
Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent to do same - ColinWright
http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/01/brutal-dishonesty
======
gyardley
It's perfectly possible for Facebook to not track users at the moment and
simultaneously prepare for a future where this is not only acceptable, it's
expected.

Facebook has placed a long-term bet that people will willingly share pretty
much everything they do. When they file patents like this, they're skating
where the puck is headed, not where it is now.

~~~
Bud
Yeah. It's also possible, and indeed true, that Facebook is lying through its
teeth, aggressively tracking now while claiming not to, introducing ever-more-
pervasive and invasive tracking without notifying users or giving them an
informed choice in the matter, thus forcibly paving the way for the future
that will place them in the most powerful position.

Let's be real. Facebook has not "placed a long-term bet"; they are actively
engineering that reality right now, despite loud and frequent objections from
users.

~~~
earplug
If Facebook is "lying through its teeth" it will only hurt them in the long
run. What is even more realistic is that they are getting (have become) so big
that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. That becomes
typical in a large organization.

This could also simply be a way for them to protect themselves in the future,
as we've all seen just how heated the patent space is becoming for the big
boys...

~~~
jellicle
> If Facebook is "lying through its teeth" it will only hurt them in the long
> run.

Because after all, we see corporations being punished every day for lying by
the powerful and effective consumer protection organizations in the United
States.

~~~
earplug
Hmmm... I never made any such claims about consumer protection organizations.
This is something you've conjured up on your own.

The bottom line is, if this is something we (the users) do not want, we have
the power to make Facebook change it. We've seen examples of this in the past
with Facebook (ex: their friend recommended ad's).

I don't believe we can rely on our government run organizations to wholly
protect us, nor have I made any such claim. But we sure as hell can vote what
we want and don't want, from a private company, through our buying and/or
usage patterns.

~~~
ericd
See this for why your thesis that the market will naturally reject this is
probably wrong, even if it's abhorrent to them now:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog>

It's very easy for liberties/expectations to be eroded imperceptibly until
they're gone and people think that's the norm because that's the way things
are, and everyone seems to be OK with it.

~~~
CWuestefeld
It's very easy to see why that's a problem. But it should be equally easy to
see the long-term results when we attempt to use the strength of government to
ensure market outcomes. It doesn't take long for the regulatory agency to wind
up working for the goals of the very entities they're intended to police. This
is called Regulatory Capture, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture> .

This isn't a problem of bad politicians or people not trying hard enough to
solve the problems. It's fundamentally implied by the nature of the beast. We
need to have experts in the role of regulators; but where do experts come
from, except from experience as past workers in those industries? This is all
basic public choice economic theory. No amount of voting for the right
candidates, or carefully crafting the regulations is going to get around the
problem.

~~~
ericd
Yep, there are problems there too, the point of my post was to refute the
parent's opinion that the market would naturally take care of it.

I'm afraid I don't have a good solution short of some way of screening for
only people who are allergic to cronyism.

Thanks for the link on Regulatory capture, I didn't realize that that
phenomenon had a name, but I'm glad it does. It's one of the more infuriating
things about the US government and the SEC in particular when it seems to
handle lots of things with kid gloves when they should be prosecuting them
with all the zeal they seem to have for prosecuting minor drug dealers.

~~~
earplug
I don't believe the "market" will naturally take care of it. You're looking at
this through blurred glasses. People, not markets, will have a choice (if they
so decide) to use or not use something. Buy or not buy something. That is
their power and we have copious examples through out our history of this
indeed working should enough people get together and want to make this change.
Again, we are talking about a private company (Facebook) who relies on these
very same people for it's success, this is NOT a reference to a form of
government that is running out of control. We've seen FB change in the past
(see my previous comment), no reason for them not to do the same in the future
should WE decide they need to.

There is a huge difference.

~~~
ericd
I'm not. The boiling frog principle still applies. The revolutions you're
talking about require people to get together and foment them, and I don't
think it will happen at sufficient scale for FB to care, or to prevent them
from having a very large negative effect on society.

------
anfedorov
I think the context is slightly different: when an employee says "we do not
track users on other domains", he means that they don't record your loading of
a page with a "Like" button, even though they could. The patent claim is for a
system with facebook "receiving one or more communications from a third-party
website [containing] an action taken by a user", which they then incorporate
into their ad-serving wizardry.

This could be quite interesting, actually: imagine facebook launches a system
where any third-party website can give it a stream of "actions" taken by
facebook's users, and pay them based on how good the data are for predicting
ad preference. Site owners would then have a financial incentive to report to
facebook every single thing their users do.

Imagine if HN did this, reporting to facebook the literacy level of your
comments, the speed at which you read the comments, what subjects you spend
the most time reading, what you comment on, etc.

------
tybris
You don't patent something because you built it. You patent something because
you think someone else might build it, or because you don't want someone else
to prevent you from building it.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Both reasons imply an intention to track users. But there is a third
possibility. They could have patented it because they are so convinced that
user tracking across websites is evil that they want to save the world from it
by preventing others from ever doing it.

After all a company that has 600 million users has a responsibility to make
sure all these people are not put in harm's way. Just imagine how Mark
Zuckerberg's feelings could get hurt if even one of his users ("the dumb
fucks") were to be taken advantage of by some evil, data greedy, ad funded
search behemoth.

And isn't it completely obvious that Facebook, unlike other major Internet
companies, has no interest in tracking users? What on earth could they
possibly do with that tracking data? Sell targeted advertising? No no no,
Facebook isn't _that_ kind of company! And doesn't their track record of
honesty and openness speak for itself?

