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Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

mashable.com

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Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#31

Post by dx034 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #9

What is Mark Zuckerberg up to right now? He's doing a lot of of outreach, and even meet and greet tours. It's a bit like he's on the campaign trail, planning on running for political office, but maybe not exactly that. e.g.: https://www.ft.com/content/b0a6481e-d20a-11e6-9341-7393bb2e1... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/04/mark-zucker...

He's probably preparing for public office. While Facebook is very successful, there's little vision in it now, compared to earlier. Most of the connected world is already on Facebook (if it's not blocked in their country). And while VR is nice, it's unlikely that it could attract a billion users anytime soon (esp because of cost).

I don't think that he'd want to manage a company that just fights off rivals. Becoming a politician and (trying to) make a change sounds more like him. He has the money, people mostly like him and he'd only have to find a CEO for Facebook to get rid of conflicts of interest, as he isn't involved in many other businesses.

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#32

Post by jllaneras »

dibstern wrote: post #5

How could anyone not know that your private messages represent valuable data to Facebook that they're going to use for ad revenue and service improvement? Your messages are not private on any service that doesn't guarantee privacy. Most services do not. Heck, your use of an app is often recorded and saved. Using these services and presuming to be in private is foolish. People other than Facebook don't respect the pri…

You don't need to trust Facebook to see inconsistencies in their message.

WhatsApp is one of Facebook's "private channels" that it's said to implement the Signal protocol, which is supposed to offer end-to-end encryption. If we assume all what Facebook claims is true, the only way to analyze WhatsApp messages for AI purposes is to leak data to Facebook servers before starting the E2E encrypted connection. But that would be just an exploitable back door that defeats the purpose of Signal, right?

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#33

Post by jllaneras »

dwetterau wrote: post #3

If Gmail reads private emails to target ads [1], why would people think that Facebook isn't doing the same thing? Also many companies (including Facebook) have agreed to share hashes and cooperate to "remove extremist content from their websites" [2]. It would be naive to think that they are excluding private messages from their searches. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-sca... [2] http://…

WhatsApp is from Facebook and it implements the Signal protocol which offers end-to-end encryption. That's why Facebook with WhatsApp cannot do the same as Google does with Gmail. If they do, then their E2E encryption is fucked up.

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#34

Post by SixSigma »

snarf wrote: post #4

Facebook sat idly by during an election cycle as their platform was used to propagate fake news because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship, and now they suddenly have the moral imperative to police your private messages? I am so glad I quit Facebook a long time ago. They are the big tech company I like the least.

> Facebook sat idly by

if you think that, you have been reading Fake News

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#35

Post by TeMPOraL »

jllaneras wrote: post #33
dwetterau wrote: post #3

If Gmail reads private emails to target ads [1], why would people think that Facebook isn't doing the same thing? Also many companies (including Facebook) have agreed to share hashes and cooperate to "remove extremist content from their websites" [2]. It would be naive to think that they are excluding private messages from their searches. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-sca... [2] http://…

WhatsApp is from Facebook and it implements the Signal protocol which offers end-to-end encryption. That's why Facebook with WhatsApp cannot do the same as Google does with Gmail. If they do, then their E2E encryption is fucked up.

That's WhatsApp, but I doubt it applies to Facebook Messenger.

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#36

Post by titraprutr »

p49k wrote: post #23
mcbits wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK those are images posted publicly or semi-publicly and getting flagged by prudes, or at least that's how it gets portrayed. But my friend sent a series of Middle East carnage images to me in "private" messages, and they were removed a few days later with a message about being inappropriate for the site. Neither of us flagged them.

Those same photos might have just been posted elsewhere on Facebook publicly and flagged there. Not that I am supporting Facebook or censorship or anything, but on the technical aspect, maybe there's an explanation that doesn't involve reading the private messages.

There is an easy to prove that they do read private messages. Send a private message with a link that points to your private website. Wait a few minutes and you should see in your server's logs that Facebook's bot is trying to crawl that url.

