[HN Gopher] Something weird is happening on Facebook ___________________________________________________________________ Something weird is happening on Facebook Author : incomplete Score : 412 points Date : 2021-09-27 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.politicalorphans.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.politicalorphans.com) | micromacrofoot wrote: | It doesn't really matter if these posts are intentionally being | used to gather data, _someone 's_ gathering it. | | Cross-reference some of the security question posts like "first | car" with large data leaks and you're bound to get some matches | eventually. Scammers in some countries can live for years off of | one good bank account hit, and many of them make a living just | reselling the data before it even gets that far. | | We need some serious public education about freely sharing | information on the internet. Like "this is your brain on drugs" | nationwide PSA campaigns. | giansegato wrote: | I don't get it. What do these people would be doing with such | data? Ok, they know that a certain Facebook account named John | Doe is likely to be a male, between 40 and 50 years old, voted | for Trump both in 16 and 20. So what? It's not like you can | retarget said account through ads. I fail to see the purpose. | spoonjim wrote: | The Cambridge Analytica scandal shows exactly what you can do | with this data. | | Targeted advertising lets you run a campaign that never could | be run before... one where you appear to be something different | to different people. If you were trying to seize control of | three different warring groups, you could advertise to A, | "We'll kill B and C!" , to B, "We'll kill A and C!" and to C, | "We'll kill A and B!" which you couldn't do in a stump speech | without people figuring out the ruse. | | By building a detailed psychological profile of individuals, | you can build a model that allows you to tie their responses to | these questions with the political messages they're susceptible | to. Cambridge Analytica paid a few hundred thousand people to | do a quiz where they shared their Facebook likes and answered | questions about their personality. CA then used that to build a | model that showed "People who live in Slidell, Louisiana and | like Dodge Ram trucks will be most receptive to messages about | illegal immigration and are generally supportive of state | violence". Then they can run that ad to everyone in Slidell who | likes Dodge Ram pickups. | rscoots wrote: | Why is targeted political messaging inherently immoral | though? | | It seems the crux of the issue here is that people are being | fooled into supplying data about themselves in a non- | consentual manner. | | The former has been happening in politics forever and imo the | latter has been every tech companies MO essentially for the | last decade. | bink wrote: | In 2016 it was used to target these specific types of people | with outrage. Get them riled up against their opponents and | make them more likely to vote for your candidate or issues and | more likely to spread your propaganda for you. | | AFAIK you absolutely can target (or could target) groups of | people based on very specific criteria. | akersten wrote: | There is _extreme_ value in knowing who your most-prospective | marks are. If you had a population of 1,000 people, and _had_ | to sell something (read: convince to vote a certain way) to 400 | of them, wouldn 't you like to know the subset of those people | who are already predisposed to your position and just need a | little more nudging with a narrowly-tailored meme , instead of | making a dartboard attempt against all 1,000? | | That was the entire value-add of Cambridge Analytica , whose | Facebook-API data-gathering loophole has now been replaced by | just engaging suckers via the platform itself and a tiny bit of | NLP/sentiment analysis. | obelos wrote: | I suspect there's also value in avoiding showing some forms | of persuasive/propagandistic content to those who are | unlikely to be amenable to it. This allows the content to | circulate with less suppressive feedback from a target's | peers. | AlexAndScripts wrote: | You can also avoid targeting people who already support | you. Or, in the case of Cambridge Analytica's brexit | manipulation, identify those who have never voted before | (using hundreds of indicators) and introduce them to | politics... Their first information being propaganda from | the leave campaign. | kube-system wrote: | There's lots of stuff you can do with the data. | | The most obvious one: with the security question type stuff, | you can take over other people's accounts. | | But collecting data about people is also useful if you're | trying to spread an agenda. You can determine what types of | messages resonate with an audience. You can group those people | and target them separately -- not through ads, but through | special interest accounts/groups. You can recruit people to | amplify your message. You can even get people to act in real | life, i.e. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency#Ralli... | | If you can identity, categorize, and influence the loudest | voices, you can influence public discussion and opinion. | x0x0 wrote: | You can pull the data off of fb. | | FB's targeting tools go to some lengths to only allow you to | target by dems on fb and associated properties. These | questions, plus profile views, allow you to extract the | information for external use. Eg selling a list of <fb id, | first car, birth year, favorite color, pet name, etc> tuples. | m0d0nne11 wrote: | Is there some way to delete/filter/downvote click-bait header | lines on HN like this one? | throwawaymanbot wrote: | Zuckerberg should be in an orange jumpsuit. | tyingq wrote: | My favorite is questions that appear to be roundabout ways to | gather your password reset questions. | | Like _" Your stripper name is: Your Favorite Color + Name of Your | First Dog!"