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by bertil 3189 days ago
> This pledge was, in some ways, the reverse of an other announcement [on retargeting].

No, it’s not: giving advertisers relevant audiences is useful; offering customers the possibility to say “me buying a vacuum cleaner was not because I was starting a collection” serves a similar purpose: showing ads to people interested by them. (On a related note: If you sell a vacuum cleaner, please don’t use retargeting.)

> The only two I could think of that might feel obligated to make the same assurances are Diebold, the widely hated former manufacturer of electronic-voting systems, and Academi, the private military contractor whose founder keeps begging for a chance to run Afghanistan. This is not good company.

No words on whether Diebolt, and the hundreds of private computer security companies who protect government services are good companies.

> At 2 billion members, “monthly active Facebook users” is the single largest non-biologically sorted group

Well, I’d wager ‘Internet users’ is larger…

> For most Facebook users, these meticulously constructed and assiduously managed challenges are the only access they’ll ever have to Zuckerberg’s otherwise highly private personal life.

The fact that I know his chidren’s names (and have seem a dozen pictures of the eldest) but I don’t know the names of most of my colleagues’ child kind of defeats that point.

> Maybe Facebook is a state within a state and Zuckerberg is inspecting its boundaries.

Something tells me that the author is American. What could it possibly be?