I've been using Facebook since college (circa 2005). Never "hidden" my profile from anyone or the public. Never deactivated anything or deleted a post. Recruiters and acquaintances look up my profile all the time. Still, I have never had the data I've given them come back to haunt me. I still trust Facebook leadership very much in this regard. Maybe it's because I trust myself and how I utilize the technology. Or maybe it's because I am cut from the same cloth as them when it comes to technology and I understand it at a very instinctive level. In light of the recent election, at this point I wouldn't trust any other entity with that kind of data (like Amazon, who seems to use my data to raise prices on me, frequently). In fact, I would wish Facebook to contract with and take over identity management systems (ie. social security, drivers license) away from local and federal government - not to dictate policy but just to dictate infrastructure. I really don't care about privatization or policy in a general sense, just progress in this regard.
10 years later I still don't get the point of these articles besides fear mongering and at most to provide a technological challenge to engineers and developers on "the other side". I understand ad-blocker companies are fighting a messy war right now with both content and ad providers. I guess that is another way, albeit much slower, way to achieve progress. Hacking goes both ways.
That age old "I have nothing to hide" argument. AKA "they're nice people, what could go wrong".
This is not the point. The point is:
Information in the wrong hands can become dangerous, period.
People change. Companies change. You have no guarantee Facebook will preserve the vision they have right now. You have no guarantee their new CEO won't have a different opinion... (wont be a "Trump").
Also you have to realize, how much pressure from authorities they have to handle. A Russian friend of mine (I'm originally from russia) used to work for "VK" which is (was) the biggest social network there. They literally got calls from surveillance agencies on a daily basis. At some point they were unable to fight the pressure and surrendered, the CEO was forced to resign and leave the country (Pavel Durov, he runs Telegram now), the stock were sold and the social network is basically controlled by the government now.
I do agree the article is a bit over dramatic. But that's just to gain attention from non-tech crowd I guess, who continue to happily post kitten-pics without thinking of the consequences.
Not OP but even if the next Hitler would get all my Facebook data I still don't care personally. Am I naive? I do understand why people have a problem with it though.
You probably never lived under communism. Often people got in trouble not because they were dissenting, but merely being associated with somebody that was a political dissenter.
The usual term of accusation was called: "Agitation and propaganda" for the imperialist/capitalist regimes.
So, why you might have been squeak clean, if your friend, or your cousin was not, then you were considered a problem just by association. When somebody got in jail, their whole family got 'interned' (means, they uproot the family and send them in some remote village). Doctors had to work farm fields, etc.
If you were just a cousin, or close friend then you were marked as a problem with not a clean history or biography. If you wanted the nice job, or good education, you would be rejected for it.
It seems like a far fetched distant dystopian reality, but during 1950-1990 was reality in half of Europe. Also, a reality in the US the 50s with McCarthyism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
If I start living in a dictatorship all of a sudden I feel my Facebook data will the least of my problems. It's such a minor issue in my mind that it's like worrying about whether the earth will be hit by a meteor.
United States IS ALREADY using this data to deny people's entry and interrogate them on the border. FBI and other agencies are ALREADY using those kind of connections to bring in suspects for crimes and suspected terrorism. Being flagged on several systems can mean that your ability to fly will be denied without explanation - in USA, RIGHT NOW.
This isn't something that went away with fall of the Wall, it came back with a vengeance in western world under the guise of Patriot Acts, Anti-Terorrism acts and it's in many ways significantly worse than it was under KGB and STASI.
Yes, and the day I end up in a dictatorship I may just as well kill myself anyway. What I'm saying is that the small risk of whatever bad things happening due to Facebook is still not worth my energy. I can fight the fight for other people though.
Ok so when will you be zipping up all your personal data and uploading it for me to examine?
And please also post your passwords to Facebook and bank accounts.
On a more serious note, are you potentially related to anybody Muslim or Jewish? Have you ever posted political comments or links? Are any of your acquaintances hardline left or right wingers? All sorts of seemingly harmless things today will get you on a list tomorrow.
