The creepiness that is Facebook

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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby identity » Thu Nov 09, 2017 10:33 pm

selected comments re: f*c*book spying from a current thread over at metafilter:


My favorite is when they listen in on conversations, and report back keywords, like in Facebook Messenger and Alexa, ostensibly for targeted advertising but who knows what else. On some devices - it's a pretty clear pattern of A/B testing, and likely done this way to get more info on how to disguise what they're doing before rolling it out to the userbase entire.

Then maybe sell more than ad buys - I can think of a few governments who would like to know when their citizens are being disloyal and disrespectful, and who have deep pockets.





This is a myth. Messenger doesn't listen in on your conversations. (bold text links to: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your-phones-microphone-for-ads-or-news-feed-stories/

I can't help but notice that article was written by Facebook, and that it was written back in the golden days of summer 2016--before Facebook acknowledged Russians and others were harnessing the power of the platform for nefarious purposes.

I've tested this out, and whether or not it was Facebook, some damn thing was listening in and spit out FB ads at me: I said a phrase in my car I've likely never said before. Something like "wrench bottom." Sure enough, within an hour, I saw FB ads for "wrench bottom."

(I quit Facebook a month ago.)




" Messenger doesn't listen in on your conversations. "

The Facebook-written text you link to doesn't actually say they don't listen, just that they do "not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed.". They're very specific about what they don't do and very vague about what they do do.

They then say:

We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio. This might include recording a video or using an optional feature we introduced two years ago to include music or other audio in your status updates.

It might include those things, or it might include many other things, by their wording.






Data point about how Facebook definitely reads/scans Messenger content (apart from all the weird 'why am I seeing this ad about something I mentioned once over chat to a friend?' type of coincidences): in discussing the Charlottesville riot with a friend, I asked him, "Have you seen the Vice video?" Within an hour, the message had been deleted from both of our logs, replaced with "This message has been deleted due to harmful or abusive content." My wording might be slightly off, but regardless, the message was innocuous and neither of us reported it. I submitted a report to Facebook asking how this had happened and why, though they never responded to it.

Like an above poster, not long after, I permanently deleted my Facebook account.






I am not on Facebook.
I have never been on Facebook.
I run NoScript and Ghostery and multiple ad blockers.

I am sure Facebook still knows a shit ton of stuff about me. Probably almost as much as they'd know if I had joined.

Because what are my friends and relatives doing? They're putting up pictures of groups at parties, and identifying the people in them. They're talking about things we did together, with the other people I know. They are letting Facebook scrape their contact list. I'm sure Facebook is collating all that and is ready and waiting for me to join. They'll already have enough info to (correctly!) suggest huge numbers of friends to me, and to advertise to me, and send me the news stories for my particular political bubble, before I ever even click "Like" for the first time. I am sure it will be instantly cozy there.

They know us all, whether we join or not.






This is a myth. Messenger doesn't listen in on your conversations.

When anecdotal evidence becomes actual data. Happened to me, happened to more than one other person in the thread. Google, Amazon and Facebook are straight up lying when they claim they're not listening in on your everyday convos while pretending to be idle, and absolutely taking action on what they heard.

"Wrench bottom" is a good one. Mine I won't share, but it was similarly unique, and the intimate nature of it... fuck.

Goddamn. I'm a no-kidding network security expert. CISSP, advance certs from the big edge network appliance vendors and cloud security vendors.

This is a huge fucking deal and paid professionals have no idea how to counter it. We're mostly pretending it doesn't exist, and if it does exist, it doesn't affect us, and if it does affect us, it's not so bad.

Fffffffffuck.




A couple of weeks ago, my co-worker and I went to get coffee. We each had our phones and were discussing a particular appliance; I mentioned a particular store I had seen an ad in that day's newspaper (dead tree edition). When we got back to our desks, she navigated to a news site and got an ad for that particular appliance; I opened Instagram and there was an ad for the store I had mentioned. Someone was listening.





I kind of...don’t understand people’s skepticism.

