This is why before I post to Facebook I write my post in vi, edit it repeatedly, consider what my life has become, and then :q!.
Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#22In this age of the "post-page" Internet, it is best to assume that everything you do on a... "page" (cough) may be communicated, unless you take measures yourself to stop this. This will continue to be a topic of concern and debate for at least some of us: Whose agent is the browser? The client's, or the host's? Currently, design trends towards more and more "programmatic" content and behavior seems to be favoring th…
Disable JavaScript > The blue pill.
Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#23Why not show us a Wireshark screenshot?
Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#24Someone should fix the HN headline, currently "Facebook monitors and analyzes posts that users type but don't submit". In their article, Das and Kramer claim to only send back information to Facebook that indicates /whether/ you self-censored, not /what/ you typed. The Facebook rep I spoke with agreed that the company isn’t collecting the text of self-censored posts.... "we have arrived at a better understanding of h…
I wasn't sure how to write a title that was concise and captured the substance of the article. It seems like you want to split hairs about whether "analyzing posts" means examining text or metadata. Do you think that "NSA is analyzing phone calls" would be an accurate description of their metadata dragnet? At any rate, if they aren't looking at the content of self-censored posts yet, it certainly sounds like they're…
Normally, the answer to your question is "nothing". In this case -- a bit of short term research -- you should read what the paper actually says:
Content was then marked as “censored” if it was not shared within the subsequent ten minutes; using this threshold allowed us to record only the presence or absence of text entered, not the keystrokes or content.
If content entered were to go unposted for ten minutes and then be posted, we argue that it was indeed censored (albeit temporarily).
These analyses were conducted in an anonymous manner, so researchers were not privy to any specific user’s activity.
Furthermore, all instrumentation was done on the client side. In other words, the content of self-censored posts and comments was not sent back to Facebook’s servers: Only a binary value that content was entered at all.
Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#25There's no need for speculation here. Open Facebook, right click, select "Inspect Element" then the "Network" tab.
On a self-censored status update, they send a request to /ajax/bz that triggers their censorlogger, but don't pass the content itself.
On messages & chat, they send a request to /ajax/messaging/typ.php to show the other person you're typing, but again, they don't pass your message to their servers.
On search, they send a request to /ajax/typeahead/search/facebar/query/ which passes everything you type to their server to power their auto-complete functionality.
Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#26There's no need for speculation here. Open Facebook, right click, select "Inspect Element" then the "Network" tab. On a self-censored status update, they send a request to /ajax/bz that triggers their censorlogger, but don't pass the content itself. On messages & chat, they send a request to /ajax/messaging/typ.php to show the other person you're typing, but again, they don't pass your message to their servers. On se…
Yes you could do that two seconds worth of testing, in basically every browser these days even. But then you couldn't write a link bait article about the possibility that they are doing it.
Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're trusting what a Facebook rep says as truth?
You can see for yourself what it does. Just look at web inspector as you type a post.
Thanks. I saw another post mentioning this too. I don't have time to test it. I'm not really worried about that all as I don't ever type "I'm going to kill you!" in a fit of rage, come to my senses / re-think it, and then delete the words I typed. :P
Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#28Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#29There's no need for speculation here. Open Facebook, right click, select "Inspect Element" then the "Network" tab. On a self-censored status update, they send a request to /ajax/bz that triggers their censorlogger, but don't pass the content itself. On messages & chat, they send a request to /ajax/messaging/typ.php to show the other person you're typing, but again, they don't pass your message to their servers. On se…
Yes you could do that two seconds worth of testing, in basically every browser these days even. But then you couldn't write a link bait article about the possibility that they are doing it.
This is Slate. I expect nothing better.
Re: Facebook self-censorship: What happens to the posts you don’t publish?
#30There's no need for speculation here. Open Facebook, right click, select "Inspect Element" then the "Network" tab. On a self-censored status update, they send a request to /ajax/bz that triggers their censorlogger, but don't pass the content itself. On messages & chat, they send a request to /ajax/messaging/typ.php to show the other person you're typing, but again, they don't pass your message to their servers. On se…
I have done this before, I've done experiments where I meticulously monitored all HTTP requests sent and I could've sworn I saw questionable activity. Doing it now I get results that seem similar to your description.
I don't know what to say, other than that experience has taught me to always be on the skeptical side of things when we're talking about Facebook.