their data worth? No discussion of privacy at Facebook is interesting unless the discussion concerns money and their bottom line. They undoubtably have people inside…

80% of their money will come from big advertisers like Unilever and Coke who target everyone and anyone. It's only the small advertisers who want their adverts targeted at people in their country and topic, thats it. That sort of targeting can be done simply by what country is their ip from whats the topic of the content Im sending them. The whole targeted advertising thing is 100% a gimmick that advertisers don't ca…

This is simply untrue. Large advertisers are often the most demanding about ensuring that their ads reach the specific audience that they are targeting. Giant companies are the only ones who can afford to hire someone whose entire job is "drive engagement with millennials in the American Southwest" (and yes, I personally know someone whose first job was basically that). Small businesses are much less active in managing targeted ads beyond location, as their marketing is usually done in the spare time of the business owner.

Re: Ask HN: Invited by Facebook for privacy roundtable. What questions should I ask?

#119
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some data, this might be true. But, for example, where is my browsing history stored, which is undoubtedly collected by FB through their social sharing buttons even if I don't have an account? Or any other drive-by data that is collected through third-party apps, websites or whatever and send back to FB. It wouldn't make any sense to store my browsing history somewhere else than in a shadow profile.

No, it actually doesn’t make sense to store it in any kind of profile. You are right that some fly by data might end up in a server log somewhere but those aren’t kept around for long...if they are kept at all at Facebook scales Storing and computing data is very expensive and risky at FB scale so they will only keep around what they actually need for as long as they need it. Meaning that data gets send to the server…

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Re: Ask HN: Invited by Facebook for privacy roundtable. What questions should I ask?

#120
post #101
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside: Interesting use of the pronoun 'she' in this comment. FB's behaviour is totally due to Zuck, as he owns 53.3% of the voting shares of the company. FB is Zuck, for all intents and purposes.

I see this use of 'she' from time to time and also curious about motivation here. Also, I'd say even though Zuck is practically face of facebook (heh), company is still genderless and should be referred to as it. In my opinion, of course.

My usual assumption is that the speaker’s first language uses the feminine pronoun for companies. Outside of English, I certainly have the reverse problem of using “it” for all inanimate objects even when they should be “he/she” according to the language’s rules.
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