The most important update, from Aristotle: "Tina Kulow of Facebook Germany has spoken again. In a tweet, she wrote: “To clarify: a 2-click button is not ideal – but not a problem. Only a Like button that merely visually pretends to be one is not OK. That’s all.” Since heise online changed the design of the button for the first click that activates the Like function, there should now be no obstacles on Facebook’s part to further use of the 2-click button by heise online and other websites."
Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
71–80 of 109 posts
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider the massive usage of Facebook and Twitter, the lack of outrage over the warrantless wiretapping scandal (running for 10.5 years now), easily available voter records (see e.g. the backstory behind Latanya Sweeney's original identifiability study), and lack of public comments about requiring ISPs to store all session information for a long time - I would say that is strong evidence that USA as a nation does no…
Please don't equate a lack of change with a lack of outrage; that assumes we have the ability to fix things here just by getting outraged about them. I'd say "if only it were that easy", except that many of the broken things that need fixing exist due to supposed outrage/fear.
I use outrage as an indicator for the degree of caring (in the sense that "value privacy" means "care about privacy"); is that not an acceptable use?
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#73This is a non-story for the reasons stated but a story for other reasons. It's standard that widget publishers require to use their widget "as is". That's basically what Facebook is saying. Not only do you not know what any custom modifications will necessarily do but it's a completely valid argument that you want a consistent user experience with your widget. As for user tracking, this is basically an inevitable byp…
> Facebook's track record seems to be to befuddle the user and trick or opt them into sharing things wider than they understand or want. Are you saying that the product designers at Facebook want to design interfaces and settings that intentionally confuse users into laxer privacy settings? Turning this discussion into a rather presumptuous smear at Facebook in the face of many privacy failures by Google is rather ch…
Has Facebook (or Google) ever had a "privacy misstep" that was an error on the side of too-tight privacy?
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note: It doesn't work on Chrome, since Chrom(e|ium) is not capable of properly blocking requests. Ghostery also does the same but has a much (500+) larger blacklist of trackers.
I don't believe that has been true for a long time now. I have disconnect installed, and, looking at the source, it checks a resource's URL on a beforeload event, and cancels the load if the domain has a match on the blacklist. Where is the problem?
I'm not sure about the internals of Chromium because i never use it and I'm not involved in the development of it, but from what i remember using beforeload is a hack that has a % chance of actually working per page load.
Proper resource blocking support is in development last time i checked, but it isn't done yet, which is why Ghostery, Disconnect, HTTPS Everywhere, etc aren't available/don't work on chrome.
Of course, Ghostery will still give you a list of trackers, but it won't always succeed in blocking all of them.
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#75This is a non-story for the reasons stated but a story for other reasons. It's standard that widget publishers require to use their widget "as is". That's basically what Facebook is saying. Not only do you not know what any custom modifications will necessarily do but it's a completely valid argument that you want a consistent user experience with your widget. As for user tracking, this is basically an inevitable byp…
Google is by far the scarier big brother company. There is no escpaing Google and as far as I know Facebook has not to date sent teams of roving wireless sniffers in guise of map making.
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#76I love the privacy "oh no they're selling our data!" paranoia that people still have without considering WHY and what legitimate reasons Facebook has for sending back data when a Like button is implemented. First, they are a SOCIAL network, this data helps them figure out the engagement level with different brands that participate on the Facebook social platform. Second, in this case, the use of 2-click solution crea…
First, they are a SOCIAL network, this data helps them figure out the engagement level with different brands that participate on the Facebook social platform.
Non-sequitur. What does their knowing the "engagement level" with a brand have to do with social networking? In what way would Facebook be less social if you eliminate the entire like-button feature (for the sake of argument)?
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#77what about the like buttons on techcrunch? they only load if you hover over them as well.
techcrunch uses a custom image for their preloaded button
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#78I forgot how when I click a like button on a foreign page, face book is keeping data about what pages I am visiting and (who,what,when,where,how) and is selling that click data about me to the highest bidder (and I cant turn it off) to advertisers or worse government agencies doing warrent-less surveillance. I'm never clicking a facebook like button again until I can turn off user website tracking.
You don't even need to click the like button. Facebook get the information as soon as you view the foreign page.
If you use Chrome(-ium), there's an extension for that. I believe there is an equivalent FF extension out there as well.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambag...
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#79I'm glad this came up to make me think about it more; I'd already gotten in the habit of logging out of FB except when actively viewing the feed, for precisely this reason---I didn't want FB tracking me across browsing other sites. (The FB-hosted comment systems were actually the proximate worry, as well as the Like button.) But that was my half-thought-through answer. Of course they're perfectly able to track me eve…
I used to do that. I also started deleting any Facebook cookies before logging into Facebook, and after logging out of Facebook. I then realized that was stupid, because I have a static IP address (helps with my job, which requires remotely logging into servers).
With Facebook cookies everywhere, you don't need to be logged in for them to track you. And in my case, even if I used a different browser for logging into Facebook, they could (in theory---I have no idea if they actually do this or not) still track me based on the IP address alone.
Google is just as scary. A few months ago I did a few searches for local casinos (I was helping a friend of mine get a job at one) and now, I see ads for casinos on about a third of the webpages I visit. It's most annoying, and quite scary when I think about it too much.
Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures
#80This is a non-story for the reasons stated but a story for other reasons. It's standard that widget publishers require to use their widget "as is". That's basically what Facebook is saying. Not only do you not know what any custom modifications will necessarily do but it's a completely valid argument that you want a consistent user experience with your widget. As for user tracking, this is basically an inevitable byp…
> Facebook's track record seems to be to befuddle the user and trick or opt them into sharing things wider than they understand or want. Are you saying that the product designers at Facebook want to design interfaces and settings that intentionally confuse users into laxer privacy settings? Turning this discussion into a rather presumptuous smear at Facebook in the face of many privacy failures by Google is rather ch…
> Are you saying that the product designers at Facebook want to design interfaces and settings that intentionally confuse users into laxer privacy settings?
Almost certainly, yes. Since that's how they derive revenue from users.
> Turning this discussion into a rather presumptuous smear at Facebook in the face of many privacy failures by Google is rather childish
/s/childish/factual/
Somehow, privacy UI changes at fb almost always lead to more rather than less confusion and more rather than less sharing. We could either assume the designers are incompetent or decide this is by design. Occam's razor says by design.