
When You Fall in Love, This Is What Facebook Sees (2014) - Perados
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/when-you-fall-in-love-this-is-what-facebook-sees/283865/
======
ploggingdev
When I see posts like these, they creep me out. Another reminder that Facebook
and all other online services, ad companies know way too much about their
users and can deduce more information about you (in truly creative ways) than
you imagined would be possible.

When I show these posts to people who resemble the average internet user, they
just don't care. This is something that is saddening and baffling for me. I
think it's just that most people don't understand why this is an issue to
begin with and people need to be made aware of what is going on. The easiest
way to start would be to discuss privacy issues with your closest family and
friends.

Worth mentioning RMS' blog post:
[https://stallman.org/facebook.html](https://stallman.org/facebook.html)

~~~
lmm
Why should I care? For most of human history, most people lived in villages.
Everyone they met would know this kind of information about them ("it's
obvious to everyone except the couple themselves that x and y are into each
other" is a literary trope for a reason). People survived, thrived even - in
fact there's a strong argument our psychological welfare was much better in
those conditions than it is in anonymous cities.

~~~
CaptSpify
> Everyone they met would know this kind of information about them

Everyone in the village would have had detailed spending habits, knowledge of
every website browsed, media preferences, political views, porn habits,
location history and more all backed up in giant databases that are easily
search-able?

~~~
tyleraldrich
Spending Habits: Yes - you could easily observe what your village neighbors
are buying.

Websites Browsed/Media Prefs/Porn Habits: No, these things didnt exist for
most of human history. I guess "Media Preferences" would be known if we're
talking books vs. newspaper.

Political views: Yes, assuming the person isn't a hermit.

Location History: Yes, presumably you'd know where village-mates are/have
been.

Backed up in a database that's easily searchable? I guess that depends on how
good your brain is at remembering things.

Not trying to nitpick too hard, but all your viable examples listed are in
fact things your fellow villagers would know about you in a close-knit
community.

~~~
CaptSpify
I'm going to _highly_ disagree with you.

Yeah, you might have a rough idea of spending habits for a handful of people,
but not everyone, and not to the same detail.

Books/newspapers/etc sure, you'd know some of it, but you wouldn't have a
record of what they consumed in their home unless they told you.

You might know some of their political views, but only the ones they share
openly.

If a co-villager wandered off for a week, you wouldn't likely have any idea
where they went. You'd have to rely on what they told you, and where others
said they went, which isn't necessarily accurate. Additionally, you wouldn't
get the level of detail FB can.

No brain is capable of storing even half of the location that FB's DB can. I
don't care how good someone's memory is.

They would know some of the above sure, but it'd be at a high level, and not
nearly as accurate.

~~~
ahartman00
You make some good points, but i have to slightly disagree with some of them
:)

"Yeah, you might have a rough idea of spending habits for a handful of people,
but not everyone, and not to the same detail."

The shopkeeper does. And as someone who grew up in a small town, the gossip is
real.

"ou might know some of their political views, but only the ones they share
openly"

Facebook doesnt know my political views? Though I dont openly share them on
fb. More to avoid flamewars.

"If a co-villager wandered off for a week, you wouldn't likely have any idea
where they went"

Depends how well you know them. You might know they like that spot by the lake
for example. And if I leave my phone at home, no one would know where I
went.(which sounds like a good reason to carry my phone, safety)

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nacc
Just to be pedantic:

Each of the data points is an average of many users (and potentially have huge
errorbars they do not show). Therefore for single individuals, this result may
not be very predictive.

In fact, given that the distribution of number of posts likely follows power
law, the average is hugely influenced by a small number of heavy facebook
users. I would say this figure summaries more about top facebook users rather
than the majority of users. So when "you" (an average facebook user) fall in
love, this is probably not what facebook sees.

~~~
jmount
I thought the same thing (and wrote a bit about it: [http://www.win-
vector.com/blog/2014/02/the-gap-between-data-...](http://www.win-
vector.com/blog/2014/02/the-gap-between-data-mining-and-predictive-models/) ).

------
donquichotte
This is from 2014. I'm not sure whether that is a selection bias, but very few
of my friends "share timeline posts" with their partners (or future partners,
or anyone really) nowadays.

~~~
rando444
I think they just worded it poorly, but what I think they mean is just any
posts that involve both people. So this would include photos where both people
are tagged, mentioning the other person, posting on the other person's wall,
and things like that.

------
dhimes
Somewhat related, my son showed me a program from Britain called "Black
Mirror"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror))
The shows are an hour or so long, and it's not a series with a long-running
plot, but each episode is separate (à la _The Twilight Zone_ ). We watched one
called "Nosedive"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive)),
which was set in a future dystopia where everybody was socially rated and that
rating was visible to others. Remember the almost-startup from last year,
Peeple.com? Yikes!

------
mrswag
The graphics are misleading, the Y axis is stretched to make the change look
big.

~~~
emodendroket
If it's significant then what's wrong with using a scale that reflects that,
even if the numbers are small in absolute terms?

~~~
mnarayan01
In this case at least, they're going from a peak of ~1.66 posts/day to a
valley of ~1.54. As an aggregate that looks like a compelling pattern, but
consider it on an individual level: we're talking about one post every ten
days. Initially looking at the graph made me think the difference was _way_
greater than a post every ten days, so I'd agree with the GP that it is
misleading; I was mislead.

