Facebook Will No Longer Allow Third-Party Data For Targeting Ads (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In a surprise change, Facebook will give up one major data source that the company uses to help advertisers target relevant users on the platform. The company just announced that it will end a feature called Partner Categories, launched back in 2013 out of a partnership between Facebook and major data brokers. Third party data helps Facebook further atomize its user base into meaningful segments for advertisers.

Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that the change is permanent, not a temporary precaution. In order to leverage the deep pool of data Facebook collects on users, the company mixes information that it obtains from users themselves (Pages a user liked, for instance) with information from advertisers (membership status in a loyalty program, for example) and with data obtained from third party providers. While Facebook feels comfortable with the integrity of its data sourcing within the first two categories, it feels less settled about dipping into these aggregate pools of third party data. The decision was issued in light of the company's recent privacy concerns over third-party data mishandling.

Comments

Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Too little, too late. Get your ass over to Capitol Hill Zuck, and try to stuff the sausage back into the casing. This goose is fully cooked. People are wising up to FB shenanigans and its days are numbered. I wouldn't buy stock in this company at half its current level, it's going to be a media circus.

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[Grand Facade]

This is not even a little, in the 5 years FB has had this relationship they have certainly figured out how to connect the dots without this "3rd party" info.

In fact what they have now got probably goes far beyond the info available.

Facebook saves money and digs deeper, PROFIT!!!

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Just before I deleted my FB account I downloaded all the info that they are prepared to tell me that they kept on me. They have all my business phone numbers. Horrified. #DeleteFacebook

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[geekmux]

Too little, too late. Get your ass over to Capitol Hill Zuck, and try to stuff the sausage back into the casing. This goose is fully cooked. People are wising up to FB shenanigans and its days are numbered. I wouldn't buy stock in this company at half its current level, it's going to be a media circus.

Wising up? What a load of shit. The only thing more pathetic than your delusions here is the assumption that people still give a shit about data privacy. If they did, Facebook and all of the other social media platforms that feed mass narcissism wouldn't exist.

Their days are numbered? If Facebook lost a million users a month from now on, it would only take 200 fucking years to empty the customer pool.

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[jellomizer]

I expect the big thing, is that Facebook is trying to whitewash the problems. Figuring that just some Zeckerberg charm will appeal the masses.

What is needed now isn't an emotional CEO or one appealing to our emotions. But one who is explaining and proving to the public a full strategy to fixes such problems, compensate for the damage caused, and new checks to prevent problems, and showing they see other risks in the future which they need to work on.

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[ctilsie242]

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I really wonder if anything will really happen long term. I think people will shake their fist, there will be some gripings in Congress, but in reality, since Facebook is so big, and the US tends to prioritize businesses over almost anything else, there will be little or nothing done, and FB will be pretty much unaffected this time next year.

Where people are actually standing up and doing things is in Europe. I wonder if the entire GDPR was created, just to deal with companies like Facebook and others whose entire business is slurping up data to sell. Other countries are also stepping in. China has already banned Facebook.

In reality, with cynicism aside, will anything really happen to Facebook after all this blows over, and people are drawn to the next news story?

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[gnick]

I downloaded mine too. ("Settings"->"Download a copy of your Facebook data") I had FB installed on more than one phone. All my contacts information and a list of every app that had been installed on those phones was there, along with some 2016 metadata.

...info that they are prepared to tell me that they kept on me.

There's the issue. Nowhere in the .zip file Facebook provided was there anything about location history or web activity beyond which FB ads I'd clicked. They're not telling us everything.

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[classzero]

Yeah, they probably bought and/or traded information with ISPs and Google and credit agencies, and other sources I've probably never heard of. They don't need 3rd party data any more.

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[classzero]

Replaces them? I don't like FB, but I also don't see anybody seriously freaking out about what they are doing, outside of a few internet forums that most FB users don't read. People freak out and post the clickbait about Cambridge Analytica, and FB pushes the clickbait in persuit of 'engagement' (which is the real underlying issue here), and people like me laugh at their 'psychometrics' bullshit, but in the end none of us are actually going to delete accounts over any of this. I've seen a much larger portion of the userbase even more angry than this when they opened the portal to non-college students and let people make apps. That was a long time ago. This is a global site now. If every American user decided to delete facebook today, FB would lose a little under 10% of their user base. That's it. For FB to shut down, people need to be mad at them globally, or there needs to be a serious alternative. I don't see one yet.

I mean, mastadon is the closest competitor, IMHO, but they aren't ready for prime time yet. When every client is an instance, and there are a few more bells and whistles, then maybe mastadon will compete. Right now, it's a bunch of techie nerds. Nothing wrong with that. Every online community worth mentioning grew from a bunch of techie nerds like this. It just has a long way to go before it challenges facebook.

