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‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

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Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#51

Post by rococode »

hbosch wrote: post #8
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #5

> A sex worker found Facebook recommending her clients, who did not know her true identity. A sperm donor got a suggestion for the biological child he never met. A psychiatrist learned that Facebook was recommending that some of her patients friend each other on the service. It is amazing how little pieces of information that are likely innocuous by themselves can be combined to develop a pretty thorough understandin…

The first and last must just be geolocation based, right? Like, these two people are in a room together every X day for Y hours... they probably know each other. The sperm donor guy, though... facial recognition? No idea.

There's gotta be more to that sperm donor story. "Oh that must be my biological kid from that sperm bank trip 20 years ago" is not the natural train of thought when you see someone who maybe vaguely looks like you as a suggestion on Facebook. And whatever the other context was - maybe one of them searching for the other - probably gave Facebook what it needed to make the connection.

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#52

Post by paxys »

titzer wrote: post #22
axlee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely adress book / phone contacts import.

The geo thing is really happening.

As one of the factors probably, but they don't recommend random people who are nearby. There has to be some actual connection (friend-of-friend, address book, in the same group etc.)

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#54

Post by rhizome »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #5

> A sex worker found Facebook recommending her clients, who did not know her true identity. A sperm donor got a suggestion for the biological child he never met. A psychiatrist learned that Facebook was recommending that some of her patients friend each other on the service. It is amazing how little pieces of information that are likely innocuous by themselves can be combined to develop a pretty thorough understandin…

I see those as BIG pieces of information! The number of people that I "might know" because we've exchanged email with the same person is horrifying in this context. There's a dystopic story to be written (which often means it already has been) about law enforcement using this second-order conntection as Reasonable Suspicion, a "why did we find your business card in this bad guy's wallet?" connection.

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#55

Post by ahartmetz »

ciil wrote: post #46
Seenso wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This attitude of "we know what's good for you" is apparent in more and more modern tech products. I find it pretty gross... It's even grosser than that. The attitude here is really "we did what was good for us, but we think you're dumb enough to be convinced we did it because it was good for you."

I think at least some engineers genuinely believe they're doing what's best for the users and that it just so happens to also be either the best for their personal bottom line or the easiest route to go with their product.

As Richard Feynman said: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool."

(To write something slightly more original than the "will not understand if livelihood depends on it" quote)

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#56

Post by aaron695 »

hbosch wrote: post #8
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #5

> A sex worker found Facebook recommending her clients, who did not know her true identity. A sperm donor got a suggestion for the biological child he never met. A psychiatrist learned that Facebook was recommending that some of her patients friend each other on the service. It is amazing how little pieces of information that are likely innocuous by themselves can be combined to develop a pretty thorough understandin…

The first and last must just be geolocation based, right? Like, these two people are in a room together every X day for Y hours... they probably know each other. The sperm donor guy, though... facial recognition? No idea.

> The sperm donor guy

How did the Sperm Donor know it was his child?

Find that and that's how Facebook knows.

To look at a friend suggestion and know it's your child means you have been in contact with someone past the donation stage.

Nothing about how Facebook offers suggestions are secret to my knowledge.

All that's happening is people are not aware how easy it is to find information from networks

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#57

Post by zaat »

gretch wrote: post #40
onetimemanytime wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I know...but it worked. "Everyone" is on FB and they are worth a gazillion dollars.

It goes farther than that - the comment parent author doesn't even realize they are exhibiting the same behavior: "This attitude of "we know what's good for you" is apparent in more and more modern tech products" Billions of people used PYMK and are generally happy with it and Facebook in general. Who are you to tell them it's a bad thing? If FB is so bad why don't more people leave? Lots of people on HN leave FB and…

> Billions of people used PYMK and are generally happy with it and Facebook in general.

You might be right, but that isn't necessarily so. I'm on Facebook, I hate many of it's features, the product design decisions and I think they are hostile and predatory. Wherever a knob was made available I changed it from the default to the more private setting. But I'm still on Facebook because I have no other option for effective communication with my globally distributed family and with the local tech community.

In short, I hate PYMK and many many other things, and generally I'm not happy at all with Facebook, but you counted me along the "Billions of people" because I'm (almost) daily active on the platform.

I believe you have no idea what portion of the users is happy with the platform, what portion is unaware of the privacy implication and what portion is unhappy about the platform's privacy but, as accurately put by the Zuck himself, pay the necessary tax.

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#59

Post by rhizome »

mrlala wrote: post #47
solotronics wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tapes over his camera on his laptop because he doesn't trust it. I do too and don't think this is odd behavior. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark-zuck...

That is physical privacy.. it's so someone can't SEE YOU. Not track your online activity.

I don't understand your point, that they're "different?" Well no shit.

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#60

Post by interlocutor »

In the early days, Facebook logged into user's email accounts and stole contact information without users' knowledge or authorization. This was possible because people used the same password for their email and Facebook, a practice common especially back in those days. This is one of their sources for PYMK.

In fact Facebook has used this technique very recently too:

A security researcher noticed the tech giant was prompting some users to type in their email passwords when they opened an account to verify their identity. And after they were caught... Social networking giant Facebook said on Wednesday evening it may have “unintentionally uploaded” the email contacts of up to 1.5 million users on its site, without their permission or knowledge, when they signed up for new accounts since May 2016.

Read more about this: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-says-it-unin...

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