Facebook To Share Private Data With Politico

tomhudson writes "AllThingsD is reporting that Facebook has agreed to share users' private data with Politico. Quoting: 'Most notably, the Facebook-Politico data set will include Facebook users' private status messages and comments. Every post and comment — both public and private — by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate's name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool.' Yes, they claim it will be anonymized, but we've seen that doesn't really work in real life."

Comments

Google does the same

[TechGuys]

Even the article mentions it:

This is similar to the way Google offers reports on search trends based on its users’ aggregate search activities.

In fact, all of this is public information too. You can look at search amounts for specific searches here.

It's just numerical data. Facebook seems to do this analysis by searching all the posts that mention candidate's name and if the associated words are positive or negative.

The comparison to anonymized data in the summary is stupid. Facebook publishing any of those messages, they're just doing analysis on them. There would be good point in this article if they actually published those messages because then anonymizing doesn't work, but it's a moot point because they aren't making anything public. Only the aggregated search amounts.

Re:Google does the same

[ThisIsSaei]

It's cool to hate facebook + sensationalist headlines get more attention = this article.

Re:Google does the same

[Anonymous Coward]

But would they properly aggregate posts about Mittens?

Re:Google does the same

[Anonymous Coward]

This is completely different.

Google is taking data that users are providing them, and doing statistical analysis on that data. There's no issue with this, because it's not leaving Google.

Facebook is taking data that users are providing them, and sending it off to a third party to do statistical analysis on it. This is a terrible invasion of privacy, because Facebook users never intended for their private data to be shipped off to other companies.

If you can't see the difference here than you're either dumb or an anti-Google shill.

Re:Google does the same

[Penguinisto]

Small point: There is a vast difference between some half-cobbled search term pecked in, and a statement of personal ideology. I mean, something like "Sen. Congresscritter criminal record" on Google has a lot more variations of context that could be applied than a Facebook-borne "Senator Congresscritter is a friggin pedophile/terrorist that stomps on puppies and then enjoys beating up old ladies while forcing his wife and kids to watch. If it wasn't for his money and status, he'd be enduring 30 years fo hard sodomy at the nearest federal penitentiary! Oh, and he cheats on his taxes - I have proof!"

Otherwise? While it would likely begin as just numerical data, I can see how the Facebook setup could be very easily abused. You're still parsing the words, after all, and those can easily contain the owner's name, or at least enough references to infer it quite easily.

Re:Google does the same

[gnick]

Google is taking data that users are providing them, and doing statistical analysis on that data. There's no issue with this, because it's not leaving Google.

Umm... Sure it is. In fact, you can go look at anonymized aggregate search trends from Google yourself. For free.

I am a huge Google fan, but don't think that anything you do with them is kept private unless they specifically tell you so.

Re:Google does the same

[Baloroth]

This is fine so long as Facebook only gives Politico the numerical results and not the actual information itself. TFA is a little skimpy on the details about who is actually running the analyzing tool: if it is Facebook, fine, but if Politico has access to the private data, that would be a problem.

Re:Google does the same

[jcreus]

Well it's fine; but for a reason. Because all you Facebook members accepted the terms of use! (Some of us don't have that problem.) Even if it is in the terms of use (which I haven't read), you know, it's not much ethical giving out private data to third parties.

Re:Google does the same

[TechGuys]

Yes, the summary is badly worded. Facebook themselves clearly say that it is Facebook who will run the statistics software.

Re:Google does the same

[Anonymous Coward]

You have missed the point. You gave that data to Google when you searched via Google. Google is doing the analysis itself and then presenting the findings itself. At no point does it leave Google. Plus, no identifying info leaves Google as it is all scrubbed down to pure numerical form before it is presented.

With this new Facebook/Politico thing, Facebook is giving the data to Politico to analyze. There's the problem. They are taking what I put on Facebook and giving it to someone else without my permission. That would be like Google taking your emails and giving them to a 3rd party to look at.

This isn't even subtle difference, it's pretty blatant. If Facebook wants to analyze it and keep it all on Facebook, that's fine, or they should allow an opt-in (NOT and opt-out) option to have your posts counted in this.

Re:Google does the same

[hedwards]

Pssh, I was hating FB way before that became cool.

Also, it's obviously not working, despite the numerous warnings about FB people still maintain their accounts and we have yet to see the government really step in and tell them to stop spying on random internet users.

Re:Google does the same

[TechGuys]

facebook is sharing anonymized personal messages and typed posts. the difference here is night and day.

