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Actual Facebook Graph Searches

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Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#61

Post by leoc »

unreal37 wrote: post #17
electic wrote: post #6

This is bad news all around. It is likely a huge percentage of searches performed by people will not enrich lives but most people will use it to mine out insights that others don't wish to be publicized. Can you imagine people being rounded up in China over this and put into prisons over their "like".

They don't have Facebook in the Great Firewall of China. And if they DID, people there wouldn't be liking Falun Gong. It's a bogus example.

> It's a bogus example.

Is it, though? The search mentions a user who liked the Falun Gong branch in [a European city - they could probably anonymise this one a bit more]. I'm guessing there are a fairly large number of people who leave China to study or work, join Facebook while abroad, then return to the PRC at some point.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#62

Post by chunkyslink »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #34
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. When Graph Searches were announced, I thought "meh, I'm tired of FB...". I never thought to explore what Graph Searches actually meant . And I would never have done so or will do so, but I'm very glad that someone has investigated the system. >it will always lead to situations like that which are [bad] I wonder if there isn't some definition analogous to "Turing complete" for social graphs? i.e. with a sufficien…

Zuckerberg thinks people complain about privacy because they're old-fashioned and scared of the future. He thinks in the future we're all going to be extremely open, share shit all the time, aaaand basically the whole world is going to be one big chat room where people don't really hide things any more. Personally I think he's probably right. It has shades of that old totalitarian argument, 'why should you be worried…

> aaaand basically the whole world is going to be one big chat room where people don't really hide things any more.

Does this include Corporations and Governments? Or just the users of pathetic chat rooms like Facebook?

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#63

Post by lhnn »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #24

Maybe this seems horrible right now, but Facebook didn't create these problems and contradictions, it just exposed them uncomfortably. I expect that the eventual abuses springing from this exposure will spur a counterreaction, hopefully with net-positive results. After all, what's the most meaningful take-away from this? Is it that Facebook is endangering individuals? Not really. Powerful, global social search tools…

> And lots of people have embarrassing and/or contradictory and/or naive views and tastes.

That they should be keeping off the Internet.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#64

Post by politician »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #24

Maybe this seems horrible right now, but Facebook didn't create these problems and contradictions, it just exposed them uncomfortably. I expect that the eventual abuses springing from this exposure will spur a counterreaction, hopefully with net-positive results. After all, what's the most meaningful take-away from this? Is it that Facebook is endangering individuals? Not really. Powerful, global social search tools…

And "Girls who are single and nearby and like getting drunk"... What noble redeeming value do you find in that search?

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#66

Post by m22 »

bane wrote: post #44

I think it's obvious that this is really a way of advertising FB's advertising possibilities, opening it up to the general public is a side-effect of building revenue generation tools. But FB will definitely have to roll a great deal of this back as this is definitely deeply troubling.

If they don't roll it back then this will simply encourage users to bump up their privacy, or even remove their details from their profiles.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#67

Post by crdoconnor »

unreal37 wrote: post #17
electic wrote: post #6

This is bad news all around. It is likely a huge percentage of searches performed by people will not enrich lives but most people will use it to mine out insights that others don't wish to be publicized. Can you imagine people being rounded up in China over this and put into prisons over their "like".

They don't have Facebook in the Great Firewall of China. And if they DID, people there wouldn't be liking Falun Gong. It's a bogus example.

It's a search for people who have family members in China. Not people in China.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#68

Post by corporalagumbo »

psbp wrote: post #55
corporalagumbo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you mean by that?

I think socialization under the umbrella of a facebook type environment will eventually create predictable and malleable identities which are inherently the consequence of a mix of various societal pressures which are in turn constricted through the lens of the facebook environment. Combine that with facebook's transparent use of corporate cohabitation with people's relationships, and I think you quickly have a socie…

I think "socialisation under the umbrella of a facebook type environment" was inevitable one way or another. The advantages of an efficient system for socialising with a centralised online persona system are just too huge to forgo. I'd be interested to hear what you consider might have been alternatives, but personally, I think the economics lead inexorably to a free-to-play ad-supported system such as Facebook. Show me the day when you can convince a couple hundred million people to sign up for a paid social network product and I'll eat my hat. Show me the day that an open-source community can compete with a for-profit business in terms of attracting the best talent willing and able to slave away for hours to build great products, and I'll eat my hat.

I don't think it means the end of individuality as we know it. We've had ad-supported newspapers for hundreds of years now and people seemed to manage okay.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#69

Post by corporalagumbo »

GuiA wrote: post #50
potatolicious wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich "social graph"" These aren't algorithms. This is a search engine - what you put into it is up to you. It can be anywhere from the silliness seen in the link, to "friends who live in London" before you take a trip. This is just handing people another tool - the uses, and misuses, of said tool are entirely on the us…

>A snarky and mean-spirited stereotyping of all nerds as socially inept! How clever. Not at all. I'm just willing to bet that the average Facebook employee has never had to hide his sexuality/political/religious beliefs for fear of execution/incarceration/abuse to his family/etc. Yet a non-negligible part of Facebook's user base are people precisely in this situation. That being said, the very fact that you call what…

I think by 'silliness' he's referring to "Girls who live nearby who are single and like Getting drunk!" Fair call in my opinion.

I made this point in another post: the take-away from this link shouldn't be how bad it was of Facebook to not realise that making available powerful search tools for already-public data might put some people in an unfortunate spotlight. The real take-away is that we shouldn't live in a world where people should be scared to be openly gay in Iran, or openly a Falun Gong member in China. Those are the things we should focus on and try and change. And we should appreciate, rather than chastise, the tools which make us realise that there are things we need to improve in the world.

Re: Actual Facebook Graph Searches

#70

Post by corporalagumbo »

chunkyslink wrote: post #62
corporalagumbo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg thinks people complain about privacy because they're old-fashioned and scared of the future. He thinks in the future we're all going to be extremely open, share shit all the time, aaaand basically the whole world is going to be one big chat room where people don't really hide things any more. Personally I think he's probably right. It has shades of that old totalitarian argument, 'why should you be worried…

> aaaand basically the whole world is going to be one big chat room where people don't really hide things any more. Does this include Corporations and Governments? Or just the users of pathetic chat rooms like Facebook?

Sorry, "pathetic chat rooms"? What are you trying to say? And why are you saying whatever it is so bitterly?
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