
Charlie Stross on Girls Around Me - bigiain
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/03/not-an-april-fool-1.html
======
unreal37
I think there is a generational difference in the concept of privacy. And a
misunderstanding that the general public "doesn't understand" the privacy
controls on Facebook.

My 69 year old mother, when she was on Facebook, had her privacy controls to
maximum. You couldn't find her on search. She didn't use her real name even!
And she was sending me articles by email every other week when Facebook had
some privacy breach. So whenever I hear someone say "most people don't
understand privacy on Facebook" I call bullshit because my own mother is the
counterexample. She's since deleted her account because of privacy concerns.

I think kids of today (teens and twenty-somethings) don't care as much. They
don't mind telling the world they are at a bar tonight. They add people they
don't know as friends. They have 800, 900 Facebook friends. There is no
privacy when you have 900 Facebook friends and they know it.

All these arguments about stalkers, rapists, and white supremacists are straw
men. As another commenter said, you don't NEED an app to find random people.
Just use your eyes. A supremacist after Jews? Not hard to find if you know
where to look. A rapist looking for women? Not hard to find if you know where
to look. This has nothing to do with Facebook.

~~~
dmbaggett
_I think kids of today (teens and twenty-somethings) don't care as much. They
don't mind telling the world they are at a bar tonight._

But is this view the result of rational consideration, with full knowledge of
all the implications, or is it something these young people have been drawn
into without stopping to think about the implications? Or worse: without the
full implications even being clear?

In other words: is this really a demographic shift we're seeing, or simply a
stage-of-life effect? Will the same teens holding the quoted view of privacy
recoil in horror at their actions twenty years later? Will these privacy
choices alter the courses of the lives in ways they wish they could later
undo? If so, then it seems unreasonable to wave away this mass choice as
morally or societally neutral.

Simply put: is privacy a public safety issue or not? If it is, then an
argument can be made to restrict young people's (and even grown adults')
freedom to choose their "policy" on it, just as many societies do with drugs,
alcohol, driving, etc. I think Charlie's post makes a pretty strong argument
that privacy _is_ a matter of public safety and societal well-being.

Putting words in his mouth, his argument might be that companies like Facebook
are inducing people to relinquish their privacy rights without the full
knowledge of the long-term implications -- just as profit-seeking tobacco
companies induced large numbers of people to smoke without full knowledge of
the long-term implications. Many governments now see the public policy
advantages to making the consequences of smoking clear to the public; the same
is not yet true of privacy rights.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> Or worse: without the full implications even being clear?

the implications of making this kind of data public are not going to be clear.
The data can be combined with other data or mined later in unexpected and
surprising ways.

Most people are surprised at how few data points are required to uniquely
identify them. Most people will cheerfully enter their first name, family name
and date of birth into any website that asks for it.

A while ago I heard the term "retroactive privacy invasion" applied to things
such as good cheap facial recognition becoming available and being applied to
existing archives of social photos or surveillance video.

------
vectorpush
_Real human beings live complex lives in which they occupy different roles
which are exposed to different people. Facebook tries to bundle everything up
into one amorphous blob._

This is my biggest issue with Facebook. I was once a moderately active
Facebook user, back when it was cool and before it became ubiquitous. Over the
years, without really thinking about it, I've allowed my Facebook friends-list
to accumulate dozens of extended (and my entire immediate) family as well as
professional colleagues and many other miscellaneous acquaintances of various
walks.

I was once fond of posting interesting articles and commentary, but now I am
compelled to consider the politics/religion/sensitivities of ~250 individuals
lest I end up in a flame war with my aunt or boss or individuals who I've been
actively avoiding who are suddenly pissed because I made a FB post but didn't
reply/comment/like their relationship status update.

Facebook has managed to make social interaction online _more_ uncomfortable
than real life, and as a result it's been over a year since I've made any type
of visible activity on Facebook, but I still can't escape...

Socializing in the real world, I have to explicitly state things like: "Hey,
please don't geotag me to this pub, and don't post pictures of me chugging
this pint of Blue Moon".

In conclusion, fuck Facebook.

