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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

People react negatively to FB because they are abusing their usefulness. Want to easily find someone to go to a movie with? Fine, give us your web browsing history, your friends list, your email addresses, your phone numbers, your social calendar, your location history, where you lived, worked, and went to school, many full-text conversations with your close friends, and... oh yeah any pictures of you that all your friends on FB take, plus you should tag your friends in pictures that you take. That way we can correlate your location retroactively even if you don't personally "check-in" with us.

Did I mention that your friends list isn't private, law enforcement can get all this data at any time, and we're using all this data for business purposes?

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What the hell are you talking about?

I found somebody to go to a movie with because he posted on our film group saying:

"This film is playing in Tempe tonight, who wants to go?"

And I responded with a "Me".

>Did I mention that your friends list isn't private, law enforcement can get all this data at any time

No, and I'm glad you didn't, because that sounds like utter bullshit. "At any time"? Do you mean "With a court order"?

This "oh no I'm so scared" reaction to facebook is neo-luddism at its finest. The point at which facebook turns into a magical black box is too high for some people, and they get scared of it.

Here's the big bad secret: facebook isn't doing linguistic analysis on your messages, and if they're using information about what youtube videos I've "liked" to serve me more relevant ads, then good, I'd rather see information about bands or lecturers I'm interested in visiting Phoenix than I would about penis pills and weight loss "secrets".

I found somebody to go to a movie with because he posted on our film group saying:
"This film is playing in Tempe tonight, who wants to go?"

And I responded with a "Me".

The ads they show you will now be more targeted, about movies and located around Tempe. I've seen ads based on search terms in "private" conversations I've had on FB. They mine your interactions very aggressively. You'll almost certainly see that guy's posts on your "News" feed more often for a while.

"At any time"? Do you mean "With a court order"?

OK, I was a tad hyperbolic. But LEOs can search FB for "public" information about you and your friends without a court order. I put public in quotes because if you're not keeping on top of your privacy settings, you probably don't realize that some things you thought were private are actually public.

_"At any time"? Do you mean "With a court order"?_

A National Security Letter would do just as well, and at least two years of data need to be at the government's disposal. Without addressing the merits of National Security Letters, I should point out that one covering your data, or many people's data, or all of Facebook's data, might arrive at any time.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter * http://www.aclu.org/national-security-technology-and-liberty... * http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0803b/final.pdf

>The ads they show you will now be more targeted, about movies and located around Tempe.

Good!

>I've seen ads based on search terms in "private" conversations I've had on FB.

Why on earth would you think this was "private"? It's private to you and your friend, but you're using a third party (facebook) to facilitate the interaction.

Gmail does the exact same thing. So does amazon.

But they're not doing it for nefarious reasons. Having all this information together is genuinely useful for users. That's why they do it! People want it, and for good reason.

The side-effect that all this information provides an unsettlingly complete snapshot of your life, trusted to a single entity, is an inevitable byproduct. Facebook has certainly made a few mistakes, but the things people complain about aren't specific to Facebook -- they're inherent to any useful, complete social network.

Is there a consumer-friendly solution to this dilemma? I'm not sure. Privacy-wise, you can't have your cake (super-connected with your friends) and eat it too (keep the site from knowing about all those connections).

If this were for my benefit, they would either stop tracking me across the web, or somehow make that data available or useful to be. It's currently opaque, so whatever their reason is, it's not for my best interests. Also, I think keeping my friends list more private would be nice. And being able to pay money instead of being shown ads would benefit both me and FB.

Making the data available to you probably would be interesting but using it to 'improve' your experience probably drives more engagement.

Also, having you paying money would probably be less beneficial to Facebook, as I'm sure they can make more money from advertising.

I'm not trying to defend FB here but it is worth remembering that they've reached 800million people so they've obviously got something right. The question people should consider is at what cost to themselves.

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