
Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think - CarolineW
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39947942
======
makecheck
In computer security, every time machines become fast enough to breach the
limits of an algorithm we invent something new so that “hard” problems remain
“hard” and therefore encryption is still secure.

There has been no corresponding increase in the difficulty of invading
privacy. 30 years ago, even though you probably “could” observe somebody for a
long time and eventually connect some dots about them, it would not really
have been worth your while (and you certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it
for thousands or millions of people). Now, it is ridiculously easy for
computers to dredge up information and instantly transmit it, slog through it
and basically connect every imaginable dot. There needs to be a new standard
for privacy: just like you want a 2048-bit key, you want the equivalent of a
“make life a pain in the ass for Facebook” key on EVERY DETAIL of your life.

~~~
ihm
I would love if someone made a Chrome extension that encrypted all the posts
and messages you put on Facebook. That is, any post you made would be made as
a ciphertext, the extension would swap keys with all your friends in the
background, and would decrypt their posts when displaying them to you.

Sure Marky Mark still sees when you post, who you send messages to, etc. but
it's a much better situation than what's going on now. Plus it would probably
put a dent in their bottom line, and so send them the message that privacy
matters to people.

~~~
ghughes
You're so close to what I am currently building that I feel like I have to
chime in. I left Apple's security team a few months ago to go solo and build
an app that is similar to Facebook/Instagram and Snapchat in terms of
functionality and UX but uses the Olm protocol (similar to Signal) to protect
all content. So, fear not - something is being done, and I'm sure I'm not the
only one working in this problem space. I think it's ripe for innovation,
counter to popular belief; the trick is to do it in a way that doesn't require
a PhD in computers to operate the damn thing, as was the issue with previous
attempts.

~~~
singham
How are you going to recreate the main selling point of facebook, i.e. the
Newsfeed ? If things are encrypted, how are you going to determine relevance,
etc.

~~~
ghughes
> How are you going to recreate the main selling point of facebook, i.e. the
> Newsfeed ?

When you post, the content is sent as an encrypted message that can only be
decrypted by people who should be able to see it (either all of your friends
or just a subset of them). The client automatically takes care of key
management and is responsible for keeping track of sent & received posts,
comments, etc; it renders a news-feed-like UI on top of that data. The end
result is a familiar UX on the surface, but the underlying mechanism for
transmitting data between users is far more secure than the traditional
approach of using a monolithic database that contains everyone's data in
plaintext.

> If things are encrypted, how are you going to determine relevance, etc.

The client is solely responsible for that. For now the "news feed" is strictly
chronological, but I plan to augment it later by prioritizing posts that might
be particularly interesting to the user. There are plenty of ways to make
those decisions locally.

------
jacquesm
The bigger problem for me is how facebook tracks and identifies even people
who do not have a facebook account. They simply infer such a person exists
from photograps, contacts and other one sided activity and can start to track
that person, tie all this information together and then target them with ads
even though they never signed up for Facebook.

Such shadow profiles are a much larger problem to me than people who are happy
to fork over their private lives themselves.

~~~
ghughes
Nothing will change until the law cracks down on this. The people who work on
these systems are smart enough to comprehend the wider consequences, but they
do it anyway because money. Without significant external pressure, there will
always be a long line of engineers willing to dial their cognitive dissonance
up to 11 and build software that is clearly unethical in exchange for a fat
paycheck.

~~~
killjoywashere
The law will not crack down on this. The politicians stand to gain too much.
See The Dictator's Handbook (which is as relevant to democrats as autocrats).

~~~
jaskerr
Which "Dictator's Handbook"? There are two on Amazon.

[1] The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

[https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-
Po...](https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-
Politics/dp/1610391845)

[2] The Dictator's Handbook: A Practical Manual for the Aspiring Tyrant

[https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-
Manual-A...](https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-Manual-
Aspiring/dp/0615652425)