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[datavirtue]

Plus you can still get your hands on the Facebook data and run over to the third parties to get their dataset to perform your own analysis. This has moved us one step back towards obscurity and less accountability, not that I would consider FB a broker of accountability. So we really have less of a clue how the data is actually being used. Before we could point to Facebook and find out...now with this convenience removed, companies will just horde the data and analysis away in their own private systems.

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[sexconker]

Yup, this is exactly it. The third party data now provides little to no benefit over the data Facebook gathers itself. So they drop the 3rd party data and try to get some PR from it.

Not gonna work, Zuck!

Re:Pathetic attempt at self-regulation

[d0rp]

The third party data now provides little to no benefit over the data Facebook gathers itself.

This isn't true.

For example, say you have a brand (i.e. something like Columbia, L.L. Bean, etc) which has a loyalty program, or even just a mailing list that customers opt-in to, because they like your brand. Currently, you can send your list of subscribers (in a hashed format) over to Facebook in order to target those people for ads. Facebook will take that list, compare it to it's users, and serve up ads to any Facebook users who match (and Facebook never tells you which customers matched, it just gives you an estimate of how many matched, as long as it's over a certain threshold).

This is a huge blow to legitimate marketers.

No longer allow third party data

[rossdee]

Only that from Republicans and Democrats

Re:No longer allow third party data

[bobbied]

That sir, is a funny one.. Wish I had mod points today..

Re:Too late.

[broggyr]

Delete your account.

Data quality is probably not the issue

[rsilvergun]

they're affraid of getting data from illegal sources. e.g. that hack of the DNC for instance.

This won't change a thing.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

This isn't going to change anything. Facebook has already earned its reputation as a giant sucking machine that takes all of your personal data and sells it to the highest bidder. Actually they sell it to *all* bidders. Smart people are already part of the #DeleteFacebook movement. Smarter people did it a long time ago.

And don't think for a minute that Facebook data won't be used in elections again. But this time Zuckerbertler will make sure it only gets used for campaigns that align with his own political preferences.

Re:This won't change a thing.

[bluefoxlucid]

Can I write a data retention law requiring the deletion of all privately-held tracking data after two years without causing an enormous economic disaster? Medical providers should keep medical records (that includes insurers); but your tracking and behavior data has to go.

The thing is we need to let companies keep stuff you put there--Facebook needs to keep your Facebook posts and photos and whatnot forever if you want them to be there when you scroll back 10 years; Google needs to keep stuff in your Gmail; etc.--but I don't want them to hold data you've deleted, or hold data they gathered by tracking cookies. What about consumer habit data gathered by explicit interaction, e.g. your purchasing history from them? What about charities, PACs, and political campaigns holding onto data about their donors and supporters as gathered from interactions?

At the very least, all of this "maybe they should be able to keep that" data needs to become "they definitely can't share that" data, perhaps with the exception of long-term aggregate statistics (not sanitized, individual data, but "40% of consumers aged 18-25..." data). Maybe we'll let aggregation houses apply for a license to accept sanitized data for aggregation and make them the only ones who can sell aggregated data: minimize the number of transfer points. We'll also have to make it illegal for the Government to receive that sanitized (or un-sanitized) data, because I don't want to create a state arm of sucking up personal data that we can probably de-anonymize with state data.

We have to start hammering this stuff out and making arguments for why certain things should remain so we can throw everything else out. The weakest policy would be sanitize and centralize: instead of every firm trading data with every other firm, they're all required to delete that data after two years, and may only share sanitized data with licensed aggregation firms. It no longer becomes a matter of scraping or hacking any of thousands of firms, but rather any of a small handful. I'm not sure that's sufficient, because deanonymizing data is a real thing; but it's a start.

Re:This won't change a thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

But this time Zuckerbertler will make sure it only gets used for campaigns that align with his own political preferences.
Flag as Inappropriate

Am I living in an alternate reality or something?

I could have sworn there was a story the week after the election where Facebook basically came out and said "Oops. We accidentally sold the election to Trump. Sorry about that, folks. We won't let that happen again." (paraphrased)

Facebook will say stuff

[brxndxn]

If you know anything about Facebook, you will know that they will say stuff with zero intention of actually following through or giving users a real way to verify. Opt out of something and you'll be 'opted in' when Facebook rearranges their privacy settings with wording that seems benign. Facebook started as a platform where you could see information people selectively shared with groups of friends through connections you control. They marketed themselves on sharing things like cell phone numbers privately with just your circle of friends. Then they threw all that out the window once everyone started putting their information on Facebook. Now your 'private' information is shared with whoever the hell Facebook decides to share it with.

Facebook is going to have huge real issues to deal with once the kids of the original Facebook users start growing up. Some parents on Facebook have been ridiculously careless with their kids in terms of posting photos or videos for damn near everything. These kids will start to want to claim their own online identities at some point.

