[thr0waway1239]

Unethical: lacking moral principles.

Moral: of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong

I think it is "clearly wrong" that Facebook creates shadow profiles, because it is violating the freedom of people who have not signed up for their service, in the same way that it is clearly wrong for me to take away your favorite pet for ritualistic sacrifice against your wishes, even if "everyone" in the community agrees that it has been a consistently effective method for pleasing the Gods.

Of course, you know these analogies are tenuous, and you will eventually go into very precise definitions of words (or worse, you will actually start taking my pet sacrifice analogy and dissecting it). Perhaps you could tell us about something you think is clearly unethical, and we will try and draw the connection for you.

[tzs]

I doubt that he doesn't understand what "unethical" means. The question is how does what Facebook is doing qualify? You've said it is because it violates the freedom of people Facebook is making inferences about who are not users of Facebook's services.

That just shifts the question to how does it violate their freedom? That is not at all obvious to me. (NOTE: this does not mean that I'm saying it is OK...just that I don't see how it is a freedom violation).

My computer desk at home is near a large window, which I often look out while I am using the computer. From this window I can see people from my street walking dogs. I can see kids going to and from school. I see cars coming and going. My street is a dead end street about 1 km long, and I'm about 200 meters in. The street bends a little way past my place, so the last 700 meters or so are not visible from my place.

By casually observing people walk by, I've gathered data to make several inferences about people who live beyond the bend. I've figured out when some people are having house guests (by seeing people I've never seen before walking dogs that I recognize).

I've inferred sibling relationships among some of the children who walk by (by noticing dress and equipment patterns that clearly indicate that the same person is shopping for both).

I've figured out what kind of cars the parents of the some of the children drive (by seeing those cars stop when passing the children on the way home, and the children getting in, or seeing a strong correlation between days when particular children who walked by to school in the morning do not walk by in the afternoon and days when particular cars drive by in the afternoon).

Am I violating these people's freedom by making these inferences from what I see out my window?

If not, what is the fundamental difference between what I'm doing by observing people that walk or drive by on my street and what Facebook does by observing what its users do on its site?

[AnonymousPlanet]

You would be more like Facebook, if you 1) would publish your observations or otherwise provide it to third parties 2) sit at nearly all streets all the time, e.g., observing whatever those house guests are up to the rest of their time.

Imagine, you share your observations with, say, a PI who was hired by a paranoid spouse or by someone's employer.

Facebook is like a vast and far reaching network of nosy neighbours of whom you do not know who they are chatty with. Maybe someone who likes to jump to conclusions?

[baddox]

I'm a little surprised. Do people think that sharing that info with a private investigator would be unethical?

[clort]

Answer is, that its not clear cut. What is the difference between a private investigator (working for a single party) and the government investigator (working for the city, state or federal level)?

I would think, that advertising in the local press or, having a sign outside the window to the effect that you were able to sell personal and assumed to be private information about the people who lived in the street would provoke an unpleasant reaction.

Doing something purely for your own benefit that you know will cause significant distress to others is sociopathy I think. Perhaps 'unethical' is the wrong word. 'antisocial' definitely covers it though it might not be strong enough.

[AnonymousPlanet]

I used the private investigator here as a middleman, a third party. Just like law enforcement or a data broker would be. My concern (in this argument) is less that of the ethics of each single act, but rather the consequences of setting up such a service. You don't know what you are enabling.

[rokhayakebe]

Imagine a gentleman decides to follow you for the rest of your life. He is always wihtin a distance but when you leave your home, there he is and see you him with his pen and paper recording your every move. You get it you car, he gets in his and follows. You stop by your lover's home. There he is the back recording. You go pick your child, save. You go to the grocery store, there he is recording again. So on and so forth.

Would you say there is absolutely nothing wrong with this?

[jacquesm]

That's roughly the theme of a blog post I once wrote.

[boomlinde]

> If not, what is the fundamental difference between what I'm doing by observing people that walk or drive by on my street and what Facebook does by observing what its users do on its site?

The expectation of privacy. The window analogy may seem very clear to you, but a lot of people see Facebook as a sort of postal service carrying their enveloped messages to their friends, and they have to trawl through a pretty large document of legalese to find out how it isn't. Facebook is more like one-way mirrored glass.

[Sparkesix]

Not OP, but I think the fundamental difference is that you are, presumably, not selling everything you know to potential stalkers that wish to know everything about the people you mentioned.

[smhost]

It's not just that. GP's analogy would only make sense if one of your neighbors was a superintelligent alien whose larger motives are hidden from you, whose livelihood lies in having an intimate understanding of your psychology and how to manipulate you, and who never misses any detail or forgets anything. Ever. It's fucking creepy.

[losteverything]

I was reared that it is in poor taste and even wrong to talk about someone. Period.

You may not violate a freedom but the bigger question to me is why would you even contemplate the thoughts to infer, etc.

What is "wrong" is that people think it is ok to talk about others.

Next time you get together in a group take a poll on how many conversations are just talking about people.

[Waterluvian]

I can't claim it's wrong because I'm not a good ethicist. But I can say anecdotally that I feel upset and disgusted by the idea that even though I don't have Facebook, they may have a dossier on me. Simply because friends use my name or share photos including me.

