Social media:
U.S. congressional panels probe whether Russia got Facebook data - sources
uk.reuters.com/article/uk-facebook-cambridge-analytica-usa-cong/u-s-congressional-panels-probe-whether-russia-got-facebook-data-sources-idUKKCN1HC2MM
And
Hard Questions: Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg on Protecting People’s Information
newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/hard-questions-protecting-peoples-information/
Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
Facebook is a US company that responds to the US press & US legislators. These were ‘Hard Questions’ supposedly. That almost completely ignored the rest of the world. It’s not an accident @DamianCollins that he’s refusing to come to the UK & answer your qs
Zuck took just one just q each from UK, Canada, Mexico...everything else was US. Here he is responding to @BBCRoryCJ about how he will face Congress but other ‘top folks’ will come to UK. Do we need to start thinking of Facebook as a hostile non-state actor? Genuine q
Cambridge Analytica is under investigation for its role in referendum. As is its affiliate AIQ. Yet Zuck made no mention of referendum. Why?
Facebook played a role, maybe a decisive one, in the referendum. If Facebook was a state we wouldn’t allow it. Yet it has more power than many nation states. And it is not co-operating with our national investigations. This is a national security issue, no?
[the next day, which is today!]
Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
Blimey. Look at this. @DamianCollins DCMS committee is becoming a force to behold. The next batch of witnesses include Cambridge Analytica's Alexander Nix, Brittany Kaiser, Aleksandr Kogan & Facebook's CTO.
twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/982197130826727424
Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
America! Is the UK Parliament whipping your arse? (Translation: "ass")
You've got Zuckerberg though. So can you please ask him about a) Brexit b) why he's refused to speak to us. Thanks, Britain.
And
Megha Rajagopalan
@meghara
Mark Zuckerberg told @ezraklein that the company's own "systems" stopped Facebook messages inciting violence in Myanmar.
Now a group of NGOs in the country has issued an open letter saying that the system he's talking about was actually them.
www.buzzfeed.com/meghara/zuckerberg-open-letter-hate-speech-myanmar
And
Caroline O.
@RVAwonk
Just a reminder from this Nov. 2016 article: Facebook has had the tools to fight disinformation for a long time — but they chose not to use them because they feared right-wing backlash.
gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-was-undercut-by-fear-1788808204
And
Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data
Facebook was in talks with top hospitals and other medical groups as recently as last month about a proposal to share data about the social networks of their most vulnerable patients.
The idea was to build profiles of people that included their medical conditions, information that health systems have, as well as social and economic factors gleaned from Facebook.
Facebook said the project is on hiatus so it can focus on "other important work, including doing a better job of protecting people's data."
www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/facebook-building-8-explored-data-sharing-agreement-with-hospitals.html
And
Jeremy Ashkenas
@jashkenas
You know, I really hate to keep beating a downed zuckerberg, but to the extent that expensive patents indicate corporate intent and direction —
Come along for a ride, and let’s browse a few of Facebook’s recent U.S.P.T.O. patent applications…
In “Systems and methods of eye tracking control”, Facebook describes a system that watches your eye movements to track “the object of interest,” or “point of regard.”
Special infrared LEDs are used to shine into your pupil and cornea to determine gaze.
patents.google.com/patent/US20180046248A1/en
In “Soft matching user identifiers,“ Facebook describes how sending an innocuous event invite to your uploaded contact can trigger a “bounce-back” message, including cookies, device UUIDs, and other unique information for identity matching purposes.
patents.google.com/patent/US20180025082A1/en
Next! Facebook explains a “user influence score,” and how
“the user influence score can be decreased when the sender is reported to be associated, within a specified time period, with other users who are reported to be associated with undesired content.”
patents.google.com/patent/US20180041464A1/en
In another patent, Facebook writes:
“…the log may record information about actions users perform on a third party system, including webpage viewing histories, advertisements that were engaged, purchases made, and other patterns from shopping and buying”
patents.google.com/patent/US20180048616A1/en
In (now newsy!) “Dynamic enforcement of privacy settings…” FB dreams of:
“a message from the social networking system to the external system requesting the external system to cease using the information obtained in the previously transmitted response.”
patents.google.com/patent/US20180046826A1/en
In “Sentiment polarity for users,” Facebook reads your comments for positive or negative “affinity scores”, and generates “trust scores” for strong feelings.
“Data sets from trusted users are then used as a training set to train a machine learning model”
patents.google.com/patent/US20180012146A1/en
In “Identifying and using identities”:
“A list of people known to a user is maintained.”
“the people known to a user may be inferred by monitoring the actions of the user.”
“identifiers also may be inferred based on indicia other than user actions.”
patents.google.com/patent/US20170374170A1/en
In “Implicit Contacts in an Online Social Network” Facebook says it
“may determine the social-graph affinity of various social-graph entities for each other”
“the overall affinity may change based on continued monitoring of the actions or relationships“
patents.google.com/patent/US20180054494A1/en
In a new travel rec’s patent, FB writes:
“The system may monitor such actions on the online social network, on a third-party system, on other suitable systems, or any combination thereof. Any suitable type of user actions may be tracked or monitored.”
patents.google.com/patent/US20180035254A1/en
In our final patent, Facebook discusses advertising based on what you browse:
“The social networking system monitors implicit interactions between the user and objects of the social networking system with which the user has not established a connection”
patents.google.com/patent/US20170324820A1/en
Whew! That was a lot of patent-ese!
But I think — as one might say at the Times — a portrait emerges of the kind of surveillance machine Facebook aspires to continue constructing.
For a good wine pairing, follow up with @chetfaliszek’s thread on FB+VR:Whew! That was a lot of patent-ese!
But I think — as one might say at the Times — a portrait emerges of the kind of surveillance machine Facebook aspires to continue constructing.
For a good wine pairing, follow up with @chetfaliszek’s thread on FB+VR:
twitter.com/chetfaliszek/status/980861065989783552
Alright, folks — since you enjoyed the previous Facebook patent thread so much, you get a bonus round!
Remember: I’m only skimming a handful of these patent applications. There are over 11,000 of them.
patents.google.com/?assignee=facebook+inc.&oq=facebook+inc.&sort=new …
Here we go...
And
Without data-targeted ads, Facebook would look like a pay service, Sandberg says
While Facebook does not sell users' information or give it away, Sandberg said, "our service depends on your data."
www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/users-would-have-pay-opt-out-all-facebook-ads-sheryl-n863151
And
Peter Jukes
@peterjukes
"Big data companies (Google, Facebook etc) have already assumed many functions previously associated with the state, from cartography to surveillance. Now they are the primary gatekeepers of social reality"
The demise of the nation state
After decades of globalisation, our political system has become obsolete – and spasms of resurgent nationalism are a sign of its irreversible decline.
www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/05/demise-of-the-nation-state-rana-dasgupta