[HN Gopher] Facebook is obstructing our work on disinformation
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Facebook is obstructing our work on disinformation
        
       Author : charlysl
       Score  : 192 points
       Date   : 2021-08-14 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | jefftk wrote:
       | Note that the FTC consent decree does not require blocking like
       | this: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/consumer-
       | blog/2021/08/...
        
       | TeeMassive wrote:
       | > Using data collected through Ad Observer, and also data
       | collected using the transparency tools Facebook makes available
       | to researchers, we've been able to help the public understand how
       | the platform fails to live up to its promises, and shed light on
       | how it sells the attention of its users to advertisers.
       | 
       | So they exploited the data from the main source of revenue of a
       | corporation and then to use that data to smear that same
       | corporation and then they complain that the corporation do not
       | want to cooperate anymore. This is a textbook definition of blind
       | entitlement.
       | 
       | > We can't let Facebook decide unilaterally who gets to study the
       | company and what tools they can use. The stakes are too high.
       | What happens on Facebook affects public trust in our elections,
       | the course of the pandemic and the nature of social movements. We
       | need the greater understanding that researchers, journalists and
       | public scrutiny provide. If Facebook won't allow this access
       | voluntarily, then it's time for lawmakers to require it.
       | 
       | Here's the problem the people who want to fight "misinformation"
       | need to realize: they won't be in charge and the loyalty of those
       | who gets to decide might change and those who gets to decide will
       | not be the same people you would place your hopes in. I can
       | delete my Facebook account but I can't delete the government.
        
       | mellosouls wrote:
       | All of the indicated research interests and criticism points in
       | the article are left-wing (fair enough), but then it follows that
       | this may not be good faith research in the sense of being a
       | _neutral_ look at disinformation.
       | 
       | Facebook may well be underhand here, but the title claim seems to
       | be disingenuous enough to undermine sympathy disinterested
       | observers may have had with the researchers.
       | 
       | If in fact these researchers are in effect at least partially
       | being seen as political campaigners themselves, then they are on
       | shaky ground expecting special treatment being accorded due to an
       | independent status claimed but not justified.
        
         | emj wrote:
         | No. Seems like they mention that Bidens ads were not origin
         | marked, why is partisanship so imporant in this issue?
         | 
         | > "it failed to include ads supporting Joe Biden ahead of the
         | 2020 elections"
        
           | mellosouls wrote:
           | Thank you for that correction, I had misread the origin mark
           | point.
        
       | temp8964 wrote:
       | Based on the examples they gave in the news report, it appears
       | their motivation is partisan. So they intentionally pick one
       | party line to conduct a "research" on "disinformation". What
       | exactly do they want to know from this "research"?
        
         | robocat wrote:
         | Yes, the Grauniad (Guardian misspelled - long running British
         | insider joke) is left wing. The researchers writing the article
         | are from New York University, and we are presuming the
         | researchers are left wing too.
         | 
         | So what? Your implied alternatives are:
         | 
         | * Only allow politically neutral science (impossible for any
         | subject containing politics)
         | 
         | * Only allow right wing science?
         | 
         | * Disallow all scientific study of politically charged topics?
        
         | gadders wrote:
         | ORANGE MAN BAD
        
           | asteroidbelt wrote:
           | You comment is downvoted, but generally yes, it's likely they
           | want to expose some bias, like racism, sexism, favor of
           | republican party, support of antivax or anything else which
           | may start twitter storm and respectively ads revenue stream
           | for them.
        
         | xx511134bz wrote:
         | How to stop people from contradicting The Party apparatus
         | online?
        
       | gautamdivgi wrote:
       | Companies are not required to share data. Have you ever tried
       | getting anonymized network traffic traces from a company for the
       | purpose of analysis? There is a lot of open source data available
       | (thanks crawdad.org!!!) but I doubt you will have a private
       | company share data with you if you just go and ask them.
       | 
       | The same with Facebook. They're just paranoid that the data will
       | make its way into places it shouldn't. Same with any other
       | company.
        
