“Like” at Your Own Risk • Hacker News Board

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#11

Post by GhettoMaestro » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

Brave-Steak wrote: post #7

sundvor wrote: post #5

I have thought about this before, even without the clever hack indicated here: Likes ought to drop off after an edit, or be clearly pointing to the previous version after any edit. IE they need to reflect staleness, and posts must better reflect that there's version history. In this day and age we ought to be able to differentiate between grammar/spell checks and complete rewrites, and update ux accordingly. Another…

> Another one is the ability for someone to change privacy level of a post from private to public. So that risky like that you thought was a safe one among friends could then be opened for everyone to see. This seems like a difficult problem in general and reminds me of this episode of Hidden Brain ( https://www.npr.org/2019/09/06/758281834/you-cant-hit-unsend... ). Where sharing shocking/"inappropriate" memes in a p…

We’re the memes really that bad? I still differentiate between a tasteless joke said in private versus screaming for example the N word publicly. Private v public behavior still has meaning to me.

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#12

Post by goatinaboat » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

Ironically, sharing this link alone could constitute a risk in some situations

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#13

Post by beerandt » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

Brave-Steak wrote: post #7

sundvor wrote: post #5

I have thought about this before, even without the clever hack indicated here: Likes ought to drop off after an edit, or be clearly pointing to the previous version after any edit. IE they need to reflect staleness, and posts must better reflect that there's version history. In this day and age we ought to be able to differentiate between grammar/spell checks and complete rewrites, and update ux accordingly. Another…

> Another one is the ability for someone to change privacy level of a post from private to public. So that risky like that you thought was a safe one among friends could then be opened for everyone to see. This seems like a difficult problem in general and reminds me of this episode of Hidden Brain ( https://www.npr.org/2019/09/06/758281834/you-cant-hit-unsend... ). Where sharing shocking/"inappropriate" memes in a p…

Why difficult? Just put the same permissions on the "like" as the parent object being liked, and leave those permissions alone if the parent object updates.

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#14

Post by EGreg » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

soylentcola wrote: post #10

I seem to remember doing some prank-ish thing like this in the early days of Facebook. Create an activity or whatever that you "liked" (ex: camping) and friends would see that "soylentcola liked camping ". They would also like camping and then eventually you would change the name of that tag/activity/whatever to something like getting kicked in the nuts so that now it tells people that "John Smith likes getting kicke…

Right! This can be done by changing the name of a page people like. Not just a post.

Seems like you can get really good amount of likes for a popular thing (like calls for impeaching Trump in 2017) before changing it to some thing you want to promote (like Tom Steyer for President) ... and you can even qualify for the Debate stage!

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#15

Post by kerkeslager » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

There's a lot of major challenges to creating decentralized, trustless systems, but this is very easy to solve in a trustless system. All you do is indicate "Like"s by signing an object like:

    {post:"",action:"like"}

That way if the post changes, your signed "like" no longer applies.

This trustless-ness can be introduced in centralized systems too, but the tendency in a centralized system is to trust the central authority, which is the whole problem with such systems.

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#16

Post by close04 » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #15

There's a lot of major challenges to creating decentralized, trustless systems, but this is very easy to solve in a trustless system. All you do is indicate "Like"s by signing an object like: {post:" ",action:"like"} That way if the post changes, your signed "like" no longer applies. This trustless-ness can be introduced in centralized systems too, but the tendency in a centralized system is to trust the central auth…

This doesn't work if you're just linking to some dynamic content. People will like the link and the link itself is static but the content provided by clicking it can change without notice.

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#17

Post by heavenlyblue » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #16

kerkeslager wrote: post #15

There's a lot of major challenges to creating decentralized, trustless systems, but this is very easy to solve in a trustless system. All you do is indicate "Like"s by signing an object like: {post:" ",action:"like"} That way if the post changes, your signed "like" no longer applies. This trustless-ness can be introduced in centralized systems too, but the tendency in a centralized system is to trust the central auth…

This doesn't work if you're just linking to some dynamic content. People will like the link and the link itself is static but the content provided by clicking it can change without notice.

You could hash both the url and the content

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#18

Post by marvin » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

soylentcola wrote: post #10

I seem to remember doing some prank-ish thing like this in the early days of Facebook. Create an activity or whatever that you "liked" (ex: camping) and friends would see that "soylentcola liked camping ". They would also like camping and then eventually you would change the name of that tag/activity/whatever to something like getting kicked in the nuts so that now it tells people that "John Smith likes getting kicke…

We did this too, all the time. Never thinking about the implications. Then suddenly it's 10 years later, social media has become one of the dominant global communications channels and it turns out this vulnerability can be used not just for funny pranks, but also to get people thrown in jail or even killed.

It's uncanny how young people have a razor-sharp nose for weaknesses in the fabric of society, often without even realizing it.

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#19

Post by close04 » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

heavenlyblue wrote: post #17

close04 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work if you're just linking to some dynamic content. People will like the link and the link itself is static but the content provided by clicking it can change without notice.

You could hash both the url and the content

In this case a different ad on that page would change the hash and you’d have to hash the content periodically anyway.

When I was using FB I noticed I “liked” some FB pages that in he meantime changes hands and were posting all kinds of crap. The name of the page stayed the same so I didn’t get the usual warning. With dynamic websites it’s impossible to have any control over those changes.

Re: “Like” at Your Own Risk

#20

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #14

soylentcola wrote: post #10

I seem to remember doing some prank-ish thing like this in the early days of Facebook. Create an activity or whatever that you "liked" (ex: camping) and friends would see that "soylentcola liked camping ". They would also like camping and then eventually you would change the name of that tag/activity/whatever to something like getting kicked in the nuts so that now it tells people that "John Smith likes getting kicke…

Right! This can be done by changing the name of a page people like. Not just a post. Seems like you can get really good amount of likes for a popular thing (like calls for impeaching Trump in 2017) before changing it to some thing you want to promote (like Tom Steyer for President) ... and you can even qualify for the Debate stage!

I haven't been on Facebook in a couple of years now, but I recall similar issues. People/groups would create pages for popular things (again, like "camping" or "sleeping in on the weekends") so that thousands and thousands of people would "like" that thing.

Then once those pages had enough followers, they could be sold off to whatever marketing group wanted access to lots of user data and an outlet to post sponsored content to a lot of viewers.

It wasn't just this bait-and-switch, though. Loads of "meme" pages and similar stuff built up a large enough following and then were either sold or just directly used for marketing.

I think it was bigger when companies/individuals could use Facebook to drive clicks to their sites but I have no idea if that's still a thing these days. Last I saw, most users/posts tended to stay within the Facebook "umbrella" rather than being linked to outside sites.