Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works • Hacker News Board

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#111

Post by inlined » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #83

inlined wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's worse is that privacy controls explicitly don't control ad targeting. Years ago I had a long term relationship end. We hid our relationship status and only ended the status a year later. Immediately after changing a status marked "only me" in privacy settings I got bombarded with dating ads. I complained that this was a huge privacy violation and they said "we didn't share your relationship status with the…

Well, but ad targeting (if it's done in-house) can be done without violating privacy. I mean, if FB would sell a service "show an ad to 10000 people born on 13th April 1998", and then doing so is perfectly compatible with keeping birthdays private as long as they don't tell the advertiser which people got shown that ad. A setting marked "only me" can be reasonably used to affect content that's shown only to you, e.g.…

I understand the point that you and Facebook each made. That is a different point than the one I did.

I felt violated. I don't care what tools Facebook used to make sure my PII wasn't given to a third party, that was personal data. It was data I explicitly marked as "nobody's business" but they used it invasively. Their long-form response was summarized "so what? We probably knew you broke up without telling us anyway"

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#112

Post by dwild » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

inlined wrote: post #111

PeterisP wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, but ad targeting (if it's done in-house) can be done without violating privacy. I mean, if FB would sell a service "show an ad to 10000 people born on 13th April 1998", and then doing so is perfectly compatible with keeping birthdays private as long as they don't tell the advertiser which people got shown that ad. A setting marked "only me" can be reasonably used to affect content that's shown only to you, e.g.…

I understand the point that you and Facebook each made. That is a different point than the one I did. I felt violated. I don't care what tools Facebook used to make sure my PII wasn't given to a third party, that was personal data. It was data I explicitly marked as "nobody's business" but they used it invasively. Their long-form response was summarized "so what? We probably knew you broke up without telling us anywa…

Can we once and for all accept that what you give to a website can be used by that website? Don't give your relationship status to Facebook if you don't want them to have it. It's a simple solution isn't it?

I think for so long people ignored the impact of what they did with their data. Facebook isn't your doctor or your lawyer. Facebook make cash out of targeted ads, it's their business models, they WILL use the data you gave them to target you with ads.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#113

Post by Waterluvian » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #30

Waterluvian wrote: post #2

Is that so surprising? You're asking him to talk about the one thing that makes Facebook a viable revenue generator. I also feel like the use of "admit" in the headline is disingenuous. I have zero expertise in this field but my intuition is that Facebook runs on an incredibly sensitive business model. Like an animal specialised to a specific biome. Adjust the conditions a bit and it might perish in a few generations…

> I also feel like the use of "admit" in the headline is disingenuous. Yet you seem to be saying that Zuckerberg is trying to hide his business model to protect it from legislators. Doesn't that make the word "admit" appropriate? What other word would you use for something someone doesn't want to say during a hearing?

Admit implies wrongdoing. I'm not. I think it can be perfectly fair to want to be guarded about your secret sauce if that's what you believe it to be.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#114

Post by bogomipz » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

bobwaycott wrote: post #109

bogomipz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"hat's why he kept conflating post-visibility settings with privacy / tracking settings." Indeed and if Congress had bothered to bring in some subject matter experts they would have been able to him out on these disingenuous answers and deceitful statements. I'm sure Zuckerberg believes he may have won here but I think he lost in the court of public opinion. I think his testimony did him a lot of damage as it shows…

> I'm sure Zuckerberg believes he may have won here but I think he lost in the court of public opinion. I think his testimony did him a lot of damage as it shows just how disingenuous and dishonest he really is. I highly doubt this. If the court of public opinion is an average of general public sentiment, my hunch is the probability a vast majority of the public paid any attention at all—and understood enough to see…

I can point to three articles in three major daily news outlets(NY Times, Washington Post and Bloomberg) in the last 48 hours that question the sincerity and accuracy of his congressional testimony. There's plenty more but these are off the top of my head.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#115

Post by shmerl » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

OrganicMSG wrote: post #55

shmerl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do care, that's why I don't use FB. Problem in using it is the network effect itself multiplied by the untrustworthy, closed and centralized foundation. I.e. you don't just harm yourself by using it, you are harming others by proliferating its use, because by using it, you are encouraging others to use it too.

I've never used it. For some reason this makes some people extremely curious as to my reasons and then very angry with me after I state them.

Why angry? In my experience most understand the problem well, but feel too dependent on FB to ditch it for good.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#116

Post by fixermark » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #80

fixermark wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does such a practice differ morally from consumer credit reporting agencies?

It doesn't really - we need to get to a point where all of these surveillance companies are out of business. Using data about a user with their consent seems perfectly fine. The fiction where this consent can be granted in perpetuity is not.

