Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Facebook is apologizing after its algorithms tagged 65,000 Russian users as "interested in treason." Facebook algorithmically tags users based on their behavior, making it easier for advertisers to target people interested in specific topics. In this case, however, the tag "treason" may have put users under the threat of government intervention. Facebook says it has since removed the interest category.
[...] Automated profiling is useful when you're an orange juice vendor looking for people who say they like orange juice, but a landmark 2016 report from ProPublica found that many of the interests Facebook links to users aren't self-selected. Facebook records your behavior, then makes inferences on who you may be or what you might like, including your race, gender, sexuality, and religion.
[...] Let's be clear: Facebook is an automated profiling machine that synthesizes the enormous amounts of behavior data we create as we click, share, and friend other users. Advertisers can tap into that machine whenever they want, for the right price, and governments can request data. Overall, Facebook hands data over about 75% of the time, according to its 2018 Transparency Report.
Source: Facebook's Ad Tools Labeled Thousands of Users as 'Interested' in Treason
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday July 12 2018, @08:27AM (1 child)
The social media tinfoil hat donning outcasts always said this would happen.
The funny thing is that a totally transparent society where surveillance is done on everybody and every action is documented, in the hands of sufficiently courageous peons, would destroy the system. So possibly the system is trolling us in accepting privacy for our own defense.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday July 12 2018, @03:18PM
Not to worry, the system destroying transparency only happens when 'The Man' is equally exposed, which will never happen.
So the rest of us might as well demand privacy.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday July 12 2018, @08:33AM (13 children)
if (fbuser.sex=female) then interest_in_treason = 'true'
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @09:27AM (8 children)
Boolean as a string?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday July 12 2018, @09:33AM
Baysian, as in TMB. Mortenduary Bruzzander, I told you to stay away from that particular carrion.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @09:37AM (4 children)
And string as a boolean?
Seems wasteful to store a gender field with only 2 possible values as a tinyint
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @09:53AM (3 children)
There are many genders waiting to be discovered, you deplorable shitlord.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @10:07AM (2 children)
"deplorable shitlord" isn't a gender, it's a lifestyle choice and should be stored as a string.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 12 2018, @02:15PM (1 child)
That's a sticky subject that should be stored as a blob.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @10:46PM
A BLOB? What about non-binary people, you insufferably deplorable shitlord?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 12 2018, @01:57PM (1 child)
That bot is defective (not defector), speaks in javascript.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday July 14 2018, @06:03PM
ITT meatbags arguing over arbitrary choices of an ultimately unambiguous (thanks to the parentheses) pseudocode.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Thursday July 12 2018, @10:03PM (1 child)
The logical comparison operator is actually a double equals sign. Your code tests to see if it can ASSIGN each facebook user the female gender - and if it can, says they are interested in treason.
While there's a whole new level of joke just waiting to pop up out of that small mess (there I go again!) better to remember that = means to assign a value (like you did after the "then" statement) and == means to test for equality.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday July 14 2018, @04:34PM
look at this page and tell me whether saner languages use = for assignment.
http://rigaux.org/language-study/syntax-across-languages.html#VrsVrbssgOrDcl [rigaux.org]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Tuesday July 17 2018, @03:35AM (1 child)
Wait..... If I successfully set my Facebook gender to female, I'm now interested in treason?!?
And shouldn't that be fbuser.interests.put("treason", true) so you have some relationship on who's interested in treason?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday July 17 2018, @09:48AM
> If I successfully set my Facebook gender to female...
You ain't seen the method source, I will merely underline that it depends on palpation.so
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 12 2018, @08:47AM (1 child)
Mod this post interesting if you are interested in treason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3oSAVwcD4U [youtube.com]
💣🔪🔫
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 14 2018, @06:10PM
Wow, that's the only snippet of star wars that I have watched after the early 80s (in fact the latest contact with star wars involved playing the arcade game). So tiny a snippet. I argue that any equally long randomly chosen snippet of Barbarella, credits included, absolutely destroys this crap.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Thursday July 12 2018, @10:05AM (5 children)
was facebook's tagging correct?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday July 12 2018, @10:16AM (2 children)
We'll find out in November. Stay tuned!!! #RedTide [twitter.com] #RedWave [twitter.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @01:25PM (1 child)
#RedFlush
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @04:17AM
#GoldenShowers
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @04:52PM
I think just about every human is interestednin treadon. Maybe some to commit it, but mostly people would want tobbn know if it is happening st all.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday July 12 2018, @08:46PM
It doesn't matter if it was correct. For example, an AI could correctly identify more black faces than white faces as being at risk of criminal behavior. It could be validated against historical data and scientific studies. It would still be verboten in modern politically correct society.
