Off-Facebook Activity

[mattkevan]

Hmm, a clear history feature that does nothing of the sort. Sounds like Facebook!

The product manager in charge said: “people were able to mentally connect that with how their browser controls work, where they can clear their history. We clearly state that … the information isn’t connected to your account.” [0]

So, they deliberately designed it to make people think it works like a browser's clear history feature (which does delete everything), but instead, it 'disconnects' the data (but doesn't delete anything).

Such a bunch of weasels.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/20/facebook-...

[gaogao]

That's why it's not called clear history anymore...

[downandout]

And? Ads will no longer be targeted to that user with this information. You've identified a distinction without a difference.

[yalogin]

Great point. I did find the selection of words odd. They said "will not be connected to your account" and not "deleted". I wonder if it's because they have no way to stop the collection of such data as any of my connections could be pushing that data to facebook.

[yumraj]

> Such a bunch of weasels

I think it's more like a very big weasel and his cult-followers.

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

Ugh, this just reads so slimy. Like, "Occasionally, businesses share that data with Facebook." or "We sometimes receive information from businesses that use third-party data..." Like it just happens to occur. 'Yep, It's just a natural process, buddy, like the sun rising. It just happens. But we're here to help you deal with this mysterious problem, because we're the good guys!' There's so much grossness to opt out of in the modern world. Thank god for GDPR and CCPA.

[high_derivative]

'The off-Facebook activity setting isn't currently available to you right now.'

Smart, announcing it without it being usable, so when it's silently rolled out later people will have forgotten about it. Never change, FB.

[moneil971]

It’s rolled out in Ireland, South Korea and Spain to start, more countries are coming soon.

[pesenti]

This is the clear history feature that was announced a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16969325. See also the engineering post that explains some of the challenges in implementing this: https://engineering.fb.com/data-infrastructure/off-facebook-...

[tobr]

This comment is by Jérôme Pesenti, VP of AI at Facebook.

[bubble_talk]

Since no one else has asked yet: You seem like a nice guy who could probably get a job elsewhere easily. Why are you still at FB?

[olliej]

This is at best disingenuous - you are a VP at facebook and should preface a comment that tries to claim FB is respecting people's privacy with a comment to the effect of:

"I am a VP at Facebook and my income is based on how effectively we track and abuse the privacy of the general public, whether or not they are user's or have agreed to any contract with my employer"

[amaccuish]

It's like how the scale of Google forced them to come up with Spanner to solve their engineering challenges: Facebook collects so much data it's now having to develop new systems and ingenious methods to allow users to delete said data.

[nod]

Why is it no longer a "clear history" feature?

[eropple]

Respectfully: if your employer (for as I understand it you are a Facebook employee) encounters "challenges" to treating people decently and not running a panopticon on humanity at large, it is hard to see a reason why your employer should be allowed to continue as a going concern.

[jforberg]

> challenges

rm -rf /var/tracking_data/jforberg

[Nextgrid]

If it’s challenging to make a feature treat users with respect then maybe you shouldn’t have built the feature in the first place?

It’s like designing a dangerous rollercoaster with no concern for safety, and then when people start dying complaining about how hard it was to make it safe.

Nasty, unethical, criminal and morally bankrupt company. There are no other words to describe it.

[jbaudanza]

Lately I've been thinking that the phrase "your data" is a deceptive use of language. It encourages the fantasy that you have some kind of ownership over the data that your actions produce. And that you have some natural right to control how it is used.

The reality is that once data leaves your device, it's not yours anymore. It will almost certainly be used to track and manipulate you. If someone is talking about giving you control over "your data", it should be a signal that they intend to do the opposite. (like the OP).

Maybe we need to give up this fantasy of "your data" before we can embrace technologies such as ad-blocking, encryption, and frankly abstaining from using abusive software.

[jasonjayr]

Digital rights holders very much hold tightly to the fiction of "your data", and use the teeth of the law to fight anyone claiming otherwise, or copying it in a manner they did not authorize.

(IANAL) At what point can we claim that Terms of Service statements are agreed to under duress, and regain rights to our data as the rightful copyright owner of such data?

[typicalfacebk]

This seems nearly useless. It doesn't remove the data when you clear it. It simply "disconnects it from your user ID". But we've seen before that the collected data has so much personally identifiable information in it, that the user ID isn't needed anyway. So in reality, this does nothing. And Facebook absolutely knows this.

[timgilbert]

Yeah, if the personal (or shadow) profile has a phone number, and the same phone number is in the tracked data, removing the personal profile's user ID seems a little beside the point.