Can these companies listen in on your conversations if they want?

Is anything stopping them?

If yes and no, then of course they are.

I mean...What in the history of this capitalist century leaves you to believe they wouldn’t do it if they could? Or try to find a way to monetize the ability?


http://www.metafilter.com/170479/Al-Franken-We-are-not-tech-giants-customers-we-are-their-product
We should never forget Galileo being put before the Inquisition.
It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.

Richard Smith, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal 1991-2004,
in a published letter to Nature
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby smoking since 1879 » Tue Nov 14, 2017 1:54 pm

Someone has you* all by the short and curlies...

Measuring impact of 'likes' by users on Facebook being targeted by sellers

A small team of researchers from Columbia Business School, Stanford University and the Wharton School of Business all in the U.S. and the University of Cambridge in the U.K. has found a way to show that sellers targeting ads at users based on their profiles on Facebook can have a dramatic impact on sales.
...
In this new effort, the researchers looked at the impact of targeting users based on nothing more than "likes" they made for two given entities.
...
Lady Gaga and Stargate
...
extroverted / introverted
...
worked with an online beauty product maker who used the data from Cambridge to create and buy ads on Facebook targeted at women based on whether they were deemed more extroverted or introverted as determined solely on their decision to click on a "like" for one or the other chosen pages.
...
reached a total of 3.1 million people
...
the scheme had resulted in a clear increase in both clicks on their ads (1.4 times as many) and in sales (1.5 times as many) as compared to untargeted advertising on the same site
...

...

...

In a prior effort, researchers at Cambridge had created a massive database by combing information available from user profiles on Facebook.




* all you facebook (ab)users, but you already knew that, right?

Abstract
People are exposed to persuasive communication across many different contexts: Governments, companies, and political parties use persuasive appeals to encourage people to eat healthier, purchase a particular product, or vote for a specific candidate. Laboratory studies show ....


:whisper:
"Now that the assertive, the self-aggrandising, the arrogant and the self-opinionated have allowed their obnoxious foolishness to beggar us all I see no reason in listening to their drivelling nonsense any more." Stanilic
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:01 pm

Ex-Facebook privacy manager says company cares more about data collection than protecting users

John Shinal

A former operations manager responsible for Facebook's privacy efforts said the company "prioritized data collection from its users over protecting them from abuse."

In a sharply critical New York Times opinion piece that published Monday, Sandy Parakilas said Facebook "has no incentive to police the collection or use of data," on its users, given its business model of selling online ads.

"I led Facebook's efforts to fix privacy problems on its developer platform in advance of its 2012 initial public offering. What I saw from the inside was a company that prioritized data collection from its users over protecting them from abuse," he wrote in the post.

"The fact that Facebook prioritized data collection over user protection and regulatory compliance is precisely what made it so attractive" to advertisers, wrote Parakilas, who worked as an operations manager on the platform team at Facebook in 2011 and 2012.

Facebook ad sales are expected to climb 45 percent this year to $27.6 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. This growth has helped push up its shares more than 50 percent this year and made founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg the world's fifth-richest person, according to Forbes.

Parakilas suggested the company Zuckerberg leads is obsessed with its press coverage and will only protect user data "when negative press or regulators are involved."

"The message was clear: The company just wanted negative stories to stop. It didn't really care how the data was used," said Parakilas, who is not the first former manager at the company to criticize it this year.

"Lawmakers shouldn't allow Facebook to regulate itself. Because it won't," Parakilas wrote, referring to several bills before Congress, one which would rely on Facebook itself to report users who violate its rules on hate speech and another to enforce a buyer disclaimer on political ads.

An email to Facebook seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Correction: This story has been updated to correctly reflect Parakilas' gender.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/20/former- ... rberg.html


Materialistic people have more Facebook friends, finds study

Olivia PetterTuesday 21 November 2017 12:38 GMT

Materialists have substantially more Facebook friends than people who are less interested in possessions, a new study has found.

Researchers claim that materialistic people view Facebook friends as “digital objects” and subsequently use the platform more intensely and more frequently.

