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Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

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Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesson learned: stop linking to evil content.

Wonder if this will exacerbate the effect of everyone only seeing views that agree with theirs and decreasing exposure to different (/evil) perspectives.

Personally I'd be happy with fewer "look at this idiot" links, whether they be on Facebook or HN. If its more of a "something to think about" link, even if I disagree, I think I'm ok if their like count goes up when I share it.

Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#72

To me, this is just standard privacy hyperbole that rears it's head every now and then. Anyone remember the headlines several years ago when "Google 'scans' your emails to serve targetted ads'? When was the last time you heard someone complain about that anymore? No one does, because it doesn't matter. Why should me sharing a link via a PM and my action be aggregated into an anonymous number worry me? How is the argu…

> Anyone remember the headlines several years ago when "Google 'scans' your emails to serve targetted ads'? When was the last time you heard someone complain about that anymore? No one does, because it doesn't matter.

Microsoft begs to differ, at least when trying to sell you Office 365: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDbrX5U75dk

Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Facebook need to visit your site to record that somebody liked it?

You misunderstood me. This would not be for likes - but for visits.

Facebook certainly does pull any pages you link to, it scans 'em for images and puts those images into the message too along with a title and excerpt. This is occasionally annoying but makes messages prettier.

Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#74

To me, this is just standard privacy hyperbole that rears it's head every now and then. Anyone remember the headlines several years ago when "Google 'scans' your emails to serve targetted ads'? When was the last time you heard someone complain about that anymore? No one does, because it doesn't matter. Why should me sharing a link via a PM and my action be aggregated into an anonymous number worry me? How is the argu…

It's not the same thing. Let's say I'm a republicrat and I'm furiously sending private messages with links to democan sites showing my friends how evil I think they are. Except now I'm told every one of my links as just made those republicrat sites more liked an I'm helping make it look like they are more popular than they really are. Scanning emails to serve you ads does not leak information to the public indirectly…

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Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#75

To me, this is just standard privacy hyperbole that rears it's head every now and then. Anyone remember the headlines several years ago when "Google 'scans' your emails to serve targetted ads'? When was the last time you heard someone complain about that anymore? No one does, because it doesn't matter. Why should me sharing a link via a PM and my action be aggregated into an anonymous number worry me? How is the argu…

While I don't use facebook's messaging except on the extremely rare occasion that someone messages me when I have their web page open, I don't think sharing a URL with someone means I LIKE the content, there are many different reasons to share a URL.

Right, so people's main problem with this is a semantic issue and not actually anything to do with their privacy.

Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#76
Facebooks private messages are censored. Here in the western world we can not message one another freely when using this Facebook, of which many think are some kind of nice private messaging system like email. Its not and never was. For example try to send a thepiratebay.org link to your friends as a private message. Who knows what more they censor, perhaps the really interesting bits to censor seem to you like they have been delivered, but facebook never actually shows it to your firend. You would never know.

Also, you cant send life-changing notifications through messages to all your friends, for example there is a cap I think on to message 30 people at once.

Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#77
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you go about disabling facebook buttons?

Run NoScript, never whitelist facebook. Crude but effective.

This only prevents FB scripts from executing, but you still get the images ( and FB the cookies). So this is not the solution for the paranoid.

Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#78

To me, this is just standard privacy hyperbole that rears it's head every now and then. Anyone remember the headlines several years ago when "Google 'scans' your emails to serve targetted ads'? When was the last time you heard someone complain about that anymore? No one does, because it doesn't matter. Why should me sharing a link via a PM and my action be aggregated into an anonymous number worry me? How is the argu…

It's not the same thing. Let's say I'm a republicrat and I'm furiously sending private messages with links to democan sites showing my friends how evil I think they are. Except now I'm told every one of my links as just made those republicrat sites more liked an I'm helping make it look like they are more popular than they really are. Scanning emails to serve you ads does not leak information to the public indirectly…

So your issue here isn't a privacy one at all, it's a semantic one.

Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#79
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstood me. This would not be for likes - but for visits.

Facebook certainly does pull any pages you link to, it scans 'em for images and puts those images into the message too along with a title and excerpt. This is occasionally annoying but makes messages prettier.

I'd forgotten about that somehow. Looks like we have our smoking gun! Hard to claim its surreptitious though.

Re: Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't use facebook's messaging except on the extremely rare occasion that someone messages me when I have their web page open, I don't think sharing a URL with someone means I LIKE the content, there are many different reasons to share a URL.

Agreed: Have you see this site ( http://sucks.com ) it sucks. (PS: I haven't actually checked out that URL. Might be NSFW) No, I don't want facebook to "Like" links for me if I didn't explicitly say I liked them.

I'm disappointed that http://www.suck.com hasn't been updated recently... I miss the heady days when it was the most interesting daily updated site on the information superhighway!
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