If Gmail reads private emails to target ads [1], why would people think that Facebook isn't doing the same thing? Also many companies (including Facebook) have agreed to share hashes and cooperate to "remove extremist content from their websites" [2]. It would be naive to think that they are excluding private messages from their searches.
I forgot that google did that, but facebook was just in your face with it. I was talking to a friend on facebook about some ice climbing and if it was ok for a beginner, and very shortly after I saw ads on my facebook for ice climbing lessons. With google the worst I see if I search for something sometimes I see ads for those.
Zuckerberg was a creeper, if you look at what he did initially with Facebook and people's information who trusted him with that information, you can tell what his basic operating premises are. And they are anti-social. He never has cared for what people might think of him or fb, as long as they keep using it. And so I think that's Zuck's deep insight into people, anti-social behavior does not matter. People are stupid and they will keep using the platform anyway. Regardless of the total and complete lack of privacy and social skills.
If he can detect bullying where people are afraid to report it. Then going forward with the authoritarian shit happening in government, what's next? Hear people verbally fighting and report that to the police. Hear kids getting yelled at and report it to the police as child abuse. Disputes and altercations are always reported to the police. The walls have ears. All this is possible with FB. It's a surveillance nightmare as bad as anything Orwell could've prophesied and yet people continue to use FB.
And Googles version is probably much more successful. I noticed the same with Facebook and I don't think it's very effective. Talk once about a topic or like a page and you'll see related ads for a long time. Google seems to have smarter algorithms that try to detect a trend to figure out if you're really interested in something or just mentioned it once.
Not to mention, with google I actually get something out of it. Instant search for my flight info (even my Google home knows about it) is still my favorite thing.
It doesn't seem like they are actually targetting "extremists" since islamist sharia groups get to stay on facebook while all groups opposing such a movement gets shutdown instantly.
Maybe because moxie marlinspike keeps telling the general public WhatsApp is using signal? Which is bullshit... because WhatsApp isn't auditable, it admits it uses metadata collection, it has the ability to cache identical messages (supposedly notnpossible with unique encryption keys, right?) amongst a host of other super suspicious shit. Now Facebook can audit the content of those messages, well big fucking surprise it's not private or the same as signal then is it?
WhatsApp is from Facebook and it implements the Signal protocol which offers end-to-end encryption. That's why Facebook with WhatsApp cannot do the same as Google does with Gmail. If they do, then their E2E encryption is fucked up.
Whatsapp is from whatsapp inc, founded by two former yahoo emplyees, then facebook bought for 19 billions dollar. Very different from "being from facebook".
You can probably trust whatsapp end to end encryption as much as you can trust facebook to protect your privacy [1][2].
Going on a tangent. I don't like Facebook as a company due to its policies. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if one of these days the WhatsApp end-to-end encryption is "discovered" as broken, followed by a quick scramble to explain it was a temporary glitch and that they found it quickly and closed it. It would just make the headlines for a day or two and then be forgotten. Most people using WhatsApp never cared about any kind of encryption or thought a lot about privacy, and most people using it now still don't.
Facebook sat idly by during an election cycle as their platform was used to propagate fake news because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship, and now they suddenly have the moral imperative to police your private messages? I am so glad I quit Facebook a long time ago. They are the big tech company I like the least.
> because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship
Facebook fired its "news curators" in response to criticism of it suppressing "news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential 'trending' news section" [1]. This happened in May of last year.
Right, in an effort not to appear as though they are editorializing legitimate news stories for one side or the other via what appears in the trending news section, they threw the baby out with the bath water. Fake news is not legitimate news. It's a form of spam. They did nothing to remove this spam once they got rid of the human editors. So the trending news section went from left leaning legitimate news stories under human editors to a bunch of spam. Now they want to use automated methods to police your private messages when they couldn't be bothered to figure out an automated method to remove spam from their trending news section when it really mattered.
The policing of private messages is not new or sudden. Facebook has censored "offensive" (yet legal) private messages for years. One can assume they also already detect and report criminal activity to some degree. But it's understandable that they wouldn't want to shine the spotlight on this practice.
This maybe true, but the mechanics of it escape me?
Many fake news sites were destination sites which carried ads. It seems unlikely that the margin on that traffic would have been enough to pay for significant Facebook traffic.
The version of this play which I've heard was:
- Create fake "news" site with outrageous stories.
- Cover it with ads (from Google and others)
- Seed it in Facebook groups
- Rely on organic reach to generate traffic.
I maybe wrong about the ability to to arbitrage on this traffic. If anyone has numbers I'd love to see them.
What is Mark Zuckerberg up to right now? He's doing a lot of of outreach, and even meet and greet tours. It's a bit like he's on the campaign trail, planning on running for political office, but maybe not exactly that.