The study, published in Heliyon, also found that materialists have a greater need to compare themselves to others on other social media platforms.

"Materialistic people use Facebook more frequently because they tend to objectify their Facebook friends - they acquire Facebook friends to increase their possession," said lead author Phillip Ozimek.

"Facebook provides the perfect platform for social comparisons, with millions of profiles and information about people. And it's free - materialists love tools that do not cost money!"

Ozimek and his team of researchers from the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany gathered their data through an online questionnaire carried out on 242 Facebook users.

Participants were asked to state how much they agreed with a series of statements that reflected their activity levels on the platform and their levels of materialism such as: “my life would be better if I owned certain things I don’t have” and “having many Facebook friends contributes to more success in my personal and professional life”.

They found that there were strong links between high levels of materialism and intense Facebook activity.

When the process was repeated on a second sample of 289 Facebook users, the researchers drew the same conclusion.

In order to explain their results, the scientists developed The Social Online Self-Regulation Theory, which states that people use social media as a tool to monitor and achieve their goals.

For materialistic people, it’s about monitoring how far away they are from becoming wealthy, the researchers claim.

“It seems to us that Facebook is like a knife,” added Ozimek.

“It can be used for preparing yummy food or it can be used for hurting a person. In a way, our model provides a more neutral perspective on social media."
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 66686.html



The Facebook whistleblower wave

Facebook insiders with detailed knowledge of the company's priorities and operations are increasingly voicing concerns that the tech giant is putting profits ahead of its users' best interests. Their accounts come as many Silicon Valley insiders are speaking out about the negative consequences of the world they helped create.

Why it matters: The accounts put more pressure on the company to quickly and publicly address tough philosophical questions that they may not have the answers to yet. And it gives more ammunition for other Facebook alumni to come forward with their perspectives while they work their issues out.

In response to these accounts, Facebook published a blog post late last night that says: "While it's fair to criticize how we enforced our developer policies more than five years ago, it's untrue to suggest we didn't or don't care about privacy."

The latest: Former Facebook operations manager Sandy Parakilas wrote in a New York Times op-ed Sunday: "Lawmakers shouldn't allow Facebook to regulate itself. Because it won't ... [Facebook] prioritized data collection from its users over protecting them from abuse."

Early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, now managing director at investment firm Elevation Partners, told CNBC last week: "I don't think there is any way for us to expect them to undermine their profits ... We're going to have to give them an incentive to do so."
Former Facebook president Sean Parker told Axios' Mike Allen two weeks ago that the platform was designed to exploit human "vulnerability," and that "[The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway."
Justin Rosenstein, co-creator of the Facebook "like" button, told The Guardian in October that there could be a case for regulating "psychologically manipulative" advertising. "If we only care about profit maximisation, we will go rapidly into dystopia," said Rosenstein, who admits to distancing himself from the platform he helped build.
Facebook product manager Antonio Garcia-Martinez, who's also author of Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, told The Guardian earlier this year before the Russia scandal broke: "The hard reality is that Facebook will never try to limit such use of their data unless the public uproar reaches such a crescendo as to be un-mutable."
Sound smart: It's one thing to be criticized from lawmakers or outside people who don't understand the company's business model, capabilities and priorities. It's another to be condemned by employees and investors with more intimate knowledge of the company.
https://www.axios.com/the-facebook-whis ... 68571.html
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby Karmamatterz » Wed Nov 22, 2017 2:04 am

couple of weeks ago, my co-worker and I went to get coffee. We each had our phones and were discussing a particular appliance; I mentioned a particular store I had seen an ad in that day's newspaper (dead tree edition). When we got back to our desks, she navigated to a news site and got an ad for that particular appliance; I opened Instagram and there was an ad for the store I had mentioned. Someone was listening.


