Facebook is just going to do whatever the f— it wants to me. And to you.
October 3, 2015 8:17 PM Subscribe
Violet Blue, a technology journalist and sex blogger, describes how she has been locked out of her Facebook account and cannot access it without providing a government ID.
She criticizes Facebook for its security questions “based on inaccurate information and literally impossible to pass,” and also describes the many problems with entrusting Facebook with a government ID. LGBT people, refugees, women, children, and all kinds of people have reasons to keep their information private. Furthermore, “Facebook has not demonstrated that it is responsible enough, trustworthy enough, or even skilled enough at the basics of user security procedure to be handed a copy of my ID.”
As a well-known figure with friends who work for Facebook, Violet Blue could technically get her account unlocked: “I had no less than three people approach me in the following days offering to help me get my account back, special favors style, from the inside. Two were private offers and one was public, from Facebook’s own head of security.” But this route is not available to most of Facebook’s users, who are vulnerable to having their information abused despite Facebook’s “real name” policy.
Previously: Violet Blue on the history of Google Plus’s now-abandoned real name requirement.
Last weekend, as I sat locked out of my Facebook account ‘for security reasons’ (and you tagged me in something, not knowing I can’t respond), my friend’s boss Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the United Nations. He talked about plans to expand Facebook use into refugee camps, and made no pretensions about how this would be used to benefit his company. I personally know what this will do. [...] De-anonymizing refugees usually precedes murder on a grand scale.
She criticizes Facebook for its security questions “based on inaccurate information and literally impossible to pass,” and also describes the many problems with entrusting Facebook with a government ID. LGBT people, refugees, women, children, and all kinds of people have reasons to keep their information private. Furthermore, “Facebook has not demonstrated that it is responsible enough, trustworthy enough, or even skilled enough at the basics of user security procedure to be handed a copy of my ID.”
As a well-known figure with friends who work for Facebook, Violet Blue could technically get her account unlocked: “I had no less than three people approach me in the following days offering to help me get my account back, special favors style, from the inside. Two were private offers and one was public, from Facebook’s own head of security.” But this route is not available to most of Facebook’s users, who are vulnerable to having their information abused despite Facebook’s “real name” policy.
Previously: Violet Blue on the history of Google Plus’s now-abandoned real name requirement.
Well, I'm totally not on Facebook myself (why do I WANT 'network effect'?) but still, any enemies of Violet Blue are enemies of mine.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:28 PM on October 3, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:28 PM on October 3, 2015 [6 favorites]
I get that a lot of people use FB, and it's a simple way to organize, get a message out, etc., but you don't have to use it. There are other ways...So you lose some of the network effect you get with FB, you win having some sort of control over your communications.
I don't use facebook myself, and lately i seem to hear more and more people I know complaining about it. But if her making a public complaint like this moves the needle at all to push facebook toward changing their policy, that's something that could affect tens of millions of people in a similar situation --- or who will soon be, if Zuck get his way. Her setting up a blog affects only her.
Having said that, it seems pretty clear there's billions riding on facebook knowing everybody's actual name, because that's what their ads are worth money. The way things are going we may break ads, though, so who knows, maybe if that happens posts like this will get the Zuckster to lighten up.
posted by Diablevert at 8:41 PM on October 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't use facebook myself, and lately i seem to hear more and more people I know complaining about it. But if her making a public complaint like this moves the needle at all to push facebook toward changing their policy, that's something that could affect tens of millions of people in a similar situation --- or who will soon be, if Zuck get his way. Her setting up a blog affects only her.
Having said that, it seems pretty clear there's billions riding on facebook knowing everybody's actual name, because that's what their ads are worth money. The way things are going we may break ads, though, so who knows, maybe if that happens posts like this will get the Zuckster to lighten up.
posted by Diablevert at 8:41 PM on October 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
There are a fairly large number of people for whom the only way I know how to contact them is via Facebook. I'm sure they also have email addresses, but those are both harder to find out and more likely to change without notice at some future date.
But I've made my peace with Facebook. I don't put anything important or interesting there, and I never login from a browser session whose persisted cookies will identify me to Facebook on some random non-Facebook site.
posted by Slothrup at 8:52 PM on October 3, 2015 [6 favorites]
But I've made my peace with Facebook. I don't put anything important or interesting there, and I never login from a browser session whose persisted cookies will identify me to Facebook on some random non-Facebook site.
posted by Slothrup at 8:52 PM on October 3, 2015 [6 favorites]
I've given this some thought and remain confused. How is a real name necessary for marketing to people? My TV does not know my real name and it serves me ads. I'm not even sure how a "real name" makes the advertising more effective. If the ads are served based upon my IP address or something, that's not my name. Is it entirely so retailers can send me junk mail in the USPS? Is that really necessary for modern marketing? I just don't understand why if Facebook is always going to be free to use, always, and thus will never have to bill any of us, our real government-cataloged names are honestly that important.
Is it a libel or slander liability?
Psuedonymity is really important. So is anonymity. I retain this belief, even as I get more and more careless about linking my pseudonyms with my real name.
posted by crush-onastick at 8:57 PM on October 3, 2015 [24 favorites]
Is it a libel or slander liability?
Psuedonymity is really important. So is anonymity. I retain this belief, even as I get more and more careless about linking my pseudonyms with my real name.
posted by crush-onastick at 8:57 PM on October 3, 2015 [24 favorites]
signal: I get that a lot of people use FB, and it's a simple way to organize, get a message out, etc., but you don't have to use it. [...] Hosting your own wordpress or whatever blog on a shared hosting setup is dead simple and costs like US$ 25 / year.
Is this sarcasm? If not, please consider: Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet. (via Daring Fireball last week). They don't even know that they're using the Internet. You want them to host their own blog? Pay $25 when their annual income is under $1000?
Also, Mark Zuckerberg defends Internet.org in India: Mark Zuckerberg is defending Internet.org after several companies in India decided to pull out of the initiative amid a growing debate over free access to the Internet in the country. Facebook's high-profile project to bring the Internet to the developing world and get billions more online has become the target of fears it could undermine net neutrality
This is quite a bit more problematic than just the 300 million people in the US. We're talking billions and billions.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:59 PM on October 3, 2015 [68 favorites]
Is this sarcasm? If not, please consider: Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet. (via Daring Fireball last week). They don't even know that they're using the Internet. You want them to host their own blog? Pay $25 when their annual income is under $1000?
Also, Mark Zuckerberg defends Internet.org in India: Mark Zuckerberg is defending Internet.org after several companies in India decided to pull out of the initiative amid a growing debate over free access to the Internet in the country. Facebook's high-profile project to bring the Internet to the developing world and get billions more online has become the target of fears it could undermine net neutrality
This is quite a bit more problematic than just the 300 million people in the US. We're talking billions and billions.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:59 PM on October 3, 2015 [68 favorites]
It was amazing how many hoops my friend with an unusual name had to go through recently when she was apparently flagged under the FB name policy rules. Especially since it wasn't the first time. My friend also is a woman who deals in controversial topics, so I'm sadly unsurprised that Violet Blue gets screwed by this. None of the idiots I know with accounts under cobbled-together couple name mashups seem affected by this rule (looking at you, Sue N Mike-Jones).
posted by padraigin at 8:59 PM on October 3, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by padraigin at 8:59 PM on October 3, 2015 [10 favorites]
What's the policy Facebook should have about confirming you are the account holder? (Not snarky, really asking.) I mean, one thing is they should hire enough customer service people that you can reach a real person. But then, what kind of confirmation procedure would be better for people who are identity-vulnerable like trans people or stalked people, or lord knows, refugees? It needs to be good enough to keep abusers/etc from somehow breaking into the account, which I assume is the other side of the threat here.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:05 PM on October 3, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:05 PM on October 3, 2015 [5 favorites]
How is a real name necessary for marketing to people?
I assume that Facebook wants your real name so it's easier or more verifiable to match your Facebook dossier up to the files that other big information databases have on you, enabling even better targeting of ads and whatever other nefarious things they do or sell the info for.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:16 PM on October 3, 2015 [16 favorites]
I assume that Facebook wants your real name so it's easier or more verifiable to match your Facebook dossier up to the files that other big information databases have on you, enabling even better targeting of ads and whatever other nefarious things they do or sell the info for.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:16 PM on October 3, 2015 [16 favorites]
Well, since FB is locking people out, it's not as though the people have forgotten their password; it seems to me that any sort of dual factor authentication would prove you're the account holder.
The problem is that FB doesn't care if you can log in, they want the header of your page to match your Driver's License, and if someone flags your name as a "Not True Name", and FB locks the account for violating their "True Name" policy, the ONLY way to get the account back is by providing state or federally issued ID cards that match the name on your account.
What FB has done in the past is *change* people's account name to their "legal name", ergo; a pre-op trans woman living her life as Jane Doe is suddenly outed by FB to be James Doe.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:17 PM on October 3, 2015 [17 favorites]
The problem is that FB doesn't care if you can log in, they want the header of your page to match your Driver's License, and if someone flags your name as a "Not True Name", and FB locks the account for violating their "True Name" policy, the ONLY way to get the account back is by providing state or federally issued ID cards that match the name on your account.
What FB has done in the past is *change* people's account name to their "legal name", ergo; a pre-op trans woman living her life as Jane Doe is suddenly outed by FB to be James Doe.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:17 PM on October 3, 2015 [17 favorites]
Ah, I didn't have that straight. Thank you.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:18 PM on October 3, 2015
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:18 PM on October 3, 2015
Is this the person who sued an adult film actress who used the name Violet Blue, complaining about Facebook not letting her use her name?
posted by zippy at 9:32 PM on October 3, 2015 [21 favorites]
posted by zippy at 9:32 PM on October 3, 2015 [21 favorites]
I've given this some thought and remain confused. How is a real name necessary for marketing to people?..,I'm not even sure how a "real name" makes the advertising more effective. If the ads are served based upon my IP address or something, that's not my name.
Facebook compiles a unique user id for you which contains all the information you've ever put on Facebook --- name, age, gender, marital status, place of birth, current location, interests, hobbies, political affiliation. It then traces pretty much everywhere you go on the web --- if a page has a like button and you visit that page while logged in, they know. (Even if you're not logged in they can often guess.) this enables them to sell incredibly narrowly targeted ads which, because they have your real name, can also be cross referenced with other sources of information to coordinate marketing efforts across media formats. This enables Facebook to charge much more for ads than typical websites.
posted by Diablevert at 9:42 PM on October 3, 2015 [9 favorites]
Facebook compiles a unique user id for you which contains all the information you've ever put on Facebook --- name, age, gender, marital status, place of birth, current location, interests, hobbies, political affiliation. It then traces pretty much everywhere you go on the web --- if a page has a like button and you visit that page while logged in, they know. (Even if you're not logged in they can often guess.) this enables them to sell incredibly narrowly targeted ads which, because they have your real name, can also be cross referenced with other sources of information to coordinate marketing efforts across media formats. This enables Facebook to charge much more for ads than typical websites.
posted by Diablevert at 9:42 PM on October 3, 2015 [9 favorites]
De-anonymization is trivial and getting more trivial by the day, not just because of the scads of data everywhere but because of basic algorithmic aspects, where graph isomorphism (the mathematical incarnation of the problem) is NP-hard theoretically but for practical, real social network graphs there are lots of good distributable O(n) algorithms for it (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/socialnetworks-faq.html). This is by percolation graph isomorphism methods: machine learning methods are harder and slower but not by much: it would cost less than $1 million, by my estimate to sit down, buy enough data, and attempt to de-anonymize everyone on the Internet, and most of that's just buying data and data people. It is less a feature of the world as it is currently held by humans than a feature of the necessary properties of the world and the world's social network, which is certainly not created by a grand plan but acts sometimes as if it does.
One of E. Snowden's points against the NSA's collection of the data went like this (cribbed, he said, from someplace else, but I forget who): if real fascists ever take hold in a modern country today, they would basically find it completely trivial to kill off whatever population they blame their troubles on, in the same way that the Nazis found it comparatively easy to find out who was Jewish in countries with more record-keeping by looking at the parish records.
posted by curuinor at 10:07 PM on October 3, 2015 [26 favorites]
One of E. Snowden's points against the NSA's collection of the data went like this (cribbed, he said, from someplace else, but I forget who): if real fascists ever take hold in a modern country today, they would basically find it completely trivial to kill off whatever population they blame their troubles on, in the same way that the Nazis found it comparatively easy to find out who was Jewish in countries with more record-keeping by looking at the parish records.
posted by curuinor at 10:07 PM on October 3, 2015 [26 favorites]
I get that a lot of people use FB, and it's a simple way to organize, get a message out, etc., but you don't have to use it. There are other ways.
There really aren't, not that are remotely comparable at least. You can't really dismiss the network effects of a social network. It's kind of the reason people are using it. You know, because (almost) everyone else is.
I've managed to resist joining for this long and expect that to continue, but it's not as easy as you suggest to be a conscientious objector. If the technical and financial hurdles weren't enough, and they are for a lot of people, there's the fact that after setting up your blog and paying your hosting bill, nobody sees your content unless they consciously try to. With your Wordpress blog, the six people you know who know how to use RSS can subscribe, but everyone else will forget about your blog next week. On Facebook, your aunt sees your pictures in her stream without trying.