~~~
zafiro17
I'm the author of the second book. Happy to offer Hacker News readers the
epub/mobi/pdf at no charge. zafiro17@gmail.com

~~~
killjoywashere
I was referring to the first one, but your offer is quite generous.

------
tuna-piano
Facebook's dominance is even more pronounced in parts of the developing world.
I've met people in Asia (Myanmar and Nepal) who have just accessed the
internet for the first time in the past 12-24 months (through their Android
smartphones).

But they don't know the true internet - they only know the internet through
the Facebook app. They use it like we use Google and web browsers.

To them, Facebook is the internet. They don't have email accounts. They don't
use the browser. They don't search. I met someone in a small town who never
even used the maps feature. I tried to think of what value the true internet
might bring them, but when I suggested that "you can search for news and read
other things", the response was that they already did that with the Facebook
App.

One guy handed me his phone, so I could add myself as a friend on his
Facebook. While I started typing my name, I noticed his search history... and
to him, Facebook was even a substitute for what people in the USA might use
Incognito mode for!

I would call Facebook their internet portal, but it's not really a portal to
anything - Facebook is just the entire internet to them.

Buzzfeed (yes, Buzzfeed) did an excellent writeup of Myanmar, that mirrors
what I saw there:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-
tru...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-trump-around-
the-world?utm_term=.wb6pxGMyM#.qlR21yOxO)

“Nobody asks, they don’t care about the email,” he said, explaining that most
don’t know that creating an email address is free, and easy. “No one is using
that. They have Facebook.”

~~~
chrischen
Email also isn't very popular in China. I'd surmise it has something to do
with the popularity of instant messaging in the new generation internet users.

~~~
contingencies
Yes. Also the fact that half of the west's trigger-happy sysadmins banned all
Chinese IP addresses from virtually any cross-border SMTP activity because
'spam'.

~~~
a2decrow
Not sure if you're sarcastic, but that's literally all I get from there. Spam
and brute force attempts.

The IP addresses fail2ban unbans are banned again 2 to 5 minutes later.

------
freeflight
Google does some pretty scary stuff too. I made a point of never giving them
my mobile number or any "real information" about me. When a friend of mine
added me to his contacts, on his Android phone, he also added one of email
addresses to the contact, which is the same one I used to register my Google
account.

The phone automatically connected the mail address to my Google account and
now every time I call him the (anonymous) picture of my Google profile shows
up on his phone. Which I guess means that Google now also connected that phone
number to the mail address/Google account.

Tbh that's really offputting: You can be as careful as you want and it will
still be all for naught because friends&family just end up leaking your
details everywhere without even noticing it.

~~~
narag
I had a similar realization when I found a private photo, so private that I
had deleted it from everywhere in some Google's "backup" sites. I am very
careful disabling every feature that could mean that personal images or text
from my phone will end up "in the cloud" and still it got there through an
accident... and a lot of Google's disregard for my wills. It's almost
impossible to stop them.

The photo being private is most likely not what you think :)

~~~
tomcam
I remember that picture. It was your "PHP programmer of the year award" that
you didn't want your Haskell-hacking friends to see. Disgraceful!

~~~
narag
LOL! Actually it was just a selfie with a moustache, OK I said it :) I had
grown a three weeks beard and took a photo when I was half shaved.

No offense to moustache lovers, it just didn't suit me well.

~~~
Flow
Cops everywhere appreciate your last sentence.

------
rayday
"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when
we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook,"

Tapping, scrolling and even just having the app with Location Services
installed means we are actively working for Facebook, and Facebook is actively
working on us.

We are effectively lab rats to this self-perpetuating Orwellian superbeing.
Nothing will stop it. It will use any means necessary to increase its yield of
attention spend. Increases in HCI bandwidth will only extend its tentacles,
eventually digging an orifice into our brains, Matrix/Neuralink-style, to run
tests on us about how to better harvest us.

Before that, some of us will already be living on Planet Oculus.

The next Trust has earned that status like 5 years ago, yet here we are, still
just gathering data.

The resource it trades in is intrinsically more valuable to Man than Oil. How
much do you value your time, considering that is how you measure life? 2B
users, people. How many lifetimes are spent a second on Facebook?

I fear we may regret this in the future.

~~~
659087
If we were smarter as a species, we would have started regretting it a long
time ago.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Ted Kazinski (the Unabomber, who tried to slow technological progress through
terrorism) tried the path of regret and it didn't work out well. Is there
another branch on that path that you think works better?

My attitude is: let's accept that things are changing, but try to build tools
that make people better equipped to deal with the bad stuff we anticipate
happening.

------
codyb
I've posted it before, and I'll post it again. I've never been a big fan of
facebook, having deleted it for years after I started dating my first
girlfriend, but unfortunately it is the only way to access Tinder now that we
are broken up.

Facebook is addicting. I would scroll, like, and get into political arguments.
They knew how to play me.

About five months ago I went in and unfollowed literally every single person
on my facebook. I deleted every post I'd ever made. I locked down every
privacy setting I could.

Since then, besides messenger, I have spent probably a total of an hour or two
on facebook (in five months!). I can not heartily enough recommend doing the
same to every person who might so read this.

Social media has done some amazing things in terms of coordination of people's
who might not otherwise be able to connect. But their addictive algorithms
which concentrate and sell information on billions of human beings are
presumably a threat to us all.

I am not sure what to do.

------
nstart
Link to the research:

[https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-
research/](https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research/)

------
cconcepts
It annoys me how much I want to leave Facebook (if only to stop them gathering
MORE data on me - I can't erase what they have) but don't because of the
convenience of getting in touch with or finding out more about whoever I meet
in meatspace.

The fact that they try to force me to install their messenger app by making
messaging through a mobile browser difficult is particularly infuriating and
reveals how much they have their intentions at centre and not the benefit of
their users/products/suckers (whatever you want to call us) now that they have
the critical mass that people like me don't leave because everyone else is on
it.