No they aren't. Summary is just badly worded. Facebook will not share any messages with anyone, they will run the statistics tools themselves. Read the announcement by Facebook, where they clearly state that. Politico will not get the messages.

Re:Google does the same

[TechGuys]

With this new Facebook/Politico thing, Facebook is giving the data to Politico to analyze. There's the problem. They are taking what I put on Facebook and giving it to someone else without my permission. That would be like Google taking your emails and giving them to a 3rd party to look at.

That is entirely false. Facebook is not giving Politico any private messages. They will run the statistics tools themselves.

Re:Google does the same

[ironjaw33]

The comparison to anonymized data in the summary is stupid. Facebook publishing any of those messages, they're just doing analysis on them. There would be good point in this article if they actually published those messages because then anonymizing doesn't work, but it's a moot point because they aren't making anything public. Only the aggregated search amounts.

The articles I've read about this don't specifically say as to how much aggregation Facebook will provide. I'm guessing that it would be a really coarse grained distribution of Facebook users' opinions and no different than the level of granularity most other political polls provide. However, if they provide breakdowns on very fine grained age ranges, geographic regions, ethnicity, gender, political views, etc, identifying specific people may be possible. I recall a similar study done with aggregated Facebook data by Harvard researchers where third parties using the data were able to identify some of the individuals.

Overall, I think this is mostly FUD. The only thing that makes this different than traditional surveys is that Facebook users don't have a choice as to whether or not they participate, but when it comes to Facebook, user choice seems to be the exception, not the rule.

Re:Google does the same

[sakdoctor]

I was hating facebook before it was cool to hate myspace.

Re:Google does the same

[gnick]

I think that saying that FB is "sharing" the personal messages and such is a little bit of a stretch though. Yes, they have partnered with Politico (they've been working with them for years), but according to their announcement, the only things that are viewed or shared to anything but the automated analysis program are stats on how many mentions each candidate gets and aggregations of positive or negative "sentiment."

It's uncomfortable, and I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I don't think it violates the TOS that I, of course, read thoroughly before agreeing to it. The only part that really chaps me is that, if I were offended enough that they were doing this, I'd have no way of retracting posts that I'd already made even if I discontinued my account.

Re:Google does the same

[stephanruby]

Even the article mentions it:

This is similar to the way Google offers reports on search trends based on its users’ aggregate search activities.

In fact, all of this is public information too. You can look at search amounts for specific searches here.

"Number of Global Searches" and "Number of Local Searches"? That's not a lot of information.

So you're telling us that Politico won't be getting Facebook's users age/birthday, gender information, party affiliation, and zip code, along with the number of times they mentioned a candidate's name positively or negatively?

Now I agree that this slashdot headline is mostly just for click-bait purposes, but personally, I would still love to see the specific report Politico was getting. The same goes for Google, if Google delivers any report privately to any company out there, I would love to see that private report as well (to make sure it only matches what's listed in the public adwords web page you just linked us to).

Re:Google does the same

[tripleevenfall]

You should join the rest of us in hating Google for the same reasons we hate Facebook and Microsoft. It's very avant-garde here on Slashdot.

Re:Google does the same

[Anonymous Coward]

facebook is sharing anonymized personal messages and typed posts. the difference here is night and day.

No they aren't. Summary is just badly worded. Facebook will not share any messages with anyone, they will run the statistics tools themselves. Read the announcement by Facebook, where they clearly state that. Politico will not get the messages.

The link you provide doesn't really clarify. It implies that actual messages go to Politico but it's hard to say for sure.

"Facebook will compile mentions of the candidates in U.S. users' posts and comments as well as assess positive and negative sentiments expressed about them. Facebook’s data team will use automated software tools frequently used by researchers to infer sentiment from text. This information will be exclusively available on POLITICO with analysis by its journalists."

A compilation of mentions of candidates would presumably be more than just some aggregate statistics. But is "the information" that they give to Politico the same thing as the compilation of mentions?

Re:Google does the same

[Bucky24]

There IS a difference, but I wouldn't say it's COMPLETELY different.

Re:Google does the same

[Baloroth]

Ah, thanks. Facebook has the data either way, so I don't really see this being a privacy problem. So long as they do it right, of course.

