Hacker News Reader

Comment by simion314 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that you are tracked by FB and Google on other websites, they know what you are reading and canalizing it, say they know what politics site you visit, what technology site you are reading, any other pages and then they put you in a bucket for advertising(say rich dude likes expensive tech, car videos, prefers dark color sites, not that smart, prefers this party, has X opinions on y)

Google analytics should not be allowed without me getting a prompt to allow it or not, FB button should be a simple static image without tracking unless I click on it. Also they track users that are not logged in or do not have accounts.

View on HN

> Google analytics should not be allowed without me getting a prompt to allow it or not

One way to go about it could be to force all these data collectors to show what they know about us, how much they shared and with whom, and allow us to delete that data on request. I'd really like to know everything FB tracks on those like buttons, it's probably an obscene amount of personal data.

Once people see how much data they retain, there would be a righteous outrage. These datasets have been provably used to manipulate elections, subvert democracy and target us with fake news. I'd like a report of what fake news and politically motivated ads I've been served by their recommenders. Maybe if they are forced to come out in the clear about what they do with our personal info, they would change their tactics. We need reverse surveillance on FB and the other tech giants and ad companies.

> I'd really like to know everything FB tracks on those like buttons, it's probably an obscene amount of personal data.

When you request a page like this guardian article, all they'd have access to would be:

  * The url you requested, along with time and IP            
  * Any facebook.com/facebook.net cookies you have stored      
  * Any other headers your browser sends       
  * Metadata about the page itself that the publisher publishes via "og:" tags

Said og: tags look like this: <meta property="og:title" content="Facebook ordered to stop collecting user data by Belgian court"/>

How does that compare with what you meant by "obscene amount of personal data"?

Knowing who you are and what pages you visited in last years it is a lot of data that they mine and tag you and sell it to the advertisers. I think they can do a good profile of you by knowing all the obscure links you visit and how much time you spend there.

The users should have a choice, "Do you want this site to share your data with Fb,Google ?" If you do not accept you can't use it, but it is your choice not to use the website, the users will get informed because now I am sure most of the people don't even know about the tracking.

So at minimum they've got your identity and much of your browser history.

Seems reasonable to call that obscene.

If you're not in the US or Canada, you can ask for all the data FB is storing about you: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com