[HN Gopher] Facebook Analytics will no longer be available
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook Analytics will no longer be available
Author : oblib
Score : 204 points
Date : 2021-04-06 04:57 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.facebook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.facebook.com)
| antegamisou wrote:
| Here's a link to the article if you want to avoid all the
| innocuous trackers
|
| https://outline.com/Mvrn9u
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| The last paragraph in outline.com privacy policy is basically
| them laughing at you for spending time reading the whole thing.
|
| > Although most changes are likely to be minor, Outline may
| change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Outline's
| sole discretion. Outline encourages visitors to check this page
| for changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this
| site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute
| your acceptance of such change.
| anticensor wrote:
| Implied consent is not a legal basis for data collection.
| ElderMillennial wrote:
| To concur:
|
| I'm not sure "we unilaterally changed the contract without
| notice and you agreed because you happened to use the
| product that day" would hold up in any court, for any
| reason.
|
| A contract requires a "meeting of the minds", which is
| impossible if one party doesn't even tell the other: you
| can't agree to a contract you didn't know you were even
| agreeing to.
|
| I don't believe those terms would hold up anywhere (and
| this is why sites will _tell_ you, over and over, when the
| terms and conditions change).
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Wow, literal Darth Vader line there.
| rkangel wrote:
| It's also illegal under the GPDR. You require positive
| consent to privacy policies.
| antegamisou wrote:
| Pretty sure this or similar applies to policies of most web
| services, sadly.
| [deleted]
| m463 wrote:
| how about a link that does a better job of that?
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210406073805/https://www.faceb...
|
| heh, except for analytics.archive.org
| traspler wrote:
| So instead you will just be tracked by Google Analytics ;)
| antegamisou wrote:
| So I just checked this from my PC and indeed uBlock Origin
| had blocked 3 google-analytics.com links. TIL I suppose.
|
| Unfortunately I cannot edit the OP anymore so I'll provide
| the original text in this comment
|
| _Facebook Analytics is Going Away_
|
| _Facebook Analytics will no longer be available after June
| 30, 2021. Until then, you will still be able to access
| reports, export charts and tables, and explore insights. To
| export data into a CSV file from Facebook Analytics on your
| desktop, click the arrow in the top-right corner of each
| chart or table._
|
| _Other business tools can help you understand your
| advertising, presences, and activities on Facebook and
| Instagram, including:_
|
| _-Facebook Business Suite allows you to manage your Facebook
| and Instagram business accounts and can show you detailed
| insights about your audience, content and trends. (This tool
| may not be available to you yet.)_
|
| _-Events Manager can help you set up and manage Facebook
| Business Tools like the Facebook pixel and Conversions API,
| and reports actions taken on your website, in your app and in
| your physical store._
| ignoramous wrote:
| https://archive.is/qQinN
| oblib wrote:
| Pretty sparse notification. They don't give a reason at all.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I didn't even know that FB had a competing tool to Google
| Analytics/Mixpanel.
|
| Anyone comment on whether this is widely used?
| borisandcrispin wrote:
| We used it a lot some years ago when we built a chatbot for FB
| Messenger. It was a great surprise. FB analytics was very
| hidden, but once you got there their product was quite good.
| Simple to use and gave us 95% of everything we needed to know.
|
| The problem was that you obviously needed to use it with
| Facebook. As we started building a FB chatbot, that was not an
| issue, but for any other product it didn't make sense.
|
| We considered:
|
| - Mixpanel was way too expensive for us.
|
| - Google analytics is definitely not a product analytics tool.
|
| - Game Analytics was a good tool, but too much focused on
| games.
|
| Analytics tools can be very expensive and there weren't many
| good free alternatives that we were aware of.
| anticensor wrote:
| Did you try Piwik, a free open source self-hostable analytics
| suite?
