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Comment by aero142 | Hacker News Reader

Facebook said it wouldn’t use the bank data for ad-targeting purposes or share it with third parties.

“We don’t use purchase data from banks or credit card companies for ads,” said spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana. “We also don’t have special relationships, partnerships, or contracts with banks or credit-card companies to use their customers’ purchase data for ads.”

How do journalists expect me to interpret this? The first sentence says Facebook made a promise, and the second paragraph reads like a supporting quote. The quote doesn't make the promise claimed in the first paragraph. Should I assume that a Facebook representative made the promise, but the actual quote got cut. Or should I assume that three different authors can't critically read a sentence to tell that the quote only makes statements about current practices? Why do we accept articles from major outlets without publishing the full text of the interview with Facebook?

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"We're not doing X for purpose Y!" (translation: "We're doing X not for purpose Y, we do X for other purposes. Luckily, nobody thought to ask us about those, and we certainly won't mention those purposes ourselves, heh, heh, heh.")

Technically, telling the truth, in a weasely way.

Journalists need to be asking what these companies are using X for, rather than specifics.

It's very easy to get around those questions. Facebook is great at it. There is usually a customer-friendly reason, which is the one they answer with publicly. For example, "we collect your information to serve you content that you like". But the real reason is, "We collect your information, because your information can be sold in many ways, indirectly and directly, to make us money".

Both are arguably true. But for a publicly traded company, the "Why" must always come back to the bottom line. The ultimate goal is to build value for shareholders. Any answer that doesn't include some reference to the bottom line is utter BS.

Freedom of the press as commonly understood in the US is a misnomer. Today we are most limited by access-based journalism. Journalist careers generally depend more on access than anything else. As such, their subjects have tremendous power if wielded smartly. PR departments are tasked with wielding this most efficiently.

By being vague in the pretense of that power-wielding landed this subject the benefit of the journalist doing the last mile dirty work of being specific. The hope is that this will buy her another interview, and another interview, and so on. They (the journalist) may have another plan in mind, but their power to execute it is limited by their professional mobility and utility to the subject.

>"Freedom of the press as commonly understood in the US is a misnomer.

No "freedom of the press" in the US is commonly understood to mean that the press is free to publish any opinions they wish without being subject government censorship. It is codified in the First Amendment with:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"

"Freedom of the press" has absolutely zero to do with freedom of access to subjects the press might be reporting on. And it certainly has nothing to do with PR flaks at powerful companies. These are not even a common misconceptions either. So no "Freedom of the press" is not a "misnomer" at all.

I think my elaboration would have been sufficient for you to realize there is no disagreement here.

My point is just that a free press, as commonly understood and as in the constitution, is not free. Americans are quick to get upset when legal regulations are placed on press freedoms but slow to recognize the less obvious.

I’m not interested in discussing any further. You appear to just be looking for a disagreement. Good luck.

>"My point is just that a free press, as commonly understood and as in the constitution,"

And your point is patently untrue. Freedom of the Press is not "commonly understood" in that incorrect way in the US.

Honestly it sounded like you yourself didn't understand the meaning of the phrase "Freedom of the Press." You even called it a "misnomer." Accusing people of "looking for a disagreement" simply because they corrected you seems kind of lame and uncalled for.

the OP's post, and your post are not mutually exclusive. I think you both point out inherent flaws in the term "freedom of press" as it is currently understood in society. His point is that they are incentivied not burn bridges with large corps, and your point is they can say whatever the f* they want with zero governmental oversight.

That's almost as useless as the FB statement.

"The freedom of the press is currently not being limited, directly, by laws, made by the government"

Just makes it sound like powerful corporations are beyond reproach, no matter how influential.

It makes perfect sense with the little bit of contextual knowledge that credit card companies sell your purchase data to whoever for whatever reason today, and I'm pretty sure Google uses buys and uses this info.

So - the first sentence refers to the potential program in question i.e. FB doing some kind of financial integration. The second part I think is FB's 'furthermore' in reference to the fact they don't seem to buy data from VISA to integrate into ads. Since the later is a rather common thing, I guess they felt the need to clarify.

It's funny that everyone is up in arms about FB using FB data to make ads ... when VISA, MC and AMEX basically sell all transactional data to pretty much anyone for any purpose. And this has been going on for some time and there doesn't seem to be a big fuss over it.