~~~
rmc
Delete your account?

~~~
vectorpush
Fair enough, and I've considered it, but deleting my account still doesn't
prevent others from tagging and posting pictures of me for the benefit of
those who can identify me through name or face alone. At least with an active
Facebook account, I receive notifications whenever my likeness is invoked.

Additionally, Facebook has become the defacto communication platform of the
day and not having one is sometimes viewed as a social red flag (or as a lie).
My cellphone # has changed three times since 2004, but the respective Facebook
query has only become better at finding me. My point being, "delete your
account?" is something akin to "cancel your cell service?" except nobody calls
and everyone uses Facebook.

~~~
zheng
You must have a strange social group. I don't have a facebook, and have never
once had a problem in anything but other websites wanting me to have one. When
friends ask for my facebook I say I don't have one, tell them I don't like
their attitude towards privacy, they find it interesting and we move on.

~~~
vectorpush
_You must have a strange social group._

Not everyone is as enlightened as your non-strange social group. One doesn't
face ostracism for lack of a Facebook account, but a lot of real social
interaction occurs on Facebook and I don't presume to judge those who highly
value that interaction. Those people do exist and some of them are great
people.

------
bigiain
Key quote: "Unfortunately you don't need a special purpose tool like "Girls
Around Me" to do this, if you have a reasonably powerful Facebook query tool
and know how to use it. I can't stress this strongly enough: the problem was
not invented by SMS Services O.o.o. of Russia, who wrote the app. And banning
the app will not make the problem go away."

~~~
itsmequinn
This is exactly what I was saying last night. There is much MORE information
available than this app accesses. This is just one of the first times someone
had put a particularly creepy wrapper on it.

~~~
flomo
Indeed. One can imagine an entirely different reaction if the app was called
something like "Popular People Around Me" and had come out of the US startup
community rather than Russia.

------
RandallBrown
The whole purpose of FourSquare and Facebook is to show off information about
yourself to other people. You sign up for FourSquare because you _want_ to
tell people where you are. You _want_ other people to know where you are. You
sign up for Facebook so you can show other people your photos and see other
people's photos. You can talk to them, interact, and share your beliefs.

Both services make it possible to limit who this information is shared with.
Saying "it's confusing" is a pretty poor argument as to why that makes these
things creepy or dangerous. Most people WANT this information to be public.
That's why they signed up for these services in the first place.

Personally, I feel MUCH safer that people know where I am and what I'm doing.
If I ever go missing, there will be a solid documented trail of where I've
been up until I go missing.

------
tptacek
This notion that Facebook artificially suppresses the multiple "roles"
(parent, teacher, officemate, spouse) people live in their real lives is a red
herring. Stross tries to make a point by suggesting teachers don't want
students to see into their private lives. Yes. And this is why teachers don't
friend students on Facebook.

In reality, Facebook doesn't suppress those roles; it just doesn't support
them (and when it comes close, perhaps accidentally, that's when Fb can start
to get a little awkward --- like, my Dad is an Fb friend; but: some people
have adult friendships with their parents! [My dad is still my dad]).

But most people do have a somewhat coherent role of "adult out in the real
world interacting with peers, friends, and acquaintances in a social setting".
It's the role you play when you go to a coworker's house party, or to a bar,
or to the park. This is a huge part of most people's lives. Capturing it in
social software is not a minor achievement.

The expectation that Facebook should do so much more than that, dividing
people's lives perfectly into facets like "immediate family" and "work group",
seems off. It may not even be possible. Just don't friend those people.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
Exactly. For some people it makes sense to be Facebook friends with their
parents, because they interact with them socially.

It probably never makes sense to be Facebook friends with your students, but
then why would you want a relationship with them at all on any social network?
It just doesn't seem like an appropriate forum for that relationship. It's not
as if Facebook is meant to replace all communication online.

------
Symmetry
I agree with a lot of what Charlie says here, but on the other hand some of
the privacy criticisms he makes about the app and Facebook are equally valid
criticisms of walking outside in public: if you can tell what race I am by
looking at my picture on Facebook you can also tell what race I am by looking
at my face when you see me in person. I feel like that sort of throwing out
arguments without considering them detracts from having a meaningful debate
about real dangers to privacy that social media can pose.