_. Never fails to get tons of responses. | okareaman wrote: | My FB feed is lousy with these sorts of things. My family & | friends seem to enjoy answering questions like "What was the | first concert you attended?" I don't think it's for advertising | purposes because I have not noticed any improvement in the | accuracy of targeted ads. I don't think it's for political | purposes because that is much easier to figure out without these | oblique questions. | | One group who would benefit from detailed life style profiles are | life insurance companies. More detail is better for setting | accurate premiums while remaining competitive with other life | insurance companies. | | Edit: I almost forgot to mention a really popular one I've seen a | lot of lately: "Have you ever had a DUI ? I'll wait." It's | unbelievable to me that people would answer this question, but it | definitely something insurance companies would like to know | because their records don't go that far back into the paper age. | A lot of people answer something like "No, but I should have." | void_mint wrote: | > My FB feed is lousy with these sorts of things. My family & | friends seem to enjoy answering questions like "What was the | first concert you attended?" I don't think it's for advertising | purposes because I have not noticed any improvement in the | accuracy of targeted ads. I don't think it's for political | purposes because that is much easier to figure out without | these oblique questions. | | Hyper dystopian take: Gathering data to be able to create real- | seeming narratives for fictional profiles to push political | agendas. | htrp wrote: | > "What was the first concert you attended?" | | That's literally a security question for a bank password reset. | okareaman wrote: | That's not a good example, which is why I added the DUI | question. I've noticed most of my friends have stopped | answering security type questions as they've been warned. | matsemann wrote: | I've long wished for an opportunity to filter my feed, so that | I only see what people post themselves. But I guess fb force | these things down my throat because no one actually posts | anything anymore, except big life events like weddings or | announcing a child. So people would realize fb is dead when it | comes to keeping in touch with friends and family. | aembleton wrote: | Train the algorithm! Just exit Facebook as soon as you | encounter one of these. | okareaman wrote: | Facebook is dead as far as I'm concerned because I tested it. | I quit all groups and unliked all pages. My feed just became | ads and posts from friends. I have a couple of friends who | like to post, but the vast majority don't post anything. It's | a ghost town. | silexia wrote: | I shit down my Facebook recently after my interactions with | it became unhealthy. | emerged wrote: | It's a pretty weird place these days. There are a few | friends who get like 7 trillion likes if they post that | their baby farted, but many many other friend posts have | literally 0 or very few likes. | | At some point I stopped commenting or Liking any post which | already has more than ~10 Likes or comments. In some sense | it feels really strange to me that people bother to engage | with content where their engagement is essentially | invisible within the crowd. | pytlicek wrote: | Something weird is happening on Facebook for a long time :/ | Buvaz wrote: | Its just me..collecting data to work out what will get my mom of | her phone. | whyenot wrote: | It's becoming increasingly clear that social media needs to be | more strictly regulated. How to do that in a free society is a | difficult question. OTOH, if we take too long to figure this out, | it may be too late. In fact, it may already be too late. | jensensbutton wrote: | What regulation would help here? | pkamb wrote: | > Yes, a question-post invites more engagement than a simple | comment, but there's something else at work here. | | Is there? | | I've noticed wannabe influencers on Instagram including questions | and polls with every one of their Stories. They're doing it to | "juice the algorithm" by getting responses. That in turn | theoretically gets them featured on the Explore Page or whatever. | YouTubers do the same things, ending each video with a CTA | question you should answer in the comments. | | The Facebook question pages that boomers answer seem to just be | doing the same thing, attracting comments and interactions and | thus boosting the page. | | The bigger question I have is why Facebook thinks _I_ would be | interested in seeing in my timeline that my 68 year old aunt has | answered "Freddy Mercury" to some question about the best | musical act they've seen live. | PerkinWarwick wrote: | Is it possible to set up Facebook to only give you people you | know or people you follow on your feed? I'd consider an account | if that were true, with the appropriate personal filters on of | course given the spying the company does. | | It's a totally sleazy company, but it actually provides a | valuable service at the same time. | marcus_holmes wrote: | I'm curious if the data harvested from this is skewed to older | people, and more "naive" people. Most of my techie friends have | uninstalled FB (like me), or rarely interact with it. And my | smarter friends just don't interact with that kind of clickbait-y | post. | | I wonder if marketing folks will even notice. Like Google | Analytics, which is disproportionately blocked by smarter and | more technical people. Marketers cheerfully ignore that, though. | Will they even know that they're missing our data? | | Is the Venn diagram of FB enthusiastic data-donaters and people | who don't block GA just a circle? If so, are public policies and | corporate marketing strategies going to be designed to cater to | them and not us? | brap wrote: | Speaking of weird things happening on Facebook... I see a lot of | official artist pages (usually artists who have been pretty | successful a few years ago but no longer are, mostly rappers for | some reason) that post A LOT of random "memes" (mostly just stuff | stolen from Reddit) that are completely unrelated to their work, | usually with very clickbaity captions (tag a friend etc). When | you go on their page it doesn't show up. Most comments seem to be | from 2nd world countries (like my own). What's that about? | md_ wrote: | I'm confused. The premise of this post seems to be that this is | some malicious attempt to deduce basic geographic data on | Facebook users. But doesn't Facebook let you target ads based on | such data already? | | Why would I not just pay Facebook directly for such targeting? | deckar01 wrote: | I believe the goal is to build a model that correlates public | attributes that FB provides with hidden attributes learned from | these probes. When the attacker is ready to target users | matching specific hidden attributes, they can reverse the | correlation into ranges of public attributes that FB will | accept for targeting ad campaigns. | mikey_p wrote: | The implication is that comments on public posts could be | scraped by a third party to build an off-FB psychographic | profile, similar to how Cambridge Analytica tried to generate | profiles for users by querying data through a third party | Facebook app. | bob229 wrote: | Who gives a hoot. Only an absolute moron use social media | cpr wrote: | I stopped reading when the article repeated the thoroughly tired | and debunked talking points about Russians stealing DNC server | materials... | jessaustin wrote: | I was torn on this one. I do agree with you, in that, if we | can't trust them on stuff that was obvious in June of 2017, how | can we trust the "facts" we can't check? However, this is at | least an _interesting_ hypothesis. The particulars are probably | wrong, but all sorts of different parties might try | "campaigns" like this for all sorts of different reasons. | (Although GOP might not be my first suspect for dastardly | clever schemes...) | | The most likely possibility seems that we have algorithms | fooling algorithms with no humans in the loop. Sure, there | might not be enough "real" (i.e. a real human purchasing a real | product) revenue sloshing around here to make the whole effort | worthwhile. However, there might be a poorly configured | dashboard somewhere that makes it _appear_ as if that 's the | case... Meanwhile FB laughs all the way to the bank. | twic wrote: | First comment: | | > Generally speaking, people should become more and more wary of | memes. | | I suppose memes which explicitly attack other memes had to emerge | at some point. | pjdemers wrote: | How many people choosing random answer would it take to muddy the | data to the point it is useless? | greenyoda wrote: | > "Sure, that first post won't accurately predict your birth | year..." | | Actually it would have, in 2019. 66 + 1953 = 2019, subtract your | age, and you get your year of birth. | Johnny555 wrote: | I've been wondering what those posts are about, I keep seeing | them in my feed, and they're always answered by the same 60+ year | old relatives. | ogn3rd wrote: | Many of those questions are used as 2FA as well. | Johnny555 wrote: | Those I understand, but I'm wondering about the "What's your | perfect fall day" or "How old were you when you got your | first job" questions that don't seem like they'd yield | answers to security questions. | mikey_p wrote: | It's not about security questions, the implication that the | author doesn't make explicit is that "how old were you when | you got your first job" probably says more about your | economic well being and possibly your political leanings. | rubicon33 wrote: | Those are thrown in there to make the general asking of | these types of questions considered normal. | edoceo wrote: | Magician calls that mis-direction. | MikeTheGreat wrote: | "What's your perfect fall day" does not strike me as a good | security question | | "How old were you when you got your first job" actually | does seem like a good security question for many people. | You're unlikely to forget it, after a while not many other | people will know it, and it's a single number (whole | number, most likely) so it's easy for a computer to parse | (and hard for you to mess up by leaving out / adding too | much detail). | | Depending on what you respond to on social media, and | depending on if you've got any accounts that use this as a | security question, you might want to go back and force the | account to use a new question ;) | NineStarPoint wrote: | The main issue I see with the "age of first job" question | is that there aren't actually statistically that many | likely answers to the question, especially if you have | basic information on a person. Compare to make and model | of first car, which has a lot of possible options and | only slightly correlates to life situation. | edoceo wrote: | Make and Model of cars are used on credit verification in | USA - like historical address, it's likely linked to some | previous credit activity. | mikey_p wrote: | The author implies, but doesn't make explicit that they | think things like "age when you got your first job" are | more about inferring socioeconomic indicators about the | individual than fishing for password clues. | | And honestly I bet age of first job probably is a decent | indicator of certain economic factors. | TameAntelope wrote: | According to the article, anything related to your age or | where you live is a pretty good indicator of what your | voting preferences are. The article cites "90% accuracy" if | your answers can be used to reasonably guess those facts. | | Additionally, if your profile is public (the default still, | I believe) is made available when you comment, I'd guess | there'd be follow-up scraping going on to collect more | details that are then used in conjunction with whatever | your response was. | mooxie wrote: | Well the article notes that some amount of user demographic | info is revealed simply by interacting with the post, | regardless of the information provided by the respondent. | | Secondly, this is almost like the email phishing paradox: | to an educated user it seems like the number of people who | respond with relevant information would be extremely low, | but if the attempt costs you basically nothing and you get | something useful 1% of the time, you're still winning. | | "My perfect fall day is my memory of Aunt June when we | lived in Connecticut in the 70s, before she passed away." | In itself something like that doesn't seem useful, but | there's a good amount of information in there if someone | can correlate it with other details about your life. | tomcam wrote: | 60 year-old here. Thanks, broseph! | CosmicShadow wrote: | Was just talking about this the other night with my wife and how | we should just start our own group sharing these baiting | questions to see how quickly and largely we can grow it. | ___luigi wrote: | Social platforms amplifies all of our human qualities, and our | interaction habits. Since old ages, people were striving to seek | attention and show their work [1] [2]. After reading this book | [3] indistractable, I started to reflect on how our educational | systems are not designed to prepare students to live in this | digital age, yesterday it's FB, today it's TikTk and tomorrow | there will be something else. FB is just one Pawn in this game. | | I know that siding with FB is one of these topics that are very | controversial in HN, but I am not finding excuses for the | practices of these companies, my point is that our kids will live | in a different age than the one we lived in, educational systems | should keep up with these challenges and find innovative way to | prepare people to efficiently manage that. