Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#101

Post by downandout » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:01 AM UTC

orf wrote: post #98

downandout wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve looked, and I manage a relatively large Facebook ad budget so I know exactly what is and is not possible to do through it. I’ve also been both advertising and writing software that interacts with both the ad API and the graph API since the beginning of both. What is being claimed in the media simply isn’t possible to do today. I’ve seen the term “audience of one” thrown around so much it makes me sick. So yes, t…

As various news sites have clearly and repeatedly reported they used the data to build highly detailed and specific psychological profiles of target voters then created content which would broadly appeal to people that match that profile. Kind of like buyer personas[1], but with rich detailed data on 50,000,000 people and their connections to play with. None of this implies in any way that they even took out a Facebo…

As I said in my original comment, the data might have been used in aggregate, for things like campaign strategy (“go campaign in Tallahassee!”). But the articles on this subject that have gotten the most attention imply that this data was used, specifically, to target ads on Facebook. Therefore my extensive experience with the platform, that you rudely sought to trivialize in your comment, is directly relevant. Once again, you cannot use the data they had to target people in the way that is being implied in most of these articles.

Finally, to put your comments to rest (hopefully), the data wasn’t used even off of Facebook in the way that you and these articles are claiming. See [1]. Enjoy the rest of your day.

[1]https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge-analyt...

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#102

Post by ucaetano » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:06 AM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #97

IBM wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple operated iAd before shutting it down. One of the former iAd execs said this to the WSJ [1]: >“I don’t believe they are interested in this capability because they have a strict policy around what they do with user data,” Crawford said. “IAd has great assets and great capabilities, but they are going to follow Apple’s policy to the letter of the law.” So they crippled a potential new revenue stream because of the…

You don't consider it at all possible that "because privacy" is the PR spin on it? When iAd launched, it required mid six digit buys for ads. Users complained that they only would see the same half-dozen ads. Over the course of the next two years, that was steadily reduced, low six digits, fifty thousand, and the complaints stayed the same. Before iAd shut its doors, you could get ad buys for a minimum of _fifty doll…

Exactly, they failed to monetize their installed base through ads, so decided to call it a "feature".

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#103

Post by landryraccoon » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:09 AM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #90

ucaetano wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His and his wife's is a proper foundation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat... The money is out of their hands, and can't be distributed back to them.

Even in that case, he and his family will for a long time have the political benefit of deciding how the money will be spent. And political advantages usually translate into economical advantages, so it can also be viewed as a scheme at some level.

I don't think this cynicism is warranted. No matter how much benefit you think the goodwill of others is towards you for giving away your money, is dwarfed by the benefit of having billions of dollars.

If the political benefit really outweighed the costs, then every single billionaire would be doing the same thing, purely out of selfish interest. How many of them are?

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#104

Post by jsjohnst » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:10 AM UTC

thinkloop wrote: post #67

headsoup wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing Apples to oranges (I'm sorry) Apple doesn't have a social network. They also don't rely on advertising and 3rd party data brokering. It's easy for Apple to be the 'good guys' here when they have physical products as their profit generators. FOSS would have worked better in the Facebook case too as people and developers would know/discover a) where their data is and b) what risks it faces

I swear there is some kind of downvote bot on HN - reasonable posts are often down-voted grey within the first few minutes (like this one's parent), and then eventually climb up to a reasonable place, when, what feels like, the humans have had time to see it - has this been noticed or discussed before? I'd be curious to know if some accounts are serial downvoters, especially as soon as comments go up - does HN look f…

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

FYI, want to start off with that to help indicate the likely reason for any downvotes you got on this post.

> One thing for sure is that a lot of people downvote based on disagreement rather than a comment's quality - which in my opinion is not right

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it doesn’t make it any more valid than other’s and doesn’t make it a fact either.

> (and I think against the intent of a downvote)

@Dang has said on multiple occasions that the intent wasn’t as you are assuming. Apologies I don’t have a link handy at the moment.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#105

Post by majestik » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:14 AM UTC

headsoup wrote: post #53

IBM wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules. They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last. Fun to give this Paul Graham essa…

You're comparing Apples to oranges (I'm sorry) Apple doesn't have a social network. They also don't rely on advertising and 3rd party data brokering. It's easy for Apple to be the 'good guys' here when they have physical products as their profit generators. FOSS would have worked better in the Facebook case too as people and developers would know/discover a) where their data is and b) what risks it faces

“Apple doesn't have a social network.”

What about iMessage?

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#106

Post by orf » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:14 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #101

orf wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As various news sites have clearly and repeatedly reported they used the data to build highly detailed and specific psychological profiles of target voters then created content which would broadly appeal to people that match that profile. Kind of like buyer personas[1], but with rich detailed data on 50,000,000 people and their connections to play with. None of this implies in any way that they even took out a Facebo…

As I said in my original comment, the data might have been used in aggregate, for things like campaign strategy (“go campaign in Tallahassee!”). But the articles on this subject that have gotten the most attention imply that this data was used, specifically, to target ads on Facebook . Therefore my extensive experience with the platform, that you rudely sought to trivialize in your comment, is directly relevant. Once…

The data was used in aggregate to produce detailed profiles (upwards of 40k of them), as reported by the original whistleblower and every reputable news source who's reported on it, and in far more detail than "go campaign in X".