It's impossible to say that you don't have anything to hide, because you don't even know yet today what you may need to hide tomorrow.
> Ok so when will you be zipping up all your personal data and uploading it for me to examine?
Why would I give it to you? I don't understand that argument. If I say "I don't really care if a bird poops on me", does it mean I want birds to poop on me? Just as I won't stop going outside due to the risk of being pooped on, I won't stop using Facebook just because there's a risk of someone obtaining my data.
> Not OP but even if the next Hitler would get all my Facebook data I still don't care personally. Am I naive?
Do you have Jewish ancestry?
Of course the next "Hitler" probably won't be after Jews. Next time it would be Muslims or immigrants or Stalinist purges of anyone who disagrees with the administration.
You don't know today what opinions would get you put on a list tomorrow.
And if you've never said anything that anyone could ever find objectionable, you're probably doing something wrong.
The problem isn't a system in which Jews or Muslims or Armenians are targeted for discrimination. The problem is a system with the power and legal authority to target any group whatsoever.
What you're missing is what security people call defense in depth.
The primary goal is to prevent a system that can target anyone, but it is a historical fact that we have not always been able to achieve that goal. What happens then?
> What you're missing is what security people call defense in depth.
I didn't miss it, I deplore it. True "defense in depth" puts all civil rights aside. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin.
> What happens then?
Citizens fight back. The outcome that tyrants dearly wish for is a population that simply doesn't care, or that can be frightened into submission. It's my hope that we're not that population.
> I didn't miss it, I deplore it. True "defense in depth" puts all civil rights aside. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin.
It seems, then, that the part you're missing is that in authoritarianism the authoritarians are the government? The entire concept of civil rights in general and privacy in particular is as a defense against a bad government.
> Citizens fight back. The outcome that tyrants dearly wish for is a population that simply doesn't care, or that can be frightened into submission. It's my hope that we're not that population.
Except that you didn't object to Facebook having all your information, so when the jackboots march in and seize their servers, they get everything they need to know to identify anyone with the inclination to resist and can dispose of them before they can organize.
The point of what? The discussion is strictly about my personal situation. I 100% understand that other people may be much more affected and I'm supporting their cause. But that's off topic.
I'm guessing this is why elastic_church thought your response was a weak rebuttal. It's a very narrow view of a complex, important topic that will likely have big affects on our society.
That's because you don't have anything to hide right now. But you never really know what class will be targeted next. Maybe you don't care because you're not Jewish, or not a Muslim, or not a right-winger, or not a feminist... but whatever class you are part of could be the next one everyone hates.
I find it so unlikely that my Facebook data will ever constitute such a problem and even if it happens, well so be it. I have much more realistic and current problems to worry about. I just can't be bothered, even if I hear what you say.
Then you surely have no problem in giving me all your data now. Bank accounts access included, pics of your mom and all conversations you ever had online say for the last 5 years. I'll take care of it, also you can trust me, i'm a cool guy and no intentions of becoming a leader or govern any country ;)
We're talking about Facebook, not privacy in general. I don't want random people to get my Facebook data, but I won't take any extreme measures to prevent that small risk.
Also, I don't understand comments like yours. It seems like a fallacy. Just because you "have nothing to hide" doesn't mean you want everyone to get your whole file just for the sake of it.
I can guarantee to you that the data will only be used by me (that's more than facebook does).
Also, I don't understand comments like yours. It seems like a fallacy. Just because you "have nothing to hide" doesn't mean anyone should get your whole life just for the sake of it.
Let's break this down. You're saying that social interaction and the experiences offered by the Facebook platform are an important part of your life. I could maybe prod a bit more on this point, to really highlight that the modes of interaction and experiences offered by Facebook has comparable alternatives, but let's say that's subjective and you like what you like.
But in terms of the data collected by FB, especially the extent of it, your view is that it seems okay, considering the benefit you receive from FB and you're not bothered. This broadly places you in a category of people who have not experienced a negative experience / erosion of your position in a transaction due to information asymmetry. Either that, or you are in a significant position that this doesn't bother you much.
