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Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

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Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#101

Post by oelmekki »

oelmekki wrote: post #100

Facebook is going way too far in many ways. The other day, I had a couple of friends at my place. At some point, we decided to order pizzas. We did so online, at my usual pizzeria. 30 minutes later (not sure of the delay, but it was before pizzas were delivered), one of my friend check her facebook on her mobile and see ... an ad for that pizzeria. She said she's never seen the ad before, nor ever ordered at that piz…

By the way, a follow up : after that, I installed Disconnect in my browser, removed facebook app from my phone, used a dedicated chrome profile for facebook, installed firefox on my mobile and made it my default browser, and installed disconnect and adblock on it. We'll see if that's enough.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#102

Post by riteshpatel »

jpalomaki wrote: post #90
bb101 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how this could work when Whatsapp advertises that conversations are encrypted end-to-end.

These kinds of things might be just random. You see probably thousands of ads during the day, but most of them are not registered by your conscious mind. Only when there is a notable connection to something, your brain wakes up and you register the ad. There's also the option that before bringing up something in conversation, your friend has made some related searches or reacted to a related ad. Facebook could then m…

> These kinds of things might be just random. You see probably thousands of ads during the day, but most of them are not registered by your conscious mind. Only when there is a notable connection to something, your brain wakes up and you register the ad.

This is similar to the Cocktail Party Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#104

Post by squarefoot »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #85
cat199 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who builds this machine and how do they tune/debug/improve it? Pretty sure any given computation could be traced, though it might take a bit of work and need to be captured fairly quickly...

I've been to machine learning talks where the presenters freely admitted they weren't exactly sure how what they made works. Reminds me of this comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2460#comic

I'm loving this comic, thanks for the link!

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#105

Post by ryanwaggoner »

oelmekki wrote: post #100

Facebook is going way too far in many ways. The other day, I had a couple of friends at my place. At some point, we decided to order pizzas. We did so online, at my usual pizzeria. 30 minutes later (not sure of the delay, but it was before pizzas were delivered), one of my friend check her facebook on her mobile and see ... an ad for that pizzeria. She said she's never seen the ad before, nor ever ordered at that piz…

Actually, it seems like much simpler than that.

Possible, but unlikely: the pizzeria was using a tracking pixel with a purchase event and was targeting ads to friends of purchasers. I don't think you can do this exact kind of targeting (but not sure) and it's pretty sophisticated for some random pizza place.

By far the most likely scenario is a mix of coincidence and confirmation bias. The pizzeria was just running geo and time of day ads and your friend did not notice or remember until this event made it seem significant.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#106

Post by dredmorbius »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #59
dredmorbius wrote: post #45

The history of Jews in the Netherlands during the Nazi Holocaust, many of whom were identified through census records, comes to mind. https://ww2gravestone.com/holocaust-in-the-netherlands/ For contemporary instances, consider that the present U.S. administration openly supports racist, neo-Nazi, White Supremecist, and similar organisations. Social-graph association of undocumented immigrants, Muslims, gang- (or non-…

There already is a US example. Virginia instituted a "one-drop" law in the 20's and scoured through old census records to label many mixed race people as black, subjecting then to Jim Crow laws.

Do you have any idea if there were private records that were included in such searches? Church or baptismal, or medical records, perhaps?

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#107

Post by mythrwy »

will_brown wrote: post #91

I have a Facebook account With literally zero friends (created only to create business pages). On 08/05 I was randomly kidnapped at gunpoint when out of town and wouldn't you know Facebook recommended friending my kidnapper (and some of his family members). Because he took my iPad and connected it to wifi he was located and arrested only 1 day later, before the friend suggestions, but I'd love to know if sans iPad lo…

Facebook attempting to induce Stockholm Syndrome.

Craziest FB story ever though. Glad you are ok.

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#108

Post by mcast »

will_brown wrote: post #91

I have a Facebook account With literally zero friends (created only to create business pages). On 08/05 I was randomly kidnapped at gunpoint when out of town and wouldn't you know Facebook recommended friending my kidnapper (and some of his family members). Because he took my iPad and connected it to wifi he was located and arrested only 1 day later, before the friend suggestions, but I'd love to know if sans iPad lo…

It’s possible the kidnapper looked your name up on Facebook after stealing your iPad. Just searching for someone’s name is enough for a recommendation.

This has happened with some of my coworkers who I have no mutual friends with and live in a completely different city (didn’t connect to work internet or have GPS permissions on FB either).

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#109

Post by throwawayknecht »

wutbrodo wrote: post #84
dredmorbius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the truth is flamebait. Doesn't make it any less true. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865686908/Sen-Mike-Lee-re... http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/346348-hatch-my-brother-d...

Hold on. That article says that Trump claimed there was "blame on both sides", followed by open repudiation of neo-Nazis and the KKK as "criminals and thugs". I'm not being intentionally obtuse: failure to condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists is a pretty huge failing for a president (though no worse than what I expect of Donald Trump), and those who condemned his remarks were absolutely right. But words have mean…

Trump pardoned someone who bragged about his self-described "concentration camps" and policing practices targeting people of Latin American descent, then bragged about how he wasn't going to listen to judges who told him to stop doing it. (Among literally hundreds of other instances of corruption, cover-ups, civil rights violations, and humanitarian abuses.)

I don't know how much more explicit you expect his support of white supremacists to be. (Honestly, I doubt you're engaging genuinely at all.)

Re: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, and It Won't Tell Me How

#110

Post by [deleted] »

throwawayknecht wrote: post #109
wutbrodo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on. That article says that Trump claimed there was "blame on both sides", followed by open repudiation of neo-Nazis and the KKK as "criminals and thugs". I'm not being intentionally obtuse: failure to condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists is a pretty huge failing for a president (though no worse than what I expect of Donald Trump), and those who condemned his remarks were absolutely right. But words have mean…

Trump pardoned someone who bragged about his self-described "concentration camps" and policing practices targeting people of Latin American descent, then bragged about how he wasn't going to listen to judges who told him to stop doing it. (Among literally hundreds of other instances of corruption, cover-ups, civil rights violations, and humanitarian abuses.) I don't know how much more explicit you expect his support…

[deleted]
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