

Why Facebook will win the Internet & why that scares the shit out of me - adamhowell
http://caterpillarcowboy.com/post/543176806/how-facebook-will-win-the-internet-and-why-that-scares

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SamAtt
Unless this guy doesn't have any Credit Cards or specialty cards (Grocery,
Gas, etc...) I think he's probably already in the position that he's scared
Facebook will put him in. It's just not being run by Facebook.

Really what he's doing is freaking out over Facebook because they've been open
about what info they're collecting. While the Grocery store tricks him with a
discount and then takes all his info on the back end.

~~~
sliverstorm
I still don't understand why people are so worried about grocery store
discount cards. Ok, so they know my address. That's alright by me; my address
exists so everyone can know it. So they know my name correlates to my address;
that's alright too, they can find this info in public records.

The only possibly sketchy thing is they can correlate my food purchases to me
and my address. However, this doesn't bother me personally. I don't care if
the world knows I buy one kind of bread instead of another, or that I buy
hummus instead of butter. If there are sensitive things you are paranoid
about, like personal care products, just don't use the card for those
purchases.

Either way, they just wind up with spending patterns on food correlated to one
individual. The horror. It's not your SSN or passport or any of that jazz.
Besides, if advertising became more accurately targeted, I feel that would
generally be a good thing. You'd get in touch with products you were genuinely
interested in, advertising costs would plummet (causing prices to drop as
well), and there'd be less utterly useless cruft in the ads you receive.

~~~
pyre
There was an instance of someone being arrested because he purchased rope from
a Safeway around the time that his wife disappeared. The police were able to
obtain the guy's details from his Safeway card and used his purchasing habits
to try and make him the prime suspect in the investigation. I think that it
turned out that he wasn't guilty of anything either.

[ This is all IIRC, btw. My memory could be waaay off, but it paints a picture
of something is not that far-fetched from possibly being the truth in a 'it
could happen to you' sort of way. ]

~~~
codexon
I'll give you an upvote if you can find the source for that story. I can't
find it myself.

~~~
pyre
<http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/030223>

I had a leg up b/c I remembered that my source was slashdot.

The important part:

    
    
      a major piece of evidence used against Lyons in his
      arrest was the record of his supermarket purchases
      that he made with his Safeway Club Card. Police 
      investigators had discovered that his Club Card was
      used to buy fire starters of the same type used in
      the arson attempt. For Lyons, the story did have a
      happy ending. All charges were dropped against him in
      January 2005 because another person stepped forward
      saying he or she set the fire and not Lyons.
    

So I was wrong, and it was arson, not murder, but the point remains that the
police were willing to use purchasing habits/items as circumstantial evidence
to go after the wrong person.

~~~
sliverstorm
> the police were willing to use purchasing habits/items as circumstantial
> evidence to go after the wrong person.

Hopefully it is not a great leap in logic to see that the justice system was
what went wrong, not the club card thing.

~~~
buster
The problem is that you assume your thoughts on justice worldwide.

China may have a totally different understanding on what is allowed and what
not. The whole privacy data thing doesn't worry me very much in my country.
But it's scary when i think of other countries.

~~~
pyre
The best way to put it is that large quantities of data _by themselves_ are
not evil and can do no harm. It's _how people use them_ that matters. Once
these large data stores are created it is _impossible_ to anticipate all of
the bad ways that people will use the data. It's disingenuous to claim that
just because the data has never been used in a certain way that it never will
be used in that way in the future.

It's the same as claiming that your privacy is safe because the company has a
'privacy policy' in place. In reality, the privacy policy say that it can
change at any time and that the company has no legal obligation to notify you
of these changes. These policies may change due to a change in direction at
the company, or because the company is losing money and decides to sell that
information to the highest bidder to stay afloat... Maybe the company is even
swallowed by a larger company that then revokes all of the old privacy
policies...

------
ashishbharthi
And the article has Facebook connect button below it to sign in to write
comments!!

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sunchild
The problem with Facebook is and will always be this: when you signed up, you
signed away your rights to privacy.

If you think publishing into their social graph is worth letting them spy on
you, go for it.

If you want access to their social graph so you can unearth long-lost friends,
feel free.

Personally, I don't see how any of it adds up to a fair deal in anyone's mind,
but I very often am unable to understand why people do things that are against
their own best interests.

~~~
ewjordan
_Personally, I don't see how any of it adds up to a fair deal in anyone's
mind, but I very often am unable to understand why people do things that are
against their own best interests._

You've listed the upsides, which for some people (I dare say even most people,
at least outside of these circles) are quite significant - most people I know
absolutely love Facebook, and feel it adds a lot to their lives. They're
_definitely_ getting something useful out of it.