An example from the past - SS used to target dissenters in Germany by throwing bricks at their windows during the night, sending lewd anonymous letters to their partners and causing strains in family relationships etc.
Key to this was knowing your affiliations and information on when you were at/out of home, if you lived with a partner or not, what your address was etc. they collected this through extensive surveillance on the ground, storing this information on paper documents and sifting through them when needed.
In our case, we have an entity FB that can capture extensive amount of our information, through voluntary and non-voluntary means, store them easily with marginal costs and have the ability to sift through them in seconds. Now, it begs the question who gets access to these capabilities if they are being offered up for sale - a benevolent company will use it to market its services, an aggressive company will try to outmaneuver you at negotiations to maximize their profit and limit your savings, a benevolent government will use it to improve services to you, an authoritarian one will use it to crush you.
If you think about the actual operation of collecting this data, it's nothing more than the commoditization of detective services. What would take a human hours of work to keep track of your whereabouts, not how long you eat your food, what you possibly spend at different places, who you interact with and how much etc now is done through our devices for no cost.
Some of us believe this is not correct, that such information is being gathered on us, because some experience in our past has negatively impacted us, due to information access and asymmetry. We oppose this and seek out ways to curb this / put guard rails. Others like you, do not see the need for jede guard rails, which to me is a little naive indeed.
Even when I paint the worst possible scenario in my mind (I get killed because of my Facebook data) it's still not something I can be bothered about. I could just as well be hit by a car tomorrow but I don't worry about that.
Of course. The problem is that look both ways in this case basically means stop using Facebook. It's not something I'm willing to do, regardless of risks. It's an important part of my life.
In your case, I wouldn't worry about the risks of FB as much as about the fact that you seem to keep going back and forth in your thoughts. You just asked us, a few levels up, to consider the "What-if?" scenario of some future Hitler coming to power, with all your data available on FB. And so people started explaining to you that, yes, in that case, you'd definitely be very naive not to consider the (obvious) risks of having all your data up on FB.
To which your answer to that was, basically, "But that's not very likely to happen."
>Still, I have never had the data I've given them come back to haunt me.
Are you sure? Facebook has a patent on lowering your credit score based on who is in your friends list[1]. They also feed data to credit score companies who directly examine your posts and use it to tweak your credit score yet further[2].
It's totally possible that your use of Facebook has affected your ability to buy a car or house, or get a job[3]. The lifetime cost of your mortgage could be $20,000 higher than it need be due to your use of Facebook. Maybe you got passed over for that job that would have been in the perfect place for raising your new child, due to your posting. How would you know? Did you really think they were going to tell you?
Maybe you're not at a time in your life where these things have happened to you yet, but I have bad news. The data you've submitted to Facebook will never be deleted. It's invisible baggage, following you everywhere. Honestly, you have no real idea of what impact it's having on your life, because it's not in the interest of any of that data's consumers to tell you what they are doing with it.
It's definitely something I have a serious concern over. I also have serious concerns about certain types of personal account being required for employment. I have personal microsoft, github and google accounts that I don't want, but had to create because I had to access msdn/github/google cloud console or I would not be employable. None of them provide a mechanism where my employer can open an account under the name of the company (so I bear no liability), bestow it upon me as a work asset, and then revoke it when I leave. AWS provides this in the form of access keys which are god damn great, but they're an exception.
At some point, we will have to start auditing and regulating the responsibility that companies owe to society once they come to dominate a field. There's a scary chance that LinkedIn might capture almost all the professional job market. Once that happens, we /need/ to be able to audit them to ensure they are fully complying with witness protection requirements, and to make sure their algorithms don't contain race biases.
Look forward to that one being the hot topic of 2025's legal circles.
Credit scores are percentiles. It's mathematically impossible for the effect of taking an attribute into account to only lower sores or leave them the same. So, you could just as easily have said that they raise scores based on who is or is not in your friends list.