~~~
emodendroket
Yeah, but if one post every ten days really is predictive, then showing it at
a larger scale isn't helpful.

~~~
mnarayan01
Looking at the graph, it seems like we're talking about ~16.5 posts in the ten
days before a relationship versions versus ~15.7 in the ten days after. In the
context of an individual, Facebook might be able to combine this with a bunch
of other data to make guesses about people entering relationships, but a quick
look at the graph makes it look like they could do it from just this one piece
of data.

FWIW, I think people are often too quick to dismiss graphs as misleading due
to the y-scale and I do think the graph is interesting. That said, I think a
lot depends on the context, and being directly below "When _You_ [emphasis
added] Fall in Love, This Is What Facebook Sees" makes this seem misleading.

------
amelius
So facebook has an incentive to keep you out of a relationship, it seems.

~~~
vitro
Lonely people tend to hang our more on social media, I guess. Lonely people
are also better consumers.

~~~
cmdrfred
Imagine the firms that would fail if all the pretext and games of dating and
sex went away. How many less exotic and luxury cars would be sold? Designer
clothes, body spray, make-up, hunks of carbon attached to gold bands? Culture
would be dramatically different.

~~~
CaptSpify
I've been wondering what our society will look like once androids look and act
comparable to humans. The prevalence of online porn has likely changed social
norms drastically in ways I can't imagine, but I'd guess realistic androids
even more so.

------
mcv
Courtship over Facebook is so unromantic. In my day, we used email, SMS and
phone.

~~~
calibration263
Don't forget AIM!

------
grzm
For reference, previously on HN 3 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7250009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7250009)

------
cbr
"We only considered couples who declared an anniversary date (as opposed to
just changing their relationship status)"

Seems like a strange choice; most dating couples I know don't seem to set an
anniversary date.

~~~
timpattinson
Many of my facebook friends (n~400, ~19 years old) are in a 'relationship'
with their friends as a joke. Enough to skew any results.

~~~
scottmf
I'm sure FB can distinguish between real and joke relationships with high
accuracy.

------
jkraker
Here's the full series run by Facebook (2014):

[https://www.facebook.com/data/posts/10152217010993415](https://www.facebook.com/data/posts/10152217010993415)

------
andrewclunn
What about private messages? I mean we know Facebook tracks those too. Do they
just not want to admit as much publicly?

~~~
diggan
They admit looking at those as well, in the original post they posted on
Facebook[1]:

"Relationships start with a period of courtship: on Facebook, messages are
exchanged, profiles are visited, posts are shared on each other's timelines."

They didn't produce any graphs of the amount of messages exchanged though.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-
for...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-formation-of-
love/10152064609253859)

------
ajkjk
I think I'd like to see a law that requires all companies to share all
information they have on you in an easily understandable format. I think
that'd be a great start.

Any saved derived information, like what kind of person they think you are, or
what they think you'd be likely to buy, must also be shared.

Basically a dump of all their databases under your user ID.

------
gcr
Original link should have been to Facebook's blog,
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-
for...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-formation-of-
love/10152064609253859)

------
jostmey
So facebook, which needs us to spend as much time on the website as possible
to maintain advertising revenue, has the perverse incentive of keeping
everyone single. So this could be the answer to the Fermi Paradox

~~~
rando444
You seem to be mis-interpreting.. or inferring data that is not there.

All this is showing is that prior to being in a relationship there is a lot of
online activity between two people, and less after being in a relationship.
Presumably because prior to being in a relationship, you are spending more
time communicating at a distance, and when in a relationship you tend to spend
more of your time physically together rather than communicating online.

This data says nothing about how much these people are using the website in
general.

------
carlmcqueen
1.61-1.65 down to 1.4 something? What is the actual average amount of posts
made a day, shared to the timeline?

small scale Y axis make it look quite large, but that doesn't seem a seismic
shift.

------
rdiddly
Given the dubious statistical significance and the fact that predicting who's
"courting" each other is really pretty easy, this article seems like a "the
suit is back" adverticle for Facebook, touting its predictive abilities to
advertisers like Jared, Netflix, Bed Bath & Beyond etc.

------
NIL8
I'm curious to know if this type of data could be used to track infidelity.
I'm thinking further than domestic trouble and more towards blackmail,
espionage, etc. I can see how this type of information could be useful for the
wrong reasons.

------
angryasian
I'm surprised Facebook hasn't specifically monetized this type of behavior. It
seems to me that this is a very clear signal of intent and can be monetized.

------
jondubois
It sounds like Facebook has a vested interest in keeping people single and to
break up existing couples.

I do think that relationships these days are more fleeting than they used to
be. I think that Facebook (Instagram, particularly) tends to encourage this
type of behaviour.

Constantly being exposed to other couples' luxurious lifestyles and holiday
trips is not particularly good for relationships (particularly new
relationships).

I do think that most people these days tend to value earning potential and
physical appearance far more than personality when it comes to finding a match
and I think that social media is probably responsible for much of this.

~~~
untog
> So basically, Facebook has a vested interest in keeping people single and to
> break up existing couples.

Not really. Married couples (particularly those with a baby) are incredibly
valuable advertising targets.

> I do think that most people these days tend to value earning potential and
> physical appearance far more than personality

There is absolutely nothing new about this.

~~~
jondubois
>> There is absolutely nothing new about this.

Not new, but it's getting worse.

~~~
askafriend
I care about earning potential and physical appearance. Why shouldn't I? I
also happen to care about many other things in a potential relationship but
those things you mentioned are definitely high up there for me.

Who are you to tell me what value system I should have? All of this is
independent of social media, by the way.

------
chinathrow
(2014)

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golergka
Three full months of courtship? Really?

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moovacha
Pardon the crassness but this statistic as well as the study behind is is
utterly useless.

