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Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#151

Post by Chardok »

cyphar wrote: post #94

> Should we all just leave Facebook? That may sound attractive but it is not a viable solution. It's the only sane response, and has been the only sane response, for the past decade. The only counter-argument given by NYT is that in some countries Facebook has a stranglehold. I don't see how that's relevant to people who don't live in those countries. As for organisers of political groups exclusively using Facebook (…

It seems incredibly bizarre to me that the author says that.

She lists all the privacy and user trust violations, future social health concerns, but then says leaving Facebook isn't viable?

I have little faith in the US government regulating Facebook's privacy and data mining and even less faith that Facebook would take any action on behalf of its users privacy. Leaving Facebook is the only viable solution.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#152

Post by paulie_a »

wepple wrote: post #38
hellofunk wrote: post #31

I wish quite badly that the benefit of deactivating FB would outweigh the inconvenience, but FB has become such a mainstay that I'd lose touch with lots of people I really have no other way of contacting. I could say "good riddance," if there is no other way to contact them then perhaps they are not important enough to my life, but that's just not true. Or what about all the local forums (FB groups) in my city that h…

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to try without it for 30 days: if you truly can’t find a way around it, fine, check it every second day. You might be surprised how unimportant it ends up being

I've slowly stopped using it because the quality of content is just so incredibly low. Facebook has created a negative feedback loop for me, the more "suggested" bullshit they attempt to push the less I care. I when every third post is that sort of thing it becomes less useful. I've personally been blocked from "hiding" ads on numerous occasions.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#153

Post by mliker »

gfodor wrote: post #141

I was one of the co-founders of an early social VR startup and observed first hand the technical capabilities that these applications will afford bad actors to use for surveillance. You can easily capture voice, body tracking, and interaction data, and basically record a full view of the world through the eyes of another human being. It's quite remarkable being able to record and play back a copy of yourself in secon…

VR hasn’t taken off as promised and the hype is dying down now. The headset is too clunky in its current incarnation. People view it as a novelty item rather than a useful tool, so I’m inclined to believe this won’t be the massive surveillance tool VR proponents think it’ll be.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#154

Post by mwarkentin »

vor1111 wrote: post #150
Angostura wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So could you educate us by showing the comparable actions of the Obama campaign?

Didn't Obama's campaign hire Droga5 to do precisely the same sort of ad targeting that CA was involved in? Ultimately, it doesn't seem that CA did anything out of the norm for any marketing analytics company (from what I've read, correct me if I'm wrong).

Did you read the article? They paid several hundred thousand people via Mechanical Türk to download their poll app and then harvested 50M users data for political targeting.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#155

Post by gfodor »

mliker wrote: post #153
gfodor wrote: post #141

I was one of the co-founders of an early social VR startup and observed first hand the technical capabilities that these applications will afford bad actors to use for surveillance. You can easily capture voice, body tracking, and interaction data, and basically record a full view of the world through the eyes of another human being. It's quite remarkable being able to record and play back a copy of yourself in secon…

VR hasn’t taken off as promised and the hype is dying down now. The headset is too clunky in its current incarnation. People view it as a novelty item rather than a useful tool, so I’m inclined to believe this won’t be the massive surveillance tool VR proponents think it’ll be.

Untethered standalone VR devices are likely a prerequisite to any mainstream adoption and are shipping this year. Your guess is as good as mine if they will reach mass appeal, but to assume VR is not viable before these devices are available at low prices is probably wrong.

The one to keep your eye on is the Oculus Go which is a self contained device for $199. (Also a Facebook product, probably going to have all this social functionality burned in. My guess is this is their first big play.)

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#156

Post by camillomiller »

1over137 wrote: post #87
camillomiller wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Germany online privacy is a social value, and Facebook is gonna have a even harder time from now on. I don't see it happen in the rest of the world. I give this three months: when the news cycle will have died out, for Facebook it's gonna be business as usual. Zuckerberg is in such a denial about the real mission of his creature, that I don't see how it will ever be able to steer the boat, even if he wanted t…

Why do you think Zuckerberg is in denial? (Honest question.) Seems to me he knows exactly what he's doing.

