
PSA: Some Major News Outlets Are Also Sending Data Directly to Facebook - jmsflknr
https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1103190266930913281
======
soared
>SOME MAJOR TECH JOURNALS ARE STILL SENDING DATA DIRECTLY TO FACEBOOK

Sound the alarms? Pretty much every site you visit has facebook, google, and
20 other adtech pixels on it. Go download ghostery and check for yourself. Any
business that wants to make money is using these pixels.. advertising would be
nearly useless without them.

How else would you know who visits your site? How would you know if someone
who made a purchase had seen one of your ads? If they were a new customer or
old customer? If they might be interested in complementary products?

The go to answer is 'check the logs'. Good luck telling your 19 year marketing
intern to check the logs. Or your director of marketing. Or your CMO. Or your
agency.

~~~
Bartweiss
Yes, there's a pretty major difference between this and the story it's
referencing about in-app Facebook tracking.
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19319215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19319215))

Sites running tracking pixels are consciously tracking their users and feeding
info to advertising players for their own benefit. I suspect many people would
be surprised that this happens even when you're not signed into the relevant
service and don't see anything like a "share this on Facebook" icon, but the
basic concept of browser tracking isn't that weird. That pixel on The Verge
didn't end up their by accident.

On the other hand, the Facebook SDK fires an event every time you open an app
using it - by default, even if you aren't signed into Facebook, even if the
app's creator never intended that behavior and gets no benefit from it. And,
of course, auditing or controlling app behavior and data exchange is way
harder than doing the same for browsers. The average person who runs uBlock or
Privacy Badger still isn't emulating every app they download to study its
behavior.

------
donohoe
I think its safe to say "Almost All Major News Outlets Are Also Sending Data
Directly to Facebook".

~~~
Bartweiss
Particularly horrible/funny, though, that the Verge article _about_ Android
apps doing this is also doing it.

------
stunt
Apparently 10% (I just made this number) of people working in tech industry
are working to collect, store, and process personal data. It is shocking to
see how few of these 10% speak up.

We put Hackers into jail for stealing personal data. Not comparing them
together, but from moral perspective they seem equal to me.

~~~
magduf
They're not stealing personal data: users are willingly giving them this data.

There is a solution to this, and that's to have stronger privacy laws like the
EU does, but American voters have flatly rejected anything like that and don't
want such laws.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
American politicians won't enact laws that impair the data broker industry
which has been around for decades. Voters are kept largely in the dark by a
press that doesn't want to expose how the sausage is made since they have a
seat at the table.

~~~
magduf
I don't buy this stuff about "the press" at all. The press in America was
firmly behind Hillary in the 2016 election, and look what happened. The voters
do have a will of their own and they're not just doing what the press tells
them. (This isn't to say the voters made the right choice: the way the voters
have voted is why we don't have strong data-protection laws, along with a lot
of other things the Europeans have such as a better-functioning healthcare
system, better public transit, etc.)

------
h3ckr
Why is Google never brought up in these? Isn’t Facebook pixel similar to
Google Analytics?

~~~
h3ckr
While at it, should we put Segment, Mixpanel, Optimizely, etc. on the list?
I’m not saying they’re good or bad in terms of data tracking, I’m just saying
they should be in the same bucket. Tech companies harvest data to improve
their businesses...

~~~
gorkemcetin
Well, while we (Countly) are direct competitor to Mixpanel, we cannot talk
about this as there is no evidence and all of them are clear about what they
do with your data. Speaking of product analytics, the best way is to keep your
own data on your premises (shameless plug here).

------
CharlesColeman
> I check _every_ time some tech outlet posts the usual, dumb, silly FB post
> about how presumably FB leaks or ingests your data...and they're _always_
> leaking your data to FB, among other, far sketchier players.

Newflash: the developers that make technology choices for the website and the
journalists writing the articles for it are in _entirely different
organizations_. It's usually dysfunctional when business users have the power
to dictate technology choices to the tech team.

------
data_spy
Can't speak to this specifically but many news publishers use FB for ads. Yes,
Facebook does ads outside of their platform.

------
tbrownaw
Yes, I know, analytics (especially _outsourced_ analytics) are fundamentally
evil.

Just like paywalls are evil. And just like ads are evil.

But, I'm not exactly clear on how these things are supposed to all fit
together.

~~~
i_am_nomad
I don’t like paywalls, but in what way are they evil? To be specific, a
paywall in front of privately funded content is annoying but fair. Elsevier-
style paywalls are another matter.