Nah, much more likely it was cookies or location based ego-fencing advertising. For example, with retargetig ads are delivered to a potential shopper if they visited a website that sells appliances. Does not have to be the actual store website the ad came from, but could be their competitors they target.
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 22, 2017 9:41 pm

Facebook (Still) Letting Housing Advertisers Exclude Users by Race

After ProPublica revealed last year that Facebook advertisers could target housing ads to whites only, the company announced it had built a system to spot and reject discriminatory ads. We retested and found major omissions.

by Julia Angwin, Ariana Tobin and Madeleine VarnerNov. 21, 1:23 p.m. EST

In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising for housing, employment or credit.

But our tests showed a significant lapse in the company’s monitoring of the rental market.

Last week, ProPublica bought dozens of rental housing ads on Facebook, but asked that they not be shown to certain categories of users, such as African Americans, mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, expats from Argentina and Spanish speakers.

All of these groups are protected under the federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to publish any advertisement “with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.” Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Every single ad was approved within minutes.

The only ad that took longer than three minutes to be approved by Facebook sought to exclude potential renters “interested in Islam, Sunni Islam and Shia Islam.” It was approved after 22 minutes.

Under its own policies, Facebook should have flagged these ads, and prevented the posting of some of them. Its failure to do so revives questions about whether the company is in compliance with federal fair housing rules, as well as about its ability and commitment to police discriminatory advertising on the world’s largest social network.

Facebook’s advertising portal lets users choose their audiences based on specific traits, demographics and behavior profiles. Our ad for an apartment rental excluded African Americans, Asian Americans and Spanish-speaking Hispanic audiences. It was approved in under a minute.
Housing, employment and credit are the three areas in which federal law prohibits discriminatory ads. However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — the agency responsible for enforcing fair housing laws — told us that it has closed an inquiry into Facebook’s advertising policies, reducing pressure on the company to address the issue. In a 2015 newspaper column, Ben Carson, now HUD secretary, criticized “government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality” in housing.

Facebook’s failure to police discriminatory rental ads flies in the face of its promises in February that it would no longer approve ads for housing, employment or credit that targeted racial categories. For advertising aimed at audiences not selected by race, Facebook said it would require housing, employment and credit advertisers to “self-certify” that their ads were compliant with anti-discrimination laws.

Based on Facebook’s announcement, the ads purchased by ProPublica that were aimed at racial categories should have been rejected. The others should have prompted a screen to pop up asking for self-certification. We never encountered a self-certification screen, and none of our ads were rejected by Facebook.

“This was a failure in our enforcement and we’re disappointed that we fell short of our commitments,” Ami Vora, vice president of product management at Facebook, said in an emailed statement. “The rental housing ads purchased by ProPublica should have but did not trigger the extra review and certifications we put in place due to a technical failure.”

Vora added that Facebook’s anti-discrimination system had “successfully flagged millions of ads” in the credit, employment and housing categories and that Facebook will now begin requiring self-certification for ads in all categories that choose to exclude an audience segment. “Our systems continue to improve but we can do better,” Vora said.

About 37 percent of U.S. households rented in 2016, representing a 50-year high, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. On average, renters earn about half as much as homeowners, and the percentage of families with children that rent rather than buy has increased sharply in the past decade, the study said. Minority renters have long faced pervasive housing discrimination. A 2013 study by HUD found that real estate agents show more units to whites than to African Americans, Asians and Latinos.

Facebook has long been a popular destination for rental listings, on pages hosted by real estate brokers, property owners and building managers. Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it had added two large providers of rental listings to its Facebook Marketplace service. “Marketplace is a popular place for people to look for a home to rent,” Facebook product manager Bowen Pan said in a press release.

Facebook warns rental advertisers in its Marketplace section that “listings that discriminate against a protected class can be reported and will be removed from Facebook.”

Facebook’s anti-discrimination initiative was prompted by an article published last year by ProPublica. For that story, we bought a Facebook ad targeting house hunters. We were able to use Facebook’s features to block the ad from being shown to anyone with an “affinity” for African American, Asian American or Hispanic people. Our ability to narrow the audience based on race raised the question of whether such ads violated the Fair Housing Act.