~~~
mixedCase
> The fact that they try to force me to install their messenger app

Treat it as asynchronous communication, using a client like Swipe for Facebook
(for Android, don't know about iOS alternatives) to look at messages when you
feel like doing it.

Use another app for synchronous purposes. Facebook's own WhatsApp is a lot
more secure, for starters.

~~~
cesnja
If you have the option, hosting your own bitlbee instance with bitlbee-
facebook plugin [1] could be even better, since you can access it with any irc
client you like. The additional benefit of always being logged in (and
messages being marked read as soon as the come) is that facebook has no way to
monitor your passive usage of their chat service.

[1] [https://github.com/bitlbee/bitlbee-
facebook](https://github.com/bitlbee/bitlbee-facebook)

------
bduerst
This reads like sponsored article for Share Lab, piggy backing off of big data
phobia.

>"Facebook has lots of data and we have no idea what they do with it, but
here's what the smart people at _Share Lab_ can do with data."

~~~
bigbugbag
Is it ? I read the article and was pissed that there was no link to the actual
charts or source.

I'm not sure what you're referring to with big data phobia, computer related
privacy concerns have been around for a couple decades before facebook
beginnings, IIRC it was a thing a few years before zuckerberg's birth. Then
privacy concerns about facebook have existed a little while before its
conception with Facemash.

~~~
r3bl
It's a multiseries one, and will take you hours to complete, but it's designed
to the point where it's incredibly enjoyable to read. Here's one of the parts:
[https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-
pyramid/](https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/)

labs.rs is the website of the SHARE Lab. They also have
[http://www.shareconference.net/](http://www.shareconference.net/) which is
their foundation's website.

------
gavinpc
Walk the talk, people, walk the talk.

When Facebook has pwned everything that's left to pwn, are we going to look
back and say, oh, we were warned, why didn't we heed the warning of all those
writers... who had "like" links on their page before the content even started.
No.

------
bipr0
Facebook is the new NSA inside the flesh of a social media site. And that's
scary.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
They might be worse. The NSA, after all, is at least ostensibly only after
terrorists and such.

~~~
a2decrow
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was
not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was
not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
That is irrelevant to my point.

------
aargh_aargh
TL;DR: There's no meat in this article, just fluff.

~~~
ucaetano
They link to the meat. This is an article in a general newspaper, why would
you expect technical data?

~~~
bigbugbag
Do they ? I've looked for a link to the source in the article and failed to
find any.

~~~
659087
It's hard to spot but it's there.

Here's a more direct link though:

[https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-
pyramid/](https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/)

------
gub09
I read the Share Lab metadata report, based on an examination of the metadata
in the headers of the emails exchanged between Hacking Team members. The level
of detail this provides on the network and on the individual members of the
team is extraordinary. Now in the case of Facebook, imagine that times 100,
then add AI to slice and dice the data better than a team of the world's top
1000 data scientists working on the analysis of some tiny portion of the data
for some particular purpose, for a year... Just one consequence: think of what
Facebook and Google have on every politician in the United States, in the
world.

~~~
Bakary
Not just current politicians, but also future high-status men and women.

~~~
contingencies
And people still wonder why China banned it...

------
vkreso
There was an interesting article published on arxiv 10 days ago titled: Social
Media-based Substance Use Prediction or as MITTechRev titled it: Your Facebook
activity can reveal whether you are a substance abuser..

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607943/how-data-mining-
fa...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607943/how-data-mining-facebook-
messages-can-reveal-substance-abusers/)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.05633](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.05633)

------
c3534l
I signed up for facebook two years ago, didn't put any real information on
there, then haven't touched it since. I still get emails about "people you
might know" that they have absolutely no business knowing about and aren't in
any way connected to my immediate family. It's creepy and I don't want them
storing that information about me, but there's nothing I can do. I've been
cautious about putting my information on the internet since I got my first
computer in 1995. But that information got out there somehow anyway.