Believe me, I do wish more people would stop using Facebook over what they're doing to users, but I understand how valuable it is to people, and how hard it would be for people to to unplug from.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:16 PM on October 3, 2015 [47 favorites]
There really aren't, not that are remotely comparable at least. You can't really dismiss the network effects of a social network. It's kind of the reason people are using it. You know, because (almost) everyone else is.
I've managed to resist joining for this long and expect that to continue, but it's not as easy as you suggest to be a conscientious objector. If the technical and financial hurdles weren't enough, and they are for a lot of people, there's the fact that after setting up your blog and paying your hosting bill, nobody sees your content unless they consciously try to. With your Wordpress blog, the six people you know who know how to use RSS can subscribe, but everyone else will forget about your blog next week. On Facebook, your aunt sees your pictures in her stream without trying.
Believe me, I do wish more people would stop using Facebook over what they're doing to users, but I understand how valuable it is to people, and how hard it would be for people to to unplug from.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:16 PM on October 3, 2015 [47 favorites]
Facebook has bought real-world grocery card services if I recall correctly, precisely to convince advertisers that ad impressions are as valuable as clicks (showed 1000 kraft dinner ads to Fred Jones, Fred Jones bought kraft dinner afterwards). I have no idea if this panned out, but its the same principle as tv ads.
posted by benzenedream at 10:22 PM on October 3, 2015
posted by benzenedream at 10:22 PM on October 3, 2015
You can also tell the existence of people not on the network, assuming more than a critical ratio of people who post content about that person and enough people in general (which FB certainly has in the first world). That's a harder decision problem but with some computational power you can do this. So not being on FB doesn't help that much, and it certainly doesn't allow you to avoid the personalization. Put FB on your hosts file, I guess?
posted by curuinor at 10:27 PM on October 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by curuinor at 10:27 PM on October 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is by percolation graph isomorphism methods: machine learning methods are harder and slower but not by much: it would cost less than $1 million, by my estimate to sit down, buy enough data, and attempt to de-anonymize everyone on the Internet
I don't know, my video porn social subgraph seems pretty non-isomorphic to my metafilter account, and it's not obvious to me what kind of trace information could be used to fill the gap. I didn't read the paper so maybe I'm missing something?
posted by polymodus at 10:35 PM on October 3, 2015
I don't know, my video porn social subgraph seems pretty non-isomorphic to my metafilter account, and it's not obvious to me what kind of trace information could be used to fill the gap. I didn't read the paper so maybe I'm missing something?
posted by polymodus at 10:35 PM on October 3, 2015
"You must your real name on social network sites" (that facebook takes and google used to) seems incompatible with "Good luck if you are stalked because you used your real name online." (that law enforcement seems to take).
There are smart people at Facebook (and particularly working in security at Facebook), they should know this.
I'm glad Violet didn't take the easy out of this problem that was offered her. She's taking the hard road for the good of the internet.*
* I didn't have any real opinions one way or another about her before this, I've met her once in passing, and have read a couple of her articles over the years.
posted by el io at 10:38 PM on October 3, 2015 [8 favorites]
There are smart people at Facebook (and particularly working in security at Facebook), they should know this.
I'm glad Violet didn't take the easy out of this problem that was offered her. She's taking the hard road for the good of the internet.*
* I didn't have any real opinions one way or another about her before this, I've met her once in passing, and have read a couple of her articles over the years.
posted by el io at 10:38 PM on October 3, 2015 [8 favorites]
It's not strictly graph isomorphism but it's graph matching (fuzzy subgraph isomorphism). Without anything but the topological data, you can get about 60-80% on the whole network, that expands rapidly with more data. The reason why it's so easy is that the entropy of the distribution of your neighbors' number of connections (not the number of connections people have, the number of connections peoples' neighbors have, so that's the support of the probability distribution) is really really high so it becomes super easy to uniquely identify people that way quick. There's a real good (really annoying but not incredibly difficult, you just have to be familiar with a bunch of algorithms and physics ideas) theoretical poking at it available to anyone here.
posted by curuinor at 10:41 PM on October 3, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by curuinor at 10:41 PM on October 3, 2015 [6 favorites]
Years ago I saw a video that indicated Facebook's board of directors, or higher-ups etc, was largely composed of people in the intelligence community. Sound familiar to anyone? I never got around to following up on the names dropped etc so it could be a big load of hoo .. I'd just like to see the video again.
posted by user92371 at 11:11 PM on October 3, 2015
posted by user92371 at 11:11 PM on October 3, 2015
How is a real name necessary for marketing to people?
While marketing is probably a big reason for these real-names policies, I don't think it's the whole reason. Facebook has positioned itself as a network of all real-life social connections, from the strongest to the weakest. As a user, I like it when other people use their real-life names. This is especially true when they're just acquaintances and I can't be bothered to keep track of which cute screen name refers to whom. If everyone started using screen names, I'd probably dump 90% of my FB friends, because I wouldn't really know who they are anymore, and I don't need Facebook to communicate with the other 10%.
tl;dr: Basically, forbidding pseudonyms give you the mental capacity to "friend" more people, which increases the stickiness of the Facebook network.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 11:23 PM on October 3, 2015 [11 favorites]
While marketing is probably a big reason for these real-names policies, I don't think it's the whole reason. Facebook has positioned itself as a network of all real-life social connections, from the strongest to the weakest. As a user, I like it when other people use their real-life names. This is especially true when they're just acquaintances and I can't be bothered to keep track of which cute screen name refers to whom. If everyone started using screen names, I'd probably dump 90% of my FB friends, because I wouldn't really know who they are anymore, and I don't need Facebook to communicate with the other 10%.
tl;dr: Basically, forbidding pseudonyms give you the mental capacity to "friend" more people, which increases the stickiness of the Facebook network.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 11:23 PM on October 3, 2015 [11 favorites]
Her broader concerns aren't entirely wrong, but as for the refugees... Don't refugees have to identify themselves to UNHCR and to countries where they are claiming asylum? Isn't the fundamental activity of the modern refugee system, horribly broken as it may be, built around the registration, identification, and enumeration of refugees by international and national agencies?
posted by zachlipton at 11:35 PM on October 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by zachlipton at 11:35 PM on October 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
All of the people I want to be facebook friends with know me primarily by an old nickname, and most of the people I don't especially want to talk don't know that nickname and instead search and (happily) fail to find me by my real name. A real name policy universally enforced would make facebook significantly less useful to anybody who goes by a nickname or has close friends that do.
cosmic.osmo, there's probably at least one person in your friend group who goes by their middle name as a first name, or a shortened version of their name, or only lists a maidin name that makes them easier for old acquaintances to find. All of these are breaches of the real name policy and technically banable offenses.
posted by sandswipe at 11:46 PM on October 3, 2015 [7 favorites]
cosmic.osmo, there's probably at least one person in your friend group who goes by their middle name as a first name, or a shortened version of their name, or only lists a maidin name that makes them easier for old acquaintances to find. All of these are breaches of the real name policy and technically banable offenses.
posted by sandswipe at 11:46 PM on October 3, 2015 [7 favorites]
I think a lot of this isn't so much having the right name, but really about having the only name. If people can't open multiple accounts they can't split their online activity, and you can both identify them more easily and target them more precisely.
There was someone a while ago who used Facebook to literally target joke ads at some individual people he knew. You can do that, if you know their account details and have some patience. People are already doing similar things in the real world: we had another story a couple of weeks ago about how mobile app companies target their product at individual high-roller "whales". This is probably happening a lot, more often than we know: I would be surprised if there are no real estate agents targeting specific property owners, or car dealers targeting people they know are ready to buy a new car. But all of this falls if people have two or more accounts - you don't necessarily want to target a single person in two different ways, and the separate accounts might prevent you realising that it's the same person looking for (e.g.) bankruptcy protection and finance deals on new cars.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:46 PM on October 3, 2015 [7 favorites]
There was someone a while ago who used Facebook to literally target joke ads at some individual people he knew. You can do that, if you know their account details and have some patience. People are already doing similar things in the real world: we had another story a couple of weeks ago about how mobile app companies target their product at individual high-roller "whales". This is probably happening a lot, more often than we know: I would be surprised if there are no real estate agents targeting specific property owners, or car dealers targeting people they know are ready to buy a new car. But all of this falls if people have two or more accounts - you don't necessarily want to target a single person in two different ways, and the separate accounts might prevent you realising that it's the same person looking for (e.g.) bankruptcy protection and finance deals on new cars.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:46 PM on October 3, 2015 [7 favorites]
I think the thing is that the UNHCR tries to practice relatively good information security with regards to refugees....whereas Facebook has already been shown to co-operate with many very sketchy and oppressive governments when seeking information from Facebook.
I really could see Zuckerburg selling out a people to be genocided, provided the quid pro quo and favors from the government were sufficiently high enough. Facebook's business model is from sorting, aggregating, and selling demographic information. It wouldn't be hard to rationalize the auctioning of such information to foreign regimes, regardless of how such information is ultimately used.
If it helps, think of Facebook as the Stasi-for-Hire 2.0. Recruiting 50% of the population to snitch on the other half, and what makes it better is that it's on demand, and you don't even have to pay the snitches.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:15 AM on October 4, 2015 [17 favorites]
I really could see Zuckerburg selling out a people to be genocided, provided the quid pro quo and favors from the government were sufficiently high enough. Facebook's business model is from sorting, aggregating, and selling demographic information. It wouldn't be hard to rationalize the auctioning of such information to foreign regimes, regardless of how such information is ultimately used.
If it helps, think of Facebook as the Stasi-for-Hire 2.0. Recruiting 50% of the population to snitch on the other half, and what makes it better is that it's on demand, and you don't even have to pay the snitches.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:15 AM on October 4, 2015 [17 favorites]
The reason why it's so easy is that the entropy of the distribution of your neighbors' number of connections (not the number of connections people have, the number of connections peoples' neighbors have, so that's the support of the probability distribution) is really really high so it becomes super easy to uniquely identify people that way quick.
That's a really neat insight but I still don't see how these algorithms could be used to figure out the name of Mefi user polymodus' character on World of Warcraft. My social circles, so to speak, are completely different across different social networks. These papers in contrast seem to be solving a specific kind of deanonymization; they are mostly interested in Twitter vs Facebook users, for example.
posted by polymodus at 12:35 AM on October 4, 2015
That's a really neat insight but I still don't see how these algorithms could be used to figure out the name of Mefi user polymodus' character on World of Warcraft. My social circles, so to speak, are completely different across different social networks. These papers in contrast seem to be solving a specific kind of deanonymization; they are mostly interested in Twitter vs Facebook users, for example.
posted by polymodus at 12:35 AM on October 4, 2015
Mod note: One comment deleted. Saying you don't care about the issue and then continuing on to generally slag on the author with hypotheticals isn't a good way to interact here.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:56 AM on October 4, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 12:56 AM on October 4, 2015 [12 favorites]
I don't get this. Do any of you honestly and truly believe that you are not accessible and surveyed at multinational state and corporate levels already? I understand someone who has taken strong counter measures feeling a reasonable sense of limited security, but in general, isn't this sort of 'the earth is round, governments and companies massively spy on individuals and the internet has scaled that to stasi exponential scale' basics?
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:21 AM on October 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:21 AM on October 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
Do any of you honestly and truly believe that you are not accessible and surveyed at multinational state and corporate levels already?
That doesn't mean we can't try to fight for whatever scraps of privacy may be left.
I'm sure if the FBI/NSA/etc cared who my identity on metafilter is it would take next to no effort for them to figure this out; but I don't want my full name to be here so that any asshat on reddit could make my daily life miserable through low-level cyberstalking anytime I decided to put forth an opinion they didn't like.
Most people's desire for everyday privacy doesn't have to do with their desire to hide from governments, nor even have corporations have detailed dossiers on them; they want to discuss personal, private, interpersonal, political, sometimes sexual thoughts on the internet without having every coworker, friend, ex-friend, partner, expartner, schoolmate, etc, be able to hold their words against them.
While I personally choose not to engage with social networking, many people have reasons for wanting to do so, and I don't think they should be forced to use their real identity to do so.
posted by el io at 1:35 AM on October 4, 2015 [24 favorites]
That doesn't mean we can't try to fight for whatever scraps of privacy may be left.
I'm sure if the FBI/NSA/etc cared who my identity on metafilter is it would take next to no effort for them to figure this out; but I don't want my full name to be here so that any asshat on reddit could make my daily life miserable through low-level cyberstalking anytime I decided to put forth an opinion they didn't like.
Most people's desire for everyday privacy doesn't have to do with their desire to hide from governments, nor even have corporations have detailed dossiers on them; they want to discuss personal, private, interpersonal, political, sometimes sexual thoughts on the internet without having every coworker, friend, ex-friend, partner, expartner, schoolmate, etc, be able to hold their words against them.
While I personally choose not to engage with social networking, many people have reasons for wanting to do so, and I don't think they should be forced to use their real identity to do so.
posted by el io at 1:35 AM on October 4, 2015 [24 favorites]
While marketing is probably a big reason for these real-names policies, I don't think it's the whole reason. Facebook has positioned itself as a network of all real-life social connections, from the strongest to the weakest.
Over the past few years, I've met a handful of people who've worked at Facebook in different capacities and for different tenures. In my limited interactions with these people, I've inferred that Facebook's real name policy is actually much less to do with marketing or government surveillance or anything similarly nefarious. I suspect it's actually much, much stupider. My opinion is that FB's real name policy is about 80% cargo cult thinking and 20% trying to maintain some aura of "classiness" but both tied to the same factor.
