
Facebook knows you didn’t publish that status update you started writing - forgotAgain
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/12/facebook_self_censorship_what_happens_to_the_posts_you_don_t_publish.html?google_editors_picks=true
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lucraft
TL;DR The researchers instrumented the Facebook client-side javascript to
return statistics on users that wrote a post then deleted it, without
collecting the content from the deleted posts.

Also, the tone of the article seems to suggest that server-side autocomplete
is scary and unethical, which I disagree with.

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JetSpiegel
It's the same thing as Google instant automatically recording your microphone.
It is creepy.

~~~
antsar
On what devices? Source?

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cbhl
Chrome on Mac/Windows/Linux/Chrome OS when you have the extension enabled.
Google Search app on Android/iOS when you have the app/Google Now open. Google
Glass.

Source: Personally using or trying all of the above products.

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antsar
I don't understand why this surprises people. Facebook is in the business of
collecting every bit of information it can about every one if its users. I
think its reasonable to assume that every click, scroll, and keypress is being
captured and used for analytics.

~~~
seiji
It's time for another browser fork. The new browser will disable invasive
javascript methods (mouse tracking, reading every key press, over-zealous XHR
partial-entry saving) on known-bad sites and on any site including javascript
from known-bad actors.

We shouldn't really let our interfaces to the world be run by advertising
interests.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
...or just use NoScript...? I really don't understand the incredulity, though;
does the average user think that Google has the entire Internet stored on its
homepage to get Auto Suggestions to work?

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cbhl
> the entire Internet

Thanks to things like PHP calendars that don't restrict the input date in the
URL parameters and programmatically-generated content honeypots, the internet
is infinitely infinite.

(Sure, the source code representation of the Internet might be finite, but
Googlebot doesn't always have access to that.)

~~~
rmrfrmrf
I was joking; apparently people are shocked that autocomplete requires a
website to log your keystrokes.

~~~
cbhl
Computers are magic to a lot of people.

Understanding that autocomplete requires a website to log your keystrokes
probably requires at least a rudimentary understanding of how machine learning
works.

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NDizzle
If HN did the same thing there would probably be 10,000+ of my words sitting
unpublished in a table somewhere.

I type out stuff then I ask myself, "would anyone actually care to read this?"
\- usually the answer is no and I hit the back button.

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stuaxo
"Do you think that facebook tracks the stuff that people type and then erase
before hitting <enter>? (or the “post” button)"

Well, it's facebook; of course they do...

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wikwocket
This is interesting. On the one hand, I can almost see a case for this, kind
of like Amazon saving you shopping cart and search history, as a convenience
if you switch computers, and for their market research.

On the other hand, most users would expect that what they enter in a random
textbox and then delete is not going to be saved anywhere. These posts are
equivalent to email drafts and I would hope they would be as private.

~~~
antsar
_These posts are equivalent to email drafts and I would hope they would be as
private._

On an ad-supported, web-based service? Why?

If they have an algorithm that parses my drafts and uses the gathered
information to make more money to pay more engineers to build better products,
I have no problem with that assuming that the data is handled responsibly.

For critically sensitive data that needs to be locked down, of course this is
unacceptable. But so is using an ad-supported web service for critically
sensitive data.

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famousactress
Tangent: This reminds me of a rumor I heard about gmail. Rumor had it, one of
the ways the inbox loaded as fast as it did when you logged in is because as
soon as they identified your email address (and before you typed your
password) they'd kick of a job to start pulling things into memory so that
your inbox would be ready to go once you logged in. If true, kind of a neat
hack.

~~~
reubenmorais
Similarly (and this isn't just a rumor), if you leave your mouse on top of a
related video on YouTube, once you click it the load is almost instantaneous.

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jds375
Link to relevant paper. It's quite interesting:
[http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM13/paper/view/6...](http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM13/paper/view/6093)

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alanctgardner2
As far as I can tell the content of the update is never sent back. I just went
on FB and started typing a status update. The status box expands, and loads
some extra assets. But you can type and erase repeatedly and no extra HTTP
requests are sent. I get the feeling their methodology was "Did the user
request the status update assets? Did they subsequently post a status
update?".

On the one hand, FB isn't doing anything evil. On the other hand, it shows how
much clever stuff you can do by looking at people's intent based on
information you already have.

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kevando
Sound the alarm when someone finds that Google keeps a list of websites
visited via incognito.

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joezydeco
And we're all sure that Google's autocomplete doesn't do the same thing,
right?

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seiji
It almost certainly does.

Very few people realize they're giving Google insight into their live thought
processes as they type a query, maybe refine it a few times before submitting
(which gives google a lot of information about if their autocomplete
suggestions are working, relevant, etc), then bouncing around search results
with further refinement.

Google got greedy and started tracking every click you make on search results
a long time ago too. They weren't content knowing "this person got a good
result and didn't need to come back for this query again" — they decided they
must know what you click on, when you come back, what you click on again, ....
It's all quite invasive, but nobody cares.

[but who are we kidding? most people don't "refine queries" — they type
"BOOBS" into google and just keep drooling on their keyboard/tablet/phone.]

~~~
rmrfrmrf
Every site owner that uses Google Analytics has this information.

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dalore
You sure it's not so you can bring up the post/status later and finish typing
it in case you lost it from closing your browser etc. Or moving to a new
device to finish it?

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kristopher
This reminds me of the outrage surrounding some sites that call home when one
selects text or hits cmd+C to copy.

Oh, what a thin line we pave between auto correction and key loggers!

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geolisto
Facebook has been doing this for a while. About a year or so ago I noticed
ajax request being sent during every keystroke.

~~~
brimanning
They've been doing it since you could tag people in status messages and
comments just by typing their name, which has probably been around 2-4 years,
maybe longer.

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Irishsteve
Unpublished images also live on the server for a short period of time.

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nichochar
This is brilliant for data analysis. Hands down facebook.