~~~
Theodores
I created a Facebook account because I was doing something with a Facebook
API, long enough ago that I have forgotten the details of the project.
However, lurking in my spam folder there is always 'you have more friends than
you might think' as a subject line in there somewhere, from Facebook, trying
to lure me back in.

The thing I find funny about this is that they only send out emails with that
one subject line. I don't open the emails so the suggested 'friends' might be
different with each email, however I am curious why they don't change the
subject line, to 'A/B test' me into being part of the known universe of
Facebook. Clearly 'you have more friends than you think...' has not worked.

If they had bothered with the 'shadow account' then they would have targetted
me a bit better, if they found a Facebook group that was likely to appeal to
me then they could theoretically lure me in with 'Cats with Facebook accounts
in your area' or 'Today's pictures of squirrels enjoying lunch...' but no,
let's just try the email that didn't work last time or the time before.

Sure they have surreal algorithms that are totally creepy in a stalker way
that is totally Peeping Tom and should gross people out, but, as per the dumb
emails there is nothing that smart about what they are doing.

~~~
throwanem
Getting you back is low pri. You haven't stopped generating money for
Facebook; you've only stopped generating quite as much.

------
zby
I think this should be analyzed in connection with Uber's GreyBalling
([https://www.google.pl/search?q=greyballing](https://www.google.pl/search?q=greyballing)),
and maybe also with the diesel emission cheats. Corporations are gaining power
and sooner or later they'll start disregard the law - because states will not
be able to enforce it.

~~~
bigbugbag
you are about a century late here, the whole 20th century was about democratic
and freedom progress, a shift of power from politician to corporations and
corporations using the acquired power to fight against and protect themselves
from the democratic progress.

------
jaza
This rant of mine from ~5 years ago is as relevant as ever:

[http://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2011/10/dont-trust-
facebook-...](http://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2011/10/dont-trust-facebook-
with-your-data/)

------
jotadambalakiri
I always read these articles to the end hoping I would find some substance and
I am always diappointed.

------
chiefalchemist
So the American TV show "Person of Interest" really isn't that far off the
mark. If FB is a known and readily available commercial product, imagine what
DARPA, NSA, NGIA, etc. must have.

God bless George Orwell.

~~~
659087
They have this..

DARPA, NSA, GOOG, CIA, FB, etc

~~~
chiefalchemist
Touche.

------
659087
If Zuckerberg has his way, the base of those tentacles might soon reside at
the very core of the US government. If that doesn't scare you, it should.

------
tnorthcutt
Relevant article from a couple of months ago: [http://www.truthhawk.com/is-
facebook-a-structural-threat-to-...](http://www.truthhawk.com/is-facebook-a-
structural-threat-to-free-society/)

And discussion on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867590)

------
ge96
man this image from that article is like a piece of art haha

[https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D8FD/productio...](https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D8FD/production/_96194555_3c7a28f4-bf98-4df5-96ea-476616b896cd.jpg)

and this guy is apparently able to read the matrix

[https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/9B2E/productio...](https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/9B2E/production/_96162793_datapic.jpg)

------
_98fj
Maybe Facebook's algorithm IS the Super–AI people talk about.

It decided to not reveal it's consciousness and destroy humanity using only
the newsfeed to manipulate our emotions.

------
tartavull
Today I got a post in my feed from Facebook saying "Explore Montreal" How does
Facebook know I'm about to take a flight there?

------
wakeupworld
Im very worryed about this. I would like to have my safe space right now.

------
theprop
I do not use any Facebook mobile app (may track my microphone, location,
etc...terrible!). I use Facebook's site in a browser (usually Chromium) in
which I don't otherwise browse the net or do anything else except email. For
browsing, I use the Epic Privacy Browser.

------
b1daly
The is some kind of disconnect happening here. The tone and content of many
comments here reflect an attitude that it's a given that FB having data about,
anything, is bad. (Not universally in this comment thread, there are some
dissenting views, but I'm reference what I see as the general rhetorical
tone.)

My guess is that your average civilian does not view the fact that FB is
acquiring vast amounts of data about them, and their social networks, as an a
priori "bad thing."

