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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty simple: just don't "Like" anything. Seriously. It didn't take an oracle to figure out that "Likes" were always going to be a gateway to direct advertising.

And for things you "need" to "Like" (eg to enter a contest or get access to something) then just use a dummy account like many do for playing Facebook games, for much the same reason: (almost) no one wants to spam their friends with "I milked a cow!" messages.

This is Facebook's (and Twitter's for that matter) biggest problem: their apparent monetization paths are at direct odds with the user experience.

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The problem with this is that at the time, to my knowledge, Facebook wasn't doing the "Social ads show an advertiser’s message alongside actions you have taken, such as liking a Page" kind of thing. Since they keep all of this data, anything you do today could be used to promote something in the future without your knowledge. Hell, even visiting a group/business may pop something up "jetti came and saw [insert business here]...shouldn't you?". If they are changing the rules but applying them retroactively, it becomes a situation where you either stop using facebook, log in and do nothing or get them to stop using past and current actions to promote ads.

Yeah, what FB does with information you give it is subject to change at any time. I "like" some things that I never clicked a Like button for because at some point between 2005 and now they converted the plain text lists of "favorite movies" and such into "Likes" for pages for those movies and all. I'd never bothered to go unlike them, but now I'm concerned that they may be spamming my friends... though, from what I see in my own feed, it's really only brands/politicians/stores that do more aggressive to-friends-of-fans advertising (a 10 year old movie has less to gain from doing that, I guess).

You can disable this functionality: they allow you to explicitly set whether your actions are allowed to be used together with advertisements to your friends; they call this "social ads".

To control this, go to "Account Settings", "Facebook Ads", "Ads and friends"/"Edit social ads setting", and tell it to "Pair my social actions with ads for" "No one" and click "Save Changes".

https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&section=social

That was in the article. This shouldn't have to be disabled, this should have to be enabled. If you are going to enable it by default, how is it ok to show history? There is no possible way you couldn't opted out to a feature that didn't exist when something was liked 3 years ago.

I guess, yes: if you aren't going to use Facebook for three years, maybe you should disable your account before you leave.

However, this is still somewhat sensationalistic: the concept of these social ads was very clearly laid out as one of the launch features of Pages back in 2007.

https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=6972252130

"""Ads will be getting more relevant and more interesting to you. Instead of random messages from advertisers, we've launched Social Ads. Social Ads provide advertisements alongside related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like "Leah is now a fan of The Offspring" (if I added The Offspring to my music) or "Justin wrote a review for Sushi Hut" (If Justin wrote this review on the Sushi Hut page). These actions could then be paired with an ad that either The Offspring or Sushi Hut provides."""

As for this specific feature to turn off these kinds of advertisements, that has existed since just about three years ago: January of 2010 is when they launched the new expanded Facebook privacy settings feature, and this is one of the settings people were talking about.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/01/19/how-to-protect-your...

The scope of when and where they appear has changed somewhat over time, especially in early 2011 with the new "sponsored stories" feature, but the idea of how this feature will work and what it means has been there for much longer than that.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/01/24/sponsored-stories-f...

Then, in 2012, they added these stories to the news feed (where they were in this article). Again: the places where these ads are shown has changed somewhat over time, but this is the exact same feature and privacy implication as all the earlier variants.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/12/20/facebook-to-introdu...

I'm thereby somewhat at a loss as to what the real issue is here, or why this is suddenly "news" to anyone: nothing has really changed in how Facebook treats these ads in many years; I'd even go so far as to say in this specific case, they haven't done it ever, but they certainly haven't done it in the last 5 years (since 2007).

Regardless, you certainly have had many years now to understand and deactivate this feature: if someone, such as the author of this original post (not you, as maybe you haven't used Facebook since 2009), really care about your privacy, and somehow at the end of 2012 you haven't noticed a giant feature linked both from "Settings" and from "Privacy" on a website that is holding tons of personal information about you, I question whether you (again, OP) really care about your privacy ;P.

>I guess, yes: if you aren't going to use Facebook for three years, maybe you should disable your account before you leave.

That is an absurd standard. When people stop using a service, they just stop using it. That doesn't mean you get to pimp them out just because they aren't around to turn your shit off.

After that statement, I spent a ton of words with examples and detailed articles showing that the guy was actually wrong about the very premise that this behavior changed: it didn't, and even that privacy feature was there just one month shy of three years ago. I felt that lead was required, however, as the guy was making statements that things might have changed while he left, and if he really cares about that, I'm sorry, but you really can't trust anyone not to change things while you are gone: if you are going to leave your house unattended for three years, I don't care if it is illegal to break into it, you are downright stupid to not figure some way to get it watched, and maybe you should just sell it or at least rent it out to others in the interim.

>> if you are going to leave your house unattended for three years... you are downright stupid to not figure some way to get it watched

That is completely different.

Number one, a common and legitimate reason to stop using Facebook is apathy. How many sites or services have you abandoned using over the years? Imagine if each one of them took your inactivity as permission to actively impersonate you.