Everyone I've met who works (or worked) at FB has roughly the same story about how FB defeated MySpace in the great social network wars of aught-seven . Their standard story goes that since MySpace allowed all kinds of pseudonyms and joke accounts and shenanigans like that you could never be sure who you were interacting with while FB since always has required "real" names. This is supposed to have ensured that the connections you made through FB were also more real while people on MySpace were significantly less real (and maybe also more mean?). The factor that's not part of their standard story is how MySpace had a population that grew to be composed significantly of, say, teenage emo goths, ska bands, southern California Hispanic rockabillies, people who earned a significant portion of their income through busking, etc... while Facebook's seed population was the scions of the ruling elite (i.e.: first Harvard, then the rest of the Ivy League, then people with .edu addresses (mainly 4-year colleges), etc...). I think danah boyd has done some research that showed that MySpace's population was notably poorer and less white (overall less mainstream) than Facebook's. I think this (pdf) is the paper.
Anyways, long story short, my personal impression is that the main reason FB clings to the real name policy is because they don't want to become MySpace. Any individual FB worker no doubt has their own opinion about these things, but I really think that Facebook as an organization collectively actually thinks this.
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 2:03 AM on October 4, 2015 [54 favorites]
Over the past few years, I've met a handful of people who've worked at Facebook in different capacities and for different tenures. In my limited interactions with these people, I've inferred that Facebook's real name policy is actually much less to do with marketing or government surveillance or anything similarly nefarious. I suspect it's actually much, much stupider. My opinion is that FB's real name policy is about 80% cargo cult thinking and 20% trying to maintain some aura of "classiness" but both tied to the same factor.
Everyone I've met who works (or worked) at FB has roughly the same story about how FB defeated MySpace in the great social network wars of aught-seven . Their standard story goes that since MySpace allowed all kinds of pseudonyms and joke accounts and shenanigans like that you could never be sure who you were interacting with while FB since always has required "real" names. This is supposed to have ensured that the connections you made through FB were also more real while people on MySpace were significantly less real (and maybe also more mean?). The factor that's not part of their standard story is how MySpace had a population that grew to be composed significantly of, say, teenage emo goths, ska bands, southern California Hispanic rockabillies, people who earned a significant portion of their income through busking, etc... while Facebook's seed population was the scions of the ruling elite (i.e.: first Harvard, then the rest of the Ivy League, then people with .edu addresses (mainly 4-year colleges), etc...). I think danah boyd has done some research that showed that MySpace's population was notably poorer and less white (overall less mainstream) than Facebook's. I think this (pdf) is the paper.
Anyways, long story short, my personal impression is that the main reason FB clings to the real name policy is because they don't want to become MySpace. Any individual FB worker no doubt has their own opinion about these things, but I really think that Facebook as an organization collectively actually thinks this.
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 2:03 AM on October 4, 2015 [54 favorites]
I'm mystified whenever I read about facebook's real name policy, because I have tons of non-real-name profiles in my network, and none of them ever disappears or gets renamed. Our two pets have their own profiles, and so do many friends' pets. One friend goes by his superhero name. An old coworker goes by a nonsense name. The joke profiles I set up with an ex years ago are still there. This policy doesn't seem to be enforced very much at all.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 2:35 AM on October 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by mysterious_stranger at 2:35 AM on October 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
This policy doesn't seem to be enforced very much at all.
Here's one other aspect of this dumb policy. While there's probably some portion that's enforced algorithmicly (say, searching for other "Barack Obamas" or something else I dunno), I suspect that a significant portion is just enforced through complaints. There was a kerfuffle a few months back I think where some people were going around reporting drag queen names on Facebook and getting those accounts messed up.
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 2:41 AM on October 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
Here's one other aspect of this dumb policy. While there's probably some portion that's enforced algorithmicly (say, searching for other "Barack Obamas" or something else I dunno), I suspect that a significant portion is just enforced through complaints. There was a kerfuffle a few months back I think where some people were going around reporting drag queen names on Facebook and getting those accounts messed up.
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 2:41 AM on October 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
Anyways, long story short, my personal impression is that the main reason FB clings to the real name policy is because they don't want to become MySpace.
Friends were calling Friendster "Stalkster" in 2002. But as our living memory will prove more reliable than news sources...I'm wondering if you'd confirm any of the following:
When FaceBook came along, the mechanism of a friend request was familiar to me from only one other community: AdultFriendFinder. I've always believed Harvard kids simply appropriated the convention.
I'll add, prior to FaceBook, the prevelant notion was that one didn't share a/s/l, except to hook up. I was astonished that a convention of FaceBook was to request an email password to extend its connectivity.
It's being reported that during the recent UN visits, Zuckerberg asked Xi Jingping to help name is unborn child. Xi Jingping declined. Last year, Zuckerberg practiced his Mandarin for a presentation in China. Nearly 100% of the US' reporting about the ban of FaceBook in China revolves around censorship and repression, but I know it to be about markets and their protection, and a refusal to surrender a nation's citizenry to the accounting of western corporate interests.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:44 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Friends were calling Friendster "Stalkster" in 2002. But as our living memory will prove more reliable than news sources...I'm wondering if you'd confirm any of the following:
When FaceBook came along, the mechanism of a friend request was familiar to me from only one other community: AdultFriendFinder. I've always believed Harvard kids simply appropriated the convention.
I'll add, prior to FaceBook, the prevelant notion was that one didn't share a/s/l, except to hook up. I was astonished that a convention of FaceBook was to request an email password to extend its connectivity.
It's being reported that during the recent UN visits, Zuckerberg asked Xi Jingping to help name is unborn child. Xi Jingping declined. Last year, Zuckerberg practiced his Mandarin for a presentation in China. Nearly 100% of the US' reporting about the ban of FaceBook in China revolves around censorship and repression, but I know it to be about markets and their protection, and a refusal to surrender a nation's citizenry to the accounting of western corporate interests.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:44 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
When FaceBook came along, the mechanism of a friend request was familiar to me from only one other community: AdultFriendFinder. I've always believed Harvard kids simply appropriated the convention.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm pretty sure MySpace's friend request system was pretty similar, see here for example. You can tell they're referring to the classic, pre-Facebook MySpace by the screenshots. Is there something in common in the friend requests between FB and AFF that's not found in MySpace?
I'll add, prior to FaceBook, the prevelant notion was that one didn't share a/s/l, except to hook up.
Sort of, maybe if by "hook up" you mean "cybersex". It was definitely the go-to opening line for people wanting to cyber. But, I think there was maybe a brief period (probably circa whenever AOL and Yahoo chat rooms were on the rise) where "a/s/l?" was just the standard way of getting to know people in any chat room, seedy or otherwise. Of course, since these interactions were almost always online-only, it was kind of understood that you should never really believe anyone's answers.
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 3:06 AM on October 4, 2015
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm pretty sure MySpace's friend request system was pretty similar, see here for example. You can tell they're referring to the classic, pre-Facebook MySpace by the screenshots. Is there something in common in the friend requests between FB and AFF that's not found in MySpace?
I'll add, prior to FaceBook, the prevelant notion was that one didn't share a/s/l, except to hook up.
Sort of, maybe if by "hook up" you mean "cybersex". It was definitely the go-to opening line for people wanting to cyber. But, I think there was maybe a brief period (probably circa whenever AOL and Yahoo chat rooms were on the rise) where "a/s/l?" was just the standard way of getting to know people in any chat room, seedy or otherwise. Of course, since these interactions were almost always online-only, it was kind of understood that you should never really believe anyone's answers.
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 3:06 AM on October 4, 2015
FB may be using the cutting edge of network maths and machine learning, coupled to intrusive massive-scale surveillance, to make the most accurate and personal advertising profile ever devised.
But they need to stop using it to try and sell me slippers. For the last six months, the only product I see ads for on FB are silicon soled, compressed felt Brooklyn-made hipster slippers.
posted by cromagnon at 4:00 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
But they need to stop using it to try and sell me slippers. For the last six months, the only product I see ads for on FB are silicon soled, compressed felt Brooklyn-made hipster slippers.
posted by cromagnon at 4:00 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Thanks for replying Pseudonymous Sockpuppet
My recollection of MySpace is second-hand (kids having shown me), but a distinction I may very well be wrong about is that seeing the "walls" of others was one permission, and "writing on their wall" was another? The convention of AFF was you had to "knock at their door" to see their wild world. You made a request to be included at all, and other than that there was little to see, like FB. And I think AFF preceded MySpace.
a/s/l was a shorthand for breeching privacy, freaked out parents, and was a rite of passage for teenagers. The sea change between protect your privacy and embrace "sharing" is FB's accomplishment. MySpace was presentational in nature. A GeoCities with a template. I also noticed kids using walls to function as email. "See you @ 4pm," messages and the like. And then there's the whole "white flight" issue to it.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:05 AM on October 4, 2015
My recollection of MySpace is second-hand (kids having shown me), but a distinction I may very well be wrong about is that seeing the "walls" of others was one permission, and "writing on their wall" was another? The convention of AFF was you had to "knock at their door" to see their wild world. You made a request to be included at all, and other than that there was little to see, like FB. And I think AFF preceded MySpace.
a/s/l was a shorthand for breeching privacy, freaked out parents, and was a rite of passage for teenagers. The sea change between protect your privacy and embrace "sharing" is FB's accomplishment. MySpace was presentational in nature. A GeoCities with a template. I also noticed kids using walls to function as email. "See you @ 4pm," messages and the like. And then there's the whole "white flight" issue to it.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:05 AM on October 4, 2015
The longer I keep resisting to get a Facebook account, the easier it gets. So many new reasons every year. Yes, I'm missing out on ways to connect with friends and family but it's totally worth it.
I just don't trust Mark Zuckerberg. That's my main reason. I'm not going to hand over any of my data to him willingly. He scares me.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:27 AM on October 4, 2015 [11 favorites]
I just don't trust Mark Zuckerberg. That's my main reason. I'm not going to hand over any of my data to him willingly. He scares me.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:27 AM on October 4, 2015 [11 favorites]
On the issue of how your non-isomorphic networks can get connected, there are multiple companies working on technologies to uniquely identify you by things like fine details of your computer hardware and OS installation and your typing idiosyncrasies. Companies are spending big bucks on blue-sky projects like that precisely to complete the connection of all the corners of your profile.
Zuckerberg may not have started it with the specific intent of becoming Stasi 2.0, but the fact is he is building and outfitting the infrastructure for precisely that, and FB has a poor history of discriminating about who they sell their data to.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:28 AM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
Zuckerberg may not have started it with the specific intent of becoming Stasi 2.0, but the fact is he is building and outfitting the infrastructure for precisely that, and FB has a poor history of discriminating about who they sell their data to.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:28 AM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
mpbx the white pages did not conveniently index your preferences in wine, dog food, and sexual partners and they were easy opt-out. My number has never been listed.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:29 AM on October 4, 2015 [14 favorites]
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:29 AM on October 4, 2015 [14 favorites]
mpbx: This is not true. They collect enough data with the mere presence of like buttons to probably de-anonymize you without a FB account and certainly to target ads on you. You can block facebook.com and all their content distribution networks from hosts and probably get away with it for now, but if enough people do this they can also figure out a way around that, too
posted by curuinor at 5:38 AM on October 4, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by curuinor at 5:38 AM on October 4, 2015 [12 favorites]
I do. It's the targeting that makes the difference. I don't want to be advertised at, but I specifically don't want to be specifically advertised at.
Are MetaFilter ads targeted? If so, first time I heard that. Can you point to a source?
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:44 AM on October 4, 2015
Are MetaFilter ads targeted? If so, first time I heard that. Can you point to a source?
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:44 AM on October 4, 2015
RedOrGreen: "Is this sarcasm? …. They don't even know that they're using the Internet. You want them to host their own blog? Pay $25 when their annual income is under $1000? "
No, I don't want them to do anything. I'm saying that, if they need a platform for political activism or organizing, etc., they shouldn't see facebook as the default infrastructure for this, they shouldn't trust it to be there for them or cater to their needs and rights. It won't and it doesn't.
posted by signal at 5:47 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
No, I don't want them to do anything. I'm saying that, if they need a platform for political activism or organizing, etc., they shouldn't see facebook as the default infrastructure for this, they shouldn't trust it to be there for them or cater to their needs and rights. It won't and it doesn't.
posted by signal at 5:47 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Zuckerberg may not have started it with the specific intent of becoming Stasi 2.0
How the Government Outsourced Intelligence to Silicon Valley
posted by bukvich at 5:52 AM on October 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
How the Government Outsourced Intelligence to Silicon Valley
posted by bukvich at 5:52 AM on October 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
Probably means confidence interval of higher than 90% for more than 60% of individuals out of a 10^7 sample in the published work. FB is probably better than the state of the published art, although they also have the problem of 10^9 scale.
It is also the case that the other ad trackers have enough info on you to be a helpful resource for terrible people in power. RocketFuel, for example, tries and mostly succeeds at having a comprehensive record of everything everyone does on the Internet - they track a solid half of the Alexa 1000 so they can sort of glomp on the other data and certainly pinpoint at least demographics data, and they said to me that they had enough entropy to pinpoint individuals but wanted a better deal with advertisers before shipping it. CEO of AdRoll said to me that they don't target individuals, but only because Facebook is better at it, and they might later - and this is very far from AdRoll's central business in the first place.
