Sleepless in Midland

Facebook profits off the divisiveness it inspires

Anyone who saw the movie "The Social Network" probably came away with a solid apprehension of Facebook. Yeah, it was just a movie, but the producer in an interview said he stuck closely to the trial transcript when Zuckerberg got sued by the people claiming to have invented the concept Zuckerberg exploited. So any untruths in the movie were there for Zuckerberg to refute. The only scene Zuckerberg reportedly refuted was one in which he was shown trying to reconnect with a female friend he had jilted.

But here's the thing that really should rile customers. Facebook embraced the polarization it created because it was more profitable than bringing people together. See Facebook's own research warned its algorithms exploit 'divisiveness'. Excerpt:

Facebook’s executives resisted internal efforts to make its platform less divisive, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The company’s internal research found that its algorithms “exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” and could make the social network a more polarized place. In another piece of research reported by the WSJ, Facebook found in 2016 that 64 percent of users joining extremist groups on the platform did so as a result of the company’s recommendation algorithms.

The following year Facebook launched “Common Ground,” a wide-ranging effort to make the social network less polarizing and “increase empathy” among users.

Yet the company ultimately decided not to act on many of the group’s recommendations, fearing it could fuel claims the company was biased against conservative viewpoints. Other proposed changes were watered down, according to the report.

The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.

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10:06 AM 5/27/2020

Does anyone trust Facebook's face recognition app?

For someone having trouble remembering a person's name this Facebook app might be a real benefit. But does anyone still trust Facebook?

Kate O'Flaherty tells us this in Forbes -- Facebook Tested A Terrifying Facial Recognition App On Employees And Their Friends. Excerpt:

Facebook is under fire again, and this time over a terrifying facial recognition app that was tested on its employees. According to Business Insider, the tool used real-time facial recognition to identify a person by simply pointing a smartphone’s camera at them.

Business Insider said the app was developed between 2015 and 2016 but has since been discontinued. Citing anonymous sources, it reported that one version of the tool could even bring up someone’s Facebook profile using facial recognition capabilities. It was allegedly tested on Facebook’s employees and their friends who had enabled facial recognition on their profiles. 

Facebook has confirmed that it did develop the app, but denied that it could identify users of the social network. CNET published a statement, which read: "As a way to learn about new technologies, our teams regularly build apps to use internally.

The program could have some benefit to individual users. But social media companies are less caring about their users than their customers -- companies and governments wanting to compile dossiers on each us. China and it's social credit scorecard comes to mind.

Americans who grew up during the cyber revolution are much more at ease sharing personal information then those who grew up without it. And some people are more tolerant of snoops than others.

It's still an open question why China purloined U.S. government employee files a few years back. But it's not out of the question that they could be compiling dossiers on each and every one of us.

In any event, it's disturbing to read how cavalier many tech companies are about developing snooping software which will undoubtedly end up in the hands of foreign government agencies.

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3:22 PM 11/26/2019

When their users are the product, Yahoo free email really really wants us to stay logged in

Earlier this year we highlighted a feature on the Yahoo email login screen which would keep the user logged in unless he/she checked a box opting out.

But with a recent update, Yahoo is politely asking users to verify that they want to log out, not once, but twice. Here are screen shots of the initial login screen and the one that follows the first logout attempt.

With all the news about Facebook's sale of personal info, Yahoo email users should probably wonder what's happening to all the information they share in emails they might have thought were personal. But that information wasn't enough for Yahoo. They want to keep tracking the user after he/she is finished with the email.

It's a little bit disturbing.

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2:28 PM 4/4/2018

A Facebook company town

Maybe this isn't such a bad idea for Facebook employees caught up in a housing shortage. But with all the revelations about Facebook snooping into the loves, likes, and interests of Facebook users, it sounds creepy.

Anyway, here's the information source on the Facebook town: Company Town: Facebook, Google Creating Planned Communities in California with Homes, Bridges, Stores. Excerpt:

The “village” is set to feature 1,500 apartments, 225 of which will be offered “at below-market rates,” while the “most likely tenants of the full-price units are Facebook employees, who already receive a five-figure bonus if they live near the office,” according to the Times, who added that in a decade, Facebook “will have space for 35,000” employees, which is “slightly more than the city’s current population.”