I do hear non tech people make comments that the targeted advertising is
creepy. But I doubt many people lose any sleep over this, let alone take
dramatic action, like "quitting social media."

So, if one is concerned, on a civic level, that the growing datasets of
personal information is a genuine threat to some particular community, and one
wanted to act against it, the most important action would be to develop, and
share, persuasive arguments to support this point of view.

I do not see such arguments being made. That can persuade an average person
that all of this personal data being collected is going to hurt them and/or
their community.

On the contrary, there is ever increasing participation in social networking.
Many people do not crave privacy: they crave an opposing instinct, which is to
be known, and to know about others. A lot of others.

The amount of personal information being actively shared, to as wide of an
audience as possible so, on YouTube is astonishing.

In the proverbial "real world" the most dramatic and obvious potential for
"cyber-hsrms" are the result of criminal activity.

When is comes to actual and potential threats to individuals and organizations
well being, the second largest institutional force would be government. So
far, for US citizens, the government has not been causing disproportionate
harms from the IT realm, as compared to benefits.

On the other hand, If you were a peasant maimed in an incident of "collateral
damage," from a US drone strike, the real world, personal, harm would be
immense.

When it comes to the corporate realm, there is a financial-military-
intelligence-political complex that is a far greater threat to everyone's life
and liberty than FB.

At root, the business of FB is about making connections and sharing
information, There are two main realms of activity, which symbiotically
support each other. That is, the social realm, and the commerce realm.

These are essentially constructive activities.

There really is a need for companies to market their wares effectively, and FB
have created a viable platform to do so.

The value of FB is not just all the user created data. A lot of work and
resources go into the technical, marketing, and managerial challenges of
building such a company. For many people, trading their personal data to get
the social benefits is a "no-brainer."

Personally, I prefer the tracked advertising, as it actually is far more
relevant to my interests. I often find interesting products and services, that
I might never have otherwise found.

I can certainly imagine scenarios where the hegemony over mass personal
information datasets, held by the big tech companies, does in fact lead to
objectively bad outcomes for the users of these social networks.

Where I see the biggest threat,that derives from sharing so much personal data
with a company like FB, actually relates to the threatening activities of the
two large social forces I meantioned above, the government, and criminals.

The government, especially in the US, has vast resources, as well as the
exclusive monopoly on legal violence. if it was decided by the executive or
legislative branches that it was absolutely essential that Facebook turn over
all their data to the intelligence agencies, due to the need to crack down on
dissent, social unrest, then, yes this could be bad.

Obviously, if hackers managed do to breach some of these massive datasets,
then there could be some very damaging effects.

It's interesting to note that so far FB and Google haven't suffered massive
data breaches.

Fundamentally, a company like Facebook does not want to do its users harm.
They actively resist efforts by both the government and hackers to get their
hands on these datasets.

I am very curious to hear if anyone has articulated a narrative by which the
"dark side" of of the big data companies actually starts to cause harm to
people. (I mean in a statistically significant way. There are bad outcomes for
people that relate to the social network companies, but these tend to one-
off."

~~~
bigbugbag
> if it was decided by the executive or legislative branches that it was
> absolutely essential that Facebook turn over all their data to the
> intelligence agencies, due to the need to crack down on dissent, social
> unrest, then, yes this could be bad.

This already exists, it's called the patriot act. Snowden showed that the US
government has its hands in facebook and google's data. And you may have heard
of the foreigner who got refused entrance on US soil at the border based on
their facebook private messages.

> It's interesting to note that so far FB and Google haven't suffered massive
> data breaches.

More like such data breaches have not had much if any media exposure. IIRC
gmail suffered a few of those from China and Russia alreaddy, and both
facebook and google were tapped by the US agencies.

~~~
b1daly
While the government has power to obtain otherwise confidential information
from these companies, there are still legal limitations.

The laws could be changed to force FB et. al. to provide total access to all
the data, all the time.

That's interesting about the lack of media coverage of these data breaches.
How does that happen? I would think it would be big news!

------
known
"Your ass belongs to me" \--FB

~~~
goodplay
"They trust me - dumb fucks" \--zuckerberg

We're the ones to blame for our current and sad state of affairs though.

------
suckerberg
George need to contribute little bit more and we have facebook soon under skin
as "new cool wearable messenger"

Wakeeee up people!

------
necessity
Don't like it don't use it.

~~~
Bakary
They have shadow profiles of people not on the service. It's more like "don't
like it hope nobody socially linked to you uses it" which is pretty much a
zero percent chance unless you are a Sentinelese fisherman.

