For once, can we have articles (or even opinion pieces) which try to explain the context and position of both sides rather than pieces such as these. These kind of writings do nothing to change the mind of anyone. For someone who hates FB and its practices, they reinforce the already held belief. And for those, who are skeptical of such media articles, they would be put off by the language used. And make no mistake, its not about putting arguments from all sides, they picked a side and decided they are right, while the other side is wrong.
> Ad Observer is a browser plug-in that Facebook users voluntarily install. The plug-in scrapes (makes a copy of) every ad that a user sees and sends it to Ad Observatory, a public database of Facebook ads that scholars and accountability journalists mine to analyze what's really happening on the platform.
I agree with the sentiment, but this clearly mentions that the plugin scrapes data and sends to NYU servers. I may be wrong, but arent we taking NYU on their word that they are scraping only the ad data and nothing else? People agree to share their data voluntarily, but they are taking this add in at the face value. It may not be scraping, but can scrape. If Facebook allows third parties to scrape data (who can incentivize users any which way) where does it stop?
The question I had was, both - the independent ad analysis and the user privacy - seem important. So, what is the way both can exist? Maybe FB sharing the data by themselves? But, isnt that close to how Cambridge Analytica happened? These are grey areas, we should be debating and discussing in detail about them, not writing snide pieces with one side as the aggressor and another as victim.
> isnt that close to how Cambridge Analytica happened?
Close to. But different.
Cambridge Analytica drew from Facebook’s servers. This plug-in pulls from users’ computers. Cambridge Analytica was not academically affiliated. This is legitimate research. Cambridge was closed source. This is open.
Most importantly, users are explicitly sharing their data with NYU. There is no carrot of a personality quiz to obscure the quid pro quo.
You can download a release straight from there and import it into your browser. Browsers also do some reviews of the plugins that are in their stores, so every update should be tested by both Google and Mozilla (even if only superficially).
I'd say the odds of them managing to pull off scraping anything else without anyone noticing are rather slim.
> If Facebook allows third parties to scrape data (who can incentivize users any which way) where does it stop?
What say should Facebook have here though? I'd argue that when I am viewing data through my browser it's on my computer at that point. I've downloaded it so why should Facebook be allowed to decide what I can and cannot do with it any more than they can decide what I can do with my emails that I also view on my computer?
Isn't(technically speaking) the addon taking data only from the users PC and not from facebook servers?
At the end of the day it shouldn't be facebook's call what goes on the user's device.
One thing about these addons is that you can actually take them apart and see what is going on if you don't trust that the addon is built from their github code.
> isnt that close to how Cambridge Analytica happened?
Yes, its exactly this.
"Facebook changes based on past scandal for the better, and this is bad. here is my 9th grade essay with no research just feeling"
Facebook _should_ be held to account.
I personally don't think that the advertising is actually that much of a problem. It all has paper trails because they have to pay. Advertising is not the worst part of facebook is its users.
for that to change facebook needs to understand that "freedom of expression" disappears when you sign the terms and agreements, which specifically limit your freedom of expression. If they actually enforced their community standards properly, the place would be much better.
Instead they carve out exceptions for celebs, based on precedence that not even employees can find.
The thing is, I don't see how Facebook have any business allowing or forbidding users to install software on their own devices. I mean, if this was about FB banning users for TOS violations, that's one thing. But claiming a third party is not legally allowed to provide software that does something FB do not like? That's a whole different can of worms.
I have recently started supporting a ban on targeted advertising. Dividing people into cultural bubbles and being able to spend unlimited dollars on it is dangerous if we are to maintain cultural unity and be able to agree on facts.
Also, when your advertising is not public and only visible to subsections of people, it is more difficult to investigate what is going on. Facebook can do it themselves, but do we want to rely on a single company to do it? But when the advertising is public, it is easier to have a public discussion and have a possible backlash to it.