You don't win arguments by being right, you win arguments by making other people think you have won the argument. That is to say, what the mob thinks trumps facts.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @12:49PM
The plain truth about the Internet advertising bubble: every word a user has typed (and probably mouseovers) is flagged as "interested in", mix in some word association "AI" and that is the "substance" behind the trillion dollar market valuations. A bullshit stalker economy that is probably paid for by spy agencies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 12 2018, @01:24PM (5 children)
... in the Thomas Paine sense.
It's funny how "treason" and "reason" differ by only one letter. In many regimes, those who are interested in the latter are branded with the former.
I'd say the solution is to stay off social media, except that too is viewed as "suspicious" these days.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 12 2018, @02:23PM (4 children)
Yeah, which is why it's useful to cast a false, wholesome image.
When I was younger I read everything Heinlein wrote. He always argued you should blend in with your social surroundings. If you're an atheist but live in a place where everyone goes to church, go to church and sing the hymns louder than anyone else. If everyone wears black, wear black also. Humans hate iconoclasts and will always persecute them. So don't make it easy for them to do so.
Heinlein took it to an extreme, as authors will do, but to me it always made sense to do something like that when it comes to social media. It will not be long before we are all persecuted for what we have done on social media, so why not employ social camouflage to better our chances?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Funny) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 12 2018, @03:33PM
LOL. You mean like almost all social media users do already?
I mean, I take your point. I just find it profoundly ironic that what you describe is basically what social media seems to be about -- pretending to be what you think everyone else wants you to look like (and often doing it in an over-the-top manner).
A marriage may consist of two people who barely talk to each other, but chances are you'll only see smiling pics of the two of them going out dressed up for an event.
Messy house? No pics of that. Wait until you hire that maid service once every month and then spend 20 minutes rearranging things to take a pic before posting that new cool piece of furniture.
Nobody posts a pic of the fourth time they go through the McDonald's drivethru that week. No, you wait until that one night that month you actually cook something moderately "fancy" at home, and post that.
In Facebook-land (and similar services), it's kinda like Lake Wobegon -- all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
And ideologically (just as in your Heinlein) example, it seems people "signal" each other on Facebook, trying to impress their "friends" with links, articles, memes, etc. that ensure they "fit in" with whoever they think is their desired crowd.
You might cite Heinlein as a reason for showing a facade on social media, but aren't most people doing that already? isn't that the point? (And if it isn't, I'm really not sure what the point of social media is...)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @10:54PM
Problem is, today's persecutions were yesterday's social camouflage. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Trying to "blend in" will always be a gamble on the future success of your chosen blend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @06:56AM
"go to church and sing louder".
how the hell are you going to improve society if you keep reinforcing the dumb ideas?!
if you actually tell yourself that this is what you're doing, here's a wake up call: you actually believe you are doing the right thing. because you do have some morality, you know that what you are doing is wrong, but you're telling yourself you're just doing it to appease society. you are too much of a coward to admit that you do like what society is doing.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday July 14 2018, @04:43PM
The point though, is that your opponent is not interested in good behavior, or virtues, but in CONTROL. So they will find any BS to blame on you no matter what.
Ad rivum eundem lupus et agnus venerant,
siti compulsi. Superior stabat lupus,
longeque inferior agnus. Tunc fauce improba
latro incitatus iurgii causam intulit;
'Cur' inquit 'turbulentam fecisti mihi
aquam bibenti?' Laniger contra timens
'Qui possum, quaeso, facere quod quereris, lupe?
A te decurrit ad meos haustus liquor'.
Repulsus ille veritatis viribus
'Ante hos sex menses male' ait 'dixisti mihi'.
Respondit agnus 'Equidem natus non eram'.
'Pater hercle tuus' ille inquit 'male dixit mihi';
atque ita correptum lacerat iniusta nece.
Haec propter illos scripta est homines fabula
qui fictis causis innocentes opprimunt.
The Wolf and the Lamb (trans. C. Smart)
BY thirst incited; to the brook
The Wolf and Lamb themselves betook.
The Wolf high up the current drank,
The Lamb far lower down the bank.
Then, bent his ravenous maw to cram,
The Wolf took umbrage at the Lamb.
"How dare you trouble all the flood,
And mingle my good drink with mud?"
"Sir," says the Lambkin, sore afraid,
"How should I act, as you upbraid?
The thing you mention cannot be,
The stream descends from you to me."
Abash'd by facts, says he, " I know
'Tis now exact six months ago
You strove my honest fame to blot"-
"Six months ago, sir, I was not."
