Experts explained why the social network know about you as more than friends

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Специалисты объяснили, почему соцсети знают о вас больше, чем друзья  Published results of relevant studies.

A second ago you put “like” a new episode of “Game of thrones” on Facebook and in your feed instantly appears in the article “Find out which of the characters of “Game of thrones” soon to be born twins”.

You scored in the search line the word “shoes” – social network a few seconds will offer is this Shoe “at the lowest possible price”, although you never it never asked for it.

Even more fun – on Facebook. You recommend to friends an article about the war in Syria, or, say, “100 interesting facts about the usefulness of cucumbers” – social network will periodically throw you dozens of material on the subject.

Does this sound familiar?

Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and many other major IT companies bit by bit gather information about you and the so-called “digital fingerprints” and know a lot more about you than you’d like.

Their analyst is quite accurate: a small error of Facebook and Twitter talk about how much money you earn, than you are interested, you Catholic or Muslim, married or divorced, gay or not.

All of this can be used against you not only for commercial purposes, says Stanford University Professor Michal Kosinski.

Several years ago he openly talked about the technology of targeted advertising as one of the most dangerous and at the same time useful to mankind.

Subsequently, she took advantage of a private British company Cambridge Analytica involved in the analysis and collection of electronic information and strategic voting technology.

Now Kosinski is working on researching new technologies, able only photos or video to identify the predisposition of a person towards homosexuality, pedophilia, as well as to calculate potential mass murderer or rapist.

Michal Kosinski told the Russian service Bi-bi-si about whether the governments of any countries already taken a similar system adopted, whether in the world at least a bit of privacy, whether it is possible to learn how to look your portrait in the network and is it possible to hide from every step, purchase and campaign in a social network was immediately zapelengovali electronic radars.

What will tell your “likes” and tweets?

Many people simply want to be friendly, but every “like” adds a touch to your own digital portrait. Many argue that like to support their friends, not because they really liked the article or news is published by someone they know.

In fact, we only think that we are doing it by accident. Science says that’s not true, we still “lichaam” very non-random things. If you look, for example, Catholics: they all have a common behavior model, a common pattern.

Look at the gays: the same picture.

Democrats and Republicans the same way. And it’s not about who they were voting for. The thing is, what is their vocabulary, what brands they prefer, what books, what a movie. All this repeated pattern of behavior with very thin strokes.

For example, people will not be able to define several proposals, Republican or Democrat, especially if the text has nothing to do with politics. But the computer algorithm does it with very high accuracy.

In order to have a pretty clear idea of who you are, don’t need a lot of “likes” – ten enough in order to know more about you than work colleagues.

50 computer analysis knows you on the level of your partner or family member. 200 “likes” enough to talk about all your secret preferences are also detailed, as it would make your husband or wife after many years of marriage.

Facebook is watching your behavior online. We tell about ourselves much more than we’d like and more than first seems apparent on the surface.

For example, he takes your cinematic or musical preferences, then a computer algorithm takes this data and translates them into a fairly accurate prediction as to who you really are.

These “likes” and tell about your political preferences, your age, gender, your personality, even what drugs you may take, whether your divorced parents and many other very sensitive and personal information.

Facebook tracks what pages you visited, which put “likes” what you post, what you share with whom you are friends, you whose follower, looks like your close network of contacts.

Obvious fact: the liberal-minded people have the same liberal friends, conservatives in the contacts list quite a bit. The same rule applies to conservatives. People in the same way are combined in groups by age and gender, sexual orientation, and many other demographic and social concepts.

I mean, Facebook already has information about your friends, “likes,” preferences, statuses and especially your comments. The latest evidence what do you respond that is an irritant.

Personal user profiles is not only Facebook, but other online monsters: Netflix, Amazon, Google, Twitter and Uber. They compare and measure your purchases, travel, books and movies with your previous experience. And offer you all new and new variations.

What is “Facebook”, and to whom he will tell you about?

Facebook is a perfect base for advertisers who, in turn, can benefit from other sources.

The company, which studies credit ratings, buy or directly get this information from other sources, and then translate it for yourself in the right language: how much money you actually have, how much you spend, how much you earn, how many credit cards you have.

All this translates into a credit rating, that is, your reliability and ability to repay debts. Many companies work in the same way, for example, major credit card companies – they collect information about what you buy, to the time when the purchase was made, how much you have spent, how quickly you paid the debt – and puts that information in your file the consumer.