> The lifetime cost of your mortgage could be $20,000 higher than it need be due to your use of Facebook.
Or it could be $20,000 cheaper if you're actually low-risk and their algorithms are better than the status quo...
> Maybe you got passed over for that job that would have been in the perfect place for raising your new child, due to your posting. How would you know?
If you didn't have Facebook, how would you know if you were missing out on opportunities because you've since lost touch with various acquaintances?
Most of the US banking sector is owned by a small number of companies[1]. Now I don't live in the USA so I can't speak for the USA in particular.
However, I have lived in Australia, where the banking competition is so bad that the consumer protection agency is having to explain in baby words to the national banks why they can't gang up on apple pay[2].
I have also lived in Iceland, a nation in which essentially all industries exist in tiny vertical monopolies, and the banks are no exception. It's hard to link citations here because fólk lesa ekki Íslensku[6][7], but go ask an Icelander if they think the national banks are in vigorous competition, they'll laugh in your face. Landsbankinn was genuinely shocked and puzzled when I moved all my accounts to Arion because they wouldn't give me a visa electron card so I could buy things off the internet.
That having been said, some quick[3] googling[4] suggests[5] that the USA isn't in great shape when it comes to competition either. In general, consumer competition is poor among banks, and they like it that way.
There are 6,799 federally insured banks in the US; it's an extremely competitive market compared to anywhere else in the world. They're also constantly competing against non-bank lenders and P2P lending marketplaces.
If you have a better algorithm of determining credit risk you can make a lot of money undercutting the competition on the right borrowers.
In fact, I would wish Facebook to contract with and take over identity management systems (ie. social security, drivers license) away from local and federal government - not to dictate policy but just to dictate infrastructure.
Is it "fear-mongering" to bring up this episode again?
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Is there a newer interview with Zuckerberg where he expresses his views at length? Given how big Facebook is now as a company, it's possible that that "policy" was supplanted by a later more reasonable policy. What is their current view, have they explained it in any detail?
I'd suggest a better question to ask would be: could you ever trust Zuckerberg to honestly tell you what his real policies will be -- as opposed to what he might say they are, in statements to the public -- when the government comes by to twist his arm?
Given the sheer number of people involved in Facebook's decision-making, I would believe it if they told me there was an internal consensus that differed from Zuckerberg's earlier college-age views. So I want to know if there is such a consensus, because if there is, then to my mind it would override that chat snapshot.
Also, yes, you can generally trust people to tell you what their real policies are. They might not be good policies, or well thought-through, etc., but there are very few people in the world who make it their business to lie and cheat every day.
Well said. Just look at conservative estimates of the number of psychopaths and sociopaths (2%) still gives you 140 million people that lie and cheat because they have no conscience and want to manipulate people.
Add some plain greed on top of that, and you'll end up with a lot of people. Grandparent is very naive.
Indeed, there's a whole host of reasons why sociopathic / psychopathic traits (such as the ability to lie credibly and manipulate others generally) enable people to ascend to positions of leadership in businesses (and hence, are represented in these ranks in higher numbers). See e.g.:
Strongly disagree, though I'm not completely certain: people use all their powers of rational thinking to convince themselves (if nobody else) that what they're doing is quite alright. So if you spot somebody lying, chances are it will show up in their reasoning if you question them about it at length—and they'll tell you about it, directly, because they've convinced themselves they're right. I think that's one way to explain why you should believe things people say about their own beliefs in interviews (while being skeptical about whether it's actually right).
This is laughably, shockingly, categorically wrong. People can and do change, all the time. Your opinions, values, etc didn't change from when you were in college?
Sure, my opinions, values, etc have evolved along a continuum since my college days, yes. I've learned a ton, and make fewer unforced, stupid errors. I've had some damaging tragedies since that time that made me more wary and empathetic to others facing similar difficulties. I am more complex and nuanced.
