[HN Gopher] Creeping as a Service ___________________________________________________________________ Creeping as a Service Author : dshipper Score : 178 points Date : 2021-02-09 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (every.to) (TXT) w3m dump (every.to) | transitivebs wrote: | Def reminds me of https://www.flock.network as well | smit2300 wrote: | The content here is definitely a useful meditation on what | people's core ideals are over time, but I think it paints a | really shallow image of human beings. Of course people's Twitter | bios change over time, they're a roughly 25-word blurb, not a | perfect representation of the individual running the account. | People are allowed to feel some topics need more limelight than | others at certain times of history, that doesn't mean they're | some horrible vulture using the cause for personal gain. Just | because you take Bernie2020 or BlackLivesMatter out of your | Twitter bio doesn't mean you stop caring about those things, it | just means you changed your Twitter bio. | AlphaWeaver wrote: | If you want to use this service without signing up, you can | browse someone's profile directly at | https://spoonbill.io/data/<username> | dylan604 wrote: | is this by design, or just lazy coding? | gfody wrote: | facilitating crass creeping as a service where one monitors | spoonbill for removal requests for the really interesting stuff | jameslk wrote: | I've been wondering when something like this would be made. I've | felt that it would be even more disgusting to track changes on | LinkedIn profiles (imagine these changes being purchased by | companies where you're interviewing). | | Unfortunately the web is open and there's nothing really to stop | it, sans regulations and trust that they will be enforced. Once | your life is on the internet you might as well assume everything | you say or do is being tracked in some version control repository | for humans. | technick wrote: | I did a vendor review last year for a SaaS which tracks the | changes of your employees linkedin profiles (they also | partnered with monster and a few other job boards). The service | is used by HR departments to measure employee happiness and | risk rate which person is looking. | recursive wrote: | How is this disgusting? I'm pretty out of the loop with social | media. But I'm assuming the major networks have the concept of | a "private" profile. And I assume that such profiles wouldn't | be available on this service. | | If I'm wrong about the existence of private profiles, then the | problem isn't this service. The problem would be publishing | information publicly that they wish to remain private. | McMini wrote: | If they track 10,000,000 accounts, does this mean they make | millions of request towards Twitter every minute? Isn't that | against Twitters terms? | codetrotter wrote: | They might be paying Twitter for enterprise API access. | | https://developer.twitter.com/en/products/twitter-api/enterp... | vincentmarle wrote: | I'm not seeing anything about pricing. How do they make | money? | filoleg wrote: | > I'm not seeing anything about pricing. How do they make | money? | | Right next to the "Apply for enterprise access" button, | there is a giant block of text saying "Our enterprise | solutions are customized with predictable pricing". | | Basically, they make money, because that API access isn't | free. They don't list the actual price there because, as it | is the case with most enterprise sales, there is no fixed | pricing, and they work out individual deals on a case-by- | case basis (which is based on the number of requests you | expect your API to make per day/hour, volume discounts, | long-term contract discounts, etc.). | | Long story short, there is a price on it, but to find out | what it is, you will have to apply. And the price you will | get will probably not be representative of the price other | people/enterprises get, but at least you will know what it | will cost for your specific company/project. | dvt wrote: | I wouldn't really call tracking public biography diffs "creeping" | though. Either way, this may be interesting, but is there an | actual viable business here? | | Would anyone _pay_ to see this information tracked? Maybe | journalists? | spongechameleon wrote: | While this made me feel creeped out at first, that "metadata" all | seems like the public information that we intend to share when we | signup for a service like Twitter. | remram wrote: | Basic but important things such as renames don't even show | up... | detaro wrote: | Systematic collection and archiving of "metadata" is not the | same as data being available at some point in time. (It's | really the same as the arguments against other automated | surveillance: it's "public metadata" where your car is on | public roads, but a country-wide database based on automated | scans is still different than the fact that someone can follow | you around manually) | egypturnash wrote: | Damn this sure is about a level of Giving A Fuck About Twitter | than I have never achieved in the thirteen years I've been on | Twitter. Like, I just looked at the data Spoonbill has on my | account and it's just a set of "egypturnash changed their | website/bio/location" entries in mid-May 2020, which is when I | assume this site first decided to look at my profile. | | Also this sure is a stealth ad and a half for Spoonbill. | kyleblarson wrote: | Every time I learn about stuff like this I'm glad that I left the | toxic cesspool that is social media years ago. (Of course I don't | include HN in this category.) | SCUSKU wrote: | I am with you