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%27allaqat [2]: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_ancient_Rome [3]: | https://www.nirandfar.com/indistractable/ | jsnell wrote: | With those comment counts, something dodgy is obviously | happening. | | The interesting question here is whether Facebook is somehow | accidentally amplifying it. Certainly it is not in Facebook's | interest to allow this kind of data harvesting. If it hurts you | to think that Facebook somehow isn't maximally evil, at least | consider that this is data that could be only Facebook's. | Allowing somebody else to harvest it is money straight out of | Facebook's pocket. | | So, given FB should not be complicit, what mistake could they be | making to allow the system to be haunted? The obvious guess is | that they have a feedback loop in the ranking algorithm. It | values comments very highly as a signal of good engagement, but | they weren't prepared for "content" that is this good at | eliciting low effort comments and have wide appeal | demographically. As long as one of these reaches a critical mass, | it'll be shown to tens or hundreds of millions of people just by | any engagement feeding even more engagement. | | Is there anything less obvious? | NelsonMinar wrote: | It's absolutely in Facebook's interest to allow this kind of | viral garbage. It feels like engagement, gives people a way to | engage socially in seemingly harmless questions. (I'm not at | all convinced these are some dastardly data gathering scheme - | many of the viral questions don't have meaningful answers.) | | It would be so, so simple to stop these. Just de-prioritize | posts with too many replies, or replies from people you don't | know, or.. anything. The virality of these things sticks out | like a sore thumb. Facebook is choosing to not stop them. | | Then again as we learned recently Facebook is choosing not to | stop all sorts of things on their platform. | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28512121 | jaywalk wrote: | It has been this way for years, so it's definitely no accident. | Posts that elicit more comments absolutely end up getting | ranked higher by The Algorithm(tm). | flatline wrote: | They recently started showing friends' response comments first, | so you can easily see those of your friends out of the 116,000 | replies. The rise of these in my feed seemed to correspond with | this feature. | | Disclaimer, am infrequent FB user and this may have been around | for longer than I realize. | kodah wrote: | > The interesting question here is whether Facebook is somehow | accidentally amplifying it. | | > Certainly it is not in Facebook's interest to allow this kind | of data harvesting | | Mark Zuckerberg has been quoted through leaked documents to be | a strong purveyor of "engagement" at nearly all costs. I don't | think giving Facebook the term "accidental" is appropriate | anymore. Their desire for engagement trumps the health of their | network. I'll dig through my favorited submissions for the WSJ | article. | | Edit: That was easy: https://archive.md/GQFLq | | People are rarely motivated by evil, but they are motivated by | opportunity to which an outcome can be perceived as pure evil | by the people it affects most. | taurath wrote: | Engagement is a really dirty word to me nowadays - the | attention economy comes with all sorts of really bad side | effects. We've turned almost all conversations into an ad in | order to sell more ads. It's you vs 100 people with a | doctorate in psychology at any given time. | termau wrote: | Agreed. I've actively taken steps to combat it, only use my | phone in black and white mode, and removed all apps. Stick | to my PC for general browsing and my phone use as gone down | to 30 minutes a day (mostly calls, messages with the wife, | and email). | captainmuon wrote: | I always thought that FB is somewhat complicit (not out of | evilness necessarily). | | I see a lot of "viral" posts - some like those mentioned in the | article, but also a ton of odd woodworking, cooking, and "resin | art" videos. The videos are quite repetitive and not really | interesting so I wonder if they are maybe hidden ads, but they | are not marked as such, and it is not clear what they are | selling. (Well maybe they are trying to sell resin, which is | really expensive.) | | Anyway, it seems like they are different kinds of posts on FB. | Some stay close to their point of origin, and only rarely get | shown to other people who have not liked a page or are friends | themselves. And other posts which, if somebody commented on or | interacted in any way with them, get shown to their friends and | friends-of-friends. | | After running a charitable cause / political FB page for a | while, I'm convinced that internally there are actually | different categories of posts - ones that are shown to | followers, and ones that are allowed to float or go viral. I | really wonder what the mechanism is to get into the floating | category. It doesn't seem to be based on quality, nor on money | spent. Maybe it is some interaction metric that somebody | learned to game? | xg15 wrote: | > _I see a lot of "viral" posts - some like those mentioned | in the article, but also a ton of odd woodworking, cooking, | and "resin art" videos. The videos are quite repetitive and | not really interesting so I wonder if they are maybe hidden | ads, but they are not marked as such, and it is not clear | what they are selling._ | | As someone who got caught up in some of those videos when I | was in complete "mindlessly browse facebook" mode, my guess | would be they are optimized for "engagement", nothing more, | nothing less. They are just interesting enough that you want | to know how the end result looks while harmless enough to | appeal to a maximally broad audience. | jrochkind1 wrote: | How are the people making the videos making money though, | or why are they doing it if not? | machinerychorus wrote: | It's still possible to share things just for the sake of | sharing | jrochkind1 wrote: | Have you seen these videos? I agree they look like they | have been "optimized for engagement"... I guess someone | could be doing that just for fun, that's your theory? | taurath wrote: | Engagement is just second order advertising, because it makes | people spend more time on the ad platform. | NineStarPoint wrote: | A quick point I'd make is that it may not be a mistake (from | facebooks perspective) to allow others to exploit a given | system as long as they're gaining enough value from it to | outweigh that. If whatever is being exploited doubles how much | they can charge for ads, they might accept some of their data | being stolen until they could find a way to have their cake and | eat it too. | cratermoon wrote: | > The interesting question here is whether Facebook is somehow | accidentally amplifying it. | | Someone somewhere found a way to exploit what FB's engagement | metrics do. Is it 'accidental' that FB amplifies things if | their system is designed to do exactly what it does when gamed? | jensensbutton wrote: | Isn't the obvious answer to stop scraping (or, at least try)? | The author states that the value here is collecting data (not | money from ads or something) and Facebook's APIs don't allow | for the kind of analysis they'd need to build profiles. Article | specifically talks about using Python to scrape profiles | (presumably using a logged in account). | Gollapalli wrote: | Cambridge Analytica style targeted political messaging, and | retailoring of political formulae to