Ok, this may sound bad, very way-out-there and not P.C. at all, so forgive me in advance, as it is my (almost fictional) speculation: I think he's in denial because of his lingering autism.

My theory is that, for Zuckerberg, Facebook has always been a perfect data machine to figure out the complexity governing social interactions. The same social interactions that have always escaped him in real life, due to his high-functioning autism.

Facebook, for the first time in history, made possible to quantify social interactions. The next step after such an enlighting discovery (it really is, actually) was to scale the analysis on a global level. Everyone - in Mark's mind - couldn't do but benefit from such formalization of social interactions. He might have asked himself: if only social interactions where as easy to analyse as a calculus problem, or as simple to formalize in a giant set of rules as grammar, wouldn't we all be better off?

Years later, he's still so autistically enamored with his own Leviathan, that he's now in denial about the evil applications his beloved monster has made possible. He's still positive that such a perfect machine can't be used for bad purposes. Sure, there have been speedbumps, but the road is still stretching towards a brighter future where technology can help us rationalize the irrational and ethereal world of mutual interactions.

Long story short: he's an autistic with a delusion of grandeur about his own creature. Such delusions are aggravated buy the shield put up around him by his fellow executives, such as Sheryl "only good news" Sandberg.

Again, this is nothing but my own literary divertissement. He might just be another silicon valley asshole executive, and that's it.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#158

Post by Nitramp »

I think it's worth noting that there's a big difference between (1) allowing advertisers to display ads on your platform based on user profiles (e.g. matching certain demographics etc) on the one hand, and (2) handing out arbitrary user data on the other.

With the former, you stay in control and are able to enforce access and use, including the guarantees you gave users on how their data is handled. With the latter model, you're handing over the keys to the castle to random and possibly quite shady third parties that you cannot have the slightest chance at controlling.

It seems rather reckless to do (2), both regarding your responsibility towards users, but also economically – if a bad actor exfiltrates all user data into their competing ad service, you have little to keep them from doing that.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#159

Post by washadjeffmad »

mliker wrote: post #153
gfodor wrote: post #141

I was one of the co-founders of an early social VR startup and observed first hand the technical capabilities that these applications will afford bad actors to use for surveillance. You can easily capture voice, body tracking, and interaction data, and basically record a full view of the world through the eyes of another human being. It's quite remarkable being able to record and play back a copy of yourself in secon…

VR hasn’t taken off as promised and the hype is dying down now. The headset is too clunky in its current incarnation. People view it as a novelty item rather than a useful tool, so I’m inclined to believe this won’t be the massive surveillance tool VR proponents think it’ll be.

The commercial products aren't representational of the limits of the form, just what's currently economically feasible to produce and sell.

You've got to have a market first, and affordable entry-level VR is damn good way to generate interest.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#160

Post by neospice »

mliker wrote: post #153
gfodor wrote: post #141

I was one of the co-founders of an early social VR startup and observed first hand the technical capabilities that these applications will afford bad actors to use for surveillance. You can easily capture voice, body tracking, and interaction data, and basically record a full view of the world through the eyes of another human being. It's quite remarkable being able to record and play back a copy of yourself in secon…

VR hasn’t taken off as promised and the hype is dying down now. The headset is too clunky in its current incarnation. People view it as a novelty item rather than a useful tool, so I’m inclined to believe this won’t be the massive surveillance tool VR proponents think it’ll be.

VR is still early but it's convincing. Have you tried a very good VIVE setup? I've only used it once but that's all it took for me to understand that VR is the future of immersive entertainment. Based on that experience it seems apparent to me that the only thing stopping it from becoming mainstream is the clunkiness you describe. However, we should all know that it's only a matter of time before that clunkiness is replaced by a better engineered form factor.
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