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| > Piwik
|
| Now renamed as Matomo.
| esnard wrote:
| > - Google analytics is definitely not a product analytics
| tool.
|
| Can you elaborate on this please? I'm really not used to
| analytics tools, but GA does look like one to me.
| markdown wrote:
| It's basically a spam engine. I had to stop using GA
| because Google, the billion dollar company with a million
| software engineers, couldn't figure out how to filter out
| spam from their product.
| firecall wrote:
| It's true.
|
| Out of the box and just installed onto a site the data is
| garbage.
|
| It provides more value to Google than it does the owner
| of a site.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Basically GA is more of a traffic measuring tool. It
| doesn't do perfect attribution of events and join them
| easily for you to build up a picture of the journey the
| customer takes.
|
| Take for example something like Amplitude which lets you
| instrument and measure conversion or journey that a user
| takes across your product.
| unixhero wrote:
| Product analytics tool, is not the same as a web traffic
| analytics tool. Maybe that is what he meant.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Google Analytics is all about web analytics, so you can see
| traffic sources, visitors, pageviews, custom events,
| conversion funnels, etc. Primarily your analysis is going
| to be around traffic sources and how individual pages are
| performing.
|
| Product analytics tools are a little different in that
| they're much more event based and allow for contact/account
| hierarchies. Ie you can group (and thus track) separate
| users under a single business entity. They're also much
| more feature based, so you'll primarily be looking at how
| features are used as opposed to app screens.
| beagle3 wrote:
| I don't know if this is related to their app SDK, but many apps
| use that (including e.g. Google's own Waze) and that SDK
| collects analytics in its common Config (and lets you register
| your own events IIRC).
| wdb wrote:
| I think these days PostHog is a good alternative for Mixpanel
| Syonyk wrote:
| Sadly, this is unlikely to be because Facebook, entirely, is
| going away.
| oblib wrote:
| I don't get what you mean. Please explain.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Facebook needs to be shutdown as it poses an existential
| threat to democracy because it provides a platform for the
| worst of us to amplify their messages of hate and division
| and to spread conspiracies. It facilitates people who would
| otherwise not be able to find others like them to organize.
| So instead of the crazy person on the corner with a sign
| condemning homosexuals or spouting conspiracies that most
| would look at and laugh these people find others like them
| and become ever more extreme.
|
| Addendum: This isn't about Zuckerberg. Any other dominant
| social network will be co-opted in the same way because of
| inherent flaws in people: we are prone to groupthink and as
| demographics change such that there's an ever growing
| acceptance of conspiracy theories and greater division in
| American politics for example Facebook will continue to drive
| discord and thereby profits from further engagement on its
| service by exploiting these inner human vices.
| headmelted wrote:
| You've basically just described an Eternal September which
| pre-dates Facebook by about a decade.
|
| Taking away the platform doesn't change the inherent nature
| of these people, who could easily educate themselves with
| actual facts if they chose to do so.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Key is "if they chose to" do so. But to overcome one's
| own ethnocentrism and cognitive biases is proving to be
| difficult.
| headmelted wrote:
| I agree, I just feel like it's worth calling a spade a
| spade.
|
| People believe horrible falsehoods because they are
| simpler, more convenient and (critically) more exciting
| than taking the time to understand actual facts. That's
| laziness, with victims.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Social networking has its issues but it's not the root of
| all evil. These copypasta-esque rants about FB being a
| threat to democracy are as bad as anything you'd see on FB
| itself.
| [deleted]
| bluescrn wrote:
| -
| [deleted]
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Citation needed
| sagolikasoppor wrote:
| You americans are really good at sounding intelligent while
| you just spew out shit, I gotta give you that.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| For some odd synapse firing reason this quote popped into
| my mind while reading your comment:
|
| "It tells me that goose-stepping morons like yourself
| should try reading books instead of BURNING them!" - Henry
| Jones - Last Crusade
|
| - Not wishing to insult you but you want to get rid of a
| service that you personally dislike. Newsflash: Many people
| don't share that opinion. (And I'm frankly almost as tired
| of hearing it as I am tired of hearing about the amazing
| benefits of crypto currencies.)
| spurgu wrote:
| Interestingly the same people arguing for
| removing/regulating/moderating FB also heavily criticize
| China's censoring politics.
| mantap wrote:
| There's a difference between wanting to ban something
| because it is a threat to your autocracy and wanting to
| dissolve something because it is too powerful and
| abusive. Punching down vs punching up.
|
| I think most people of that persuasion just want to break
| up large tech companies though, not ban them outright.