The task at hand is surprisingly easy, because in order to uniquely identify a human being you need 33 unique bits information entropy - and you actually have 2 of them handed to you by the simple knowledge that this person is using the Internet. Usually you have 10-30 unique bits in your collection of web fonts? (see this article for more). The only viable way to really have anonymity against a proper fingerprinting tracker is to buy a brand new flagship Apple or Samsung phone and connect to the internet, to try to render non-unique the entropy that these people are getting. But they need 33 bits, and most people after using their computers for more than 3 months send more than 60 in every HTTP request header.
Unfortunately, the contention that the NSA was tracking an appreciable fraction of all humanity, metadata and direct, was a paranoiac fantasy - until it wasn't. Is this so much better when FB is doing it?
posted by curuinor at 5:58 AM on October 4, 2015 [14 favorites]
It is also the case that the other ad trackers have enough info on you to be a helpful resource for terrible people in power. RocketFuel, for example, tries and mostly succeeds at having a comprehensive record of everything everyone does on the Internet - they track a solid half of the Alexa 1000 so they can sort of glomp on the other data and certainly pinpoint at least demographics data, and they said to me that they had enough entropy to pinpoint individuals but wanted a better deal with advertisers before shipping it. CEO of AdRoll said to me that they don't target individuals, but only because Facebook is better at it, and they might later - and this is very far from AdRoll's central business in the first place.
The task at hand is surprisingly easy, because in order to uniquely identify a human being you need 33 unique bits information entropy - and you actually have 2 of them handed to you by the simple knowledge that this person is using the Internet. Usually you have 10-30 unique bits in your collection of web fonts? (see this article for more). The only viable way to really have anonymity against a proper fingerprinting tracker is to buy a brand new flagship Apple or Samsung phone and connect to the internet, to try to render non-unique the entropy that these people are getting. But they need 33 bits, and most people after using their computers for more than 3 months send more than 60 in every HTTP request header.
Unfortunately, the contention that the NSA was tracking an appreciable fraction of all humanity, metadata and direct, was a paranoiac fantasy - until it wasn't. Is this so much better when FB is doing it?
posted by curuinor at 5:58 AM on October 4, 2015 [14 favorites]
I completely agree with Violet Blue in not trusting enterprises with my government ID. That is the reason I refuse to use PayPal. PayPal allowed me to open an account, but refused to let me actually perform any transactions until I sent them government ID. Fuck that.
I rejoiced so much the day Metafilter allowed Stripe as an alternate form of payment.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 6:13 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
I rejoiced so much the day Metafilter allowed Stripe as an alternate form of payment.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 6:13 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
FB is very aggressively the opposite of opt-out. FB has admitted to building profiles of non-FB users based on connections from their FB using acquaintances. And FB will not allow you to access their content unless you are a FB user; if you make a witty comment and it's linked on a completely unrelated site like dailykos, if I click on that link FB won't serve me the content unless I am logged into FB. This is unlike the White Pages which were available for me to use even though I wasn't listed myself. The deal is very clearly that I am not allowed any of the benefits of the community unless I give them access to me.
FB also has a long and nasty habit, when they do grudgingly provide a privacy setting, of occasionally re-defaulting them or eliminating them or linking other privileges so that if you want privacy you can't have access to this or that feature. FB is really not that coy about wanting your data, wanting all of it, and wanting it whether you want them to have it or not.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:13 AM on October 4, 2015 [21 favorites]
FB also has a long and nasty habit, when they do grudgingly provide a privacy setting, of occasionally re-defaulting them or eliminating them or linking other privileges so that if you want privacy you can't have access to this or that feature. FB is really not that coy about wanting your data, wanting all of it, and wanting it whether you want them to have it or not.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:13 AM on October 4, 2015 [21 favorites]
I have a Facebook account because it is nice to see baby photos and other basic life updates from people I know but am not in routine touch with. But their privacy policies are atrocious and it makes me really nervous to have a private company aggregating that much personal data. I mean, even the NSA has more oversight and public control, and more public trust.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:18 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Dip Flash at 6:18 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
> I think danah boyd has done some research that showed that MySpace's population was notably poorer and less white (overall less mainstream) than Facebook's. I think this (pdf) is the paper.
Previously discussed (in 2009) with real-time contrasting of MySpace and Facebook by people who were actively using both for different purposes. I think a lot of recent commentary on MySpace has been a kind of armchair quarterbacking combined with a shifting and blurring in public memory of what it was and how it worked at the time. So it's interesting seeing what people thought of it while it was still a contender.
posted by ardgedee at 6:23 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Previously discussed (in 2009) with real-time contrasting of MySpace and Facebook by people who were actively using both for different purposes. I think a lot of recent commentary on MySpace has been a kind of armchair quarterbacking combined with a shifting and blurring in public memory of what it was and how it worked at the time. So it's interesting seeing what people thought of it while it was still a contender.
posted by ardgedee at 6:23 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Previously discussed (in 2009)
I started lurking MetaFilter in 2002, still devout about /., and for a while didn't appreciate MF from MemePool, believing it to be just a bunch of artists from Silver Lake. Really wrong, of course. I'm saying this to hurl a lawn comment if a "quarter-backing" comment includes my post.
Because by 2009, there was already a lot of confusion and disputation about timelines and it's all through that thread. I couldn't afford connectivity for a long time, but I did witness others', and the wasteland that AOL made that was vanquished overnight by the usability and whitespace of Google, Wikipedia, and Craig's List has come full circle with the issue of adblocking. I'll defer to usenet users beyond that, and NO ONE else. (Except BB nodes)
No where in that thread does it say this: FaceBook destroyed ClassReunion.com in a week. And that was the only cool thing that I could suss about it. And no one talked about AdultFriendFinder, because, you know, prudes. So, I'm going to go on with my bad self and intuit that some Harvard kids were getting their freak on and appropriated a mechanism and rose on a wave that was going to come some how, some way, no matter what.
What powers be needed Gates' heir, and Zuckerberg is the new King David.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:55 AM on October 4, 2015
I started lurking MetaFilter in 2002, still devout about /., and for a while didn't appreciate MF from MemePool, believing it to be just a bunch of artists from Silver Lake. Really wrong, of course. I'm saying this to hurl a lawn comment if a "quarter-backing" comment includes my post.
Because by 2009, there was already a lot of confusion and disputation about timelines and it's all through that thread. I couldn't afford connectivity for a long time, but I did witness others', and the wasteland that AOL made that was vanquished overnight by the usability and whitespace of Google, Wikipedia, and Craig's List has come full circle with the issue of adblocking. I'll defer to usenet users beyond that, and NO ONE else. (Except BB nodes)
No where in that thread does it say this: FaceBook destroyed ClassReunion.com in a week. And that was the only cool thing that I could suss about it. And no one talked about AdultFriendFinder, because, you know, prudes. So, I'm going to go on with my bad self and intuit that some Harvard kids were getting their freak on and appropriated a mechanism and rose on a wave that was going to come some how, some way, no matter what.
What powers be needed Gates' heir, and Zuckerberg is the new King David.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:55 AM on October 4, 2015
After going to all this trouble to destroy our privacy and profile us, it is almost comical how useless the targeted ads which are the supposed outcome of it all are. You'd think that Amazon, for example, who knew I just bought a lawnmower because I bought it from them, might realize that it's a bit late to show me ads for lawnmowers on every site I visit. But advertisers think these ads are sooper extra valuable which is what finances and encourages the outrageous conduct.
It's also rather more ominous to consider not just how wide and invasive these graphs of our interactions can be, but also that they can be wrong. Even if I limit my porn browsing and sketchy purchases to this computer at home, does the fact that I also surf several prominent sites from several shared work computers cause my graph to be commingled with those of my coworkers? This is a concern that comes up very frequently and it's clear that nobody in any of these industries or agencies gives a rat's ass whether the data is accurate, only whether it is "useful." And when that utility shifts from showing us ads to putting some of us up against a wall, history shows they still won't care much.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:59 AM on October 4, 2015 [10 favorites]
It's also rather more ominous to consider not just how wide and invasive these graphs of our interactions can be, but also that they can be wrong. Even if I limit my porn browsing and sketchy purchases to this computer at home, does the fact that I also surf several prominent sites from several shared work computers cause my graph to be commingled with those of my coworkers? This is a concern that comes up very frequently and it's clear that nobody in any of these industries or agencies gives a rat's ass whether the data is accurate, only whether it is "useful." And when that utility shifts from showing us ads to putting some of us up against a wall, history shows they still won't care much.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:59 AM on October 4, 2015 [10 favorites]
PayPal allowed me to open an account, but refused to let me actually perform any transactions until I sent them government ID. Fuck that.
As a money transmitting business, they're required by law to have anti-money laundering procedures.
posted by jpe at 7:06 AM on October 4, 2015 [10 favorites]
As a money transmitting business, they're required by law to have anti-money laundering procedures.
posted by jpe at 7:06 AM on October 4, 2015 [10 favorites]
"Just don't sign up for Facebook" is like "if you have nothing to hide, you don't need to worry about privacy" - both suggestions utterly miss the point of what's wrong in the bigger picture. But hey, if you can't trust billionaires who compile personal details of private citizens for the generation of revenue, why, you might as well burn your phone book!
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:11 AM on October 4, 2015 [17 favorites]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:11 AM on October 4, 2015 [17 favorites]
About Ads: Data mining and consumers really took off with loyalty cards and privacy issues have been conflated endlessly ever since. First off, collecting data isn't about using it for a single purpose. Targeted ads (given popular illustration in Minority Report) are the tip of an iceberg. The "private" data collected isn't just about targeting an individual. As everyone notes, that's not been a priority. It is demographics crossed with purchasing information sold to enterprise tasked with distribution and inventory. That's the big money. Under that, every machine identified by an IP given a unique number can have an endless number of assignments to it.
Or maybe I'm wrong about what defines a good database, but I don't think so. Any collection of information is best when it does more than one thing. That's part of what so nefarious about it all and why comparing what's going on to a phone book is woefully naive.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:13 AM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
Or maybe I'm wrong about what defines a good database, but I don't think so. Any collection of information is best when it does more than one thing. That's part of what so nefarious about it all and why comparing what's going on to a phone book is woefully naive.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:13 AM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
> After going to all this trouble to destroy our privacy and profile us, it is almost comical how useless the targeted ads which are the supposed outcome of it all are.
That is the fault of the advertiser for doing a poor job of modeling their target market. It is in no way the fault of the service that is providing matches for that model.
posted by ardgedee at 7:13 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
That is the fault of the advertiser for doing a poor job of modeling their target market. It is in no way the fault of the service that is providing matches for that model.
posted by ardgedee at 7:13 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
One of my author pages got locked at FB for not being a real name. When I tried to straighten it out, FB wouldn't budge. If I couldn't show govt ID, they were not going to unlock the account. They did offer to change the account to *my* name, which I pointed out defeated the entire purpose of a pen name.
All because someone complained about the name...and I'm fairly sure they complained because they were trying to prove that I was the author behind the name. In other words, I think someone took deliberate steps to out me, and FB was all about making that happen for my stalker.
I haven't been back to the FB in weeks. I've actually gained a lot of productive time, now that I'm not having to politely "like" shit to massage the feelings of "friends" who think minion memes are clever social commentary.
That said, a fair number of female writers in a couple of genres have been hit lately with the "prove it" tactic of shutting down FB accounts.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:18 AM on October 4, 2015 [18 favorites]
All because someone complained about the name...and I'm fairly sure they complained because they were trying to prove that I was the author behind the name. In other words, I think someone took deliberate steps to out me, and FB was all about making that happen for my stalker.
I haven't been back to the FB in weeks. I've actually gained a lot of productive time, now that I'm not having to politely "like" shit to massage the feelings of "friends" who think minion memes are clever social commentary.
That said, a fair number of female writers in a couple of genres have been hit lately with the "prove it" tactic of shutting down FB accounts.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:18 AM on October 4, 2015 [18 favorites]
I changed my facebook age to 105 in a vain attempt to get The Algorithm to quit sending me ads for wrinkle cream targeted at "one smart mom," or whatever. Now I get ads for reverse mortgages and mortuary services and wrinkle cream. Now I know that the correct procedure when I reach A Certain Age, namely 105, is to reverse mortgage my house and use the money to buy a bigass coffin and squirt it full of wrinkle cream so I can get my new millennium Nosferatu on.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:19 AM on October 4, 2015 [16 favorites]
posted by Don Pepino at 7:19 AM on October 4, 2015 [16 favorites]
These companies will continue to gobble each other up, merging all my online "identities". I expect that every keystroke I've ever made will eventually wind up in the FB database.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:25 AM on October 4, 2015
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:25 AM on October 4, 2015
Every time anyone has presented plausible real-world security concerns about real-name policy to Facebook, they've just gone all la-la-I-can't-hear-you. I suspect it's ideological and yes-man based, just because it's so in line with what big tech entrepreneurs usually do - the whole "we know better than you because we're rich and in tech" business. But it's no different from what those Peeple women are doing, really, the idea being that no one is entitled to keep anything about themselves private, and if losing your privacy has bad consequences for you, it's because you deserve them.