Unfortunately, as long as consumers can't be uniformly and universally trusted, there's but a market and a compelling, morally-acceptable use case for consumer tracking and reporting in that regard. So if what Facebook doesn't differ from consumer reporting in some other way, I don't see a compelling argument to toss it for the same reason I don't see a compelling argument to toss, say, return fraud tracking.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#117

Post by bobwaycott » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #114

bobwaycott wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure Zuckerberg believes he may have won here but I think he lost in the court of public opinion. I think his testimony did him a lot of damage as it shows just how disingenuous and dishonest he really is. I highly doubt this. If the court of public opinion is an average of general public sentiment, my hunch is the probability a vast majority of the public paid any attention at all—and understood enough to see…

I can point to three articles in three major daily news outlets(NY Times, Washington Post and Bloomberg) in the last 48 hours that question the sincerity and accuracy of his congressional testimony. There's plenty more but these are off the top of my head.

That doesn’t reflect the court of public opinion (at least not yet). That’s merely a measure of journalist opinion at 3 outlets.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#118

Post by gsich » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

908087 wrote: post #107

gsich wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or using another browser. And yes your average user is able to do that.

Average users are able to do a lot of simple things to afford themselves basic protection from some of these practices. The problem is that the vast majority of them don't know what those things are and don't know that they should be doing them. Even among the few who do take steps, the majority misunderstand what they're even achieving, in a "I use incognito mode so the NSA can't track me" kind of way. The even bigg…

Well they installed the apps, so they are presented with the permissions. And sometimes even before first access to SMS/Call with another option dialog to tell them that.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#119

Post by candybar » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

This particular article from Bloomberg loads (for me this time, it likely varies from one pageload to another) javascript files from these (and more, I stopped after reaching m, alphabetically) domains, many of whom are likely tracking users across sites and Bloomberg is doing so despite having no affirmative consent from me whatsoever:

  a.quora.com
  action.media6degrees.com
  ad.crwdcntrl.net
  ads.pubmatic.com
  ak.sail-horizon.com
  amplify.outbrain.com
  amplifypixel.outbrain.com
  analytics.twitter.com
  assets.bwbx.io
  bat.bing.com
  bcp.crwdcntrl.net
  cdn.perfdrive.com
  cdn.taboola.com
  cdn.teads.tv
  cdn.tinypass.com
  connect.facebook.com
  consent.truste.com
  dt.adfaceprotected.com
  horizon.sailthru.com
  in.ml314.com
  insight.adsrvr.org
  js-sec.indexww.com
  ml314.com
  ...

It's important to blame the right party here - pubmatic doesn't have a relationship with you and taboola doesn't have a relationship with you - it's Bloomberg that is sending your usage data to them. The same is true when Facebook or Google pixels are loaded (I'm sure they are there) - they are not tracking you directly, the publishers that are loading those pixels are sharing your browsing information with them. The media companies, that are manufacturing lots of faux outrage of how the internet works, largely because they mistakenly believe that if not for large tech companies, they'd make more money, which is unlikely to be true, are not only complicit here, but they are far worse about their blatant misuse of user data.

So however you feel about Facebook or Google or whoever happens to be on the hot seat at the moment, this is just how the internet works today and says more about the advertising ecosystem at large. The data collection also includes offline entities that are selling or at least "sharing" purchase data, gym check-in data, and so on. It's also important to realize that trying to stop this through regulations likely kills smaller publishers that cannot directly monetize their inventory with advertisers (because they are too small and cannot prove their trustworthiness) while benefiting larger entities that advertisers can reach directly. Google and Facebook don't need to load all these third-party JS because they can sell directly to advertisers. Google also happens to be an ad-tech intermediary but they don't need to be.

So be careful what you wish for here - while some of these privacy regulations are, in spirit, the right path forward but the articles currently bashing Facebook largely come from writers whose salaries are paid for by selling user data without affirmative consent to anyone who's willing to pay. It's likely that the publishing world won't be able to support the same number of writers once of some of the ad-tech data pipelines are broken. It's also likely that lots of people here and elsewhere who are currently complaining about privacy are likely complicit in many ways. Salesforce? It's a tracking tool where a lot of this sensitive data ends up. Oracle? Same (through their marketing cloud). Verizon? It's also an ad-tech vendor. Random Fortune 500? They are probably both selling/sharing whatever user data while their marketing teams are busy acquiring data for their campaigns. Small technology consulting firm? If you deal with lots of data, at least some of the data you're dealing was harvested this way.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works

#120

Post by icantgoogle » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

TekMol wrote: post #101

thaladred wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Since Amazon uses Facebook for advertising, they can feed their data to both Google and Facebook ads. It's easy to do with cookies. 2. If you don't have Facebook app on your phone or if you did not open your Facebook app when you are in store, you won't see ads for that store. Unless you have a loyalty program with the store or the store decides to target advertise you based on your payment info, etc. In any case,…

1: How is that easy? If I had a cookie on Amazons domain, how would that enable Amazon to show me personalized ads on FB? I don't keep cookies though. So the targeting must use other types of user identification. 2: I don't have a FB app nor do I use FB on my phone. But I see ads related to the places I went to. So the flow of information must be via other channels. One part is probably Google (I use Android).

They can also use Local Storage if necessary. I know quite a few Ad tech companies were using local storage to get around no 3rd party cookies in Safari.