But even if this advertising-pocalypse 2.0 comes to pass, what's the tangible
downside for most of these people? Beyond the obvious "don't post naked
pictures of yourself hitting the crack pipe right before going into your job
interview" stuff, I mean.

Almost nobody actually gives a shit or a half whether some company knows what
they buy, what sites they visit, what products they might be interested in,
etc., as long as this stuff is not browseable by the public at large.
Certainly this information _could_ be used in ways that might hurt them, but
for the most part it is merely used to try to sell them stuff that they didn't
realize they might want. I just can't get behind the "ZOMG they'll try to sell
me stuff that I actually might want to buy, based on what I've already bought,
the HORROR!" logic, it really doesn't seem that sinister to me, and in certain
contexts (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) I find it incredibly useful.

I don't use Facebook, but that's only because I value social privacy; as a
rule, I don't want people I went to school with to be able to get in touch
with me at all, especially not if it's as easy and impersonal as clicking a
box next to my name on a list of former classmates. People that care enough
can find me in any of a million other ways if they have anything specific to
say to _me_.

But I could care less if Facebook gathers advertising data on me; I _don't_
care one bit when Google does it, and I actually find a bit of value in it
because if I'm going to be served ads, I'd prefer that they be targeted at me
than completely irrelevant.

~~~
pyre
What happens when the insurance company sees that you've been browsing
swingers sights? Maybe they raise your rates because you're into 'high risk'
activities?

You browse for 'sexual' things in 'private browsing mode' you say? What about
the insurance company finds out that you're on a rock-climbing mailing list or
that you frequent a rock-climbing forum? Up goes your rates!

Access to these kinds of information _need_ to come with a set of rules
regarding how the information can be used. The problem is that hindsight is
20/20 on what rules will work the best (i.e. which are too strict, which are
not strict enough, which don't do anything, which have loopholes, etc), too
bad foresight isn't.

I personally don't think that private B2B contracts can get everything right,
nor do I believe that the government can/will pass any laws that will fix
this. Personally, I don't think that anyone can be trusted with the vast
quantities of data that are out there.

------
noelchurchill
_It’s called ad re-targeting, and it’s the most effective innovation online
ads have seen in a while. And no one will be able to do it better than
Facebook._

Well, Google already does it better, but Facebook might be able to catch up.

~~~
bad_user
I think Google will always have better data ... Google knows what you're
really searching for.

By contrast on Facebook it's just a vanity contest.

One example ... I'm sometimes searching for interesting articles in an area,
but without having anything specific in mind. Delicious provides way better
results than browsing Reddit ... that's because on Delicious the rating is not
a conscious choice.

------
hugh3
This is enough to make me want to use a separate browser just for facebook, to
make sure that facebook doesn't know anything about me that I don't
consciously decide to tell it.

Hmm, startup idea: a browser designed specifically to keep facebook in its
place.

~~~
thwarted
This is called "New Incognito Window" in chrome/chromium, or a separate
profile in Firefox. What would be really nice, though, is the ability to have
a bookmark open in an incognito window. The separate profile in Firefox is
better because it'll keep cookies between sessions so you don't need to keep
logging into facebook.

~~~
listic
"Tools" -> "Start Private Browsing" in Firefox

~~~
wwortiz
control-shift-P works as well (probably command on a mac but I don't have one)

But really chromium/chrome has the best implementation as it creates a new
window and doesn't destroy your session.

~~~
listic
In Firefox, the session isn't destroyed, instead it is saved until you choose
"Tools" -> "Stop Private Browsing". But, the chromium implementation might be
more convenient.

------
SlyShy
I'm not going to be comfortable until Facebook's motto becomes "Don't be
evil". ;)

------
toby
I'm genuinely curious -- I've never been particularly concerned about privacy
on the internet, and it seems like the author's main concern is better ad
targeting (which I see as beneficial, although I may be in a minority).

What are some other dangerous scenarios that people can imagine?

~~~
pyre
In order to create this 'targeted advertising,' they create huge databases of
information on people. People called this creepy when the FBI was doing it,
but it's ok when a private corporation does it? It's not like the
FBI/CIA/MI6/etc doesn't just send a request to the company and get your data
anyways... So I'm not really seeing the difference between _any_ company
having access to this information and the government having access to it.

In some cases, it may be that the government has _better_ controls over who
can internally access the data. Not that I necessarily trust the government to
create such oversight, but the sheer amount of bureaucracy can prevent things
from happening. On the other hand, there are plenty of companies that have
'organically' grown from a point were everyone was trusted, and now they have
poor controls in place or they just have the bare minimum 'government
mandated' controls in place to comply with the law.

In general though, I don't really think that anyone can be trusted with that
sort of information.

