Facebook confirms it is scanning your private messages to increase Likes

To me, this is just standard privacy hyperbole that rears it's head every now and then.

Anyone remember the headlines several years ago when "Google 'scans' your emails to serve targetted ads'? When was the last time you heard someone complain about that anymore? No one does, because it doesn't matter.

Why should me sharing a link via a PM and my action be aggregated into an anonymous number worry me? How is the argument different from Google 'scanning your emails'?

Social networks nowadays seem to be competing on ways of justifying bigger numbers on the counters. It makes sense, the bigger the number the bigger the social proof which will attract webmasters. Scanning PM's for shares isn't something I might of thought they would do, but they do and it makes sense. The whole privacy debate surrounding this particular case is a complete non-issue for me though and will probably fade into insignificance just like Google scanning your emails.

An action from a big company that shifts the boundaries of acceptability in privacy would be a justified concern, but in this instance no land here in the privacy war has been lost. Nothings really happened.

There's a reason I disable Facebook buttons on my browser and don't stick them on my own sites (including my blog). I don't trust Facebook with my browsing data, and I don't want to subject users of any website I work on to their abuse, either.

"Move fast and break expectation of privacy"

This is known by most Facebook App Developers.

What makes up the number shown on my Like button? http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

The number shown is the sum of:

The number of likes of this URL. The number of shares of this URL (this includes copy/pasting a link back to Facebook). The number of likes and comments on stories on Facebook about this URL. The number of inbox messages containing this URL as an attachment.

Doesn't sound like a big deal at all. There certainly aren't any privacy implications. When you send a link to a website via PM the 'like' counter on that page on that website will increase by one. Makes sense (not perfect though e.g. if you're directing a friend to something you don't like). It's not like the 'like' is then shared publicly to your friends not part of the private conversation.

The difference between Gmail and Facebook is that Gmail did not aim to track who you correspond with. Facebook is focussed on personally identifiable information. They have made it their business from Day 1 to know who your correspondents (friends) are _and_ to exploit that for profit.

To my mind, this is not something Google set out to do. Although to compete with Facebook, I imagine they may have changed direction. We have Facebook to thank for that.

Let's imagine for a second that the future brings us the proverbial "video telephone" that even the most non-technical person expects to one day be standard issue. Crystal clear, real-time communication with both audio and video as available to every person as owning a cell phone is today. Now, hold that thought.

Should companies be invited into every conversation we have on this device? Should they be permitted to show ads to us as we converse?

We never had companies keeping a record of everyone who we telephone and listening in to our telephone conversation to try to figure out what junk postal mail to send us. Would this be different? How?

Ok, now we can return to present day reality. The question is: Where do we draw the line? Should companies be a party to every conversation? What will happen if we leave this question to the unscrupulous kids working and compromised adults working at Facebook? I doubt they would see anything wrong with what I described in the previous paragraph.

So if I send a PM to a friend on FB with a link and note that says, this is the lamest site ever the "Like" counter on the site goes up by one? That makes perfect sense.

"Private messages" and "Facebook" are mutually exclusive.

Facebook is the antithesis of privacy.

Dreamers think FB has value.

Does the average person, of any age, think privacy has value?

What's more valuable?

Can all value be measured in monetary terms?

Web traffic has value (e.g. we can sell display ads). FB has web traffic. But so did milliondollarwebsite.com.

Privacy OTOH seems a long-lived concept, dating from at least the dawn of civilisation. I'd argue we have a lot more privacy than our ancestors. A trend that has continued unabated for hundreds of years. FB is but a {milli,micro,nano,pico}second in the evolutionary timeline of privacy.

I'm not throwing away my fig leaf just yet.

Why are people still using Facebook anyway? I can only presume people that do simply don't care much about privacy because Facebook has proved time and time again that your privacy does not matter at all to them.

I know FB scans private messages. You cannot send links with certain domains without getting an error message. Sure, they don't have some dude in a cubical looking at each and every message, but if they are scanning for domains, how hard is it to scan for keywords within those private messages? Mention your new iPhone in a message, and you see ads for iPhone cases. Make a Tony Romo joke and you see ads for an RGIII jersey, etc etc.

"Privacy is a relic of a time gone by" -Sean Parker

the hubbub over "scanning" here is silly. Obviously Facebook's systems scan your everything. The issue is that FB considers a "private mention" as a "Like", but it's old news that a "Facebook Like" is not an "English like"

What about the "ad-likes", where FB shows "Your friend Jill likes ponies. Here's an ad for My Little Ponies" -- are these similarly prevented?

Breaking things tends to make unhappy the people using.

I'd rather be shocked if they don't do it (think viruses, trojans, hoaxes etc)

Facebooks private messages are censored. Here in the western world we can not message one another freely when using this Facebook, of which many think are some kind of nice private messaging system like email. Its not and never was. For example try to send a thepiratebay.org link to your friends as a private message. Who knows what more they censor, perhaps the really interesting bits to censor seem to you like they have been delivered, but facebook never actually shows it to your firend. You would never know.

Also, you cant send life-changing notifications through messages to all your friends, for example there is a cap I think on to message 30 people at once.