| [deleted]
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| just because we are all tired of this fight is no reason
| that the fight and outrage should stop. if anything it
| means that FB has won and US propagandists have achieved
| their goal: exhaustion of the enemy. anyone in this
| thread arguing in defense of FB has never supported the
| #DeleteFacebook movement in the first place (perhaps
| because they're eyeing a job in that firm or are already
| working there). It doesn't change the fact that facebook
| (and other BigTech) needs to be fought like cancer:
| Either we survive BigTech by fighting it perpetually to
| the teeth or it's going to kill us (in some cases quite
| literally - see Rohinga or similar).
|
| the problem is larger than FB. it's rampant in all areas
| of BigTech and chances are high many here are guilty for
| working on the destruction of society. See for example
| Stripe (an "innocent" payment processor) which processes
| payments for the Proud Boys:
|
| https://www.ourfreedomfunding.com/campaign/19/freespazzo-
| dom...
|
| https://www.ourfreedomfunding.com/campaign/23/financial-
| aid-...
|
| See also Cloudflare which is happy to protect such sites
| as the one above (and has a history of doing so):
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90312063/how-cloudflare-
| straddle...
|
| The real problem comes from having a small highly paid
| and entitled circle of Tech people in the US be the
| arbiter of truth and social values worldwide.
| headmelted wrote:
| Your suggestion is fighting fascism with fascism, and it
| reads like maybe you don't realise that?
|
| "BigTech needs to be fought like cancer". When did we all
| agree to this?
| bbarnett wrote:
| One cannot change human nature, but instead, must
| engineer a society which uses our nature as a plus, not
| minus.
|
| FB is a detriment to society, but this is primarily due
| to capitalism's flaws, which entices profit above all,
| and even punishes those who stray from this dogma.
|
| (A board must remove a CEO not on mandate, shareholders
| will sue if they do not, etc...).
|
| Everything has flaws, needs to be tweaked, no engine runs
| without maintenance. We handle this aspect of capitalism
| with regulation, patching an inherent flaw where
| required.
|
| Banning a social network would only see it pop up
| elsewhere, perhaps in a place like China or Russia, with
| all of the censorship and state controlled manipulation
| this implies. Think Facebook is bad? Imagine all of
| Facebook's issues, with no spam control, no privacy
| legislation, plus members of the state on the board, and
| state sensors filtering posts, and injecting state
| approved data.
|
| Destroying Facebook is ... nuts.
|
| Instead, create a level playing field for all via
| regulation, tweaking and fixing the for-profit motivation
| which leads to bad societal outcomes. (And, keep positive
| for-profit motivations, edited to clarify I am not anti-
| profit.)
|
| Fix, repair, improve, do not destroy.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| AFAIK there's _already_ a Facebook "clone" in Russia :
| Vkontakte (AFAIK it basically has been nationalized,
| which is indeed even worse.) I'm sure China has its own
| version ?
|
| There's no "level playing field" while Facebook exists.
|
| You might be under the sunk cost fallacy ..?
| bbarnett wrote:
| There are many, many Facebook clones. None of these
| platforms are king of the world.
|
| Yet imagine Facebook is "destroyed" tomorrow, literally
| shut down. Now, where do all those people go to get their
| fix?
|
| You suggest two alternatives that could grow quickly, and
| in regions I am concerned about. I don't think it's a
| sunk cost fallacy, when my premise is "This will exist no
| matter what" and "Let's make sure any such platform can't
| work detrimentally".
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| The most detrimental aspect of Facebook is the scale.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Maybe. Not saying you're wrong entirely. But the Pii is,
| to me, a massive problem. If you have 10 social networks,
| all identical in feature and scope, and each has 1/10th
| of the users? And all have facebook style Pii, newsfeeds,
| silos, and everything else that is causing issue?
|
| Then manipulation is still rather easy? Best to
| legislate, mandate, ensure that market forces make this
| type of preying on society, economic model a loss, not a
| win.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Everytime I see the words "engineer a society" is just
| freaks me out. They are supposed to be grown from the
| bottom up, not engineered top-down.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Any government is 'engineering society'. Every time you
| craft a law, pass legislation, create a body to mandate
| and control things (FDA/FCC/FBI/EPA/whatever), you're
| engineering a change to society.
|
| I think what is in your mind is some ruling body telling
| you what to think.