Since that'll never happen without toppling the money printing machines of several of the world's most powerful companies, I'd like to repeat an idea that I once heard -
A publicly available clearinghouse of all targeted ads published via a service so that researchers can find out
- Every ad published
- What targeting parameters were used, other basic data about the ad
- How many impressions the ad received
- How many clickthroughs, etc
It would not include any PII of those who saw the ads, only on the ads themselves. Bonus points if we can also have some kind of GUID "advertiser_id" that would allow researchers to tie the ads back to some kind of probably-anonymized-but-maybe-not entity that published the ad. The API would be defined in the regulation so that vendors can't pull any obfuscatory fuckery.
Since I turned off targeted advertising, youtube delights in showing me very graphic videos of earwax extraction. It feels like deliberate punishment and a not-so-gentle nudge to opt for more personalised ads.
Advertising, targeted or not, does not change the general public's ability to agree on facts or not, if indeed that ability exists at all.
If you're going to advocate for restricting free speech (by the state, no less) there had better be a great reason for it, not false claims like this one. It's a critical human right, not to be regulated lightly.
A vague desire for "cultural unity" is insufficient alone to start eroding human rights.
This is a great idea. Transparency is the real blocker here. On the other end, maybe idealistic / political advertisers need to register their content and spending in a public ledger.
They do not even take up the main problem between academia and FB.
Science goes were the data is- and data is at G,F,A . Meaning any science regarding people e.g. social sciences, psychology, behavioural studies - are effectively privatized.
Meaning, the paper of psychology grad-student who did a experiment and asked 200 people on campus is less valuable, as the internal report of some fb-data scientists, who wrote a query and a filter and send the very same question into the production database.
So if a whole branch of the sciences is effectively privatized, why do we even pretend the outside branches are anything then a publicly subsidized hobby?
Why is there no real discussion about the moral problem of privatized sciences, selling the knowledge and advantage gained as manipulation lever to politicians?
I'm not expecting this to happen for many financial and sociopolitical reasons, but I wish NYU would sue Facebook before November 30 seeking a declaratory judgment that their extension complies with all applicable laws and also with FB's terms of service (leaving aside the obvious catch-all of "we can cut you off for no reason in our sole discretion").
Too many threats like this from FB and other powerful entities yield unwarranted capitulation. If those powerful entities had to fear a real risk of losing a lawsuit on the topic of their baseless threat, they'd at least think before threatening and would sometimes refrain. Alas.
> This may be par for the course with Facebook, but it's not something we as a society can afford to tolerate any longer.
Those are strong words, but I'm afraid the "we as a society" are not as much of a power as one would hope. Facebook as a company might turn out to be more powerful. Facebook can bring lawsuits, PR doublespeak and over time wear down adversaries threatening their business.
I think the underlying problems need to be fixed before there can be hope of restricting what businesses like Facebook can do.
“We as a society” write the laws. They can be changed.
The process, IMO, already has started, with the USA and the EU launching investigations against about all the big tech companies (I think Microsoft isn’t investigated yet, but in the context of privacy, they aren’t a truly big player yet. Any new laws will apply to them, regardless)
I wonder if NYU business school prof Scott Galloway @profgalloway is going to weigh in on this issue. NYU is by no means powerless.
We can guess that FB employs a full-time proactive crisis management public relations team. Why? To help guess what they can get away with. But they may have underestimated NYU as an opponent.
Is there any difference between selected private ads, secret society and religion? It's quite similar. Subgroup of crowd, believing something may not be scientific, xenophobia, delivering some "special idea" to their members, etc.
If there is no illegal stuff, why should we criticize on this? Just because they are not mature or long enough as religion?
It’s important to point out that Facebook has an Ads library that allows you to research currently running ads for a given Facebook page and for politics, social issue, or election ads there is an API.
While these capabilities do not map 1:1 to how this plugin works it seems like a bit of a middle ground for the researchers to be able to research ads without risking privacy of people or violating terms of service.
> Facebook has an Ads library that allows you to research currently running ads for a given Facebook page and for politics
The library omits targeting information. The specific subject of this research. Also, Facebook has a culture and history of lying. There is public interest in auditing its disclosures.
So you don't want independent researcher to verify if you are targeting ads when you have proved from time to time Facebook is not trustworthy with our data?
And the link you shared doesn't have any information how ads are targeted. Stop using Privacy as a PR stunt. I trust those researcher with my data than facebook.