This file can later be sold to other companies. There is a very easy way to check if your information is sold or shared with other outside companies or sources. You know, we in Silicon valley are saying: if you don’t pay for a product or service, then you are the product.

Who can advertise in social networks?

Any user of “Facebook” with a credit card can come and place their ads. After that, he or she can send it to people with certain psychological, demographic, and geographic characteristics. You can do targeted advertising depending on age, skin color, location, political orientation, gender, home value and income level.

Moreover, you can go further and target those groups of users who share common interests, and people with a similar hobby. Imagine you have hundreds of thousands of email addresses relevant to politics or religion, gays or heterosexuals. You upload all those email addresses to Facebook and tell him: “Facebook”, find me some more people with similar interests and show them my ad.

And now guess who behave like Catholics? Right, other Catholics! And even if a man never told the network that he is a Catholic or Republican, or gay, all these people will come your is if to use such tools.

What is this thing called espionage or on micro targeting?

Most advertisers use social networks, the so-called on micro targeting. This means that the products that you see in the ads, services or ideas, articles on political or culinary topics, clearly reflect on your previous “likes”, the decisions and behavior of your age, economic well-being, status, occupation, religious affiliation, sexual preference, income, and hundreds of other little touches.

In General, it’s not so bad. With a global perspective on micro targeting is the advertising that is suitable and focused on each individual and his personal needs. In this case, and marketers and politicians can be sure that those messages which they send to their customers or constituents, really relevant. It has a lot of advantages, especially in a political context.

For example, if a politician will have a better understanding of the voter, his social status and financial ability, he will be able to talk about those parts of their program that are important to you, this will help people to be more involved. I think that the increase in the level of interest in politics is good for democracy.

On the other hand, this technique can lead to negative consequences, especially if you are dealing with a dishonest, immoral politicians, people who lie to their voters, want to manipulate them, to discourage them all the hunting vote. For such politicians on micro targeting is an additional trump card with which you can use to achieve unethical aspirations.

The reason why every day I warn people from using targeted advertising and talking about its risks – that we have to remember that in terms of a global perspective these tools are created for our benefit – as citizens, voters, consumers.

But in order that they were sent for good, it is necessary to talk about the risks and reverse side of the medal. For this you need to know how to regulate it, as they upgrade and when to use them.
When politicians began to use targeted advertising?

On micro targeting long had its place in politics, they are all major candidates of any election race in order to establish and maintain communication with voters. According to my sources, the budget which was used by Hillary Clinton on advertising in social networks, in three times the budget of Donald trump.

By the way, one of the first targeted advertisements began to use Barack Obama, who has taken many serious steps in order to reach people in social networks and adjust its promises, making them more understandable and meaningful. Don’t forget, there is a positive side: this technology allows policy to adjust their message, it is good for democracy.

Again, on micro targeting is a fairly cheap tool, you can save a lot of money. It also allows people to be more aware, again, is working on slogans and promises you gave to his constituents as a politician, this allows them to hone and understand the real needs of the people. And it doesn’t mean that using microTargeting you immediately have an advantage.

Order it must carefully consider a large number of different messages which will be sent to people. A variety of topics, especially those that are important to minority groups. And these forgotten earlier threads, suddenly have become important.

So I as a politician can selectively apply to different groups of people, taking into account their different financial, economic and social status, different professions, it will be different messages.

What does Cambridge Analytica and Donald trump?

Cambridge Analytica is a British company that uses data mining to promote candidates during election campaigns. She participated in the campaign of Donald trump, elections in France, where he helped marine Le Pen, and presumably participated in the campaign of supporters of a British exit from the EU.

Cambridge Analytica uses the method concerning which I have repeatedly warned the scientific and IT community. It’s called targeted advertising. This method is used for many years. When I started my research, it’s used by many companies, but they are not really bragged about it.

Long before Cambridge Analytica I reconstructed what they do behind “closed doors” and tried to tell people about the risks of this technology and potential benefits from it. Because technology is always good, and evil.

In my research, I use the exact same tools used by professionals for targeted advertising, working in government and private companies. But with these tools I’m just showing how the situation looks from the inside. Moreover, I even do not improve, do not upgrade, do not try to improve them.
Holder illustrations Image caption EPA Head Cambridge Analytica Alexander Knicks seminars, telling how his company is using on micro targeting, helped in the election Donald Trump

Cambridge Analytica became a player in the market microTargeting quite late, 10 years after this technology has already been used. And exactly 10 years after almost the same technology first used by Barack Obama – she, however, was less advanced, because at that time when he began his great political career, we have a network significantly less time.