         | wolpoli wrote:
         | Let's say Facebook produces a newspaper with customized ads for
         | each household. Should households be prevented from mailing
         | their copy of the newspaper to researchers due to privacy
         | concerns of the advertisers?
         | 
         | Should Facebook be allowed to stop sending newspaper to the
         | researchers? Should Facebook be allowed to stop providing phone
         | and mailing service for these researchers?
        
           | MikusR wrote:
           | But they are not producing a newspaper with customized ads.
           | They are showing you photos your friends took at the party
           | last weekend. Photos that are shared with you and not with
           | their boss.
        
             | chandelier wrote:
             | If I am consenting to share with the researchers via Ad
             | Observer the data that Facebook has shared with me,
             | whatever that data is, great. I signed no NDA with
             | Facebook.
        
               | MikusR wrote:
               | Did all the people you have friended on Facebook also
               | gave permission to give their data to the researchers?
        
         | mandmandam wrote:
         | No one is requiring Facebook share data, though it could easily
         | be argued that they owe us.
         | 
         | It's _users_ who install a browser extension that are sharing
         | the ads they were shown.
         | 
         | If FB wants to serve people ads, why should they get to stop
         | them sharing those ads with researchers / whoever they want?
         | 
         | They claim the FTC is forcing them to, even though the FTC has
         | stated that's untrue.
         | 
         | This is fairly open and shut. Facebook are full of shit, quelle
         | surprise.
        
         | ardit33 wrote:
         | I can't blame Facebook on this. Last time they allowed data for
         | research purposes we got the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where
         | that researches fed the data to this consulting company to be
         | used for election purposes...
         | 
         | Why should these guys be trusted? "Trust me bro" --- that
         | didn't work well before.
         | 
         | FB is right on this one.
        
           | _Algernon_ wrote:
           | Last time the data was accessed through an official API with
           | (at best) dubious consent.
           | 
           | This time the data is voluntarily provided by using a client-
           | side extension.
           | 
           | Seems quite different, doesn't it?
        
       | gadders wrote:
       | Ironic to see the Guardian complaining about misinformation.
        
       | ardit33 wrote:
       | I can't blame Facebook on this. Last time they allowed data for
       | research purposes we got the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where
       | that researches fed the data to this consulting company to be
       | used for election purposes...
       | 
       | Why should these guys be trusted? "Trust me bro" --- that didn't
       | work well before.
       | 
       | FB is right on this one.
        
       | chroem- wrote:
       | The threats posed by disinformation are too broad and numerous
       | for these smaller academic organizations to handle. We need to
       | consolidate our efforts under a single entity that will have more
       | power to fight disinformation and protect truth. A "Ministry of
       | Truth", if you will.
        
         | enumjorge wrote:
         | One of the frustrating things about political discourse is
         | that, when conducted among a large enough audience, topics lose
         | most of their nuance. Things tend to get reduced to A vs B.
         | It's disappointing to see that when it comes to the subject of
         | misinformation and propaganda in social media, for some people
         | it seems, efforts to understand and reduce the spread of
         | misinformation have become the enemy of freedom of speech and
         | expression.
         | 
         | I don't understand why academics trying to understand the
         | spread of misinformation on Facebook draws comparisons to the
         | authoritarian government in 1984. Since when do we fear
         | university researchers the same way we do oppressive
         | governments? I get it, censorship is a problem, but seriously
         | guys, "Ministry of Truth"? What the fuck.
        
           | thethethethe wrote:
           | > I don't understand why academics trying to understand the
           | spread of misinformation on Facebook draws comparisons to the
           | authoritarian government in 1984.
           | 
           | Its because this "concern" over miss/disinformation is not
           | isolated to academia, the ruling party has been pushing this
           | narrative for some time now.
           | 
           | The ruling party has now aligned itself with the security
           | state, the military industrial complex, and is now working on
           | wrestling control of information away from big tech--all
           | while expressing great concern over moms on Facebook getting
           | their news from unauthorized sources as viewership of
           | conventional mass media, which they have control over,
           | continues to fall. I don't think it is unreasonable to view
           | this as an authorization posture. Sure it's not Ministry of
           | Truth status, but the comparison is there
        