There's books and books to be written about the double-edged nature of how activism works now via Facebook. Black Lives Matter, for instance, runs via Facebook. Virtually every public-facing radical project I can think of has a Facebook page. We've gotten to the point where this is so normal that no one young than me even thinks twice about putting every single fucking argument, connection, etc right onto the Facebook page so that the government doesn't even have to work to collect it all. It's creepy as hell. You don't have to be one of the 3 million who don't understand that Facebook is on the internet to feel like it's a great idea to put sensitive information in the hands of Zuckerberg, et al.
Every time I think about breaking down and getting a Facebook page - because I sure do miss out on stuff - I read something else godawful about them and draw back. I know that just by existing on the internet my data is being collected and I am basically identifiable if you're diligent enough, but I feel a bit safer knowing that my entire everyday life isn't on there.
posted by Frowner at 7:26 AM on October 4, 2015 [20 favorites]
There's books and books to be written about the double-edged nature of how activism works now via Facebook. Black Lives Matter, for instance, runs via Facebook. Virtually every public-facing radical project I can think of has a Facebook page. We've gotten to the point where this is so normal that no one young than me even thinks twice about putting every single fucking argument, connection, etc right onto the Facebook page so that the government doesn't even have to work to collect it all. It's creepy as hell. You don't have to be one of the 3 million who don't understand that Facebook is on the internet to feel like it's a great idea to put sensitive information in the hands of Zuckerberg, et al.
Every time I think about breaking down and getting a Facebook page - because I sure do miss out on stuff - I read something else godawful about them and draw back. I know that just by existing on the internet my data is being collected and I am basically identifiable if you're diligent enough, but I feel a bit safer knowing that my entire everyday life isn't on there.
posted by Frowner at 7:26 AM on October 4, 2015 [20 favorites]
Totally anecdotal, but I have noticed a lot more women than men getting locked out for "fake name" reasons. In fact there's a guy, a friend of a friend, whose last two names have been English adjectives for at least over a year now.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:32 AM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:32 AM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
This happened to a friend of mine and it happened to me. My friend merely had to provide them with a business card. In fact, a scan of a business card. So, essentially, he could have just created a business card on his computer and sent them a copy.
I refused to send them jack shit. They locked me out.
Before they did, I passed the "ownership" of my business' FB account to a new account that I created under a fake name. I now had exactly what FB had accused me of: an account with a fake name, which I hadn't before as my soon-to-be locked out account was my real identity.
A few months later, FB hit me with the same request on the fake account that they did on the real account: send us ID. Again, I refused and they locked me out.
However, I accidentally clicked a link to FB on an old computer that I hadn't used since being kicked out the first time and my real FB account had been reinstated. So, apparently the "ban" was not permanent.
The weird thing? Why my accounts were flagged as in need of ID in the first place.
There is only one thing these accounts had in common: both had been used to criticize a large American hamburger chain that had just opened in my town: Carl's Jr. Perhaps I'm being paranoid but that is seriously the only link. The new account had ZERO friends linked to it (the only reason I had it was to run my store's FB account). I followed my local newspapers and when they praised the chain for coming to town, I piped up in the comments about how they're anti-LGBT and anti-Choice. The next day, each account was flagged by FB as "possibly fake".
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:48 AM on October 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
I refused to send them jack shit. They locked me out.
Before they did, I passed the "ownership" of my business' FB account to a new account that I created under a fake name. I now had exactly what FB had accused me of: an account with a fake name, which I hadn't before as my soon-to-be locked out account was my real identity.
A few months later, FB hit me with the same request on the fake account that they did on the real account: send us ID. Again, I refused and they locked me out.
However, I accidentally clicked a link to FB on an old computer that I hadn't used since being kicked out the first time and my real FB account had been reinstated. So, apparently the "ban" was not permanent.
The weird thing? Why my accounts were flagged as in need of ID in the first place.
There is only one thing these accounts had in common: both had been used to criticize a large American hamburger chain that had just opened in my town: Carl's Jr. Perhaps I'm being paranoid but that is seriously the only link. The new account had ZERO friends linked to it (the only reason I had it was to run my store's FB account). I followed my local newspapers and when they praised the chain for coming to town, I piped up in the comments about how they're anti-LGBT and anti-Choice. The next day, each account was flagged by FB as "possibly fake".
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:48 AM on October 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
On the other hand suppose it had been easier to authenticate as Violet Blue after an account lockout. Then she'd probably be complainin about how Facebook isn't doing enough to protect your identity online. This seems like a no win situation for Facebook.
posted by humanfont at 8:30 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by humanfont at 8:30 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
My recollection of MySpace is second-hand (kids having shown me), but a distinction I may very well be wrong about is that seeing the "walls" of others was one permission, and "writing on their wall" was another?
Oh, I see what you mean. I think you're talking more about the privacy settings of the walls vis-a-vis "friend" connections. Well, it turns out that MySpace had the concept of a "private profile" but it wasn't the default and I think it might have been a feature added later (but I can't be sure about that). The default was to have a public profile open to everybody. Also, they added various other privacy controls of varying degrees. Facebook had their default set to private profiles (at least for wall posts and photos) by the time they went with public launch (i.e.: outside of universities) but I'm really not sure what the default privacy settings were while they were still restricted to Ivy League. This chart shows the evolution of Facebook's default privacy settings but doesn't have 2004.
Basically, I personally doubt that this was actually a case of FB taking inspiration from AFF (which, I think was never really as popular among college kids as it was among, say, the more mature swinger communities and certainly not as well-known or popular as MySpace) but rather a matter of taking a non-default, added-later option in another social network and making it the default in their own from the start because it was a good idea. I would say it's similar to Google Plus's "circles" which were basically the same as Facebook's restricted access lists (which definitely existed when Google Plus launched) but instead of being a non-default, added-later feature that most people didn't know about, Google made it a core part of their design.
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 8:36 AM on October 4, 2015
Oh, I see what you mean. I think you're talking more about the privacy settings of the walls vis-a-vis "friend" connections. Well, it turns out that MySpace had the concept of a "private profile" but it wasn't the default and I think it might have been a feature added later (but I can't be sure about that). The default was to have a public profile open to everybody. Also, they added various other privacy controls of varying degrees. Facebook had their default set to private profiles (at least for wall posts and photos) by the time they went with public launch (i.e.: outside of universities) but I'm really not sure what the default privacy settings were while they were still restricted to Ivy League. This chart shows the evolution of Facebook's default privacy settings but doesn't have 2004.
Basically, I personally doubt that this was actually a case of FB taking inspiration from AFF (which, I think was never really as popular among college kids as it was among, say, the more mature swinger communities and certainly not as well-known or popular as MySpace) but rather a matter of taking a non-default, added-later option in another social network and making it the default in their own from the start because it was a good idea. I would say it's similar to Google Plus's "circles" which were basically the same as Facebook's restricted access lists (which definitely existed when Google Plus launched) but instead of being a non-default, added-later feature that most people didn't know about, Google made it a core part of their design.
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 8:36 AM on October 4, 2015
I really appreciate you parsing what I related. But I disagree how you're giving weight to what was popular at the time. In '96, Rotten.com was popular in urban middle schools. What was popular was, well, everything because there wasn't as much. No, AFF wasn't popular with Harvard kids, except for those that knew about it. I'll contend no other community/culture before AFF had the conventions of "joining" that FB adopted.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:43 AM on October 4, 2015
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:43 AM on October 4, 2015
A couple of days ago, I noticed again, an old photo of my grown daughter, in my purse. I pulled it out about 3/4 way and took a picture of my messy desk, purse, and photo. My only comment was, "Things moms do." Facebook tagged the post as me with my daughter. They have our faces, then it follows they have all our names we use, attached to our faces, and everyone we know linked to our faces. Facebook's problem is stupidity, or worse yet, stupidity among intelligence vendors, of every stripe and nation, if I understand how economics works.
We would like a lot of things, but we are going to get what makes the big fish money, and what makes the big fishes feel safe while making their money. It could work positively for refugees if their faces link to educational records, helping them to certify for work in a new nation. It could work positively if it can reunite families. It can work positively if it identifies known combatants who wish to export combat to new venues, via refugee status.
Facebook has your face, regardless of makeup, hair color or style. It is smart/stupid that way, and wildly invasive/profitable. There is little incentive to smarten up.
I tried accessing my gmail account while private browsing. My android phone took a picture of me without my asking, and stored the image somewhere other than my phone. The game is up.
posted by Oyéah at 8:51 AM on October 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
We would like a lot of things, but we are going to get what makes the big fish money, and what makes the big fishes feel safe while making their money. It could work positively for refugees if their faces link to educational records, helping them to certify for work in a new nation. It could work positively if it can reunite families. It can work positively if it identifies known combatants who wish to export combat to new venues, via refugee status.
Facebook has your face, regardless of makeup, hair color or style. It is smart/stupid that way, and wildly invasive/profitable. There is little incentive to smarten up.
I tried accessing my gmail account while private browsing. My android phone took a picture of me without my asking, and stored the image somewhere other than my phone. The game is up.
posted by Oyéah at 8:51 AM on October 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
But I disagree how you're giving weight to what was popular at the time.
Ok. That's fair. And I agree that it needn't have been widespread so long as Mark Zuckerberg or any of his cohorts knew about it and drew inspiration from it. My impression about the relative popularity of these sites wasn't based on the fact that AFF was skeevy or pornographic (as if that would be a drawback) but rather my impression that AFF required a credit card to do anything fun, including friending or contacting other people. I guess maybe you could see the main profile pics without a card?
I'll contend no other community/culture before AFF had the conventions of "joining" that FB adopted.
This may very well be the case. I can't think of any myself. I would reckon that the social norms among social networks prior to FB (or AFF) were that user profiles/walls were basically like public websites, like a Geocities site or a Blogspot blog, and should of course be defaulted to be readable by anyone (or, at the most, anyone registered on that network). The closest thing to a social network that had something ressembling a default private presumption (either as a technical default or a cultural one) was maybe LiveJournal. And even there, I think it was just social norms not a system default and was much weaker, with only certain sub-communities that defaulted to "friends-only" publishing and most of LJ defaulted to "everyone can read".
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 9:07 AM on October 4, 2015
Ok. That's fair. And I agree that it needn't have been widespread so long as Mark Zuckerberg or any of his cohorts knew about it and drew inspiration from it. My impression about the relative popularity of these sites wasn't based on the fact that AFF was skeevy or pornographic (as if that would be a drawback) but rather my impression that AFF required a credit card to do anything fun, including friending or contacting other people. I guess maybe you could see the main profile pics without a card?
I'll contend no other community/culture before AFF had the conventions of "joining" that FB adopted.
This may very well be the case. I can't think of any myself. I would reckon that the social norms among social networks prior to FB (or AFF) were that user profiles/walls were basically like public websites, like a Geocities site or a Blogspot blog, and should of course be defaulted to be readable by anyone (or, at the most, anyone registered on that network). The closest thing to a social network that had something ressembling a default private presumption (either as a technical default or a cultural one) was maybe LiveJournal. And even there, I think it was just social norms not a system default and was much weaker, with only certain sub-communities that defaulted to "friends-only" publishing and most of LJ defaulted to "everyone can read".
posted by Pseudonymous Sockpuppet at 9:07 AM on October 4, 2015
I rejoiced so much the day Metafilter allowed Stripe as an alternate form of payment.
To combat money laundering, it is likely they have systems to flag odd and potentially illegal payments, which can involve validating the identities of the parties involved in a transaction.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:25 AM on October 4, 2015
To combat money laundering, it is likely they have systems to flag odd and potentially illegal payments, which can involve validating the identities of the parties involved in a transaction.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:25 AM on October 4, 2015
...but rather my impression that AFF required a credit card to do anything fun, including friending or contacting other people. I guess maybe you could see the main profile pics without a card?
You're correct that a credit card was the important "gate" (not an issue at Harvard) and what I keep referring to as a convention (that you've termed better as a default private presumption) was the feature of AFF, or a mechanism of control, the system of requesting contact, because the world of swingers is fraught with unsolicited attention. I learned all of this without joining. After the first bubble, the only cash cows were dating sites like Lava.com (other than porn itself) and the game there was to defeat the filters by encoding contact information in a profile. AFF didn't show anything.
When I saw this as a premise of FB, my only other reference was AFF. MySpace was a public wall that required permission to write on. Friendster had died, MySpace was still a few years from fragmentation, and what FB had innovated was something I'd seen swingers do. But I've never seen a thing written about it. When I've related it to people, they shrug. And maybe that's appropriate.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 9:46 AM on October 4, 2015
You're correct that a credit card was the important "gate" (not an issue at Harvard) and what I keep referring to as a convention (that you've termed better as a default private presumption) was the feature of AFF, or a mechanism of control, the system of requesting contact, because the world of swingers is fraught with unsolicited attention. I learned all of this without joining. After the first bubble, the only cash cows were dating sites like Lava.com (other than porn itself) and the game there was to defeat the filters by encoding contact information in a profile. AFF didn't show anything.
When I saw this as a premise of FB, my only other reference was AFF. MySpace was a public wall that required permission to write on. Friendster had died, MySpace was still a few years from fragmentation, and what FB had innovated was something I'd seen swingers do. But I've never seen a thing written about it. When I've related it to people, they shrug. And maybe that's appropriate.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 9:46 AM on October 4, 2015
Years ago I saw a video that indicated Facebook's board of directors, or higher-ups etc, was largely composed of people in the intelligence community.