After ProPublica’s article appeared in the fall of 2016, HUD, then under the Obama administration, began examining Facebook’s practices. Facebook then said it would build an automated system to spot ads that discriminate illegally. “We take these issues seriously,” Facebook Vice President Erin Egan wrote in a blog post. “Discriminatory advertising has no place on Facebook.”

In February, Facebook announced it had built its system and was rolling it out. The press lauded the announcement: “Facebook cracks down on ads that discriminate” was the Washington Post’s headline.

Facebook has been under fire for other aspects of its automated ad buying system as well. Two months ago, the company disclosed that it had discovered $100,000 worth of divisive political ads placed by “inauthentic” Russian accounts. And in September, ProPublica reported that Facebook’s ad targeting system allowed buyers to reach people who identified themselves as “Jew haters” and other anti-Semitic categories. Facebook pledged to remove the offending categories and to hire thousands more employees to enforce its ad policies.

“We’re adding additional layers of review where people use potentially sensitive categories for targeting,” Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said during Senate testimony earlier this month.

After Stretch’s public statement, we wondered whether the ability to buy discriminatory housing ads had really been addressed. So we set out to buy an advertisement with the exact same targeting parameters as the ad we bought last year. The ad promoted a fictional apartment for rent and was targeted at people living in New York, ages 18–65, who were house hunting and likely to move. We asked Facebook not to show the ad to people categorized under the “multicultural affinity” of Hispanic, African American or Asian American.

(ProPublica generally forbids impersonation in news gathering. We felt in this instance that the public interest in Facebook’s ad system justified the brief posting of a fake ad for non-existent housing. We deleted each ad as soon as it was approved.)

The only changes from last year that we could identify in Facebook’s ad buying system was that the category called “Ethnic Affinity” had been renamed “Multicultural Affinity” and was no longer part of “Demographics.” It is now designated as part of “Behaviors.”

Our ad was approved within minutes.


Left: A screenshot of ad targeting categories ProPublica submitted and Facebook approved in 2016. Right: Categories ProPublica submitted and were approved in 2017, raising questions about what the social network has done to police discriminatory ads.
Then we decided to test whether we could purchase housing ads that discriminated against other protected categories of people under the Fair Housing Act.

We placed ads that sought to exclude members of as many of the protected categories as we could find in Facebook’s self-service advertising portal. In addition to those mentioned above, we bought ads that were blocked from being shown to “soccer moms,” people interested in American sign language, gay men and Christians.

We also tested whether it was possible to use geography as a way to target racial groups — a practice known as redlining. We bought a housing ad that targeted ZIP codes in Brooklyn whose residents are more than 50 percent non-Hispanic white people, according to the U.S. Census bureau. By definition, that meant the ad was not shown to Facebook users living in Brooklyn neighborhoods where minorities are a majority of the residents.

Image
Facebook drew blue lines around our target neighborhoods and told us our “audience selection is great!” It approved the ad.
https://www.propublica.org/article/face ... nal-origin



Facebook can tell if you're gay based on a few 'likes,' study says
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out ... es-n823416


Facebook Will Tell You If You Liked or Followed Content Made by Russian Trolls During the 2016 Election
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... rolls.html
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 04, 2017 7:03 am

Australia to probe Facebook, Google

Published 9 Hours Ago

Australia's competition regulator said on Monday it would investigate whether U.S. online giants Facebook and Alphabet's Google had disrupted the news media to the detriment of publishers and consumers.

Like their rivals globally, Australia's traditional media companies have been squeezed by online rivals, as advertising dollars have followed eyeballs to digital distributors such as Google, Facebook and Netflix.

The government ordered the probe as part of wider media reforms, amid growing concern for the future of journalism and the quality of news following years of declining profits and newsroom job cuts.

"We will examine whether platforms are exercising market power in commercial dealings to the detriment of consumers, media content creators and advertisers," Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.

The inquiry also would study how Facebook and Google operated to "fully understand their influence in Australia," he added.