He's probably preparing for public office. While Facebook is very successful, there's little vision in it now, compared to earlier. Most of the connected world is already on Facebook (if it's not blocked in their country). And while VR is nice, it's unlikely that it could attract a billion users anytime soon (esp because of cost).
I don't think that he'd want to manage a company that just fights off rivals. Becoming a politician and (trying to) make a change sounds more like him. He has the money, people mostly like him and he'd only have to find a CEO for Facebook to get rid of conflicts of interest, as he isn't involved in many other businesses.
> While Facebook is very successful, there's little vision in it now, compared to earlier. Most of the connected world is already on Facebook (if it's not blocked in their country). And while VR is nice, it's unlikely that it could attract a billion users anytime soon (esp because of cost).
Facebook could always give away VR headsets for free (disguised similar to the Free Basics program). Facebook has already run out of space to put ads on the Facebook platform, and so it has started trials on Messenger (in a couple of countries). One way to put ads everywhere is to install large screens (like in Sci-Fi movies or like those in Times Square). Another way is to give a small screen to people that's always in front of them and put ads there based on what the person is looking at, the location, time of day and other factors - that's what VR, or rather AR, will be about whenever Facebook gets serious about it (in relation to Wall Street and earnings). Google Glass probably had the same long term intent in mind when it was developed.
I think that depends on geography and demographics. He's popular in SV and the tech community, but perhaps not as popular elsewhere. It's hard to find objective data on it. The only thing I could find was a silly cbinsights bracket vote. [1] It would be interesting to see what his Q score is.
> ...and he'd only have to find a CEO for Facebook to...
He already has a CEO: Sheryl is more than capable of running the business. Sure, she'd need a tech-visionnaire CTO (like a Jony Ivy for her Tim Cook-style), but I think FB would be perfectly fine without Mark.
I hate facebook not because of this bullshit but because using facebook is so utterly "normal" on the society that some websites are facebook-exclusives (facebook login only), people only seems to like the idea of using the fucking facebook chat for everything and now even customs ask you to unlock your phone so they can analyze your friends... hoping one day, some terrorist attacks facebook servers so we can get rid of everything online and start to forget about it.
I haven't seen it myself, but I have seen it on TV in a reality show based on the real-life activities of the US and Canadian customs and immigration agencies. It is standard procedure when they are questioning someone they suspect of entering the country for work (but stating they are visiting as a tourist) to ask to see their phone SMS message history. In the show they often find messages from their friends saying "good luck at the job interview tomorrow dude" and the like.
Im sick and tired of facebook. Yesterday I shared a picture from Syria depicting a homosexual being executed by being thrown off a building - In a political discussion, of course this gets censored within hours. Meanwhile there is groups where this picture also appears, albeit in a another context that actually encourages this type of punishment, and it gets to stay on facebook.
It seems kind of obvious what happens - the picture you posted was reported by your peers in the discussion. The group that encourages this type of punishment probably will not have members that report the picture, so it doesn't get deleted (as fast).
But would it really be hard to have checks for that kind of groups automatically?
How can Facebook read all of my private chat message, find out what the conversation was about and serve me accurate ads, but can't find out that this group called "death to all jew" is hate speech?
Oh wait, the first case brings in money and the second simply makes the world a better place.
Did you read Zuckerberg's letter yesterday? I wrote a response that didn't go over super well here but comparing how Facebook is an idealistic experiment versus capitalistic exercise is enlightening. Facebook can truly heal the world! Well, if it doesn't help destroy it first...
This article is so poorly written that I couldn't tell which version was the original and which the revised (or whether there were one or two revisions) until I'd read it three or four times. After I'd figured that out (I think), I had to go back again to understand what point the author was trying to make.
Then again, it's just Mashable. I don't know why I worked at it so hard.
I was also confused similarly, more so with the headline that sounded as if this was a malicious move meant to hide the intent to monitor private messages (not that I would put it past Facebook not to do such horrific things).
It is quite simple, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product and even if you are paying in some cases. This is well known. Also well known, is expect no privacy online.
Always assume everything you do online is being monitored and do your best to encourage everyone you know to use encryption, or to prefer encrypted services, wherever they can.
How could anyone not know that your private messages represent valuable data to Facebook that they're going to use for ad revenue and service improvement?
Your messages are not private on any service that doesn't guarantee privacy. Most services do not.
Heck, your use of an app is often recorded and saved.
Using these services and presuming to be in private is foolish. People other than Facebook don't respect the privacy when they copy and paste your messages to a friend of theirs. Written messages have never been a way to conduct private business that you don't want leaked or passed on to a third party.
You don't need to trust Facebook to see inconsistencies in their message.
WhatsApp is one of Facebook's "private channels" that it's said to implement the Signal protocol, which is supposed to offer end-to-end encryption. If we assume all what Facebook claims is true, the only way to analyze WhatsApp messages for AI purposes is to leak data to Facebook servers before starting the E2E encrypted connection. But that would be just an exploitable back door that defeats the purpose of Signal, right?