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#37

Post by p49k »

titraprutr wrote: post #36
p49k wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those same photos might have just been posted elsewhere on Facebook publicly and flagged there. Not that I am supporting Facebook or censorship or anything, but on the technical aspect, maybe there's an explanation that doesn't involve reading the private messages.

There is an easy to prove that they do read private messages. Send a private message with a link that points to your private website. Wait a few minutes and you should see in your server's logs that Facebook's bot is trying to crawl that url.

True, but they also show a preview of the page in the message, which would require fetching it. Pretty much every messaging service does that now. Also, there are legitimate reasons to scan URLs (malware, for example). Again, not trying to defend Facebook or absolve them of violating privacy, just saying that for these specific criticisms, there are technical explanations.

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#38

Post by skj »

dx034 wrote: post #29
mseidl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot that google did that, but facebook was just in your face with it. I was talking to a friend on facebook about some ice climbing and if it was ok for a beginner, and very shortly after I saw ads on my facebook for ice climbing lessons. With google the worst I see if I search for something sometimes I see ads for those.

And Googles version is probably much more successful. I noticed the same with Facebook and I don't think it's very effective. Talk once about a topic or like a page and you'll see related ads for a long time. Google seems to have smarter algorithms that try to detect a trend to figure out if you're really interested in something or just mentioned it once.

Google doesn't need a better algorithm; search is simply a stronger buy-signal than conversation.

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#39

Post by newscracker »

jllaneras wrote: post #33
dwetterau wrote: post #3

If Gmail reads private emails to target ads [1], why would people think that Facebook isn't doing the same thing? Also many companies (including Facebook) have agreed to share hashes and cooperate to "remove extremist content from their websites" [2]. It would be naive to think that they are excluding private messages from their searches. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-sca... [2] http://…

WhatsApp is from Facebook and it implements the Signal protocol which offers end-to-end encryption. That's why Facebook with WhatsApp cannot do the same as Google does with Gmail. If they do, then their E2E encryption is fucked up.

Going on a tangent. I don't like Facebook as a company due to its policies. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if one of these days the WhatsApp end-to-end encryption is "discovered" as broken, followed by a quick scramble to explain it was a temporary glitch and that they found it quickly and closed it. It would just make the headlines for a day or two and then be forgotten. Most people using WhatsApp never cared about any kind of encryption or thought a lot about privacy, and most people using it now still don't.

Re: Zuckerberg removed a line about monitoring private messages from his manifesto

#40

Post by newscracker »

dx034 wrote: post #31
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #9

What is Mark Zuckerberg up to right now? He's doing a lot of of outreach, and even meet and greet tours. It's a bit like he's on the campaign trail, planning on running for political office, but maybe not exactly that. e.g.: https://www.ft.com/content/b0a6481e-d20a-11e6-9341-7393bb2e1... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/04/mark-zucker...

He's probably preparing for public office. While Facebook is very successful, there's little vision in it now, compared to earlier. Most of the connected world is already on Facebook (if it's not blocked in their country). And while VR is nice, it's unlikely that it could attract a billion users anytime soon (esp because of cost). I don't think that he'd want to manage a company that just fights off rivals. Becoming…

> While Facebook is very successful, there's little vision in it now, compared to earlier. Most of the connected world is already on Facebook (if it's not blocked in their country). And while VR is nice, it's unlikely that it could attract a billion users anytime soon (esp because of cost).

Facebook could always give away VR headsets for free (disguised similar to the Free Basics program). Facebook has already run out of space to put ads on the Facebook platform, and so it has started trials on Messenger (in a couple of countries). One way to put ads everywhere is to install large screens (like in Sci-Fi movies or like those in Times Square). Another way is to give a small screen to people that's always in front of them and put ads there based on what the person is looking at, the location, time of day and other factors - that's what VR, or rather AR, will be about whenever Facebook gets serious about it (in relation to Wall Street and earnings). Google Glass probably had the same long term intent in mind when it was developed.

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