Facebook doesn't delete all cookies (for instance, there's an `sb` cookie still set) in their logout response. They may choose not to do anything with the cookies that remain, but the technical answer to the question is yes. And even if they currently did delete all cookies, there's nothing from preventing them from introducing cookies that do remain.
Zuck knows this is generally feasible - he's a talented software engineer. The question was ambiguously worded, and Zuck could have clarified or answered that it's generally feasible but that Facebook has tight controls around the usage of that information. It's the panel's responsibility to not let him get away with that type of maneuver, and they don't have the type of real-time support that, say, a news anchor has (with earpiece and live research staff) to handle interviewing domain experts in an optimal way.
This is all supposed to be politically scary and demonstrative of the fact that very few people actually knows what is going on. Which all the more scary to me because these are the people who are supposed to understand what's going on so they can have proper oversight. This entire issue reminds me of the time the supreme court tried to wrap their brains around the (finger quotes) "the cloud".
What's really sad is that nobody has been addressing just how creepy the internet is getting. Like the fact that with just 500 likes the social network can insinuate more of your personality than your lover. Or how Google can predict what you will likely like to eat for breakfast tomorrow based on the kind of stuff you are buying at the store whenever you use reward cards that is gets cross referenced to your browsing habits that insinuate moods.
We are really over engineering the internet to the point that we have a "don't touch that red button" being installed into our lives where nobody knows what it does until it gets pressed, we end up wrecking our cars and are left wondering why the car manufacturers thought it was smart to install NOS in our cars without our knowledge in order to remain on the cutting edge (and thus competitive).
I'm deriving a perverse kind of pleasure from all this. Maciej Ceglowski has a fantastic talk called Haunted By Data, where he compares data to radioactive waste: we collect a lot of it, and ultimately don't know how to handle it safely and responsibly.
He ends the talk with a warning that unless the tech sector is careful, they will have their own Three Mile Island, and will forever afterwards be regulated into the ground. Facebook and Google are almost begging for it. May we see them become a shadow of their powerful selves in not too distant a future.
For advertising purposes it really only depends as a whole how truthful a picture the likes tell. If the likes are on average 70% truthful it is still going to be more effective targeting than not using them at all.
It's a reference to a study where they had an algorithm fed with a certain number of facebook likes compete against personal acquaintances (including spouses) in predictig personality traits. The algorithm won:
But what's the supposed ground truth that spouses and algorithms were tested against? Self reporting? Some other glorified coin flip algorithm that maybe just did the same mistakes as the "thumbs" algorithms? An export panel populated with people that, unlike the benchmarked spouses and acquaintances, used the same jargon as the algorithm authors?
(Glancing over the footnotes it seems to be (b), some other algorithm)
The beauty of adtech: it's perfectly fine to be wrong as long as advertisers think you are right.
On meta level, this "better than your lover" meme/study is surprisingly enlightening.
The parent's argument assumes though that this kind of accuracy is achieved regularly and consistently today, which is way different than the report of one study.
It doesn't need to be consistent in order to be horrifying.
The fear is that big data tech will become radioactive.
Imagine a bus full of school kids crashes because the driver was a recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon.
Some smart SV engineer realizes their tech spotted the driver visited AA groups regularly & his wife just left him. The algorithm knows this data makes him an excellent target audience for _new alco-energy drink!_.
It doesn't really matter if the technology is even capable of that yet, what matters is that this is the sort of outcome that adtech engineers are trying to create.
> They may choose not to do anything with the cookies that remain, but the technical answer to the question is yes.
I think you could say the same thing about IP addresses. A website might log the IP addresses of people who visit them, or they might not, but quite a lot of tracking is feasible. The problem with focusing on feasibility there, is that you end up with an answer like "yes, just like every other website in the world, Facebook can track you when you're logged out." Assuming Zuckerberg has been coached to High Heaven not to gives answers like that, it seems fair to respond to the question as though it was asking about the internal details of what Facebook does with cookies / IP addresses / browser fingerprints.
