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Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

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Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#51

Post by cambalache »

Fnoord wrote: post #48
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is the degree to which advertising actually influences behavior. It must have some effect, I’d agree, but was Cambridge Analytica’s ad targeting so powerful that a 1.3 million vote margin was entirely their doing? I’m pretty skeptical.

It was highly targeted advertising on targets which were highly susceptible to be turned. Whatever they were turned by, doesn't matter whether it was factual or not (cause that is the low standard for advertising). We have Edward Bernays standard of advertising coupled with the power of Facebook available for everyone, including people who lie through their teeth to get what they wanted. Furthermore, there is evidenc…

> Elections are very tough nowadays because of how easy people (WHO VOTE AGAINST MY POLITICAL ORIENTATION) are influenced.

Let's be honest, none of this were a scandal if Cambridge Analytica would have worked for Hilary or the remain campaign. I dont deny all this stuff influence people, it clearly does, but that is the price you have to pay for having a society with freedom of speech and universal vote. If you want to get rid of, either you have to take more draconian censorship laws or you eliminate universal voting for adults, both cornerstones of a modern democracy.

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#52

Post by _Understated_ »

Fnoord wrote: post #48
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is the degree to which advertising actually influences behavior. It must have some effect, I’d agree, but was Cambridge Analytica’s ad targeting so powerful that a 1.3 million vote margin was entirely their doing? I’m pretty skeptical.

It was highly targeted advertising on targets which were highly susceptible to be turned. Whatever they were turned by, doesn't matter whether it was factual or not (cause that is the low standard for advertising). We have Edward Bernays standard of advertising coupled with the power of Facebook available for everyone, including people who lie through their teeth to get what they wanted. Furthermore, there is evidenc…

> It was highly targeted advertising on targets which were highly susceptible to be turned

This doesn't gel with me... how many people saw the ads, how many times, and of those, how many were actually influenced by it?

Going by my sample size of two (my sister and my wife) they both claim that they never even look at ads that appear on screen.

I honestly am calling bullshit on the whole ad industry here... show me evidence that a significant number of people are influenced by ads that makes it worth spending money on (if unbiased data actually exists).

Are there any advertisers out there that are seeing a quantifiable return on their ad spend?

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#53

Post by _Understated_ »

intricatedetail wrote: post #32

Facebook (and other too big to fail companies) should be split. Facebook Ad company should be independent from Facebook and should have access to the platform on the same terms any other ad company could have access with all respect to privacy. Currently Facebook has a conflict of interest between the social media platform and ad business. We never have seen this before and this needs to be urgently regulated. The sa…

> Facebook Ad company should be independent from Facebook

Be under no illusions... Facebook IS an ad company! Their product is the people that use the platform.

There is no separation.

The Facebook data feed that users interact with is the bait to harvest the data for ads... it's nothing more than that.

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#54

Post by cambalache »

Jgrubb wrote: post #30
antris wrote: post #25

I have recently started supporting a ban on targeted advertising. Dividing people into cultural bubbles and being able to spend unlimited dollars on it is dangerous if we are to maintain cultural unity and be able to agree on facts. Also, when your advertising is not public and only visible to subsections of people, it is more difficult to investigate what is going on. Facebook can do it themselves, but do we want to…

Since that'll never happen without toppling the money printing machines of several of the world's most powerful companies, I'd like to repeat an idea that I once heard - A publicly available clearinghouse of all targeted ads published via a service so that researchers can find out - Every ad published - What targeting parameters were used, other basic data about the ad - How many impressions the ad received - How man…

None of that will work. Sure, have some basic regulatory model for your political campaigns to avoid unduly intervention by foreign actors and similar shady stuff,but that is an small deterrent. You cannot avoid targeted advertising, hell, all advertising is in one way or another targeted. Even if you get rid of advertisement period, you will have to deal with stuff like famous academic Op-Eds, celebrities recommending who to vote for, media bias, etc. So you can control the blatant intervention but at the end you have to trust all voting citizens are discerning adults, savvy consumers of information in a complex world, although you know that is not true.