“The community will have eight acres of parks, plazas and bike-pedestrian paths open to the public. Facebook wants to revitalize the railway running alongside the property and will finish next year a pedestrian bridge over the expressway,” they reported. “The bridge will provide access to the trail that rings San Francisco Bay, a boon for birders and bikers.”

Editor's Note: They should call it "Farmville." HA HA! Robo-ed | Hmm. How long will it be til Zuckerberg sees a Truman Show opportunity for the residents there. Sleepless

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1:36 PM 3/22/2018

The big three info websites might come under close scrutiny

Conservatives have known for a long time that at least two of the big three -- Google and Facebook -- have slanted their search results in favor of Democrats. The third company listed in the articles is Amazon, and while that one is a biggie, it isn't clear that it was as politically influential as the other two.

But here's a surprise. Al Franken has championed the cause of the customers against these three. Here's an excerpt from Al Franken Just Gave the Speech Big Tech Has Been Dreading:

Franken has not shied away from voicing concerns about tech’s encroachments on privacy and competition in the past, but Wednesday’s criticism was unusually sweeping, tying together a revised narrative about Silicon Valley that only emerged in glimpses during the Russia hearings. Franken argued that the same control over consumers that facilitated the spread of Russian propaganda on social media also helps Facebook and Google siphon advertising revenue from other publishers and helps Amazon dictate terms to content creators and smaller sellers. Tech giants are incentivized to disregard consumer privacy, Franken noted. “Accumulating massive troves of information isn’t just a side project for them. It’s their whole business model,” he said. “We are not their customers, we are their product.”

We would have to speculate why Franken would be concerned about Amazon influencing content creators, and it's not entirely clear if any remedy he proposed would change Google's or Facebook's efforts to influence voters. But if Democrats are now critics of the very companies that helped them so much that's a big deal.

See also, Tech companies pushed for net neutrality. Now Sen. Al Franken wants to turn it on them.

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2:26 PM 11/14/2017

Facebook's latest incursion into users' minds

Although the details might not have been predictable, it should come as no surprise that Facebook did to consumer what they're alleged to have done. See Facebook Added 'Research' To User Agreement 4 Months After Emotion Manipulation Study.

The movie The Social Network told us a lot. An interview aired on some radio program with the guy who wrote the book which supplied the story for the movie. The author used transcripts from depositions from the lawsuit in which one betrayed friend and two betrayed business associates sought recovery for their share of the Facebook business. Since live people were involved in a litigated dispute, the author had to be careful to stick very closely to the testimony in the depositions. The movie did too.

So while it is never a good idea to base one's belief in historical events on the movies, "The Social Network" might be as close to an exception as we can get.

In any event, someone who treats his friends and associates the way the character in the movie did is not a friend. That so many people trusted him and his company with their most personal information doesn't speak well of the level of critical thinking that exists in modern consumers.

Meanwhile, the above linked Forbes.com article contains another tidbit. To wit:

Defenders of the Facebook study including my colleague Jeff Bercovici say that everyone on the Internet is doing A/B testing — showing users two versions of something to see which resonates more based on how they click, share, and respond.

Quite so. Yahoo mail users see a completely different lineup of news items after they shut down cookie acceptance. Surely they're using some program that figured out what might keep the user on the yahoo site.

Overheard in the checkout line -- "On Facebook everyone in the world is connected to every other person in the world by five people."

Well, OK. But that seems merely to be a modification of six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Apparently Facebook has managed to knock off a degree.  But to be fair to the keepers of the Kevin Bacon database, the unknown speaker must have intended to say that every Facebook user is separated from every other Facebook user by five Facebook users.

And isn't it a little bit creepy that Facebook computers are doing that sort of thing? I mean, it's not as if Mark Zuckerberg is really that interested in human relationships other than as they serve his social media empire.

Editor's note: Oh don't be such a fuddy duddy. His business model is no different from any other supplier of consumer products. He gives people what they want and makes money along the way. Robo-ed | Yes, but don't forget that every entry into a Facebook page goes into a database for mining by other consumer product sellers as well as government agencies and probably political advocacy groups.  Sleepless