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Facebook Turned Off Search Features Used To Catch War Criminals, Child Predators, And Other Bad Actors (buzzfeednews.com) 84

The human rights and war crimes community is up in arms over Facebook's decision to turn off a set of advanced features in its graph search product, which is "a way to receive an answer to a specific query on Facebook, such as 'people in Nebraska who like Metallica,'" reports BuzzFeed News. "Using graph search, it's possible to find public -- and only public -- content that's not easily accessed via keyword search." The decision, which was not announced publicly, was likely made in an effort to limit data scandals and improve privacy. From the report: When Mark Zuckerberg personally introduced graph search in early 2013, he billed it as equal in importance to Facebook's News Feed and profile timeline. On launch day, the company also published a post offering journalists tips on how to use graph search. Over the years, graph search became a valuable tool for investigators, police officers, and journalists. At the same time, social media became a key source for uncovering war crimes, disinformation campaigns, child exploitation, and other crimes and abuses.

The move raised even more concern in the human rights and investigative journalism communities because Facebook appeared to thwart attempts to find workarounds. Henk van Ess, an investigator and trainer who works with Bellingcat, operates a tool that uses graph search to enable powerful searches of public content. After Facebook turned off some searches, he was able to find workarounds -- until the company blocked them. "I patched my tools 5 times and each time, after 2 hrs, the tools were crippled by FB," he wrote in a Twitter direct message. "Other toolmakers experienced the same." Van Ess now requires people to request permission from him to use his tool; he says he's been flooded with requests from people pursuing investigations "involving human rights abuses, war crimes, terrorism, extremism, white collar crime ... corruption, disinformation campaigns, environmental crimes, cybercrime -- the list just keeps on going."
A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to BuzzFeed News: "The vast majority of people on Facebook search using keywords, a factor which led us to pause some aspects of graph search and focus more on improving keyword search. We are working closely with researchers to make sure they have the tools they need to use our platform."
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Facebook Turned Off Search Features Used To Catch War Criminals, Child Predators, And Other Bad Actors

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  • Loaded headline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 10, 2019 @07:59PM (#58742622)

    Alternate headline: Facebook turned off search feature used by oppressive governments and shadowy organizations to unmask dissidents, amass databases for political targeting, and otherwise surveil people who are too stupid to set the right privacy settings on their accounts.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Alternate headline: Facebook turned off search feature used by oppressive governments and shadowy organizations to unmask dissidents, amass databases for political targeting, and otherwise surveil people who are too stupid to set the right privacy settings on their accounts.

      Find all billionaires in San Francisco, CA who own multiple homes on a block, and do not have an ethical compass.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Thars monies in them thar serchings, fuck off yeah free feeding leacherous dogs. That is all that is floating around in Facebook executive and board minds. No more free data mining of Facebook, want it, argh hargh, well bloody pay for that extortion material.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They could have kept it available for trusted organizations.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Like Buzzfeed?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Note that all the data is public anyway, it's just the advanced search engine which they are taking away.

          Presumably government agencies already have their own, even better search engine, e.g. X-Keyscore.

          • With a warrant, the "trusted organizations" can go get this data. It's still there. They can go get it.

            What they CAN'T do is trawl everyone's data to profile likely criminals. Because the 4th amendment exists and we are supposed to be "secure in our papers". Because otherwise we'll have a society constantly afraid of acting out of line and getting black-bagged in the night for political dissent, similar to the Red Scare or the bad times in communist countries.

  • ...when there are so many conservatives left unbanned, so many examples of WrongThink that need to be suppressed, so many Social Justice Warriors that need to be appeased?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      LOL! In reality, I suspect the Facebook system was just overloaded by search requests from Slashdot users searching for:

      "IT janitor from San Jose who works at 7 AM for a three letter agency in Palo Alto"

    • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Monday June 10, 2019 @08:17PM (#58742722)
      This move is about privacy. When it comes to FB I'm way more concerned about privacy than I am about catching war criminals.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 )

        Yeah they seem to miss that those search features dont just let the good guys stalk the bad guys. It also lets the bad guys stalk the good guys.

        A few years ago a friend of mine, a mother of 2 with political savy about as naive as you might expect was copping horrible harassment from some psychotic 14yo 4chan racist who was going after her , and sending threats about her kids and the like. I ended up using facebooks search features to track down this kids parents and have a word about what comes next unless

        • No, you're missing the point. We're supposed to sacrifice the privacy of billions for the sake of catching maybe a dozen septuagenarian Nazis who wouldn't even realize if they were being incarcerated for the few years they have left. That's not a good trade-off, people.
        • The solution to cops not being to catch the bad guys should remain. Withhold donuts until they do.
    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Same problem Stalin faced. It takes time and effort to go through millions of people to find everyone who engages in wrongthink.

      • by necro81 ( 917438 )

        Same problem Stalin faced. It takes time and effort to go through millions of people to find everyone who engages in wrongthink.

        Not anymore! There's an app for that.

  • Researchers find something USEFUL about Facebook.

    Facebook blocks usage of these features.

    Facebook will only allow society crushing features and outrage on their platform. Anything that actually might benefit humanity, that's not allowed.

    • But, and sorry for double post. These sound like the exact features Cambridge Analytica used to isolate voting blocks for targeted ads. So yeah. Just wanted to mention that part too. There's two sides to this coin.

  • So quick all this SJW anti data collecting bullshit has already started taking away PUBLIC data features. Can't wait for the coming multiple hundreds of rounds of data collection, sharing laws inacted that will destroy data science as we know it. Opensource or "evil corporate" editions. Thanks assholes.
  • In other words, the tools were for use by
          totalitarian state oppressors, enforcers and propagandist

    I'm not just talking about China here.

    The state and the party deserve to know all your personal information, but you can't have access to any information about them. They will filter it for you.

  • If I knew someone who worked at a certain company and lived in New York, I might search for "people named John who work at XYZ and live in New York". That doesn't work anymore. I have no idea how you'd use graph search to find a war criminal or child predator though.
  • Good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by peppepz ( 1311345 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @01:18AM (#58743582)
    This feature was a privacy abomination. Criminals have to be catched by judicially-sanctioned investigation, not by indiscriminate mass surveillance. Since the information collected was "public", anyway, whoever used this feature to access it can still obtain it easily, can't them?
    • Since the information collected was "public", anyway, whoever used this feature to access it can still obtain it easily, can't them [sic]?

      Obtain it? Yes. Easily? No. You've apparently never used anything like a reverse telephone directory, I take it. Without one, you have to go through every entry in the phone book looking for a match. Without graph search, sure, you could go through everyone's Facebook page and check for a match... but it would take you a while.

      • My question was rhetorical. My point being, that saying that the feature only collected "public" information, thereby implying that the feature didn't pose a threat, was weasel wording. Because what made the feature harmful to people's privacy wasn't the arguably "public" nature of the information collected, but rather its gathering, storage, classification, and the way it was made available to third parties.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Wait, do you think Facebook owes you something? Because if you do, go send them an invoice.

    Otherwise they get to do WHATEVER THEY WANT and we get to participate or not.

    Oh, you participate? You're a Facebook member? You give them your info for free.

    You're getting exactly what you deserve.

    You're welcome.

    E

  • But evidently, one can no longer write the word "honk" on Facebook. [reddit.com]

  • Rumour has it that it was catching leftists. They're the criminals and they were being jailed so they had to stop that. Antifa, democrats, etc.

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