<story><title>Actual Facebook Graph Searches</title><url>http://actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>achompas</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich &quot;social graph&quot;; it will always lead to situations like that which are, at best, embarrassing, and at worst, dangerous, for whoever is in the system.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What does this even mean? The &quot;dumb algorithm&quot; here will (a) take a user&apos;s query and (b) search that user&apos;s friends and public profiles for hits on that query. What&apos;s next: shouting about the robots taking over? Lamenting about how we&apos;re all losing our humanity and man weren&apos;t things better back in the old days?&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m really disappointed this is the top comment on HN&apos;s top post. Users identified by Graph Search have public accounts and have &lt;i&gt;willingly entered personal information into Facebook.&lt;/i&gt; We go thorough this song-and-dance every year: FB updates security policies, everyone is up in arms, then -- gasp! -- everyone updates their security settings. Facebook has a clear transaction with users: build a profile, get sold as eyeballs to advertisers. If you don&apos;t like it, then quit.&lt;p&gt;&quot;With great power comes great responsibility,&quot; indeed. People have received numerous warnings about Facebook and privacy, and yet they&apos;ve chosen to share personal information with everyone they know. At this point the user is responsible for choosing to participate or drop out. Meanwhile, every third HN post includes a commenter, wagging their finger, reminding us in a nasally, know-it-all voice that we&apos;re not the customer if we&apos;re not paying.&lt;p&gt;Is Graph Search really that shocking to you--to anyone on HN? Why the hell is anyone up in arms about this in 2013, given what we know about social networks?</text></item><item><author>GuiA</author><text>With great power comes great responsibility.&lt;p&gt;Companies such as Facebook and the like undoubtedly draw great power from their &quot;social graph&quot;; however, human interactions are subtle, complex, multifaceted and often contradictory.&lt;p&gt;Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich &quot;social graph&quot;; it will always lead to situations like that which are, at best, embarrassing, and at worst, dangerous, for whoever is in the system.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t think it&apos;s a matter of doing things the right way or fixing them- trying to put human relationships in a computer system will never reproduce the human experience (however, you may make marketers very happy). The best you can do is complete certain very focused subsets of it in an interesting way.&lt;p&gt;Zuckerberg&apos;s views on privacy and openness are laughable, and to be completely expected from someone of his background and world experience. If you think about who the average Facebook employee is, you&apos;d realize that you probably wouldn&apos;t want them to be in charge of designing a system meant to model the intricacies of human interaction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mark_integerdsv</author><text>If you fail to see the danger that a tool with the ability to search a network for such things as &quot;Islamic men interested in other men, living in Tehran,&quot; a tool that can then display their place of work or other contact details (that they may have willingly ((yet unwittingly)) entered),  in the hands of bullies, bigots or oppressive regimes then personally I feel you are similarly limited in your world experience to what the grandparent poster is accusing Zuckerberg of being.&lt;p&gt;Basically, it&apos;s one of two things:&lt;p&gt;1.) such incredible naiveté that, frankly: you require supervision&lt;p&gt;2.) such hideous cynicism, so deeply felt, that it represents, to my sensibilities, a form of evil&lt;p&gt;This thing is dangerous. The people to whom it poses danger are the ones least likely even to comprehend the danger imposed upon them.&lt;p&gt;I cannot see how you could defend such a thing.&lt;p&gt;BTW: decrying the state of HN when you feel personally ill at ease with the general feeling of the community is poor form and a very strong indicator of butthurt.</text></comment>
<story><title>Actual Facebook Graph Searches</title><url>http://actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>achompas</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich &quot;social graph&quot;; it will always lead to situations like that which are, at best, embarrassing, and at worst, dangerous, for whoever is in the system.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What does this even mean? The &quot;dumb algorithm&quot; here will (a) take a user&apos;s query and (b) search that user&apos;s friends and public profiles for hits on that query. What&apos;s next: shouting about the robots taking over? Lamenting about how we&apos;re all losing our humanity and man weren&apos;t things better back in the old days?&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m really disappointed this is the top comment on HN&apos;s top post. Users identified by Graph Search have public accounts and have &lt;i&gt;willingly entered personal information into Facebook.&lt;/i&gt; We go thorough this song-and-dance every year: FB updates security policies, everyone is up in arms, then -- gasp! -- everyone updates their security settings. Facebook has a clear transaction with users: build a profile, get sold as eyeballs to advertisers. If you don&apos;t like it, then quit.&lt;p&gt;&quot;With great power comes great responsibility,&quot; indeed. People have received numerous warnings about Facebook and privacy, and yet they&apos;ve chosen to share personal information with everyone they know. At this point the user is responsible for choosing to participate or drop out. Meanwhile, every third HN post includes a commenter, wagging their finger, reminding us in a nasally, know-it-all voice that we&apos;re not the customer if we&apos;re not paying.&lt;p&gt;Is Graph Search really that shocking to you--to anyone on HN? Why the hell is anyone up in arms about this in 2013, given what we know about social networks?</text></item><item><author>GuiA</author><text>With great power comes great responsibility.&lt;p&gt;Companies such as Facebook and the like undoubtedly draw great power from their &quot;social graph&quot;; however, human interactions are subtle, complex, multifaceted and often contradictory.&lt;p&gt;Nothing good can come out of applying dumb algorithms (that is, any algorithm) to a sufficiently rich &quot;social graph&quot;; it will always lead to situations like that which are, at best, embarrassing, and at worst, dangerous, for whoever is in the system.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t think it&apos;s a matter of doing things the right way or fixing them- trying to put human relationships in a computer system will never reproduce the human experience (however, you may make marketers very happy). The best you can do is complete certain very focused subsets of it in an interesting way.&lt;p&gt;Zuckerberg&apos;s views on privacy and openness are laughable, and to be completely expected from someone of his background and world experience. If you think about who the average Facebook employee is, you&apos;d realize that you probably wouldn&apos;t want them to be in charge of designing a system meant to model the intricacies of human interaction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joe_the_user</author><text>&quot;Is Graph Search really that shocking to you--to anyone on HN?&quot;&lt;p&gt;Are serial killers who actually &lt;i&gt;kill people&lt;/i&gt; really shocking to people? Well, the answer to that question depends a lot on how much you let its framing determine your thinking, right?&lt;p&gt;Sure, I too, personally, don&apos;t share &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt; personally identifying on FB, in violation of FB and G+&apos;s TOS BTW. But all those naive people, they walked through the door, they didn&apos;t see the samurai behind the door and pow, what do they expect? They won&apos;t be play in the Seven Samurai now.  Why should we Samurai give a heck about them morons? Well, there are some reasons, starting with the fact that we have personal relations, with non-Samurai.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Again we are defeated,&quot; Kambei muses. &quot;The winners are those farmers. Not us.&quot;</text></comment>