Re:Google does the same

[Synerg1y]

Coincidentally, I bet most slashdotters can't provide a valid reason (no imagination, no tinfoil) for hating any of them. And I'm accomplishing nothing by stating so besides ruffling the herd :)

Re:Google does the same

[TechGuys]

No. Facebook will compile the mentions of the U.S. candidates. Then Facebook's data team will use automated software tools to do the statistics. These statistics are given to Politico, not the actual messages.

Re:Google does the same

[gatkinso]

I hated AOL way before you owned a computer.

Re:Google does the same

[ilguido]

I don't think that I'm offtopic if I ask you how you could read the FTA and write the first post (citing the FTA btw) in less than a minute after that the story was published. I'm not offtopic because the answer could invalidate all your points.

Re:Google does the same

[Beardo the Bearded]

Pfft, hating M$ and F-UB are SO mainstream.

I hate slashdot.

Re:Google does the same

[NeutronCowboy]

If Politico actually believes that it can get useful information from the statistics alone, they paid a ton of money for absolutely nothing. People can hawk the social media tools all they want, but all they do is keyword analysis with some language heuristics thrown in. The vendors themselves will tell you (if they are honest) that they cannot tell you what the accuracy of their tool is, because nobody knows for sure how the training posts correlate with the posts in the wild.

And DCTech/InsightIn140Bytes/SmithZ/Whatever else you will post under in the next FB/MS/Google stories, I hope you get paid well. Your job is worse than that of a used car salesman. At least they don't lie about whether they are used car salesman.

Re:Google does the same

[blueg3]

It's not, actually. While the summary is misleading, Facebook is performing the analysis themselves and providing Politico with the summary results. It would be more correct to say that Facebook is sharing the results of analysis performed on private data with Politico, as they're not sharing the data itself.

Re:Google does the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, he's just an another part of CmdrPony/InsightIn140Bytes/DCTech/DavidSell sockpuppet (forgive me for not enumerating each of his throw-away accounts, I'm skipping 4 or 5 of them). He's got an account with subscription to see when the story's coming up and a new account every week to get first post with anti-Google tripe.

Check his posts history and see. He's always like this, once there's a chance to bash Google - he's right here. Here, there was even same scenario, an article about FB with his first post bashing Google.

Re:Google does the same

[mr1911]

Coincidentally, I bet most slashdotters can't provide a valid reason (no imagination, no tinfoil) for hating any of them.

Because I want to.

Valid enough for me.

Re:Google does the same

[garaged]

Well, you must be new around, I have seen WAY too much reasons to hate pretty much any existing company just in the last couple of months :D

Re:Google does the same

[ThisIsSaei]

It seems that's reason enough to denote the original comment trolling. Perhaps if I was needlessly verbose...

Re:Google does the same

[Tyr07]

It still won't learn! We can't get it to read the TOS! When will you learn iCentipede!

Psht...reading TOS.

Re:Google does the same

[ColdWetDog]

Pfft, hating M$ and F-UB are SO mainstream.

I hate slashdot.

Well, I hate everybody.

Re:Google does the same

[Wrath0fb0b]

Facebook is taking data that users are providing them, and sending it off to a third party to do statistical analysis on it. This is a terrible invasion of privacy, because Facebook users never intended for their private data to be shipped off to other companies.

Facebook never intended for users to give them data that they considered private. If you want to keep something private, common sense dictates that you not give it to other people. Heck, it's not even common sense, it's tautological -- data that you give to other people isn't private (anymore) unless there are specific safeguards (attorney-client privilege, HIPAA comes to mind) that create a positive duty on them not to share it.

Seriously folks, if you've sent it to someone else, it's not private. If you've kept it to yourself, no one can leak it but you.

Re:Google does the same

[tlhIngan]

If Politico actually believes that it can get useful information from the statistics alone, they paid a ton of money for absolutely nothing. People can hawk the social media tools all they want, but all they do is keyword analysis with some language heuristics thrown in. The vendors themselves will tell you (if they are honest) that they cannot tell you what the accuracy of their tool is, because nobody knows for sure how the training posts correlate with the posts in the wild.

You do realize that they can't get statistics on stuff they can't see, right? It's all fine and well to gather statistics on the public stuff, but what about the private stuff? That's where the analytics behind Google and Facebook come in, because that information isn't supposed to be released, and if it can't be released, it means any third party wanting it needs to pay the company to run the analytics for them.