While a website may be able to track you via IP address within itself, it can't track you across websites like FB can since their code gets injected to a lot of websites (which they do use to track you when you're signed in - my guess would be the same holds for when you're logged out).
Browser fingerprinting is already alright, even without world-class data centers with several server rooms the size of football fields, and world-class AI experts tuning those many rooms of servers to intelligently track and classify people online.
Cookies are almost certainly irrelevant to FB's ability to track people, and Zuck certainly knows it.
Cookies? I would assume Facebook is using the latest tracking techniques like canvas fingerprinting and other ways to identify users uniquely on the web.
Even if they can't track single users solely based on canvas fingerprinting, it gives them a big additional piece of information, to narrow down specific users.
I get the distinct impression that Zuckerberg has been briefed to say "I'll get back to you on that", on anything that might be controversial. Probably some wisdom in that as it defuses a lot of emotion that could arise if certain information comes out in this setting. But it's also disingenuous, even if it avoids a lynchmob for now.
"I'll get back to you" was essentially "On the advice of council, I would like to exercise my fifth amendment right". It was like a Chapelle skit at times.
Every time he said that or "This is a very important question", the honest way to finish the sentence would have been "..which I'm not going to provide an answer to".
I do not have the facebook app on my phone. I downloaded Instagram and it magically knew one of my email addresses (not the one used with my facebook account). I deleted it, mashed the keyboard for the new email address, declined syncing contacts, blocked the permission as well as every other permission, and lo and behold it still shows all of my facebook friends on instagram as suggestions.
Fucking creepy.
It was people who don't have my phone number or any other information including people who I am not friends with and only messaged once from a buy/sell group.
I am guessing because I used the app at some point on my phone it fingerprinted it, then Instagram goes and fingerprints it when you install and links your account even when you decline to do so.
Lots of ways this could happen but people often forget about GPS/location services which are very accurate. I'm not sure if you have never had FB app on your phone, but even if you never installed FB app on your phone there could still be geo-associations inferred.
Think about the times your phone is near your friends phones, how your phone probably sits in the same space every night, the overlap between your IP location to whatever other devices connect behind your NAT which also send data to FB.
If you previously had Facebook or Messenger installed on the phone it's possible they saved some user info on the device or in the cloud linked to your device ID.
Honestly is there anyway that he could explain the Facebook Pixel/ad network that wouldn't just be describing any ad network?
By definition, ad tracking (cookies etc...) is opaque to most people and explaining it publicly would make it seem like FB is doing something more nefarious than others.
It's an important discussion but his response would just make FB seem way worse on that specific issue than highlighting how the entire ad network ecosystem works.
This is a good point, but FB brings the "real name policy" to the data broker's world. Being able to link real people with real credit profiles, and real web browsing habits is a game changer. Many of us were ranting and raving all of over HN ~2010/2011 about the issues FB represented, but we were tinfoilers and haters.
Even those of us without FB accounts (with forgone networking opportunities) are at risk because we all have friends without the same cynicism.
The real name policy is kind-of irrelevant. Data brokers can see what FB account is logged in and link with your real name via credit card transaction codes and e-commerce tracking cookies.
> Honestly is there anyway that he could explain the Facebook Pixel/ad network that wouldn't just be describing any ad network
The only ad network in front of Congress today, was Facebook. 'Everyone else is doing it' or 'this is the nature of the business' doesn't qualify as an excuse. Perhaps it could have been good for the large public to know what goes on with ad networks these days.
> It's an important discussion but his response would just make FB seem way worse on that specific issue than highlighting how the entire ad network ecosystem works.
Any legislation that comes out of this hearing wouldn't apply only to Facebook. Facebook admitting the extent of its tracking could help clean up the "entire ad network ecosystem."
It's a good strategy, all the media coverage is about his actual testimony today, whereas when he sends an update to the committee next week, it will not make as big of a splash as this one.
Zuck: "I need to get back to you on that"