|
| This isn't that. This is using an elected body, to
| effectively patch society to fix issues that exist
| therein. The Government is you. If it isn't, get a new
| Governmental system, or fix it, because something is very
| wrong.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| calling me a fascist is a cheap shot and I'm not going to
| respond to it - not because it offends me but because
| it's a boring argument that doesn't engage with my point.
| cecja wrote:
| Dude you are a fascist.
| headmelted wrote:
| Sigh. No-one called you a fascist. It's worth
| understanding what fascism is though.
| rswail wrote:
| "guilty for working on the destruction of society." is a
| big stretch. Stripe processing payments for the Proud
| Boys is a failure of regulation of the Proud Boys, not of
| Stripe.
|
| Canada has declared the Proud Boys a terrorist
| organization. If they had bank accounts in Canada, the
| banks would not be allowed to keep them open or to deal
| with them. Neither would Stripe.
|
| I don't know what the situation is where someone uses a
| Canadian-bank issued credit card to buy something or
| transfer funds to the Proud Boys in the US. That would be
| similar to using it to transfer funds to Al Queda or ISIS
| if they had a bank account.
|
| Cloudfare are not "happy" to protect those sites, but
| they are also committed to not censoring unless
| absolutely necessary and in accordance with the law.
|
| So the tech examples you quote are about enforcing laws,
| not requiring big tech to somehow police itself by
| "fighting it like cancer".
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Not only that but it's changed the social dynamic in a
| shitty way.
| brink wrote:
| Social media has brought out the worst in us.
| BugWatch wrote:
| And US, too.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > Facebook needs to be shutdown as it poses an existential
| threat to democracy
|
| I really would welcome that but no way it will.
|
| 1) even if it were banned in many countries it would still
| survive in the US for Intel/NatSec reasons.
|
| 2) it's so ingrained in society that it's unthinkable that
| it could disappear. In many countries facebook _is_ the
| Internet and large parts of the economy and social fabric
| (as toxic and shitty as it is) depend on it. This has
| implications to 1) (e.g. NatSec) above, because
|
| 3) FB is part of the US propaganda[1] machine. _Radio free
| Europe_ or _VoA_ , etc dwarf in comparison of what US
| dominated BigTech does[2]. See also trending here recently
| [3] note especially the title changed from the original
| official title (presumably to be less inflammatory even
| though the original title made exactly that point and the
| new title does the bidding for the propagandists).
|
| FB is too big too fail in every sense. It is impossible to
| fight legally (or with illegal means it will survive like
| the stubborn parasite it is)
|
| [1] _Propaganda: The Formation of Men 's Attitudes_ by
| Jacques Ellul https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512
|
| [2] https://thenextweb.com/distract/2020/12/21/how-netflix-
| shape...
|
| [3] How Netflix is creating a common European culture
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26696396
| disabled wrote:
| This is very thoughtful. I do not know why people
| downvoted your comment.
|
| I personally despise Facebook and all of its services.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > I do not know why people downvoted your comment.
|
| reason why people call me out for my behavior is this:
|
| > I personally despise Facebook
|
| ^^ I do not agree with the mainstream view which is to
| hold companies liable for their actions. Instead my
| attitude (and I get why people have a hard time with it)
| is to direct my anger at the individuals hiding behind
| these big-corps. I'm making it personal because for me it
| is. We (humans in most "civilized" countries) made a huge
| mistake by allowing a company to be a "legal" person
| which gives people the ability to hide their ghoulish
| behavior behind the legal facade of a company. You can
| not win a fight as a person against a company (only in
| rare cases that don't matter much). As a legal person I
| can fund terror with shell/shelf companies and get away
| with paying 0% income tax (e.g. Netflix, Google and all
| other cancerous US companies registered in Ireland or
| Luxembourg) while as a natural person I get away scot-
| free.
|
| My solution to the problem is too radical for most as it
| calls out the Zuckerberg's, Eric Princes, Peter Thiel,
| Bezos, Musk, Koch, Trumps and hundreds of others.
|
| People here absolutely hate that and (in some cases
| rightfully) attack me because what I propose is against
| the law and probably violates my own code of human
| rights. If laws don't serve us we have to change them and
| in many cases this will not be possible without violence.
