Facebook Rolls Out News Feed Change That Blocks Watchdogs from Gathering Data (themarkup.org) 37
Facebook has begun rolling out an update that is interfering with watchdogs monitoring the platform. From a report: The Markup has found evidence that Facebook is adding changes to its website code that foils automated data collection of news feed posts -- a technique that groups like NYU's Ad Observatory, The Markup, and other researchers and journalists use to audit what's happening on the platform on a large scale. The changes, which attach junk code to HTML features meant to improve accessibility for visually impaired users, also impact browser-based ad blocking services on the platform. The new code risks damaging the user experience for people who are visually impaired, a group that has struggled to use the platform in the past.
The updates add superfluous text to news feed posts in the form of ARIA tags, an element of HTML code that is not rendered visually by a standard web browser but is used by screen reader software to map the structure and read aloud the contents of a page. Such code is also used by organizations like NYU's Ad Observatory to identify sponsored posts on the platform and weed them out for further scrutiny. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment before press time. Following the changes, the Citizen Browser project experienced a drop in data collection rates from early September, prompting the investigation that uncovered these changes to the code. At around the same time, users of certain ad blockers noticed a decrease in their effectiveness.
The updates add superfluous text to news feed posts in the form of ARIA tags, an element of HTML code that is not rendered visually by a standard web browser but is used by screen reader software to map the structure and read aloud the contents of a page. Such code is also used by organizations like NYU's Ad Observatory to identify sponsored posts on the platform and weed them out for further scrutiny. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment before press time. Following the changes, the Citizen Browser project experienced a drop in data collection rates from early September, prompting the investigation that uncovered these changes to the code. At around the same time, users of certain ad blockers noticed a decrease in their effectiveness.
Seems disingenuous (Score:4, Insightful)
How many times has Zuckerberg, or some other Facebook official, stated, under oath, before Congress or to some other government regulator that they are working to improve things like the spread of hate speech and covid misinformation... and then they pull shit like this.
As if we didn't already know that what Facebook was telling the government was just what they wanted to hear with no real intentions of ever following through, we now see that they appear to be actively taking steps to prevent other groups from holding them accountable in any meaningful way. Surely there are enough talented people at Facebook they could have figured out a way to improve access for visually impaired people, if that was the goal, that didn't have the other impacts.
Re:Seems disingenuous (Score:4, Insightful)
Zuck promised FB would make an effort to get better. He never promised to let third parties evaluate independently how much of an effort they made or how much better they got. You're supposed to take his word at face value.
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But he tried REEELL hard!
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they are working to improve things like the spread of hate speech and covid misinformation
Hate speech and covid misinformation are subjective. Which way is Zuckerberg supposed to move the threshold to make the right people happy? Better just to block large scale data analysis. And label those unhappy with their content a bunch of fringe loonies, triggered by an outlying post.
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Hate speech and covid misinformation are subjective. Which way is Zuckerberg supposed to move the threshold to make the right people happy? Better just to block large scale data analysis. And label those unhappy with their content a bunch of fringe loonies, triggered by an outlying post.
There may be a gray area where weak statements may fall, but no. Up is up, down is down, and the Moon is not composed of anything resembling cheese. Claims to the contrary by people with their heads up their asses are not 'subjective', they are wrong.
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Just sue them - problem solved (Score:5, Interesting)
The new code risks damaging the user experience for people who are visually impaired, a group that has struggled to use the platform in the past.
I'm sure if they screw up accessibility for the visually impaired on purpose, we can throw the Americans with Disability Act at them.
No benefit of the doubt for FB (Score:2)
"At around the same time, users of certain ad blockers noticed a decrease in their effectiveness."
The changes might have been designed with the ad blockers in mind, but FaceBook has been such an unrepentant scum on society that they no longer get the benefit of doubt from me.