Here's Facebook's Board of Directors, official Management Team & unofficial Senior Management Team (per Business Insider, 2012). I see a few former government employees but none who've spent time in the IC.
posted by scalefree at 9:52 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Here's Facebook's Board of Directors, official Management Team & unofficial Senior Management Team (per Business Insider, 2012). I see a few former government employees but none who've spent time in the IC.
posted by scalefree at 9:52 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
I have 2 facebook accounts and 3 google plus accounts - all with completely false information. The trick to doing it is to not give them any information other than the very minimum required, to close off public access to everything that you are allowed to do so and to keep your friends network minimum to non-existent. I have had those accounts for 3-6 years now. If there is a group I want to interact with - I make a new blank and fake facebook account for it.
I use the google accounts for google voice numbers and/or mail and the facebook account only to interact with a group that is on facebook and that I have an overriding interest in. Yes I know that minimizing friends and not networking defeats the entire point of facebook - but not for me I don't network on social media (save for business only marketing purposes)
posted by AGameOfMoans at 9:58 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
I use the google accounts for google voice numbers and/or mail and the facebook account only to interact with a group that is on facebook and that I have an overriding interest in. Yes I know that minimizing friends and not networking defeats the entire point of facebook - but not for me I don't network on social media (save for business only marketing purposes)
posted by AGameOfMoans at 9:58 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
You might return the lawnmower you purchased due to dissatisfaction and buy a different one.
Facebook has also spent months now suggesting I buy more wedding rings.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:12 AM on October 4, 2015 [17 favorites]
Facebook has also spent months now suggesting I buy more wedding rings.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:12 AM on October 4, 2015 [17 favorites]
I'll contend no other community/culture before AFF had the conventions of "joining" that FB adopted.
It's possible. On the other hand, there were about three separate inventions of television at about the same time, you know? Given a similar problem people will often adopt similar solutions. It strikes me as far more likely to be coincidence than that Zuckerberg was consciously adopting AFF conventions.
posted by Diablevert at 10:12 AM on October 4, 2015
It's possible. On the other hand, there were about three separate inventions of television at about the same time, you know? Given a similar problem people will often adopt similar solutions. It strikes me as far more likely to be coincidence than that Zuckerberg was consciously adopting AFF conventions.
posted by Diablevert at 10:12 AM on October 4, 2015
> This policy doesn't seem to be enforced very much at all.
I have a very varied group of people on my Facebook and many of them have run into this, it's an ongoing issue.
And each and every one of these people were liminal people - people who say inconvenient things - comedians, political radicals, queers of various stripes, freaks, people of color who have adopted more traditional, non-birth names.
It's absolutely true that if you and your circle consist entirely of centrist, prosperous individuals then you can probably take pretty well any name you like. It's also absolutely true that if you're any sort of outspoken person, or even just a different person, then Facebook will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
This whole thing is really making me think deeply about whether I can ethically be involved with Facebook any more...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:20 AM on October 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
I have a very varied group of people on my Facebook and many of them have run into this, it's an ongoing issue.
And each and every one of these people were liminal people - people who say inconvenient things - comedians, political radicals, queers of various stripes, freaks, people of color who have adopted more traditional, non-birth names.
It's absolutely true that if you and your circle consist entirely of centrist, prosperous individuals then you can probably take pretty well any name you like. It's also absolutely true that if you're any sort of outspoken person, or even just a different person, then Facebook will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
This whole thing is really making me think deeply about whether I can ethically be involved with Facebook any more...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:20 AM on October 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
I'll contend no other community/culture before AFF had the conventions of "joining" that FB adopted.
AFF was definitely first in 1996. Myspace & Friendster both came along in 2002 & Tribe followed in 2003. Facebook was the fifth big, successful site to use membership as a requirement.
posted by scalefree at 10:24 AM on October 4, 2015
AFF was definitely first in 1996. Myspace & Friendster both came along in 2002 & Tribe followed in 2003. Facebook was the fifth big, successful site to use membership as a requirement.
posted by scalefree at 10:24 AM on October 4, 2015
This is quite a bit more problematic than just the 300 million people in the US. We're talking billions and billions.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:59 PM on October 3 [40 favorites +] [!]
You act like accessing Facebook is a life or death matter. What am I missing here?
posted by jayder at 10:27 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:59 PM on October 3 [40 favorites +] [!]
You act like accessing Facebook is a life or death matter. What am I missing here?
posted by jayder at 10:27 AM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
I was going to post a link the same article that Bukvich did, but he got up pretty early this morning.
Follow the money: In-Q-Tel. Palantir/Peter Thiel. Facebook.
The money connections are in plain sight, and I would be a little surprised if the path the money takes is not reciprocated by a path that information takes.
posted by the Real Dan at 10:28 AM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
Follow the money: In-Q-Tel. Palantir/Peter Thiel. Facebook.
The money connections are in plain sight, and I would be a little surprised if the path the money takes is not reciprocated by a path that information takes.
posted by the Real Dan at 10:28 AM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
The more I think about it, the more I feel sick in the pit of my stomach.
We have the big three: Facebook, Amazon, and Google.
If you're an active member of the digital community, then these three groups know an incredible amount about you - far more than any totalitarian society ever knew about its members in history (though to be fair, there just wasn't that much information to have about a person in 1950's Russia - if you knew their mail, phone, and contents of their bookcase, what else was there?)
And yet Facebook and Amazon at least are both headed by powerful individuals who give every impression of being sociopaths - of being pathologically indifferent to others. I urge you to refute me - give me examples of their warmth and compassion - because it's pretty frightening.
(I have had significant personal contact with the Google triumvirate - it's been almost a decade now, time flies - and can say that Eric Schmidt seemed to be a genuinely warm and engaging individual who seemed to consider moral questions as a significant part of any problem, and that Larry and Sergey seemed similar, but further out on the aspie scale - for example, one of them had no use for any sort of music, and the other one literally considered that the value of a piece of music was how much money it made...
(But I still believe that Google was founded on an ethical basis and encouraged and apparently still encourages its employees to ask ethical questions, so I worry about them less, and I'm going to give them a pass here...)
What are we going to get if Facebook and Amazon get their way?
If Facebook has its way, in order to engage in the social world of the web, all our personal information will be made public, and sold to advertisers both in aggregate and one at a time. That's what's despicable - it's not that they *entice* us to reveal our personal information, which would be perhaps annoying but fair, but they are now *forcing* us to do it if we are to continue living in their world, otherwise we are digitally ostracized.
And if Amazon has its way, if their ultra-competitive, no-second-wasted work aesthetic really does dominate the world, then in our work day you're going to be monitored every second, our productivity will be continually monitored, any fluctuations sternly noted, any prolonged deviation downwards punishable by firing, and then when the robots come along, your job will be gone anyway.
That last paragraph seemed hyperbolic when I looked back at it and I had to remind myself that this is exactly what Amazon is doing already, and it has happened to at least one person I know personally.
It's super-dystopian, and it isn't happening in the future, it's happening now.
We have been attempting not to use Amazon for two years now. It can be very hard - we purchased an item on ebay that was delivered from Amazon somehow, and other companies we have done business with for years now only do fulfillment through them, putting us in a quandary...
And now, I think Facebook must go. Perhaps an email list would be better. Indeed, that's a fun idea.
...I suppose it's sort of pathetic, giving it all up - but what else is one suppose to do?
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:46 AM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
We have the big three: Facebook, Amazon, and Google.
If you're an active member of the digital community, then these three groups know an incredible amount about you - far more than any totalitarian society ever knew about its members in history (though to be fair, there just wasn't that much information to have about a person in 1950's Russia - if you knew their mail, phone, and contents of their bookcase, what else was there?)
And yet Facebook and Amazon at least are both headed by powerful individuals who give every impression of being sociopaths - of being pathologically indifferent to others. I urge you to refute me - give me examples of their warmth and compassion - because it's pretty frightening.
(I have had significant personal contact with the Google triumvirate - it's been almost a decade now, time flies - and can say that Eric Schmidt seemed to be a genuinely warm and engaging individual who seemed to consider moral questions as a significant part of any problem, and that Larry and Sergey seemed similar, but further out on the aspie scale - for example, one of them had no use for any sort of music, and the other one literally considered that the value of a piece of music was how much money it made...
(But I still believe that Google was founded on an ethical basis and encouraged and apparently still encourages its employees to ask ethical questions, so I worry about them less, and I'm going to give them a pass here...)
What are we going to get if Facebook and Amazon get their way?
If Facebook has its way, in order to engage in the social world of the web, all our personal information will be made public, and sold to advertisers both in aggregate and one at a time. That's what's despicable - it's not that they *entice* us to reveal our personal information, which would be perhaps annoying but fair, but they are now *forcing* us to do it if we are to continue living in their world, otherwise we are digitally ostracized.
And if Amazon has its way, if their ultra-competitive, no-second-wasted work aesthetic really does dominate the world, then in our work day you're going to be monitored every second, our productivity will be continually monitored, any fluctuations sternly noted, any prolonged deviation downwards punishable by firing, and then when the robots come along, your job will be gone anyway.
That last paragraph seemed hyperbolic when I looked back at it and I had to remind myself that this is exactly what Amazon is doing already, and it has happened to at least one person I know personally.
It's super-dystopian, and it isn't happening in the future, it's happening now.
We have been attempting not to use Amazon for two years now. It can be very hard - we purchased an item on ebay that was delivered from Amazon somehow, and other companies we have done business with for years now only do fulfillment through them, putting us in a quandary...
And now, I think Facebook must go. Perhaps an email list would be better. Indeed, that's a fun idea.
...I suppose it's sort of pathetic, giving it all up - but what else is one suppose to do?
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:46 AM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
A real name policy universally enforced would make facebook significantly less useful to anybody who goes by a nickname or has close friends that do....
Oh, I totally realize this. It's just that it's rare enough that I doubt Facebook cares if people like that have a hard time. I think this may be one of the cases where there's a trade off and not everyone can be happy with the decision.
cosmic.osmo, there's probably at least one person in your friend group who goes by their middle name as a first name, or a shortened version of their name, or only lists a maidin name that makes them easier for old acquaintances to find....
Actually, several do (including me). I'm not saying I support strict real-names policies, I was just looking at them from the perspective of Facebook and non-privacy minded individuals.
Also I think the legal-name policy is really just an enforceable approximation of a real-name policy.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 10:47 AM on October 4, 2015
Oh, I totally realize this. It's just that it's rare enough that I doubt Facebook cares if people like that have a hard time. I think this may be one of the cases where there's a trade off and not everyone can be happy with the decision.
cosmic.osmo, there's probably at least one person in your friend group who goes by their middle name as a first name, or a shortened version of their name, or only lists a maidin name that makes them easier for old acquaintances to find....
Actually, several do (including me). I'm not saying I support strict real-names policies, I was just looking at them from the perspective of Facebook and non-privacy minded individuals.
Also I think the legal-name policy is really just an enforceable approximation of a real-name policy.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 10:47 AM on October 4, 2015
On the issue of how your non-isomorphic networks can get connected, there are multiple companies working on technologies to uniquely identify you by things like fine details of your computer hardware and OS installation and your typing idiosyncrasies. Companies are spending big bucks on blue-sky projects like that precisely to complete the connection of all the corners of your profile.
That wasn't my issue. Of course many kinds of side- or trace- information can be used to help identify an online user. My question was about the paper versus curuinor's claim that deanonymization is reducible to graph isomorphism as known as the mathematical problem with practically efficient, fully automatic algorithms.
An assertion was made in this thread that deanonymization is theoretically easy, using an entropy argument. I don't believe the paper actually made this claim or this argument, so I have been left trying to guess what assumptions are being held under such different problem contexts.
posted by polymodus at 11:37 AM on October 4, 2015
That wasn't my issue. Of course many kinds of side- or trace- information can be used to help identify an online user. My question was about the paper versus curuinor's claim that deanonymization is reducible to graph isomorphism as known as the mathematical problem with practically efficient, fully automatic algorithms.
An assertion was made in this thread that deanonymization is theoretically easy, using an entropy argument. I don't believe the paper actually made this claim or this argument, so I have been left trying to guess what assumptions are being held under such different problem contexts.
posted by polymodus at 11:37 AM on October 4, 2015
And just to give a concrete example - how would you figure out my WoW account character given my polymodus profile on Metafilter? It's not obvious how to automate this task at all.
posted by polymodus at 11:43 AM on October 4, 2015
posted by polymodus at 11:43 AM on October 4, 2015
What'll happen to all of the facebook 'shadow profiles' - the gigs worth of data on personal preferences, semi-to-fully-secret communication off of facebook, websites visited, messages sent, religious preference, sexual preference, phone number, email and now, government ID - when facebook eventually goes out of business?
But, also, since shadow profiles have value, I'm sure facebook already sells that data. Possibly pegged to identifying information about individual users, possibly not. And I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned that facebook might sell religious data on, say, x country's users to, say, x country's government. Or to someone who tells them 'my obviously fake company is marketing to a locally unpopular religious minority, can we get names with that info, and don't ask too many questions about my obviously fake company?'
Because, part of what scares me about facebook is that, as a publicly traded company, they have to do just about everything legal they can do with everything of value that they have before they are allowed to go under, right? So, if facebook becomes less massively profitable as times change and the public's taste moves on, who will make offers on what data?
