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Why We Disagree with The New York Times

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Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#241

Post by smallnamespace »

rhizome wrote: post #235
smallnamespace wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you distinguish between unethical science and A/B testing, or even just 'We changed our product, then didn't like the results, and changed it back?'

There is at least a dense 50 years of research and writing on the topic of scientific ethics, it's a bit naive to pop into a thread and ask, "so what's the deeeeaaaal with human experimentation?"

To be clear, I think the question is where the line is between 'experimentation' and 'just doing what people do normally'.

Concrete example: I am in the process of trying to hire people right now. I'm not sure what the exact best way to do that is, so I vary how I interview over time and see how well it seems to work. I record what happens in a spreadsheet, and then later on I look at the 'data' to make some judgments.

Am I experimenting on my interviewees? Am I potentially harming them?

Well certainly if I ask question A in one interview, and question A' in another, and question A' is harder and I don't pass that person, then one might be tempted to argue that maybe that person would've done better on question A; therefore, I've harmed someone by 'experimenting' and making it harder for them to get a job. Rejecting someone can certainly make them depressed.

In principle this is no different from A/B testing an interview process, using real live humans no less.

So do I personally have an ethical obligation to disclose to everyone I interview that I am conducting human experimentation on them? Or is the only difference in power and scale—I am just one person, but Facebook can A/B test on millions of people at once?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#242

Post by staticassertion »

zzzeek wrote: post #227
TulliusCicero wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling cake has the potential to harm people, a moral framework needs a bit more subtlety than that to be sensible.

do folks "sell cake" to see if it worsens people's depression? this is more like selling cake that secretly has nuts in it which are known to cause allergic reactions without disclosing it.

Well, it's more like if the nuts had an unknown reaction, and the idea was to figure out what the reaction was by slipping it into some cake, and then observing.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#243

Post by dominotw »

JackCh wrote: post #185
dominotw wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook gave an assurance that our data would never cross paths with a bad actor. Don't downvote for asking me this, asking in good faith. Where did they give that assurance?

The root contention here is over the word "prevent". You questioned this: > "Signed agreements do not prevent your information from being used in other ways." But I guess you now understand why contracts do not prevent it.

I was not asking why an agreement is not able to physically get between the person and his computer and tie his hands from data being used in other ways. Why would i possibly ask such a question :D

I was asking why consequences of breach of agreement is not a strong enough deterrent in this case .

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#244

Post by sizzle »

smallnamespace wrote: post #178
zzzeek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unethical science does not deserve to be wrapped in its journalistic language in an effort to detach it from the harm it caused, it deserves to be called out for what it actually is, in this case intentional psychological manipulation of people's moods without their knowledge or consent. One does not grasp the true harm caused by unethical experiments by reading only the documented (published or non-published) scient…

How do you distinguish between unethical science and A/B testing, or even just 'We changed our product, then didn't like the results, and changed it back?'

Well if your study involves depressed people unknowingly being manipulated with negative newsfeed items that they didn't know they consented to being subjected to in a secret study, then that's unethical. The scientists aren't stupid, they knew beforehand that in a sufficiently sized population, there will be a segment of depressed people that they are influencing to commit suicide by being subjected to increased negative newsfeed material. That is unethical to me any way you cut it.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#245

Post by cjhopman »

snowwrestler wrote: post #229
cjhopman wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others. That's because you're just making up a problem that doesn't exist. The replies are all talking about what is actually happening, not your fantasy world. As the article states: " friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends".

I understand why my iPhone needs access to my Facebook friends' info, in order to display it to me. I don't understand why Apple Inc. needs access and permission to download and store my friends' data on Apple Inc. servers . That is what the NY Times reported, and Facebook has not directly denied it here. Edit to be clear: I'm just using Apple as an example company.

Do you know about the Amazon Silk web browser? If you log in to facebook in that browser, Amazon may download and store your friends' data on Amazon's servers. And that's even without any agreement with facebook.

I can think of a handful of Facebook-like experiences that would require an OS/device provider to store data on their servers, especially considering the constraints imposed on some devices (particularly older ones) and some OSes (particularly older ones and iOS).

Let's take a concrete example. Let's say that Apple wants to support contact syncing across devices. It also wants to support contact importing through fb's device integrated api.

