Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 159 posts

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#131

Post by sizzle »

vmsp wrote: post #117
fermienrico wrote: post #9

It’s very simple: As a consumer, we cannot trust any advertisement company. Their goals are in direct conflict with user privacy. In fact it’s not a wishful goal, it is their business model. Our attention is very expensive and everything is designed around us to grab us by the neck so to speak. Flashing ads, stories and feeds. I cannot, absolutely cannot, trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, Visa, Amex,…

I think you're completely wrong. You and I care about privacy and it feels like everyone does too because we're only getting signals from inside our own little tech bubble. People don't care about their privacy, it's a simple as that. At least not enough to stop using Facebook and whatnot. Most of my friends and acquaintances are software engineers and couldn't care less about Facebook's scandals and how it uses thei…

And my friends think their phone is spying on them with the built in microphone, due to ultra personalized targeted data. Once I raise their awareness of scummy advertising industry privacy practices, in laymen terms, do they understand that there is a shadow industry tracking their movements and purchase history to manipulate them into purchasing products, do they agree that this is not the future they want to live in.

In my experience, the amount of people that care are simply ignorant of what's going on in ad tech, of no fault of their own. They are tech consumers, raising families, working 9-5, living their life.

We are the tech creators, we need to be looking out for them in addition to ourselves. How can we say they don't care when they simply don't understand?

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#132

Post by codyb »

Zelphyr wrote: post #128
codyb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't facebook already have his data anyways even if he deleted his account? I thought they were even making shadow profiles of people who didn't exist? So if he's not adding new information the only info he's giving them is by what events he clicks which is still valuable. And then of course if he browses the web with the facebook cookie that probably gives them a significant amount of browser habits, no? Which i…

I don't think the answer is to just give up. Sure they have shadow accounts. But that data gets stale after you delete your account. And you can hasten that by blocking Facebook domains so that they can't track your movements around the web.

I wasn't saying it was, I was saying maybe said person has figured to himself his event clicking patterns are worth giving up in exchange for the service fb provides that they clearly find of value.

If they add nothing to their profile, and don't browse the web with facebook cookies aren't they not really losing much of worth? If they've made the conscientious decision that event data is worth the events calendar?

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#133

Post by Marsymars »

saagarjha wrote: post #111
falcolas wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft may not be directly supported by ads, but they're happy to show you ads in your purchased install of Windows 10 for other Microsoft products (Halo, One Drive, etc.) EDIT: I'd be happier to hear why I'm incorrect in the place of downvotes.

They also prebundle a bunch of games in the "clean" install.

This is bonkers to me. How is this worth the damage they're doing to the brand?

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#134

Post by Alterlife »

WalterSear wrote: post #112
werber wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet that is a much greater of indicator of your real taste (and what they can get you to binge) vs. the taste you want people to perceive you as having via ranking

Perhaps even better than what you think you like yourself.

What you would like to watch.

What you actually watch.

This is why I hate YouTube recommendations. It feeds my monkey brain.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#135

Post by kbenson »

echevil wrote: post #123
kbenson wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General advertising is not a problem. Individually targeted advertising is. General advertising includes the sign on the door or exterior of the brick and mirter storefront, as well as billboards, magazine/newspaper ads, and product placement in media. It ranges from almost entirely informative (on the storefront) to annoying and off-putting (some billboards, poorly done product placement). This advertising is passiv…

"Individually targeted ads" is intrinsically more relevant to the individual and leads to better click through rate. It is in the interest of both the company who run these ads and the user who see these ads (that they're much more likely to see something relevant and useful). If an ad intends to confuse their audience to think they're purely informational material, they probably should not be shown to anyone. That's…

> "Individually targeted ads" is intrinsically more relevant to the individual and leads to better click through rate.

It also only works when the advertisers know information about you, and the more they know, the better it works. This presents a perverse incentive to get as much information as possible, even if it's not in the individual's best interest.

To lay it out clearly, it is in an individual's best interest to have relevant ads shown if any ads are going to be shown. It is not in an individual's best interest to have personal, private or even possibly harmful information warehoused at different advertising entities. The tension between these two things is what we're discussing, and I think the harm (or possible harm) from having that personal information aggregated far outweighs the benefits to the individual for targeted advertising. That targeted advertising it also helps the company is of little consequence in this specific equation (that is, should I as an individual want this, but of course matters quite a bit in explaining the status quo).

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#136

Post by pmiller2 »

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #130
pmiller2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about cereal boxes and soda cans?

Might be possible, but you can’t really advertise the latest LG vacuum cleaner on a cereal box, while on a billboard anything goes.

Yes, but I think someone might pay to change all the soda cans to Pepsi products, for instance.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#137

Post by dabockster »

vmsp wrote: post #117
fermienrico wrote: post #9

It’s very simple: As a consumer, we cannot trust any advertisement company. Their goals are in direct conflict with user privacy. In fact it’s not a wishful goal, it is their business model. Our attention is very expensive and everything is designed around us to grab us by the neck so to speak. Flashing ads, stories and feeds. I cannot, absolutely cannot, trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, Visa, Amex,…

I think you're completely wrong. You and I care about privacy and it feels like everyone does too because we're only getting signals from inside our own little tech bubble. People don't care about their privacy, it's a simple as that. At least not enough to stop using Facebook and whatnot. Most of my friends and acquaintances are software engineers and couldn't care less about Facebook's scandals and how it uses thei…

> People don't care about their privacy, it's a simple as that.

People DO care about their privacy. However, due to the market dominance of platforms like FB and others, they have no real reasonable alternatives due to lack of competition. So they have to choose between tolerating FB's practices or going with another service with worse UX and/or fewer features.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#138

Post by dabockster »

Animats wrote: post #100
jasode wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A basic friends-only system isn't that expensive to run. The expense depends on what the baseline for "basic" is. I believe today's average consumer would want basic features to include photos and video sharing. (This consumer expectation having been conditioned by previous $0/month social networks like Facebook.) Needless to say, this requires expensive datacenters with petabytes of harddrives. Rising storage infra…

Good point. Now a "Freemium" app might work. Text is free. Pictures up to a limit are free. A few seconds of video with an expiration time is free. More pictures, longer video, and long term storage all cost. Fortnite is "freemium", and bringing in over $1BN a year without ads.

I've been thinking about this myself. Small bits of text is free. The occasional photo is free. Maybe not video.

You could also treat brand pages as what they really are: advertising. Charge them a weekly/yearly fee to have the ability to run such a page.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#139

Post by dabockster »

fortythirteen wrote: post #53

While the general conclusion is correct, this angst-ridden blog post posing as a news article wouldn't get past the most generous editor a few decades ago. It's sad that Buzzfeed News is considered a legitimate source by some.

> It's sad that Buzzfeed News is considered a legitimate source by some.

Everyone has a different definition of "legitimate source" these days.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#140

Post by dabockster »

snarf21 wrote: post #10
dabockster wrote: post #4

I only largely use Facebook for the events calendar anymore. Big brands and community groups use that part of the site heavily for event promotion. If we want Facebook to become obsolete, we would need to create a comparable event promotion experience elsewhere. So far, though, I've only seen inroads into discovering events already being promoted. The real money is disrupting how events are promoted so the customer d…

You've hit on the key, make it lazy for the user. Don't make them go search on meetup or eventbrite like a neanderthal.

As I said in my post, Eventbrite can't compete because all the organizations are posting events to Facebook exclusively. You would have to get them to change that practice before users will move.
Post reply on HN