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#55

Post by rebuilder »

ankit219 wrote: post #8

For once, can we have articles (or even opinion pieces) which try to explain the context and position of both sides rather than pieces such as these. These kind of writings do nothing to change the mind of anyone. For someone who hates FB and its practices, they reinforce the already held belief. And for those, who are skeptical of such media articles, they would be put off by the language used. And make no mistake,…

The thing is, I don't see how Facebook have any business allowing or forbidding users to install software on their own devices. I mean, if this was about FB banning users for TOS violations, that's one thing. But claiming a third party is not legally allowed to provide software that does something FB do not like? That's a whole different can of worms.

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#56

Post by fjdjsmsm »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I personally don't think that the advertising is actually that much of a problem" Facebook was used to illegally infuence elections in Uk and break spending rules and because of their closed nature, nobody realised untill a whistleblower stepped forwards. Its a massive problem, and maybe we would not have Brexit without it. www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-44856992 A TV ad, by comparison, is aired publically and…

The question is the degree to which advertising actually influences behavior. It must have some effect, I’d agree, but was Cambridge Analytica’s ad targeting so powerful that a 1.3 million vote margin was entirely their doing? I’m pretty skeptical.

Attempted murder is still manslaughter.

Breaking election laws in an attempt to influence an elections outcome is still breaking election laws whatever the outcome. It doesn’t have to be entirely their doing.

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#57

Post by _Understated_ »

ankit219 wrote: post #8

For once, can we have articles (or even opinion pieces) which try to explain the context and position of both sides rather than pieces such as these. These kind of writings do nothing to change the mind of anyone. For someone who hates FB and its practices, they reinforce the already held belief. And for those, who are skeptical of such media articles, they would be put off by the language used. And make no mistake,…

> If Facebook allows third parties to scrape data (who can incentivize users any which way) where does it stop?

What say should Facebook have here though? I'd argue that when I am viewing data through my browser it's on my computer at that point. I've downloaded it so why should Facebook be allowed to decide what I can and cannot do with it any more than they can decide what I can do with my emails that I also view on my computer?

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#58

Post by PicassoCTs »

They do not even take up the main problem between academia and FB.

Science goes were the data is- and data is at G,F,A . Meaning any science regarding people e.g. social sciences, psychology, behavioural studies - are effectively privatized.

Meaning, the paper of psychology grad-student who did a experiment and asked 200 people on campus is less valuable, as the internal report of some fb-data scientists, who wrote a query and a filter and send the very same question into the production database.

So if a whole branch of the sciences is effectively privatized, why do we even pretend the outside branches are anything then a publicly subsidized hobby?

Why is there no real discussion about the moral problem of privatized sciences, selling the knowledge and advantage gained as manipulation lever to politicians?

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#59

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

fjdjsmsm wrote: post #56
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is the degree to which advertising actually influences behavior. It must have some effect, I’d agree, but was Cambridge Analytica’s ad targeting so powerful that a 1.3 million vote margin was entirely their doing? I’m pretty skeptical.

Attempted murder is still manslaughter. Breaking election laws in an attempt to influence an elections outcome is still breaking election laws whatever the outcome. It doesn’t have to be entirely their doing.

Sure. I'm not defending Cambridge Analytica here - just saying that, on a practical level, it seems unlikely that they had a decisive impact on any elections.

Re: Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

#60

Post by bogomipz »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #28
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isnt that close to how Cambridge Analytica happened? Close to. But different. Cambridge Analytica drew from Facebook’s servers. This plug-in pulls from users’ computers. Cambridge Analytica was not academically affiliated. This is legitimate research. Cambridge was closed source. This is open. Most importantly, users are explicitly sharing their data with NYU. There is no carrot of a personality quiz to obscure the…

Cambridge Analytica was academically affiliated. The data they got was laundered through a University of Cambridge researcher Aleksandr Kogan, and their app claimed to be using the data for legitimate academic research. I’m not saying it’s exactly the same, but the fundamental challenge is still present: how can Facebook be sure that these researchers won’t share the data with some controversial organization?

No they were not. Please see this post from Dr David Stillwell from the Psychometric Centers at Cambridge University who responded to a post here a few weeks ago about this very point:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24912986

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