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Facebook Being Sued Over Mining of Private Messages
Kimomaru writes "Two Facebook users are trying to start a class action lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly mining information from private messages with the intention of selling is to advertisers (full complaint PDF). It's not the first time a social medial player has been in the press over privacy or security issues. But when the services are provided free of charge, does the user have a realistic expectation of privacy or security, especially when it's understood that the user's data is being mined for advertising? If not, should social media networks be allowed to use words like 'private' (as in private messaging) or 'security' to describe their services?"
If i send a private message to someone on facebook, I feel I deserve the same level of privacy as if I was using gmail to send it.
MABASPLOOM!
You are responsible for your own privacy. When Facebook or Google mine your data ('you are the product' as people say), you have nothing to fall back on. It's in their ToS which most people agree with because they just HAVE to see their 3rd cousin's dancing cat videos.
Bitching is easy, doing something about it is harder.
Trolling is a art,
Google doesn't (as far as I know) save that data or send it to 3rd parties. Facebook appears to be creating a profile based on those keywords and using it for yet to be defined purposes.
Contextual ads require context.
If all someone is doing is running a function that looks at keywords then displays a relevant ad, this doesn't both me.
If they collect the keywords, save them to a profile db, then sell that profile to others, that's a far more obvious violation of privacy.
MABASPLOOM!
While people using Facebook aren't necessarily paying customer, they are users of the service. Without users Facebook has no point of existing and therefore has no need of sponsors. For this reason we are using a service provided to us and in doing so there are expectations of fair treatment. Even cattle have certain rights.
Brushing users off as 'non-paying customers' is a port excuse, since they are both users and customer of the service. If we don't 'like' as sponsor's message, then they can't ask for a exchange of fees from the sponsor.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The complaint makes a key point. Facebook lied in their privacy policy. See page 19 of the complaint, "Facebook Fails to Disclose That Its Private Message Processes Read, Acquire, and Use Private Message Content, in Violation of Its Express Agreements With Facebook Users." This looks like a clear ECPA violation.
Another sad tale lost to history.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch: In the 1800s in the western United States, many taverns would offer free lunches. The catch was that while the lunch was free, the beer was not. Even today, you'll see tavern and pub food offerings being the saltiest, greasiest food possible- an outgrowth of the free lunch menus, designed to make you thirsty so that you'll buy more beer. In downtown Portland, OR, a teetotaler millionaire decided to fight back- Samuel Benson. He did so by creating Skidmore Fountain and the "Benson Bubblers"- free water fountains that can still be seen in downtown Portland- which ended the free lunch craze there.
So yes, it is *exactly* like a free lunch- give them the lunch, make them pay for the drinks.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's worth noting that Facebook calls them "Messages", not "Private Messages" as some forums do.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's Facebook. Is it reasonable to expect complete privacy with any part of it? Email at least has some expectation of privacy, but even there, the big providers scan your email for targeted advertising.
I really don't think a reasonable person expects a lot of "privacy" at Facebook, certainly "private messages" are only private from other users, not Facebook bots...
If a message is stated as "Private" it should be treated entirely as private. I think that implication would hold up in any court as a reasonable expectation, regardless of how Facebook mines Public or Shared content. Dangerous precedent otherwise.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
... But when the services are provided free of charge, does the user have a realistic expectation of privacy or security,...
The user should have a realistic expectation that the service will abide by the Terms of service. This holds true whether or not the service is free or costs one's first-born child.
.
So the discussion here should really center around how this alleged behavior violates facebook's terms of service.
If they collect the keywords, save them to a profile db, then sell that profile to others, that's a far more obvious violation of privacy.
Facebook is in the business of selling your information. If you don't like that, you should use a different communication mechanism.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's their servers, their house, their terms of service. Nobody forced you to be on Facebook. You asked to be there when you requested an account, and you knew the rules when you walked in the door.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This is never the correct response, ever. The "you are free to walk away" assumes you can somehow mitigate the need to occasionally talk to retards who are determined to use facebook, privacy and logic be damned.
You can take yourself outside of the stupid system, but you can't take the stupid out of the system.
That need is mitigated just fine by use of phone, text, email, snail mail, face-to-face contact, etc... "You are free to walk away" is the ONLY correct response, and if enough users would walk away, Facebook would be forced to stop the crap. The problem is that not enough users give a shit about their privacy.
I am pretty sure that google will begin just what you describe if Facebook wins this lawsuit.
I'm quite sure that Google will not, and I work for Google (though I don't speak for Google -- these are my own opinions, not any kind of official statement). Two reasons:
First, though it's contrary to the /. groupthink, because Google actually cares quite a lot about user privacy. Even if the people who work for Google didn't care themselves (and, they generally do, a lot), there's the FTC consent decree that means Google has to step very, very cautiously around privacy issues. Of course, Google does collect a lot of information about users, to target ads as well as (increasingly) to deliver personalized services like Google Now, but that data stays within Google, and Google guards it carefully.
Second, because even if privacy weren't a concern, Google is quite certain that advertisers wouldn't be able to utilize/monetize user data nearly as effectively as Google can. Google believes that its algorithmic, big-data approach can target advertising more effectively than the advertisers could do, and therefore Google can make more money by providing interested eyeballs to advertisers than it could make by providing data to advertisers so they could go get their own eyeballs. Add to that the high probability that the advertisers would act obnoxiously to Google's users in attempting to advertise to them, thereby damaging Google.
IMO, Google would be stupid to sell user data, and (also IMNSHO) Google is not stupid.
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Google doesn't do the same thing. If you see ads about wedding stuff after getting e-mails about weddings, it's because the ads are being served by Google. Google doesn't sell your data, but Google does use your data to decide what ads might be useful to you. You probably saw those ads all over the web, not just on Google properties, but that's because sites all over the web display Google ads. But Google serves the ads, and the sites don't know what's being served, and the advertisers don't know who it's being served to.
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