             | enumjorge wrote:
             | Dude, what are you talking about. The _ruling party_? You
             | mean Democrats, who have been held the presidency for less
             | than a year? The ones that barely have a majority in
             | congress, and the ones that appointed only 3 out of 6
             | judges in the Supreme Court?
             | 
             | What does it even mean that the "ruling party" is now
             | aligned with the "military industrial complex"?
             | 
             | Democrats control conventional mass media? Because the
             | behemoth that is Fox New's and the rest of Rupert Murdoch's
             | media empire is, not mass media?
        
               | thethethethe wrote:
               | The democrats currently control two of the three branches
               | of the federal government, the majority of Americans are
               | democrats, establishment republicans are defecting a la
               | Lincoln Project thanks to the fascist bent of the new
               | Republican party, the democrats control the majority of
               | the cities and the states with the most economic output
               | and influence, and big tech workers and executives are
               | overwhelming democrats. Sure it's not 100% but they are
               | the ones in power rn and it has been growing for the last
               | three decades despite setbacks at the federal level.
               | 
               | News Corp is the only major media corporation out of
               | _six_ that is not aligned with the democrats. They happen
               | to be the only one not pushing the disinformation
               | narrative and are gaining viewers, not losing them like
               | the others.
               | 
               | The military sided with the establishment, which is now
               | embodied by the democrats as the republicans have become
               | proto fascist populists, during January 6th. The military
               | is now having hearings on equity and inclusion, requiring
               | reading from liberal-co-oped leftist academics. The CIA
               | recently put out that commercial trying to present
               | themselves as holding progressive values. The democrats
               | are talking about a new domestic war on terror and have
               | acquired funding to expand the capitol police. The
               | majority of officials in both the CIA and the FBI are
               | democrats now. I could go on and on.
               | 
               | I'm not trying to say that all of this is bad or that the
               | republicans are better, I am just pointing out that
               | establishment power is aligning behind the democrats
               | after the whole Trump fiasco and this whole
               | dis/misinformation narrative has strong authoritarian
               | undertones
        
           | chroem- wrote:
           | Science is for everything that can be objectively measured,
           | and politics is for everything else that people can't come to
           | a consensus on. Bad things happen when you try to frame your
           | subjective political opinions as objective scientific
           | reality. "Misinformation" or not, you can't control what
           | other people think, at least not within the confines of a
           | free society.
        
             | enumjorge wrote:
             | So are we supposed to do, ban the study or research of
             | topics that can't be objectively measured because the
             | results might be interpreted as scientific reality by some
             | people? The line between science and politics is not as
             | clear cut as you might think. History and psychology can't
             | be objectively measured. Anything, even hard science, can
             | be politicized. The existence of climate change and
             | COVID-19 are considered political opinions by a good chunk
             | of the population.
        
               | chroem- wrote:
               | Your premise that there are bad ideas that need to be
               | studied and actively suppressed by authoritarian means is
               | flawed.
        
       | glitcher wrote:
       | Many people here are conflating the research done through Ad
       | Observer with the Cambridge Analytica fiasco. There is a huge
       | difference in terms of user consent, and also the code review
       | done by Mozilla on the open source Ad Observer plugin.
       | 
       | For a much better explanation of the distinct differences between
       | these two situations, please see this EFF article:
       | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-attack-resea...
        
       | mrits wrote:
       | It's really odd that these researchers think they deserve access
       | to this information. The successful will probably go to work at
       | competitors to FB down the road. Such entitlement just because
       | they give themselves the "research" title.
        
         | uniqueuid wrote:
         | "Being entitled" is a weird way to say:
         | 
         | Researchers routinely work long hours
         | 
         | with little pay
         | 
         | out of altruistic motives
         | 
         | to the benefit of everyone.
         | 
         | Would you say doctors are entitled when they seek patients to
         | study?
        
