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Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
211–220 of 275 posts
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#212Some day I'll need to reclassify all my cyberpunk books as non-fiction it seems. We are nearly at the point of having real-life equivalents of things like information brokers and a Central Intelligence Corporation. The funny thing is the real companies I've seen are more creepy than the over-the-top portrayals of your typical dystopian corporate future. Worse yet, they do a better job of automating it all vs. the typical human intelligence or hacking missions in those types of books.
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most common source of those suggestions is phone contacts. Anyone using the Facebook (or Instagram) app is sending them a copy of their entire address book to be used for network mapping purposes.
I don't know if this is still true given the permissions model on Android (don't know about iOS). I just checked IG and it only has access to storage. Contacts, SMS, microphone, etc are not enabled.
WatsApp can read your contacts.
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to forget on HN, but there is far from universal buy-in for the notion that having or collecting data on people is unethical. Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data. The impulse to make something better by applying a database engine that you might feel for business processes, can j…
lmao the mental olympics needed to arrive at the conclusion "data collection to improve advertising efficiency" is noble.
Reminds me of one of the recorded AOL customer service calls from someone trying to end service.
AOL: Hi, this is John at AOL. How may I help you today?
Ferrari: I want to cancel my account.
AOL: OK. I mean, is there a problem with the software itself?
Ferrari: No. I don't use it. I don't need it. I don't want it.
John disputes Ferrari's claim that he never uses the account.
AOL: Last year, last month it was 545 hours of usage.
Ferrari: I don't know how to make it any clearer. So I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.
AOL: Well, explain to me what is wrong.
Ferrari: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.
It goes on like this for 5 minutes.
Ferrari: Cancel my account. Cancel the account. Cancel the account.
From: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13447232/ns/business-cnbc_tv/t/how...
IIRC, from the audio the AOL rep. just goes on about how he's "just there to help you". To me, this is the same. "We just want to give you the best advertising that is relevant to you!" So possibly these people just take them at face value. Which is usually a bad idea when there's a profit motive.
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#215There must be many HNers who work at Facebook. Anyone willing to make a throwaway account and tell us how it feels from the inside for Facebook to be one the wrong side of so many ethical issues? It just seems like in so many dimensions they've been caught saying wrong things or appearing to outright lie, and I'm curious how developers who work for them think about aiding a company that seems to be so compromised at…
It's easy to forget on HN, but there is far from universal buy-in for the notion that having or collecting data on people is unethical. Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data. The impulse to make something better by applying a database engine that you might feel for business processes, can j…
> Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data.
That's all great, but how can I opt-out? Even without a facebook account, they are collecting my data.
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
They sell ads by offering this information in the form of targeting.
I've worked at an ad-serving company. Clients couldn't get our data out , it's behind the scenes to them. Business-wise, it would be undermining our own product to offer anyone's personal information. There are other companies that do this focusing just on the collection side, which sounds like what FB is buying - but for FB to protect their position they're going to try to keep lids on that. The companies that try t…
> I've worked at an ad-serving company. Clients couldn't get our data out
That's not really possible. Proof: Say Alice is your client, and her ad targets gay people (even though the ad or the advertised product itself is not necessarily related to being gay). Then using your data about sexual preference, you serve the ads only to gay people. Only gay people will see the ad, and thus only gay people will reach Alice's website. Hence Alice got the data out. QED.
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
NSA recruiters came to a class I had in college. I imagine Facebook employees would have the same sort of party line drilled into them. Yes the NSA takes privacy very seriously. The NSA spies on everyone else but doesn't spy on Americans, period. Oh, well yeah of course we collect data from Americans but if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're supposed to throw it away immediately. Throw in a harmle…
> The NSA spies on everyone else but doesn't spy on Americans, period. Ah, so that's settled then. So, spying on normal people and prying into their private lives is ethical - as long as they aren't American? What about American expats? How does the NSA distinguish between them and non-Americans? What about the Five Eyes? Perhaps the NSA doesn't read about your juicy personal life but GCHQ does because the NSA handed…
I'm thinking a lot of people misread GP
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seconded. I would gladly hand over my personal data if it means improved FB/search experience. I think there's a large number of people who share my viewpoint. If someone is concerned about protecting their online privacy they have the option of not using those services. (I know about trackers on third-party websites. It's pretty trivial to block them.)
So how do I prevent my friends from uploading my phone number when they share their contacts? What do I do when they take pictures at a party and upload them? Should I have to jump out of view every time somebody takes a phone out of their pocket? Give only "trusted people" my phone number?
You don't, and can't. Not beyond perhaps choosing better friends.
Information about you is not necessarily owned by you.
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a Facebook employee, but I don't see any particular ethical problem with the company. There's nothing in the law or Facebook's terms of use that obligates the company to release data they buy from third-party sources.
I'm not trying to agree or disagree with you here (for the record, I despise Facebook and anyone who works there), rather I want to point out that ethics often has no correlation with law. The difficulty in making ethical determinations is precisely that there is often no well-defined written criteria like a law or terms of use that dictate what are the ethical boundaries or what might be ethically or morally reprehe…
And that's fine. Most of the "ethical" barbs I see being leveled about facebook are on the hypothetical/philosophical level, rather than the practical one.
As a general rule, I'm a lot more bothered by actual bad actions rather than hypothetical future ones. Facebook collecting all the data they want just doesn't even register as even sorta bad to me. (And no, I don't work there.)
Re: Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them
#220Why is it obligated to?
No, really. Why? Why on earth is it a problem what a company does internally with its own collected data? Why is this only being directed at Facebook?