| I'm not saying I have a solution[1] for it but I also
| can't see how companies should continue to get away with
| destruction of society (and the environment). Until we
| start eating the rich (metaphorically) and they start
| fearing the rest of us (again) nothing will change.
|
| [1] my pov is constantly evolving and in many regards
| half baked, e.g. I also am deeply suspicious of more
| government power to solve these issues or any form of
| "seizing the means of production". and I think that
| technology (science) will even less be able to provide a
| cure for something that isn't a technological problem
| (see Jacques Ellul _" The Technological Society"_). again
| I absolutely need to stress that I have no solution
| either.
| disabled wrote:
| I agree with you. I will read Jacques Ellul today. Thank
| you for the recommendation.
|
| You may want to check out Timothy Snyder (both his books
| and YouTube discussions). He talked about Big Tech in
| creative ways, like how to deal with it.
|
| I am personally American and Croatian by citizenship, but
| I am culturally American. I live in Croatia and I am
| enjoying it. Social media is evil (in my opinion) but it
| is toned down here in Europe, which we are lucky. But, I
| am so worried about America.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| appreciate the suggestion and I'm also going to look into
| it. I too live in Zagreb and work mostly for US
| companies. Perhaps we'll one day bump into each other at
| Tkalciceva when they let us out again.
|
| Everything you say about the situation being very
| critical/worrisome in the US is true IMO. What I see as a
| problem is how smaller less powerful places here in
| Europe ideologically appropriate the problems of those
| they are "ruled by" and look up to. As a kid I spent some
| years in Austria and every time there were news about
| something happening in Germany the same things got
| debated as being a problem in Austria to the point where
| it was ridiculous. Like a strange me-too complex (it
| comes in many shapes and sizes often justified but also
| sometimes not). I see this as a huge problem since much
| of what is an issue in the US isn't one over here etc.
| LightG wrote:
| Same. It's a scourge.
|
| Facebook employs thousands. It's not unthinkable that a
| lot of them are here and feeling a bit red-faced.
| cinquemb wrote:
| I think the only real possible way for institutions that
| grow as large and powerful as facebook to decline is by
| irrelevance.
|
| Which might be hard for some to imagine a future where
| facebook becomes irrelevant, but not for me... but that's
| not to say such a future wont hold other kinds of
| powerful orgs that wont have others calling for their
| demise ;)
| varispeed wrote:
| I keep wondering whether such tools should be even legal. Where
| is the line between making sure you show your advert to people
| most likely interested in your product and straight up
| manipulating people into buying something they don't need?
|
| In the past, if you sold let's say car parts, you would then
| naturally buy advert on a car forum, hoping that people
| interested in cars would click your ad and see what you have to
| offer.
|
| Now you that such forums are mostly gone, you have the whole
| science of nudging people into buying something using your
| personal data harvested in questionable ways, various funnel
| strategies and so on. Why is this socially acceptable?
| justapassenger wrote:
| > manipulating people into buying something they don't need?
|
| This shows you have very little idea how advertising business
| works. There's a lot of bad and shady stuff, sure, but that's
| extremely naive oversimplification. It's like saying that
| software engineering exists to steal jobs from people and give
| them to machines instead.
| cwkoss wrote:
| People who work in telemarketing or bulk mail or spam all
| make similar arguments, but I don't buy it.
|
| There are narrow cases where advertising can be societally
| beneficial, but this is not the case the vast majority of the
| time.
| justapassenger wrote:
| It's not about arguments, it's about educating yourself on
| the topic before making definitive conclusions.
|
| Bringing up telemarketing and spam when we talk about
| advertising is as relevant as bringing ransomware as an
| argument against encryption.
| jacobolus wrote:
| What do you think the difference is between telemarketing
| and other forms of advertising that makes comparing them
| an expression of total ignorance, worthy of gratuitous
| insults?
|
| The premise of both is forcing people's attention to
| focus on an unsolicited message as a way of manipulating
| them into doing something they would not otherwise do or
| buy something they would not otherwise buy.
|
| Spreading those manipulative messages through phone calls
| or paper mail does not seem to be fundamentally different
| than spreading them through interstitial television
| clips, magazine pages, billboards, spam emails, or
| website popups. All of these delivery mechanisms are
| ugly, unpleasant, and typically exploitative.