           | jwond wrote:
           | > out of altruistic motives
           | 
           | > to the benefit of everyone.
           | 
           | This is debatable or even blatantly false in many cases.
           | Researchers are still human, and many of them are driven by
           | greed and self-interest.
        
         | tobr wrote:
         | > The successful will probably go to work at competitors to FB
         | down the road.
         | 
         | What do you base this on?
        
       | anotherhue wrote:
       | If you're reading this and haven't deleted your account already,
       | will you ever?
        
         | beardyw wrote:
         | I did this year.
         | 
         | [Edit] though I had kept clear of it for 5 years.
        
         | jimkleiber wrote:
         | I hope for the day when there are more options than stay or
         | leave, when users of a platform have more voice to determine
         | the direction of the platform.
         | 
         | Leaving FB (and IG and WhatsApp and GIPHY) seems like moving
         | out of a country and never seeing or talking to many of my
         | friends again. I'd much prefer to stay in the country and have
         | more power in determining the laws governing how we interact
         | with each other.
        
           | apecat wrote:
           | Yeah. Especially seeing the effects the pandemic has had on
           | peoples' social lives, and as such quality of life, I'm not
           | going approach grownups who are unlikely to form new strong
           | friendships, and tell them to cut off a major source of
           | casual semi-social interaction with old buddies.
           | 
           | For context, I'm a man in my thirties, and I notice that a
           | lot of my peers are super busy balancing work/life, or just
           | bury themselves in work.
           | 
           | I'm from a Nordic culture where we don't have Southern
           | European social customs and strong multi-generational
           | families. I'm really worried about how our norms basically
           | push us into loneliness outside our attempts to run nuclear
           | families, which often fail and leave people divorced with
           | limited additional social bonds.
        
             | jimkleiber wrote:
             | I feel a similar worry. I'm a man in my thirties as well,
             | Midwestern American culture which has a similar focus on
             | work and nuclear family, and yet my work for the last 9
             | years has been focused on emotional communication. I see
             | lots of social pressure that if one has emotional intimacy
             | anywhere, it's with the nuclear family, typically just with
             | the romantic partner. Outside of that (or even in those
             | relationships), it almost becomes taboo to express one's
             | fuller range of emotions.
             | 
             | So yes, I wish we don't have to cut off our digital ties to
             | others where we may still be maintaining some of those non-
             | work, non-family relationships.
        
             | anotherhue wrote:
             | All reasonable, but why does it have to be Facebook?
        
               | apecat wrote:
               | Social networks and communications platforms have value
               | because there are people using them. I'm sure you know
               | this, it's called the network effect.
               | 
               | Facebook's services are places where people in my
               | demographic have accumulated social networks that
               | sometimes forms connections in actual socializing.
               | 
               | When we throw parties with my best friends for a wider
               | social circles, friends and acquaintances included, we
               | still use Facebook events, to coordinate them, as an
               | example.
               | 
               | Similarly, although I use Signal to talk to my closest
               | friends, Facebook Messenger is still a functional way to
               | get hold of people when you don't have their phone number
               | or e-mail. Where I'm from, people my age didn't really
               | collect phone numbers, since Facebook's convenient for
               | that.
               | 
               | Transferring the connection between myself and these
               | acquaintances may be cumbersome or awkward, and mind you,
               | I'm the kind of person who insists on moving
               | conversations to Signal after a certain point.
               | 
               | As a case in point, it took years to make Signal
               | something that I actually use for real social connections
               | outside my closest circle of people who humor my nerdy
               | demands. And only succeeded thanks to 1) me having moved
               | some group chats to Whatsapp for encryption the minute
               | Whatsapp released a desktop app in May 2016. This moved
               | the social graph to my phone book, which made it easy to
               | switch to Signal over time. The initial move to Whatsapp
               | worked because people already used it. 2) the larger
               | network effect of Signal taking off, largely over the
               | last year.
               | 
               | So, with all of this hassle in mind, I'm not going to
               | tell people who, bluntly put, are at risk of being
               | lonely, to drop useful social tools.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | inglor_cz wrote:
         | I deleted my account at the end of July 2019.
         | 
         | Facebook did not become a better place through that. But at
         | least I now procrastinate on HN instead. The population here is
         | visibly smarter and the mods actually do their work to keep the
         | standard from sliding into abyss.
        