The probe will have power to demand information from businesses and hold hearings. It is due to make its final report in 18 months.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/03/austral ... ption.html
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby Sounder » Sat Dec 23, 2017 7:32 am

test
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-2 ... e-election

Authored by Shelley Kasli via GGI News,

Just days after GreatGameIndia exposed how American and Japanese companies could be hacking Indian elections, a recent Bloomberg report has revealed how a secret unit of Facebook has helped create troll armies for governments around the world including India for digital propaganda to influence elections. Under fire for Facebook Inc.’s role as a platform for political propaganda, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has punched back, saying his mission is above partisanship.

But Facebook, it turns out, is no bystander in global politics. What he hasn’t said is that his company actively works with political parties and leaders including those who use the platform to stifle opposition—sometimes with the aid of “troll armies” that spread misinformation and extremist ideologies.

The initiative is run by a little-known Facebook global government and politics team led from Washington by Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital strategist who worked on former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign as well as 2014 Indian elections.....


More at link.
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby Gnomad » Sat Dec 23, 2017 7:50 am

Shouldn't that be as illegal as claimed russian-paid Facebook propaganda meddling in US elections?

Still happy I have never made an account. Never will either, even though these days it sadly also means missing out on much useful communication with people I know. One gets kind of sidelined if you do not use a smartphone, or Facebook, or pretty much any popular social media thingie. Most people communicate through these channels now, and if you do not, you miss out. Yet better than the alternative of voluntarily reporting everything you communicate to the corporate overlords, though.
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby Sounder » Sat Dec 23, 2017 8:43 am

Shouldn't that be as illegal as claimed russian-paid Facebook propaganda meddling in US elections?


Sure, of course, but Facebook having become the Monsanto of the IT world, will insure their isolation from useful application of law.

Still happy I have never made an account. Never will either, even though these days it sadly also means missing out on much useful communication with people I know. One gets kind of sidelined if you do not use a smartphone, or Facebook, or pretty much any popular social media thingie. Most people communicate through these channels now, and if you do not, you miss out. Yet better than the alternative of voluntarily reporting everything you communicate to the corporate overlords, though.


But the thing is, you are 'missing' out on 100 times the amount of useless distractions compared to the useful communication that might be had through more direct communication. Yes I do miss out, but do hear about what I need to know from the better connected folk.

It is then easy to understand the appeal and wide adoption of the new platforms, so denigrating the users of our various 'social entrainment' devices is a somewhat lowbrow tactic. Hate the sin but not the sinner, an all.

Not you Gnomad
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby Gnomad » Sat Dec 23, 2017 9:12 am

Yes, kind of. But I have noticed that I rarely get a text message anymore about get-togethers in the evenings, or meeting in a bar, or music clubs people are going to and so on. Nobody remembers anymore to send them to that one odd guy out who did not see the Facebook event. Whether those are really necessary is another thing, but I know I used to be invited to many more things than nowadays.

Good thing I am such an introvert that there is no place like home, and no company like your own ...
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby Sounder » Sat Dec 23, 2017 9:35 am

Good thing I am such an introvert that there is no place like home, and no company like your own ...


Maybe, as in my case, people are leaving you alone because that is what you project. Personally I like it and have used it to good effect in both professional and personal life.

Long story short, I play music to support the introvert in me, then reach out by being a supporter of local music, plenty of engagement, and with the beautiful side of people.
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby Gnomad » Sat Dec 23, 2017 10:10 am

Very likely true, now that you mentioned it.

Anyway, if Facebook was an open source, free as in freedom, decentralized, communications hub for the people, by the people, I would love it.
As it is, it is like a vampiric entity feeding on social relations and peoples' need of affirmation, milking them for profit and behavioural analytics.
And now that they have the market cornered, no upstart is going to be viable for the foreseeable future.
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby Gnomad » Sat Dec 23, 2017 12:46 pm

Like this https://diasporafoundation.org/
But I bet it will never reach any considerable number of users.
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 26, 2018 9:16 am

Russians got tens of thousands of Americans to RSVP for their phony political events on Facebook
By Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin January 25 at 7:30 PM

(Reuters/Dado Ruvic)
Russian operatives used Facebook to publicize 129 phony event announcements during the 2016 presidential campaign, drawing the attention of nearly 340,000 users -- many of whom said they were planning to attend -- according to a company document released by the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday.

