Live data from Hacker News

Actual Facebook Graph Searches

actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com

141–150 of 251 posts

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#141
post #19

> “Islamic men interested in men who live in Tehran, Iran“ This is funny, in Iran people don't quite understand what "interested in" means. In sign up process when they see "interested in" options, they think that means "are you interested in finding friends who are male?" (same for females). This is because: 1. People use VPN to access Facebook and Facebook can not localize/internationalize their experience. 2. Usin…

Iranians perfectly know what is homosexuality and some practice it in secret , they are not dumb , they just dont talk about it for obvious reasons.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those "online footprint" type of websites already exist, and they're very popular with due diligence firms.

Do they actually go as far as log aliases and pseudonyms? People often reuse screen names more than they do passwords.

yes, that was exposed a couple of weeks ago. I cannot remember any searchable terms from the post or I would link.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#143
The searches depicted are more telling about the person making the search rather than the supposed "victims". Nothing to see here, unless you buy into stereotypical fearmongering or are "shocked" that humans are human.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#144
post #5

With great power comes great responsibility. Companies such as Facebook and the like undoubtedly draw great power from their "social graph"; however, human interactions are subtle, complex, multifaceted and often contradictory. Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich "social graph"; it will always lead to situations like that which are, at best, embarrassi…

Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich "social graph"; it will always lead to situations like that which are, at best, embarrassing, and at worst, dangerous, for whoever is in the system. What does this even mean? The "dumb algorithm" here will (a) take a user's query and (b) search that user's friends and public profiles for hits on that query. What's ne…

> Users identified by Graph Search have public accounts and have willingly entered personal information into Facebook.

This is quite misleading. Before Graph Search much of that capability was limited to Facebook Inc. and the affiliated government. This really opens the floodgates.

Were they warned? If you follow Wired and HackerNews yes. For general population though it's not something they were warned enough. They teach you how to cross a road in elementary; nobody explains you how to use privacy controls.

The whole liking and sharing ecosystem is promoted by social media itself. While you have skills to be critical of privacy implications, many more people have very vague idea or none whatsoever. Facebook de-facto is seen as a way of communicating with your social circle, that's why normal people join it; there is a (misguided) expectation of the same kind of privacy that you have in a clique of friends.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is Graph Search really that shocking to you--to anyone on HN?" Are serial killers who actually kill people really shocking to people? Well, the answer to that question depends a lot on how much you let its framing determine your thinking, right? Sure, I too, personally, don't share anything personally identifying on FB, in violation of FB and G+'s TOS BTW. But all those naive people, they walked through the door, th…

Are serial killers who actually kill people really shocking to people? Yes, universally so. Because they kill people and murder is a Bad Thing. Social networks that index information produced willingly by members aren't in the same country as your analogy.

Except that in Iran, you get hung for being gay. It's not a huge stretch to see what this search is implying

> “Islamic men interested in men who live in Tehran, Iran“… “Places where they’ve worked.”

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#146
post #5

With great power comes great responsibility. Companies such as Facebook and the like undoubtedly draw great power from their "social graph"; however, human interactions are subtle, complex, multifaceted and often contradictory. Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich "social graph"; it will always lead to situations like that which are, at best, embarrassi…

Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich "social graph"; it will always lead to situations like that which are, at best, embarrassing, and at worst, dangerous, for whoever is in the system. What does this even mean? The "dumb algorithm" here will (a) take a user's query and (b) search that user's friends and public profiles for hits on that query. What's ne…

If you fail to see the danger that a tool with the ability to search a network for such things as "Islamic men interested in other men, living in Tehran," a tool that can then display their place of work or other contact details (that they may have willingly ((yet unwittingly)) entered), in the hands of bullies, bigots or oppressive regimes then personally I feel you are similarly limited in your world experience to what the grandparent poster is accusing Zuckerberg of being.

Basically, it's one of two things:

1.) such incredible naiveté that, frankly: you require supervision

2.) such hideous cynicism, so deeply felt, that it represents, to my sensibilities, a form of evil

This thing is dangerous. The people to whom it poses danger are the ones least likely even to comprehend the danger imposed upon them.

I cannot see how you could defend such a thing.

BTW: decrying the state of HN when you feel personally ill at ease with the general feeling of the community is poor form and a very strong indicator of butthurt.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#147

Contrary to what a lot of people think, you can change the visibility of likes . This affects Graph Search, Timeline visibility, and also page visibility (I've personally tested these). The Admins of pages you like will still be able to see that you like their page. Go to the Likes page on your timeline. Click the Edit button in the upper right. Privacy visibility buttons will pop up next to each Like category for yo…

I appreciate the information, but this misses the point. Facebook hides privacy settings because privacy is bad for their business objectives, and most people will never bother to dig for these settings, leaving them open to the kinds of attacks demonstrated by the original post.

> Facebook hides privacy settings

I have a direct link to privacy settings in the header. I don't know how can they make it more visible.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're a fan of data, that's fair enough. Who isn't a fan of data? The issue is, who owns and controls that data? You, the true owner and source of the data, or some big advertising-driven tech giant with it's own crappy hollywood movie? Not only that, but in order to make money from advertising, they link all this wonderful data (your data) with advertiser interests. Much of this linking is done under the radar,…

What, in your opinion, would be an appropriate platform?

A platform which is transparent, open and shared by it's nature. A platform for which the first and foremost priority is to be trustworthy with no conflict of interest between being all the above and economically feasible. This would probably become a government-funded international push rather than a single corporation with commercial interests.

The big problem in the future will be the fact that as the line between "real" and "online" life diminishes, the party which holds the data will become an authority akin to governments we have today. When or why should we trust an authority? How can we be sure that the authority is trustworthy? Politics is hard enough and we all know that we can't trust politicians, how on earth are we going to trust a party with commercial interests to somehow manage our social lifes?

You seem very optimistic about things like Facebook collecting data and interlinking people's social life via their platform by using the collected data. I for one find this very scary, to such extent that I'll rather cripple my social life and not use Facebook than trust an commercial authority over the data collected about me which I have no control over.

I provide the data. I see the data. I own the data. I control the data. What is so hard about it? Honestly.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#149

And oh.. you want some potential cheating women (or men)? Try "Married women who like Ashley Madison"... ;)

We need to be careful not to read too much into this data without context. "Liking" a fan page used to be a much lighter thing before the FB interest graph became interwoven into other applications & this new search feature.

I used to "like" friends fan pages without much thought, if they asked me to. Re: Ashley Madison, there are married people who work there and will choose to "like" their employer. This represents a small number of users, but is meant to show that there are legitimate use cases.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#150

Not sure what would happen in the long term, but at least in the short term, I can see a lot of people start removing their personal data from Facebook when this gets released...

This is a headache to do (could someone build an app to make this easier?) but I'm putting this into my personal task list for next week.
Post reply on HN