The key question to me is why users privacy needs to be protected from opting in to the NYU study, but not from opting in to using the Facebook platform.
Facebook (and other too big to fail companies) should be split. Facebook Ad company should be independent from Facebook and should have access to the platform on the same terms any other ad company could have access with all respect to privacy. Currently Facebook has a conflict of interest between the social media platform and ad business. We never have seen this before and this needs to be urgently regulated. The same with Google - their ad business has to be decoupled from search and ad company shouldn't have any access to personal data. Google search and Facebook should be forbidden by law to store personal data in a manner that does meet interest of advertising or other types of surveillance.
[+] [-] ankit219|5 years ago|reply
> Ad Observer is a browser plug-in that Facebook users voluntarily install. The plug-in scrapes (makes a copy of) every ad that a user sees and sends it to Ad Observatory, a public database of Facebook ads that scholars and accountability journalists mine to analyze what's really happening on the platform.
I agree with the sentiment, but this clearly mentions that the plugin scrapes data and sends to NYU servers. I may be wrong, but arent we taking NYU on their word that they are scraping only the ad data and nothing else? People agree to share their data voluntarily, but they are taking this add in at the face value. It may not be scraping, but can scrape. If Facebook allows third parties to scrape data (who can incentivize users any which way) where does it stop?
The question I had was, both - the independent ad analysis and the user privacy - seem important. So, what is the way both can exist? Maybe FB sharing the data by themselves? But, isnt that close to how Cambridge Analytica happened? These are grey areas, we should be debating and discussing in detail about them, not writing snide pieces with one side as the aggressor and another as victim.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|5 years ago|reply
Close to. But different.
Cambridge Analytica drew from Facebook’s servers. This plug-in pulls from users’ computers. Cambridge Analytica was not academically affiliated. This is legitimate research. Cambridge was closed source. This is open.
Most importantly, users are explicitly sharing their data with NYU. There is no carrot of a personality quiz to obscure the quid pro quo.
[+] [-] input_sh|5 years ago|reply
You can download a release straight from there and import it into your browser. Browsers also do some reviews of the plugins that are in their stores, so every update should be tested by both Google and Mozilla (even if only superficially).
I'd say the odds of them managing to pull off scraping anything else without anyone noticing are rather slim.
[+] [-] _Understated_|5 years ago|reply
What say should Facebook have here though? I'd argue that when I am viewing data through my browser it's on my computer at that point. I've downloaded it so why should Facebook be allowed to decide what I can and cannot do with it any more than they can decide what I can do with my emails that I also view on my computer?
[+] [-] White_Wolf|5 years ago|reply
One thing about these addons is that you can actually take them apart and see what is going on if you don't trust that the addon is built from their github code.
[+] [-] KaiserPro|5 years ago|reply
Yes, its exactly this.
"Facebook changes based on past scandal for the better, and this is bad. here is my 9th grade essay with no research just feeling"
Facebook _should_ be held to account.
I personally don't think that the advertising is actually that much of a problem. It all has paper trails because they have to pay. Advertising is not the worst part of facebook is its users.
for that to change facebook needs to understand that "freedom of expression" disappears when you sign the terms and agreements, which specifically limit your freedom of expression. If they actually enforced their community standards properly, the place would be much better.
Instead they carve out exceptions for celebs, based on precedence that not even employees can find.
[+] [-] rebuilder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] konjin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antris|5 years ago|reply
Also, when your advertising is not public and only visible to subsections of people, it is more difficult to investigate what is going on. Facebook can do it themselves, but do we want to rely on a single company to do it? But when the advertising is public, it is easier to have a public discussion and have a possible backlash to it.
[+] [-] Jgrubb|5 years ago|reply
A publicly available clearinghouse of all targeted ads published via a service so that researchers can find out
- Every ad published
- What targeting parameters were used, other basic data about the ad
- How many impressions the ad received
- How many clickthroughs, etc
It would not include any PII of those who saw the ads, only on the ads themselves. Bonus points if we can also have some kind of GUID "advertiser_id" that would allow researchers to tie the ads back to some kind of probably-anonymized-but-maybe-not entity that published the ad. The API would be defined in the regulation so that vendors can't pull any obfuscatory fuckery.