personality/moral- | foundations/IQ profiles, in order to create coalitions is the | future of political messaging and activism. In many ways, now | that the gameboard has changed so drastically, it's unavoidable. | | This is how politics works now. It's not (just) Russia, or China, | it's every political activism group or lobby that wants to | achieve anything. Welcome to the new age. | engineer_22 wrote: | no different than it used to be, just more sophisticated. | Gollapalli wrote: | I think there is a qualitative difference. | | Previous means of influencing politics involved NGO's and | political parties actively working different demographics in | order to get them to vote in the organization's interest. | These organizations may loosely be considered managerial | bureaucracies, whether they are labor unions, or activist | NGO's, or political parties. Even large scale media campaigns | conducted via mass psychology are essentially managerial or | bureaucratic in nature, using mass organizations at a large | scale. | | The new means of manufacturing consent are not in this | character. Rather than acting directly on mass groups using | mass organizations, they operate by directly targeting | individuals and niche groups leveraging algorithms and | digital means. It's different paradigm: mass vs niche, mass | media vs targeted media, mass psychology vs individual | psychological profiling, large bureaucratic organizations vs | smaller technologically enabled teams, the management of | people vs the management of algorithms. | | It's two different approaches to power, and hence, two | different elite groups. And when you have two different elite | groups, you have conflict. It's a new world, a revolution in | the making. | jollybean wrote: | I wonder if it's even worth pondering the various kinds of | dumpster fires that happen there? | | It's like we're caught watching a tornado hit a garbage pile ... | while the 'exit' sign is clear for all of us to follow if we | want. | | I think the answer to all questions Facebook-related is 'delete' | / 'exit' / 'log off' and then to go ahead to Spotify and listen | to some Ahad Jamal from 40 years ago to put it in context. | JasonFruit wrote: | Off topic: I hadn't listened to Ahmad Jamal in years until a | couple months ago, and he was a genius. So much creativity, | with no sacrifice of lyricism, and an amazing way with silence. | throwawaywindev wrote: | Those look like phishing for answers to account security | questions. | ergot_vacation wrote: | "Oh no the Skinner box we built to exploit and manipulate people | is being used to exploit and manipulate people!" | | "But why is that-" | | "Because OTHER people are doing it!" | | "Oh no!" | sk2020 wrote: | That the author is peddling the absurd "Russians hacked muh | servers" popular myth makes the comment all the more poignant. | | Social networks tolerate fake traffic because it increases | their perceived value. The real crime is the fictive usage and | engagement metrics they use to set ad pricing. | Kiro wrote: | Facebook is not ohnoing anything here. In fact, I wouldn't be | surprised if their algorithm boosts posts encouraging this kind | of low-effort engagement. | jjoonathan wrote: | Yeah. Other parties get data, FB gets cold hard cash. I bet | they're quite happy with those terms. | xenihn wrote: | Not sure if AsianHustleNetwork (AHN) really falls into what's | being described in this article, but it's one of the more | insidious FB communities I've run across, in terms of members | being milked for affiliate revenue. | | The content is overall wholesome and useful, but I'm assuming | most members (both contributers and passive viewers/clickers) | don't realize that they're lining the owners' pockets with their | clickthroughs, along with whatever personal data is being | collected through Facebook. | madrox wrote: | This could be more benign than the article makes it out to be. | Growing a content business in 2021 requires you to understand | Facebook's algorithms and what will get your post amplified. | Instagram famously only shows your posts to 10% of your followers | by default [1]. The trigger points for your post to reach wider | require certain engagement quotas, and if you're designing your | post to get more comments then it'll hit them faster. Often | accounts do these kinds of posts because their profile is about | selling a single thing (like a book they wrote) or are | dropshipping and focused on the marketing side. The real thing | they want to get in front of users is the link in their bio. | | I think the real issue here is that it's impossible to tell the | benign from the malignant. Is that cute mom blog going to start | hawking ivermectin? What is my comment revealing about me that I | don't authorize? There's no Better Business Bureau for Facebook | pages. Maybe there should be. | | 1. https://www.thelovelyescapist.com/2018-instagram-algorithm/ | vidanay wrote: | Facebook...Nuke it from orbit. | aasasd wrote: | 1.4 million comments on a single post? Holy crap! I was | previously wondering on Reddit, what kind of vapid self- | importance compels people to comment in threads that already have | over 100-200 comments--when new ones go straight to the bottom | and no one sees them afterwards. But this is on scale of some | mental illness, unless I seriously misunderstand something about | Facebook comments. | the_arun wrote: | It is mindblowing to see so many people socially active! | hoten wrote: | I wouldn't consider engaging in FB comment threads to be | social nor active. | pkamb wrote: | Don't worry - their comment response to the meme page is | annoyingly broadcast into the timeline of every one of their | friends. | TrackerFF wrote: | From what I see, people tend to tag their friends in these | massive threads. | SPascareli13 wrote: | Your friends will see your comment in fb, so there is an | incentive to comment even when there is already millions of | other comments. | Jorengarenar wrote: | >I was previously wondering on Reddit, what kind of vapid self- | importance compels people to comment in threads that already | have over 100-200 comments--when new ones go straight to the | bottom and no one sees them afterwards. | | It works in similar way as here. The post have 145 comments | (right now) and yet I'm adding another one. | strulovich wrote: | Facebook shows comments from your friends highlighted in your | feed. | | So if one of your friends comments with the one millionth | comment, you can end up seeing the post and your friend's | comment In your feed. So while no one can read all comments - | your friends are likely to see yours. | cmg wrote: | I've seen a lot of this recently, both on the types of posts | in the article and on the posts of controversial / extremist | right-wing politicians like MTG. | HaloZero