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What is wrong with being both? To me it seems like a mutually beneficial relationship. I am getting tremendous value from using their site to interact with and

by kcurtin 15y ago

What is wrong with being both? To me it seems like a mutually beneficial relationship. I am getting tremendous value from using their site to interact with and stay connected with friends. They are using my data to make money by serving me unobtrusive ads that don't really negatively impact my user experience. I do think that being more upfront and more transparent would be a good thing, there are alot of misconceptions out there.

davidw 15y ago
Being both what? I wrote that I agreed with the point of the article. My point was that most people, who are only casual users, are going to take a while to slowly make their way down this path: 1) Oh, what a cool service! For free! 2) Huh, they're showing me ads for stuff I'm interested in... what's up with that. Oh! They're selling "me" to these companies! OMG! Privacy!!! 3) Ah... well if I know exactly what they are and are not selling, and I get the free service, I guess that makes sense and I'm ok with it. It beats paying, and I do like using it.
- kcurtin 15y ago
  *Both the product and the user. But I do agree that there is almost always an initial negative reaction when people figure out that their data is being sold.
pingswept 15y ago
If Facebook were simply showing me ads for stuff I mentioned, or something like that, I would have no objection. "Hmm, this guy keeps posting about hats. He must like hats. Let's show him some ads for hats!" No problem. That's basically what I thought would happen when I signed up. I did not expect that when I visited cnn.com, after having logged into Facebook a week earlier, Facebook would log which articles I read. There was no reason for me to think that clicking "remember me" when I logged into Facebook also implied "and also remember my browsing history on all of your partner sites." That's the behavior that pisses me off, not the targeted ads that you mentioned. (I assume it's obvious why logging a subset of my browsing history without my consent pisses me off, but let me know if that seems odd and I'll explain more.)
- etha 15y ago
  It's not obvious to me. How were you harmed by facebook logging this data?
  - pingswept 15y ago
    I'm not actually asserting that the logging itself harms me, just that it pisses me off. The reason it pisses me off is that my browser history reveals things about me that I'd rather keep private. Facebook is taking that from me without my consent. I would feel approximately the same if I discovered they were stealing stuff out of my garage without my consent-- it wasn't part of the deal I thought I agreed to. Without getting into the details of my particular situation, I'll just say that I have political and religious views that I think are unpopular, and I don't trust the rest of the world to treat me fairly were those views made public. Also, even my views weren't unpopular now, I want to be judged for what I do, not what I read about on the web. (I should also add that I don't think any of the private stuff that I mentioned is creepy; it's just my private business. For example, I might feel the same way if I were gay and lived in Mauritania (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Mauritania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Mauritania).) Seem reasonable?
    - etha 15y ago
      Not really, no. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding facebook's tracking system, but I don't think your browser history is being captured here. You are viewing pages that have a facebook widget on them, and if you have a facebook cookie that says "pingswept", this tells facebook that pingswept visited a page with a specific widget on it (and thus, which page). Facebook is not taking anything from you that you are not sending them - the issue is that a website that is not facebook is passing your information on to facebook. Aren't they the ones that deceived you, not facebook?
      - pingswept 15y ago
        I believe you have explained the mechanics of the system correctly. As to who is doing the deception, I think you're right that (in the example we're discussing) cnn.com is being deceptive. That's a good point; I hadn't really considered the complicity of the partner sites. But in the end, Facebook is producing widgets, building a system to receive data from those widgets, and working with their partners to deploy those widgets. This system of data transmission is in no way obvious to normal people; if I weren't a web developer, I'd just think I was seeing a "like button image," and that's it. That's the part that pisses me off-- I think it's sneaky, not just me complaining about something I originally agreed to. Just out of curiosity, and assuming you actually have a Facebook account, this really doesn't bother you at all? Should it be obvious to me that buttons I'm not clicking may be transmitting data to other sites?
DanBC 15y ago
> I am getting tremendous value from using their site to interact with and stay connected with friends. What about the people who haven't signed up to Facebook, but who still have data about them logged? I see nothing mutual about that relationship.
gldalmaso 15y ago
> by serving me unobtrusive ads that don't really negatively impact my user experience I'm not a heavy Facebook user, but what you said certainly does not apply to google. What was once unobtrusive ads now are just ads cleverly disguised as search results in a very faint slightly different background-color box. They wanna pass the ads down as search results and that certainly impacts user experience. These guys are wise enough not simply through the ads in there altogether, they let you grow accostumed, than just enlarge then a slight bit every now and then. That is not a mutually beneficial relationship, that's an abusive relationship.
- gujk 15y ago
  In theory, you're complaint is valid. In practice, my browser is quite capable of detecting those ads and dispatching them according to my wishes.