It's not possible to know how often people gathered in response to the sham announcements, but the numbers highlight how Russian operatives were successful in prompting Americans to express a willingness to act. In some cases, Russians allegedly working in an office building in St. Petersburg motivated at least some people to mobilize behind various causes, a striking accomplishment for a foreign influence campaign.

“Not only did they influence how people viewed Russian policy, they got people to take physical action. That’s unprecedented,” said Clinton Watts, a former FBI agent who studies Russian disinformation for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “They just did it persistently, and they did it well.”

Facebook gives groups the ability to announce events and solicit interest from users, who can register their intention to attend. Facebook, which along with other big tech giants sought to downplay the Russian activity for months, declined to disclose a list of the 129 events publicized by the operatives. The company has said the operatives were linked to the Internet Research Agency, often called a "troll farm" because it employs people who use fake accounts to intentionally manipulate online conversations.

Facebook, Twitter reveal Russian meddling during 2016 election (The Washington Post)
Previous disclosures by Facebook make clear that the operatives focused their disinformation campaigns on sensitive social issues, including racial and religious controversies, gun rights, police violence, southern heritage and immigration.

Facebook had previously disclosed details about a particular event advertised by Russian-controlled accounts. A group called Heart of Texas, announced a rally to take place May 21, 2016, under the banner of “Stop Islamization of Texas.” A separate Russian-controlled group, United Muslims of America, publicized a competing rally to “Save Islamic Knowledge” at the same place and time, prompting two groups to face off in competing demonstrations in Houston — a sign of how Russians hoped to turn divisions into open conflict.


The document, which includes written responses by Facebook to questions posed by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, contains several revelations, including that there was some "overlap" between targeting of voters by Russian accounts and the campaign of Donald Trump. Facebook called this overlap "insignificant" in the document -- echoing remarks made in a Nov. 1 hearing by the company's general counsel Colin Stretch.

Facebook in its written response did not directly answer a question about whether it has found evidence that Russians sought to meddle last year's state elections in Virginia and New Jersey. But a spokesman said Thursday night that the company has not yet seen any sign of Russian influence during those campaigns.

The revelation about the events publicized on Facebook came in response to a question by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) about the subject. The company wrote in the document released Thursday that, "a total of 129 events were created across 13 IRA Pages. Approximately 338,300 unique accounts viewed these events. About 25,800 accounts marked that they were interested in an event, and about 62,500 marked that they were going to an event. We do not have data about the realization of these events."


Facebook has generally been more aggressive than other technology companies identifying and publicly explaining the Russian manipulation on its platform during the 2016 election and its aftermath, but it has drawn criticism for moving slowly to detail how much disinformation spread on its platform and how many people it reached. The company told lawmakers shortly before the November hearing that 126 million people saw free posts made by 470 Russian accounts and pages affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, and 10 million saw ads paid for by these accounts and pages.

Yet even with those numbers public for months, researchers were struck by the large number of events that Russian-linked accounts announced and the apparent appeal to American voters.

"This shows the effort to create long-term relationships with segments of the American public," said Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. "This was also about measuring individual motivations to translate online signals into real-world behaviors."

In one case, lawmakers asked Twitter why a Russian-linked account called Guccifer2.0 was allowed to stay active after tweeting material hacked from the Democratic National Committee. The company responded that it could not comment on matters that may be related to specific law enforcement investigations.

Google described the difficulty of distinguishing content from Russian operatives and American political activists. "Many times,” Google wrote, "the misleading content looks identical to content uploaded by genuine activists. We are dealing with difficult questions that require the balancing of free expression, access to information, and the need to provide high quality content to our users.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... 03b801e45c
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The creepiness that is Facebook

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 28, 2018 10:50 am

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

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