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Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

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Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#101

Post by MOARDONGZPLZ »

pdkl95 wrote: post #55
chiph wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or have the office assistant provide a metal tin container to use as a Faraday shield. "Put your phone in the box to prevent it reporting that you're here today."

That would create very conspicuous network exit/entry points at the office. According to Zoz's DEFCON 22 talk[1] about modern OPSEC, these are specifically targeted by various agencies, so I'm sure Facebook finds entry/exit data points just as interesting. [1] (warning: strong language) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1q4Ir2J8P8#t=2291

Or, more interesting even. It is clearly someone taking the initiative to take their phone off the network at specific times in a specific place.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#102

Post by ehudla »

untilHellbanned wrote: post #7

> “Without additional information from the people involved, we’re not able to explain why one person was recommended as a friend to another.” Such a terrible excuse. FB you only have one job! Fail.

Technical question: does anyone know if FB can easily answer why X was recommended to Y? That is, do they have to manually check or can they query this easily and get the precise answer why a recommendation was presented(for example: the reason why X was recommended to Y on date d, cannot be that X is connected to Z and and Z to Y, if X connect to Z on d+1; I assume bad inferences like this will probably happen often if such questions are answered manually).

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#104

Post by LeifCarrotson »

stoshe wrote: post #84
Fuxy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if you value your privacy. It's sad that we are at this stage but it's mostly our fault for being so complacent with companies doing these kinds of things. If people stopped using their service when they did these kinds of things they would change their behaviour really quic…

An individual's data sharing with Facebook is less of the issue, here, though. You personally not using it doesn't prevent you from becoming the common thread that ties others together. Just because I'm not on Facebook (I'm not), anyone that's allowed Facebook to see their own contacts, in their phone or email, has shown that they are or are not connected to me in some way. Without me actually ever even having an acc…

That doesn't seem to be very important. It's not the doctor who wants privacy.

The people who want privacy allowed Facebook to scrape their contact lists and monitor their locations. They then expected Facebook not to correlate this data with others who contact and visit the same doctor. Why not?

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#105

Post by throwanem »

pdkl95 wrote: post #72
throwanem wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't they? How common do you imagine it to be, among Facebook employees, not to have a Facebook account?

Of course they have FB accounts. That isn't the point. The authors of these algorithms introduce - often without conscious intent - their own biases. They bring their own background, morals, etc when they design an algorithm. This is a general problem with creating an algorithm to supplement or replace anything previously done by humans. Even if the algorithm is given accurate and unbiased data (which is rare), the c…

You're not wrong. Does it seem likely, though?

I mean, at this point you're asking Facebook to do something which is directly inimical to its interests, in that people opting out of "local friend discovery" truncates its social graph, or at least reduces the weights it can put on some edges, and thus makes its information less valuable for targeted advertising.

It would be nice to imagine that the people who make such decisions would make that one out of the goodness of their hearts. I do not think this likely. In the absence of a strong financial incentive to do otherwise, I would expect to see things go on pretty much as they have been, i.e., getting gradually worse over time. Threatening Facebook employees with physical harm seems like a severely counterproductive strategy toward applying such an incentive, but I'm not sure what to suggest in its place, because I've tended more in the direction of finding ways to convince people the problem actually exists - itself a regrettable necessity.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#106

Post by throwanem »

ryandrake wrote: post #87
throwanem wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it really says something about our industry that our preeminent modern accomplishment requires everyone to choose, blindly and unaware, among effective social nonexistence, espionage-grade opsec, or the kind of radical transparency that no one but maybe a performance artist would even have contemplated just a few years ago.

Effective social nonexistence? Come on. As someone who does not use Facebook and Twitter, yet miraculously has an active social life, I find your dichotomy to be false.

That's great. As someone who also does not use Facebook and Twitter, and saw the result this had on the social life he'd enjoyed before they rose to such preeminence in the field of mediating human social interaction, I find your experience to be lacking in universal applicability.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#108

Post by SixSigma »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #9

TLDR#1: The investigation still didn't reveal exactly how this happened. TLDR#2: The recommendation to "prevent" these issues on the individuals side is, "Lisa’s medical community has started recommending that patients concerned about privacy not log into Facebook or other social media accounts at medical offices, or even leave their phones in their cars during appointments. " This is about as practical as recommendi…

Don't use the Facebook App, use the website

Don't share location via the web browser

Still poor substitutes but ....

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#109

Post by radarsat1 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #104
stoshe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An individual's data sharing with Facebook is less of the issue, here, though. You personally not using it doesn't prevent you from becoming the common thread that ties others together. Just because I'm not on Facebook (I'm not), anyone that's allowed Facebook to see their own contacts, in their phone or email, has shown that they are or are not connected to me in some way. Without me actually ever even having an acc…

That doesn't seem to be very important. It's not the doctor who wants privacy. The people who want privacy allowed Facebook to scrape their contact lists and monitor their locations. They then expected Facebook not to correlate this data with others who contact and visit the same doctor. Why not?

> They then expected Facebook not to correlate this data with others who contact and visit the same doctor. Why not?

Because that would be a dick move.

But clearly that is not enough to dissuade companies from doing this kind of thing, because they have no morals.

And that is the crux of the problem. They don't give a shit what would be considered "reasonable behaviour" for a human being, because they are just giant correlating machines with access to data they shouldn't have been given access to by people who don't know better.

At the end of the day, we are allowed to have reasonable expectations of others, including companies, so I take issue with any implication that they should have known better. We are allowed to have these reasonable expectations. And we will be constantly disappointed. But we should maintain them, I might even say that it is a duty to do so.

Saying "they should have known better" is giving up the fight prematurely. They shouldn't have to know better. They should be able to expect that their privacy (a right) will not be violated.

It is an ideal, not a reality, but it is something to work towards. One step might be to sue the hell out of Facebook for this.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#110

Post by strathmeyer »

Fuxy wrote: post #21
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #9

TLDR#1: The investigation still didn't reveal exactly how this happened. TLDR#2: The recommendation to "prevent" these issues on the individuals side is, "Lisa’s medical community has started recommending that patients concerned about privacy not log into Facebook or other social media accounts at medical offices, or even leave their phones in their cars during appointments. " This is about as practical as recommendi…

So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if you value your privacy. It's sad that we are at this stage but it's mostly our fault for being so complacent with companies doing these kinds of things. If people stopped using their service when they did these kinds of things they would change their behaviour really quic…

You'll need to stop everyone else in your life from using Facebook, too.
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