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Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

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Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

#131

Post by jpttsn »

aserafini wrote: post #92
linuxftw wrote: post #79

There seems to be a cottage industry around making words more palatable when it comes to tech privacy. "Scans" should be "reads and stores" "What you send to other people" should be "private messages, images, and videos" "What you send to other people" implies that there was no expectation of privacy in the first place, which (while true) I think does not match the 'normal' person's expectations or understanding. New…

Another example of charitable sanitisation: referring to personal data being 'monetized' rather than 'sold'. Information is sold when advertisers can target sets of users based on their personal data.

But, if I sell you an ebook, you would expect a copy to read, right?

Accusing Facebook of selling data makes it easy for them to rebut: no data changed hands.

Similar to accusing copyright infringers of “stealing” movies. It muddies the waters.

Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

#133

Post by IIAOPSW »

feelin_googley wrote: post #33

"You can't watch your kids 24/7," reads one poster, which has a picture of Schumer, Zuckerberg, and a shirtless Anthony Wiener outside Facebook's New York offices. "BUT WE CAN." ... Schumer - who in 2016 railed that "a person's cellphone should not become a James Bond-like personal tracking device for a corporation to gather information" - has stayed relatively silent since Facebook's user data scandal with Cambridge…

The post reports on generic graffiti now?

Are they that desperate to find their daily DeBlasio/Schumer/Cumo 2 min hate? Can they not just call random Democrats Communist to satisfy their readership? Could Sabo possibly find a more tenuous link between Schumer and Facebook?

The fact that Sabo admits to having an unnamed financial backer coupled with the fact that this non-news is reported on in the Murdoch press makes me think this is some sort of guerilla marketing by an underhanded conservative firm similar to Cambridge Analytica.

Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

#134

Post by IIAOPSW »

jerf wrote: post #71
rectang wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shock is that it's exploitable by political actors who people are opposed to. That's what's getting attention these days.

I just hope people, including a lot of people reading this, remember this for longer than two or three news cycles. Just because Not-Trump gets into power someday doesn't mean that he or she won't be followed by Not-Not-Trump. In fact, I guarantee the eventual rise to power of Not-Not-Trump, because the only thing that would stop it is if Not-Trump successfully institutes totalitarianism, hardly a win. Our vigilance…

>I just hope people, including a lot of people reading this, remember this for longer than two or three news cycles.

Name one thing that people remember for more than 2 news cycles.

Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

#135

Post by dudus »

tristanj wrote: post #3

Old news. Facebook has been doing this since at least 2009, I recall seeing an article where Facebook censored all links (including those in private messaegs) to thepiratebay.org [0] They also crawl links you share in private messages to grab the title, intro, and favicon to generate that clickable widget link thing. [0] https://torrentfreak.com/facebook-blocks-all-pirate-bay-link...

This is not old news and the examples you provided are not proof that they were doing it prior.

It is perfectly possible to crawl pages to get titles and FavIcons client side or using a web service that don't necessarily keep a log of these requests.

Same thing for censoring links. You can have a static list of disallowed domains and do all the filtering client side or have a web service that given a link returns true or false if it should be censored. It doesn't necessarily means it needs to be logged, kept, associated with a user or manually analyzed.

What we're seeing now is that facebook is actively looking at whole messages, that's a step up from the previous instances. It's still unclear if this is all automated or if some are manually reviewed. It's also unclear if these are associated with a user, or anonymized when analyzing them. Are these logged? How long are they kept for? Facebook should be more clear on how this all works. Otherwise we're just left guessing.

Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

#137

Post by nstj »

Mandatum wrote: post #130
nstj wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh nice one. Did the links get blocked when Messenger was in “non-Secret” mode?

Yep. Same with the Apple crash character bug from a few weeks ago. Also when linking .EXE's and .SCR's, I didn't see any hits on the server. Facebook blocks direct linking to executable files, and usually does a HEAD request against the web server - in this case I didn't see anything when sending via Secret.

Great catch - appreciate the follow up.

Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

#138

Post by linuxftw »

jpttsn wrote: post #131
aserafini wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of charitable sanitisation: referring to personal data being 'monetized' rather than 'sold'. Information is sold when advertisers can target sets of users based on their personal data.

But, if I sell you an ebook, you would expect a copy to read, right? Accusing Facebook of selling data makes it easy for them to rebut: no data changed hands. Similar to accusing copyright infringers of “stealing” movies. It muddies the waters.

I disagree. If I can query some API and it gives me some output, the data has changed hands. I can't really imagine a system where one has 'access' to data and does not receive it, unless it's in some kind of "Data Library" and nothing is allowed to leave the premises.

Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

#139

Post by fouc »

jpttsn wrote: post #131
aserafini wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of charitable sanitisation: referring to personal data being 'monetized' rather than 'sold'. Information is sold when advertisers can target sets of users based on their personal data.

But, if I sell you an ebook, you would expect a copy to read, right? Accusing Facebook of selling data makes it easy for them to rebut: no data changed hands. Similar to accusing copyright infringers of “stealing” movies. It muddies the waters.

That's true.

Maybe it's better to accuse companies of "selling access to the person".

Such as if you were eating at a restaurant and touts came directly in and started trying to sell you various things. Where the touts had paid off the business for access to your person.

Re: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

#140

Post by taneq »

yndoendo wrote: post #104
tristanj wrote: post #3

Old news. Facebook has been doing this since at least 2009, I recall seeing an article where Facebook censored all links (including those in private messaegs) to thepiratebay.org [0] They also crawl links you share in private messages to grab the title, intro, and favicon to generate that clickable widget link thing. [0] https://torrentfreak.com/facebook-blocks-all-pirate-bay-link...

This is why Facebook's "We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified." is a false statement.

"We connect people. With Facebook. That's why all the work we do to stunt competition is justified."
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