[blub]

Facebook has been screwing with people's privacy for years, so it's only fair that they are now criticised for years on end.

This has got to be a new Facebook apology meme: the pile-on. Until Facebook and privacy is regulated in the US, like GDPR does it for the EU, the pile-on should continue. Must continue, no matter how uncomfortable it is for the pro-Facebook, pro-ads or pro-spyware people.

[Joeboy]

For me, the result of having HN filled with these Facebook non-stories is that I'm going to stop taking an interest in them. As far as I can tell the situation with Facebook is substantially the same as it's been since it started. Users willfully broadcast information using Facebook, and sometimes Facebook uses that information in ways its users didn't intend or expect. Among the recent slew of dramatic stories I haven't seen anything I found particularly surprising or shocking, so I've started to pattern match anti-Facebook stories as fluff. One day something actually shocking will happen, like Facebook leaking people's private messages or browsing histories. Hopefully when that happens we won't all have reached the point of ennui, boiling frog-style.

[tjoff]

What makes you think this is a non-story? It is yet another example of a culture that feeds on lack of empathy and respect of peoples lives.

Yes, it is boring, yes it is repetitive. And it will continue to be that way until facebook gains a shred of decency. But I guess that we should just forgive and ignore because there are too may of them?

Maybe you are not the target of these stories, the public at large do feel that they are surprising and shocking.

[philipodonnell]

> the result of having HN filled with these Facebook non-stories is that I'm going to stop taking an interest in them.

> the public at large do feel that they are surprising and shocking.

Not OP, but I don't think the point is that its a non-story to the public at large, I think the point is that its a non-story to anyone reading HN, which is decidedly not the public at large.

I get where they're coming from. If I go to reddit or local news and see a bunch of Facebook non-stories I would tend to discount that as the public finally waking up to this. When I come here and see a Facebook article I immediately assume it is important and I need to pay attention because the audience here is so different than reddit/local news. If I can't trust HN to filter for only truly important stories then I'll start to treat it like Reddit and look for a better source for truly important news, which would be a shame.

[chickenfries]

> If I can't trust HN to filter for only truly important stories

The HN frontpage is a pretty poor proxy for "importance." It's simply whatever the users of HN find interesting. AFAIK, there is no "only upvote truly important" stories rule.

[philipodonnell]

That's fair. I was using important to mean "worth spending the time to read" as my interests are fairly well aligned with the HN community (at least as far as my interest in Facebook-related news). Though over time audiences change, so as more of these non-stories continue to proliferate, perhaps HN is becoming more targeted to the interests of the general public and I should accept that or move on.

[camillomiller]

I don’t know why you’ve been downvoted, you actually posed a serious point. Two days ago, Facebook’s CTO admitted that the search-by-phone-number functionality has been used by bad actors all over to rake in public profile information from potentially all users. We all barely flinched.

Facebook PR strategy is now coming straight out of the Trump’s PR book.

[Joeboy]

> I don’t know why you’ve been downvoted

I'm guessing for being a pro-Facebook shill and/or an anti-Facebook zealot.

[a-priori]

Is it not shocking to you how blatantly Facebook breaches people's expectations about the use of their data?

People share data with Facebook for a particular, immediate benefit to themselves. I share my location so my friends can see where I am, I post my photos so my friends can see what I'm doing and who I'm with, I share my contacts so I can find my friends, etc. In and of itself, this should be fine and safe to do. The problem comes when Facebook takes the data that was given to them for one purpose, in one context, and they use it for another purpose now or in the future.

I can't make informed consent when it comes to data, because the real value of data only comes from when it's aggregated with other data -- either my own over time, or other peoples'. I can't know what incremental effect this datum has when it's combined with everything else Facebook knows about me, and all their other users, and run through their current or future machine learning algorithm. So, it's impossible to know whether it's in my interest to disclose any particular bit of information to them.

Details that are innocuous to human eyes can be very salient to algorithms. I might disclose a set of data points and never make any connection between them. I might mention I feel tired on one day, and write with a negative tone on a few other days, and wake up (i.e, open Facebook for the first time in the morning) later than usual. Without knowing this, that's enough information for Facebook to make a confident inference that I'm depressed, an inference that amounts to discovering private information I never intended to reveal. Of course, they don't disclose that they know that about me, but they do use it against me. They may target ads for anti-depressant drugs, or they may invisibly bias my news feed to have more negative content.

That's even assuming I'm aware that I'm disclosing information at all. If I log into Facebook to see what my friends are up to, then close the tab and start browsing the web, Facebook knows where I go on the web any time I visit a page with Facebook comments even if I don't post any comments. The content of the page, combined with other data they know about me and the other visitors to the site, can be combined to make inferences about me, my interests and hobbies, my sex or sexual orientation, race, socioeconomic class, medical conditions, vices, and so on.

We can't expect every person to become experts on data analysis so they can fully understand the implications of disclosing their data.

[lallysingh]

They're hardly alone, just the most visible. Let's remember that many of our fellow hackers are likely Facebook engineers doing regular work, and are probably feeling pretty bad right now, even though the decisions behind what's going on is way above their pay grade.

Yes there's some responsibility due them as well, but perhaps we can remain civil to our silent peers?

[sincerely]

>Let's remember that many of our fellow hackers are likely Facebook engineers doing regular work, and are probably feeling pretty bad right now, even though the decisions behind what's going on is way above their pay grade.

Didn't we establish that "just following orders" doesn't cut it decades ago?

[lallysingh]

The second paragraph that you didn't quote covered that

[leesalminen]

Barely. I think FB engineers deserve more than “some” of the blame here. Surely they could see the negative consequences of linking health data into their graph.

[LinuxBender]

The ones I know are proud of the fact they can pull in thousands of data sources. They will show off what they can do using big data, AI and other bingo terms with your data.

[leesalminen]

Scary stuff. Glad I never drank the FB Kool-Aid. Don’t think I’d even consider a job offer from them.