           | asteroidbelt wrote:
           | > The population here is visibly smarter
           | 
           | You pick your Facebook friends, you subscribe groups which
           | you prefer with mods you like, and you are free to ban
           | whatever Facebook recommends you. My Facebook feed is
           | interesting, I even click ads from time to time because ads
           | are good.
           | 
           | Comparison to HN is not fair, because Facebook is about
           | friends and HN is about strangers. Still I kinda like
           | Facebook because on HN there's very narrow Overton window and
           | interesting comments are often downvoted while on Facebook
           | I'm exposed to very broad range of ideas from far left to far
           | right.
        
             | Nuzzerino wrote:
             | If you're frequently on Facebook, you still have to deal
             | with comments from friends of friends, if reading their
             | posts - and that's where the frustration starts.
        
             | inglor_cz wrote:
             | "You pick your Facebook friends"
             | 
             | True, but this picking is not completely voluntary. If you
             | are on Facebook and your relatives/coworkers/colleagues
             | are, too, they will feel offended if you reject their
             | friend request and you will have some personal hassle in
             | your meatspace. Happened more than once to me and I reacted
             | by cowardly accepting everyone and then filtering out most
             | of them. Was not proud.
             | 
             | In that sense, being in a community of complete strangers
             | here in HN is actually refreshing.
             | 
             | What I really value on HN is the fact that a lot of
             | comments contain valuable info or at least interesting
             | thoughts. I often changed my perspective on something I
             | previously considered obvious after reading a HN
             | discussion.
             | 
             | This is rare on Facebook, most of the user-produced content
             | is low-effort, shallow, information-poor and/or fishing for
             | likes.
        
         | mic47 wrote:
         | Probably not...
        
         | 6AA4FD wrote:
         | A lot of the people I know who still have an account, and are
         | aware of Facebook's track record, use it for maintaining
         | contact with friends and status updates, I don't think there is
         | a whole lot that will get those people to drop, they would
         | rather try to further close off the flow of information into
         | Facebook, and they are already not trusting the service or what
         | it does with the information it gets.
        
           | still_grokking wrote:
           | But they're still feeding the machine...
           | 
           | The presented line of reasoning makes no sense. But people
           | aren't rational, that's no news.
        
             | codetrotter wrote:
             | I have Facebook messenger app installed for the sake of a
             | couple of people, and I check the Facebook main page once
             | in a blue moon to respond to event invites from a friend.
             | 
             | Other than this I don't use Facebook at all any more and
             | have used it very very little for the past several years.
             | 
             | I use a browser that tries to protect me from trackers and
             | ads.
             | 
             | To me, this is what makes sense to do.
             | 
             | But they still get a significant amount of my attention
             | because I use Instagram though.
        
               | realusername wrote:
               | The main issue here is that they also get to link all the
               | other app events to your facebook account due to the
               | facebook sdk and the fact you installed the app on the
               | phone.
        
               | GoodJokes wrote:
               | So you use IG. Honestly, you are being irrational. So two
               | friends are forcing to use fb messenger. How? They refuse
               | to communicate outside of it? They don't sound like good
               | friends and insta is just as bad as fb so...you have
               | literally done nothing to mitigate.
        
             | whatsapps2020 wrote:
             | You are saying that comfortable communication with friends
             | is rationally less important than long-term ideological
             | battle that you don't really influence?
        
               | ipaddr wrote:
               | If you don't mind sharing your private conversations then
               | sure it starts looking rational.
               | 
               | It is not just an ideological battle when your
               | information is used directly against you personally.
               | Companies pay for ads targeted to you by mining your
               | personal content.
               | 
               | If you are not on facebook or rarely use it they have no
               | opportunity to influence you.
        
