Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#81

Post by coldtea » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

nebabyte wrote: post #78

coldtea wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are 100% correct about this. People have appeared on "People you may know" when I have absolutely zero connection to them other than I have chatted to the on What's App... Well, isn't it obvious though? Facebook owns WhatsApp and has access to both "social graphs". (Plus, it can also infer "people you may know" from people your friends in FB and Whatsapp know).

Did you think they were saying otherwise?

No, I thought they presented it as surprising, when it's totally obvious.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#82

Post by wutbrodo » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #45

The history of Jews in the Netherlands during the Nazi Holocaust, many of whom were identified through census records, comes to mind. https://ww2gravestone.com/holocaust-in-the-netherlands/ For contemporary instances, consider that the present U.S. administration openly supports racist, neo-Nazi, White Supremecist, and similar organisations. Social-graph association of undocumented immigrants, Muslims, gang- (or non-…

> the present U.S. administration openly supports racist, neo-Nazi, White Supremecist, and similar organisations

I try not to follow what the guy says too closely, but do you have any source for this? The last thing on the topic I recall him saying was a repudiation of said groups.

I feel like I would've heard about it if he openly supported any of these groups.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#83

Post by gse345rb » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #59

dredmorbius wrote: post #45

The history of Jews in the Netherlands during the Nazi Holocaust, many of whom were identified through census records, comes to mind. https://ww2gravestone.com/holocaust-in-the-netherlands/ For contemporary instances, consider that the present U.S. administration openly supports racist, neo-Nazi, White Supremecist, and similar organisations. Social-graph association of undocumented immigrants, Muslims, gang- (or non-…

There already is a US example. Virginia instituted a "one-drop" law in the 20's and scoured through old census records to label many mixed race people as black, subjecting then to Jim Crow laws.

Add to that accusations that the FBI used census data to build maps of Muslim communities post-9/11. We like to pretend that since such uses of census data are 'illegal' right now, that they won't suddenly become legal on the next national security whim.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#84

Post by wutbrodo » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #64

mythrwy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accusing the current administration of openly supporting neo-nazi groups is political flamebait. You are certainly entitled to your opinion on how "serious" the situation is but I, (and probably others) would appreciate it if you kept the hyperbole and rhetoric minimized. Your original point stands fine without it, and in fact that accusation weakens your entire post and makes it appear little more than a simple trol…

Sometimes the truth is flamebait. Doesn't make it any less true. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865686908/Sen-Mike-Lee-re... http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/346348-hatch-my-brother-d...

Hold on. That article says that Trump claimed there was "blame on both sides", followed by open repudiation of neo-Nazis and the KKK as "criminals and thugs". I'm not being intentionally obtuse: failure to condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists is a pretty huge failing for a president (though no worse than what I expect of Donald Trump), and those who condemned his remarks were absolutely right.

But words have meaning, and calling this "open support" is flat lying. He's unbelievably terrible at the job of president and human being: you don't need to lie in order to make the case that he is.

Just because your bubble (and my own) consists entirely of people who are aware of how terrible he is doesn't mean everyone is, and lying for political reasons is exactly the kind of thing that makes big chunks of the country inhabit alternate realities where all news is fake and the notion of a fact disappears from political discourse. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#85

Post by MiddleEndian » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

cat199 wrote: post #71

jpalomaki wrote: post #51

There's at least a theoretical possibility that even Facebook does not exactly know why they make certain recommendations. This could be just a machine doing all the work. All kinds of data goes in, predictions are made. Facebook users give feedback by accepting/rejecting the recommendations and algorithms learn and adjust accordingly.

And who builds this machine and how do they tune/debug/improve it? Pretty sure any given computation could be traced, though it might take a bit of work and need to be captured fairly quickly...

I've been to machine learning talks where the presenters freely admitted they weren't exactly sure how what they made works.