[tobr]

So how will this work if I don’t use a Facebook account?

[givinguflac]

That's my question as well, they aren't saying anything about shadow profiles. It seems like a ploy to get people to create accounts just to 'stop' tracking.

[WaylonKenning]

I've just blocked all Facebook.com cookies in my browser. If you're not using Facebook, why do you ever need its cookies?

[hedora]

It looks like they rotate the ID for third party data every 24 hours, but only if you opt out.

Presumably, their tracking is more effective if you simply don’t create an account (so they never rotate the ID).

/Insert a rant about perverse incentives and dark patterns here

[beshrkayali]

In the video she said that the website sends data about you to Facebook. This is incorrect. Facebook is the one doing the collecting or the purchasing of your data from 3rd party collectors.

I try to post this on every Facebook related post: Leave Facebook. You'll thank yourself a year from now.

[echeese]

Not true, you're able to advertise to specific groups of people by sending hashed email addresses in a "Customer List". I found this out when I discovered Rockstar Social Club targeted me for a GTA Online campaign.

[olliej]

If you leave facebook you can't access the "clear history" feature, so they can track you and keep that information forever.

Facebook is a morally bankrupt company and the only real fix is to black hole their many domains.

[cameronbrown]

This is a good step but it'll probably be something that won't be pushed widely by Facebook themselves but pointed to by them to regulators, saying 'look, we do care!'

[CaptainZapp]

This is a good step

I disagree. It's a typical Facebook step.

Sneaky, shifty and weasely.

[llamataboot]

All I want is a clear answer from someone at facebook. Why can't I choose to delete data about me from your database? I don't even nec need to be able to see it or do it at a granular level, though that would be nice. All I want to be able to do is say delete this.

Can I delete a private message from your database?

Can I delete your record of a status I wrote from your database?

Can I delete access logs from a website that was using a FB pixel from your database?

[tareqak]

I'm glad Facebook chose the name that they did. Hopefully enough people will ask, "why does Facebook care about my activity off Facebook?"

[gregknicholson]

If you don't read it too closely, it sounds like an advert for the very concept of doing activities away from Facebook, which made me chuckle.

“Exciting features include: Cycling through woods! Reading a story in a book made of paper! Now you can control what you see, do and think!”

[kd3]

I just recently stopped using Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. Taking everyone close to me to Signal.

[elicash]

Facebook deleted a ton of the really valuable ad settings controls I used to prevent bad advertiser behavior somewhat recently. I'd rather have that ability to block advertisers uploading data I didn't give them than this feature.

And all they'd have to do is turn it back on.

[ben7799]

Wait how can I set my preferences for the activity they're tracking on me if I don't have an account?

I'm not under any illusions they're not trying to track me despite me not having an account with them.

[daphneokeefe]

We know that FB tracks us just as much as the people who have accounts. But we have less access and fewer rights.

[newscracker]

As a good practice, does the user have to go to this page and “clear history” everyday, akin to brushing one’s teeth? Who’d even do that (not taking about brushing one’s teeth)?

Why not make it like a permanent toggle that says “never associate off-Facebook activity with my account (to advertise to me and sell me stuff I don’t need)”?

I don’t see anyone being creeped out or annoyed by “backpack ads” (as seen in that dramatization video of this feature) and still being ok with seeing continuous creepy and annoying ads for shoes or something else later.

[dredmorbius]

"Disconnected".

Data Re-Identification:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification

[kbos87]

This sounds so similar to the engineering of the notifications UI they have done over the past few years. When they say they’ve “given users more control”, yes, they’ve added toggles to that screen, but they’ve engineered the whole thing to take control away and force people into an all or nothing decision where Facebook has the ability to serve you a notification when they feel like you should be engaging.

[samschooler]

So I've all but given up on trusting these big corporations to delete all of my data when I turn off data collection/clear history.

However, I think these activity tools are extremely useful. They allow me to see all (or at least most) of what Facebook/Google has on me and it allows me to practice and implement strategies that prevent the corps from collecting the data in the first place.

[shafyy]

Honestly, it pisses me off that I even have to THINK about this.

[danpalmer]

Translations from their FAQs:

> If I disconnect my activity, will I stop seeing ads?

No.

> Does disconnecting my activity mean that it's deleted?

No.

> Why am I seeing businesses I don't recognise?

Because they are creepier than you thought.

[werber]

Who is going to see this that isn't a nerd checking out places like HN like all of us? This doesn't seem like a real effort to aid user privacy, if it was it should be something that pops up in every facebook user's face, not an article you have to search for.

