Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 302 posts

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#111

Post by Waterluvian »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #93
baddox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you pretend I either disagree or have yet to form an opinion, and explain why this is "clearly unethical"?

Unethical: lacking moral principles. Moral: of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong I think it is "clearly wrong" that Facebook creates shadow profiles, because it is violating the freedom of people who have not signed up for their service, in the same way that it is clearly wrong for me to take away your favorite pet for ritualistic sacri…

I can't claim it's wrong because I'm not a good ethicist. But I can say anecdotally that I feel upset and disgusted by the idea that even though I don't have Facebook, they may have a dossier on me. Simply because friends use my name or share photos including me.

It's upsetting because I don't know what I can do about it. How do I protect my privacy in this world? Do I stop having friends? Do I wear a mask everywhere?

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#112

Post by jgalt212 »

jacquesm wrote: post #4

The bigger problem for me is how facebook tracks and identifies even people who do not have a facebook account. They simply infer such a person exists from photograps, contacts and other one sided activity and can start to track that person, tie all this information together and then target them with ads even though they never signed up for Facebook. Such shadow profiles are a much larger problem to me than people wh…

you basically hit the nail on the head. And if Obama did nothing about it, you can sure expect Trump to follow suit with inaction as well. The consumer's only hope here is the EU.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#113

Post by fictioncircle »

Mosi1 wrote: post #81
makecheck wrote: post #72

In computer security, every time machines become fast enough to breach the limits of an algorithm we invent something new so that “hard” problems remain “hard” and therefore encryption is still secure. There has been no corresponding increase in the difficulty of invading privacy. 30 years ago, even though you probably “could” observe somebody for a long time and eventually connect some dots about them, it would not…

How many times has your privacy been invaded?

It terms of a hostile 3rd party and not an automated system? 5 times.

Snoopy relatives of women I have dated a couple times, a couple times by PIs paid to track me down, and a stalker once.

So...yeah. It's a real problem and none of these people had a legitimate cause to do so. Even beyond FB, etc. I don't post my face online because of shit like that.

Other people have stopped posting pics of me as well, a couple people have been called based on my name being tagged to things on social media.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#114

Post by corrosive »

jacquesm wrote: post #4

The bigger problem for me is how facebook tracks and identifies even people who do not have a facebook account. They simply infer such a person exists from photograps, contacts and other one sided activity and can start to track that person, tie all this information together and then target them with ads even though they never signed up for Facebook. Such shadow profiles are a much larger problem to me than people wh…

Are the "shadow profiles" created by credit rating companies equally unethical/immoral in your view?

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#115

Post by gavinpc »

Walk the talk, people, walk the talk.

When Facebook has pwned everything that's left to pwn, are we going to look back and say, oh, we were warned, why didn't we heed the warning of all those writers... who had "like" links on their page before the content even started. No.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#116

Post by Mathnerd314 »

bduerst wrote: post #7

This reads like sponsored article for Share Lab, piggy backing off of big data phobia. >"Facebook has lots of data and we have no idea what they do with it, but here's what the smart people at Share Lab can do with data."

It doesn't read as sponsored, it'd be more circumspect. More like, the reporter found it and thought it was cool so he interviewed "Dr Julia Powles" about it so he could write an article on it. You can ask him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joemillerjr

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#117

Post by still_grokking »

hueving wrote: post #102
qyv wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more likely that the market corrects this well before the law. How much longer can the status-quo of online advertising remain intact? Do these targeted ad's really work? There is a ton of time and talent being poured into hyper-advanced targeted advertising systems, how long can this be sustained?

>Do these targeted ad's really work? The massive income Facebook has seems to imply so.

No, the massive income Facebook generates only imply that the people spending money on targeted ads believe (!) these ad are working.

It is not a prove per se these ads really are worth their costs.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#118

Post by tunesmith »

makecheck wrote: post #72

In computer security, every time machines become fast enough to breach the limits of an algorithm we invent something new so that “hard” problems remain “hard” and therefore encryption is still secure. There has been no corresponding increase in the difficulty of invading privacy. 30 years ago, even though you probably “could” observe somebody for a long time and eventually connect some dots about them, it would not…

Is there any work being done on making tracking our details more worthless? Like... generating fake data, honeypot browsing behavior, etc?

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#119

Post by prostoalex »

tunesmith wrote: post #118
makecheck wrote: post #72

In computer security, every time machines become fast enough to breach the limits of an algorithm we invent something new so that “hard” problems remain “hard” and therefore encryption is still secure. There has been no corresponding increase in the difficulty of invading privacy. 30 years ago, even though you probably “could” observe somebody for a long time and eventually connect some dots about them, it would not…

Is there any work being done on making tracking our details more worthless? Like... generating fake data, honeypot browsing behavior, etc?

AdNauseaum

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#120

Post by prostoalex »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #93
baddox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you pretend I either disagree or have yet to form an opinion, and explain why this is "clearly unethical"?

Unethical: lacking moral principles. Moral: of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong I think it is "clearly wrong" that Facebook creates shadow profiles, because it is violating the freedom of people who have not signed up for their service, in the same way that it is clearly wrong for me to take away your favorite pet for ritualistic sacri…

> because it is violating the freedom of people who have not signed up for their service

That's your interpretation of their reasoning, Facebook's interpretation could assume that they haven't signed up for service yet.

Also, how exactly is their freedom violated? Let's say they could do a certain set of actions on a given day prior to Facebook violation. So if a government violated their freedom (e.g. by putting them under house arrest), a certain subset of those actions, like walking to a store or a park, would be impeded.

What would be an example of actions that would be impeded by Facebook's violation?

Post reply on HN