So... is anyone actually surprised by this?
I was surprised that they were not already doing this.
If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
161–170 of 194 posts
Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wanted to chime in and say kudos for speaking up. That sure is a risky thing to do. Unless, of course, this is just more smoke and mirrors. I like to believe it is not.
It isn’t smoke and mirrors, it might just be idealism or trolling.
I wondered about trolling too. There are examples in the comments of people taking it at face value. If it's not trolling then there would be something to learn from it for sure for successful trolling.
Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#163FB ads engineer here. Every time I read these threads, I'm 1. Flattered by how sophisticated HN thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart. FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago) 2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.) Hypertargeting doesn't work. Targeting small audiences doesn'…
If I want to run porn apps on my VR devices what right does FB have to vacuum up that knowledge? If the porn app has a specific sexual orientation why should Facebook get to know that?
Facebook should not be collecting this data IMO. Microsoft and Apple should be working to make it impossible to collect and governments should work to make it illegal to collect and extremely high fines if caught collecting.
Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#164FB ads engineer here. Every time I read these threads, I'm 1. Flattered by how sophisticated HN thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart. FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago) 2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.) Hypertargeting doesn't work. Targeting small audiences doesn'…
> The main priority here is to enable "Show ads to people who own an Oculus" level targeting.
From the article:
> Your photos and related content like captions, likes and comments if you use the “share photos” feature to share photos from VR to your Facebook Timeline
But don't worry! An engineer has told me I can just ignore that part of privacy policy because Facebook doesn't even care about my photos. They're utterly irrelevant.
It really takes a load off my chest. Sure, Facebook is collecting info about what apps people use, what people message, and what photos people take, but that's just going into a database somewhere that will never be monetized or read or used against them. And I can definitely trust that, because when Facebook says its going to silo data, it always keeps that promise, and definitely doesn't change its privacy policy to remove that silo 4-5 years down the road.
> FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago
I'm relieved to hear it, because its very concerning to hear about a technical team building infrastructure to collect individual app usage when all that anyone at the company cares about is whether or not I own an Oculus. It's wasted effort. Y'all need to learn to tighten your sprint scope, why are you building all these features that aren't being used anywhere?
> it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago.
And don't worry, the CEOs that made those decisions have all retired, and they definitely won't make them again in the future. It's just old, outdated stories that keep resurfacing. Like in 2017 when Facebook experimented on how depressed teenagers would respond to ads[0], or like in 2016 when Facebook started trying to intuit people's race based on their behavior[1]. See? Decades ago!
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In actual seriousness, I don't have any reason to doubt the author's intention, but I think this is a type of gaslighting, whether purposeful or not. I've brought this issue up before in regards to privacy debates -- but the conversations around surveillance have a habit of suddenly shifting.
Before Snowden, people who worried about the NSA were paranoid, and the response was, 'we're not doing any of that, and we don't care about your data anyway.' After Snowden, the comments became 'why is anyone surprised, and it's not even a big deal anyway because it's just metadata and metadata has always been fine to collect.'
Before the Alexa/Google Home contractor scandals, it would not have been hard to find people on HN that argued that 'the controls are perfect, and it's just a computer listening to you, and people who worry about this are just paranoid.' After the scandals broke, it was 'of course you need human reviewers to train AI, this is a nothingburger that everyone already knew about.'
So try to remember adgineer's comment, because a few years from now when it turns out Facebook is doing microtargeting based on really invasive Oculus data, the story is suddenly going to be, 'this was consistent with our privacy policy, of course everyone knew what they were getting into, it's not a big deal.'
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/faceb...
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/faceb...
Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valve's main revenue stream is selling products to consumers (unlike Facebook), so at the very least it's a safer bet. This quote is entirely unrelated but I thought of it and want to share: "Valve used to make games, now they make money."
The HTC privacy policy had some glaring issues in it years ago. Is the new vive different?
The new Vive is by HTC, the Index is by Valve? Different companies.
You may be confused by the fact that HTC previously had a partnership with Valve. The Index is independent from HTC.
Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telling someone that what they do for a living makes the world a worse place is neither a personal insult nor hating. Social pressure is one of the principal ways we stop people from making self-interested decisions that are detrimental to the group.
It is an insult because you’re attacking them for what they do.
Anyone can be judged for the actions they take, that doesn't make it an insult.
Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
That may be true, but this is also the sole comment from this account, made to defend the ad policies of a company known to take veeeeeery large liberties with the data of it's userbase, both to enhance features and to sell ad targeting. Like if it's HN's policy to not call things astroturfing, fine, I'll accept that. But if it talks like a duck, walks like a duck, and posts in it's own defense for no apparent reason…
It doesn’t matter. One is still claiming astroturfing with nothing but circumstantial evidence. If you have actual evidence that this account is a troll, post it. Regarding the “new account” argument: HN encourages throwaways. Maybe OP didn’t want to lose karma on their main account. Maybe they don’t want people knowing who he is? It doesn’t matter.
Fun fact: Circumstantial evidence is admissible in court!
Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having spoken with people who have worked on the FB ads team, and having heard stories of how extensive FB's tracking is, this post seems disingenuous and personally I wouldn't be surprised if the account is sponsored by FB.
Please don’t suggest people are astroturfing here. It’s against the site guidelines.
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Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your systems are sophisticated enough to make people believe their phones are listening to them in the background even when that's not the case. So even if you think they are primitive, a lot of people thinks they're more than sophisticated enough to be creepy.
Facebook's not helping this conspiracy theory with their "why did I see this ad?" dialog. I'll see a clearly hyper-targeted ad (for example, a psoriasis medication) and click that button and it'll say "they wanted to reach people in the United States between 18-65!" I know I was targeted by that ad. I know they're just showing me the most general bit of the targeting info that was used to put that ad in front of me.…
I am a professional FB advertiser.
The advertisers are probably choosing to target everyone on FB in that age range, but asking FB to optimize for conversions. Then the FB algorithm finds more people who look like people who are clicking and converting.
Re: If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. They know I play Beat Saber and move pretty quickly while doing so. Maybe they'll try to sell me exercise stuff (though I rarely interact with Facebook and my browser setup is kind of aggressive when it comes to them). They also know I'm shorter than Darth Vader. They know the size of a couple of our rooms. I acknowledge there is data they can attempt to extract value from, but that data just doesn't concern me…
>I acknowledge there is data they can attempt to extract value from, but that data just doesn't concern me This feels like a weird non computer person answer of "I don't understand why I should be worried about metadata it doesn't concern me"
Let me put it another way: there are many things we choose to do which generate data and provide that data to various entities. We have to decide which data we're willing to share with whom and for what benefits.
I know some people who, at least as of a couple of years ago, had dumbphones from which they'd remove the batteries when not in use so that their location couldn't be tracked.
I have an iPhone. I've got Comcast internet at home and don't use a VPN. I have a Facebook account (which I access in Firefox only using the facebook container). I don't use gmail, and my primary browser isn't logged into Google and has various bits of tracking protection.
So it's a pretty conscious choice. Maybe it's misguided, but I just think the data Facebook is getting from my Oculus Quest is pretty low value. Lower value than Likes, for example.