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Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#231

Post by 659087 »

killjoywashere wrote: post #42
ghughes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing will change until the law cracks down on this. The people who work on these systems are smart enough to comprehend the wider consequences, but they do it anyway because money. Without significant external pressure, there will always be a long line of engineers willing to dial their cognitive dissonance up to 11 and build software that is clearly unethical in exchange for a fat paycheck.

The law will not crack down on this. The politicians stand to gain too much. See The Dictator's Handbook (which is as relevant to democrats as autocrats).

The thought that Mark Zuckerberg might one day run for president, and actually have a chance, is absolutely terrifying to me. If this happens, kiss the concept of personal privacy goodbye forever.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#232

Post by 659087 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #47
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…

That's actually why I gave up on avoiding it (after leaving my fb account dormant for ~5 years). If I'm being tracked anyway I might as well enjoy the social benefits of the platform, which are not insignificant. FB absolutely knows more about me than any individual person at this point. I've decided, for good or ill, to accept that and leverage it; rather than feeling upset about my inability to enforce a right to p…

Unless you remember every conversation you've ever had on one of their services word for word, they also know more about you than you do.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#233

Post by 659087 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #221

So the American TV show "Person of Interest" really isn't that far off the mark. If FB is a known and readily available commercial product, imagine what DARPA, NSA, NGIA, etc. must have. God bless George Orwell.

They have this..

DARPA, NSA, GOOG, CIA, FB, etc

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#235

Post by 659087 »

rayday wrote: post #160

"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook," Tapping, scrolling and even just having the app with Location Services installed means we are actively working for Facebook, and Facebook is actively working on us. We are effectively lab rats to this self-perpetuating Orwellian superbeing. Nothing will stop it. It will use any mean…

If we were smarter as a species, we would have started regretting it a long time ago.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#236

Post by 659087 »

bigbugbag wrote: post #216
ucaetano wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They link to the meat. This is an article in a general newspaper, why would you expect technical data?

Do they ? I've looked for a link to the source in the article and failed to find any.

It's hard to spot but it's there.

Here's a more direct link though:

https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#237

Post by jacquesm »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #227
tzs wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that he doesn't understand what "unethical" means. The question is how does what Facebook is doing qualify? You've said it is because it violates the freedom of people Facebook is making inferences about who are not users of Facebook's services. That just shifts the question to how does it violate their freedom? That is not at all obvious to me. (NOTE: this does not mean that I'm saying it is OK...just that I…

Imagine a gentleman decides to follow you for the rest of your life. He is always wihtin a distance but when you leave your home, there he is and see you him with his pen and paper recording your every move. You get it you car, he gets in his and follows. You stop by your lover's home. There he is the back recording. You go pick your child, save. You go to the grocery store, there he is recording again. So on and so…

That's roughly the theme of a blog post I once wrote.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#238

Post by dkarapetyan »

ihm wrote: post #123
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…

I would love if someone made a Chrome extension that encrypted all the posts and messages you put on Facebook. That is, any post you made would be made as a ciphertext, the extension would swap keys with all your friends in the background, and would decrypt their posts when displaying them to you. Sure Marky Mark still sees when you post, who you send messages to, etc. but it's a much better situation than what's goi…

How would you finance and support this endeavor? Also, why wouldn't Facebook ban all such users? Facebook is a private platform and they make the rules on how you get to play with it.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#239

Post by dkarapetyan »

bigbugbag wrote: post #225
benevol wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How easy would it be for Zuck to just update the TOS to say "encrypted content is against our TOS" and ban you? Zuck can't add any encrypted content to your personal profile, which means he doesn't make any money off you. And Zuck can do pretty much whatever he wants in his castle, I'd say.

Content is mostly irrelevant, metadata is way more interesting. In other words they do not care what you say, but who you say it to, when you say it, from where, at what time, and so on.

This is not true. They munge through the posts. In fact, that is one big reason they can target people so well.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#240

Post by dkarapetyan »

ghughes wrote: post #22
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…

Nothing will change until the law cracks down on this. The people who work on these systems are smart enough to comprehend the wider consequences, but they do it anyway because money. Without significant external pressure, there will always be a long line of engineers willing to dial their cognitive dissonance up to 11 and build software that is clearly unethical in exchange for a fat paycheck.

We are all complicit. It's not just smart engineers.
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