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Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

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Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#21

Post by phatfish »

woodpanel wrote: post #10

"In May, researchers say Facebook asked to meet with the project leaders and accused them of violating the platform’s terms of service. Another objection was that the project violated the GDPR, since it collected data from users who had not consented to participate." Aww, GDPR keeps on giving – to those who can afford the legal manhours. Thank you, Jan Philipp Albrecht. You've ruined the internet.

On the criteria of "legal manhours" the internet was ruined by Facebook/Google et al long before the GDPR was around. Plenty of other options for their lawyers to abuse.

Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#22

Post by pptr »

jimsimmons wrote: post #9
ergocoder wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They learned from the mistake and now doesn't want to make the same mistake. Sounds fair though. How do you guarantee it is just a research group? Didn't Cambridge analytics look innocent as well in the beginning?

FB’s response to imagine the worst and outright ban is awfully convenient. Do you really think FB is so on top of their user’s privacy otherwise?

Security and privacy are all about imagining the worst. Anything that can be exploited will be exploited eventually.

Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#23

Post by uxcolumbo »

If you want to help stop platforms like Facebook suppress public interest research projects, then sign this open letter:

https://algorithmwatch.org/en/defend-public-interest-researc...

----

Thanks to marapuru for the link - from yesterday's discussion:

AlgorithmWatch shuts down Instagram monitoring after threats from Facebook

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168544

Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#24

Post by sorokod »

annadane wrote: post #20
uniqueuid wrote: post #17

I can add some details, knowing AlgorithmWatch a bit. This is a very earnest and credible German NGO, with most of the active people coming from academia and with collaborations with highly-regarded news organizations. An original (english) post is here: https://algorithmwatch.org/en/instagram-research-shut-down-b... Their message is very critical of platforms, but in the international context (i.e. compared to some…

I think the fact they can always claim to be hiding behind Cambridge Analytica is disgusting. They're clearly not the same

Very much in the spirit of regimes that would execute an inconvenient individual and then charge the family the price of the execution.

Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#25

Post by uniqueuid »

annadane wrote: post #20
uniqueuid wrote: post #17

I can add some details, knowing AlgorithmWatch a bit. This is a very earnest and credible German NGO, with most of the active people coming from academia and with collaborations with highly-regarded news organizations. An original (english) post is here: https://algorithmwatch.org/en/instagram-research-shut-down-b... Their message is very critical of platforms, but in the international context (i.e. compared to some…

I think the fact they can always claim to be hiding behind Cambridge Analytica is disgusting. They're clearly not the same

I agree that it's frustrating how CA is used as an argument to end all arguments.

But we have to acknowledge that Facebook and other platforms are under threat of exploitation from malicious actors, that they often do want to legitimately prevent abuse and that they have to do something.

My biggest gripe is of course the laughable shallowness of the debate. I've once had a Facebook representative tell me that they can't share political ad data because the data is so large "it doesn't fit on a usb stick". Come on. That's lawyers speaking bullshit, and it's tiring.

Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#26

Post by janesvilleseo »

I don’t know if this is connected, but the company I work for we provide marketing services. One service we provide is marketing videos on Facebook on behalf of our clients. We would post the videos on their pages and promote them. We could then publicly see the amount of views they would get.

Well in the last month Facebook has changed how that works. We now have to add them to their ads manager and promote them through there and they will now not automatically get added to the clients page to be seen publicly.

That’s fine we can do that. The kicker here is that Facebook removed 2 years of videos from all of our clients. We have hundreds of clients and thousands of videos.

I wonder now if this is an attempt to stop people from researching this data since they have been removed.

I just have no other explanation for removing 2 years of videos. Note that these videos are not political in any way they are general 15-20 second animated ads. All unique and custom written a produced for each client.

Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#27

Post by beezischillin »

Honestly, I genuinely regret having anything to do with that platform. It’s such a pain; we’ve integrated OAuth into a client’s platform at her request and every two months we get threatened to either provide them with stuff or just misc. BS. That we have to reply to or they threaten to shut us out. This last week we got an email saying our integration doesn’t work and we need to fix it or be shut down. Ironic, as it works with no issues… About two months ago we had to provide then with an account to our platform. That involved creating a fake Facebook and handing the credentials over to their dev team (something that I believe is against their ToS, but whatever). We only grab the bare minimum of information on registration and only use them to log in. I can’t imagine anyone having to rely on them for anything more serious.

We’re planning on transitioning our users out of using their Facebook accounts to log in.

Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#28

Post by amcoastal »

woodpanel wrote: post #10

"In May, researchers say Facebook asked to meet with the project leaders and accused them of violating the platform’s terms of service. Another objection was that the project violated the GDPR, since it collected data from users who had not consented to participate." Aww, GDPR keeps on giving – to those who can afford the legal manhours. Thank you, Jan Philipp Albrecht. You've ruined the internet.

Lmfao, sure, if you take Facebooks arguments at face value even though they are obviously wrong. But hey, who cares if the argument is true if its a launching point for a moronic personal grievance to be aired.

Re: Facebook shut down German research on Instagram algorithm

#30

Post by ergocoder »

jimsimmons wrote: post #9
ergocoder wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They learned from the mistake and now doesn't want to make the same mistake. Sounds fair though. How do you guarantee it is just a research group? Didn't Cambridge analytics look innocent as well in the beginning?

FB’s response to imagine the worst and outright ban is awfully convenient. Do you really think FB is so on top of their user’s privacy otherwise?

No, but that doesn't mean they have to allow random research group to crawl their data.

Again a mistake happened in the past. FB learns to not trust random research group upfront.

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