I don't understand what is the big deal. Google probably knows that a teenager is pregnant before her boyfriend.
It is also a good thing general if people could target people and offer them products which might help them.
Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure', 'worthless'
61–66 of 66 posts
Re: Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure', 'worthless'
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Non-profits strive to place human outcomes over financial results. Many corporations are either unwilling or unable to do so, beyond what is required by law. Market forces aren't well suited, on their own, to deal with these kind of externalities.
> Non profits strive to place human outcomes over financial results. Most corporations are either unwilling or unable to do so, beyond what is required by law. This is incredibly reductive. A non-profit can strive to place human outcomes over financial results, but nothing requires them to, and there are plenty of forces that push them in the other direction as well. Conversely, for-profit corporations might not stri…
> The "non-profit" vs. "for-profit" distinction tells you literally nothing about a company's ethics.
Have you researched this? It's quite a strong claim.
On average, there are large differences between the two org types, in legal structure, vision, goals, funding, motivation, etc.
It would be quite peculiar if all of these differences has zero net effect. It'd be like flipping a coin and having it land on the narrow edge.
Re: Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure', 'worthless'
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
What speaks against making subscription an option as with Spotify?
A spotify subscription is more valuable than whatever option a social network could offer. Facebook makes a boatload off ads so there's no way they would just turn the option off even with a small subscription. Plus, not enough users care about ads. Most of the comments on this forum will be preaching to the choir.
I'm not so sure about that. A lot of people are not completely comfortable with Facebook using their data and I think a substantial number of people might be willing to pay, not primarily to get rid of ads but to have a sense of privacy. If they get rid of ads that a nice bonus. Saying it's never going to happen is like saying that people will never pay for music online. A lot of people believed that to be true just a couple of years ago and yet ...
Re: Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure', 'worthless'
#64I was just about to post to AskHN about how much data these social network behemoths can garner from unposted data, i.e., I write something into my status box or a comment like "fuck the police," then delete without posting, is that data gathered and mined? My gut and brain say yes, because it's easily possible to gather it and with the little bit of research I found no evidence that really shows one way or another w…
Has anyone managed to capture unposted thoughts being sent over the wire(less)? I've read the claim that this is done but I don't any relevant network activity when I type and discard something in Chrome...
Putting aside the question of whether these folks are serving malicious JS to users, seeing no network activity at the same time as your keystrokes doesn't tell you much. The client could easily be caching your keystrokes locally, then uploading in a batch with any AJAX call.
Re: Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure', 'worthless'
#65Why don't we have a subscription based, non-tracking, ad-free social network yet??
Is that a serious question? Social networks are dependent on network effects. Having a subscription immediately increases the barrier to entry too high for people to be able to get their friends on the same platform.
You could make it more exclusive.
Re: Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure', 'worthless'
#66I was just about to post to AskHN about how much data these social network behemoths can garner from unposted data, i.e., I write something into my status box or a comment like "fuck the police," then delete without posting, is that data gathered and mined? My gut and brain say yes, because it's easily possible to gather it and with the little bit of research I found no evidence that really shows one way or another w…
I remember reading about this a few years ago, and observed network activity using Facebook. They certainly did capture what you type but fail to post. I would put serious money on them mining that data, too, since it can reveal someone's true uncensored thoughts.
I'm going to take a weekend and build a javascript capturing tool that does just this, so I can open the source up and get a viral post on HN, that should spark some discussion