Number two, this isn't like your abandoned house getting broken into by random people. This is like your landlord changing your rent agreement unilaterally to say that she can steal your furniture.

The real difference is that I assume my landlord is basically honest, whereas I long ago dropped that assumption about Facebook. If I heard that Facebook were taking over web cameras and selling indecent images of their users, I would not be surprised.

I see the basic policy of Facebook as "we are going to do anything we want with your account and/or data unless you vigilantly monitor and stop us." Which is why I deleted my account.

I assume they actually kept it and are still selling my data, because that's just the kind of company they are.

> I guess, yes: if you aren't going to use Facebook for three years, maybe you should disable your account before you leave.

What? Why would you have to disable your account to not have facebook send out notifications on your behalf?

> Regardless, you certainly have had many years now to understand and deactivate this feature

How could you understand this "feature" (bug), if it only shows up in other people's streams?

It is quite well and heavily documented in the settings panel of the Facebook, which is itself cross-linked from the privacy panel. Additionally, you will be seeing the behavior occur to your friends, but again: if you are not looking at the settings and privacy sections of the website but purport to care about your privacy there is something wrong with you.

if you are not looking at the settings and privacy sections of the website but purport to care about your privacy there is something wrong with you.

This is a dangerous, anti-consumer notion. Nobody should have to go out of their way to preserve their privacy. I would reword your assertion like this: "If your users have to dig through settings and privacy sections to have some semblance of a normal existence, there is something wrong with your site."

What next, people start selling your most personal information (travel habits, TV and movie viewing history, etc.) on the open market, then demand a $20/mo fee to be left alone?

>> if you are not looking at the settings and privacy sections of the website but purport to care about your privacy there is something wrong with you.

There are two separate issues here: 1) should Facebook have done this, and 2) should the user have stopped it sooner.

You say the answer to #2 is "yes." Ok, fine.

But the answer to #1 is definitely "No." I don't care if they've been doing it since the day they launched. They're spamming the user's friends, without the user's explicit action, in a way that makes it appear that the user did it personally.

How can they possibly call that a "feature"? Imagine having Skype auto-dial your contacts, impersonate your voice, and pitch them on products.

>> if you are still using Facebook but purport to care about your privacy there is something wrong with you.

There, I fixed that for you.

Is this definitely enabled for everyone by default? Mine was already set to "No One" and i'm fairly certain i've never seen that page before.

When did you create your facebook account?

This was enabled for me by default, and I'm certain I've never seen that page before. I created my FB page in 2008.

I'm the same.

But while I've never seen that page before historically I've been pretty strict about going in and tightening up privacy settings.

I wonder if when they introduced this they created a default based on other privacy settings?

Read that page more closely.

Your Like can still be used in a sponsored story.

His objection is to the "so and so liked this company" in the timeline. That's a sponsored (by that company) story, and not blocked by this setting.

You have to unlike the company.

Well, both the original article (before) and the person I replied to (after) seemed to believe that that setting actually would control it, so I wouldn't be so sure about that ;P. The issue here was not the initial advertisement of the like, but that it was appearing over and over and over again later in relation to the Page: this really seems like a Sponsored Story, which is covered as part of Social Ads and this setting (as also described by various articles online if you search for these features and how to disable them).

> seemed to believe ... so wouldn't be so sure about that ;P

Sticking your tongue out and winking doesn't change the fact of what Facebook themselves tell us right on that page:

“... independent of this setting, you may still see social actions in other contexts, like in Sponsored Stories...”

Believing otherwise may be a bit of cargo culting -- the Sponsor has recently shown you and may simply not be showing you again for a while.

Colleagues and I have the setting set to "Pair my social actions with ads for No One", and have had it set since the setting was introduced. Our Likes definitely show up in "Sponsored Stories" whenever the Sponsor wants to pay to show our friends we liked them.

As Facebook tells us point blank, we are seeing social actions in Sponsored Stories.

> "just don't "Like" anything. Seriously."

I completely disagree with the idea of never "Liking" anything. There is plenty of benefits of "Liking" a Facebook page. I, personally, enjoy seeing update posts from bands, products, etc. about new content, products, promos, etc.

I think music artists is a great example to use here. I love tons of bands. A lot of those bands do not have websites other than using Facebook. I'm not going to check their Facebook pages multiple times a day, going through the 100's of artists that I "Like", just to see if they post an update of some sort. I understand that this not a universal example, and some pages are not worth "Liking" (pages that are a joke meme and not a product, company, artist, etc.), but I think it's ridiculous to say never "Like" anything.

You can subscribe to their posts without liking.

You can also like a Page without getting messages from it: click the Liked button and uncheck "Show in News Feed".

That defeats the purpose of what I'm saying, though. I'm saying to get any sort of updates from a page, you have to "Like" it. There is no way around it, currently. There is plenty of brands I do want updates from, so I have to "Like" their page to get those updates.

