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Comment by CubsFan1060 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure there are a lot of businesses that can exist by knowing everything about me. And, frankly, I think it's ok if they do... as long as they have my permission.

The nice thing is that this is what this change does. It makes it more clear who, and what, is sharing information about me. A world where we have apps and websites that pop up with an alert "This website will share information about you with Facebook, even if you don't login. This information may be able to identify you", seems reasonable to me.

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Ugh. The more I think about this the more complicated it becomes.

I think most people would be pretty ok saying "I'm a part of a classic car community on Facebook, so I get ads on Facebook for classic car things".

I think people would be less ok with "I played a game on my phone while standing in an auto shop. Now I'm getting car ads on my news site because game accessed my location, shared with facebook, who then shared with news site"

I don't know how to make these different use cases clear without having pages and pages of explanation that nobody will read.

I don't mind that my ads are targeted based on my location, content of my messages, etc.

... What I mind is that nobody can assure who the buyers of my data are, or what they're really using it for. Facebook says "small businesses", but there are no guarantees it's not your government, a foreign government, your employer, your insurance company, a scammer, etc.

But Facebook never sells the data itself, it only sells targeting capabilities. The government can only say "display this ad to people who fit these categories", but they can never see those identities.

The targeting capabilities are never fully revealed, even if you check the "why was I displayed this ad".

It's always something generic like "reaching people who are over 15 and located in $country".

...then why the fuck is the ad about the exact same thing I was browsing 20 seconds ago on my work laptop or chatted about with my friend on Messenger? I've even got ads on FB properties about products I chatted on IRC with someone I've got no connections on FB with, but most likely our graphs have merged somehow.

This is easy to test, turn off all blockers and go browse for some product you normally don't look for. A bread maker or a washer-dryer combo. Then count the seconds you start getting ads for that exact type of product on FB/IG.

See "Web Custom Audiences"[0] and "Lookalike Audiences"[1]:

Company X sends event logs to FB whenever anyone visits their website. They don't know who you are, but they pass metadata that helps FB determine who you.

Company X can then specify that their ads should be shown to anyone who visited their site in the last, say, 30 days. This is helpful for businesses who want to follow up with the digital equivalent of window shoppers.

Alternatively, Company X could create a "Lookalike Audience", and have FB show their ads to people who have similar characteristics to their existing site visitors/purchasers, but are different users entirely. This is useful for businesses who want to efficiently find new customers.

Most ads people see fall into one of these buckets.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/610516375684216?id=24... [1] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/164749007013531?id=40...

Even if this was true, the targeting can get so fine grained that you can basically narrow your ads down to individuals, and your ad can be whatever payload you want.

“Deliver this specific JavaScript to all white men in Vermont who own a 2015 iMac 21” who predominantly browse in Private Mode, drive a Mazda 3, and have visited Real Doll twice in the last month.”

That is basically one person. Now you know their location because the JavaScript loaded a unique file from service you have access to.

Are you sure about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

If the US passed laws that changed personal information ownership to be instead: "Personal information is permanently owned. Individuals cannot sell their personal information, only give licenses for use to individual organizations and licenses can be retracted at any time."

I think that would be a good way to set things up.

>I don't know how to make these different use cases clear without having pages and pages of explanation that nobody will read.

Expose the logic. Put a "?" Icon button on the add that lists every data point used in the decision making process, who collected the data, when, and how.

E.g:

1.1.2020 @ Starbucks on main st in 90210 you bought a medium coffee, a gift card, and a cookie.

1.3.2020 @ Barnes and noble you bought a book and m&MS.

So when the customer wonders why they're being shown advertisements for cat litter they'll be able to see how the ml algorithm thought they'd be interested.

If the logic can't be explained in real time to the advertised too then it surely can't be justified to the actual companies buying said advertisement.

But that's not how sophisticated machine learning algorithms work. Without knowing specifics, it gets us in the right ballpark to imagine they ingest all that kind of information and build an opaque representation of the user/customer, which allows various similarities to be computed between users and ads, regarding how likely they are to be receptive or how likely they will click. There's no short list of events you did. It can even contain stuff like how quickly you move your mouse cursor, whether you use the scroll wheel or the scroll bar, or who knows what else.

If all those metrics are being used to sell advertisements against me then I have every right to know each metric, all the details behind every single piece of data collected, from where when and whom, as well as the right to know to know how every data point and metric and is used to sell every specific advertisement to me. That means everything I just enumerated and more must be retained every time a query is run against my data or auction is ran to advertise to me.

What's that about a short list? Sorry, I may not have been clear, if you're using 1 data point or 1x10e999 I have the right to know every single one. I have the right to know the inferences drawn about me and how advertisers can target me. If companies aren't retiring data they are reckless and auditable records for every customer should help to rectify that imbalance. Likewise, if a model cannot be explained, proven mathematically, and reproduced then it's bad computer science. I'm sorry if this seems offensive but I'm sick of the whole move fast and break things when innocent people keep getting hurt or companies fleeced of their advertising dollars.

Either this stuff can be explained in reverse (so consumers know what privacy they've sacrificed, and advertisers know they're not being fleeced) or it can't and there's sketchy or bad computer science at work.

The ML algorithms are the ultimate "source: dude trust me"

Even if that were possible it wouldn’t really explain why you got this ad vs some other one, so the explanation would fall flat. That is just “how” you got it not “why” you got it.

You're missing my point.

Many ads are sold in real time auctions. Every metric exposed or used in that process should be accounted for and auditable by the advertised too. Let the user, or journalists, or researchers figure out the why from the corpus.

I agree with you about the 2 scenarios.