Reminds me of this comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2460#comic

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#86

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #57

dredmorbius wrote: post #45

The history of Jews in the Netherlands during the Nazi Holocaust, many of whom were identified through census records, comes to mind. https://ww2gravestone.com/holocaust-in-the-netherlands/ For contemporary instances, consider that the present U.S. administration openly supports racist, neo-Nazi, White Supremecist, and similar organisations. Social-graph association of undocumented immigrants, Muslims, gang- (or non-…

While I can see how someone could draw similarities in the aggregation of user data, I disagree about that being a comparable system for many reasons. Namely that they aren't government systems, and the political environment doesn't reflect, nor are projected to reflect a state of genocide. This falls into the same line of thinking as "I need my assault weapon to fight the government when it becomes tyrannical." It's…

It's not necessary for data systems to belong to governments, or for them to be accessed by the local government jurisdiction.

For examples of each:

AT&T maintain call-level history of its subscribers dating to the 1980s, which has been provided to the US DEA.

Google have disclosed information to both Chinese and Russian nationals, through extralegal, non-discretionary disclosures. The first occured when the accounts of Chinese nationals involved in the Free Tibet movement were hacked. The latter when an email account belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, was hacked by parties strongly linked to the present Russian government.

"You can't disclose what you don't have" is a well-established principle of data security. You'll find variants of it offered by Gene Spafford, Bruce Schneier, Eben Moglen, Cory Doctorow, and others. Or in the alternative, "data are vulnerability".

Sources:

Google / China / Tibet: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-not-only-target-of-china-...

Podesta / Clinton: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg7xjb/how-hacker...

AT&T / DEA: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/att-gives-dea-26...

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#87

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

MiddleEndian wrote: post #85

cat199 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who builds this machine and how do they tune/debug/improve it? Pretty sure any given computation could be traced, though it might take a bit of work and need to be captured fairly quickly...

I've been to machine learning talks where the presenters freely admitted they weren't exactly sure how what they made works. Reminds me of this comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2460#comic

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#88

Post by azag0 » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

cat199 wrote: post #71

jpalomaki wrote: post #51

There's at least a theoretical possibility that even Facebook does not exactly know why they make certain recommendations. This could be just a machine doing all the work. All kinds of data goes in, predictions are made. Facebook users give feedback by accepting/rejecting the recommendations and algorithms learn and adjust accordingly.

And who builds this machine and how do they tune/debug/improve it? Pretty sure any given computation could be traced, though it might take a bit of work and need to be captured fairly quickly...

I think much effort went into understanding why AlphaGo makes the decisions it does, and it’s almost a research project in each particular case.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#89

Post by micheljones » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #54

facebook does nothing besides match tons of contact list that idiots upload to their servers when they install any facebook app. why does people think this is rocket science? even the supposedly clever people here try to imagine complex algorithms. geez. its 1:1 text match on phone numbers. their genius move was getting enough idiots uploading their entire phone address book for free.

I do agree with your sentiment, but Facebook does a lot more than just that.

They put a lot of effort into tracking sites you browse, their phone app slurps up any possible data to improve your profile, starting with location info, and going all the way to uploading photos from your camera gallery to Facebook, to be analyzed for face recognition.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#90

Post by jpalomaki » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 7:16 PM UTC

bb101 wrote: post #75

javiramos wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - it is amazing how even a small mention of a product in a whatsapp conversation with my friends turns into a barrage of related ads on Facebook. We have even started teasing each other by mention funny products just to indundate each other with irrelevant ads. So sad - my assumption is: anything you say or do in an electronic device is NOT private.

I wonder how this could work when Whatsapp advertises that conversations are encrypted end-to-end.

These kinds of things might be just random. You see probably thousands of ads during the day, but most of them are not registered by your conscious mind. Only when there is a notable connection to something, your brain wakes up and you register the ad.

There's also the option that before bringing up something in conversation, your friend has made some related searches or reacted to a related ad. Facebook could then make the decision to show the ad to you based on your friend past behavior and the fact that you two had a conversation.