|
| Personally I find e.g. Facebook and Google's panopticon-
| driven advertising empires to be more ethically
| problematic than many kinds of telemarketing and junk
| mail. Facebook in particular has caused more concrete
| harm in the world than any telemarketing firm.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Telemarketing and spam _are_ advertising. It 's all the
| same game as digital advertising, just different mediums.
|
| Your hostility to the idea that advertising is a net
| societal ill reminds me of the quote, "It is difficult to
| get a man to understand something when his salary depends
| upon his not understanding it."
| [deleted]
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| How is this different to how advertising has been done for
| hundreds of years, e.g. newspapers or a billboard on a public
| street?
|
| Aren't they "manipulating people into buying something they
| don't need"?
| cwkoss wrote:
| The vast majority of advertising is not a socially productive
| activity.
|
| There is a narrow use case that can be productive when
| informing a buyer of the existence of something they actually
| need, but this is not the case 90+% of the time.
| varispeed wrote:
| Today advertising looks something like this:
|
| - You go to a shop and ask for information about what kind of
| tires they have
|
| - A spotter sees you and phones the ad company that you were
| seen at such and such store asking for tires
|
| - The ad company already knows where you do usually walk and
| what time
|
| - They send agents with tires on billboards who follow you on
| the way to work and back and whenever you look they try to
| shove a banner in front of your eyes, sometimes even slowing
| you down as you try to walk past them
|
| I am pretty sure if they did exactly the same as they do
| online, but offline, that would be illegal (stalking for
| starters)
| fakedang wrote:
| While I'm a vocal critic of both Facebook and Google, do they
| really make people buy things they don't need by manipulating?
|
| Anecdotally, most of the marketing material and discounts that
| people around me get and then use to make a purchasing decision
| came from email. Not Google or Facebook shoving shit in their
| face, plain old email. Are you going to call for a ban on
| email?
|
| The times I've been convinced to check out a product were only
| because either a.) their product was really good in the ad and
| b.) the ad was really good. For example, I still show that
| Honda R button ad to people who haven't seen it. And even
| though that ad was still brilliant, as I type this, my Google
| query (to reconfirm) was "Hyundai R button ad". That's right -
| that unique and famous YouTube ad that I still remember from
| 2015 was still not enough for me to even remember the name of
| the company, much less the name of the product!
|
| Most ads are obnoxious and/or boring, and simply exasperating
| when they interrupt you in between, but nowhere near
| manipulative. Facebook and Google's major flaw is not in the
| advertising model but in the way they amplify voices of like
| minded people who are otherwise irrelevant personae.
| walshemj wrote:
| Or the impossible dream advert advert Honda basically won car
| adverts with that one.
| johncessna wrote:
| I always took it as name recognition/playing the long game.
|
| I'm not currently looking to buy a car. When I do there will
| be 10ish years of product placement in movies, banners, radio
| and TV commercials, magazine ads, youtube ads, good press,
| and bad press that I've been 'ignoring' that will undoubtedly
| play somehow into the purchasing decision.
| fakedang wrote:
| Exactly, it has always been about brand building. Which is
| why I find Amazon and Deliveroo tiresome. These guys just
| replaced TV and newspapers in the ad business.
| wubbert wrote:
| >Why is this socially acceptable?
|
| Because most people don't know that it's happening, and of the
| people that do, most don't care.
| kyrra wrote:
| https://www.adexchanger.com/analytics/facebook-analytics-wil...
|
| The above seems to go into guesses as to why it's going away. A
| lot more informative than the original link.
| robryan wrote:
| As that article states it was potentially a useful source for
| age and gender demographic data. Google Analytics has this as
| well but I'd assume more people have given more precise data
| about their age and gender to Facebook than they have to
| Google.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Does the data precision on an individual level matter? As
| long as it's slightly better than random and the confusion
| matrix is known, then accurate aggregate statistics can be
| generated for any site that has more than a handful of users.
| XorNot wrote:
| Its never been clear to me why Facebook would have better
| ad targeting data then Google. Facebook has only ever had a
| passive view of its products, whereas Google has an active
| one - people go to Google and declare their desires and
| intents. Who cares about age and demographics when someone
| will tell you _exactly_ what they 're currently looking
| for?