~~~
cstross
There are two key differences between walking outside in public and disclosure
on Facebook:

a) In public, observation is reciprocal (that is, you can see who is watching
you) -- less universal in these days of CCTV, but traditionally this has
generally been the case,

and

b) Public observation is real time and line of sight; FB "observation" may
take place days, months or years later by persons you have never had an
opportunity to see.

The long term consequences arising from these new constraints are not yet
obvious.

------
trestacos
A fundamental part of charles' argument is that in order to sell ads, facebook
must encourage you to set your profile settings to public. That's not the
case. It doesn't matter whether you've set your profile to fully private -
Facebook's privacy settings don't affect whether or not marketers can target
you with ads. In fact, in that regard facebook is incented to protect your
privacy so that you'll be comfortable putting more information in the site,
which they can then use for better targeting. Since marketers don't get
specific information about _you_ when you're targeted, your privacy hasn't
been breached in doing so.

This doesn't change that people should be very careful about their privacy
settings, but the fact that facebook does targeted ads doesn't mean they have
incentives to encourage you to make everything you post public.

------
shadowfiend
“However, to make such micro-targeted advertising practical, the social
networks need to motivate their users to disclose information relevant to
advertisers. ”

This is what makes most complaints in the facebook-makes-money-off-of-you vein
a complete misunderstanding of technology.

For the purposes of advertising, facebook does not need you to disclose
relevant information to anyone but facebook. Advertisers need never come
anywhere near that information. The data doesn't even need to be sent to them
in aggregate. All advertisers need to do is say “I want to target this
demographic”. They then need to get no data other than “someone from this
demographic clicked on your ad”. That's it! Facebook has the data, facebook
does the matching, facebook provides feedback in clicks—this, yes, in
aggregate—and no other information needs to be exchanged.

There is a broader argument being made here, about exposing personal
information and what have you, but facebook doesn't need you to make your
information public so that advertisers can get to it, they want you to make
your information public so that that guy you met at a party last night can
find you, friend you, and start liking your posts, thus making you feel that
your posts are getting more attention, thus making you feel good about
yourself, thus making you want to post more, thus making others want to get on
more to read your posts, etc, etc. Of course, they also want it public so that
guy over there can look you up and see some of your pictures, even if he
doesn't necessarily intend on friending you. That way, said guy is also on
facebook, using it more than before.

So I would argue that how public information disclosure is on facebook is _far
more_ about retention and usage than it is about advertising. Advertising can
be and, at least as far as my understanding of it goes, _is_ done without
having to disclose _anything_ to the advertiser. And that's as it should be,
since the technology lets them not leak that info. Why would they want to
provide that information if they can achieve the same results without doing
so?

With that in mind, I wish the facebook privacy argument would stop presenting
advertiser information swapping as a real issue. There are reasons that
privacy is an issue on facebook, foursquare, etc., (indeed, this app is an
excellent example) but I don't think advertising is one of those reasons. That
can be done with very little information revealed, even in aggregate.