Heck, sometimes just the keyword search differences between public posts and private posts can be revealing,

Re:Google does the same

[NeutronCowboy]

You're assuming that just because someone ran some posts through some number-crunching software, the numbers you get back are somehow meaningful. They may be, or they may not be. The point here is that no one can say for sure exactly what the numbers. Example: "I think that the ads portraying Romney as a douchebag are wrong." Is this is a positive for Romney? Maybe. For Gingrich? Maybe. For the SuperPAC running the ads? Probably not. Now realize that the best that the system can do is to run keyword frequency and position analysis. Romney is followed by douchebag is followed by wrong. Is douchebag in their keyword dictionary? How does it weight the fact that douchebag is wrong? Here's some more fun: "I think Romney is a douchebag.", "I think Gingrich thinks Romney is a douchebag", and "Romney sucks! The wind out of Gingrich's campaign. Hahah!"

Political sentiment analysis via semantic number crunching is nothing but snake oil. And yes, I studied semantic analysis in school and now have to answer people's questions about what our social metric software actually does.

Re:Google does the same

[CCarrot]

Pfft, hating M$ and F-UB are SO mainstream.

I hate slashdot.

Well, I hate everybody.

Oh yeah? Well I hate myself!

<pause>

*sniffle*

Re:Google does the same

[Beardo the Bearded]

That's okay, everybody hates themselves at least part of the time.

Do you want a hug or some whiskey?

Re:Google does the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Fb violating people's privacy can be truly horrible (though Idk why ppl would care who knew about the political views they posted on fb for everyone to see???)

This comes up in every discussion about Facebook/social networking privacy. Almost no one makes social networking posts for everyone to see. They make them for their friends to see. The distinction is not trivial, and every "Facebook's privacy breaches don't actually matter" post seems to equate them.

Re:Google does the same

[CCarrot]

That's okay, everybody hates themselves at least part of the time.

Do you want a hug or some whiskey?

Oh damn, you mean I circled right back to mainstream again? How embarrassing!

Gimme that whiskey...got any scotch? :)

Re:Google does the same

[thereitis]

Feds: stop spying on random internet users.
Corp: ok. we'll shut off your data feed while we're at it.
Feds: um, nevermind.

Re:Google does the same

[silanea]

Have you recently used Facebook's interface without any browser extensions to alter it (Social Fixer etc.)? Name one thing there that does not deserve to be hated. Facebook as a website sucks. Hard.

And Microsoft? They still have no half-way sensible package management, installing their current OSes over a network still makes even the most extreme SM session look like wellness and I hate those damned ribbons!

And Google? They are a privacy nightmare. Like any other large company. And most governments.

Re:Google does the same

[Em Adespoton]

Are you assuming that most slashdotters are human and have valid reasoning ablities? Or are you just stating that the slashbots have no imagination?

Re:Google does the same

[http]

A one hundred sixty word response, complete with link, less than one minute after the story goes live, from a seven digit UID. Uncanny.
May I hire your services? I need to disrupt freerepublic next month.

Re:Google does the same

[gVibe]

I agree with the Anonymous Coward...especially since the supposed agreement reached recently between the FTC and Facebook explicitly forbids them from doing this without user consent. I mean, it hasn't even been 3 months and Facebook is clearly thinking they can stil do business as usual without any repercussions. On a side note...Has anyone ever tried to figure out exactly how many of said 1 billion accounts are actual live people who use Facebook, versus automated bots that use Facebook for nefarious purposes. I mean to Facebook it makes no difference, an account is an account and they count it as so. Furthermore, how many live persons actively using Facebook actually use confirmed true information?

Re:Google does the same

[ckaminski]

I have a whole shelf full. I'm thinking a glass of Cardhu tonight will hit the spot!

Re:Google does the same

[tomhudson]

First, it is NOT the same. Google analyzing your data in-house and sharing the trends is not the same as giving your data (including private posts) to a 3rd party for the 3rd party to analyze.

Second, as the links I provided in the submission show, there is no such thing as "anonymized data" - given enough data, you can pretty much connect anyone to a series of facebook posts.

Re:Google does the same

[Khyber]

Oh, I could provide plenty of reasons.

Google's search, despite you telling it not to, still tailors search results based upon what an IP address has searched for recently. This seriously fucks up my searching for what I'm after, because I get a bunch of nonsense from local results that are made by people that do not know what they're talking about.

Facebook has leaked out too much data. No thanks.

Microsoft has this penchant for still attempting to abuse antitrust. It's a natural part of hat company, now. You might as well say it's in their genetics.

Got some other companies to name? I'm sure I've got a bunch of other legit reasons to hate them as well.

