Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#81

Post by chillingeffect » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 2:26 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #40

I hope that by now everybody understands that we are the product, not the customers.

This is generally very true, especially for facebook, but there are cases of pure altruism and fraternity, such as open and free software. Some people really do want the world to be a better place and dedicate small or large amounts of their life's work to improving it for the others.

Some free things are actually wholesome. So we have to learn how to discriminate between whether something free is actually good for us.

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#82

Post by chillingeffect » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

This reminds me of Microsoft's purchasing LinkedIn. It's as if these corporate giants are trying to scoop up as much data about our lives as possible.

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#83

Post by ggggtez » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

To be quippy, "hashing is not privacy". Netflix learned that the hard way too.

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#84

Post by psychometry » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #83

To be quippy, "hashing is not privacy". Netflix learned that the hard way too.

What was the Netflix thing?

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#85

Post by polarix » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

dschuetz wrote: post #77

I don't understand. Why? What was the motivation to conduct such talks? Regarding what Facebook does, according to Facebook connecting people , how does patient's medical data contributes to that? "You've been committed to the local hospital last week, connect to people who shared that experience with you?" It doesn't make sense at all!

It's Hard to connect with someone if they're dead.

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#86

Post by LinuxBender » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

leesalminen wrote: post #80

lallysingh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paragraph that you didn't quote covered that

Barely. I think FB engineers deserve more than “some” of the blame here. Surely they could see the negative consequences of linking health data into their graph.

The ones I know are proud of the fact they can pull in thousands of data sources. They will show off what they can do using big data, AI and other bingo terms with your data.

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#87

Post by LinuxBender » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

RoyTyrell wrote: post #52

tjoff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, all I see is that insurance companies will be the ones with the most to gain (economically) from this information, and thus the ones that will pay the most for it.

Insurance companies already have tons of relevant medical data on their clients, there's no reason why whatever FB can provide them is going to be miraculously more telling than actual medical data such as their current and past diagnoses and medical conditions.

It could be useful additional data for detecting insurance fraud.

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#88

Post by Irishsteve » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 3:08 PM UTC

marcell wrote: post #6

The pile on continues... (1) This is probably a project by a small "research" group at Facebook. The goal of that group is probably to publish papers in a Psych journal or something like that about how they were able to correlate anonymized medical data with Facebook feed updates. Tech companies have these research groups for prestige, they are not central to the company mission. (2) According to the article, the pro…

Unless of course, the research is promising and can be integrated into the product somehow.

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#89

Post by xxs » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

sseth wrote: post #16

I am curious about the "cryptographic hashing technique" being proposed. How does that work? Is it just a hash of the name / dob / other identifying info? Does it somehow include matching faces?

Dunno what's proposed but hashing personal data doesn't work in terms of anonymity, due to the small space of the said data.

In the days of crypto currencies, brute forcing the hashes (imagine names, day of birth, city) is a trivial task.

Re: Facebook was in talks with hospitals about a proposal to share data

#90

Post by firstplacelast » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

marcell wrote: post #6

The pile on continues... (1) This is probably a project by a small "research" group at Facebook. The goal of that group is probably to publish papers in a Psych journal or something like that about how they were able to correlate anonymized medical data with Facebook feed updates. Tech companies have these research groups for prestige, they are not central to the company mission. (2) According to the article, the pro…

I agree it's terrible, people should really look out for these multi-billion dollar companies more.