Now, let's say that Apple actually implements that in such a way that it's encrypted end-to-end. Even in that case, Apple may have needed permission to store that data on their servers under whatever agreement the companies had and the Times could have written their story.

But I feel like that case isn't that interesting. Let's consider the case where your contacts are stored unencrypted on Apple's servers, but only for 3 hours while actually syncing to a new device (kind of a silly approach to the contact syncing case, but is likely more reasonable for other things). There may be a reasonable argument against that, but I think that most people wouldn't agree with it. Also, that argument would apply much more strongly to Android's contacts permissions (which don't require any sort of contract around how developers use/store that data).

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#246

Post by secabeen »

smallnamespace wrote: post #241
rhizome wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is at least a dense 50 years of research and writing on the topic of scientific ethics, it's a bit naive to pop into a thread and ask, "so what's the deeeeaaaal with human experimentation?"

To be clear, I think the question is where the line is between 'experimentation' and 'just doing what people do normally'. Concrete example: I am in the process of trying to hire people right now. I'm not sure what the exact best way to do that is, so I vary how I interview over time and see how well it seems to work. I record what happens in a spreadsheet, and then later on I look at the 'data' to make some judgment…

> Well certainly if I ask question A in one interview, and question A' in another, and question A' is harder and I don't pass that person, then one might be tempted to argue that maybe that person would've done better on question A; therefore, I've harmed someone by 'experimenting' and making it harder for them to get a job. Rejecting someone can certainly make them depressed.

> In principle this is no different from A/B testing an interview process, using real live humans no less.

> So do I personally have an ethical obligation to disclose to everyone I interview that I am conducting human experimentation on them? Or is the only difference in power and scale—I am just one person, but Facebook can A/B test on millions of people at once?

Generally, when interviewing, we ask the same questions of each applicant. We adjust the questions from A to A' as positions are hired, and pools are assembled, but for a specific job, each candidate gets the same questions.

It would have to be different for open recruitment not tied to a specific job, but I haven't had to do that.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#247

Post by zzzeek »

staticassertion wrote: post #242
zzzeek wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do folks "sell cake" to see if it worsens people's depression? this is more like selling cake that secretly has nuts in it which are known to cause allergic reactions without disclosing it.

Well, it's more like if the nuts had an unknown reaction, and the idea was to figure out what the reaction was by slipping it into some cake, and then observing.

which would be massively unethical if not illegal to do as a food manufacturer

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#248

Post by cjhopman »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #239
cjhopman wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much harm can the regulator really inflict on the general public? They can make regulations on social networks that are infeasible to comply with for any company not making 10s of billions of dollars a year, effectively cementing facebook as the only legal social network. Whether you consider that a harm or not is up to you.

I think that's an insane stretch of what's really happening.

Sure. It was a reply to a (dismissive) question asking what's the worst a regulator could do... it wasn't necessarily meant to be a reflection of what's really happening.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#249

Post by nemothekid »

snowwrestler wrote: post #229
cjhopman wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others. That's because you're just making up a problem that doesn't exist. The replies are all talking about what is actually happening, not your fantasy world. As the article states: " friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends".

I understand why my iPhone needs access to my Facebook friends' info, in order to display it to me. I don't understand why Apple Inc. needs access and permission to download and store my friends' data on Apple Inc. servers . That is what the NY Times reported, and Facebook has not directly denied it here. Edit to be clear: I'm just using Apple as an example company.

On my iPhone, I enabled a feature that would sync my contacts with my address book. My blackberry did this as well way back in the day.

My iPhone is also syncing with iCloud.

Now my friends “private information” are on Apple’s serves via my iCloud backup.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#250

Post by eat_veggies »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #111
detaro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYT article says that Facebook told them that some partners stored that data on their servers. Do you have a good citation that this does not refer to these device integrations, given you so strongly claim it doesn't? (It's very well possible that it's a misleading quote by the NYT, or a misunderstanding, but I don't see a clear answer in any of what we know) That's from my perspective the critical point here.

Surely that applies to every API in existence, for example, on the HTTP API I'm using right now to post this comment, I know that Mozilla stores some of my data on their servers (through FF Sync), and HN know that's possible, but it's not up to HN to ensure Mozilla aren't taking that data and selling it elsewhere.

HN didn't design the commenting API specifically for FF Sync to use though.
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