Re:Google does the same

[Nyder]

Coincidentally, I bet most slashdotters can't provide a valid reason (no imagination, no tinfoil) for hating any of them. And I'm accomplishing nothing by stating so besides ruffling the herd :)

I hate Facebook because it's a platform for gleaning as much info, personal or otherwise, from it's user, without giving any added value. They do NOT care about user rights or privacy, which has been shown time and time again in various articles.

Facebook wants to make as much money as it can off of you, and it doesn't care how.

(And yes, i know peeps will say Google is like that, but that's not true. Google provides a lot of useful services and don't sell you out to 3rd parties for some extra cash.)

Re:Google does the same

[Lundse]

Insightful? More like troll - but a couple of other people at least seem to feel the need for a serious answer...

Microsoft is a repeat offender of FUD and EEE tactics. Just to mention the tip of the iceberg.
Facebook owns the largest sociological database in existence, and they are selling its usage to the highest bidder.
Google is trying to take over the web, while have pioneered the FB business model.

Re:Google does the same

[tehcyder]

I personally don't see a reason to hate them, it's like hating wal-mart for having a superior business model instead of coming up with a better one yourself.

I hate wal-mart for many reasons, including pandering to the lowest common denominator at every step and being anti-union. Any twat can come up with a "be as evil as possible within the confines of the law" business model/plan.

Re:Google does the same

[cavebison]

posts that mention candidate's name and if the associated words are positive or negative

All the other candidates have the wisdom of youth and the energy of age. Ron Paul, however, is the shit. Obama, too, has a certain pulchritude. I offer him my contrafribbilarities.

Re:Google does the same

[rapidmax]

Facebook is taking data that users are providing them, and sending it off to a third party to do statistical analysis on it. This is a terrible invasion of privacy, because Facebook users never intended for their private data to be shipped off to other companies.

The main reason why I don't have a Facebook account is because I have to sign an agreement, that all data I enter into Facebook belongs to Facebook and they could do with it whatever they like. Specifically they could provide it to other organisations. If I had signed this agreement like anyone with a Facebook account then I'll be ok with that.

~Andy

Re:Google does the same

[drinkypoo]

They're probably just counting hits to the URL filter. When I post links I always wait for the full preview to appear, yet sometimes when I click to post the link disappears. Facebook took "via Links" off the bottom of such posts so there's no longer any visual clue that a link is missing except context. This happens to me only when I post some political content that is going around, or when I post some other content from a site that commonly carries it. If I post some inane drivel it always (and I mean always) has succeeded.

Re:Google does the same

[Viewsonic]

How are they possibly making money off 'big boobs'?

Re:Google does the same

[AmiMoJo]

I wouldn't object so much if I could completely opt out, but it isn't easy. My friends use Facebook to organise and it got to the point where I heard about gatherings at the last minute when someone remembered to text me, or not at all. Then the gatherings themselves were reduced as people shared their news and gossip via Facebook instead of face to face. Sad but it happened and my only option was have a Facebook account or be a social outcast.

Actually even if you don't have a Facebook account they collect data on you, and once you have one any info Facebook finds out about you will never ever be deleted.

I use many of Google's services by choice so have less to complain about there.

when will the FBI come for me?

[alen]

i LOVE our glorious President. he's the Dearest Leader i've ever had

Re:when will the FBI come for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's also an internet expert.

Re:when will the FBI come for me?

[Minwee]

And very good at looking at things.

It's simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

We just have to troll the data by posting nothing but Ron Paul links on Facebook. /looks at Facebook feed

See! Everyone's already doing it!

Re:It's simple...

[gVibe]

by everyone ... you also mean the bots, right? Not every account on FB is real and even some real one's use fake information, thus causing inflated statistics for dear Suckerberg.

Another day another account

[Anonymous Coward]

Google does not give it's data to anyone else. Facebook does. The difference is clear.

Oh also fuck you DCTech/cmdrpony/ge7/tech4. Get a life.

paranoia

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'm learning that when the fundamental dynamics of something seem wrong, you should usually go with your gut regardless of what the crowd does.

With a little thought, it's easy to spot problems that the mainstream media, and public at large, are simply ignoring. Perhaps they take cues from each others' lack of concern?

• housing bubble - Easy to see the debt:income ratios for buying a house were becoming impossible to manage. I didn't understand bond markets and CDO's at the time, but I could tell something was going to give before long.
• government deficit spending
• higher-education cost bubble
• Facebook's access to "private" data, with fundamental financial incentives to share it with 3rd parties.