But, my character, my moods, my tells, and the fundamental flow of my thought processes have never changed. I'm the same lumpish animal I was when I was a tot. When someone says "People don't change", I think the core of that sentiment is that the brain wiring that makes random person X who they are never changes (save the brain becoming damaged or fading, of course.) I'm talking about the essence of a mind.
So I contend that a creep like Zuck doesn't uncreep himself. A sociopath is wired that way, even if they're proficient at hiding that fact. You might say, "Zuck's been exposed to and riding atop a business operating at a mind-blowing scale and pace - that HAS to change a person!" I think that's just projecting what one thinks would happen to themselves in such a situation. What change can you actually point to in Zuck?
Well, the recent "policy" I heard had something to do with "racial affiliations" to target the ads, if racial profiling was allowed they would do just that.
But... why? When? How? I joined Facebook in 2006 when it opened to the public and it never asked for my social security number. Did they used to ask that prior to 2006? I mean, "people just submitted it" only works if it was asked for. Unless we're presuming people posted their SSNs on their wall for their friends to see.
This isn't about Facebook though, it's about some prototype he created earlier. I'd say he probably had SSNs because lots of universities used SSNs as student IDs before it became universally clear why that was a terrible idea, and he probably required your student ID number to use the service.
Yes, it was from an earlier prototype of FB. But the bigger point is that it was Zuck who was saying that. And it tells you everything you need to his real attitude toward your privacy -- no matter what his "policies" say.
As well as attitude towards his users as human beings generally.
The point of this particular article is that you don't even need to be on Facebook. Your image is bound to be captured, perhaps only in the background in a public space, by someone who is. Your face will be recognized and it will become part of your "public record". No amount of opting out will prevent this. Perhaps going full Amish will, but even that simply pushes back the timeline.
"FYI man, alright. You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!" lol i used to love this quote in Hackers and your point made me recall it.
On Facebook and other social media websites, people regularly volunteer to identify their friends in photos.
That does not happen with ordinary street surveillance footage, as far as I know.
So you might have pictures of you taken by street surveillance cameras as you walk around in big cities, but your face isn't ordinarily going to be recognized by anyone.
These days, I'd be willing to bet that "ordinary street surveillance" uses facial recognition algorithms. It wouldn't be as effective as FB's, because FB has an enormous stream of training data coming in all the time. However, that could change if law enforcement got access to FB's data - hence this article.
Facial recognition software can only recognize you if your face is already in the database and identified as you. It's not going to magically know your identity otherwise, no matter how sophisticated it is.
On the other hand, I guess it could do some inference, such as: person X seen at location Y is also seen going in to residence Z every evening and coming out of the same residence every morning for the last 6 months, therefore there's a high probability that this person's address is residence Z, and since John Doe is the only person registered as living in that residence, person X is probably John Doe, etc.
Government already has a huge database of photos with name tags attached: the photos you submit when you want to get a passport, drivers license, or any other form of ID.
Consider yourself lucky if you or your loved ones haven't been harassed or stalked because of information you've posted about yourself or your family online.
Some have not been so fortunate, and don't want to make themselves or their families any more vulnerable than they already are.
Statistically speaking, the apple only ever falls so far from the tree. Imagine if we had Face-book in the since the 1920s. Imagine if DHS could use FB info to figure out who's parents gave them alcohol as infants when they wouldn't STFU or hit them when they swore. I bed they'd start showing up at schools and randomly questioning kids the way young people crossing the border get searched "randomly"
You might not have anything to hide now but you might in the future and even if you don't that doesn't mean you won't be harassed because you "might" have something to hide.
Immigrants from japan/germany/italy in the US during WW2. Those people all had nothing to hide on Dec 6th.
Yeah, I always get annoyed at standing in line for building security needing to take yet another photo of me and stare at my license. Let's just be friends on Facebook so their security cameras can identify me when I walk in the door.
10 years later I still don't get the point of these articles besides fear mongering and at most to provide a technological challenge to engineers and developers on "the other side". I understand ad-blocker companies are fighting a messy war right now with both content and ad providers. I guess that is another way, albeit much slower, way to achieve progress. Hacking goes both ways.