
Facebook: The Normalization of What Should Never Have Been Accepted as Normal - theBashShell
https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2019/01/26/facebook-the-normalization-of-what-should-never-have-been-accepted-as-normal/#690c52831e41
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cs702
A simple test for figuring out which of Facebook's arguments are sensible is
to substitute "Facebook" for a different entity such as, say, a neighborhood
association, the phone company, or a government agency. For example, take the
subtitle of Zuckerberg's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: "We need your
information for operation and security, but you control whether we use it for
advertising." Substituting:

* Would you be OK with _your neighborhood association_ installing spyware on your cellphone because they "need your information for operation and security, but you control whether they use it for advertising?"

* Would you be OK with _the phone company_ installing spyware on your cellphone because they "need your information for operation and security, but you control whether they use it for advertising?"

* Would you be OK with _a government agency_ installing spyware on your cellphone because they "need your information for operation and security, but you control whether they use it for advertising?"

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Yeah but fb didn't install spyware on my phone. I intentionally give data to
fb so that they can share it for me...

~~~
ohazi
No, you intentionally give fb a photo or a piece of text to share. They hoover
up everything else.

For example, they will record your physical location when you send a message
or share a post, as well as randomly several times per day. They will also
record which photos, posts, and ads you linger on as you aimlessly browse.

This is information that most people are not sharing intentionally, and it's
not optional. Fb uses this information to build a profile on you that's
separate from anything you share intentionally.

It's being referred to as spyware because most users aren't aware that
Facebook does this, and wouldn't have agreed to it had they been offered a
choice.

~~~
raspasov
If I say "no" on iOS when the FB app asks for location how are they exactly
recoding my location?

P.S. No idea about Android.

~~~
ACow_Adonis
Theoretically (i don't work at facebook) there's a number of ways you could go
about it.

\- Geocode down to the lowest applicable level of IP address

\- grab it from the photo metadata

\- Piggyback off of similarities to other people obtaining similar photos or
activity

\- grab it from other database sources that do have your location

\- correlate it to your interactions with other hardware/infrastructure with
known locations

\- transitively deduce it from your friends and acquaintances who share their
location and tag themselves and reply to your stories/photos

Theoretically you could try to train some neural nets on images themselves.
Geoguessr.com is a fun game website where you can try to do so as a human, and
you can usually get pretty damn close. Images themselves leak a tonne of
information on time/place: clothing styles, fonts and languages on signs,
shadows, light colour, fauna/flora, asphault + stone types, arichtecture and
design quirks. In many ways the neural net might even have some advantages
over humans, because not many humans memorise the thousands of minutae:
eastern USSR uses this particular kind of road barrier and reflector type and
this kind of font on its road signs.

But aside from a research activity, i imagine facebook already has the data it
needs most of the time...

~~~
mixmastamyk
I once posted a shot including a friends daughter. FB tagged her mother before
I shared the post. We were all creeped out.

------
imhelpingu
I doubt I'm the only person in their 30's+ who can remember warning people
that giving so much data to Facebook is a bad idea, and the response was just
outright, sanctimonious screeching and accusations of unreasonable paranoia.
I'm talking borderline religious zealotry from hipsters who consider
themselves progressive and free-thinking.

~~~
godelski
I think people don't understand the power of that data. I think they also
believe that organizations only have the data they explicitly give. I think
this, because this is what others convey to me when I talk to them about data.
People are realizing now the extent and power. I talk about why Facebook
doesn't need to listen to your conversation to make those creepy ad
suggestions. This is the best way I've found to explain it

~~~
tuesdayrain
Personally I don't find any kind of ads creepy. I would prefer highly relevant
ads to spam.

~~~
kodablah
Sadly such an opinion as yours would be deemed, as the GP mentioned, as just
not understanding. Those that willingly accept the tradeoff are often assumed
to be ignorant and most don't voice their opinions online making the narrative
appear one sided.

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bronzeage
I've heard so many creepy Facebook stories by now.

I know a psychologist who is well aware of privacy, which created a pseudonym
account only to avoid her patients, which had the whole thing blown in her
face when she installed Facebook app which then immediately suggested those
patients she tried to avoid just because she had their phone, and those
patients could briefly see her as a suggestion too. Nothing could help at this
point, it didn't even need her permission for the phone contacts, just her
phone number was enough for Facebook because it had already gotten the
contacts of her patients which contained her number.

Just think about how ridiculous this is for a moment: anyone, including that
shady taxi driver you ordered, or the plumber, or whatever, can suddenly get
you as friend option in Facebook because you happened to call each other the
other day and you're living in the same city. It gets super creepy really
fast.

~~~
DanBC
Similarly I visit mental health hospitals and facebook recommends patients of
those hospitals to me as new friends.

It's really fucking creepy.

------
ACow_Adonis
For context, I have a stub facebook account with practically no activity,
mainly just to show people in our society i exist. I don't like social media
and i think the whole phenomenon is a net negative for humanity.

Professionally, people might call me a data analyst or a data scientist, but
to the layperson in terms of describing 'what I actually do for money', I
think its basically 'imagine sherlock holmes grew up being able to program'.

There's an element of those 'what I think i do' memes in that statement, but I
think there's an important philosophical concept I've been dealing with
lurking under all that and I'm not sure how our society is going to deal with
it.

Excluding those instances of 'actual spyware', people just ooze and leak
information perpetually throughout the day. This information is being put out
there whether they are aware of it or not, but its primarily the reciever's
sensitivity, infrastructure and use of that information that determines
whether its:

a) perceived as information at all

b) is captured

c) is then used for some purpose of the capturing entity

The character of sherlock holmes gets away with it because he's an anomaly,
because people perceive him to be good and working against the 'bad guys', and
honestly, because people just don't really think about the privacy and
lifestyle implications of being in his presence.

