Yann LeCun (the famous Deep Learning researcher) gave the reason behind this: "WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption. Facebook Messenger doesn't, which allows it to provide enhanced services using AI-based content understanding (the information is not shared with 3rd parties). Both are owned/run by Facebook. It gives you a choice."
Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
51–60 of 192 posts
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#52Why is this newsworthy? Did people think Facebook somehow didn't have access to what was being sent across its own platform?
Yes, they have access. The point is more that they have an automated system scanning and flagging messages, specifically so that they're reviewed by humans, for content they don't want on their platform.
My landlord has access to my apartment, and I certainly don't expect them to just pop in and take things out that they don't like -- I at least expect some kind of notice. You can apply this to basically anything in the physical world, like mail. Having the capability to access does not equate to having permission to access.
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#53This should be a surprise to no one, and is not unique to Facebook.
Gmail has been scanning the email it's servers receive since it's inception.
Initially this was to show ad relevancy. Once your email content became more valuable than showing ads, Google removed ads.
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#54Ofcourse they do. On one hand it’s absolutely surprising that such a piece is considered “news” but on the other hand at least the general public (not just people in CS) are paying more attention to their privacy. But in this case I think it’s 100% fine, even expected in order to stop bad content (porn, abuse etc) from going through
stopping "Bad content" is a slippery slope, especially on a network, where most only talk to people they actually know and who are usually using real identities. Keep in mind it's private messaging we're talking about.
Many people have that same expectation of email, but are ok with spam and phish filtering
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#55This should be a surprise to no one, and is not unique to Facebook. Gmail has been scanning the email it's servers receive since it's inception. Initially this was to show ad relevancy. Once your email content became more valuable than showing ads, Google removed ads.
Google shows ads on Gmail under the Promotions tab. It does not scan emails to target ads. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you rather see ads for cat food? (Even though you don't have a cat.) This is not a rhetorical question: please answer it. The reason for this question is that even though you don't have a cat lots of people do! It's absolutely not a false dichotomy. Either people who have no cats must see cat food advertisements (bad choice), or cat food advertisements must be shown to people who probably have a cat (better cho…
You’re ok with someone reading your mail then spamming you after learning something from it? Does that only apply to email, or physical mail too (with your permission in a vast TOS document of course). What if someone looked in your windows then sent you advertising based on what they saw? I’m always a bit startled at what people are ok with.
This (what you just wrote):
>You’re ok with someone reading your mail then spamming you after learning something from it?
Does not match this (OP):
>When our daughter was born, and I sent an announcement via GMail, I started seeing ads for diapers.
I can see how the language "I started seeing ads" might sound like it applies to spam (unsolicited mail or messages) but to me it's clear that the poster just meant that the types of textual gmail ads they see changed to include baby ads. They're talking about this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=gmail+text+ads&source=lnms&t...
Now there's something actually interesting here. We don't have enough information to decide, but I bet this is the reason that poster paid so much attention to those text ads: they used to be highly relevant for them!
I bet they used to be filled only with stuff like industry conferences, IoT dev kids they were really interested in, security whitepapers, all sorts of stuff. (An indication of this is that they did not learn to mentally filter those parts of their inbox out as irrelevant.)
On one of my computers I have a hosts file that blocks Google's ads - so I often have to copy the ad URL and open it myself: because I clicked on it, and still want to see it after it doesn't open, and after knowing very clearly that it's an advertisement. Advertising doesn't get much better than this.
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#57When our daughter was born, and I sent an announcement via GMail, I started seeing ads for diapers. After that, I assume anything I'm doing on the internet is being data mined for advertising or some other source of revenue.
Google does not use the content of your emails to target ads: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603
Ads where? Do you just mean display ads on the web? If so, your browser likely ended up on a list for diaper ads by some other means. Top of mind: - Did ever add a baby-related product to a shopping cart on a retail site? - Did you visit baby-related websites?
Less likely, but possible,if your browser cookie was linked to other personal information by 3rd party data brokers: - Do you use a loyalty card at a physical store? Did you suddenly buy baby stuff for the first time? - Did you return a product registration card for a carseat or something like that? The company my resell their customer lists.
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#58Why is this newsworthy? Did people think Facebook somehow didn't have access to what was being sent across its own platform?
Yes, they have access. The point is more that they have an automated system scanning and flagging messages, specifically so that they're reviewed by humans, for content they don't want on their platform. My landlord has access to my apartment, and I certainly don't expect them to just pop in and take things out that they don't like -- I at least expect some kind of notice. You can apply this to basically anything in…
In many states (all of them?) landlords are specifically not legally allowed to “just pop in” without reasonable cause or sufficient notice.
So yes I agree with your statement but in this example it’s already a law.
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#59Old news. Facebook has been doing this since at least 2009, I recall seeing an article where Facebook censored all links (including those in private messaegs) to thepiratebay.org [0] They also crawl links you share in private messages to grab the title, intro, and favicon to generate that clickable widget link thing. [0] https://torrentfreak.com/facebook-blocks-all-pirate-bay-link...
Yep, very old news. They also blocked URLs to competitors claiming the links were spam. Even if you legit posted the link, Facebook didn't notify you the message didn't send. It just failed silently.
> They also blocked URLs to competitors claiming the links were spam. Even if you legit posted the link, Facebook didn't notify you the message didn't send. It just failed silently.
Any links to more reading on this?
Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
#60This should be a surprise to no one, and is not unique to Facebook. Gmail has been scanning the email it's servers receive since it's inception. Initially this was to show ad relevancy. Once your email content became more valuable than showing ads, Google removed ads.
Google shows ads on Gmail under the Promotions tab. It does not scan emails to target ads. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603
It does not scan email for ad-targeting anymore
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html
Google has enough data on you that it no longer needs to scan email to show you relevant ads.