Live data from Hacker News

Is my Facebook activity fucking my finances?

foundation.mozilla.org

1–10 of 57 posts

Re: Is my Facebook activity fucking my finances?

#3
There's many terrible data brokers involved in many terrible things (especially in the US - they generally get zero headlines because they are b2b and rather secretive), so it's strange to have this headline be about Facebook, when they're the only company being discussed that doesn't sell your data (even if they do many other things with it that we may not like!). I know it's very fun to use them as the worst possible example in any given category of bad things, but I'd much rather have FB handle data than almost every single US data broker, if I was forced to choose between the two. A GDPR-equivalent would still be nicer either way though too!

Re: Is my Facebook activity fucking my finances?

#4
post #3

There's many terrible data brokers involved in many terrible things (especially in the US - they generally get zero headlines because they are b2b and rather secretive), so it's strange to have this headline be about Facebook, when they're the only company being discussed that doesn't sell your data (even if they do many other things with it that we may not like!). I know it's very fun to use them as the worst possib…

Data can be collected by third parties about your activity on platforms like Facebook without involvement of the platform owner. On TikTok or Instagram a bot can subscribe to you. On Facebook some info may be public to other users (depends on settings) and some interactions are public, like commenting on a public post.

Re: Is my Facebook activity fucking my finances?

#5
post #3

There's many terrible data brokers involved in many terrible things (especially in the US - they generally get zero headlines because they are b2b and rather secretive), so it's strange to have this headline be about Facebook, when they're the only company being discussed that doesn't sell your data (even if they do many other things with it that we may not like!). I know it's very fun to use them as the worst possib…

Data can be collected by third parties about your activity on platforms like Facebook without involvement of the platform owner. On TikTok or Instagram a bot can subscribe to you. On Facebook some info may be public to other users (depends on settings) and some interactions are public, like commenting on a public post.

Right, I think a lot of the HN audience understands this often happens with public (or 'public') data on the Internet. I still think the article title is a bit misleading when the article is about data brokers instead of Facebook (even if sometimes data brokers use FB) and would hope for more constructive and better-sourced articles from Mozilla.

Re: Is my Facebook activity fucking my finances?

#7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data can be collected by third parties about your activity on platforms like Facebook without involvement of the platform owner. On TikTok or Instagram a bot can subscribe to you. On Facebook some info may be public to other users (depends on settings) and some interactions are public, like commenting on a public post.

Right, I think a lot of the HN audience understands this often happens with public (or 'public') data on the Internet. I still think the article title is a bit misleading when the article is about data brokers instead of Facebook (even if sometimes data brokers use FB) and would hope for more constructive and better-sourced articles from Mozilla.

Increasing engagement is only evil when Facebook does it.

Re: Is my Facebook activity fucking my finances?

#8
post #3

There's many terrible data brokers involved in many terrible things (especially in the US - they generally get zero headlines because they are b2b and rather secretive), so it's strange to have this headline be about Facebook, when they're the only company being discussed that doesn't sell your data (even if they do many other things with it that we may not like!). I know it's very fun to use them as the worst possib…

Not so secretive. Just register a domain, put an official looking website on it with contact details and enjoy sketchy sales pitches. My latest favorite is a blunt offer to buy a database with millions of entries, with all PII imaginable except maybe SSNs. These data brokers aren't much different than drug dealers, it's just PII theft and sale hasn't been outlawed yet.

Re: Is my Facebook activity fucking my finances?

#9
post #3

There's many terrible data brokers involved in many terrible things (especially in the US - they generally get zero headlines because they are b2b and rather secretive), so it's strange to have this headline be about Facebook, when they're the only company being discussed that doesn't sell your data (even if they do many other things with it that we may not like!). I know it's very fun to use them as the worst possib…

Also, Facebook and other big tech companies are way less likely to get hacked thanks to more established data handling practices.

Breaches still occasionally happen, but you're more likely to see data breaches from these data broker companies because they didn't secure their elasticsearch DBs or something dumb like that.

Post reply on HN