My pessimistic guess is that end-to-end encryption will be removed from WhatsApp, Allo, etc., in a matter of time with flowery language like, "...to provide the best possible experience that our users expect and deserve, and to empower our users with choice, we're switching the default (to quick plaintext communications)...the communication will still be secure through encryption on the network from client to server to client."
Then it'll become like Messenger, where end-to-end encryption is an explicit choice (similar to Secret Chats in Telegram). Not that people using WhatsApp would really care. The stickiness factor is quite high.
Readit News
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-sca... [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-internet-extremism-databas...
If he can detect bullying where people are afraid to report it. Then going forward with the authoritarian shit happening in government, what's next? Hear people verbally fighting and report that to the police. Hear kids getting yelled at and report it to the police as child abuse. Disputes and altercations are always reported to the police. The walls have ears. All this is possible with FB. It's a surveillance nightmare as bad as anything Orwell could've prophesied and yet people continue to use FB.
One group ponders on the implifications and simplifications of rules, and how they can follow it with ease.
While extremists try to take the most painful interpretation of rules and use demagogue speech to enforce it.
You can probably trust whatsapp end to end encryption as much as you can trust facebook to protect your privacy [1][2].
[1]: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/13/whatsapp-security-make-thi... [2]: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/israeli-firm-allegedly-selling-spy-...
You have no way to know what is actually running on their servers.
Dead Comment
Facebook fired its "news curators" in response to criticism of it suppressing "news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential 'trending' news section" [1]. This happened in May of last year.
[1] http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-supp...
Or because they were raking in money off the back of it.
Many fake news sites were destination sites which carried ads. It seems unlikely that the margin on that traffic would have been enough to pay for significant Facebook traffic.
The version of this play which I've heard was:
- Create fake "news" site with outrageous stories.
- Cover it with ads (from Google and others)
- Seed it in Facebook groups
- Rely on organic reach to generate traffic.
I maybe wrong about the ability to to arbitrage on this traffic. If anyone has numbers I'd love to see them.
if you think that, you have been reading Fake News
e.g.:
https://www.ft.com/content/b0a6481e-d20a-11e6-9341-7393bb2e1...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/04/mark-zucker...
I don't think that he'd want to manage a company that just fights off rivals. Becoming a politician and (trying to) make a change sounds more like him. He has the money, people mostly like him and he'd only have to find a CEO for Facebook to get rid of conflicts of interest, as he isn't involved in many other businesses.
Facebook could always give away VR headsets for free (disguised similar to the Free Basics program). Facebook has already run out of space to put ads on the Facebook platform, and so it has started trials on Messenger (in a couple of countries). One way to put ads everywhere is to install large screens (like in Sci-Fi movies or like those in Times Square). Another way is to give a small screen to people that's always in front of them and put ads there based on what the person is looking at, the location, time of day and other factors - that's what VR, or rather AR, will be about whenever Facebook gets serious about it (in relation to Wall Street and earnings). Google Glass probably had the same long term intent in mind when it was developed.
I think that depends on geography and demographics. He's popular in SV and the tech community, but perhaps not as popular elsewhere. It's hard to find objective data on it. The only thing I could find was a silly cbinsights bracket vote. [1] It would be interesting to see what his Q score is.
[1] https://www.cbinsights.com/research-tech-ceos
He already has a CEO: Sheryl is more than capable of running the business. Sure, she'd need a tech-visionnaire CTO (like a Jony Ivy for her Tim Cook-style), but I think FB would be perfectly fine without Mark.
Associated hn discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13371991
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
You don't need to blame Facebook for this.
How can Facebook read all of my private chat message, find out what the conversation was about and serve me accurate ads, but can't find out that this group called "death to all jew" is hate speech?
Oh wait, the first case brings in money and the second simply makes the world a better place.
Then again, it's just Mashable. I don't know why I worked at it so hard.
Always assume everything you do online is being monitored and do your best to encourage everyone you know to use encryption, or to prefer encrypted services, wherever they can.
Your messages are not private on any service that doesn't guarantee privacy. Most services do not.
Heck, your use of an app is often recorded and saved.
Using these services and presuming to be in private is foolish. People other than Facebook don't respect the privacy when they copy and paste your messages to a friend of theirs. Written messages have never been a way to conduct private business that you don't want leaked or passed on to a third party.
WhatsApp is one of Facebook's "private channels" that it's said to implement the Signal protocol, which is supposed to offer end-to-end encryption. If we assume all what Facebook claims is true, the only way to analyze WhatsApp messages for AI purposes is to leak data to Facebook servers before starting the E2E encrypted connection. But that would be just an exploitable back door that defeats the purpose of Signal, right?
Then it'll become like Messenger, where end-to-end encryption is an explicit choice (similar to Secret Chats in Telegram). Not that people using WhatsApp would really care. The stickiness factor is quite high.