Facebooks attempts at making up for their mistakes almost always leave me feeling worse about the company

[mosselman]

For Android, privacytools.io advises Blokada. It is an app that runs a sort of local pihole which enables it to block trackers in any app, not just a web browser. I don’t have an android phone myself, but I was very impressed when I tried it out on someone else’s.

Is there a similar for iOS that anyone is aware of?

[skonteam]

DNSCloak (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-secure-dns-client/id1...) seems to do the job.

[romaaeterna]

Here is a dirty GDPR secret: HDFS is an append-only filesystem. It's way too hard to delete things in big data projects, so they get disconnected instead.

[roddux]

>If you'd like, you can disconnect that information from your account, and it will not be associated with you personally. Specifically no mention that they will delete the data, helpfully combined with no mention that it's trivial to deanonymise such data.

TL;DR: This is a bullshit PR piece to assuage worries that Facebook data-mining the internet. They still are. Move along.

[nappy]

Facebook just happens to get sent data... yeah, more like Facebook buys data. And invests heavily in tools to make it easier for its customers to send Facebook data.

[rolltiide]

> If you’d like, you can disconnect that information from your account, and it will not be associated with you personally.

“But we still keep it and the entire unique fingerprint”

[gukov]

Social media has became incredibly complex. Facebook now has a mini-site to explain the purpose of a single button.

[sandeshd]

What will happen to people who are already opted out of ads based on data from facebook business partners.

[olliej]

Please create a facebook account so we can track you^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h help "you" can "control" how we make ads from our abuse of your privacy.

We aren't going to stop tracking you, and "bugs" and "inadvertent" changes may "accidentally" reset your settings.

[sgt101]

Firefox, firefox, firefox!

((facebook containers -> it looks after you))

ironically, posted with Chrome

[tsjq]

as a non-FB user, do these browser settings keep FB from tracking me?

block all 3rd party cookies, block all trackers, clear cookies on exit, uBlock Origin extension,

and blocking FB related sites in /etc/hosts file

[bravoetch]

It's hard to know for sure, and I think you're doing most of what you could do. More layers would be using TOR browser, noscript, and using a VPN for Al connections on your phone and other devices.

[plodman]

How does this work in terms of GDPR? If it’s only rolled out in a few countries, surely this is Facebook admitting they collect this data but we have no way to access it right now?

Shouldn’t this incur a rather heavy fine?

[lwh]

Does this block react CDN hits?

[ProAm]

So creepy.

[winternett]

Hey Guys,

We here at Facebook realized you don't trust our apps, so we made another app that makes you think our apps are safe. Despite this just being another app within our portfolio of tracking tools. Please download and install, otherwise the other apps may not work eventually. Trust us. ಠ_ಠ

[_bxg1]

And just look at that lovely, friendly new shade of blue! There's no way a company using that color can mean any harm!

[the_watcher]

Where does it say you need to download another app? It lives in the Settings tab of the main app.

[pictur]

Why do people keep using facebook? I don't want to see this shit anymore.

[ilikehurdles]

It's for kids to share memes under fake profiles and boomers to share fake news under real profiles.

A hard cut from facebook is surprisingly easy. The biggest challenge is getting over the mentality of fear that it will somehow be challenging.

[pyr0hu]

Keep in touch with family and friends. In my country (hungary) most people use Messenger to communicate. It'd take too much time and hassle to introduce new apps and platforms to my friends to keep in touch with them.

[nimajneb]

Both of my kickball teams use for game attendance, etc. There are plenty of social events to be found on FB. There's a lot of reasons to keep using it. A lot people use it as their main communication vehicle. There's more reasons than what I listed.

[19ylram49]

I deleted my Facebook account about 9 months ago. My life has been noticeably better without it!

[decebalus1]

I live abroad and it's one of the few ways in which I get to see what my family/friends are up to. I don't post anything or read news articles from Facebook. I just look at baby/vacation/wedding/birthday pics.

I use Facebook in a container tab in Firefox, completely cut off from my regular browsing. Before that, I used to block it using Privacy Badger.

[saagarjha]

It provides value to people.

[astura]

They use it because they get value out of it.

[drinchev]

Facebook can receive whatever they deserve, but let's clap our hands on their development team. React is what currently puts bread on my table and it seems like it will do so for a long time. I can't think of a single big win from a social network in spending their money for R&D than FB ( look at LinkedIn for example ).

[sgt101]

Kafka?