| strgcmc wrote:
| Because you can sell them something other than the one
| thing they are looking for.
|
| Contrived example: I search for "buying new SUV" so
| clearly you should show me new car ads and car buying
| articles and reviews. But if I am a mid-30s married
| person, you might also try to sell me car seats for the
| babies I demographically am likely to have or want to
| have soon. OTOH, if am an older 60s retired widow, you
| may want to advertise warranty and car maintenance plans
| for my peace of mind about taking care of the car.
|
| Actually it's a little more nuanced than that, because I
| could be mid-30s and married but choosing to be
| childfree, or I could be a 65 year old widow and former
| car mechanic who is more than capable of taking care of
| my own vehicle. So collecting the demographic data is
| about building a gradient of probabilities, things that
| are ranked in likelihood of value/relevance, and using
| that information to inform the demand side of advertisers
| deciding how much to bid for my eyeballs.
| XorNot wrote:
| Sure if that was how Google worked - but Google would
| also have found you searching for "what to expect from
| pregnancy?" and "tax implications of a spouse dying", or
| "developments in car maintenance".
|
| Facebook finds out what you think to share, Google finds
| out what you're doing and generally the path you took to
| get there.
|
| Google News has always uncannily followed by current
| job's tertiary areas, for example.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Facebook also tracks you with the "like" button on 3rd
| party website. They know which page you have browsed and
| for how long
| Splendor wrote:
| What do you think Google Analytics does?
| everythingswan wrote:
| It's more explicit now. Most sites add the Facebook Pixel
| as they want to track conversions on their site. Most
| brands have this on their site. Facebook can do all of
| the analysis that Google can with that, such as knowing
| how many people add something to their cart, checkout,
| etc.
|
| The power is in combining that data, like one of the
| grandparent comments mentioned. They will know if you buy
| a SUV (since the dealer uploads the data as an offline
| conversion) and that you're browsing baby clothes on
| Walmart/Target. Now you're a "new or expecting parent".
|
| Some of these interest categories are not that explicit
| but the lookalike audiences are. That's a whole other
| post :)
| strgcmc wrote:
| Not that I disagree with what you said, but maybe you can
| think about it this way (again, contrived
| oversimplification):
|
| - Google are the experts/masters of knowing "what you
| want", expressed via your search intents
|
| - Facebook are the experts/masters of knowing "who you
| are" (including demographics, as well as
| family/friends/connections,
| interests/hobbies/personality, etc.)
|
| Google can guess at the same type of "who" information
| that Facebook owns (e.g. gender inference), and vice
| versa Facebook can guess at the type of info that Google
| owns (e.g. search/purchase intent), but both have
| distinct relative advantages over the other, which is why
| there is still competition in this space (the GP comment
| was questioning, why hasn't Google just "won", why is FB
| even in the picture, etc.).
| cm2012 wrote:
| As an advertiser that specializes in targeting niche
| audiences, for anything except search itself, Facebook
| has amazingly better targeting than Google. Google
| display and Youtube targeting for ads is just so bad. Not
| sure how its possible.
| sfifs wrote:
| It turns out people don't really search for most of the
| things that are out there to sell - cola, soap, milk,
| chocolate, candy, fuel. Yes some people do search and
| research these things but compared to the number of
| people who buy these categories (aka category
| penetration), the # of people searching is vanishingly
| few.
|
| It turns out that in other categories, a LOT of people
| search for things but very few buy them. About 1.5
| million luxury cars are sold in the US in any given year
| but you could bet the number of searchers would be in
| tens to hundreds of millions.
|
| So the Google data works for some businesses which are in
| the Goldilocks zone when it comes to search behaviour
| (ie. It's a product that just the people who wamt to buy
| will actively research before buying) but for many other
| businesses - especially the ones with giant marketing
| budgets, search is just hygiene cost, not a business
| driver - ie. spend enough so your competitors don't
| appear as the first results in search ranking.
|
| At the scale of many businesses (especially the ones in
| the first paragraph), broad demographic segments (and yes
| TV!) turns out to be a very efficient way to build a
| brand and yes you can also selectively augment with other
| data based marketing.
|
| For other businesses (think niche cosmetics brand) paid
| word of mouth (aka influencer marketing) and pushing the
| paid word of mouth content to more people who are likely
| to be have the same interests (eg. Follow fashion
| bloggers) turns out to be hugely efficient and relevant
| and that's something Facebook excels at.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Not an expert on the topic, but Facebook allows for very
| localized/granular targeting. I'm sure that somebody could
| identity individuals with the data they expose.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| A bit dated and probably things have changed... but yes.
|
| http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-
| pranking-...