~~~
dhimes
To your point is the Beverly Dennis v. Metromail case. A company had a bad
idea for outsourcing some of the tasks they performed with the data they had.

It's covered here <http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ftc-info_mktpl.htm> (buried
deep in the page)

------
commanda
RFID tags "implanted" in conference badges? The OP jumps on to this slippery
slope argument and lands in big-brother-knows-my-physical-location land.
Nowhere at f8 did Facebook announce any plans for stepping into the location-
based services market, least of all with any specialized hardware the OP is so
afraid of.

------
digitallogic
"Given pre-condition #2 (traffic), Facebook Like buttons are going to be
everywhere. All of the top sites will have them, and most of the medium-sized
sites will too."

Wrong. All the medium-sized sites will have it, and all the >= 2nd place large
sites (bing, retailers that aren't amazon) will have it. All the top large
site will have their own systems to push.

------
eirene
Like most monocultures operating on 20th century logic, FB will fail. I'm not
saying they won't make a ton of money in the process (ala MS) but in the end,
the system will innovate around and past them (as it is already doing).

The 21st century is all about UX, i.e. power to the people. Entities who do
not recognize this will not thrive in the long-term.

~~~
joubert
Sounds interesting. Care to expand?

------
mattwdelong
I think if Facebook seriously wants to gain trust, they must offer the ability
to curate your personal data. Not just FUTURE data -- All of your data. Of
course, they would be giving up some serious leverage that they have right now
in taking _control_ of the internet.

I have been seriously questioning my presence on Facebook for some time now,
the only thing holding me back is that a large portion of my distant friends
and relatives are on Facebook, and they use it as a primary method of contact.
I was an early adopter of Facebook, the amount of data they have on me over
the years -- especially during my stupid years at University, scares me. When
will this be used against me? Furthermore, HOW it can be used against me
scares me most.

------
stcredzero
There are three countervailing forces: the residual desire for privacy, the
availability of cloud resources, and the ubiquity of personal mobile
computing.

There are still plenty of people who use Facebook and even the Internet as
little as possible. They can do so because there are other communication
channels available and because networks other than the ones online still
matter as much or more than their online networks.

The cloud and mobile computing will allow some people to opt-out of social
networks, providing ecological niches for competitor networks to grow. Some
youth will aways find it awkward to be on the same social network as their
parents. New social networks will arise and competition will keep these
networks in check.

------
toddh
The likes also feed into the advertising system, which may be obvious but I
didn't read that connection. With the likes being so ubiquitous it's quite
possible, given their broad reach, that Facebook will be able build a better
model of your propensities than Google.

------
Tichy
"It’s called ad re-targeting, and it’s the most effective innovation online
ads have seen in a while."

I can not believe that Google & other ad networks have not been doing this for
years already. (That's why they are networks).

~~~
falsestprophet
Be assured they did and they do.

------
Tycho
What I wonder about Facebook is the effects of sharing information with people
you don't _really_ want to share information with. For instance, the older
generations are all signing up for Facebook now; it's an phenomenon for 'all
the family.' Therein lies its problem: teenagers, tweenagers, don't want the
grown-ups to know everything about their social lives. It starts to get
awkward.

I predict some migration of young people to newer, trendier social networks
because of this issue.

~~~
pyre
Or there is a big push for Facebook for create/fix publishing controls? (i.e.
'publish this post to everyone except mom & dad')

~~~
Tycho
I'm thinking they would need to get quite complex - eg. what happens if
someone posts to your 'wall' - who controls the visibility of that? Simply
moving to a different site might be a more convenient solution for most
people. Especially if these 'all-in-one' programs become more popular.

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jeffreyg
This person did not answer their own question.

There have been a bunch of posts about "Company X will know too much about me,
. . . "

No one ever says WHY that scares the shit out of them.

------
prgmatic
I think the social-media meets brick and mortar environment you predict is
going to happen one way or another whether it's FB or someone else.

------
Pheter
How about this: Don't use Facebook if it scares the shit out of you.

------
FlorinAndrei
Privacy is dead. Get over it.

~~~
stcredzero
Not dead, only marginalized. Don't forget that there's always been power in
the marginal.

