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Comment by ohstopitu | Hacker News Reader

That's because they are not selling those very pictures to anyone who'll pay.

They (facebook) are the middle men - people who have money come to them to sell their product, and facebook knows who to show those products too.

your friends (and mine, and a huge percentage of facebook's userbase) trust facebook enough for that to happen.

And it does not help anyone's cause when people say "X company (be it Google, Facebook etc.) are selling your info".

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Yeah, as someone who has used Facebook for advertising, what they're doing is pretty obvious and not really that nefarious IMO. When I set an ad, I get to say "I want people within 10 miles of this zip code who like dogs, shopping, sports, and breweries" and Facebook limits my ads to only that subset of people. I don't get a list of their names, I don't even know who they are. They just see my ad and I'm charged $1.

Whenever someone asks "what nefarious thing is this company doing with my data?" the answer is rarely "something really, really bad!". Rather, it's almost always "trying to sell you something".

That's true, but Facebook knows the real names, and that targeting technology could just as easily point to religious / political affiliations and personal experiences.

FBI (via NSL):

"Hey FB, show me all the posts from right-wing pro-gun users in within 20 miles of X because we think there's something going on near there".

"Hey FB, show me all the people with pictures taken outside the US with Middle East looking faces/names who are living in South East Michigan".

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