It's the ad blockers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the main target of these changes was ad blockers, not data collectors. The data collection people may have been the ones who figured it out, but that doesn't mean they were the reason for the changes. Data collection is annoying to Facebook, but ad blockers attack their bottom line, and they'll fight them as hard as they can. It's the same way they care about bot networks primarily because they provide a way to boost content without having to pay Facebook for promoting it, not because they're a source of disinformation.
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Might be data collectors as well. I mean a big part of facebooks revenu is ad targeting. Well if others can gather stats on news feeds, well they can use that for ad targeting...
I can see why FB would very much not want to enable that sort of snooping for very basic business reasons.
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So basically whack-a-mole. Geeks have been playing that game for years.
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You are most likely correct that ad blockers were the original target.
Of course, then someone reported to management that this solution also would impact data collectors. Management considered that a bonus.
Then someone probably reported to management that this would impact visually impaired folks. Management shrugged and didn't care.
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I would love to see a lawsuit over their deliberately degrading the experience for people who need screen readers. It seems like an open and shut violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and I assume it would run afoul of similar laws elsewhere in the world.
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Shhh..Shhh.. FB is doing the disabled community a favor by denying them their services. Have you seen what FB withdrawal does to a person?
If you have nothing to hide . . . (Score:2)
One wonders what Zuck is so terrified of if he has to resort to these measures to prevent people from monitoring his site. I mean, is the alleged pedophile that afraid of someone from the outside watching what he does?
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glad I never (Score:2)
Glad I left years ago. (Score:2)
I miss some of the people I semi-regularly talked to only on Facebook. But it's not worth returning. Everything that made me leave is still there, and stuff has gotten worse since then.
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Everything you ever posted is still there too, and they keep your account updated every time you surf the web. I've never had a FB account, and I know they keep a shadow account of my information anyway.
At one point they emailed me, listing a bunch of my friends, and said "Don't you want to join FB too?"
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I think you are wrong, at least in this case.
I did go through the hoops of *deleting* my account.
I can't prove that they don't still retain my posts internally, but Google can't find anything I posted.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Some of those links do *refer* to me -- some were posted by my wife, another was posted by my former employer -- but none were posted by me.
Facebook Allows Datamining Posts (Score:2)
What song was #1, when you were young?
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Watchdogs = well funded lobbies (Score:1, Troll)
Censors BTFO (Score:2)
Oh noes! How will we harass facebook into censoring News we don't like now? Censors and authoritarians BTFO.
Another course of bricks (Score:2)
... Atop the garden wall. This is about facebook opacity, not user privacy.
Why Facebook? (Score:2)
I get why FB is trying to make their platform safer, but what I've never understood is why white supremacists, pedophiles, etc... find their platform so attractive in the first place. Are the majority of FB users so naive that they would believe hate speech in the first place? Are they really so morally depraved they would overlook, or even welcome, abusive material?
We've all seen some rather objectionable content on the internet, but where other communities recognize and down-mod the trolls, FB seems
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The key is that Facebook- and plenty of other social media- pushes engagement over anything else. They want you to spend more time on their site, so they want to push content that will get and keep your attention. The content that does that most effectively is stuff that gets you emotionally. It can be good emotions or bad emotions, but the stronger the emotions the more you respond and tend to stay around. The net effect is that their algorithm deliberately pushes provocative content because it's bette
Re: Why Facebook? (Score:2)
For The Masochists And Those Forced To Use FB... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unfortunately, these same changes did a real number of FBP's filtering, too (someone sufficiently cynical might think that was the real endgame).
Caught Facebook Editorial Malfeasance.. (Score:3)
.. during the Hillary/Trump election.
Gathered the evidence. Threw it at Facebook and the fake news sites that were being run by a Washington PR firm (in usual technically incompetent manner which allowed me to detect it in the first place). The fake facebook accounts went dark for a time (to reappear later).
Handed the evidence over to The Intercept.
Now Facebook are trying to make it difficult for people to catch them at their Fuckery.
Liars for Hire.