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if this boils down to - who has provided more
| labeled photos of themselves?
| busymom0 wrote:
| I would have thought the opposite - that more people would
| have given accurate info about age and gender to Google than
| Facebook. After all, your search results on Google, YouTube
| etc, your premium subscriptions to YouTube or Google drive
| etc all provide accurate info to Google.
|
| Btw by saying this, I don't mean to say I trust Google more
| than FB. I trust neither and prefer DuckDuckGo.
| garbagetime wrote:
| Do you trust DuckDuckGo?
| samstave wrote:
| More than goog or FB? Held yeah.
|
| FB is like. Creepy stalker sways hiding upside every
| window and spying on you when it's completely unrelated
| to your relationship with FB.
|
| Goog is more like the gestapo eavesdropping on every
| phone call you have and visit to the library you make
|
| DuckDuckGo is like asking a stranger for directions who's
| going to forget they ever met you in a few minutes.
| garbagetime wrote:
| What reason do I have to assume that DuckDuckGo is not
| collecting data about me? How can I be sure they're going
| to forget we ever met after a few minutes?
| scrose wrote:
| The fact that their entire business and privacy policy is
| built on that idea? Trust isn't a binary thing. You can
| trust someone but still, rightfully, be concerned that
| what they're saying may not be 100% accurate.
|
| But if you have to choose who to trust more between two
| established companies, with one stating 'We don't collect
| your personal information, here's why you should care.'
| and another saying 'When you use our services, you're
| trusting us with your information'. And the latter
| proceeds to hit you with a 50+ page doc explaining how
| they track essentially every interaction you make on
| their services, or services that use them, which would
| you trust more?
| garbagetime wrote:
| My question was whether or not we should trust
| DuckDuckGo, not whether DuckDuckGo is more trustworthy
| than some alternatives, and not whether they collect less
| user-specific data than some alternatives.
|
| My thinking is that there isn't much reason to trust
| them. I disagree that their business is built on them
| being trustworthy. Their business is built on people
| _believing_ them trustworthy. This may act as a
| disincentive to act in an untrustworthy manner, but it is
| simply another factor for their cost-benefit analyses.
| Most companies benefit from appearing trustworthy, such
| as banks, but the unfortunate reality is that this doesn
| 't mean that they will actually work in your best
| interest.
| scrose wrote:
| > My question was whether or not we should trust
| DuckDuckGo, not whether DuckDuckGo is more trustworthy
| than some alternatives, and not whether they collect less
| user-specific data than some alternatives.
|
| Your question would be answered far better by reading
| their privacy policies and help site[0] to get an idea of
| everything they do to preserve your privacy, rather than
| asking on Hackernews. Of course, if you don't believe
| what the company is saying, I'm not sure what a rando on
| HN can say to convince you otherwise?
|
| [0] https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/privacy/no...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Even if they are just faux-trustworthy, that certainly
| limits their room for maneuver. Facebook basically says
| "so what" and issues a non-apology later. DDG's whole
| reason to exist is predicated on their behavior.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Don't assume it, then. That said, the scope of what the
| can do with the collected data is pretty much limited to
| selling it to a broker, unlike Google which can and does
| do incredible things with their corpus of collected data
| over the years.
|
| Unless there is a better option, I know which one I feel
| safer using.
| garbagetime wrote:
| >Unless there is a better option, I know which one I feel
| safer using.
|
| There is one option you might not be considering:
| reducing one's use of internet search engines.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| It's a fair option, and I do what I can do reduce it,
| like searching on the sites I want to pull data from (I
| usually know this beforehand). But the internet is a
| rather large place, and there is only so much navigation
| one can do without resorting to a search engine.
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