My concern, though, isn't about potentially pages and pages of explanations. It's more about the fact that I spend time opting out of that kind of stuff and some how still get the ad just because I was standing in an auto shop.

I've got a pi-hole on my home network, I've opted out of personalized ads on every site that gives me the option. I try to make it clear, "leave me alone."

But still I get ads that tell me I'm not being left alone.

The problem is these tools we're given to opt out, and we learn that they don't work; and a feeling that everyone in the world except marketers have to seek explicit consent.

I had a minimal Facebook account that I wasn’t really using, so I deleted it. Before deleting, I downloaded the third party vendors that Facebook shared data with and was shocked. I almost am never logged in to Facebook and yet here was Home Depot, the company I get face wash from, etc all linked back to my account somehow, and I had no idea.

> so I deleted it

I wonder if FB actually deleted it. FB, LinkedIn, etc maintain profiles of non-users as well, both to sell ads off property and, ahem, “to provide a better experience for new members”.

I think very few people realize that those “share” buttons on websites provide tracking info to the respective sites simply by exposing them.

I use 1 email address for most online services (Facebook, and online shops), and I'm pretty sure the shops used my e-mail to look up my "ad profile" on FB.

I wonder if they match people through other ways, like name and ZIP code (with Facebook knowing your ZIP code through harvesting your location through their mobile apps), or even more sinisterly, if a friend uploaded their address book to Facebook/WhatsApp, and said friend has conveniently organized their address book to link your name and phone number to your Facebook profile -- the same phone number you gave Home Depot..

Are there any other stores near you that you could’ve used instead of Home Depot?

The reason I’m suggesting in your particular case that this might have been a lucky guess rather than invasive Detective-Sherlock-type inference is that when I did the same to Twitter, I discovered that they thought I was interested in soccer (I’m not) and three languages I don’t speak and have never attempted to learn.

It wouldn't have made a difference. The problem is pervasive. I looked at my list on Facebook of the same data and also was shocked. It was hard for me to find websites I HADN'T visited. The most disturbing were entries for when I visited my online bank. What my bank needs to report to Facebook is a mystery to me.

That’s true! Some might be lucky. The face wash brand I use is pretty distinctive and not sold everywhere, and that was on the report, so I feel like there is a lot of truth in the products being linked back to me.

I think the more important question is... Home Deopt for face wash?

the etc implies this is a list of 2 different companies, I don't think he buys face wash from home depot

No no, I use sandpaper. So much cheaper than other exfoliating washes.

But yes, I did mean to imply two different companies.

Humor was intended but I really did want to know. Sometimes English syntax is ridiculous and I can be annoyingly concrete in my thinking.

I am an idiot and actually took it at face value I’m sorry to say

Interesting. How do you get that information?

probably using this FB tool -https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/28/all-users-can-now-access-f...

This response reminds me a bit of how politicians talk to each other. Politician A says: "I feel bad for SMBs that will suffer if we prioritize privacy." Politician B responds: "I totally agree. They should just simply ask me for my permission, that seems fair, no?"

Politician B is likely aware that asking for permission is going to cause the outcome that Politician A is predicting and is unhappy about, so in a way they are saying: "My privacy is more important to me than the SMBs' ability to survive." Which, to be clear, is a perfectly reasonable answer, and one that the majority of people will support. Except, that's not what they are saying. Their response ignores the inverse correlation between the two choices and paints a picture that represents the best of both worlds. Really smart and really effective - you help other supporters of your view ignore its downside and make them feel better about continuing to support it.

I've been asking myself why people argue this way, and PG's article titled Refragmentation [1] helped me understand some aspects of the new world we're living in. An alternative explanation is that it is - ironically given the context - all Facebook's fault which has been reinforcing the echo chambers of ideologies. If you believe that the Earth is flat and you wanted to find some validation, Facebook will be happy to do that for you. Just search for "flat Earth", join the biggest Facebook group on that topic [2], and within days you'll start getting content (and friend suggestions) that will make it hard to escape that alternate reality. They will feed you with convincing arguments that are better than what you can come up with, so that the next time someone says: "Dude, what about the ISS?", you'll be able to say, "I agree with you and think you bring up a valid point. I also think that [insert an argument that cannot coexist with the concept of the ISS]."

I am longing for the days when people would openly disagree with each other, because that forced them to actually listen to the arguments and then address them as opposed to talking to each other like politicians do, whose job depends on getting their constituents to support them even when their ideology is wrong.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html [2] https://www.facebook.com/groups/2205176794

We're supposed to assume good faith here.

Politician B can believe most people will opt in. Politician A has a history of claiming the tracking is consensual and still hasn't plainly retracted the claim.

I assumed that most people on HN are familiar with the dynamics of such opt-ins. For example, setting your newsletter subscription to opt-in vs opt-out will give you vastly different results. This concept of human laziness certainly translates to other industries as well: https://twitter.com/shawnxu/status/1339377828345757699.

Apple's change is showing a prompt. Opting out and opting in take the same effort.

We're starting to split hairs here. Sure, laziness is not at play here, but the point remains that businesses will have fewer people to serve targeted ads to. With that, you will see either fewer transactions or the same amount of transactions but on fewer websites (eg: Amazon). Either way, if you wanted to launch a small business that - to extend OP's example - sells dog leashes to people with a penchant for the outdoors, your CAC will increase and you will have to raise your price. At that point, some of your customers will go with the cheaper Chinese version sold on Amazon, or simply won't buy any. So we'll get more privacy and a stronger Amazon, and fewer people will be able to make a living with their SMBs. I am not judging either way, all I want is for people to be aware that there's a trade off here that we should discuss openly and honestly.

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