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

291–300 of 302 posts

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#291

Post by erikpukinskis »

cconcepts wrote: post #133

It annoys me how much I want to leave Facebook (if only to stop them gathering MORE data on me - I can't erase what they have) but don't because of the convenience of getting in touch with or finding out more about whoever I meet in meatspace. The fact that they try to force me to install their messenger app by making messaging through a mobile browser difficult is particularly infuriating and reveals how much they h…

Yeah, the way they prevent you from reading public posts, sometimes cutting them off half way through to demand you make an account really pisses me off.

Same for Yelp who makes you install the app if you want to view more than 10 photos.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#292

Post by ionised »

type0 wrote: post #6
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…

Mentioned shadow profiles and some other of their shady practices to an acquaintance recently, he uses fb and wanted to stay in touch using it. He chose not to listen to my critique of fb calling me a "tinfoil hat" (whatever that even means).

Calling someone a tinfoil hatter is a way for someone to dismiss your argument without them actually having to think about something that makes them uncomfortable.

It's a defense mechanism.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#293

Post by ionised »

tuna-piano wrote: post #79

Facebook's dominance is even more pronounced in parts of the developing world. I've met people in Asia (Myanmar and Nepal) who have just accessed the internet for the first time in the past 12-24 months (through their Android smartphones). But they don't know the true internet - they only know the internet through the Facebook app. They use it like we use Google and web browsers. To them, Facebook is the internet. Th…

This is an incredibly dangerous thing.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#294

Post by killjoywashere »

Bakary wrote: post #76
jaskerr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which "Dictator's Handbook"? There are two on Amazon. [1] The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po... [2] The Dictator's Handbook: A Practical Manual for the Aspiring Tyrant https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-Manual-A...

They're referring to the one by Mesquita because it was popularized by a recent CGP grey video

I was referring to the one by Mesquita, but because my brother, an attorney, recommended it, not because of a GCP grey video. Perhaps you meant "I think it's because..."?

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#295

Post by bigbugbag »

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.

So facebook finally has a massive income ? How did they manage to turn the tables around ? Last time I heard of them they were having a very hard time making more than pocket change and almost all the revenue was limited to the US.

They were steadily losing users in the very significant 13-17 years demographic, had a CTR one fifth of the rest of the web. Several reports of brands quitting facebook or advertising on facebook because it is expensive and does not seem to be effective on a background of unstable rules and "quirky" system with some overcharging and ads not displayed.

Facebook built itself on investor story time, with promises of better targeted ads in the future, and up to now is still selling the idea that at some point in the future it will succeed at this. It has yet to deliver on this promise in a consistent way.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#296

Post by bigbugbag »

hueving wrote: post #163
still_grokking wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>It is not a prove per se these ads really are worth their costs. So you think that Facebook has collectively convinced thousands of businesses who are repeat customers to use something that is losing them money?

Isn't that what advertising and marketing companies managed to do decades before the internet ?

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#297

Post by bigbugbag »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #183
Msurrow wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the new EU Data Protection Directive[1], I think they do, since the DPD covers not only EU based companies, but also any company that provides services for EU citizens in the EU (so, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. are covered by this..but also e.g. your little weather app). The new DPD is very strict, but there are two parts of the directive that a particularly interesting: - The Data Portability concept: A company cov…

I foresee a long drawn out nasty international legal fight about this. In the same way the EU authorities have been very weak dealing with the car companies and emissions e.g. dieselgate, the US authorities refuse to see the problem with privacy and data. The governments are going to blame each other for stifling competition (companies from their country) etc. I think the practices of online tracking joined up with o…

The safe harbor agreement allowing EU citizens' data to be sent to the US was invalidated by the European Court of Justice and hastily replaced by the EU-US privacy shield which is effective since february 2017 and is already under attack and possibly on the way out while trump took a strong stance to not give any privacy to non-US citizens.

Then there is the secret negotiation of TAFTA where the US wants to siphon data without providing privacy and Germany refuses to let TAFTA go on until there are adequate privacy measures.

So yeah, this battle has been an ongoing one for years now.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#298

Post by bigbugbag »

zmb_ wrote: post #141
linkregister wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do European Union users have a recourse against this? Or do they have to create an account, then request a deletion?

In principle yes, in practice Facebook does not follow the EU laws. For example, they are required to provide you with all the data they hold about you. I requested this data (shadow profile) from them multiple times, they never responded. The next step would be to contact the Irish authorities responsible for overseeing FB, but from what I read they don't process complaints against FB, and the next place would be so…

Facebook sometimes submit to European laws. Facebook turned off their facial recognition after Germany made it illegal, registered used data has been made available for download among a few other cases.

Recently Facebook got fined 110 millions by France for lying to antitrust regulators during the vetting of the whatsapp deal, a few days before it got fined the maximum of 150k euros for repeated infringement to local privacy laws (maximum has since been raised to a percentage of the worlwide revenue) and a few days later it got a 3 millions fine in Italy for a similar privacy offense.

I'm not sure shadow profiles are covered by the legal obligation as facebook never acknowledged the existence of those for they are illegal in the EU.

More about the difficulties and process to get your data from facebook here: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data...

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#299

Post by bjelkeman-again »

bigbugbag wrote: post #297
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I foresee a long drawn out nasty international legal fight about this. In the same way the EU authorities have been very weak dealing with the car companies and emissions e.g. dieselgate, the US authorities refuse to see the problem with privacy and data. The governments are going to blame each other for stifling competition (companies from their country) etc. I think the practices of online tracking joined up with o…

The safe harbor agreement allowing EU citizens' data to be sent to the US was invalidated by the European Court of Justice and hastily replaced by the EU-US privacy shield which is effective since february 2017 and is already under attack and possibly on the way out while trump took a strong stance to not give any privacy to non-US citizens. Then there is the secret negotiation of TAFTA where the US wants to siphon d…

Indeed. I think it will get worse though.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#300

Post by fictioncircle »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #135
fictioncircle wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

I went in and untagged myself from a bunch of stuff my parents posted after my online friend commented on one of the pictures. It wasn't that it was super problematic, it's just I realized I really didn't want family pictures broadcast to my friends.

I don't have a FB account.
Post reply on HN