(It's possible I missed a detailing somewhere of facebook explicitly exposing
information to advertisers in a way different from what I mention above; if
so, I'd love a link and I'll sit down and be quiet now :) It's also true that
_between_ fb advertisements and installing fb like buttons, it's possible to
gather more data on a user than concentrating on advertisements alone. But
that's a complaint about fb giving your information to _apps_ , and while it's
a lot harder to tease out the motivations there, I think they still derive a
greater benefit from that in terms of retention and usage than they do in
terms of advertising.)

~~~
neutronicus
The discrimination possibilities are just as unsettling, even if they use the
same privacy model.

Say I want to show an "ad" to white, heterosexual, protestant men with
libertarian leanings, no history of depression, unlikely to use alcohol in
their free time, who don't look pornography, and are predisposed towards
compliance with authority currently employed in the technology industry
earning over $150,000. Say my "ad" is for a high-paying job opportunity. Or
housing. Facebook definitely has the ability to let me do this.

I find that unsettling, in that people can use Facebook to apply prejudices
against information I'd prefer to keep hidden but that Facebook has inferred
via data-mining _even without_ knowing who I am or actually learning that
information about me.

The "stalker" scenario presented here is certainly frightening (although as a
heterosexual man I can only really understand the fear in the abstract), but
the "reveals information I'd prefer to keep hidden to people with a financial
motive for knowing it" scenario is already getting uncomfortable.

~~~
jrockway
I'd rather have people discriminate against me before I meet them rather than
after I meet them. It saves me time.

If I showed up to a job interview where someone wanted a "white, heterosexual,
protestant men with libertarian leanings, no history of depression, unlikely
to use alcohol in their free time, who don't look pornography, and are
predisposed towards compliance with authority", it would be a strong
disappointment for both of us. The problem is not targeted ads. The problem is
that people suck.

~~~
PaperclipTaken
In some cases, you are correct. For instance, if I am hiring someone to sell
cars, I need a person who I can expect to be liked even by the most racist
people.

But say that I am only slightly racist. If I knew you were Black, I probably
would not go out of my way to say high to you. But once we are having a
conversation it's easy for me to relate to you and my prejudices are more
likely to be overridden.

~~~
ktizo
I'd start with how good they are at sales. If you sell twice as many cars to
everybody else, then why should you care if there are some bigots who don't
buy your cars.

------
reidmain
"The problem is this: all social networks run on the principle that if you're
not paying for the product, you are the product."

I wonder what percentage of Facebook/Foursquare/etc users realize this?

~~~
scotty79
You are a product to almost everybody who shows you pretty pictures or talks
to you not asked. It's nothing unusual.

------
ghshephard
I signed up for Facebook back when it required you to have an email address
associated with a university. I acquired my 300 or so friends, various
extended family members (each of which in their own carefully crafted privacy
circles) and an impressive collection of pictures of debauchery at various
parties (ergo, the carefully crafted privacy circles)

The point a which FB became a $100 Billion entity is about when I realized
that perhaps it was time to move on. This article was the catalyst that let me
pull the rip cord and delete my Facebook account. All credit to Facebbok -
they make it exceptionally easy to do. Took me all of 90 seconds (and most of
that was deciphering a captcha).

I've switched Path with a much smaller group of five friends (funny how there
were only five of the 300 i really felt the need to share with) - i'll hang
out there until that becomes intrusive in some way I don't appreciate - who
knows, maybe a rolling history of increasingly privacy oriented social
networks is the way to go.

Maybe, one day, there will be a social network upon which, -I- am the
customer. I would certainly pay for that service.

~~~
icebraining
_All credit to Facebbok - they make it exceptionally easy to do. Took me all
of 90 seconds (and most of that was deciphering a captcha)._

They seem to have a tendency to restore it if you so much as look at one of
their buttons during the two week period after you "delete" it. Only after
that it becomes "deleted".

------
golden_apples
Tangential to the actual topic of discussion:

what exactly has changed in Facebook's developer/app policies that an app like
this is possible today, while a year ago something like Breakup Notifier was
blocked from Facebook's API? Was it just that Girls Near Me hadn't gotten
noticed yet?

(I see that Foursquare blocked Girls Near Me from their API, but I haven't
seen a response from Facebook yet.)

