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Comment by netsectoday | Hacker News Reader

This is a message board about tech... comments aren't welcome anymore - we need evidence to participate?

I think it's interesting when a bunch of people chime in and say "Hey, yeah, I had some crazy thing happen to me, I'm in tech and understand how this stuff works, and there's a very small to zero chance this happened through some other parallel construction by the tech company, they just straight up listened to my conversation and showed me an ad".

This is what kicks off a handful of you to go packet sniffing and write up a blog post looking for this behavior. So yes, evidence is welcome but it doesn't seem like we are quite there yet.

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In general I agree, but I think when you are being explicitly asked for a "source" in response to an allegation that it is settled that FB has been "caught recording people," I would prefer to not have anecdotes in reply.

I'd prefer to say whatever I want. Must have filed it in the wrong place.

You can say whatever you want, doesn't mean I won't criticize you for it or downvote you.

And I'll flag if you violate HN guidelines, which you have.

Cool! Which ones?

> Edit: Holy fuck there are (paid?) Facebook shills all over this like flies on shit.

From the HN guidelines: [0]

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I mean… this is a conversation, not some sort of formal debate? Someone is telling you "hey, this happened to me," and your response isn't "have you considered this other explanation?" but rather "I won't discuss this further unless you do a bunch of research and present the results to me."

I'm happy to continue discuss it (not sure where you are getting the idea that I'm not from), but I think it is also fair to point out when someone asks for a source to a claim that something has been proven/caught and instead the replies are a bunch of personal stories where people think something is happening.

To me, that is indicative that, contra the original claim, no such thing has ever been proven.

Is it verboten to say that?

It's not verboten. But, candidly, it is kind of rude. What's the difference between someone at, say, the EFF "proving" something happened by running an experiment and writing about it publicly, and someone on Hacker News doing the same?

I disagree that it is rude to point out something is an anecdote.

The proof has to do with the technical details, not the authority figure posting it. If someone from the EFF wrote a blog post with the same content as these HN posters, I would be similarly dismissive of this as "proof."

They aren't saying "this happened to me"

They're saying "facebook has been caught multiple times doing this", which is not a personal anecdote, but an assertion that proof exists and is available.

So where is it?

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