
Facebook Ordered by Hamburg Regulator to Allow Pseudonyms - adventured
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-28/facebook-ordered-by-hamburg-regulator-to-allow-pseudonyms
======
nxb
Facebook does the same with birthdays. I input my age as 90 when creating my
account. They changed it to my real birthday somehow.

AND then they expose it publicly to anyone who looks up my profile, even when
they aren't my friends.

AND this is all after me having disabled the "show birthday on timeline" and
enabling every other privacy setting there was.

If there's one company using AI and data collection for evil, it's Facebook.
Not to mention the years of silently disabling previously set privacy settings
without getting the user's permission - e.g. the "show profile in search".

Insane. Facebook should be slammed hard by the courts.

~~~
abluecloud
How is that possible for them to know your real age, logically? (I don't mean
you're lying, but only you can work out the link with other services and
facebook that might be leaking this information).

~~~
nxb
\- Deducing based on my median friends' ages.

\- Easily deducing my approximate age from my Linkedin profile.

\- Any of the numerous other private people data sources they have access to
or have bought over the years. I'm sure my birthday and basic details are in
some of those. It's impossible to get those all deleted once the information
is out.

\- Day and month are easy, because everyone wishes me happy birthday in the
messages and wall posts. All that's remaining is the year, which could be
easily deduced from Linkedin and other third party data sources. - Which I've
mostly cleaned up now, until Facebook exposed it all again.

\- I had a profile for a few months in 2005 before deleting it. Used a
different computer, different location, different email and everything for
this new one a decade later, but probably they've connected the identities.
Looks like if you ever tell Facebook some private information, it's non-
revokably theirs to expose to the world forever.

Facebook invests very heavily in machine learning / AI, and uses it heavily
through out their platform. They collect and buy tons of data both on the site
and from third parties. This deduction is trivial for them.

The bad part is not so much that they deduced these details about me though,
it's that I specifically made it clear that I didn't want any age public, let
alone the real age, and they exposed me anyway.

~~~
grkvlt
I don't think Facebook are as clever as you imagine, and they certainly would
never do something as crazy as trying to deduce your age based on median
friends ages. But, if you _do_ give Facebook information about yourself, then
it's no longer private to only youurself - it's known to both of you. You will
have agreed to some T&Cs about sharing it based on certain account settings
when you signed up, so as I mentioned above, if you can prove information
leakage when you've set certain privacy settings explicitly then this is
absolutely a bug in Facebook's system, and you should definitely report it...

~~~
nxb
I can't begin to guess as to why you'd feel that way.

Facebook runs one of the top machine learning research labs in the world.
They're among the most clever in this domain, by every possible metric.
They've written extensively about how they employ machine learning across
their entire product line, and are adding more constantly. They've acquired
numerous ML startups and world-class researchers.

[https://research.facebook.com/](https://research.facebook.com/)

[https://research.facebook.com/researchers/1543934539189348](https://research.facebook.com/researchers/1543934539189348)

Respectfully, you're absolutely wrong, and I'm suspicious as to why you'd be
intentionally spreading misinformation that they don't use ML/AI to fill in
the gaps in their information about their users.

~~~
grkvlt
The ML activities at Facebook seem to be focussed on delivering content and
advertising optimally to users. They can determinine which posts or adverts
you might 'Like' based on your friends choices, or those of other similar
groups of users found by various demographics and metadata. It's right there
in the research group page you linked:

> "We strive to find ways to deliver more engaging content in News Feed, rank
> search results more accurately, and present the most relevant ads possible."

I think it'd be a pretty poor use of ML and AI to use it to try and guess the
gaps in your profile, and then _fill them in_. Of course I'm sure they try and
show you content and adverts based on what they believe your demographic
profile might be, but these beliefs are purely internal to the algorithms that
make the decisions as to what to publish - they aren't used to populate your
public profile.

In fact, Facebook _want_ the profile information to come _from you_ and for it
to be as accurate as possible - to help those algorithms. It wouldn't be
sensible or useful to just set your profile fields based on guesses, no matter
how clever the ML behind it. As I said before, I think people ascribe too much
intelligence to the way Facebook handles personal information - it isn't
magic.

~~~
dhimes
I don't know if they are using ML or not, but they filled in my "works at"
field with laughably wrong information. I didn't bother to correct it. It's
not far-fetched to me that advertisers would be interested in this kind of
information- ads to your SO when your birthday nears, etc.

~~~
grkvlt
While you say 'they' did it, it's actually hard to know what is going on. Was
it stale browser data that got passed in as autofill field values when you
registered? Is it based on an old LinkedIn profile you associated with
facebook and then forgot to update? Did you connect with the Facebook app on
an old phone where you had contact details for yourself from a previous job,
and synchronise them?

Actually, the LinkedIn profile is the most likely, people often try these
things, signing up and click-thru acknowledging everything without thinking,
then never touch the app again. All I'm saying is that often what you think of
as external is actually caused by actions you performed and then forgot about,
or never really registered in the first place. Although, some of this may well
be down to 'Dark Patterns'in the UX, which should really be investigated and
changed.

~~~
dhimes
Nope- never worked there. Heck, I've never even been there. Not on linkedIn.
Has nothing to do with what I do (Imagine I was an elementary school teacher
and it said I worked at Delta Airlines). Never filled out a form. In this
case, they used _something_ to guess.