by kcurtin 15y ago

davidw 15y ago

Being both what? I wrote that I agreed with the point of the article. My point was that most people, who are only casual users, are going to take a while to slowly make their way down this path: 1) Oh, what a cool service! For free! 2) Huh, they're showing me ads for stuff I'm interested in... what's up with that. Oh! They're selling "me" to these companies! OMG! Privacy!!! 3) Ah... well if I know exactly what they are and are not selling, and I get the free service, I guess that makes sense and I'm ok with it. It beats paying, and I do like using it.

kcurtin 15y ago
*Both the product and the user. But I do agree that there is almost always an initial negative reaction when people figure out that their data is being sold.

pingswept 15y ago

If Facebook were simply showing me ads for stuff I mentioned, or something like that, I would have no objection. "Hmm, this guy keeps posting about hats. He must like hats. Let's show him some ads for hats!" No problem. That's basically what I thought would happen when I signed up. I did not expect that when I visited cnn.com, after having logged into Facebook a week earlier, Facebook would log which articles I read. There was no reason for me to think that clicking "remember me" when I logged into Facebook also implied "and also remember my browsing history on all of your partner sites." That's the behavior that pisses me off, not the targeted ads that you mentioned. (I assume it's obvious why logging a subset of my browsing history without my consent pisses me off, but let me know if that seems odd and I'll explain more.)

etha 15y ago
It's not obvious to me. How were you harmed by facebook logging this data?
- pingswept 15y ago
  I'm not actually asserting that the logging itself harms me, just that it pisses me off. The reason it pisses me off is that my browser history reveals things about me that I'd rather keep private. Facebook is taking that from me without my consent. I would feel approximately the same if I discovered they were stealing stuff out of my garage without my consent-- it wasn't part of the deal I thought I agreed to. Without getting into the details of my particular situation, I'll just say that I have political and religious views that I think are unpopular, and I don't trust the rest of the world to treat me fairly were those views made public. Also, even my views weren't unpopular now, I want to be judged for what I do, not what I read about on the web. (I should also add that I don't think any of the private stuff that I mentioned is creepy; it's just my private business. For example, I might feel the same way if I were gay and lived in Mauritania (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Mauritania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Mauritania).) Seem reasonable?
  - etha 15y ago
    Not really, no. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding facebook's tracking system, but I don't think your browser history is being captured here. You are viewing pages that have a facebook widget on them, and if you have a facebook cookie that says "pingswept", this tells facebook that pingswept visited a page with a specific widget on it (and thus, which page). Facebook is not taking anything from you that you are not sending them - the issue is that a website that is not facebook is passing your information on to facebook. Aren't they the ones that deceived you, not facebook?
    - pingswept 15y ago
      I believe you have explained the mechanics of the system correctly. As to who is doing the deception, I think you're right that (in the example we're discussing) cnn.com is being deceptive. That's a good point; I hadn't really considered the complicity of the partner sites. But in the end, Facebook is producing widgets, building a system to receive data from those widgets, and working with their partners to deploy those widgets. This system of data transmission is in no way obvious to normal people; if I weren't a web developer, I'd just think I was seeing a "like button image," and that's it. That's the part that pisses me off-- I think it's sneaky, not just me complaining about something I originally agreed to. Just out of curiosity, and assuming you actually have a Facebook account, this really doesn't bother you at all? Should it be obvious to me that buttons I'm not clicking may be transmitting data to other sites?

DanBC 15y ago

> I am getting tremendous value from using their site to interact with and stay connected with friends. What about the people who haven't signed up to Facebook, but who still have data about them logged? I see nothing mutual about that relationship.

gldalmaso 15y ago

> by serving me unobtrusive ads that don't really negatively impact my user experience I'm not a heavy Facebook user, but what you said certainly does not apply to google. What was once unobtrusive ads now are just ads cleverly disguised as search results in a very faint slightly different background-color box. They wanna pass the ads down as search results and that certainly impacts user experience. These guys are wise enough not simply through the ads in there altogether, they let you grow accostumed, than just enlarge then a slight bit every now and then. That is not a mutually beneficial relationship, that's an abusive relationship.

gujk 15y ago
In theory, you're complaint is valid. In practice, my browser is quite capable of detecting those ads and dispatching them according to my wishes.