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Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

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301–310 of 478 posts

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#301
It upsets me that the "normal" way to keep in touch with people now seems to be to use some kind of big-brother-esque system.

I try and evangelize Signal over WhatsApp and most of my friends won't budge. I deleted my Facebook four years ago, and as a result I have lost contact with a lot of friends.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#303
post #245
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple: delete your Facebook account. Many of us already have. Nothing will send a stronger message than people doing this en masse. Even if they don't get the message or don't care, it's the only way to protect yourself from their never-ending privacy violations.

I deleted facebook in 2008, this article discusses shadow profiles.... I suspect that more people deleting facebook and moving to facebook owned subsidiaries, or anything that is centrally owned and not federated will not solve the problem. even then there will be new mining techniques with their own set of challenges. unfortunately I do not think that more people doing that will solve the root of the problem... only…

It will be a part of the solution even if it won't solve the problem on its own.

If enough people decide to turn their backs on FB (or any other company doing things like this), there will be a market for better solutions.

It needs time.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#304
post #200
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook probably knows your phone number anyway because your friends have likely shared their phone's contacts with Facebook.

Or if you use Whatsapp. Their privacy policy makes this pretty clear: As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings.…

> We do not allow third-party banner ads on WhatsApp. We have no intention to introduce them, but if we ever do, we will update this policy.

I wonder how do they come up with this kind of language? Do they write a short text that gets filtered several times by multiple teams of lawyers and comes down to this? I cannot honestly imagine a sane human being writing such intricate bullshit, even on purpose.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#305
recently interviewed at Facebook (didn't pass the in-person) and one thing I was looking for was a job that WASN'T based on ads. I didn't want to come across negative so I was circumspect in my asking ("Tell me about the positions at Facebook that I as an outsider don't know about - I know ads, messaging, and events"). I wasn't really excited by the answers I got - ads seemed worked into everything they brought up, but the answers weren't super-nefarious either. This was the Seattle office, which apparently has a strong ads-basis. Because they hire people and then (allegedly) let them pick from available team openings (after a "bootcamp" to do onboarding), I simultaneously felt like I'd have a chance to avoid the worst but also couldn't be sure of what I was committing to. I didn't pass the interview and the few weeks since have tried very hard to make me not regret that by raising issues like this one, despite my natural tendency to give FB the benefit of the doubt and to recognize the difficulty of moderating speech sanely.

I've never had such uncertainty about what a job would involve before - the "you find your match" sounded good initially, but in retrospect I'm wondering if I dodged a bullet - so hard to know.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#306

I talked with the lead engineers from a company back in 2014, that shall remain nameless, that bought private profile data from Facebook, ran it through a bunch of algorithmic mumbo jumbo, and sold the aggregated data to marketing firms. They acted like this was really cool and awesome, much like the wide-eyed cultists. It was very creepy, and I backed away slowly even though this place was looking for more engineers…

Are you sure the "private profile data" wasn't aggregated before it was sold? Either way, selling private data is not something Facebook is actually known to do much (outside of misunderstandings by confused activists/journalists). If you contact me (info in profile) I'm very curious to understand more.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#307
post #239

What's facebook's boiling point? My guess is they'll respond, they'll no longer use 2FA #'s for ads, the damage will have been done, and 99% of the population won't know any of it occurred. We'll repeat this cycle when a fresh revelation occurs months from now, as facebook continues to test how much they can leverage for more ad revenue. But none of it is actually slowing FB down. Its biggest dip in value came from d…

FB is now running it's own branding ads in out of home media [1], which is a signal they've done the cost/benefit analysis internally and are now losing enough user trust to justify this brand spend. Also, FB MAUs and DAUs are stalled [2], meaning users are becoming less interested in the blue website. If anything, FB is closer to a 'boiling point' now than ever in the past. [1] https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wUQP/facebook-…

Definitely worth noting, but I think they felt pressured to respond because the election meddling made enough waves with the gen pop to warrant a message, I don’t see it having a lasting impact.

The MAUs and DAUs are more interesting, especially since younger people seem to be avoiding it entirely (although many are flocking to IG, so again, no loss for FB).

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#308
post #239

What's facebook's boiling point? My guess is they'll respond, they'll no longer use 2FA #'s for ads, the damage will have been done, and 99% of the population won't know any of it occurred. We'll repeat this cycle when a fresh revelation occurs months from now, as facebook continues to test how much they can leverage for more ad revenue. But none of it is actually slowing FB down. Its biggest dip in value came from d…

It all comes down to Wall Street. As long as investors are OK with FB's shenanigans, they'll continue to find innovative ways to sell off their users.

Which is a bit of a mug's game, as most investors are explicitly about profits. Externalities be damned.

I would much rather see industries self-regulate. But I have big concerns about industries where people are mainly the product, not the customer. I think it breaks the key feedback loop that makes most self-regulation work: irritable users/customers.

For me America's best backup to irritable customers has always been class action suits. It allows aggrieved customers to band together and force accountability where otherwise individual harm would be too small to justify the costs of a lawsuit. But mandatory arbitration is breaking that too, and anyway doesn't work as well when users aren't customers.

So if we don't have user-fueled self-regulation, and we don't have class action, then I'm not sure what we can do short of government regulation. It's a last resort for me, but nothing else seems to have worked on Facebook.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you hinting that FB advertisers are throwing 50 billion (expected 2018 revenue) at ads that are poorly performing? Obviously that is not correct, the result of all this detailed targeting is campaigns that are performing very well for experienced marketeers.

okay so… - not all people buying FB ads are experienced marketers - companies throw tons of money at ineffective ads, that should be obvious… - we have no idea what the ratio of "successful" to unsuccessful campaigns is - even if that ratio is negative, Facebook is still one of the only remaining "games" in town, so people _will_ continue throwing money at it. “Least worst” is a fine and lucrative place to be in. - c…

> can we just get over this idea of rational economies, by the way

This is key and undermines a lot of rational arguments. People buying ads aren't reading HN and then making a buying decision based on the general vibe they get there. They'll buy based on budget. Budget is based on decisions made in a meeting a year or two before. Those decisions will be based on a strategy. For many that strategy is to the tune of 'I keep hearing about this social media thing that's supposed to be the future. I notice we aren't spending anything in digital. We need to buy more digital'.

If public opinion sours on Facebook it may be a while before we see a significant drop in revenues.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#310
post #140

Google has been pushing SMS 2FA a little more aggressively over the past couple of years, too. And I think Apple made it "easier to use SMS 2FA" in iOS 12 for the same reason. I also said before that this is exactly why Facebook wanted to "verify people's faces for security purposes", too. It just seemed so obvious to me that Facebook would use security as an excuse to get people to put their own 100% accurate face s…

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