wrote: | And then y'all can communicate in thread too. So it's a | little microcosm. | jjoonathan wrote: | My guess: on FB, it steers your post to your friends, so you | aren't talking to the 1.4M so much as chatting with your | friends about a meme that 1.4M people are also chatting with | their friends about. | | Just a guess, though. I don't actually FB. | dbtc wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placing_notes_in_the_Western_W... | CosmicShadow wrote: | The same type of people answer these as the people who get an | email from Amazon or Home Depot about a product they bought with | a question like "What are the dimensions" and they answer "I | don't know". | | And for all time, everyone else is like WTF did you even answer | the question if you don't know, it's not like your friend asked | you in person, and that is the story of 80% of Q&A's on every | product. *SIDE RANT OVER! | ComputerGuru wrote: | The emails Amazon sends (or used to send) to randomly selected | prior purchasers of a product when there's a new unanswered | question have a subject line along the lines of "David is | asking you if xxx, can you help him?" | | They're deliberately made to look like personal appeals to the | individual specifically, and I don't blame people for not | understanding that it's disgusting growth/engagement hacking. | bondarchuk wrote: | > _This multi-billion dollar industry has to be getting revenue | somewhere else._ | | Wait, how do they know this is a multi-billion dollar industry in | the first place? | Lammy wrote: | https://www.statista.com/statistics/693438/affiliate-marketi... | badkitty99 wrote: | The 90's called and wants their chainmail back | th0ma5 wrote: | Probably mapping spread vectors. | uptownfunk wrote: | does that mean trying to understand how "virality" spreads? | arbuge wrote: | Just a note for those of you who were confused like I was upon | reading this article: the author seems to be using the term | "affiliate networks" in an unusual way - they're calling Facebook | pages with some kind of commercial relationship between them | "nodes" in an "affiliate network". | | The commonly accepted usage is: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_network | cratermoon wrote: | I think the author's description is a completely accurate | description of affiliate networks. The fact the the commercial | relationship results in "likes" or "influence" for the | affiliates rather than direct monetary compensation from the | merchants is just the nature of social media. | LAC-Tech wrote: | 7 Tacos is a lot. Don't let someone you care about eat 7 Tacos, | that's just enabling. | bovermyer wrote: | The real question is, how do we discourage interaction with these | bait posts on a scale that matters? | bluGill wrote: | Block all the originators of them. I've been doing that for a | week or so now, and facebook is slowly getting better. (first I | left all groups myself - facebook is a terrible way to keep up | with you hobbies as there is no good way to see everything). | Facebook is becoming more and more pictures of real events in | my friend's life - actually social media, and less and less | politics, memes, and pictures that were funny the first time 10 | years ago... | dqv wrote: | Well you can take the approach that one TikToker's mom took: | comment on the post and say it's datamining. | Nition wrote: | I once saw an official Facebook blog post about some change | to the T&C, with 80,000+ comments on it, most of them one of | those meaningless copy-pastes about how they don't consent to | Facebook using their data. More comments were appearing every | second. | | Every 20th post or so, someone would be saying something like | "Stop it you idiots, this stupid copy-paste doesn't do | anything, you can't declare your rights like this." Then a | bunch more copy-paste comments would appear before the next | person telling the idiots to stop. | wutbrodo wrote: | Would the segment of users who respond to content-free posts | like these have much of a reaction to a comment saying that? | | I don't mean that as a snarky dismissal, but a sincere | question. I know that plenty of people, especially among | digital-natives, have instant negative reactions to being | reminded of data collection. But the type of user answering | "what was your first car" or "what do you call your | grandchildren" do not strike me as having much overlap with | the groups that are cynical about social media platforms. | dqv wrote: | I don't really think it's a legitimate or scalable way to | inform people. On a smaller scale it could help people in | the local social network to be aware of what those posts | are doing. | | Another thing to do is to tell people "they're trying to | use this information to get into your bank account". That | will make them stop really fast. But as far as scalability | goes, I don't think there's a way. | Kiro wrote: | It's a really interesting question. What makes people so eager | to respond? I keep seeing friends and family (especially | family, older generation) answering these obvious spam | questions all the time. | jcims wrote: | Some other interesting questions they should pose: | | - What's your mother's maiden name? | | - What street were you born on? | | - What was your first car? | | - What's your childhood's best friend's name? | ceejayoz wrote: | Oh, I've absolutely seen these come up. | | "Tag your mother if you love her", "tag your childhood best | friend", etc. | ctvo wrote: | "Being an American is a privilege few have. Let's share our | American issued social security numbers!" <Over photo of a bald | eagle> | mywittyname wrote: | My understanding is that a portion of the SSN is based on the | ZIP of your birthplace. I'm sure some clever person could | come up with a way to use birth location + a checksum that | would reveal an SSN without actually typing it out. | | I'm thinking something like, "Add up all the individual | numbers of your SSN and figure out what Founding Father you | are!" Use some statistics to ensure that lots of people get | good ones. | jrwr wrote: | Used too, But anyone under the age of 20 will have a random | SSN [1] | | 1: https://www.ssa.gov/kc/SSAFactSheet--IssuingSSNs.pdf | robocat wrote: | I presume there are a lot of non-Americans with SSNs: I have | one from working in the US on a working visa. | madrox wrote: | These do get shared, but usually in meme form where you turn | your birthday into your "Werewolf name" and are encouraged to | share in the comments. Because you're sharing in an altered, | amusing form, you don't stop to consider someone can reverse | your birthday from it. | jrochkind1 wrote: | My birthday is literally already on my Facebook "about" page | though, and shown to all my friends whenever it comes around, | so they can post on my