I was actually not responding to you: I was expanding on what aw3c2 said to mention that the opposite was also explicitly true (and to show how to set it), as this information also helps the person you responded to (who specifically was bothered that they were getting spammed).

That said, unlike with the direction I was indicating, it does seem like what aw3c2 is only of limited applicability: while Facebook supports subscriptions to Pages, it seems like it might be something that Pages have to activate (not 100% certain about what causes it to appear).

It is not a property of every Page, however. If you do a search, though, on Google, for 'subscribe to a page without liking it' you will get numerous hits talking about such users, with screenshots of the buttons on some Pages, and discussing the rollout and announcement of the new feature.

That is not true. I think subscribing only works for people accounts, not pages. Or at least, you are in a special A/B test that has that ability. Currently, I have no way of subscribing to a page to get updates. I can only "Like" the page.

Example of a page I have "Liked": http://bluetide.pro/me1r Example of the same page if I "UnLike" it: http://bluetide.pro/878h

There is no way to subscribe and get updates without "Liking" it.

I have no problem subscribing to Pages without Liking them. (Little drop down to the right of Like and Message buttons on a page; click on Add to Interest Lists...)

As per the grandparent post of this thread, I don't "Like" anything on twitter, and follow things in interested with Interest Lists.

You think they don't use subscriptions to show you ads?

It's highly possible. But even if they didn't I just hate this concept where FB/Zynga try to trick users into doing something they expect will yield X when in fact they have changed it to do Y.

For instance, I once used my PayPal account to authorize a in-game payment in FB (Zynga game) for my wife. Go figure why she likes to play that stupid game but she does. In my mind I was thinking "I am authorizing THIS payment NOW" but what they did in fact? Paypal added FB as an authorized company allowed to charge me anything.

So then when my wife clicked something curious in the game thinking she would just see something, the game actually charge my account for that. I never agreed to it charging my account once again and a third time. But that's what it did.

I know, it's probably all very well explained in the those small grey letters but I didn't bother to read. My wife won't read them. My grandma won't either. Nobody will... and they know it.

PayPal was a whole experience in itself. I had to dig down into 4-5 levels of options until I found the list of authorized companies and FB was there.

I know this can all be explained with "users are dumb and deserve it" but really? Do they have to resort to such tactics? Well, they probably have otherwise their stock will keep falling more and more... sad situation.

A few weeks ago I deleted my FB account because it was fed up with all the things mentioned here and it was a great distraction. It's impressive how little impact it had, except I have more mental space for other (let's hope so) more useful things.

I advocate a hipster approach to Facebook. Don't like anything unless it's so obscure no one has ever heard of it.

Then stop liking it once it becomes popular.

I'd upvote this but not for a sellout.

Tough words from someone who named themselves after a peanut butter cup. ;)

When you connect to that game, one of the options on that very first screen Facebook shows you to authorize the future accesses is "who do you want to show stuff related to this app to"; I always choose "Just Me". If you don't want to spam your friends with "I milked a cow!", then don't tell Facebook you want your friends to see that content: problem solved, and much easier than using a dummy account.

Facebook's approach is desperate and ham-handed. It shows me nearly every day on the mobile app that the same three people I went to high school with like Target, BestBuy and some other major corporation. I have visited the profiles of those people no more than once and have no real interest in what they like whatsoever.

Facebook must be desperate for ad impressions. I too unliked nearly everything and experience a tinges of irritation every time the mobile app "so and so likes this major corporation" stuff shows up in the mobile feed.

In comparison, Twitter's ad platform is subtle, engaging, and visually beautiful.

Facebook is going to spam your friends regardless of whether you "Like" anything. My policy right now is to "Like" things that I think are worthy of attention, and which I'm not embarrassed to be associated with. Not that Facebook will suggest them to anyone without getting paid, but I might as well help some good people get value for their advertising dollar.

It really does suck that Facebook is spamming our friends in our name, though. Perhaps you're right, and it's best not to "Like" anything, so my friends don't associate my name with the annoying intrusion of commercial messages into their news feed.

If you don't "Like" anything, what would they spam your friends about, in your name? (Maybe it's obvious from my question that I don't use Facebook.)

Nothing, which is why you might want to avoid the "Like" button. You can choose between not "Like"-ing anything, to avoid your name showing up on spam, or you can "Like" worthwhile, interesting things, so your friends' spam is marginally more interesting.

That stops me spamming my friends but it doesn't stop my friends spamming me.

Seems pretty simple to me. Put one of those info banners at the top of everyone's Facebook feed (like they did to say "I voted" during the election) that gives you the option of either opting-in to ads (and ads to friends) or paying a fee to use Facebook.

A year or so ago I came to this same realization and removed all but a handful of likes. There's no point in most of the things people like. Yes, liking can be used for signaling but beyond that it's pointless.

...for now. They can possibly scan your posts/shared urls, like "Galaxy S3 rocks" or whatever, and put that as a sponsored story instead.

I like this.

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