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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

#31

Post by thr0waway1239 »

throwanem wrote: post #27
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised just how few people know Facebook owns WhatsApp. When I mention it to my non-tech friends, they are first surprised, and then nod their heads like its no big deal, and then a few weeks later exclaim utter surprise at some new privacy intrusion. Someone should start a project with the sole purpose of mining all kinds of personal data about FB employees from Facebook/Google and publish it as a Ka…

I'm not sure what you see that helping.

The main issue, which you and I both see, is the sheer asymmetry of the whole thing. We are in this weird situation where the individual, the typical cognitive miser who even on his/her best day cannot possibly take all the preventive actions, is up against tireless machines with perfect memory and ability to generate extraordinary pattern recognition working all day to mine just that little bit more information to then hand out to the advertisers.

But I see your point, and certainly would like to see more constructive suggestions than mine.

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

#32

Post by brianfitz »

mrweasel wrote: post #11
untilHellbanned wrote: post #7

> “Without additional information from the people involved, we’re not able to explain why one person was recommended as a friend to another.” Such a terrible excuse. FB you only have one job! Fail.

Facebook must understand how weird that sounds. How can they not know why people are recommended to each other? They really do need to dig into the issue, if in fact they don't know. Because something seriously need to be excluded from their recommendation algorithm if the article is true.

She can't reveal the patients to them, so Facebook wouldn't be in a position to give a specific reason -- only generically how the algorithm is calculated.

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

#33

Post by wtbob »

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 share their contacts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289223 (I'm not posting this to shame them or something: March wasn't that long ago for developing a feature like this, and of course it's open source; I could develop it myself and submit it to them).

I think it's something they care about; they've just not found a solution they're comfortable with yet.

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

#34

Post by sverige »

wtbob wrote: post #28
Fuxy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if you value your privacy. It's sad that we are at this stage but it's mostly our fault for being so complacent with companies doing these kinds of things. If people stopped using their service when they did these kinds of things they would change their behaviour really quic…

> So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if you value your privacy. I've been doing this for years now, and you know what? I don't miss it at all. I use the Facebook website from my computer, and that's A-OK.

I don't use Facebook at all and don't miss it.

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

#35

Post by TheCoreh »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #9

TLDR#1: The investigation still didn't reveal exactly how this happened. TLDR#2: The recommendation to "prevent" these issues on the individuals side is, "Lisa’s medical community has started recommending that patients concerned about privacy not log into Facebook or other social media accounts at medical offices, or even leave their phones in their cars during appointments. " This is about as practical as recommendi…

Or just disable location access for the Facebook app.

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

#36

Post by vidarh »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #31
throwanem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you see that helping.

The main issue, which you and I both see, is the sheer asymmetry of the whole thing. We are in this weird situation where the individual, the typical cognitive miser who even on his/her best day cannot possibly take all the preventive actions, is up against tireless machines with perfect memory and ability to generate extraordinary pattern recognition working all day to mine just that little bit more information to t…

I see so many potential ways of aggregating this kind of information in massively privacy intrusive ways on a day to day basis. And it's terrifying how many of them are just stopped by my lack of willingness to sacrifice my morals over it.

Because I know very well how easy it is for people to think "oh, well, but that one little thing isn't so bad, when faced with bills to pay, or a raging boss. Many of which really aren't all that bad in isolation. Except it doesn't take all that many "one little things" before you have a total privacy disaster.

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

#37

Post by mrweasel »

nroets wrote: post #29
dunkelheit wrote: post #15

The phonebook hypothesis seems most plausible to me (especially considering that WhatsApp is owned by facebook). All those apps gaining access to a phonebook is a privacy disaster.

I recommend that we all add the office number of a health care professional we don't need to our phone book. It will muddy the water just a little bit.

It would be better if Facebook didn't hoover up data not explicitly entered into their app or website.

In fact I think that should be the basis of privacy laws everywhere: You can only use data that the user personally entered into your application or website. Data should only be available across your different "properties" it they are branded as being part of a single platform.

It would be much more in tune with the average persons understanding of something like Facebook.

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

#38

Post by throwanem »

vidarh wrote: post #36
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue, which you and I both see, is the sheer asymmetry of the whole thing. We are in this weird situation where the individual, the typical cognitive miser who even on his/her best day cannot possibly take all the preventive actions, is up against tireless machines with perfect memory and ability to generate extraordinary pattern recognition working all day to mine just that little bit more information to t…

I see so many potential ways of aggregating this kind of information in massively privacy intrusive ways on a day to day basis. And it's terrifying how many of them are just stopped by my lack of willingness to sacrifice my morals over it. Because I know very well how easy it is for people to think "oh, well, but that one little thing isn't so bad, when faced with bills to pay, or a raging boss. Many of which really…

It is easy to imagine that the people who build and maintain Facebook conceive of their behavior as immoral. I'm not sure it is accurate or helpful.

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

#39

Post by laktak »

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…

> I think it's something they care about

so did you get a reply?

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

#40

Post by thr0waway1239 »

throwanem wrote: post #13
petra wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until of course some journalist started digging deep into Schmidt, than the tune was completely different.

Well, of course. He did say "you", after all.

Classic.
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