Facebook posts and lawn signs....

[Shakrai]

If either of those things translated into real votes Ron Paul would be President. Seriously, I see four of his lawn signs around these parts for every one I've seen for another candidate.

Re:Facebook posts and lawn signs....

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed the ones that will just gleefully ignore them?

Re:"Facebook To Share Private Data"

[Kenja]

If you gave the data to Facebook, it was never private in the first place.

Its not private data

[nurb432]

If its placed in a public database. Now if i was *paying* for service id be in a bad mood if there was not a US warrant first. FB is free, its public. its how this stuff works.

Re:Its not private data

[forkfail]

You do not buy rights. If you did, they'd be privileges.

We all know that the user is the product on Facebook. However, there are limitations on how Facebook can sell its product, and those are determined by the EULA, terms of service and privacy policy documentation.

I can't imagine a less correct statement concerning privacy in general and Facebook in particular than yours.

Re:Its not private data

[Anonymous Coward]

FB is free, its public. its how this stuff works.

All you've proven is you don't know "how this stuff works"
Service charges have absolutely no bearing on whether data is public or private.

By your logic, since Hotmail and Gmail are free services, I should have no trouble getting hold of their databases and start reading all their users emails right???

More to the point, if FB users data is 'public' as you claim, then why are the FTC doing privacy audits on Facebook for the next 20 years? After all, if the data is 'public' then there is no privacy to invade,right ?

Why should anyone care?

[andyring]

Seriously? What's the big deal? If you don't like it, don't use Facebook. I don't. I quit several months ago and deleted my account. Same with Twitter after I learned they were giving their entire archive to the Library of Congress.

With FB, I am convinced it's really nothing more than a giant waste of time with little or no real benefit. Yes, I will grant that I met my wonderful wife courtesy of Facebook, but beyond that, I cannot see how my life is any better due to the time I used to spend there.

Not to mention Facebook basically means someone else is hugely profiting from the comings and goings of my daily life. And, quite frankly, I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg with my life any further than I could throw a giant boulder.

No one is forcing you to use Facebook. I don't miss it a bit.

Re:Why should anyone care?

[BLT2112]

Yes, I will grant that I met my wonderful wife courtesy of Facebook, but beyond that, I cannot see how my life is any better due to the time I used to spend there.

Spot the irony in the above sentence!

Re:Why should anyone care?

[andyring]

True, but I don't continue to add to it. Yes, I know what was out there is out there for good. And I suppose it could be considered irony in the statement about meeting my wife, however that was several years ago and does not negate my point that aside from that, my life hasn't benefited from spending hours a day on FB.

Re:Why should anyone care?

[CCarrot]

Yes, I will grant that I met my wonderful wife courtesy of Facebook, but beyond that, I cannot see how my life is any better due to the time I used to spend there.

Spot the irony in the above sentence!

I met my equally wonderful husband in a smoking section while *gasp* having a smoke. Does that mean that smoking was the best thing to ever happen to me? Should I have continued to smoke for the sake of sentimentality?

IMHO, FB is bad medicine. Some of us can sample and quit, and some never start in the first place...

Re:Why should anyone care?

[Em Adespoton]

Wouldn't it be great if people actually read EULAs?

I did, and vowed I'd never touch Facebook.

If everyone actually read EULAs and only signed up for things they actually agreed to, we'd end up with EULAs and privacy policies we COULD actually agree to... because any company that didn't have policies in line with what people actually agreed with would get no business. This doesn't just go for social media sites; it goes for software, movies, music, and anything else that can be digitized.

Personally, I'd love it if I could create an "avatar" for myself that had a defined EULA "whitelist" and a defined EULA "blacklist" and flagged up anything that didn't fit one of these categories. Then, whenever I went to sign up for something or buy a product or service, only those that fit my list would show up at the top of the list. I'd get a secondary section with "questionable" flagged items, and a third section with "almost matches" where I could decide to change my UNIVERSAL white/blacklist.

Still not perfect, but if such a thing existed and everyone used it, we'd likely have slightly more expensive goods and services that actually delivered what we expected. And anyone who abused the system would be in serious trouble.

Re:Why should anyone care?

[Em Adespoton]

As an added benefit, this service could also track what was done with the information you provided and what you did with the information you received, and flag any potential infringements. Just to keep everyone honest.

Re:"Facebook To Share Private Data"

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Do people really not get this by now, given it's been in all the mainstream media?

