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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

#161

Post by NamTaf »

corobo wrote: post #133
noer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of that argument is: You don't stop making friends & meeting people, why should Facebook stop suggesting people you might know? I moved out of state three years ago, most of the people I see & spend most of my time with a completely different than the people I did five years ago.

> You don't stop making friends & meeting people, why should Facebook stop suggesting people you might know? If we've agreed to become Facebook friends then we've done it outside Facebook. If I use the "People you may know" feature I look like a stalker.

There's many younger people for which this isn't the norm.

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

#162

Post by dcw303 »

The funny thing is that this would be very easy for Facebook to fix - just a line of text under each friend request explaining the suggestion:

  * "You're both friends of Duffman McPartyDude"
  * "We found Psycho Ex Boss's phone number in your contacts"
  * "Location Services confirms you were both frequenting a dubious drinking establishment at 4am three Saturdays ago"
Would they do it though? Of course not. It would scare the hell out of their users if they knew how this algo actually worked.

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

#163

Post by wtbob »

glitcher wrote: post #75
wtbob wrote: post #33

Note that everyone's favourite privacy-respecting app (mine too!), Signal, also does contacts-sharing, although it doesn't do friends discovery (so the server knows one's contacts, but one's contacts don't). If Open Whisper Systems wanted to be evil, though, they could do this form of analysis. Back in March I laid out how they could use a private set intersection protocol to enable any pair of users to privately sha…

Yet another daunting issue in our modern world: No matter how good a given company or product is at privacy-respecting, what happens to all that data if they are bought out by someone else?

Well, that's the good thing about PIR — with the protocol I discussed, OWS wouldn't have access to one's list of contacts. They'd still know with whom one spoke (anonymising that is a hard problem), but at least they wouldn't know everyone one knows.

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

#164

Post by kej »

wavefunction wrote: post #116
kej wrote: post #114

I wonder if there is an open WiFi access point in the vicinity. I noticed that I had several coworkers suggested as friends shortly after I connected my phone to the office WiFi. It makes sense that people using the same access point or connecting to Facebook from the same external IP would likely know each other.

It's quite an assumption that they would want to 'friend' each other on facebook or even be presented with another's facebook profile.

Sure, I'm just tossing out another hypothesis beyond tracking locations or everyone importing their contact lists containing the doctor.

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

#165

Post by ryandrake »

throwanem wrote: post #123
ryandrake wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so I understand: You're saying you used to have a robust social life, but now somewhat less so, because the people you used to interact with will no longer do so outside of Facebook and Twitter? I don't want to sound harsh, and maybe I'm just too old, but it seems kind of incredible to me. You can't just call them up or E-mail them?

I don't know what you mean by 'robust'. What I'm saying is that I used to have a satisfactory social life - on the order of parties or other similar events call it once a month more or less and "let's get together for beers" or similar on a reasonably regular basis besides - which in essence no longer exists. I can certainly understand that it seems kind of incredible to you. It seems extremely incredible to me! I st…

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for your perspective. All I can offer is that I've not seen this phenomenon in my own social circle (age:40). I have always considered "You can't have a social life without Facebook" to be pure hyperbole from people who never knew a world without FB.

I suppose we can agree that "it depends" on who your friends are. Oh, and I don't sweat downvotes on HN--any quick way to bury unpopular opinions can be hard to resist for some people.

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

#166

Post by cloudjacker »

hoodoof wrote: post #157
grandalf wrote: post #142

This is one of the many dark patterns that Facebook uses. It simply does not respect any boundaries the user might wish to have in place... Install it on your phone? Anyone you have in your phone's address book gets to see your picture under "people you may know". Someone in your family joins Facebook and friends you? Now everyone you are friends with gets prompted about whether or not they know your family member. W…

Some girl from a dating site Googled my phone number, found my name, searched for me on Facebook and then Facebook suggested I friend her, providing me with her full name, which I did not previously know. If you search for someone on Facebook, then Facebook will suggest to that person that they friend you. Seems a massive privacy hole to me.

I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THAT PATTERN

I've been aware of how Facebook attaches people to you for a long time, so I deactivated that one, made a new Facebook several years ago primarily for development purposes, different name, different email address, friended a few people from one particular circle, never installed it on my phone

Occasionally I will get random friend suggestions about people in different chapters of my life

Facebook didn't have my address book, or a big enough graph to make these connections

I hadn't considered that those were the people merely searching for my name or variations of it

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

#167

Post by throwanem »

sverige wrote: post #156
throwanem wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I do know. Rather than rehearse again the means by which I know, let me refer you to the two most recent times I've done so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12009198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12362818 (Maybe it's necessary to point out that I'm aware of the possibility that all the apologies I ever received on this subject were lies. I'm aware of the possibility that all the apologies I ever…

I think the abusive relationship metaphor is perfect.

So do I, but it seems to weird people out pretty strongly when I use it. That could be to do with me rather than with it, but it's rare in my experience that I'm unable to bring people with me to at least some extent, so I've been going on the surmise that it's more a problem with what I'm saying than with the way in which I say it. I could be wrong about that, though, and how would I really be able to tell?

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

#168

Post by yaur »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #152
yaur wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost certainly the "phonebook" hypothesis. If Lisa has her phone number associated with her Facebook account and either Lisa or the client has the others phone number in their smart phones contacts and the Facebook app installed that relationship can pop up in people you may know. If there aren't good "people you may know" suggestions the ones you get can end up being "people who may be known to people you…

That might help, but facebook is still fully capable of seeing that the clients have the same number in both of their phone books.

And at the point that they start using that its 100% a Facebook problem, but I don't believe that they are at this point.

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

#169

Post by BariumBlue »

rando444 wrote: post #151
grandalf wrote: post #142

This is one of the many dark patterns that Facebook uses. It simply does not respect any boundaries the user might wish to have in place... Install it on your phone? Anyone you have in your phone's address book gets to see your picture under "people you may know". Someone in your family joins Facebook and friends you? Now everyone you are friends with gets prompted about whether or not they know your family member. W…

I know it's seems like it's 'dark pattern' week on HN, but not everything is a dark pattern. Dark Patterns are user interfaces that are designed to trick users. Facebook requests the permission to go through your stuff and if you read their data use policy, they go so far as to tell you in detail exactly the information they're taking from you, as well as how they use it. Sure, it's a little bothersome when the infor…

Pretty sure we need a new term if a term is being co-opted to mean something it's not.

Something like "malign algorithm", or "encroaching design" might do.

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

#170

Post by vacri »

throwanem wrote: post #135
vacri wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much clearer example is this article: "Going to a doctor for a mental health issue".

There's still a stigma, most places. It's a shame, and I wish there weren't, but there is. So it's not hard to see how that argument can have a hard time getting traction.

Oh, I just mean it as an example of something that you should absolutely do if you need it, but something that most people wouldn't want publicised (because of that stigma).
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