~~~
alexgartrell
I'd like to try to respond to this, but I can't, because you've gone out of
your way to obscure whatever point you have with three paragraphs of ultra-
sarcastic nonsense.

Fundamentally though, I think your point is, "I don't trust Facebook because
of statements and privacy mistakes they've made in the past." That's a fine
opinion to have (even though I obviously don't agree with it), so please, for
the sake of discussion, state it like that instead.

Edited to add that, in response to your first point (the non-sarcastic one),
it doesn't necessarily imply an intent to track users. Filing defensive
patents is nothing new at FB (Facebook patented the News Feed and hasn't yet
sued anyone for infringement).

~~~
fauigerzigerk
No, my point is not that I don't trust Facebook and I don't think they have
made a single honest mistake. My point is that their intentions and interests
are a logical consequence of their business model. Claiming to have no
interest in collecting as much information as possible about their users is
absurd because that is what they sell.

The reality is also plain to see for anyone who knows the least bit about web
technologies. The way they designed their like button, their logout, their
privacy defaults, etc is just too obvious and their public lies are a
calculated attempt to mislead people who don't have a clue how these things
work.

~~~
alexgartrell
Then why didn't you say that? You'd have cleanly communicated your point with
minimal confusion, and it would have let us skip out on the snarky stuff.

Seriously, I'm not trying to be a Facebook PR drone here, I just want HN to
not suck, and one of the reasons it didn't suck before was the lack of snarky
crap.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I would take your concerns about HN quality a lot more seriously if this
wasn't about sarcasm directed at your own employer and if it wasn't about a
story that exemplifies the truly breathtaking duplicity of the corporation
that pays your bills.

------
damoncali
When you have less credibility than an investment banker on a cocaine bender,
you've got some trust issues.

I'm still trying to figure out if anyone will care. My faith in humanity is
being tested.

~~~
megablast
Why should people care about this, they don't actually care that 1000s of
people a day die of starvation. But you consider this is worth caring about?

It is the way of the world, too many important things to care about.

~~~
damoncali
Well, if I turn of my computer, nobody gets to eat.

------
tokenadult
As Confucius said, in one of his most famous take-downs,
"始吾於人也、聽其言而信其行、今吾於人也、聽其言而觀其行。At first in dealing with people, I would hear
their words and trust their deeds, but now my way of dealing with people is to
hear their words and observe their deeds."

~~~
asto
"hear their words"? Easier said than done. Here's a blog post I wrote about
how the things they say aren't very consistent.
[http://blog.arunbalan.in/2011/09/28/hey-facebook-ive-got-
a-q...](http://blog.arunbalan.in/2011/09/28/hey-facebook-ive-got-a-question-
for-you/)

~~~
Duff
That's precisely the point. To adapt the lawyer joke:

Q: How do you tell that a Facebook spokesperson is lying? A: Check to see if
his lips are moving.

Facebook has demonstrated on numerous occasions from the earliest days of the
product that it holds user's privacy in contempt. What else do you need to
know?

~~~
shithead
The f_c_book brigade will be here soon to downvote you.

They really hate to be called out as creeps and liars.

------
abailin
Link to patent application: [http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20110231240.PGNR.&OS=dn/20110231240&RS=DN/20110231240)

------
arcs
This feels like blatant sensationalism to me.

This particular patent describes the process for 3rd party sites to tell
Facebook about something the user did (new Open Graph API, anyone?), which
subsequently can be shown as an ad to the user's friends, i.e. "Your friend
blah has bought something on This Service, do you want to do so too?" (some
peer context for ads, which facebook already tries to do for things like
fanning pages).

This is quite different from the meaning implied by this post, which the first
2 quotes were addressing, that Facebook tracks and correlates browsing
patterns of users across the internet without their consent.

------
saturn7
Its getting to a point where I will have a dedicated virtual machine just to
check Facebook.

~~~
jeggers5
or, a different browser on a proxy :P

~~~
stfu
Like that idea. One should be able to create some "rules" for a browser, e.g.
that any Facebook related url is going to be opened in a "clean" browser
space. Ideally where one can attribute certain basics, such as proxies
beforehand.