If you go back to the question of Cambridge Analytica: they are so much late for the beginning of the game and was so inexperienced, that he told the General public about how they screwed up, revealed all his dark secrets.

More experienced companies that did the same thing for decades, he was smart enough and experienced to keep your mouth shut. Have you ever heard of the company, which worked on Obama and Clinton? The name, details of the activities? Of course not. Because they are professionals.

And I here’s what I say: the US has a lot of negative political marketing, when politicians publish ads that have to kill their opponents. In Europe, it is still less. From a psychological point of view, we know that it is very hard to get Hillary’s voters not to vote for her in the elections. The same situation with the voters of Donald trump.

The only reason Donald trump would have shown the voter is Hillary – not exactly in order to try to persuade him, but to kill in that any voter desire to vote. This, in General, the pressure on the voter.

The same can be applied to Hillary: she totally did not expect that they will be able to convince trump supporters to vote for her. The only reason she would have shown the voter is trump to get him to stay home.

How to find out what I know about social networking?

I and my assistants used the information from Twitter, Facebook and even credit history. It gave us voluntarily and, if anything, has donated about six million people, and we found out how accurate and precise is the information used by companies and governments for their purposes on every person.

As a result, we decided to make a model of this study, public available online so that people could see what they look like from the side, as many can tell you their “likes” on Facebook.

We have created a website applymagicsauce.com – it can go everyone to upload their “likes” – we will not touch them and do not store this information simply in order to see how much they, without knowing it, tell us about yourself.

What do you say face?

In my new project I consider the algorithms of computer analysis of the video, which have long benefited from the intelligence community, security companies and many different startups. These companies are not going to tell the General public about what they do.

I’m not crazy.

Modern computer analysis is able not only to recognize and identify faces, but also intimate behavior. Why? Yes, because this is truly disgusting! I use the same tools that they are, and trying to reconstruct in his laboratory, what happens behind closed doors.

And, according to our latest development, the algorithms that are used to read the video also talk about our sexual orientation with very high accuracy.

These technologies are used by many governments. And I think people deserve to know that this technology is able to do.

I believe that the algorithms of computer analysis and should not dictate our orientation – heterosexual or homosexual we are, we should solve it ourselves, but homophobic tyrannical government do not think so.

They are already working with many startups and intelligence agencies to investigate crimes. And don’t ask me about it – just Google, countries such as China, Russia, USA, many European countries have long used computer technology for facial recognition in its security systems.

On the one hand, this is good news: we can protect children from pedophiles, we can save innocent lives from a terrorist attack – I only like technology, but it needs to be discussed publicly. In some countries, homosexuality or atheism involve criminal prosecution.

In Saudi Arabia, if you’re not heterosexual, you are facing the death penalty. If you’re an atheist in Saudi Arabia it means the exact same sentence. And if it is possible to “read” the human face is the risk and we can no longer ignore.

Is there any privacy?

Computer algorithms are getting better all the time, their predictions more and more accurate. They allow you to put all your digital prints on personal transactions which we leave, in very neat patterns. With the help of our “likes” on Facebook can determine our political views, religious views via Twitter, and our sexual orientation just to read on the face or the photograph.

We leave an incredible amount of digital traces while online. We “celebrated” by going to the store and paying by credit card. Call a taxi via a smartphone app – one more track.

At the moment it is very difficult to understand how to stop it. Why? Yes, because all these technologies are so comfortable and frequently used, they make our life more long, comfortable, healthy. I’m not even trying to convince people to stop using this. If this happened, it would be a real tragedy.

Without search engines, mobile banking, cards, online learning courses and email will suffer not only personal life but also the economy. Put it all together, you get here’s the picture: every day we have less and less personal space, if it left at all. And that’s not what makes me happy.

And even if in the world there will be no privacy, no personal space, the purpose for which I continue my studies is a tolerance for each other. Intolerance in a world in which privacy does not exist, it is very difficult to hide.

Imagine the poor uneducated people killing and maiming each other because of religious differences, political orientation, and sexuality. By the way, wealthy companies can also commit acts of hatred and intolerance.

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