Sunlight is the first step in stopping this.
[+] [-] jan_Inkepa|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|5 years ago|reply
If you're going to advocate for restricting free speech (by the state, no less) there had better be a great reason for it, not false claims like this one. It's a critical human right, not to be regulated lightly.
A vague desire for "cultural unity" is insufficient alone to start eroding human rights.
[+] [-] prox|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
Is targeting knitters by advertising your knitting needles in a knitting magazine a problem in your mind?
That seems a really silly thing to want to ban, to me, and I think it will actually make enjoying advertising-supported content worse, not better.
[+] [-] mFixman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PicassoCTs|5 years ago|reply
Science goes were the data is- and data is at G,F,A . Meaning any science regarding people e.g. social sciences, psychology, behavioural studies - are effectively privatized.
Meaning, the paper of psychology grad-student who did a experiment and asked 200 people on campus is less valuable, as the internal report of some fb-data scientists, who wrote a query and a filter and send the very same question into the production database.
So if a whole branch of the sciences is effectively privatized, why do we even pretend the outside branches are anything then a publicly subsidized hobby?
Why is there no real discussion about the moral problem of privatized sciences, selling the knowledge and advantage gained as manipulation lever to politicians?
[+] [-] romanoderoma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsnell|5 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24909056
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24922578
[+] [-] mikece|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|5 years ago|reply
Censorship and privacy aren't opposites and I would probably argue they are largely independent or even orthogonal.
[+] [-] jkaplowitz|5 years ago|reply
Too many threats like this from FB and other powerful entities yield unwarranted capitulation. If those powerful entities had to fear a real risk of losing a lawsuit on the topic of their baseless threat, they'd at least think before threatening and would sometimes refrain. Alas.
[+] [-] Maarten88|5 years ago|reply
Those are strong words, but I'm afraid the "we as a society" are not as much of a power as one would hope. Facebook as a company might turn out to be more powerful. Facebook can bring lawsuits, PR doublespeak and over time wear down adversaries threatening their business.
I think the underlying problems need to be fixed before there can be hope of restricting what businesses like Facebook can do.
[+] [-] Someone|5 years ago|reply
The process, IMO, already has started, with the USA and the EU launching investigations against about all the big tech companies (I think Microsoft isn’t investigated yet, but in the context of privacy, they aren’t a truly big player yet. Any new laws will apply to them, regardless)
[+] [-] URfejk|5 years ago|reply
If everyone would abandon FB, they would go out of bussiness.
People have much more power that they think they do.
They just do not know it.
[+] [-] OliverJones|5 years ago|reply
We can guess that FB employs a full-time proactive crisis management public relations team. Why? To help guess what they can get away with. But they may have underestimated NYU as an opponent.
[+] [-] matchbok|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LdSGSgvupDV|5 years ago|reply
If there is no illegal stuff, why should we criticize on this? Just because they are not mature or long enough as religion?
[+] [-] gabea|5 years ago|reply
While these capabilities do not map 1:1 to how this plugin works it seems like a bit of a middle ground for the researchers to be able to research ads without risking privacy of people or violating terms of service.
(Disclaimer - I work at FB)
See:
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/api/?source=archive-lan...
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|5 years ago|reply
The library omits targeting information. The specific subject of this research. Also, Facebook has a culture and history of lying. There is public interest in auditing its disclosures.
[+] [-] Maarten88|5 years ago|reply
...so you go along in the doublespeak. Please elaborate, because the article says it's without merit and also rather rich coming from Facebook.
> violating terms of service
prohibiting independent research to find if what they promise is actually true, after they have been proven untrustworthy many times?
[+] [-] cute_boi|5 years ago|reply
And the link you shared doesn't have any information how ads are targeted. Stop using Privacy as a PR stunt. I trust those researcher with my data than facebook.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mattnewton|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commentrix|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] intricatedetail|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Understated_|5 years ago|reply
Be under no illusions... Facebook IS an ad company! Their product is the people that use the platform.
There is no separation.
The Facebook data feed that users interact with is the bait to harvest the data for ads... it's nothing more than that.