Facebook just needs to stop fucking with people. Instead of their secret private experiments where they try to manipulate people, they really should just go back to being a platform for people to be social with who they want to be social with. Let people organize events, keep up with people they haven't talked to in a while, control their own feeds, etc..

Also, the idea that Facebook somehow helped Trump is ridiculous. Facebook seems to prioritize anything anti-Trump on peoples' feeds.

Maybe Facebook's goal is to get itself heavily regulated.

Re:Facebook will say stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the idea that Facebook somehow helped Trump is ridiculous. Facebook seems to prioritize anything anti-Trump on peoples' feeds.

Maybe Facebook's goal is to get itself heavily regulated.

It's only prioritized on feeds of people who are anti-Trump. As someone who isn't on Facebook, but sees someone using it on a regular basis and is a Trump supported, believe me...the echo chamber is strong. Her feed is full of nothing but Trump-praising liberal-bashing entries.

It's almost like Facebook prioritizes those things the person wants to see. (Everyone gets their safe-zone...no one wants their world view challenged)

Re:Facebook will say stuff

[Maury Markowitz]

> It's only prioritized on feeds of people who are anti-Trump

No, no no no no.

FB doesn't know anything about politics.
All it knows is that people who read post X will more likely click on Y.
That's it. That's the entire algorithm.

So if you like hamburgers, you're likely going to click on posts about hamburgers. And if you like chicken, you're going to see adds for chicken.

And if you like Trump, and ever clicked on a pro-Trump article, guess what, you're 0.01% more likely to click on the next pro-Trump sponsored post. And if you hate him, the reverse.

It's *very dangerous* to ascribe motive to these posts. The only motive is to get the most clicks. Period.

I did a search for a part for our Subaru *once*, and ended up on a site to sold to FB. For *months* my stream was polluted was Subaru ads.

The experience is more than enough to make me laugh every time I hear someone talk about how AI is coming for us all.

Re:Facebook will say stuff

[beerbear]

> It's only prioritized on feeds of people who are anti-Trump

No, no no no no.

FB doesn't know anything about politics.

Parent never said it did.

All it knows is that people who read post X will more likely click on Y. That's it. That's the entire algorithm.

That's what the parent said.

Re:Facebook will say stuff

[bobbied]

I'm a Trump supporter and I can attest that this is NOT true. I see LOTS of anti-trump leftist propaganda on Facebook and the advertisements they toss my way.

However, I think Facebook really doesn't have much to do with the majority of what I see that's not ads. What you see in Facebook is mostly driven by your circle of friends and what they post. In my case, I have a number of ardent liberals who are rabidly anti-trump in my circle of friends (you know, the type that went to all those post election riots, I mean protests). Maybe I'm just unique in that my circle of friends are not of a singular political mindset?

My guess is your Pro Trump friend simply only has pro-Trump friends on Facebook, which is why their feed is all pro-Trump stuff. I know that some of the ardent anti Trump "friends" I used to have on FB have stopped including me on their posts and have stopped reading mine. This isn't Facebook, this is people's natural tendency to select friends who are more like them. Call it confirmation bias...

"Face" saving exercise to not be Egg-Facebook

[adosch]

... that was a horrible pun. FML.

This is garbage, calculated PR absolute-minimum-change-we-can-do to not loose any more stock or a user base. I love this "We give a shit now" moment by Facebook, and with Zuckerberg going 'on the record' with Congress to 'make a change'.

This stunt is like having a legitimately bad restaurant experience, and after you decide to walk out, the manager comes tripping over half the tables and chains from across the restaurant to come tell you how sorry they are just so you don't go throw a huge 0-star rant on Yelp. They really don't care, they just want to stop the damage with the one person and the handful of patrons eyes that witnessed it, and not go any farther to continue business-as-usual.

All this facebook bruhaha.

[Anonymous Coward]

They've got the "experts" coming on the morning news shows now reassuring people that Facebook has done nothing illegal, and we all agreed to be snooped on permanently when we signed up, so we all need to calm down.

The truth of the matter is, the government wants something done about this because they're pissed off that all that wonderful data they've been able to slurp up and use to fuck with people's lives is available to other people too. And you know damn good and well nobody involved in the government wants that data collection to stop. What they really want is to lock it down as a direct pipeline for themselves and they're financiers.

The funny thing is, the uproar may cause some people to actually wise up and stop trading their lives away to these media giants, making it harder to track every waking (and some sleeping) moments of people's lives. Ya dun fucked up by letting this shit get public and allowing the plebes to hear some small smattering of the truth.

Now, if we could get some actual technical people on the news shows the half aware general citizens watch telling the ACTUAL truth that these big media companies are a giant info siphon, that could bring the whole thing to a much more manageable state. Though there's still rumblings from a few folks that the security trade-off is worth it for the convenience. I have yet to understand what's convenient about Facebook. For the month or so I used it to follow a couple bands it essentially annoyed me with "related" bullshit I had zero interest in and I eventually shut it down for good.

