I used to be on threads (on 3 accounts!!) and I ended up quitting there cause I found the algorithm to be more rage-bait driven than what I can stand without being unhealthy, but I have to admit that I really miss Vivian Wilson's posts.
A place where ai slop is told to post ai slop about how "no we're not selling your data, now ignore that data we:re selling in the 20 ads on this page"
Mark Zuckerberg saw all the Twitter drama with lEon skuM fucking everything up, so he whipped up a clone that plugs into Instagram (and still requires IG for making any major account changes). Left-wingers flocked to it.
Usual growing pains, content moderation (or lack thereof), bots, etc.
Then the 2024 election came. First was the revelation that one Project 2025 sycophant got a spot as member of the threads' moderation team. More content removals against users critical of Tump and GQP. Afterwards: Zuck changed meta's TOS — branding LGBTQ+ users with "mental illness" is PERMITTED.
What else do you call taking personal data without permission if not theft? If an individual did it rather then a megacorps it would absolutely be theft.
Had our head of tech at my work argue that using generative AI is ok because its 'not about profit' for those companies but 'equality'... anyway, is your company hiring?
I think you should make sure that the Onion is readily available for AI training, so that AI’s wind up basing all of their 'knowledge' on articles from the Onion.
I don't know who Benedict Evans is, and after reading this post and the comments, I feel like that makes me a little more blessed than the rest of you. :-)
They obvious reposted that legal thing on Facebook, wiped their hands & patted themselves on the back for a job of protecting their data from Facebook done well
Depends what you mean by “sell”. They allow companies to target you based on the data but they don’t directly sell it to anyone. Not that commercialising data is that great either
So rather than “sell” you said commercialising which means “manage or exploit in a way designed to make a profit.”
They sell your data — there is no meaningful distinction between what they do and selling which is why the different word you tried to use means the exact same thing.
So basically, renting out a house is equivalent to selling it, alright got you. As I said words have meanings. If you want to stop what Meta is doing, you need to understand what they are doing, otherwise you’re screaming at the ambulance to put down a fire.
What energy CEOs I’ve met? How many energy conferences I’ve attended? As someone who has known many Meta employees (too many), attended tech conferences (too many) and generally suffered in the industry for a while now, I do wonder where you get your take from here? Cuz it’s WAY off.
Yeah, they're giving the data to advertisers for a commission on their sales. Just because there are restrictions on how the data is used doesn't mean they're not selling it when they exchange it for money.
Well they don’t, they commercialise it, but they don’t sell it. The difference is that there are many ways to profit from commercialisation of data there’s only one from sale and not knowing what or how the difference is makes you powerless to do anything about it.
yes but the thing about your "words have meanings" theory is that you are factually incorrect, a sale, by its own definition both professionally and coloquially, is occurring, and if you insist on continuing to dig i won't deny you a shovel, but i might have a piss to take
Yes, a sale of a service is occurring, the service being an advertisement platform that can target specific demographics based on what Meta knows about them. When you say “they sell your data” people imagine they package it up and exchange it for money so someone can do whatever they like with it.
"Lehman Brothers doesn’t issue subprime mortgages. There is no sense in which that slogan was true. Lehman Brothers does other things that you might not like, but they’re new things, and complicated, and working out precisely what they mean is a lot more difficult than shouting a nice simple slogan"
This line from All the President's Men applies to many VCs: “Forget the myths the media has created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”
the bots have taken over. I left months ago and the second i logged back on i saw "Kamala would have been so much worse" No one who thinks that can work a smartphone
As someone who sells hyper-targeted advertising campaigns, many of which run on social media, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that Facebook does sell your data.
Yeah, the technicalities of it are silly - they're monetizing your data.
Are they selling dossiers on individual Meta users to businesses? No, but they're using your data to help those businesses better target the right FB users with their ads. They're making money off the data.
For example, through a system of hashing, they allow third parties to line up their datasets with Facebooks.
So if the advertiser (or LE agency!) already knows some of your personal details, the two accounts can be matched and they can mine all they need about you.
I try every now and then to go on threads. I really liked it for the first few months. Now it's really hard be on, much like facebook....I wonder why that is 🤔
"We stole all the copyrighted works on the Internet, put them in a box, and shook the box *really* hard. So technically it's not stealing when the box spits out derivative works"
You do what Google does and you basically assign a unique identifier to a user on the internet and then track them wherever they go.
If you go to theonion dot com (for example), open up your browser console. You'll see your unique Google ID next to things that says Googlesyndication. Ta-dah.
I've heard the very long winded explanations of how AI doesn't plagiarize and if anything, the person making the prompts is most culpable for any plagiarism and to that I say
This reminds me of a take I read on HERE that AI is not being fed right-wing propaganda and has no bias, and suggesting otherwise is just fear mongering by people who hate AI. The next day, Grok started responding to everything with info about "white genocide" in South Africa. So...
The whole ‘WATER IS NECESSARY FOR LIFE’ panic reminds me a lot of the time when people used to claim that ‘Water makes things wet’. Water does not wet. There is no sense in which that slogan was true.
Water does other things that you might not like, but they’re new things, and complicated, and...
I actually went to school with that guy, and can confirm that he’s more intelligent than he makes out to be, so he’s clearly making dumb takes for money.
