The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search • Hacker News Board

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#11

Post by random42 » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 5:21 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #8

lostnet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you feel about clicking on an Ad that matches one interest of yours if you don't know the additional targeting criteria? The more specific the criteria, the more likely the "advertiser" is a spear fisher. I can think of a couple exploits (Err- links) one might pay to send to "groups" like: All Oracle employees who like sailboats and tennis. All Universal Health Care employees who like Oracle. All apple employ…

Do advertisers get information on the specific users who click on their ads? Can you reverse-map an ad click into a Facebook profile?

It is * technically* possible. Not sure if FB allows the advertisers to do that or not, but internally they would almost certainly be using this information for targeted ad placements.

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#12

Post by notahacker » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 5:26 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #7

This feature has rolled everyone, by default, into a dating service ("Single females in San Francisco who like Radiohead") and a marketing database ("People under 25 who like Coca-Cola"). This assumes that the advertisers didn't have access to searches like this already. That seems very unlikely.

Marketers have certainly been able to do "people who added our app who are x and like x" queries for a while.

The only difference is that ordinary people can do it with their friends and no obscure query syntax.

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#13

Post by thirsteh » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #7

This feature has rolled everyone, by default, into a dating service ("Single females in San Francisco who like Radiohead") and a marketing database ("People under 25 who like Coca-Cola"). This assumes that the advertisers didn't have access to searches like this already. That seems very unlikely.

That's how Facebook Ads worked/works.

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#14

Post by cheald » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 5:31 PM UTC

joshdotsmith wrote: post #10

cheald wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do advertisers get information on the specific users who click on their ads? Can you reverse-map an ad click into a Facebook profile?

No, this isn't possible.

I get the "technically possible" argument above, but this is what I'm driving at - targeted advertising is one-way (you can target people, but don't know who they are), while Graph Search is two way (you can target people, and find out who they are), which is why I don't think the comparison between the two is all that apt.

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#15

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 6:12 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #7

This feature has rolled everyone, by default, into a dating service ("Single females in San Francisco who like Radiohead") and a marketing database ("People under 25 who like Coca-Cola"). This assumes that the advertisers didn't have access to searches like this already. That seems very unlikely.

[deleted]

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#16

Post by spullara » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

This at least exposes what you could have been doing all along using their API. If anything it is better that they launch this and people realize the implications rather than developers being able to do it without people really understanding the implications.

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#17

Post by Shenglong » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 6:30 PM UTC

I personally think this feature is really cool, and has the capacity to be really useful. While I don't personally mind people creeping me, it will likely have vast social implications.

For example: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/46245195/jealousy-machine.jpg

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#18

Post by Wilya » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #7

This feature has rolled everyone, by default, into a dating service ("Single females in San Francisco who like Radiohead") and a marketing database ("People under 25 who like Coca-Cola"). This assumes that the advertisers didn't have access to searches like this already. That seems very unlikely.

Did they have access to this, or did they have access to "show my ad to everyone who matches this query" ?

I don't see why Facebook would allow advertisers to build databases of people when they can just force them to go through their own tool and keep people anonymous, like Google does.

Also, this is free, as opposed to advertising tools, which broadens the audience quite a lot.

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#19

Post by ryguytilidie » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #7

This feature has rolled everyone, by default, into a dating service ("Single females in San Francisco who like Radiohead") and a marketing database ("People under 25 who like Coca-Cola"). This assumes that the advertisers didn't have access to searches like this already. That seems very unlikely.

Right, I just don't get why Facebook had a huge rollout for a feature that provides very little, if any value to users, and tons of value to advertisers. It really says a lot about where they are as a company IMO.

Re: The Creepy Details of Facebook's New Graph Search

#20

Post by mtgx » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 6:52 PM UTC

ryguytilidie wrote: post #19

brown9-2 wrote: post #7

This feature has rolled everyone, by default, into a dating service ("Single females in San Francisco who like Radiohead") and a marketing database ("People under 25 who like Coca-Cola"). This assumes that the advertisers didn't have access to searches like this already. That seems very unlikely.

Right, I just don't get why Facebook had a huge rollout for a feature that provides very little, if any value to users, and tons of value to advertisers. It really says a lot about where they are as a company IMO.

Maybe because they don't really have any exciting, innovative products on the horizon for consumers, and that's the best they could do right now.