My first reaction was: "Wow, FB finally went over the line and is actually an evil spyware distributor."
Then I started thinking about what this app really is. At $20/month per user, it's clearly impossible to recoup that money on a per-user basis via better ad targeting. This app is a market research app with a very small opt-in panel, just like having a Nielsen box on your TV.
I've never felt like Nielsen's data collection is evil, so it makes me wonder if my reaction is rational.
There's a huge difference between what Nielsen does and what Facebook did.
1) Nielsen doesn't explicitly target children.
2) The data that Nielsen collects is far less intrusive than what FB collects.
3) The consumer is much more likely to be informed about the data Nielsen collects, where as with FB, it's unlikely that a user (especially a minor) understands the extent of what FB was collecting.
And yes, Facebook was requiring "parental consent" to collect this data, but as we all know that is very hard to verify and children have been ticking the "I'm 13 or older" box for years without their parents knowing.
What Facebook did clearly crossed a line. End of story.
I've been sent those packets offering to become a Nielsen family, and looked through the included description of how it works.
1) Nielsen does explicitly target children, insofar as Nielsen families are supposed to give them data on the usage habits of every member of the family, including the kids. That said, the decision of whether or not to become a Nielsen family remains firmly in the hands of the heads of the family. Perhaps regardless of the consent of its younger members.
2) They do also now track participating families' Internet usage at large, like Facebook's app was doing. I don't know whether it relied on a VPN or some other technology.
3) I think that most people could understand the TV consumption tracking that used to be Nielsen's bread and butter. But, at least based on the recruitment materials that were sent to me, I didn't have a clear understanding of the extent or nature of Internet usage data collection. I assume the story would be similar for most other users, especially minors.
Based on that, I think that a lot of these comparisons are comparing what Facebook is doing now to what Nielsen was doing 20 or 30 years ago. Which is fair comparison to explore, but let's be careful not to absolve the Nielsen of today from any scrutiny in the process.
They're really pushy about it too. They selected my house and sent a gift basket and some guy came to the house three times emphasizing the "prestige" of being a Nielsen house because you're supposedly helping to define what shows get made. I can't imagine what kind of person would be swayed by that argument.
My uncle used to tell a story about taking a studio tour in the 1960s where part of the tour was being a test audience for Lost in Space (he was a kid at the time). The whole family had a pad with a dial and you could turn it one way to display approval and the other to give a thumbs down.
He hated the show and tried to indicate as much throughout the showing. But when the lights came back on he realized that he'd had the pad backwards the whole time.
He never forgave himself for that one time he "got Lost in Space green-lit".
I could see it being compelling decades ago. Nowadays, though, I'm guessing fans of niche programming are increasingly cord cutters who don't need Nielsen to ensure their TV consumption is being tracked.
Totally non-scientific evidence: The only acquaintances I can think of who still have cable TV subscriptions do so because their TV consumption is dominated by sports.
Good information, and based on that, I agree, Nielsen is doing similarly bad things, one distinction being that a child is unlikely to sign up for these services without their parents' knowledge.
I'm not here to defend Neilsen at all, but I do think Facebook has a bit more responsibility to make the right decisions here given their ubiquity, reach, AND the invasiveness of how a root certificate allows them access to encrypted traffic and even text messages (really?).
I'm not sure what you mean by this because Nielsen absolutely targets children. The parents are explicitly consenting to having the box in the home but the box is constantly monitoring what is on the TV and invasively forces you tell it every 30 minutes or so exactly who is watching the screen.
My family was a Nielsen family for a time when I was in college and my 8-12 year old brothers were living at home.
Nielsen asks the parents to consent to monitoring. The parents are adults, and adults are in a position to be able to give such consent. Parents routinely make decisions for their children that the children are not in a position to make on their own. This ensures that children, who do not have the education and life experience to be able to make such decisions on their own, have their interests looked out for by responsible adults.
Facebook skipped the parents and pitched their app to the kids directly.
There is no invasion like what you're mentioning in the (recently) current systems. I was a Nielsen household. They use audio tracking via HDMI/optical audio to "see" what's being watched, and they can of course tell what TV it's coming from, but that's the extent of it.
I wonder what the actual effects of saying “Period! End of Story!” are in a discussion forum.
Obvioisly someone is still free to respond, and then that won’t be the end of the discussion. So what’s the point of saying it? It seems to escalate the stakes basically: “if you disagree then you are a LABEL!”
I understand your sentiment here, but the broader point here is that we as industry have been historically timid about taking hardline ethical stances. In my opinion, Facebook's behavior here is clearly wrong, and I'm going to state it as so.
By taking a hardline stance, I'm opening the opportunity to prove me wrong. This is an open forum and I'm not calling anyone names for disagreeing with me. In fact if you do have a valid counterargument, PLEASE DO disagree. I'm more concerned about getting to the truth than being right.
But if there isn't a counterargument, then I want my comment to stand out as a stark reminder that we should not accept or be complicit to these types of practices going forward. If we don't take these types of stances, I do not think we will change the culture in tech.
Agreed. If the original commenter cannot make a cohesive and convincing argument as to why what happened is wrong, then they ought not to say anything. If they believe their argument is convincing, then these kinds of statements are unnecessary
Yeah I mean it's mostly interesting to see that at $0/mo Onavo was a fantastic deal for FB and they are willing to pay users at least $20/mo for the same quality data. I wonder what price this instrumentation is worth to them if $20/mo and PR risk was okay -- like, what is the upper bound on good quality iOS Onavo data?
Seemed like the WSJ described this tool pretty well [ https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-onavo-gives-social-me... ] -- reportedly Facebook employees can just plug in "Snapchat" into the Onavo metrics and see "we estimate [XX] MAU, declining [Y%] year over year and [Z%] month over month", and they can use this info to short/long SNAP or to prioritize building/buying a competitor. Such a great idea.
I do feel bad for whatever PM in Facebook (on Project Atlas or whatever) has been watching this news for the past few days and saying "whoa, this seems disproportionately unfair, given that Google and others do the same thing on iOS". I'm just wildly speculating here but that project team is probably getting a firsthand lesson in the "New York Times test" rule: if what you are doing were published on the front page of the NYT, would you regret it? (This is a particularly rough area because I think a lot of current employees probably feel like the NYT and peers have some kind of vendetta against them and probably don't really understand the hostility.)
> Be 18 years of age or older and capable of entering into a binding contract. You expressly declare that you are the owner of or lawfully exercise control over any Device onto which you authorize the downloading of the Software.
Facebook's spyware was pushed to teenagers as young as 13. But yeah, same thing.
> "Children watch an average of 2.8 hours of video content each day – the majority use devices other than a traditional television set to watch this. "
Then I started thinking about what this app really is. At $20/month per user, it's clearly impossible to recoup that money on a per-user basis via better ad targeting. This app is a market research app with a very small opt-in panel, just like having a Nielsen box on your TV.
I've never felt like Nielsen's data collection is evil, so it makes me wonder if my reaction is rational.
Also, looks like Nielsen has a similar program: https://computermobilepanel.nielsen.com/