"Then 'twas th' old ram thy sire," he cried,
And so he tore him, till he died.
To those this fable I address
Who are determined to oppress,
And trump up any false pretence,
But they will injure innocence.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday July 12 2018, @02:01PM
... now we will never know who was interested in advertising treason, what's the market price for it and when it goes on sale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday July 12 2018, @02:26PM
Thousands, THOUSANDS of users are interested in Treason?
What percent is that of the larger group Facebook is examining?
If we're talking about, say the US population, of about 300 million, then THERE PROBABLY ARE thousands of people interested in treason, willing to pay full price for it, and that would not even be a statistical anomaly.
There are probably Thousands of people who think the Earth is flat. Who think vaccines cause autism. Who think systemd is a good idea. Etc.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 12 2018, @02:31PM
Facebook will be apologizing for tagging people as homosexual because they went to see a show on Broadway. The day after that, they'll be apologizing for calling people vegans because they thought the new McDonald's hamburger tasted gross.
Because that's what happens when you try to reduce the human experience to an extended series of switch statements. The same thing even happens when they try to reduce human economic activity to mathematical formulae; they always get it catastrophically wrong when they try to use it for predictive purposes.
The best coders in the world have to necessarily set limits to their scope, because the less you clearly define it the more code falls apart. Facebook are not the best coders in the world. How can they do what the best cannot, and even cannot by definition?
Those of us who work in technology know this on a gut level, but the laiety never accept that because technology is magic. We are wizards, and the only reason we can't do something is because we don't want to badly enough, so they obviously only need to lean on us hard enough to get it to happen.
If they keep leaning on us to do this crap, we'll give them something, but I guarantee you they really, really won't like what they get.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @03:41PM (3 children)
"Our algorithms have detected an anomaly in your personalty. We have notified your local authorities, for your protection of course"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @04:32PM (2 children)
No, no, Facebook operates to make money. Their response would be to show you ads for a resort style psychiatric center.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)
Depends on who is paying them more.. The "resort" or the federal government.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 12 2018, @09:13PM
Nah, go ahead and report you to the authorities...
Then send you ads for legal defense assistance.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 12 2018, @05:13PM (1 child)
A researcher, Bob Altemeyer, studied authoritarianism in the US for years, and published a book in 2006 (a decade before Trump). Your quote is consistent with what he found about authoritarian followers. Relevant quote from his book, The Authoritarians (page 75) (RWA stands for right wing authoritarian):
The key to the puzzle springs from Chapter 2's observation that, first and foremost, followers have mainly copied the beliefs of the authorities in their lives. They have not developed and thought through their ideas as much as most people have. Thus almost anything can be found in their heads if their authorities put it there, even stuff that contradicts other stuff. A filing cabinet or a computer can store quite inconsistent notions and never lose a minute of sleep over their contradiction. Similarly a high RWA can have all sorts of illogical, self-contradictory, and widely refuted ideas rattling around in various boxes in his brain, and never notice it.
So can everybody, of course, and my wife loves to catch inconsistencies in my reasoning when we’re having a friendly discussion about one of my personal failures. But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic. These seven deadly shortfalls of authoritarian thinking eminently qualify them to follow a would-be dictator. As Hitler is reported to have said,“What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.”
-- the above shamelessly copied from another site
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Thursday July 12 2018, @11:55PM
I think there's a lot of truth in that but it's also wise to remember that we all grew up initially having to place a lot of trust in authority figures (unless you were a lone orphan) be they parents, teachers, or peers and you accept a lot of knowledge on faith quite early on in life until you learn to analyze and think critically. It's all too easy to be conditioned into the trap of subconsciously assuming that authority figures know better than you do in their field. Even when you start to reject what you grew up with, the subconscious biases can still be there. Don't take anything you learnt in the past for granted. Debunk everything. Open your mind.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday July 12 2018, @07:35PM (2 children)
It doesn't work to blackhole Facebook's tracking pixel with one's hosts file; to do so blocks the entire Facebook.com domain.
I've got in mind an easy-to-use Grandma Test-Passing solution but presently I'm busy trolling a Nigerian romance scammer [warplife.com]. That should all wind up sometime soon as just yesterday I sent a nine-page narrative with lots of such facts as Mr. Ishola's Bank Of America account numbers to some legal authorities as well as the Security team at B Of A's corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by acid andy on Thursday July 12 2018, @11:47PM (1 child)
You say that like it's a problem. The only problem I can see is that Facebook own lots of other domains as well.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 14 2018, @09:21AM
Indeed. If only it were that simple to nuke the entire site from orbit.