As Confucius said, in one of his most famous take-downs, "始吾於人也、聽其言而信其行、今吾於人也、聽其言而觀其行。At first in dealing with people, I would hear their words and trust their deeds, but now my way of dealing with people is to hear their words and observe their deeds."
Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
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Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#22Its getting to a point where I will have a dedicated virtual machine just to check Facebook.
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Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
or, a different browser on a proxy :P
Only so long as facebook doesn't use flash cookies as those are cross browser. (Or you constantly delete flash cookies)
Luckily we live in a world where Flash is no longer a real requirement for most websites, and browsing with it completely disabled, or even uninstalled is not an issue.
Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#24It's perfectly possible for Facebook to not track users at the moment and simultaneously prepare for a future where this is not only acceptable, it's expected. Facebook has placed a long-term bet that people will willingly share pretty much everything they do. When they file patents like this, they're skating where the puck is headed, not where it is now.
Moreover, if you've stumbled on something patentable that could potentially be useful to you (or any competitor) at any point in the future, of course you patent it.
Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
or, a different browser on a proxy :P
Like that idea. One should be able to create some "rules" for a browser, e.g. that any Facebook related url is going to be opened in a "clean" browser space. Ideally where one can attribute certain basics, such as proxies beforehand.
I seem to recall that part of Mozilla's work on bringing identity management into the browser was the idea that you could have different tabs with different sets of cookies associated with them.
Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#26You don't patent something because you built it. You patent something because you think someone else might build it, or because you don't want someone else to prevent you from building it.
You never know it may be built but just not released. I think its perfectly fair to patent it even though it sounds creepy. The expectation of privacy are changing in people's minds. Probably Facebook thinks that they want to keep the feature ready and not release it until the time is right. And obviously if anybody else releases it before them (most likely Google) then they can use the patent to prevent them from doing so.
Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#27After seeing what it was, part of me was thinking "is this a spoof site pretending to be real?" while another part was thinking "this is too well written to be a joke." I wonder why they chose to file for the patent right when they were getting bad press for it. Maybe they were hoping it would go unnoticed and filed after discovery so noone else could scoop it up?
Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#28After seeing what it was, part of me was thinking "is this a spoof site pretending to be real?" while another part was thinking "this is too well written to be a joke." I wonder why they chose to file for the patent right when they were getting bad press for it. Maybe they were hoping it would go unnoticed and filed after discovery so noone else could scoop it up?
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Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#29As Confucius said, in one of his most famous take-downs, "始吾於人也、聽其言而信其行、今吾於人也、聽其言而觀其行。At first in dealing with people, I would hear their words and trust their deeds, but now my way of dealing with people is to hear their words and observe their deeds."
"hear their words"? Easier said than done. Here's a blog post I wrote about how the things they say aren't very consistent. http://blog.arunbalan.in/2011/09/28/hey-facebook-ive-got-a-q...
Re: Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same
#30Suspicious, sure, but filing a patent doesn't mean they're actually using it.
Sure. And buying a car doesn't mean you go anywhere in it. But usually...