More like "This specific group of people in X who like guns, willie nelson and dislike bananas would be receptive to a picture of willie nelson squashing a banana with Hillary Clinton's face on it with a caption about 2A". Then, spread this picture organically through facebook groups for people who hate bananas, love willie nelson and guns.

To be clear: the story is not at all "oh no they brought targeted facebook adverts", and it should be evident that perhaps your logic or understanding is faulty rather than a worldwide media conspiracy to short Facebook stock.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#107

Post by downandout » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:21 AM UTC

misiti3780 wrote: post #77

downandout wrote: post #58

The Facebook API has been useless since 2014 when most access to friend data was cutoff. Since then, if your objective was data collection, that could be easily achieved by scraping publicly available information (many friends lists are public, there are many public posts, etc. - certainly enough to use in aggregate to formulate campaign strategies etc.). I suspect that will be the next “scandal,” since in 2018, peop…

That is what I thought also but how did CA get this friend data?

They got it by using the same technique that Obama did in 2008 and 2012. They got one of your friends to authorize their app, and then they were allowed to access most of the data about your friends that you could access. The only difference between CA and Obama is that Obama’s app was given special permission to blow through data collection limits enforced on all other apps, such that even though less than 1 million people authorized Obama to have their data, they had information on ~200 million people - the entire US social graph. The researcher that created the app at issue in the CA scandal, who eventually sold that data to CA years after the fact, only had access to about ~50 million profiles.

Both of these things were wrong, but it should have been a huge deal back in 2008 and again in 2012, when 4x the number of profiles were accessed and used, about 99.5% of which never authorized Obama to have or use their information.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#108

Post by rrdharan » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:28 AM UTC

ericflo wrote: post #54

nl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty related in this case, since the kind of security that is being discussed here is around access to private data (and I'd note that it was you that used the word security here, not the OP who made the more correct contrast between openness and powerfulness). One could equally make the point that Facebook is secure because no one has hacked their servers, and that it is open because it is free to join. T…

I should have used Monero as an example instead of Bitcoin, but I thought less people would have heard of it. Privacy can also be achieved with these primitives.

> I should have used Monero as an example instead of Bitcoin, but I thought less people would have heard of it. Privacy can also be achieved with these primitives.

Well actually that’s very much still in dispute:

https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#109

Post by ethbro » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:28 AM UTC

ericflo wrote: post #63

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Facebook API is, now at least, a capabilities based system where you ask the user for permission to access various bits of information. The major problem these days is that people don’t read through the authorization dialogs because they want to see which Star Wars character they are.

To my knowledge, you're not able to reveal just your first name, or just a proof that you're a FB verified user. And once you grant access, it's forever. We may be at a global maximum for user permissions, but I doubt it. The problem is we can't try anything new - since it's all stored in FB's servers, we have to wait for them to build new granular capabilities.

The truth is that Facebook engineering & UX has been either incompetent (incredibly unlikely given the caliber of people they have) or willfully / inadvertently avoiding clearly communicating to users what permissions apps need.

The thought that they can't "do better" than dialogs / strings identifying each permission is laughable.

It's not rocket science.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#110

Post by downandout » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 12:28 AM UTC

orf wrote: post #106

downandout wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in my original comment, the data might have been used in aggregate, for things like campaign strategy (“go campaign in Tallahassee!”). But the articles on this subject that have gotten the most attention imply that this data was used, specifically, to target ads on Facebook . Therefore my extensive experience with the platform, that you rudely sought to trivialize in your comment, is directly relevant. Once…

The data was used in aggregate to produce detailed profiles (upwards of 40k of them), as reported by the original whistleblower and every reputable news source who's reported on it, and in far more detail than "go campaign in X". More like "This specific group of people in X who like guns, willie nelson and dislike bananas would be receptive to a picture of willie nelson squashing a banana with Hillary Clinton's face…

and it should be evident that perhaps your logic or understanding is faulty rather than a worldwide media conspiracy to short Facebook stock.

Classic liberal tactic: dismiss people that point out the obvious flaws in your rhetoric by painting them as conspiracy theorists. I don’t think it’s a “worldwide conspiracy to short Facebook stock”. I think that the media outlets distributing these stories, which are spreading false information and implying things that aren’t possible (as my comment points out), hate Trump, are pissed that they were unable to manipulate the election in the way that they wanted, and are doing what they can to ensure he doesn’t win in 2020. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they attempted to get a little cream on top and tried to profit from their false narrative by shorting the stock as well. There’s actually nothing wrong with that, as long as the stories are factual, but it’s illegal (at least under US law) when they are not.

the story is not at all "oh no they brought targeted facebook adverts"

That isn’t all of the story, but that is a part of the narrative that is being told, and that part is factually impossible. Further, even the rest of your claims that they actually used the psychographic profiles are simply not accurate. See: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge-analyt...