'Well, just don't be on facebook' makes sense if you were forward thinking enough to never join, but it doesn't do much for those, who, like me, have been using the service long enough to experience an extraordinary amount of creep on these issues. Initially, ok, facebook was doing some stuff I wasn't entirely comfy with, but it didn't feel (or, at least wasn't widely known to be) awful. I had, basically, nothing to hide, shows to promote, and I wanted to see pics of my adorable relatives. I can't really point to when, exactly, it happened, but it feels that without a lot of fanfare, a few years back facebook's EULA crossed a threshold that I, and a lot of others, are not only uncomfortable with, but would never have agreed to. However, since they already had a profile on everyone who'd used the service for longer than a minute, since the data was already collected and aggregated, since I'm basically aware that shuttering my account won't erase the dosser of me that they've created (perhaps it'd even incentivize selling that data more), and since deleting my profile won't do anything about the continuing collection of data every time someone mentions me, or uploads a photo of me... I'm basically powerless to do anything about facebook, and facebook is going to use a profile it has built of me in way unconstrained by anything like the foundational documents that my government is theoretically kept in line by. (To say nothing of: my government is unlikely to sell the info they have on me to x other government or for-profit institution, but facebook? Maybe. And what about profile information being resold?) There are certain datapoints facebook has on people that are Very Bad in the wrong hands. I don't think it's weird to be worried that facebook will sell that information for the right price.
posted by qnarf at 12:38 PM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
But, also, since shadow profiles have value, I'm sure facebook already sells that data. Possibly pegged to identifying information about individual users, possibly not. And I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned that facebook might sell religious data on, say, x country's users to, say, x country's government. Or to someone who tells them 'my obviously fake company is marketing to a locally unpopular religious minority, can we get names with that info, and don't ask too many questions about my obviously fake company?'
Because, part of what scares me about facebook is that, as a publicly traded company, they have to do just about everything legal they can do with everything of value that they have before they are allowed to go under, right? So, if facebook becomes less massively profitable as times change and the public's taste moves on, who will make offers on what data?
'Well, just don't be on facebook' makes sense if you were forward thinking enough to never join, but it doesn't do much for those, who, like me, have been using the service long enough to experience an extraordinary amount of creep on these issues. Initially, ok, facebook was doing some stuff I wasn't entirely comfy with, but it didn't feel (or, at least wasn't widely known to be) awful. I had, basically, nothing to hide, shows to promote, and I wanted to see pics of my adorable relatives. I can't really point to when, exactly, it happened, but it feels that without a lot of fanfare, a few years back facebook's EULA crossed a threshold that I, and a lot of others, are not only uncomfortable with, but would never have agreed to. However, since they already had a profile on everyone who'd used the service for longer than a minute, since the data was already collected and aggregated, since I'm basically aware that shuttering my account won't erase the dosser of me that they've created (perhaps it'd even incentivize selling that data more), and since deleting my profile won't do anything about the continuing collection of data every time someone mentions me, or uploads a photo of me... I'm basically powerless to do anything about facebook, and facebook is going to use a profile it has built of me in way unconstrained by anything like the foundational documents that my government is theoretically kept in line by. (To say nothing of: my government is unlikely to sell the info they have on me to x other government or for-profit institution, but facebook? Maybe. And what about profile information being resold?) There are certain datapoints facebook has on people that are Very Bad in the wrong hands. I don't think it's weird to be worried that facebook will sell that information for the right price.
posted by qnarf at 12:38 PM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
Here's another reason Facebook wants real names: Companies who grant credit based on personal data found on social networking sites. Any guesses as to how much revenue Facebook is making from businesses like Lenddo and Affirm?
- From University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business article here: "Lenddo takes it one step further by using a debtor’s social connections to exert pressure if he or she defaults on payments, according to the Journal. For example, the start-up will tell customers’ Facebook friends if they haven’t paid, and the friends’ Lenddo scores could suffer if the customer fails to repay the loan."
- From the San Jose Mercury News article here: "If the mobile site you're using has partnered with Levchin's startup, the user might see a "Pay with Affirm" button. Click that, and you're asked to log into Affirm using your Facebook or other social network account. Affirm takes a cut of the transaction and sends you an invoice."
posted by cynical pinnacle at 12:51 PM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
- From University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business article here: "Lenddo takes it one step further by using a debtor’s social connections to exert pressure if he or she defaults on payments, according to the Journal. For example, the start-up will tell customers’ Facebook friends if they haven’t paid, and the friends’ Lenddo scores could suffer if the customer fails to repay the loan."
- From the San Jose Mercury News article here: "If the mobile site you're using has partnered with Levchin's startup, the user might see a "Pay with Affirm" button. Click that, and you're asked to log into Affirm using your Facebook or other social network account. Affirm takes a cut of the transaction and sends you an invoice."
posted by cynical pinnacle at 12:51 PM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
Wow, a lending service that publicly shames you into paying. The future is here!
posted by teponaztli at 12:58 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by teponaztli at 12:58 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Heh, Lenddo is in direct contravention of federal law. Even if they aren't US-based, Facebook is, and they are enabling the behavior. All we need is some shark of a trial lawyer and Lenddo will be out of business in no time flat. And Facebook might find themselves a credit reporting agency if they keep allowing shitheads to abuse their service like that.
posted by wierdo at 1:24 PM on October 4, 2015
posted by wierdo at 1:24 PM on October 4, 2015
All we need is some shark of a trial lawyer and Lenddo will be out of business in no time flat.
Doesn't that depend on whether they have been financed by Carlyle, etc.?
posted by rhizome at 1:30 PM on October 4, 2015
Doesn't that depend on whether they have been financed by Carlyle, etc.?
posted by rhizome at 1:30 PM on October 4, 2015
Wow, Lenddo sounds like it's breaking all sorts of regulations with their outing of customers, and the "lowering" of other people's credit scores because they know someone who missed a payment. That said, Lenddo and Affirm both sound like more good reasons to avoid a real FB presence.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:36 PM on October 4, 2015
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:36 PM on October 4, 2015
> You know years ago, a large monopolistic corporation used to compile the names and addresses and phone of everyone in a large book and then distribute it to strangers throughly entire cities so that people you didn't even know could just look you up and call you or show up at your door. Thankfully, we were able to defeat these "white pages" before they could be used to exterminate the populace.
On the uses of information previously thought to be innocuous.
posted by rhizome at 1:38 PM on October 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
On the uses of information previously thought to be innocuous.
posted by rhizome at 1:38 PM on October 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
Handful of thoughts on this:
First, as I think I've mentioned before, I use a nickname and my last initial on FB, and have since I signed up back in 2007-ish. But as a straight cis white man, there's little risk of me getting hassled over it. But what this often makes me think of is the textbook problem of string entry for names in databases, where attempting to normalize things almost always excludes some users arbitrarily. In the FB case, that almost mirrors identically the traditional sources of structural power.
Second, one of my roles at my old job was to manage all of the social media, and the more I did that, the more I learned about FB and the more I pulled back. I'm on there relatively little now that I don't have to be, and I feel awkward because one of the things that I'm qualified to do is to run social media but I'm not sure that it's a good idea for most of the people who would be my clients, at least not a great idea past a bit of perfunctory usage. Both the privacy and the content controls through FB's walled garden are pretty dubious. On my computer, I keep Privacy Badger on — I tried No Script for a while, but it was too much of a pain in the ass to get anything to run. One of the things I noticed about the Privacy Badger is that because of Violet Blue's use of Discus for comments, her page won't load unless you enable the Disqus tracker.
But that's also meant that I just don't talk about a lot of my life on social media — I'm more open on MeFi under a weak pseudonym than I am even in friends-only stuff on Facebook because I just don't trust them to protect that data or to use it responsibly. As Google has updated their policies to "Don't Be Evil," I've pulled back hard there too.
Third, one of the things that I do as a passive aggressive protest is to confirm whenever Facebook offers me the wrong tag for a friend — the facial recognition software routinely thinks that chair legs, concrete corners and wire shelves are my wife. I like adding a little noise into the machine. So while I had to name friends from photos the last time I had to do a reset, some of the pictures were absolutely useless. Luckily, I tend to keep my overall list pretty tight, since I don't care about the lives of a lot of tertiary contacts.
Fourth, I don't think there's necessarily a good legal scheme for protecting personal data at all. Think about how often you see maundering about the anonymity of trolls — there's no good way to protect the harassed and not the harassers through a one-size-fits-all policy. And the further we move into this paradigm of data capture, the less able we are going to be to curtail it — any attempts to stop it will be opposed by the companies making billions from the data grab. In a weird way, Chinese restraint on commercial usage may be helpful — except the Chinese government sees nothing wrong with their use of similar data schemes, they just don't want Western companies controlling it.
Fifth, and this is just a minor complaint: Either Violet Blue is misgendering the head of the Transgender Law Center — the current executive director and the previous one have both identified as men — or engaging in some puffery when Blue says her aunt "runs the Transgender Law Center." Playing fast and loose with details has long been something that has annoyed me about Violet Blue's ostensible journalism, and tends to encourage a reading of her work as needlessly hyperbolic.
posted by klangklangston at 2:00 PM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
First, as I think I've mentioned before, I use a nickname and my last initial on FB, and have since I signed up back in 2007-ish. But as a straight cis white man, there's little risk of me getting hassled over it. But what this often makes me think of is the textbook problem of string entry for names in databases, where attempting to normalize things almost always excludes some users arbitrarily. In the FB case, that almost mirrors identically the traditional sources of structural power.
Second, one of my roles at my old job was to manage all of the social media, and the more I did that, the more I learned about FB and the more I pulled back. I'm on there relatively little now that I don't have to be, and I feel awkward because one of the things that I'm qualified to do is to run social media but I'm not sure that it's a good idea for most of the people who would be my clients, at least not a great idea past a bit of perfunctory usage. Both the privacy and the content controls through FB's walled garden are pretty dubious. On my computer, I keep Privacy Badger on — I tried No Script for a while, but it was too much of a pain in the ass to get anything to run. One of the things I noticed about the Privacy Badger is that because of Violet Blue's use of Discus for comments, her page won't load unless you enable the Disqus tracker.
But that's also meant that I just don't talk about a lot of my life on social media — I'm more open on MeFi under a weak pseudonym than I am even in friends-only stuff on Facebook because I just don't trust them to protect that data or to use it responsibly. As Google has updated their policies to "
Third, one of the things that I do as a passive aggressive protest is to confirm whenever Facebook offers me the wrong tag for a friend — the facial recognition software routinely thinks that chair legs, concrete corners and wire shelves are my wife. I like adding a little noise into the machine. So while I had to name friends from photos the last time I had to do a reset, some of the pictures were absolutely useless. Luckily, I tend to keep my overall list pretty tight, since I don't care about the lives of a lot of tertiary contacts.
Fourth, I don't think there's necessarily a good legal scheme for protecting personal data at all. Think about how often you see maundering about the anonymity of trolls — there's no good way to protect the harassed and not the harassers through a one-size-fits-all policy. And the further we move into this paradigm of data capture, the less able we are going to be to curtail it — any attempts to stop it will be opposed by the companies making billions from the data grab. In a weird way, Chinese restraint on commercial usage may be helpful — except the Chinese government sees nothing wrong with their use of similar data schemes, they just don't want Western companies controlling it.
Fifth, and this is just a minor complaint: Either Violet Blue is misgendering the head of the Transgender Law Center — the current executive director and the previous one have both identified as men — or engaging in some puffery when Blue says her aunt "runs the Transgender Law Center." Playing fast and loose with details has long been something that has annoyed me about Violet Blue's ostensible journalism, and tends to encourage a reading of her work as needlessly hyperbolic.
posted by klangklangston at 2:00 PM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
polymodus:
All claims about the easyiness of de-anonymization have to be ones based on entropy, because de-anonymization as a formal task is basically just getting those 33 bits. Given that, the arguments about the easiness of fingerprinting online are listed pretty well in the Panopticlick project's paper. For the argument about neighborhoods, you have to get at a significantly more obscure paper which is cited in one of the citations of the theoretical guarantees paper I mentioned (which does more work on noting the easiness of the phase transition and the existence of it) - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1346684, and Narayanan's explanation which is easier to follow here.
To poke at the WoW example, imagine you give me just your profile and control over WoW data. You have a nice big corpus on Metafilter postings (public), and I bet there's enough entropy to do some ML attacks on your WoW chat corpus (and if something stupid like n-gram similarities are not good enough, which they probably are not, you poke at grammatical features instead, or reduce down to features for where you live, what do you do, gender, age, etc etc), which may not be enough to reduce down to just you but is probably good enough to reduce down to ~100 people. Not practicable for a stalker, good enough for a nation-state or big corp. Many ways to skin a cat.
Few of the actual network-theoretic and good ML techniques are really within the reach of an individual because those mostly aim to de-anonymize 10^5-10^9 people and individuals tend not to actually want to do that, but they are definitely within the reach of the corporation or government.
posted by curuinor at 2:46 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
All claims about the easyiness of de-anonymization have to be ones based on entropy, because de-anonymization as a formal task is basically just getting those 33 bits. Given that, the arguments about the easiness of fingerprinting online are listed pretty well in the Panopticlick project's paper. For the argument about neighborhoods, you have to get at a significantly more obscure paper which is cited in one of the citations of the theoretical guarantees paper I mentioned (which does more work on noting the easiness of the phase transition and the existence of it) - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1346684, and Narayanan's explanation which is easier to follow here.