timeline. | gavin_gee wrote: | isnt this already known as social engineering data collection for | hackers for use in later attacks? | mikey_p wrote: | That's not what the article is about. It points out that | passwords for random folks aren't really worth much, and are | probably out there on the dark web for purchase anyway, but the | idea that psychographic profiles could be build by a third | party that is scraping these comments off public posts. | captainmuon wrote: | I think this is just a conspiracy theory. What's happening is | that capitalism sets ridiculous incentives, so people are | compelled to set up all these blogs and create these memes to | maybe get fractions of cents per interaction. The real scandal is | not that the Russians or the Chinese are attacking democracy this | way, it is that we are waisting so much productivity on this | (both users, and people working on such campaigns). | | PS: If the described tactic really works, I gotta try it out in | order to take over the world. | tarkin2 wrote: | So, there's a network of popular accounts that are posting | questions and harvesting the comments to psychologically analyse | Facebook users and later politically target them and their social | networks with disinformation that's tailored to their | psychological grouping? That's what I gleamed. | yabones wrote: | My speculation: The exact same thing that happens with reddit | accounts used for astroturfing... People will 'build up' a | profile over the course of several months, reposting popular | posts from months/years ago, etc. They're actually quite easy to | spot, an account with high posting points and low comment points | is usually one of these. Then, when it's nice and ripe, they will | sell it to a troll farm which uses it to push a particular | agenda. We saw this happen quite a bit in 2015-2016, and again | starting in early 2020 (though it never really stopped). | | But, in this case, the product is the 'network' rather than | individual accounts. Something that appears this 'organic' and | 'homegrown' is a very valuable tool for a widespread disinfo | campaign. | | Or, it could simply be the magician gang that makes viral posts | of gross food. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/creators- | countertop-spaghetti... | [deleted] | bink wrote: | I've never understood this logic. Very few subs limit posts by | karma and those that do certainly don't require the insane | amounts of karma that these bots are farming. | | I know I don't go back through someone's post history before | voting on their comments and I don't really care about their | aggregate karma values. | MattGaiser wrote: | It just takes one person to do that though and say "you made | a new account for this you troll?" before everyone gets it. | josefx wrote: | That would work if the moderators of various subs weren't | part of it, quite a few subs will hand out temp. bans when | you "accuse someone of shilling". Even if the account was | created the day a story went public, didn't post anything | until weeks later when the story hit reddit and never | backed up its attempts to discredit one side of the | conflict. | | Some fun oriented subs will however happily ban spam bots | that just automate imgur reposts if you point one out early | enough. | cogman10 wrote: | Before the advent of the current crop of social media, online | forums would post your post count and sign up dates. Posts | from someone that has a brand new account and low post count | were HIGHLY scrutinized. In some cases, needing mod approval | before becoming visible. | | My assumption is troll farms are buying accounts with karma | to try and do an end around such a system. It wouldn't be | hard on reddit/hn/or other vote based social media locations | to pay extra scrutiny, even automated, against brand new | accounts. By using established accounts, it makes astroturf | detection harder to do. Now every account is potentially an | astroturfer. | yabones wrote: | Indeed, there's more to it than that. I haven't gone in- | depth, so this is my very pedestrian understanding... | | The very secretive spam filter has cut-outs for 'high value' | accounts - this isn't really documented formally, but it's | pretty obvious that posting limits are essentially | nonexistant for 1M+ users, either by design or because | they're well known to the mods... | | The value of the high-karma accounts is that they're much | more likely to be accepted for moderator applications. Get | enough mods on a default sub, and you basically control the | universe. That's very difficult, so the much easier way is to | create legit-looking fringe subreddits with names like | "newstoday" or "politicallyuncensorednews". Get enough of | your smurf accounts to upvote those, and you can get to | rising for /all. Get enough real bites and you might even get | it to the front page. | | I haven't really looked into this stuff for a few years, | because it's frankly depressing. So my understanding will be | a little off what the most recent networks are doing. | spoonjim wrote: | Is there a difference in your post's reach on Reddit if you | have 1,000 karma vs. 1,000,000? | oconnor663 wrote: | I wouldn't be surprised if some of their shadowban logic was | more lenient on accounts that had a lot of karma, to avoid | high-profile embarrassing mistakes? Just a guess. | lpcvoid wrote: | I don't see how banning a high karma account would be | embarrassing? I didn't even know that people cared about | karma on Reddit. | oconnor663 wrote: | Just that high karma accounts are marginally likelier to | be subreddit mods or whatever? Again just a baseless | guess on my part. | Lammy wrote: | Luckily for Reddit it can only be highly embarrassing if | people actually notice and raise a stink, which | shadowbanning is designed to avoid. The shadowbanned user | may just naturally get sick of the lack of interaction and | leave the site, like this top /r/worldnews moderator with | 14mil Karma who has been shadowbanned since July last year: | https://old.