Personally I think the sale by Visa of all your transactions is a much worse violation of privacy because it's financial info, there's no overt 'opt in' for this, and it's sold and used willy nilly for whatever.

But to your point I don't think that too many people are aware that Visa is selling data so the context required for the later comment may not be obvious.

But with Visa we can opt-out by using monero instead, what are we supposed to do with facebook?

.. not use Facebook? It's really not necessary.

But if Facebook is building shadow profiles out of your data sourced through means outside control (can you not use banks?!) what's your recourse?

> It makes perfect sense with the little bit of contextual knowledge that credit card companies sell your purchase data to whoever for whatever reason today, and I'm pretty sure Google uses buys and uses this info.

Any way to opt out of this?

Start a Twitter campaign and get CNN to act against their best interests by taking on an important story that risks upsetting some of their major advertisers.

Without an 'event' like Cambridge Analytica and without some kind of underlying momentum (ie FB appearing in front of Senators) it's probably difficult for the story to catch fire. Then you have to get the press to ignore their business folks who will want to never talk smack of some of their revenue sources ...

Notice the direct quote says "don't", not "wouldn't". Obviously they "don't" at the moment, because they're probably building it right now. Doesn't mean they "wouldn't" in the future.

We do not "wittingly" use the data for targeted ads.

And furthermore, “don’t” can be as of this second, but we are knowingly launching something next week that will.

I think it means they are open to doing it, and will be happy to do it in the future as long as they don’t get caught.

Update from Facebook that sounds more reasonable. Seems like the journalists kinda bungled this one.

"Facebook says it doesn’t plan to build a system to let US customers review their checking accounts; the company also claims it’s not seeking access to credit card usage data; Facebook suggests it’s interested in offering transaction alert tools and other services via Messenger; the firm already provides similar features in many other countries"

https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/06/facebook-banking/

I would be surprised if signing up for those alerts didn't also constitute an "opt-in" for advertising sales based on your purchase information.

As a side effect, of course we will have a profile of your purchase patterns to correlate with your social behavior.

Don't worry, what could go wrong?

Last I heard Facebook was working with First Data for ad-targeting insights based on purchase behavior. That partnership is what enables their advanced targeting based on in-store purchasing data (look at the CPG targeting categories available in Facebook ads, for example). While First Data is not technically a bank or credit card company that's a very misleading and disingenuous statement for Facebook to make.

In this day of easy information sharing source transparency sounds like a great tool for democracy.

I am more inclined to believe that marketing spin, lawyer-approved press releases, and asymmetry of resources for vetting (reporter)/preparing (Facebook) lead to spun views for normal reasons; not to speak of other pressures and less friendly corruption that might occur.

It appears that it would be opt-in, and even then, the data would not be used for ad targeting. One of the suggested ideas is that you’d be able to see your account balance and receive fraud alerts from your bank within Messenger. I would actually love a chatbot that would let me clear a debit card fraud alert, rather than having my card shutdown and being forced to call in when my usage goes up (usually when traveling).

The fears here seem to be somewhat overblown and misrepresented by the article - certainly by its headline.

My fraud alerts come via email. A simple click to approve or denyz No way in hell would I want Messenger to be sending me stuff from my bank.

Simple solution: don’t opt-in. But I wouldn’t mind it being an option.

To be charitable: colloquially, "we do not" can mean "it is against our principles or practice to do so." E.g. "we do not put our customers' safety at risk" implies "and we will continue to do so in the future," not "but that may change at any time."

Right, but the second sentence says they don't have special agreements with the banks. But the whole article is about how they are requesting new agreements with banks that have been turned down by the banks for vague "privacy" related reasons. It is not colloquial to say "we don't have agreements" when you are referring to a future agreement that hasn't been signed yet. You would definitely say that as "we are not discussing agreements for ad purposes."

This is so over-the-top that I really don't know what to think, except WTF? But banks already monetize customer data, so I suppose that it's not unprecedented.

Still, what can Facebook be thinking? Given all the controversy over Cambridge Analytica etc, you'd think that they'd be pushing some privacy PR. But no, they're digging deeper. What is up with that?

They might be perfectly happy to be the dominant player in a regulated industry.

Who is going to stop them? Twenty furrowed brows in a congressional hearing? Of course not, and facebook knows this.

Governments have been known to shut down criminal enterprises. But maybe too many have been paid off. Time will tell.

Also, at some point, you'd think that people would just stop using it. Again, time will tell.

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