I do have a FB connection to the place, though.

------
personjerry
How can a government have jurisdiction over this? It's their system. If they
decide to only give you an account on their system if you've verified your
name (i.e. through driver's license) then why can you demand otherwise? They
can just refuse you service, can't they?

~~~
creshal
It's not fully clear whether the German government has jurisdiction here, with
Facebook nominally residing in Ireland. A case has just been _filed_ by the
Hamburg state government, but that can easily take years to go through courts.

> How can a government have jurisdiction over this?

Because the government can decide that demanding a driver's license is illegal
because it is an unreasonable burden on users, simple as that. German law
states it _must_ be possible to use a service anonymously or pseudonymously
"if it is technically possible and reasonable". Whether it is reasonable in
this particular case is for the courts to decide. (cf. Telemediengesetz,
[http://www.cgerli.org/index.php?id=51&tx_vmdocumentsearch_pi...](http://www.cgerli.org/index.php?id=51&tx_vmdocumentsearch_pi2\[docID\]=1438)
)

~~~
mseebach
They can _decide_ all that, but that doesn't give them clear jurisdiction to
actually enforce it. They can penalise users doing it, possibly by making it a
breach of the terms of carrying a drivers license to use it for this purpose,
although it's not clear how they'd prove such usage.

Alternatively, they can try to hit Facebook's ad sales in Germany, but that's
likely to run into common market rules around trade barriers.

Anyway, does Facebook actually enforce this? I have never shown any ID to
Facebook, and I see plenty of people not using their real names (typically
they use derivatives or add a screenname as a middle name, rather than being
totally pseudonymous).

~~~
Symbiote
Facebook completely enforces this, but only acts on profiles that are reported
to them.

Around a year ago, many of my friends were in a "Gay Pride 2014 parade" group.
Over two or three days, everyone in that group with a fake-looking name was
reported. A little later, everyone who had 'liked' a local gay nightclub page
was reported.

The obvious conclusion was someone with an agenda was searching particular
groups for people to report.

~~~
pjc50
This is another example of a theoretically neutral policy being used to enable
harrasment, because it's not applied in a uniform manner.

------
raverbashing
A lot of users in Germany already, from my experience, 'use pseudonyms' (you
just put a real-enough sounding name that's fake) and be done with it.

Facebook should really not try to make the same mistakes as G+ in that sense

~~~
zaidf
Real identities have been core to the Facebook experience since the day it
launched; just as fake usernames have been core to YouTube since its launch.
For either to go back on a core part of who they are would be a mistake.

Facebook would be making the same mistake as Google if it _did_ allow
pseudonyms.

~~~
DanBC
Should Facebook not allow "Robert Galbraith" (JK Rowling) to have a page? How
about "JK Rowling" (Joanne Rowling)? Should she be forced to use her full
forename?

In England you can use whatever name you like, as long as you don't have the
intent to deceive. (This is tricky with doctors and banks). So, legally, I
could be "Bob Smith" and "Ann Jones" at the same time. Why does Facebook get
to tell me that I only have one name when my government is fine with me having
multiple names?

~~~
florian-f
Is there a British version of the
[Lichtbildausweis]([https://shop.digitalcourage.de/lng/en/thema/ak-data-
retensio...](https://shop.digitalcourage.de/lng/en/thema/ak-data-
retension/lichtbildausweis-mit-selbst-gewaehlten-
daten.html?type=N&language=en))? It's a custom 'official' looking ID that is
sold by an NGO that promotes privacy among other things.

~~~
Symbiote
No, but probably because there's no official identity card in Britain.

I've never tried to use a false name, but it probably would be easy for many
things (utilities, local government) but difficult for others (bank account).

~~~
juliangregorian
Not even a driver's license?

~~~
jameshart
Driver's licenses, passports, utility bills, bank cards, all are considered
'forms of ID' in the UK, which you might need to use to open a bank account or
get credit, but there's no 'ID card'; there's no obligation to have a driving
license, or a passport, or whatever.

~~~
juliangregorian
That much is true in the US as well.

------
xwintermutex
"Facebook changed the profile to her real name against her will ..."

How did they know her real name?

~~~
on_and_off
One explanation is that Facebook collects its users contact lists.

That way, it can create 'shadow-accounts' for people that don't have yet a
Facebook account. So when/if that person finally creates a Facebook account
with some data tying him/her to a shadow-account, Facebook can directly
propose relevant contacts and already knows a lot about that person, including
his/her real name.

------
glomph
Many of my friends already use pseudonyms on Facebook. They just use ones that
look like a real name. Their reason is just that they want to be able to tell
new friends something to search and still be invisible when they look for jobs
etc.

------
return0
Facebook and twitter will soon become the primary medium for a government to
communicate with its citizens. It's the new press, so governments have to make
sure their citizens have access to that information, regardless of whether
they want to use their real names or not. The freedom of the press cuts both
ways, and forces a number of responsibilities on these companies, due to their
peculiar and de-facto monopoly state, and the sheer amount of attention time
they occupy. The press was not completely unregulated in any well-functioning
democracy, and i don't see the reason why the new (increasingly old actually)
media should not be.

------
docspace
Hamburg Regulator == Hamburger Helper?