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill | mywittyname wrote: | It would be interesting if their shadow-ban logic | actually gave users upvotes at random for posts. | Nition wrote: | Questions like this one from the article are also very common | on /r/AskReddit: | | > Without naming the state you are from, what is it famous for? | | Hard to tell if that's intentional data gathering or just | someone innocently copying a common data-gathering question | format from Facebook though. | 0x4d464d48 wrote: | Fuck zodiac signs. | | Tell me what kind of car you plan to buy next! | platz wrote: | A hovercraft | akersten wrote: | That kind of thing is a gold mine for data harvesting. | Automatically: for each comment from a certain state, go | through their commenting history to map opinions on whatever | you care to search for on a state-by-state level. Way cheaper | and faster than phone surveys, and also gives a radically | higher value slice of the population (than those who would | pick up the phone to answer a survey). And that's probably | the least nefarious thing someone could do with that data. | giantrobot wrote: | Or just look them up on SnoopSnoo, it'll pull in those | things and give you a decent estimate of their personal | details. | cratermoon wrote: | The generic "without directly revealing PII, provide some | detail which ML algorithms can use to determine the PII with | a high degree of accuracy" is pretty clearly a product of | intentional data gathering. The fact that is might get copied | and organically spread is just a bonus. | | This also goes for "the first letter of your last name plus | the date of your mother's birthday are your <pop culture | tag>". | | Oh and all the cutesy little image processing tools like | "what would you look like older/younger/as a different | gender/if you were a cartoon" are there to train facial | recognition algorithms. | | Yet even supposedly sophisticated people fall for these. | cinntaile wrote: | Do you have any actual proof that this is used for data | mining and not because it's an engaging, fun question? | decremental wrote: | I think this misses the point. Even if what he said has | never happened, your mind should be trained to never | engage with things like that to begin with. The very | first thing that should occur to you is "I'm about to | upload a picture of my face on the internet. That's not a | good idea. I won't do that." Same with entering personal | information. | _jal wrote: | There are multiple "the point"s. | | Yes, teach your kid to be careful with their data. | | But also, how many outfits are actually doing this, or is | this currently a theoretic concern? If people are doing | this, what are their goals? Are they meeting them? | | Are there less obvious examples of the same thing? | | I'm sure you can keep going with more points. | decremental wrote: | If you just don't ever engage then even if the concern is | not over a theoretical threat, you'll never have to worry | either way. This isn't a "citation needed" kind of issue. | "Do you have a source for it not being a good idea to | provide personal information to strangers?" Bizarre. | [deleted] | handoflixue wrote: | Why should I care, though? | | "What state are you from" seems like pretty innocuous | information. I'll readily mention that I'm from Seattle | if it's relevant to the conversation or asked directly, | and I tend to think of myself as being on the more | paranoid / pro-privacy side of things. | | All the big players already have my address because I | gave it to them, and a stalker should be able to work | that information out pretty easily because I post in the | Seattle sub-reddit and otherwise engage a lot with | Seattle topics. | edoceo wrote: | > seems like pretty innocuous | | That's how they get you. It's a trap! | handoflixue wrote: | Yeah, but... what actually IS the trap? What bad thing | happens because of this? | AlexAndScripts wrote: | You'll happily mention it, and a human can find it if | they look through your profile. ML will have a much | harder time in comparison to going through some comments, | all in a similar way, on a post where everyone is saying | something about their state. | handoflixue wrote: | Yeah, but... what's bad about that? Why should I be | opposed to ML knowing I'm from Seattle? | 1123581321 wrote: | The most commonly known proof that such tactics are used | is that Cambridge Analytica used social quizzes and games | to gather data. | https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica- | facebook... | cinntaile wrote: | I would argue that's quite different from when some | influencer asks what state you're from without telling | what state you're from. Quizzes and games give data in a | much easier format compared to this. It's just a trick to | engage people and people like to laugh with stereotypes | so they happily oblige. Analyzing all this unlabeled text | data to find out what state someone is from seems hardly | worth the effort, it's not like that's valuable | information. | 1123581321 wrote: | That may be. I'd expect these tactics to evolve, but like | most people I'll only know for sure if it blows up in a | big scandal. | GoodJokes wrote: | Delete Facebook. By god. How many articles do we need to write to | communicate the same sentiment. | spoonjim wrote: | "Delete Facebook" is like saying "Delete drugs." The whole | reason Facebook is dangerous is because its draw on the human | psyche is stronger than that of the average person to resist, | and that the people who do engage with it can harm the people | who don't. There needs to be a national social media policy the | way there is a national drug policy. We need to have the | conversation about where we want to be as a country from "full | ban" to "fully legal," just like people recognize that a | country's drug policy can be somewhere between Singapore's and | Portugal's. | boppo wrote: | >national drug policy | | I'm not sure that's less harmful to society than no policy. | It may be causing more people to use. | [deleted] | [deleted] | parksy wrote: | Already done, parents are still on there as it's the best way | to connect with people they went to school with 50 years ago, | as far as I can tell Facebook is burning through the younger | ages and it's going to end up a digital retirement home, | already well on the way. | wutbrodo wrote: | This article is more than just "Facebook is bad". It's | proposing a specific phenomenon the author thinks it's noticed, | and digging into what may be behind it. | macintux wrote: | My democracy is being destroyed by Facebook. What good did | dropping it do me? | jcims wrote: | I just signed up for an account last year. I unfollowed | everyone about six months later. Now I pop on every few days | and either see something I'm tagged in or it says 'you're all | caught up'. Sometimes it throws an error which is rewarding. | | Seems to avoid most of the garbage on Facebook but I can still | use it to contact people or hit the marketplace. | TheSockStealer wrote: | Some of these questions are similar to those questions you would | see in an identify verification challenges. What is your first | car, pet name, city you were born in. I am not saying this is the | "only" answer, but could be one of them. | wodenokoto wrote: | The article directly addresses this point and claims that the | password is worthless, while somehow also claiming that the | data they can scrape about you after you interact with them is | where the money is made. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-27 23:00 UTC)