Now however, we're at this point where corporations have an ability to collect
the information that exceeds the average person's ability to
comprehend/process that information. Its not as good as sherlock, buts its
above that of the average person. Part of that is just because our educational
systems do such a piss-poor job of getting people to interpret or analyse
information, but part of it is just the natural evolution of systems and
infrastructure now being able to capture, process and use the information
being output into the world that's always has and always will be there.

A power company doesn't need to install any spyware: you just need to look at
the patterns in your power consumption to determine what a person is doing at
what times.

A phone company doesn't need to install any spyware: they need your hardware
details, your physical location, metadata to serve you websites, metadata to
provide you calls, your billing details and identity.

Your grocery doesn't need to install any spyware: they know the product mix in
your trolley tells them everything they need to know, and if you pay with non-
cash means or have a loyalty card, they also have sufficient identity and
personal details as well.

Your bank doesn't need to install any spyware: they know the merchants, time,
place, amount, and identity details of your transactions.

A government agency doesn't need to install spyware: you have a birth
certificate, (will have) a death certificate, and you verify your identity
each time you interact with them.

If you think those companies aren't doing this already, congrats, you're
living in ignorance.

Facebook doesn't need to install spyware (whether they are or not is another
question). People are participating in their ecosystem and on top of that,
providing huge amounts of additional information out into the public stream in
a systematic way that previously was not previously available and not
previously being shared on such a scale.

The existence of facebook and social media (the structure of the thing itself,
as an instance of a particular phenomenon on a certain kind of
telecommunications and tech infrastructure, rather than the individual
instances of companies) leaks and necessitates this information being put out
there to be used.

Now, we can say to people 'i don't like that they're doing this with that
information', but its important to separate that from the actual information
being put out there, and from the fact that there are many individuals who can
use and successfully interpret that information, whether they work for
facebook or not.

You can try to ban facebook from using that information (god knows what that
would look like, i imagine it would be a horrible set of laws), but its like
trying to ban sherlock from having thoughts and piecing together the mud on
your shoe from the footprint in the lobby: only there's a lot more sherlocks
running around out there now and people are voluntarily putting cameras into
their own home and broadcasting it.

~~~
selimthegrim
Everybody always told me I’d always make a good private investigator - thanks
for selling me on data science!

------
JetSpiegel
> When all is said and done, advertising is also the basis for Google’s
> business model; with one fundamental difference: advertisers on Google
> choose their segmented targets based on many variables, but Google will
> never give them the identity, address or personal data of its users, which
> it zealously guards, applying far superior security to do so than most of
> its competitors.

This article starts off well, but then it reveals its true colors.

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gregknicholson
> I still believe social networks have a future, but that this future will
> have to be based on radically different business models, ones that do not
> see users as a commodity to be bought and sold, and that instead, respect
> them.

I don't accept the assumption that a social network must have a business
model, or that it must be a business.

------
FiveSquared
Listen, FaceBook monetizes social interaction. It is completely normal and
good to socialize, but Facebook is like someon read your mail and sold it. Oh
wait, that’s GMail. My point is that they montitize and manipulate and
obfuscate the real truth of their platforms.

~~~
jyrkesh
Except that FB now has a consistent track record of leaking those "mails" (or
friend lists, or interactions, or whatever) to 3rd party entities that I've
never authorized to have that data.

Gmail on the other hand has one of the best security track records in the
industry, minus state-sponsored snooping (but that's a bit of a different
issue, I think). There's zero instance of my Gmail mails being used by Google
in anything other than algorithmic ad targeting.

~~~
est31
Even algorithmic ad targeting can be dangerous. If you are writing love
letters to your secret gay lover then that should be between you two and you
shouldn't get gay ads during other browsing activity, which might be in
presence of others like your employer or family.

~~~
joering2
Exgoogler here: they have list of sensitive do-not-cross-ad categories that
will not show up on your other devices or networks you are or been part of.

Example: google “buy lawnmover” on your cellphone. Most likely other
participants of the same LAN will sooner or later experience ads for
lawnmovers. Now, google “Best online dating apps” or “im HIV positive how to
protect my environment”, noone else than your own device, in limited scope,
will see a followup-ads.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Is there a public list of what Google does and doesn't consider sensitive?

Or is that - just guessing here - considered too sensitive to share with the
public?

~~~
est31
That's a good point. The presence of the list is only beneficial when people
don't know it exists: then everyone acts as if they wouldn't know it existed,
so all its doing is preventing those sensitive details to be leaked. However,
if you know that the list exists, but you don't know what's on it, you might
trust it too quickly... and might only find out that something is NOt on the
list if it's too late. So then the existence of the list also contributes
towards exposure of private details in some instances, while preventing
exposure in many others.

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nokya
Let's look at the bright side of this article: (almost) nobody cares.

------
buboard
what an accurate, non-clickbaity and non-karmawhoring submission

------
bronzeage
If you don't like Facebook don't use it, it's that simple. Social networks
need a critical mass of people to run, even a naive user would stop using
Facebook when most of his friends aren't there.

Facebook isn't the first social network and it isn't the last. It gained the
most momentum, sure, but it will eventually fall. The trend is already
downward. Anything other than just moving on not using Facebook is half
measure. If you're still using Facebook by now, either you are naive or
misinformed.

~~~
marci
In some places, saying "If you don't like Facebook don't use it, it's that
simple" is akin to "If you don't like Facebook don't use the Internet, it's
that simple"

[https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-
id...](https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-
using-the-internet/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-
free-basics-developing-markets)