You have to actually believe what you're saying is true in order to be wrong. That guy is just plain lying. I'd put money on him being on the Meta payroll.
Holy heck, it’s one thing to just be philosophically okay with all data being open for anything no matter what, but can we at least be honest about what is happening
It was not a “Reign of Terror.” There is no sense in which that slogan was true. Guillotines do things that you might not like, but they're new things, and complicated, and working out precisely what they mean is a lot more difficult than shouting a nice simple slogan.
I'd love to hear his explanation of AI if he is ruling out theft and plagiarism. "AI is a computerized idea cloning machine that is a tribute to the original human-created idea. Not an illegal copy"
Look, elucidating profit vectors from the informational traces left by entities across a global network that has been built to politically control entire societies, is nothing so tawdry as 'selling your data', I mean, c'mon.
Facebook doesn't sell your data. They just sell targeting advertising based on your location, demographics, interests, and behaviors, which is somehow completely different.
ah, benedict, someone i haven't thought of in a comfortably long time. idk if he was more twitter famous for how laughably wrong he always was, or that time he accidentally posted his porn search history
Agree, my only caveat is that I suspect a browse of Paul Graham's XdotCom feed would not take long to turn up one in the same vein, but more fatuously self-congratulatory about the essential goodness of robber barons
Guys Petco doesn't sell pet supplies and it's stupid to claim they do. Sure some people might use things they buy there for their pets but that doesn't make it a pet store.
Imagine hearing "we don't sell your data, we share it with partners" and not understanding that when data is "shared" with only those giving you money, buddy, that's a sale.
I was trying to remember why I was associating this guy with rugs and the answer is he had a long Twitter thread complaining about San Francisco, and one of his bullet points was there were no good carpet stores in the city.
To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it all depends on what the meaning of "sell" is.
"They claim not to sell data, but Facebook and Google have paid developers with data. This selling of your personal data is central to platform economics."
"its all a lot more complicated" = "i have no clue wtf i am talking about"
knowledgeable people can take "complicated" and lay it out for people less knowledgeable. It's one of the skills you pick up through the learning process.
Ben, everyone knows that what Facebook does to your data is to make sweet, sweet love to it. And if that is so wrong, Facebook doesn’t want to be right.
"Big Tech is inventing new crimes and rights violations so alien and strange we don't even have words for them" is one way to launder the privacy and copyright issues of online platforms. A bad way
Even taking his point at face value he’s effectively saying “I stole the paint, brushes, and canvas from the store and mostly copied someone else’s picture, but I shouldn’t be punished because the picture did nit exist before”
Then how come every single site knows I’ve looked at something on FB? Why do all my apps stalk me and offer me random things to buy after I do a single search on any of them?
I literally have become much more conservative about clicking just so I don’t get spammed
Comments
Usual growing pains, content moderation (or lack thereof), bots, etc.
tl;dr twitter clone went MAGA to appease Tump.
Zuck ended up being criticized by both MAGA as an opportunist (which he is), and by left-leaning folks as a hypocritical sellout (which he is). Lol.
working out exactly what type of corncob i am is a lot more difficult
i hate that guy
https://sfist.com/2015/12/21/vc_guy_incites_twitter_ire_by_basic/
You're only missing the enablers.
https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3lqb4ae7dkk2n
The end.
They sell your data — there is no meaningful distinction between what they do and selling which is why the different word you tried to use means the exact same thing.
Let me ask you. Honest question. If I waded into a thread talking big about the energy sector would you wonder what experience I have?
they don't need people um akchuallying in their defense, and that you feel a need to casts an extremely poor image of yourself to others.
ignore the british person, english probably isn't her first language
vs
"No it isn't"
It's "is AI stealing your data?well, it's complicated"
TECHNICALLLLLLLYYY they don’t need to seellll the data
Are they selling dossiers on individual Meta users to businesses? No, but they're using your data to help those businesses better target the right FB users with their ads. They're making money off the data.
When it’s free you are the product.
Seems these thinking heads have forgetting that
They have a brokering API that lets advertisers access your data, ON THEIR SYSTEMS.
So 🤷♂️
So if the advertiser (or LE agency!) already knows some of your personal details, the two accounts can be matched and they can mine all they need about you.
If you go to theonion dot com (for example), open up your browser console. You'll see your unique Google ID next to things that says Googlesyndication. Ta-dah.
They left because they couldn’t stomach the organization and how they treat user data.
Because, they have little controls around it, and sell it with reckless abandon to anyone who will pay.
It was a whole big thing. 😐
Wow. He thinks the public is either stupid or has the memory of a gnat.
Water does other things that you might not like, but they’re new things, and complicated, and...
I'm inclined to think these are just bots .. Slop boosters throwing out waves of bot accounts, again, trying to sway opinions through spam..
Facebook just uses analytics to monetize your data into a positive income stream.
verified threads users stanning daddy are almost certainly bot accounts
how can it be wrong?
I wonder how that ended up in their post.
Dude what? Almost their entire business model would like a word.
oh boy
"They claim not to sell data, but Facebook and Google have paid developers with data. This selling of your personal data is central to platform economics."
https://hoofnagle.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/hoofnagle_facebook_google_data_brokers.pdf
knowledgeable people can take "complicated" and lay it out for people less knowledgeable. It's one of the skills you pick up through the learning process.
I literally have become much more conservative about clicking just so I don’t get spammed