               | tomjakubowski wrote:
               | You can use Facebook while not having any conversations
               | on it you'd wish to stay private. I think most of my
               | friends still on Facebook use it that way.
        
               | still_grokking wrote:
               | You don't need FB to comfortable communication with
               | friends.
               | 
               | So there is no reason to use it.
               | 
               | If you know what FB is about, and still use it
               | nonetheless (actually for no reason), that's highly
               | irrational.
               | 
               | "I want to communicate with my friends" is just a very
               | lame excuse for feeding the machine.
        
               | asteroidbelt wrote:
               | > You don't need FB to comfortable communication with
               | friends.
               | 
               | You don't need planes to meet your distant relatives, but
               | flying is often much more convenient than other modes of
               | transportation.
               | 
               | > So there is no reason to use it.
               | 
               | Convenience is my reason. If you don't have reasons for
               | yourself, that's fine, don't use it, but don't say for
               | everyone.
               | 
               | > feeding the machine
               | 
               | This is a bit dramatic.
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | >You don't need planes to meet your distant relativesx
               | 
               | This is not a good parallel. You can use any modern
               | instant messenger like Telegram to talk to your friends
               | as comfortably (or more).
        
               | asteroidbelt wrote:
               | It is a good parallel. Obviously if your relatives live
               | on another continent, flying is the optimal, but for
               | example you can ride a bus from SF to LA instead of
               | flying.
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | Bus takes much longer, whereas other messengers are
               | practically as convenient as Facebook.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | Yes. There are many options outside of Facebook, but
               | compromising your morals sticks with you.
        
           | GoodJokes wrote:
           | A lot of people you know seem lazy or extremely
           | unimaginative. There are just so many ways to still socialize
           | and keep up with friends. If your friends stop talking to you
           | cuz they can't do it through fb...maybe re-evaluate said
           | friends.
        
       | izacus wrote:
       | And not a single mention of the fine that Facebook got for giving
       | access to this data for someone elses "work". The work that
       | Guardian gleefuly led the assault on and also widely reported
       | (with good reason! Cambrige Analytica was a huge privacy issue).
       | 
       | So not recognising the fine is disingenuous hypocritical crock
       | and far from trustworthy reporting. Guardian, do better.
        
         | uniqueuid wrote:
         | As others here have pointed out, you are conflating two very
         | different things.
         | 
         | Cambridge analytica deceived people to steal and sell data, and
         | to invisibly manipulate them.
         | 
         | These NYU researchers are scientists, whose entire work is only
         | valuable if put into the open, and who are boud do law and
         | supervised by many checks and balances - soft and hard ones.
         | 
         | It _must_ be possible to study platforms, and for people to
         | volunteer their data with informed consent to science.
         | Otherwise the entire mechanism of  "self-observation" of
         | society falls apart.
         | 
         | So yes, it would be good to mention the caveat that Facebook
         | does need to protect users. But no, that's almost entirely not
         | the issue here.
        
         | newbie789 wrote:
         | I'm not 100% familiar with the Cambridge Analytica situation,
         | but wasn't their tooling based around _user_ data rather than
         | just keeping track of ads?
         | 
         | From the article: > Facebook claimed that we were violating its
         | terms of service, that we were compromising user privacy, and
         | that it had no choice but to shut us down because of an
         | agreement it has with the Federal Trade Commission. All of
         | these claims are wrong. Ad Observer collects information only
         | about advertisers, not about our volunteers or their friends,
         | and the FTC has stated that our research does not violate its
         | consent decree with Facebook.
         | 
         | If these NYU researchers have in fact created an identical
         | system with identical strategies and goals, and are lying
         | blatantly in the Guardian, that should be big news!
         | 
         | I'm somewhat skeptical about the equivalence here.
        
         | zdragnar wrote:
         | Expecting the Guardian to do better would be like expecting the
         | NYT to do better- pretty pointless. They have specific agendas,
         | and the stories are written to conform to the narrative.
         | 
         | As an aside, I don't use Facebook at all, and wouldn't trust
         | them with my dog's name either.
        