------
fredBuddemeyer
is there any evidence that the loss of privacy is more than the gains we share
from being open and sharing? is there any reason to believe that even such
thoughtful posts about privacy will not look quaint and absurd in a couple of
years? a loss in privacy is a gain in openness and understanding and thats why
real (and much more often) hypothetical horrors aside it is an intrinsic and
evolutionary trend for humanity.

------
AndyKelley
"Or even just an unscrupulous ass-hat in search of a one night stand who isn't
above researching his target's taste in music and drinks without their
knowledge."

Why is he so up in arms about this? What's wrong with this behavior, other
than that it is arbitrarily discouraged by most of our culture?

These women are making this information public. If some guy wants to try to
use this publicly broadcast information to meet women and attempt to seduce
them, who cares? Maybe she'll even enjoy the fact that the guy has bothered to
find something common to talk about.

~~~
RobAtticus
I think the implication is the guy doesnt actually share the interests but can
pretend he does to appear like he has something in common with her. The tactic
isnt new or anything, just a bit easier to pull off.

------
trestacos
I think Charles is right to be concerned about the current state of privacy in
social media, but I take issue with his statement that facebook is
deliberately making it harder to make your content private. If you click on
Privacy setting in facebook today the first thing you're greeted with is a big
control asking you if you want your profile to be public /friends/custom. But
first you have to care enough to click on it.

Building social network privacy controls is not an easy problem b/c people
don't want to do the extra work that's involved in setting privacy on things
that they post AND it's confusing. Most people just don't want to choose a
circle for their 300 fb friends.

Facebook has gone through many iterations of privacy controls -
<https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=391922327130> goes into some of that
history. Some of them even included google circle-like functionality for
privacy. No one used them.

I'm not saying that these controls couldn't be improved, but the point here is
that privacy controls take _work_ from users. Until society as a whole is
aware of these issues (and Girls Around Me does a great job of it :), people
aren't going to invest the time to do it.

TL;DR - building privacy controls are hard. The industry as a whole needs to
improve them, but society also needs to learn to care about their privacy so
they actually use what's available to them.

------
nevinera
I initially thought that the app was an amusing attempt to point out how
creepy fb and 4sq are.

~~~
J3L2404
EFF should build a MaxCreepOut app just to highlight the situation.

------
dfc
_"It's probably possible to apply this sort of data mining exercise to
determine whether a woman has had an abortion or is pro-choice."_

Using a social graph to figure out if a user is pro-choice is probably not
that hard. I'd love to hear how this guy is going to use it to determine if
someone has had an abortion. But I'm afraid to know what assumptions he makes
about women who have abortions in order to come to this conclusion.

~~~
ams6110
Target was able to figure out when a woman had likely become pregnant. So it's
probably not impossible to figure out when a woman has had an abortion.

~~~
dfc
Target is not a social network, but I will play along. Target was able to
discern pregnancy because of purchases made or not made over a span of months,
many months. In the case of abortion there is a significant motivation to not
wait; namely abortion laws but also social stigma. Expectant mothers purchased
folic acid and other vitamins. There is not a recommended vitamin routine for
an abortion. The same thing can be said for many other purchases made by
expectant mothers. How are you going to separate abortions from miscarriages?

------
Katelyn
I disagree with many of the arguments you make to support your theory, namely
1)the idea that the way users use Facebook wont evolve and get more
sophisticated as they share more information, and 2) the idea that sharing
more information about yourself even makes you more susceptible to stalker and
hate crimes.

After I read your post, I went back up to the top re-read your proposal,
which, in its simplest form, makes a the claim that reads: "Facebook-as-a-
business will eventually kill the very users it needs to survive, because in
order for Facebook to grow and profit, it will encourage users to share more
about themselves with others, and as a result, users will share so much about
themselves with others, (who they are, their interests, behavior, location)
that they will become victims of crimes like rape, murder or even hate crimes
and genocide.

This sounds outlandish, of not even a little silly. Surely, our acculturation
with Facebook and the way we use it will evolve over time to protect our
selves from this kind of thing from happening.