It's upsetting because I don't know what I can do about it. How do I protect my privacy in this world? Do I stop having friends? Do I wear a mask everywhere?

[AnonymousPlanet]

It's like finding out that the Stasi had an extensive file on you, even though you never travelled to the GDR or were an interesting target. The only connection is that friend of your's who once visited their uncle on the other side.

The difference is, the GDR is gone and none of this has any consequences anymore. However, the consequences of Facebook et al. are yet to be seen.

[wordupmaking]

> I can't claim it's wrong because I'm not a good ethicist.

Even the best ethics expert in the world would just be one who knows how to describe a bunch of ethical systems and ideas that exist currently and historically. Other than that, they can help you exactly zilch with such decisions. I'm not a psychologist, but I'll claim if it makes you feel upset and disgusted, that means you did decide you consider it wrong. And if it helps, I agree.

As for how to change things, well, ask the EFF for example? There's things you can do which, apart from being a real help, also help you with the dread of this free floating vague blob of worries that you sometimes look at but as you said feel you can't do anything about.

One thing you can always do, is that not giving in. It just takes one person to prove the claim that everybody accepts or wants X wrong. When being that person seems scary, personally, when looking around, I'm not convinced at all that the people who fight no or trivial battles are less scared. It's not actually safer on the side of thugs, generally speaking, and life isn't more fun at mindless parties either, only those who don't have the comparison would think that. I'd rather say that's all built on sand, on holes that have to be temporarily filled with more and more material.

So keep on hanging on, because there might come a point where you feel less upset, more grounded, and the people who drift along will become more and more confused. Real things can hurt, sometimes badly, but real things also have longevity, they bring their own means and nutrients for growth.

At least, that's how I answer these questions for myself, that's how it ended up working out, and while I know that can't be generalized, sometimes it does get darkest before dawn. Don't let it drag you down (Sophie Scholl's outlook = best outlook).. but what you can shoulder, do shoulder. The only way out really is through, ultimately.

If worst comes to worst, don't get crushed when the screeching narcissism machine attempting to eat the planet drives itself and billions of people against the wall and implodes. Easier said than done, but change will come one way or the other. I'm not convinced it would leave spots of unscorched Earth, but that hope dies last, anyway.

[sandov]

Well, your moral principles are very different from mine. I don't feel like I (or the state) should have a say about what goes on inside of Facebook's servers, they can do whatever they want with the information they have as long as the don't use coercion (to me, freedom is the lack of coercion).

That said, I do believe that there's a practical problem, but it's us that must try to solve it, we must educate people, we must ask our friends not to post our photos or personal info on social media, etc.

[astrobe_]

> they can do whatever they want with the information they have

What if they decide to publish online your computed profile? Maybe they know you better than yourself.

> as long as the don't use coercion

Isn't influence or suggestion a kind of coercion? Why do you think they spend so much resources on profiling everyone?

> That said, I do believe that there's a practical problem, but it's us that must try to solve it, we must educate people

My country used to have over 6000 people killed on roads out of about 60M people. The state tried to "educate" people about not driving while drunk, not driving fast, using seat belts, etc. But in the end, what actually worked was more policemen on the roads.

You say freedom is the lack of coercion but you fail to realize that you are coerced into being part of FB, and your only opt-out is drastic measures like using a blocker.

FB probably has more intelligence capabilities about mere people than any past or present intelligence agency of any country ever had. That raises a lot of questions, the first of them being to make sure that they don't use it against people.

[sandov]

I'm not being coerced to use Facebook, there's not threat of physical violence involved. I choose to use the web, if some site has fb trackers I can disable cookies, I can disable JS, I can do whatever I want with my computer in order to not give them my info.

Yes, there is influence, and I would certainly prefer it to no be like that, but freedom of people to use a lousy service as fb is still freedom, and freedom is more important than my feelings.

[clort]

The state is our collective will, on a national level. People like to refer to them and us but the government is us.

[gagege]

The state is the collective will of a relatively small group of people with money and power. Most people have no influence at all. That's how it always has been. I think the only way to maximize freedom is to support small, local governments.

[sandov]

According to Max Weber, Something is "a 'state' if and insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim on the 'monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force'. I am not part of the state, the state is the president, the congressmen, the taxman, but not "us".

[hueving]

I think the commenter was looking for an explanation of why you think shadow profiles are unethical.

In your argument you state that it violates peoples' freedom, but you need to define how their freedom is being violated.

[patkai]

Basically if FB creates a - shadow - profile of someone _not_ on FB they don't gibe her the chance to accept or reject their terms.

[prostoalex]

> because it is violating the freedom of people who have not signed up for their service

That's your interpretation of their reasoning, Facebook's interpretation could assume that they haven't signed up for service yet.

Also, how exactly is their freedom violated? Let's say they could do a certain set of actions on a given day prior to Facebook violation. So if a government violated their freedom (e.g. by putting them under house arrest), a certain subset of those actions, like walking to a store or a park, would be impeded.

What would be an example of actions that would be impeded by Facebook's violation?