I just don't understand how people didn't know this was the end result until it beat them over the head.

About 10 years too late on this one

[wardrich86]

Most companies probably have more than enough data on everybody already...

Just a minor correction

[hyades1]

"The decision was issued in light of the company's recent privacy concerns over third-party data mishandling."

There had been no mishandling of data. The data were used in precisely the manner intended by all parties involved, except perhaps those who provided it fully understanding the implications of their decision.

Re:Just a minor correction

[Ol Olsoc]

"The decision was issued in light of the company's recent privacy concerns over third-party data mishandling."

There had been no mishandling of data. The data were used in precisely the manner intended by all parties involved, except perhaps those who provided it fully understanding the implications of their decision.

The problem with your blessing of facebook's actions is this. Facebook is in the position of acting as the snitch. If they give people data who are acting illegally, they can be held responsible for the act. If you don't believe this hire a hit man. Give them the address of your significant other, who put no restraints on your giving out their address. Now after the hit man kills you SO, use the excuse you are using for a defense against hiring the hitman.

Re:Just a minor correction

[hyades1]

You're preaching to the choir. Damned tiny keyboard dropped out "NOT" understanding the consequences of their decision. The comment still makes sense, so I didn't bother commenting again to correct it. The basic fact of the matter remains, though: nobody's mishandling data. They're handling it exactly the way they want to. Even the victims aren't completely blame free. They knew they were trading privacy for all the things Facebook offers. They just didn't realize they were trading all of it.

Re:Just a minor correction

[Ol Olsoc]

Even the victims aren't completely blame free. They knew they were trading privacy for all the things Facebook offers. They just didn't realize they were trading all of it.

Yeah - its a hellava thing, and some of us have to be there. FWIW, I obfuscated and completely malformed my data, which is why I suspect I hardly got any of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytic Bullshit. But today, I only check the groups I have to, and haven't been on my page or home for a few months now.

Fortunately, that project is ending soon, and the only thing left is to block the FB scripts on the rest of the net after I kill my account.

Meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a meaningless and empty gesture if Facebook are still engaging in these practices themselves. The folks at Facebook are either incredibly stupid or incredibly arrogant or both. Data mining and harvesting by anyone for any reason should have been suspect from the start. Our right to privacy isn't a 'digital right', it's just a right. Facebook and their ilk are theives, plain and simple. If nothing comes from any of this scrutiny but a slap on the wrist, there will have been no point whatsoever.

Re:Too late.

[Mashiki]

Some people might have forgotten but it was just a few years ago, that the learned people were saying that if you don't use social media you're likely a psychopath, or sociopath, etc. My, my...how times change.

Re:Happy Friday From The Golden Girls!

[dgatwood]

Wow. I just realized something mind-blowing. For years, this person has been warning us anonymously that many of our Facebook "friends" are really a bunch of Russian trolls. Suddenly, it all makes sense!

Too simplistic

[Anonymous Coward]

If Facebook lost a million users a month from now on, it would only take 200 fucking years to empty the customer pool.

The useful point isn't when the product pool is empty; it's when the product pool isn't profitable.

Facebook has a large, expensive infrastructure. If it gets to the point where it can't support that, change of some kind will come. I strongly suspect that how they approach data collection will get worse before it gets better under that kind of pressure. I base that assumption upon their already-demonstrated willingness to behave extremely badly.

--fyngyrz*

* Anon due to mod points, because Slashdot moderation rules are stupid.
Soylent News does it better. A lot better.

You're giving Capital Hill way too much credit

[rsilvergun]

the folks in charge right now have deregulation as a central plank of the party. We'll get a little theater to make it seem like they care and then they'll do precisely squat.

If you want that to change show up to your primary and vote for people who think government can actually do good. If you don't think government can do any good don't complain when it doesn't.

Re:Too late.

[desdinova 216]

...or a terrorist.

you can always tell

[originalGMC]

the first attempt to mitigate isn't hitting where it hurts. If this is their first suggestion, my counter would be zuck goes to federal prison for aiding and abetting and/or 2 billion counts of misdemeanor larceny, and the US enacts global "privacy policy" for companies doing business on US soil. 21st century HIPAA here we go

Right

[Ol Olsoc]

The problem of course is money. The shakers and movers at facebook have done this before, and they will do it again. The only way they won't, is if they don't have the product to abuse. And we all know who the product is. But you can bet if you continue to use facebook, your data will be sold to whoever they like.

Re: Too late.

[Defakto]

Except that terrorists use it to find vulnerable people in order to grrom them into their beliefs.

Re:Happy Friday From The Golden Girls!

[sexconker]

It's Thursday...