Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Actual Facebook Graph Searches

actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 251 posts

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#181

Post by notahacker »

camus wrote: post #175
notahacker wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing what homosexuality is =/= assuming the purpose of an innocuous-sounding phrase like "Interested in" is intended as a declaration of homosexuality, especially if you're living in an environment where you can't see why anyone would conceivably want to publicly declare it. I suspect those least likely to select "interested in: men" are homosexually-inclined Iranians who know exactly what it's for and wish they l…

you are insulting them saying they cant even understand plain english, you dont have to live in USA to understand what "interested in" mean in that context , there is nothing innocent sounding in that expresssion, and i'm not english nor have an english culture. Dont take aliens for fools.

I'll give you a relevant example: Back in ~2006 it was possible to do similar searches within your college.

A disproportionately large number of people declaring their interest in both men and women were from China. Now it's possible that Chinese students were much more likely to be [openly] bisexual than British and European ones, but every shred of evidence I've ever seen (at college, in the media and living in a relatively-liberal ethnically Chinese country) points to the opposite.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#182

Post by mseebach »

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #180
mseebach wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thought: If you live in a country where people are summarily executed for being gay, don't put "I'm gay" on a public website with your name on it. YES people should be allowed to be gay in Tehran, and YES Facebook should help them with that - and they do: By not requiring you to enter your sexuality. I don't live in Tehran, so I am privileged here - but if I put "I did tax fraud, I win!" on my public Faceboo…

> YES people should be allowed to be gay in Tehran, and YES Facebook should help them with that - and they do: By not requiring you to enter your sexuality. Forget about being gay in Tehran. How about being gay in cyberspace? It strikes me that you are of the belief that cyberspace ought to mimic life in meatspace directly. That one fixed identity should be all a person is entitled to. What a waste of so many wonderf…

> It strikes me that you are of the belief that cyberspace ought to mimic life in meatspace directly.

If it's a problem that Facebook uncovers someone who's gay in Tehran, then that is only because that persons cyberspace identity mimics his meatspace one. If the gay person in Tehran profile doesn't actually link up to a physical person in Tehran, then there's no added danger to anyone.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#183

Post by mark_integerdsv »

lusr wrote: post #179
mark_integerdsv wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is your opinion on the following scenario: An "Islamic gay man living in Tehran" in 1997 creates a web page and populates it with exactly the same personal information you are describing. Sometime later Google comes of age and indexes his site for the world to easily discover. Do you feel that Google and Facebook are acting differently in this scenario, and if so, why?

I do. Primarily because Facebook caters to users with low technical ability and includes baked in privacy settings that are notoriously ambiguous and difficult to understand.

Facebook actively promotes an anti-privacy styled online presence.

Those with the skills to build a website in '97, along with the requisite metatags to allow for the type of indexing you describe can reasonably be expected to understand what they are doing.

Not so with Facebook.

Adding content to a webpage is a pro-active move. Vanilla Facebook with no security tweaks or other expert knowledge (by my understanding) leaves users wide open through no action on the part of that user.

Did anyone opt-in to being included in Graph Search results? If they knew what it was, would anyone do this?

It's an interesting question that you pose and I think there is definitely more to it but the answer above is from the top of my head. I will mull on it some more and add should I come up with anything further.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#184

Post by rogerchucker »

angersock wrote: post #126
rogerchucker wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you intentionally being dense? Where is the data that showed "consumers wanted it"?

I don't have it, but I assume you could look for people that "like" the Graph feature on Facebook. :)

That doesn't indicate that a significant number of Facebook users "wanted" it.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#185

Post by ohwp »

This only shows a lot of people take data without context as "truth".

Example: I might work for a charity related to prostitutes. So ofcourse there is a possibility that I "like" something that has to do with prostitutes.

I think lack of context is what's most dangerous these days.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#186

Post by rogerchucker »

ElissaShevinsky wrote: post #149
rogerchucker wrote: post #116

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…

Not sure if you tried the search string. "More than 100 people" were returned on this and most of them in the top results were indeed employed elsewhere.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#187

Post by OGC »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #27
GuiA wrote: 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…

Wow. When Graph Searches were announced, I thought "meh, I'm tired of FB...". I never thought to explore what Graph Searches actually meant . And I would never have done so or will do so, but I'm very glad that someone has investigated the system. >it will always lead to situations like that which are [bad] I wonder if there isn't some definition analogous to "Turing complete" for social graphs? i.e. with a sufficien…

> I wonder if there isn't some definition analogous to "Turing complete" for social graphs? i.e. with a sufficiently powerful API, any question can be answered. Just as Turing complete-ness leads to viruses, worms, etc, might "XYZ complete" social networks lead directly and predictably towards A, B and C bad outcomes?

This graph search is just a fancy database interface, it's basically "SELECT name, age, etc from users WHERE location = 'Teheran' AND looksfor = 'men'" (massively over-simplified).

So, no it can not answer _any_ question, because it's limited by _what_ and _how_ you ask _and_ the data. You can't ask it something it doesn't already know.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#188

Post by corporalagumbo »

zxcdw wrote: post #148
corporalagumbo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I suppose I've always assumed that no company can escape government and therefore democratic scrutiny in the long run. Maybe the situation is different in countries with more corporate corruption.

Also, not using facebook is difficult to imagine for me. It's pretty baked in to my life.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#189

Post by mark_integerdsv »

mseebach wrote: post #182
mark_integerdsv wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YES people should be allowed to be gay in Tehran, and YES Facebook should help them with that - and they do: By not requiring you to enter your sexuality. Forget about being gay in Tehran. How about being gay in cyberspace? It strikes me that you are of the belief that cyberspace ought to mimic life in meatspace directly. That one fixed identity should be all a person is entitled to. What a waste of so many wonderf…

> It strikes me that you are of the belief that cyberspace ought to mimic life in meatspace directly. If it's a problem that Facebook uncovers someone who's gay in Tehran, then that is only because that persons cyberspace identity mimics his meatspace one. If the gay person in Tehran profile doesn't actually link up to a physical person in Tehran, then there's no added danger to anyone.

Maybe we missed each other... In my example I am talking about a man whose identity is necessarily hidden in meatspace due to an oppressive government.

Cyberspace allows him freedom from this oppression.

Hope that makes it clearer.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#190

Post by ed209 »

dutchbrit wrote: post #164
ed209 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

Indeed. The thing is, the results in that screenshot don't necessarily mean gay. Interested in might mean I'm interested in networking or meeting new people, being male or female. Interested in doesn't necessarily mean I'm interested in sticking my penis in *. Also, all people in that screenshot are also interested in females.

We've heard plenty of stories of false accusations in order to settle old family scores.

"Interested in men" does not necessarily mean in a homosexual way, but it can be twisted to look that way.

I accept what I'm implying is a stretch, but I'm not 100% comfortable with Graph Search either.

Post reply on HN