To poke at the WoW example, imagine you give me just your profile and control over WoW data. You have a nice big corpus on Metafilter postings (public), and I bet there's enough entropy to do some ML attacks on your WoW chat corpus (and if something stupid like n-gram similarities are not good enough, which they probably are not, you poke at grammatical features instead, or reduce down to features for where you live, what do you do, gender, age, etc etc), which may not be enough to reduce down to just you but is probably good enough to reduce down to ~100 people. Not practicable for a stalker, good enough for a nation-state or big corp. Many ways to skin a cat.
Few of the actual network-theoretic and good ML techniques are really within the reach of an individual because those mostly aim to de-anonymize 10^5-10^9 people and individuals tend not to actually want to do that, but they are definitely within the reach of the corporation or government.
posted by curuinor at 2:46 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
So long as your fake name is suitably Western and you provide them with something you are credibly pretending is a government ID (even if it is a terrible photo that is entirely of a surface hologram and is illegible,) they have no problem.
Those who are operating under pseudonyms or half names have simply not been reported yet, and are only one acrimonious discussion away from losing their accounts and needing to perform this particular kabuki.
This is not about actual names, it is about plausible names which can be believed without actual verification, and the most plausible names are Western ones.
posted by perianwyr at 7:19 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Those who are operating under pseudonyms or half names have simply not been reported yet, and are only one acrimonious discussion away from losing their accounts and needing to perform this particular kabuki.
This is not about actual names, it is about plausible names which can be believed without actual verification, and the most plausible names are Western ones.
posted by perianwyr at 7:19 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
The irony that I can't read that post without enabling trackers is not lost on me.
posted by rufb at 7:26 PM on October 4, 2015
posted by rufb at 7:26 PM on October 4, 2015
So, if facebook becomes less massively profitable as times change and the public's taste moves on, who will make offers on what data?
That is a great question. If the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general keep vigilant about the importance of customer data in the event of bankruptcy, privacy may still have a fighting chance.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 7:28 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
That is a great question. If the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general keep vigilant about the importance of customer data in the event of bankruptcy, privacy may still have a fighting chance.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 7:28 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
When Jones New York (women's clothing retailer) announced it was up for sale earlier in the year (or late last year, I forget the exact date), the first thing the company did was sell off its e-mail contact list to a shoe company (Easy Spirit). They didn't contact their customers first. Instead there was an e-mail in my inbox saying, "we (Easy Spirit) got your name from Jones. Now you're on our mailing list. Opt out if you want." Customer data privacy doesn't exist. And I seriously doubt it will ever exist.
posted by sardonyx at 8:15 PM on October 4, 2015
posted by sardonyx at 8:15 PM on October 4, 2015
The EU's right to be forgotten is on the right track.
posted by humanfont at 8:45 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by humanfont at 8:45 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
"it's absolutely true that if you and your circle consist entirely of centrist, prosperous individuals then you can probably take pretty well any name you like. It's also absolutely true that if you're any sort of outspoken person, then Facebook will come down on you like a ton of bricks"
What an offensively presumptuous comment.
I am far from prosperous. In fact I chose to forego some prosperity to do the helping work I do. I do illegal drugs (hallucinogens) and am open about it. I am vocal about things I care about, which are often not mainstream. I've posted a lot about the issues I see with police entitlement and brutality in this country. I used to be an escort and am relatively open about that. I have friends and acquaintances from all walks of life and in fact probably have "too much" diversity in my friends list, as I've lumped in employers and coworkers with friends and family. There are devoutly religious people, atheists, gay, straight, white, black, you name it.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 3:18 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
What an offensively presumptuous comment.
I am far from prosperous. In fact I chose to forego some prosperity to do the helping work I do. I do illegal drugs (hallucinogens) and am open about it. I am vocal about things I care about, which are often not mainstream. I've posted a lot about the issues I see with police entitlement and brutality in this country. I used to be an escort and am relatively open about that. I have friends and acquaintances from all walks of life and in fact probably have "too much" diversity in my friends list, as I've lumped in employers and coworkers with friends and family. There are devoutly religious people, atheists, gay, straight, white, black, you name it.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 3:18 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I guess there's also a geographical component to this. It is rather common among Germans to use only the first syllable of their first and last names as their Facebook name.
posted by brokkr at 6:12 AM on October 5, 2015
posted by brokkr at 6:12 AM on October 5, 2015
On LiveJournal and protected posts: I was on the Terms of Service team as a volunteer in 2003/2004, and thus saw a huge number of people's journals that were outside my own personal use of the site. This was at a point when if you did a little hunting you could often figure out if someone had protected entries (because of how it displayed on the calendar) but you couldn't see anything else about them other than the day they happened on.
(We often had to poke at that because there are some Terms of Service issues where the content had to be removed entirely, rather than just not public, and we'd have to see if we had to get a staff member with appropriate ability to check it. If someone decided to just remove that post, then no need.)
As I remember it, maybe 1/4 of people using the site at that time had entirely public journals, about 1/4 had entirely locked journals, and most people in the middle had a mix (ranging from 'mostly public with occasional private posts for really identifying things' to 'mostly locked, with occasional public posts'. It was very common for people to do a "I'll add basically anyone who asks: I just don't want things to be trivially searchable on the larger Internet", too. Communities were more varied, and I think a lot of dynamics there changed more over time as there were more community tools.
posted by modernhypatia at 12:15 PM on October 5, 2015
(We often had to poke at that because there are some Terms of Service issues where the content had to be removed entirely, rather than just not public, and we'd have to see if we had to get a staff member with appropriate ability to check it. If someone decided to just remove that post, then no need.)
As I remember it, maybe 1/4 of people using the site at that time had entirely public journals, about 1/4 had entirely locked journals, and most people in the middle had a mix (ranging from 'mostly public with occasional private posts for really identifying things' to 'mostly locked, with occasional public posts'. It was very common for people to do a "I'll add basically anyone who asks: I just don't want things to be trivially searchable on the larger Internet", too. Communities were more varied, and I think a lot of dynamics there changed more over time as there were more community tools.
posted by modernhypatia at 12:15 PM on October 5, 2015
My stance is that if Facebook is going to require state ID, that makes them a government actor.
posted by rhizome at 2:35 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by rhizome at 2:35 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I have long since lost count of the number of times I have been glad I have no facebook account. Taking inventory: no twitter, no pinterest, no instagram, no AOL, no Compuserve, no--Ghod, I can't even remember the name--oh yeh, myspace. I do ask myself often what the next huge thing is going to be, so as to carefully avoid it. (If metafilter membership suddenly spikes into the trillions, I'm skrood.)
posted by jfuller at 3:48 PM on October 5, 2015
posted by jfuller at 3:48 PM on October 5, 2015
"I was on the Terms of Service team as a volunteer in 2003/2004, and thus saw a huge number of people's journals that were outside my own personal use of the site."
Frequently, I feel like Facebook adopted all the idiotic provisions from LJ's TOS. I remember having an incredibly dumb fight before capitulating after someone filed a DCMA complaint about my profile picture — which was one I took, of me — alleging it was their copyright. That I could produce infinitely more functionally identical pictures was no defense — I had no ability to prove to the schmuck running it that I actually owned the copyright of that specific image, and I was welcome to take the case to court but LJ would suspend my account for the duration.
posted by klangklangston at 4:47 PM on October 5, 2015
Frequently, I feel like Facebook adopted all the idiotic provisions from LJ's TOS. I remember having an incredibly dumb fight before capitulating after someone filed a DCMA complaint about my profile picture — which was one I took, of me — alleging it was their copyright. That I could produce infinitely more functionally identical pictures was no defense — I had no ability to prove to the schmuck running it that I actually owned the copyright of that specific image, and I was welcome to take the case to court but LJ would suspend my account for the duration.
posted by klangklangston at 4:47 PM on October 5, 2015
Ya there is only downside for someplace like LiveJournal to fight a DCMA notice. I'd be surprised if any free blogging service goes to bat for their users in that way.
posted by Mitheral at 6:57 PM on October 5, 2015
posted by Mitheral at 6:57 PM on October 5, 2015
I've tended to think the same thing about Facebook (and other sites! I keep having these moments where something turns into a huge mess, and I wander around going "Do we not know Internet History, people? Are we doomed to repeat it every couple of years? Honestly!" like something out of a Greek tragedy for a day or two at anyone who will let me.)
On the copyright: there really isn't any good solution to it, given the law: it's not like any given site is in a position to make an actual legal decision about who holds copyright, because they're not a court of law. That said, there've been more recent legal decisions than 2003 (I alas forget the details and can't dig for them right now) that mean that sites are more okay with "You, person A, claim a violation. You, person B, claim it isn't. You can take it to court, we are no longer involved" options (sometimes after some back and forth and temporary removal while you work through the legal required statements/actions).
On the other hand, a really startling number of sites have no clue about the legal implications of their decisions, or much of the precedent, so this kind of thing is often handled very badly.
posted by modernhypatia at 6:21 AM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
On the copyright: there really isn't any good solution to it, given the law: it's not like any given site is in a position to make an actual legal decision about who holds copyright, because they're not a court of law. That said, there've been more recent legal decisions than 2003 (I alas forget the details and can't dig for them right now) that mean that sites are more okay with "You, person A, claim a violation. You, person B, claim it isn't. You can take it to court, we are no longer involved" options (sometimes after some back and forth and temporary removal while you work through the legal required statements/actions).
On the other hand, a really startling number of sites have no clue about the legal implications of their decisions, or much of the precedent, so this kind of thing is often handled very badly.
posted by modernhypatia at 6:21 AM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
Mod note: A couple of comments deleted. It's fine if you don't really personally care for the author, but a) you need to be commenting on the article, not making personal charges against her, b) particularly with incorrect information (that her name is not her legal name), or c) complaints that a writer who writes about internet, tech and identity issues is writing about these issues. Complaining about women discussing issues "for attention" is a toxic trope; please avoid.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:59 AM on October 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:59 AM on October 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Mod note: One comment deleted. There's an article and a bunch of other stuff here about how for some people their former names are a problem in myriad ways, and there's obvious ways that female public figures get harassed and threatened on the internet and how it might behoove them not to put all their identity info online. If you think her concerns about her identity stuff are silly or whatever, please just skip this discussion; what you're doing is just picking a fight.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:40 AM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:40 AM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Tim Berners-Lee: 'Just Say No' To Facebook's Plan To Bastardize The Internet
posted by homunculus at 2:57 PM on October 21, 2015
posted by homunculus at 2:57 PM on October 21, 2015
Your personal experience simply indicates nobody has complained about your profile name.
Or, as I wrote before, any other name on my friends list, which has included a whoooole bunch of fake names.
I don't know why a couple people jumped down my throat for the simple observation that Facebook doesn't seem to enforce their real name policy very much.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 3:18 AM on October 31, 2015
Or, as I wrote before, any other name on my friends list, which has included a whoooole bunch of fake names.
I don't know why a couple people jumped down my throat for the simple observation that Facebook doesn't seem to enforce their real name policy very much.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 3:18 AM on October 31, 2015
It's clear that Facebook does have such a policy, and that they do enforce it. The fact that their enforcement is selective doesn't make it better; it means that it's possibly arbitrary, and done for bad reasons.
So when you say "Oh, lots of my friends have fake names!" it probably means that you and your friends are members of a privileged group that isn't subject to attacks by people demanding that Facebook enforce its TOS.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:44 AM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]
So when you say "Oh, lots of my friends have fake names!" it probably means that you and your friends are members of a privileged group that isn't subject to attacks by people demanding that Facebook enforce its TOS.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:44 AM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]
Facebook relaxes 'real name' policy in face of protest
Facebook has announced plans to water down its controversial “real names” policy, after lobbying from civil liberties groups worldwide. The new rules still officially require the use of “authentic names” on the site, something which has previously resulted in criticism from varied groups including the drag community, Native Americans, and trans people. While Facebook does not require the use of “legal names” on the site, it does demand that users identify with the name that other people know them by. [...]
Firstly, the site will now allow users to “provide more information about their circumstances” in order to “give additional details or context on their unique situation”. [...]
Secondly, the company will require that users who flag others for using fake names also provide more context. Falsely flagging profiles for using a fake name has become a popular tool of harassment on the site.
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:01 AM on November 2, 2015
Facebook has announced plans to water down its controversial “real names” policy, after lobbying from civil liberties groups worldwide. The new rules still officially require the use of “authentic names” on the site, something which has previously resulted in criticism from varied groups including the drag community, Native Americans, and trans people. While Facebook does not require the use of “legal names” on the site, it does demand that users identify with the name that other people know them by. [...]
Firstly, the site will now allow users to “provide more information about their circumstances” in order to “give additional details or context on their unique situation”. [...]
Secondly, the company will require that users who flag others for using fake names also provide more context. Falsely flagging profiles for using a fake name has become a popular tool of harassment on the site.
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:01 AM on November 2, 2015
« Older The Spiritual Ordeal of Marriage | #FreeAllBodies Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
So you lose some of the network effect you get with FB, you win having some sort of control over your communications.
posted by signal at 8:23 PM on October 3, 2015 [13 favorites]