If you give your info to FB, whether directly or indirectly by (say) loading their "like" button from another site, then what you give them is not private. You gave it to an organization whose entire purpose is to distribute it to anyone who wants to buy.

Re:"Facebook To Share Private Data"

[gstoddart]

If you gave the data to Facebook, it was never private in the first place.

Valid point, but there are some places which have data privacy laws Facebook will be bound to ... and those laws likely say that there's limited things Facebook can do with certain data. I think in some countries, this would likely run afoul of that.

However, for the rest of us, it might be fun to game the system and flood it with a bunch of stuff to drive things crazy ... "Romney wears womens underwear", "Barak Obama wipes his nose on tablecloths" or other random things might at least poison the well.

They may be going to give it away no matter what you do, but that doesn't mean you can't have a little fun with it.

data set?

[whereiswaldo]

If I put on my I-want-your-data hat for a second, I think giving a data set is the wrong approach. Give Politico a search interface to perform research on. Then I get to collect data on the things that Politico cares about and do my own tertiary data mining. Maybe that's a bad idea, I don't know. I'm not very good at being evil. ;)

Re:"Facebook To Share Private Data"

[Kenja]

The day Facebook makes your data truly private is the day they start charging for using their products. How do you think they make their money?

Okay, but only if I get the same courtesy.

[blair1q]

Let me see everything written by any Politico employee, published or private. You can anonymize them if you like.

Different expectation of privacy

[Comboman]

I think the expectation of privacy is considerably different between submitting a query to a search engine and posting a message marked "PRIVATE" to a social network. A bit like the difference between making a call to 411 for directory assistance (where I expect the call may be recorded) and making a private telephone call (where I expect only the government to be able to record it, and only with a warrant, though perhaps I'm being a bit nostalgic in that regard).

Re:"Facebook To Share Private Data"

[Jawnn]

Exactly. Do people really not get this by now, given it's been in all the mainstream media?

Clearly, they do not. That, or they just don't care enough to think about the consequences. The latter is, to me, the more troubling explanation by far. I guess that the civil rights reaming we've been taking from the government actually makes the violations by Facebook, et al, just kinda slip in unnoticed.

Hopefully the data will be better visualized

[Anonymous Coward]

After looking at these wonderful unlabeled graphs for years, I hope they've learned how to visualize data:

http://www.facebook.com/developers/chart.php?type=at_total_time
http://www.facebook.com/developers/chart.php?type=at_error_count
http://developers.facebook.com/live_status/

So what.

[RightSaidFred99]

Come on, this is getting old. If you don't want your words or pictures to be made public don't put them on Facebook. How difficult is this? Assume that anything you write there will be public information because it's, well, public.

Re:So what.

[forkfail]

It won't get old until Facebook says on their privacy page, "We don't value your privacy. Everything you say will be data mined and sold to anyone who gives us enough money. And we might even give it away for free."

Fixed that for you.

[RightSaidFred99]

Facebook To Share Public Data

Re:"Facebook To Share Private Data"

[forkfail]

Big Brother may have gotten his start in the public sector, but he's shifted to the private one these days.

Our government is the tool of the corporations and the big money. So, yes - this is an Orwellian trend, but nevertheless - look at who pulls the strings.

Ron Paul will have a JFK moment.

[Colin Smith]

If he ever becomes president.

Seriously, it won't be allowed.
 

Re:Ron Paul will have a JFK moment.

[Palshife]

I'm one of the people that won't allow it. Democracy. It's a bitch.

Re:Automated analysis of intent?

[blueg3]

Absolutely. But the only way to really ruin the results is to get enough people to make such comments that it has a statistically-relevant influence on the end result.

A lot of sentiment-analysis algorithms are very simple, though -- they should probably consider most or all of your examples to be unclassifiable (so they'd still count as "mentions", but not with a positive or negative sentiment).

It's more likely that you'd get bad data off of statements like, "I hate how Ron Paul is being mistreated by the media," or, "Ron Paul would be a great president, if you like policies that don't make sense and have no chance of being implemented."

Where anonymous data fails

[Chewbacon]

Coorelation. If you combine enough data, you can identify the people that make it up. For example, the malls that were tracking people via cellphones. Combine that with sales data from merchants, and you can see what individual people were buying and filter out window shoppers from legitimate shoppers. So who is willing to go the distance on this and delete their facebooks?

Yet another reason you cannot find ...

[Skapare]

... Skapare on Facebook.

