Re Facebook accused of introducing extremists to one another through 'suggested friends' feature

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: José María Mateos <chema () rinzewind org>
> Date: May 6, 2018 at 8:08:54 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: [IP] Facebook accused of introducing extremists to one another through 'suggested friends' feature
>
> On Sun, May 06, 2018 at 05:11:11PM -0400, Dave Farber wrote:
> > > https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/05/facebook-accused-introducing-extremists-one-another-suggested/
> > >
> > >     Facebook has helped introduce thousands of Islamic State of
> > >   Iraq and the Levant (Isil) extremists to one another, via its
> > >   'suggested friends' feature, it can be revealed.  The social
> > >   media giant - which is already under fire for failing to
> > >   remove terrorist material from its platform - is now accused
> > >   of actively connecting jihadists around the world, allowing
> > >   them to develop fresh terror networks and even recruit new
> > >   members to their cause.  Researchers, who analysed the
> > >   Facebook activities of a thousand Isil supporters in 96
> > >   countries, discovered users with radical Islamist sympathies
> > >   were routinely introduced to one another through the popular
> > >   'suggested friends' feature.
>
> For IP, if you want,
>
> Isn't this the expected outcome of this platform, however? It's a 
> feature, not a bug. Back in 2009, this made the news:
>
> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6213590/Gay-men-can-be-identified-by-their-Facebook-friends.html
>
> > The study found that it was possible to predict men's sexual 
> > orientation by analysing the gender and sexuality of their contacts on 
> > the social networking site – even if the rest of the information on 
> > their profile is set to private.
> >
> > The small-scale survey indicates that people who believe they have 
> > discreet online habits may still be making personal information about 
> > themselves public.
> >
> > As part of the study the researchers Carter Jernigan and Behram 
> > Mistree scanned the Facebook friends of more than 1,500 fellow 
> > students who indicated their sexual orientation – straight, gay or 
> > bisexual – on their profiles.
> >
> > This analysis revealed that homosexual men had proportionally more gay 
> > friends than straight men, allowing the students to devise a computer 
> > programme to predict the sexual orientation of other Facebook users 
> > based solely on the sexualities of their friends.
>
> There's two readings from this:
>
> 1. Facebook does a good job at what is says it does: connecting people 
>   with similar tastes. In 2009, it happened that the social graph could 
>   be analyzed externally to give away your sexual orientation. In 2018, 
>   it turns out that the social graph can be analyzed internally to 
>   recommend friends you can build a caliphate with. But it's still 
>   pretty much the same thing.
> 2. Every Facebook user is putting their social graph outside for anyone 
>   to inspect (anyone with access, be it Facebook or whatever 
>   intelligence agency). I remember that in the past I used to watch 
>   crime movies in which the main character has a wall at home with many 
>   pictures, pins and pieces of thread of different colours linking 
>   relationships and events. Now that is all a Graph API call away.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- 
> José María (Chema) Mateos
> https://rinzewind.org/blog-es || https://rinzewind.org/blog-en



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