<story><title>When You Fall in Love, This Is What Facebook Sees (2014)</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/when-you-fall-in-love-this-is-what-facebook-sees/283865/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lmm</author><text>Why should I care? For most of human history, most people lived in villages. Everyone they met would know this kind of information about them (&amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s obvious to everyone except the couple themselves that x and y are into each other&amp;quot; is a literary trope for a reason). People survived, thrived even - in fact there&amp;#x27;s a strong argument our psychological welfare was much better in those conditions than it is in anonymous cities.</text></item><item><author>ploggingdev</author><text>When I see posts like these, they creep me out. Another reminder that Facebook and all other online services, ad companies know way too much about their users and can deduce more information about you (in truly creative ways) than you imagined would be possible.&lt;p&gt;When I show these posts to people who resemble the average internet user, they just don&amp;#x27;t care. This is something that is saddening and baffling for me. I think it&amp;#x27;s just that most people don&amp;#x27;t understand why this is an issue to begin with and people need to be made aware of what is going on. The easiest way to start would be to discuss privacy issues with your closest family and friends.&lt;p&gt;Worth mentioning RMS&amp;#x27; blog post: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stallman.org&amp;#x2F;facebook.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stallman.org&amp;#x2F;facebook.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tsycho</author><text>Interesting viewpoint.&lt;p&gt;The difference is that in the village case, the information distribution was much more symmetric. People knew about you and you knew about them, and you knew about each other&amp;#x27;s knowledge and presumably acted accordingly. So for instance, if being gay was going to be a problem in your village, you hid it well.&lt;p&gt;With Facebook, they have all the information about you, and you don&amp;#x27;t even know what they know about you. So in the best case scenario, you are hoping that they are going to be a &amp;quot;benevolent dictator&amp;quot; with their asymmetric knowledge, and not exploit you.</text></comment>
<story><title>When You Fall in Love, This Is What Facebook Sees (2014)</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/when-you-fall-in-love-this-is-what-facebook-sees/283865/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lmm</author><text>Why should I care? For most of human history, most people lived in villages. Everyone they met would know this kind of information about them (&amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s obvious to everyone except the couple themselves that x and y are into each other&amp;quot; is a literary trope for a reason). People survived, thrived even - in fact there&amp;#x27;s a strong argument our psychological welfare was much better in those conditions than it is in anonymous cities.</text></item><item><author>ploggingdev</author><text>When I see posts like these, they creep me out. Another reminder that Facebook and all other online services, ad companies know way too much about their users and can deduce more information about you (in truly creative ways) than you imagined would be possible.&lt;p&gt;When I show these posts to people who resemble the average internet user, they just don&amp;#x27;t care. This is something that is saddening and baffling for me. I think it&amp;#x27;s just that most people don&amp;#x27;t understand why this is an issue to begin with and people need to be made aware of what is going on. The easiest way to start would be to discuss privacy issues with your closest family and friends.&lt;p&gt;Worth mentioning RMS&amp;#x27; blog post: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stallman.org&amp;#x2F;facebook.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stallman.org&amp;#x2F;facebook.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CaptSpify</author><text>&amp;gt; Everyone they met would know this kind of information about them&lt;p&gt;Everyone in the village would have had detailed spending habits, knowledge of every website browsed, media preferences, political views, porn habits, location history and more all backed up in giant databases that are easily search-able?</text></comment>