Re:Yet another reason you cannot find ...

[forkfail]

Give it time.

Facebook will find you.

Re:Yet another reason you cannot find ...

[Em Adespoton]

Indeed... I'm sure that both my online persona and my real persona are on Facebook, based on the way it works. I've never created a FB account, but I can't guarantee that nobody else has, and I'm sure that the people I know have mentioned me time and time again. I'm also sure there are pictures of me on Facebook. I'm sure the company could autogenerate an account for me just based on the information happily provided by others.

What about Person + Bomb?

[Tyr07]

Well, we all heard that phone calls get recorded if you say specific messages like president and bomb in the same conversation.

What about facebook messages? Does it suddenly become not anon if they see phrases like that?

What if it was, 'I love Obama, he is the bomb'. What happens?

Who cares?

[frank_adrian314159]

The only thing this says is that Politico is stupid. Something most of us know already.

What is Politico actually getting?

[Kelson]

So who's doing the analysis? Facebook, or Politico?

If Facebook is doing the analysis and handing Politico a graph (or rather the numbers that can be made into a graph), then big deal. Facebook already has access to the information, and nothing personal is going public, even anonymized.

OTOH, if Facebook is grepping for candidates' names, stripping off the usernames, and handing *that* to Politico, *that* would be a breach of privacy.

Santorum???!!!!

[kurthr]

Does that mean that any time someone discusses that "byproduct" it will be linked to the presidential candidate? :O
That would be awesome! Will the comments be more negative than positive... which social groups?

Next president... Lincoln Free Beer!

Why pay for that?

[Lawrence_Bird]

Dear Politico,

There is no need to pay Facebook for infomation regarding political sentiment of their user postings and messages. For free I can tell you the answer:

RON PAUL

I am available for hire as a political consultant.

Thank you

LB

Facebook Abbreviation

[iinventstuff]

Should we abbreviate Facebook Incorporated as FB or is it now better to just call them FBI?

Re:Providing some clarity from Facebook

[tomhudson]

So why (assuming your post is legit) are you doing this with PRIVATE posts and messages?

What part of the word "private" do you people continue to have a problem understanding?

Also, you have a serious credibility problem, given facebooks' past history of misconduct and breaking privacy laws in several countries, such as PIPEDA in Canada. Why should we believe you this time?

BTW, no, it's not similar to google zeitgeist - people searching using google never explicitly marked a search query as private or public, so stop with the bad analogies and disinformation. We're not that naive (or stupid), and treating us like technological unsophisticates is insulting.

Hmmmm

[jason777]

I've been touting Ron Paul because obviously he is the only hope for this country. Granted, I'm sure by mentioning this on facebook the government knows that I'm a terrorist. That right, people that metion ron paul, the FED, and such are labeled terrorists now by our wonderful government. With the NDAA now, just being a terrorist SUSPECT can grant you indefinite detention, no due process, no lawyer. Yeah. And now they are trying to push this Enemy Expatriation Act through, which says the government can strip you of your US citizenship if they deem you hostile to the government. Please people, vote Ron Paul. You may not like all his ideas, but the alternative is total TYRANNY.

Substance versus Structure

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Coincidentally, I bet most slashdotters can't provide a valid reason (no imagination, no tinfoil) for hating any of them. And I'm accomplishing nothing by stating so besides ruffling the herd :)

I hated MySpace because it made Geocities looking pages "cool" again and made the long armed, over the forehead, into the cleavage, puckered lips photo popular.

I hated Facebook because they only make life more difficult, be it under age vanity photos, college drunkenness, friending coworkers and bosses, starting family feuds because someone started a flame war because one of them is an antivaxxer or religious fundamentalist, etc.

And while these services may have at first exposed what is a human problem not a technological problem, it is the thriving on our ego, anger, lust, self pity that disgusts me.

I don't need a tin foil hat. I'm perfectly fine hating them for their substance apart from their structure.

Here's what FB actually sends

[stremo]

A Facebooker here. The file we send to Politico looks like this:

Candidate, Date, Mentions, % Positive, % Negative
Lincoln, 21 Aug 1858, 4217, 0.35, 0.12
Lincoln, 22 Aug 1858, 5829, 0.42, 0.08
Douglas, 21 Aug 1858, 3119, 0.28, 0.42
Douglas, 22 Aug 1858, 6339, 0.18, 0.55

The numbers are computed by textually analyzing wall posts. The actual mention counts are in the thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Questions?