there. Sometimes though I wish HN'ers were a | little more compassionate to their fellow hackers. I suppose | everything can't be perfect though. | kreeben wrote: | >> though I wish HN'ers were a little more compassionate to | their fellow hackers | | The reason why HN'ers are not always kind to other HN'ers is, | because HN is nothing more and nothing less than social | media, albeit at its finest. | rl3 wrote: | In the past I've theorized people do this for HN comments to | track edits. | | As a serial _edit-until-finally-satisfied_ poster, I suppose it | 's nice to know that those edits are taking up terabytes of data | in such systems. :) | bartread wrote: | Back in 2013, at the intersection of peak .ly domain usage, crazy | amounts of information available through Facebook's graph APIs | (as well as other social networks), widespread GPS-equipped | smartphone usage, and free and open APIs literally everywhere | (including Google maps), along with my own re-education as a | then-modern web developer after years of mostly desktop app | development, I realised it would be possible to plot the | movements of anyone you "knew" online within a pretty good margin | of error in most cases using their social media updates. | | _As a joke_ - let me emphasise: _AS A JOKE_ (we 'll get to this | in a minute) - I seriously considered (aware of the irony) | registering stalk.ly as a domain name with Libyan Spider and | using it to host a site that billed itself as an online private | investigation agency with the tagline, "We'll find out what you | need to know... for a price." The whole thing was overall going | to look as shady as reasonably possible. | | You'd be able to find out exactly what you'd been up to and where | you'd been based on your social media posts, with a timeline, map | view, etc. There'd be a sign-up option that would offer you the | ability to do the same for your "friends". | | Worried your partner has been having an affair? No problem: slap | their profile URL in here and we'll tell you exactly what they've | been up to and where they've been up to it, etc. Want to know | what your kids or employees have been up to? We've got that | covered too. Oh yeah. | | The point was to highlight how much oversharing most of us do | online, and how unaware we all often are of how much information | about our lives we're really giving away. Also I was more than a | bit curious about how many people would actually try to sign up, | and I thought it might be funny. | | Fortunately (I think, although I still wonder sometimes) my | tendency to laziness kicked in and I never actually implemented | it. I was also a bit concerned about the possibility of | unintended consequences that could be personally detrimental. I | have no doubt Facebook et all would have gone ber-effin-zerk once | they'd spotted the app, but that wasn't my major concern - I was | more worried about the reaction of friends, and my employer, if | by some chance it had gained some traction. | | The ideal outcome would have been for it to provide a certain | amount of entertainment for a while, and possibly drawn some | small attention to issues of privacy that - prior to that point - | had very much been minority concerns. Still, I was quite worried | about it backfiring. | muttled wrote: | The real plot twist would be if you send a message to the user | they were stalking letting them know who made the attempt. | bartread wrote: | Absolute genius. That would have been incredible. It would | also have caused the most incredible shitstorm. | | Maybe let them check, offer a redacted or | scrambled/fictionalised history, and then let their target | know a week or two later. | | Otherwise I think it would have been shut down really | quickly. You really want the thing to build up a head of | steam before the sky falls if at all possible. | [deleted] | joncp wrote: | Information wants to be free. If you post information in a public | forum then that information can take on a life of its own. I'm | just surprised that people are surprised by that. | balls187 wrote: | Not really related, but Budgie Smuggler is the Australian common | name for men's speedo like swimwear. The name is derived from the | fact that the look of a man's privates while wearing the swim | wear appears as if the man is hiding (smuggling) a small bird (a | budgie) down his pants. | | Hence, Budgie Smuggler. | tobias2014 wrote: | Is archive.org then also creeping as a service? | tppiotrowski wrote: | > Social apps have made creepers out of all of us. | | Back in the AOL Instant Messenger days of the early 2000's there | was a service like this that tracked users' "Away Messages". | People definitely tweaked those repeatedly as well :) | gumby wrote: | Who cares? I don't mean "who cares about this article"; I found | it worth the read. What I really mean is: is there really that | much interest, or even that much _of_ interest, in the edits of | peoples ' autobiographical sound bites? | | We "learn" that Elon Musk is indeed self-centered and image- | obsessed. Big deal, I'm sure he hopes that you think so, and you | already knew so before reading this. Anyone whose net worth is | tied to their public image and fandom is almost certainly the | same. It's also not clear how much of those changes are actually | his personality and how much are simply consistent with his | public persona. A delta between the two would be interesting but | almost by definition impossible to determine from this info. | | Don't get me wrong: I'm sure there is a fascinating PhD or two to | be found in this info. But for any ordinary person (including | journalists or TMZ employee) are there any real, insightful | nuggets in what is explicitly the process of curation? | detaro wrote: | It's "awesome" to make sure that if someone ever had something | in there that's now embarrassing or wrong you can taunt them | with it without having to have stalked them yourself. Stalker | paradise. | gumby wrote: | Sigh. This is indeed an example of someone who would care. | Judgmentality wrote: | > We "learn" that Elon Musk is indeed self-centered and image- | obsessed. | | It's an untestable hypothesis, but I've always wondered if | anyone would care about Elon Musk if he never got hairplugs. | | https://pagesix.com/2018/07/25/its-highly-likely-elon-musk-s... | | I just can't imagine him developing a cult personality without | it. I think people would think of him more like Ballmer - just | kinda crazy. | dylan604 wrote: | Yeah, cuz nobody cares about Bezos | SkyBelow wrote: | HR seems to, and that alone is enough to cause massive | disruption for most people, even the 'relatively well off'. If | you aren't rich enough to never need to work again to survive, | then your livelihood is one Twitter mob away from being | destroyed. | kall wrote: | Spoonbill updates are neat when people use twitter bios as a | mini resume, like a linkedin feed of sorts. That way you can | see who left facebook this week. | Swizec wrote: | People care. As evidence I present the entire yellow | journalism, reality show, and influencer industry. | | There's an entire meme economy built on top of things like the | batchelor. None of those people are even noteworthy. | | People really really care. | gumby wrote: | I understand that many people are interested in celebrity. | (That's why I included people like "TMZ employee" as | "ordinary people"). | | I really meant the ephemera of autographical edits. It seemed | as relevant as collecting used cocktail napkins of | celebrities. | | A parallel comment to yours suggests its fodder for "gotcha" | posts. I guess that makes sense for those who like that, so | does answer, a little, my "who cares" question. | Debug_Overload wrote: | Stuff like this makes our online presence very creepy. More than | I personally used to think anyway. Even on platforms where people | usually think of their accounts as "throwaway" or "anonymous". | | Take Reddit. Besides the well-known archive sites that keep | removed/deleted _content_ (removeddit, ceddit, etc), there is | this cool service (pushshift) that offers all that and more. One | interesting and relevant feature of this tool is the ability to | look up all content by a specific author /username. You just put | the name there, and lo and behold, everything this person ever | posted is right there; even if it's deleted, or removed. | | If you do a quick test using this tool, you'll soon see the | amount of people who thought their deleted content couldn't be | tied back to them, continuing to use their usernames like nothing | happened. The deleted content can sometimes be incredibly | sensitive information that the person posted by mistake (or when | looking for advice, having a rant about something, etc). It | sometimes includes very specific details that may uniquely | identify a person. And most users aren't aware of any of this. | And it's available even if you delete your account. Someone just | has to know that you used this username once upon a time. | | The tool eventually removed this option from the UI (but it's | still available through their API). The thread where this removal | was announced is interesting and reveals how useful this tool was | to some users on Reddit for combating spam/harassment (or even to | find their own content), but nevertheless this dark side of it is | there. As you might expect, someone slapped a new UI on that very | tool, and that feature is readily available today, few google | searches away. | | When I saw this tool, it really reminded me of that. It's | incredible how our online activities became permanent, no matter | how much we try to erase the parts we don't like (or don't want | to be public). | beauzero wrote: | "Retroactive prosecution" are words that I tell my daughters | all the time. Do NOT put your opinions online...period. You | have no idea what will be illegal in 30 years and if you were | for or against it. | bikeshaving wrote: | For Americans, if it were legal for you to post something | today, your actions are legally protected thanks to Article | 1, Section 9, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which prevents | "ex post facto" laws, or laws which retroactively change the | legal consequences of past actions. | | Most countries have some version of this protection, so your | legal advice to your daughters is probably incorrect. | aranelsurion wrote: | While this is technically correct from legal standpoint, | the kernel of truth is in there. (Il)legality doesn't | matter much compared to consequences. Consequences matter a | lot, and in that case his advice is perfectly sound. | | That one "joke" you made when you were sixteen might render | you unemployable by 2040. People evolve, and their earlier | marks on earth vanish. Before social media even the worst | could re-make themselves into something better, now even | the best have their worst moments permanently recorded. | interviewer0000 wrote: | Not if your families beliefs are outdated or otherwise | bigoted. My older family members are racist. I harbored | racist beliefs, and told plenty of racist jokes as a boy. | My "opinions", I posted on twitter, as a teenager, would be | more than enough to get me expelled