------
martswite
I may be way out here but, it's been mentioned that the data facebook holds
that is publicly available could be used and mined to target certain groups of
people...

Am I way out here in mentioning historical organisations that also stored
masses of data on a population like the stasi (maybe extreme)?

I just find it extremely uncomfortable that people are so blasé about what
they share on facebook. What worries me more is that I dont think people are
ignorant of the privacy settings. Amongst my friends that do use it, they
know, they just dont really care, purely because as some people have said it
takes maintenance, makes it more difficult to connect with people or makes it
impossible to be connected with...

I just find this whole culture of sharing intimate details with a) facebook
and b) with each other, that we never really shared previously to be
disturbing and the organisations that encourage this to be sinister.

------
scotty79
I don't really like the whole privacy debate.

Should my safety rely mostly on the fact that people don't know anything about
me?

I'd rather much prefer the world where me not being stalked relies not on the
fact that my potential stalker knows nothing about me, but on the fact that
everybody knows everything about my potential stalker.

I think that the world I'd prefer is where the technology currently drags us
kicking and screaming.

~~~
scribu
In other words, "Screw privacy! If you're honest, you've got nothing to hide."

~~~
scotty79
No. Rather "Screw privacy! Regardless of your honesty you'll eventually won't
be able to hide anything. You might as well demand open access to this kind of
information about everybody because some people will know those things about
you."

------
dfc
What is a _"reasonably powerful facebook query tooi"_? Is this an app category
that exists? Are there any good examples?

------
rdl
I wonder how many billions this app could drop off Facebook's IPO, if it
either causes people to avoid sharing (unlikely) or brings in a heavy-handed
regulatory response in an election year (much more likely).

FB should just buy the company to kill the product; would be cheap in
comparison. 1% chance of 100mm loss would warrant it.

~~~
nyrath
And about five minutes later, zillions of programmers would start writing
similar apps, in hope of a big payday when Facebook shows up to buy them out.

~~~
rdl
Which would solve facebook's other problem (hiring).

------
bugsbunnyak
How the hell does this have anything to do with the Rwandan genocide (linked
in second paragraph)? I agree that this confluence of apps/search/sharing is
potentially dangerous, but that kind of hyperbole doesn't help -- especially
when it is a non-sequitur.

~~~
cstross
It's not a non-sequiteur; it's a hook for the last-but-one paragraph, which
provides a rather more concrete example of how such tools might be misused in
future.

~~~
gyardley
I don't know, Charlie - yes, these tools can facilitate genocide, but we've
shown ourselves to be pretty good at the genocide thing with a lot less
sophisticated technology.

The next time we have a genocide, we'll use a lot of different tools to do it,
maybe even iPhone applications and Facebook data, but I have a hard time
believing the same horror wouldn't have occurred absent this information.

The problem isn't the app, and the problem isn't the behavioral targeting
industry that encourages others to share. The problem is us. When one group of
us makes up our minds to kill another group of us, it's going to happen
whatever the technology at hand.

------
Aftershock21
Why do you need an app to find girls AROUND YOU! I find them around me all the
time.

------
georgieporgie
Am I the only one who thinks the saddest part of all this is the fact that
people immediately jump to the conclusion of "OMG STALKERS AND RAPISTS!"?
We're addicted to worst-case thinking. We see men as aggressors and dangerous,
and we reinforce notions of "weak" members of society (i.e. women and
children) needing to be hidden away in what we perceive as safety.

~~~
drblast
You're not the only one.

What's a bit silly is the idea that there's someone sitting at home wishing to
perform a stalking or rape, but is prevented from doing so by the lack of an
app for that.

~~~
epo
What's a bit silly (actually idiotic) is your second sentence. No one is
claiming that stalking or rape is impossible without these apps, they are
saying such apps makes life easier for stalkers and rapists.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
It seems unlikely that social media has had a significant effect on making
rape easier because rapes in the US been declining for a while now.

