Facebook has been insisting that non-discrimination should be the responsibility of the purchasers, but we've shown over [0] and over [1] again [2] that even when the advertiser targets all groups proportionally (no misuse of advertising options), Facebook subselects who to show their ads to in a skewed way, leaving the advertiser and the users no recourse.
I just read half of the last paper (and skimmed the other half). It is surprising that the paper does not use the term "information theory" even once. The research basically bumps into the established facts that properly hiding or destroying information is really hard.
Advertising industry has known this since ancient times. Military signals intelligence has been essentially built with that tidbit as its core. Even weak proxies are formidable if you have bucketloads of them to choose and combine from.
Now, let's make one thing clear: I am not a FB apologist. In fact, I find the modern advertising systems abhorrent, immoral and outright vile. But even then, this article felt like the authors chose to miss the point. Hiding information is incredibly difficult - and conflating "information theory is damn hard" with "FB[ß] are evil and/or immoral" feels intellectually dishonest.
For what it's worth, I would actually love to see research _and_ well sourced articles about the practical net effects of information theoretical attacks, intentional or not, on the human populations as observed through the various e-stalking platforms.
ß: I'm using "FB" here as a shortcut for FANG+MS+others.
Advertising industry has known this since ancient times. Military signals intelligence has been essentially built with that tidbit as its core. Even weak proxies are formidable if you have bucketloads of them to choose and combine from.
Now, let's make one thing clear: I am not a FB apologist. In fact, I find the modern advertising systems abhorrent, immoral and outright vile. But even then, this article felt like the authors chose to miss the point. Hiding information is incredibly difficult - and conflating "information theory is damn hard" with "FB[ß] are evil and/or immoral" feels intellectually dishonest.
For what it's worth, I would actually love to see research _and_ well sourced articles about the practical net effects of information theoretical attacks, intentional or not, on the human populations as observed through the various e-stalking platforms.
ß: I'm using "FB" here as a shortcut for FANG+MS+others.