from society today. Be | it culturally cancelled in the US, or imprisoned in the UK. | | Not everyone is raised by good people. Thankfully I had a | seismic event (Perma banned from a favorite game after | sinking 1000s of hours for being offensive) correct my | behavior. I thank my lucky stars it was merely me being | banned from a video game that caused me to reconsider how I | act, and not something much more serious. | beauzero wrote: | Different perspective. It's not legal advice. It's read | history advice...when governments change people generally | go to prison or worse for things that were legal under the | previous government. Since data is mobile and global there | is good chance that if a government goes away the data | won't. | torwayburger wrote: | I'm thinking McCarthyism as an example makes it good advice | either way. | ISO-morphism wrote: | I think gp may be going for "persecution" rather than | "prosecution", i.e. jury of public opinion rather than jury | in a courtroom. | offtop5 wrote: | Tools like this are why I stopped using Reddit ( aside from | talking about programming). And I assume anything I post here | may eventually be traced back to me. | | Even if you do change your username regularly, your patterns of | speech may stay rather similar. And no matter what you say, the | context around it may change in 30 years or so. | | This new generation loves to screenshot personal conversations | and then post them to Reddit for brownie points. Meaning if you | get involved with someone who's slightly malicious, they can | easily ruin your life too. | | At this point I'm very careful to only meet folks in person. | It's not unheard of for people to share compromising details | about themselves, only to become extortion victims. | dangus wrote: | Everything you're saying is true, and from a privacy | standpoint it is quite scary. | | However, there's a really easy way to not worry about this: | don't be mean/rude to other people publicly, and think about | what you say before writing it down. | | It's also hard to be "compromised" if you really own who you | are. Embarrassing things about yourself are only embarrassing | if you're embarrassed about them. | | Obviously, people have interests and fetishes they'd rather | not be made public. Maybe they'd like to interact with those | communities online and remain anonymous. I don't have an easy | answer for that - an alt account might not be enough. | | Still, for many social media sites it really is in some ways | the same standard as written letters. Don't write things that | you're worried about being read and attributed to you in the | future. | | Security by obscurity many apply: if in 2050 everyone | everyone has 30-40 years of social media data under their | belt, it strikes my as unlikely that anybody's going to care | about the one thing you said 30 years ago, a needle in quite | an enormous haystack. | | After all, you aren't a historical figure. | ishjoh wrote: | I would really caution against thinking this way. Parent | discusses changing contexts which is exactly right. Things | said in polite society 30 years ago are no longer | acceptable, there is no reason to think that what we say | today in polite society will be acceptable in 30 years | time. The thing is even though everyone will have skeletons | in their closet that doesn't act as some sort of defense, | it will only take the right kind of persistence by someone | strongly motivated to blow up your life, it doesn't matter | that much that they have skeletons. | | It also seems to be very asymmetric, in that the ones most | likely to attack are the ones with the least history. It's | an asymmetric tool younger folks can use against older | folks, and that asymmetry will always exist. | offtop5 wrote: | To each their own, you can only control what you say, not | how it's interpreted. | | Plus I really think people should be able to mature, just | because you said something really mean when you were 19, | doesn't mean at 39 you're a horrible person. In fact just | because you said something really mean at 19, doesn't mean | you're a horrible person at 19. But instead of it being a | one-off comment at a party, it's now a part of you. I | really think this is why so many young adults get so | stressed out over social media, you constantly need to | create this artificial image of some superhuman who's | living a fantastic amazing life. Any misstep you'll lose | fans,followers, etc. This makes so many people so | miserable. | | I know I became much happier after I got rid of my social | media, but again to each their own. | Clewza313 wrote: | "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most | honest of men, I will find something in them which will | hang him." -Cardinal Richelieu (supposedly) | | Your view seems quite naive to me. Not only do times | change, with previously acceptable things becoming | unspeakable (eg. "retarded", "transsexual", | "transvestite"), but with taking out of context and | selective quoting you can distort the meaning of almost | anything. | simplestman wrote: | This is one reason that I create new account on each service | every few months or until my cookies expire. I never remember | or save passwords. | [deleted] | jcun4128 wrote: | man... stuff like this makes me glad I'm more socially/internet | aware than I was before | | breadcrumbs | baxtr wrote: | Seems like they don't have any European accounts? Probably | because they don't want to deal with the GDPR issues? | | PS: I only checked a couple or so. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-09 23:00 UTC)