       | djanogo wrote:
       | China also likes to detect and sensor all "disinformation". GTFO
       | out here trying to research on what ads/subjects people are
       | seeing so you can categorize them based on what your
       | classification of that information is.
       | 
       | Entire community is in uproar on apple scanning your pictures but
       | this "research" group gets a pass on monitoring what people are
       | engaging in non-public internet FB groups/feeds?, and gets to
       | classify if that information is "disinformation"?
        
         | TeeMassive wrote:
         | I like reminding those "misinformation fighters" that they will
         | never be in charge. The look of disenchantment in their face is
         | usually quite telling.
        
         | mandmandam wrote:
         | You seem to have the wrong end of some sticks.
         | 
         | Users are installing a browser extension to specifically share
         | the ads they were shown.
         | 
         | Facebook are claiming this is against an FTC agreement and so
         | they are sadly forced to shut the researchers down - the FTC
         | says that's bs.
        
           | asteroidbelt wrote:
           | But it is too high risk that these extensions will share
           | something else like friend list or phone numbers. Even if
           | extension authors have honest intentions (we cannot verify
           | that), we cannot trust their account and the extension itself
           | won't be hacked and extension replaced with something else.
           | 
           | And if that happens everybody will forget these newspaper
           | analogies and will go straight to blaming Facebook. No, it is
           | in everybody's best interest (except these researchers) not
           | to have this extension.
        
             | cronix wrote:
             | You mean after FB has already shared your friends list and
             | phone numbers? And tracked you and your friends, most if
             | not all of who did not give you permission to give FB their
             | private contact info, all over the web?
        
               | ergocoder wrote:
               | I see.
               | 
               | Since they have shared it with Cambridge Analytica,
               | therefore, they must share with every single group that
               | asks?
               | 
               | That just doesn't make sense.
               | 
               | I'm happy that FB is more stringent on this since
               | guardian isn't exactly great either.
        
               | cronix wrote:
               | Not what I said. Did your friends and family give you
               | specific permission to give FB their private contact
               | info, which FB uses to associate private relationships
               | whether they are on FB or not and track people across the
               | web? Nothing to do with Cambridge or anyone else I didn't
               | mention.
        
               | ergocoder wrote:
               | So, your comment has nothing to do with the current topic
               | them?
               | 
               | Yeah, a lot of people give that permission. It is in the
               | user agreement.
               | 
               | Not that I agree with wide user agreement, but I'm sure
               | user agreement covers that part, arguably.
               | 
               | Yes, arguably, your friends are rightfully allowed to
               | share your private info like phone numbers and photos.
               | Because they have access to those information.
               | 
               | Not that I agree with it, it is just the current state we
               | live in.
        
               | tzs wrote:
               | > I'm happy that FB is more stringent on this since
               | guardian isn't exactly great either.
               | 
               | The Guardian has nothing to do with Ad Observer and the
               | research it is used for. They simply ran the article
               | written by the NYU researchers that Facebook banned.
        
               | ergocoder wrote:
               | Why did they choose to run it on a shady newspaper
               | though?
               | 
               | There are at least 10 other more credible newspapers to
               | choose from.
        
       | Vanit wrote:
       | So... They're complaining that they got banned for spreading
       | disinformation?
        
         | adjkant wrote:
         | Am I missing something? What disinformation did they spread?
        
           | MikusR wrote:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13443719
        
             | tzs wrote:
             | The submitted article about Facebook is _in_ the Guardian
             | but not _by_ the Guardian. It is by a couple of researchers
             | from NYU.
             | 
             | The article you linked to is both _in_ the Guardian and
             | _by_ the Guardian.
        
       | tomc1985 wrote:
       | So much of the discussion on disinformation is completely
       | disingenuous and a distraction from the fact that Facebook and
       | other social media magnates need to radically restructure their
       | business practices and strip away the last 15 years of
       | "innovation" in how our feeds are presented to us.
       | 
       | Return everyone's feed to a reverse-sorted chronological list of
       | posts from friends only and so much of the misinformation problem
       | goes away!
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-08-14 23:01 UTC)