~~~
sixtofour
Would that include pages that don't have anything to do with Facebook except
that they have a Like button?

~~~
stfu
In my case I have these blocked out with NoScript. But if you click on these
and are not logged in you are most likely redirected to Facebook, right? So it
would just open these in the separate FB environment (i.e. proxy&clean
browser).

------
binaryorganic
They can certainly say they're not using the data now, but store it and change
their minds later, no?

------
Hayes
We could use this thread to give some feedback back to Facebook. They'll hear
it and might even listen. Because this isn't black and white. All the web
developers on here "track users" on their websites, it can be as mild as
logging for AB testing. Facebook is now needing to do this across domains
because their application extends across domains. Where do you draw the line?

~~~
Hayes
I mean, by the patent description couldn't this just be the ticker auto-
sharing stuff?

I think something along the lines of what they've done where you have to
approve a given app (or domain) before you can be tracked on it and maybe
otherwise it logs things anonymously with a hashed UID like Facebook asks
facebook app developers to do with all their logging.

------
paul9290
I wonder how many Facebook and HN readers are using Spotify along with FB's
auto-publish feature?

I used it and forgot it was auto-publishing my tunes to FB. I went back to FB
and was embarrassed to see it had published a song I wish no one knew I was
listening to. Since then I updated Spotify and only listen in "Private
Listening," mode.

Spotify is great, but automatically sharing everything I do/listen to is out
of the norm. We as humans share when we want and been doing so since well
forever.

------
orijing
I'm not a patent lawyer, but I tried reading the patent application
([http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20110231240.PGNR.&OS=dn/20110231240&RS=DN/20110231240)).

It sounds like Facebook Connect/open graph, where you can Like something on a
third party domain, or read something, etc. Is it just saying "You will now
have an activity feed for all your likes, etc on third party websites on your
timeline"? The 9/22 F8 date seems to suggest that.

But HN is a lot more skeptical than I am. Are you just worried that it may
mean different things in the future? What's the deal?

It also sounds like "Don't try this, Google. It's my turf"

~~~
alain94040
No, this was filed in February, and is automatically made public 6 months
later. Nothing to do with f8.

Also, I can think of definite prior art for this, from a company called
Google. I did read the claims.

So not much to worry about, as usual.

------
mmwako
Not necessarily contradictory. Not enough context to conclude anything.

As far as I know, if this was Google, for sure everyone would argue "they
patent this tracking system just to avoid other less reliable companies to do
so".

(I still think that facebook is malign, though)

------
rat
They are obviously asking for the patent to prevent others from using this
technique.

~~~
napierzaza
Not sure to vote for you since I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not.

~~~
rat
yes

------
chris_dcosta
I don't get the anger here. Surely all of us has written code at some point
that tracks what a user is doing, even if it's just to keep state.

What's the difference between that and what Facebook might (/must) be doing?
The difference as far as I can see is that Fb has a public image tarnished by
privacy issues, and it makes for a good story.

Of course it's a damned if you do damned if you don't situation for Fb. It's
not lying, it's just what happens when PR spin and reality get caught in the
same room.

~~~
nxn
The big difference is that this application is for tracking what users are
doing on other websites outside of facebook.

Read the abstract: [http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20110231240.PGNR.&OS=dn/20110231240&RS=DN/20110231240)

~~~
chris_dcosta
Wow. I didn't know that. What about cross-domain policy? Is this trying to
legitimise XSS or are they trying to patent the use of iframes?

------
click170
One can't help but wonder... Did they just get that idea from us?

"Everyone thinks we track users"

"But we don't!"

"...Well, we're already getting the PR flak for it, maybe we should?"

------
nomdeplume
After seeing what it was, part of me was thinking "is this a spoof site
pretending to be real?" while another part was thinking "this is too well
written to be a joke." I wonder why they chose to file for the patent right
when they were getting bad press for it. Maybe they were hoping it would go
unnoticed and filed after discovery so noone else could scoop it up?

~~~
anatoly
They filed in February. It is a (notable) coincidence that the application
became public just now.

------
jfb
There is no entailment relation from the second fact to the first. However,
nothing Facebook does in service of their goal to own people's online identity
and experience would shock me.

------
tlrobinson
Suspicious, sure, but filing a patent doesn't mean they're actually using it.

~~~
asto
Sure. And buying a car doesn't mean you go anywhere in it. But _usually_...

~~~
estel
That might be a valid analogy if we lived in a world where the majority of
cars were bought simply to prevent other people from getting it instead.

------
nh
Do as I say, not as I do..

------
dustingetz
patent registration is the nash equilibrium of the current US legal climate.
patent collections are ammo in corporate wargames.

facebook does all sorts of evil like releasing full user history without a
subpeona, but the OP's tone and these comments are FUD. bad.

