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From article: Quote: But that location metadata is not thrown away by Facebook—it is way too valuable.
Is it really? Knowing a person was at location x can be monetized how?
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You are everynight at place XXX and that's a nice neighbourhood, let's advertise luxury things.
You are being in a hospital... means either you or someone you love is serious sick, let's advertise health insurances or additional covers
You are going offroad in a slow speed... you probably are jogging. Let's advertise sport things.
You are during the day at location X, is that the place of a big OEM? or maybe a research institution?
You go to the gym severals a week, let's advertise fat burning or muscle development staff (depending on other things they know from your browser history)
...
and those were just on the spot.
If you start thinking how (and they surely have enough people thinking on it) there is a lot of useful information knowing were you spend how many time in which part of the day.
M.D.V. 
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Trivial targeted advertising. Moreover, wouldn't you rather have targeted than non-targeted advertising? Still believe the data is far less valuable that Facebook believes or claims.
Edit: What's interesting is that this theory of targeted advertising doesn't work very well in practice. I'm continually amused that Amazon seems to have given up on it and simply pushes what you looked at last or which the product owners paid to be put front and center.
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Joe Woodbury wrote: Trivial targeted advertising.
Change the targeted advertisement with the selling that information to other companies.
If you go often to the doctor or to the hospital, insurances companies that know it could set you more expensive fees.
If you are almost no time outside, the same, because your lifestyle is too sedentary and no sport or whatever (higher risk of health issues)
This is in german, I don't know if a online translator will sufice to make the text understandable but...
Golem.de: IT-News für Profis[^]
That information is easily connected to a person.
Being static during the night at the same place for a certain period of time... you live there.
Being static during the office hours at the same time for a certain period of time... you work there.
With those two it is easy to find out who you are.
Looking which places you visit, a tastes profile can be extrapolated (expensive shopping street versus cheap big stores, restaurants versus fast foods, outdoor versus indoor life style..) that combined with the internet browsing data / streaming preferences... it can say A LOT about your personality.
There is a lot of companies willing to pay for such information in order to (ab-)use it to their profits.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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The data can be useful, but my stated point was that it's less valuable than Facebook claims.
Back in the 1980s, a company I dealt with came up with a method of tracking things. They collected a huge amount of data (everyone involved knew and went along.) It was remarkably advanced for the time and worked well. They dropped it after a few years. An insider told me that they confirmed after the first few days what the metrics were and collecting megabytes more data didn't change anything.
The point is that two pieces of data in all this--the task and date of completion--were important, everything else was noise. Further, the date was important to only a few people.
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Joe Woodbury wrote: but my stated point was that it's less valuable than Facebook claims.
I would say that a look to FB and Google, their capital, their publicity revenue and their power... gives that data more value than you think.
Anyways... I don't want to convince you. If you think it is not that important, is fine.
Have a nice day. 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
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1987's Acorn Archimedes was the first production RISC-based personal computer. "Great oaks from little Acorns grow"
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"Obscure"!? <cough>
Acorn wasn't obscure.
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Outside of the UK? I vaguely remember hearing about it (probably Computer Chronicles) but never knew anyone who had one (or who knew someone who had one. GOTO 10)
TTFN - Kent
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Hrmph!
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Science seeks the basic laws of nature. Mathematics searches for new theorems to build upon the old. Engineering builds systems to solve human needs. "Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it."
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With the rise of remote work, written communication has become indispensable. Write right. Right?
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Wright rite.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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... and there's the problem.
I'm an old fart, so I'm going to subject you to a story; shut up and listen, because that's the point here.
When I was in college I worked for a small consulting company. Most of the time I was writing bits of code on larger projects, thoroughly supervised by more experienced engineers. One project was different, however. A customer needed a document that would describe their computing resources (several VAXen, peripherals, data base systems, and so on) to their potential users. I got the job.
Like most engineers I loathed writing. Why express in words what you were going to do in code, or in this case, what the machines could do? Over the course of six months I wrote a 70 page document describing each of the four VAX machines, the peripherals they had, what software they were running, and so on. Pretty dry stuff, until the people in the organization who were reviewing drafts started asking questions. "Why is it like that? Why does this machine have this feature, and it's not on that machine?" and so on. This is where I learned how to write.
The first rule of writing isn't about spelling, or grammar, or what bloody font you use. It's this: CONSIDER YOUR AUDIENCE! The document you're writing has a purpose, otherwise why write it? Your job as author is to correlate that purpose to the needs, skills, and temperment of your audience. The thing that my audience reviewing my drafts pointed out was that while the basic information was useful, they also wanted to know the rationale behind the configuration. That knowledge, not available anywhere except in the system manager's heads, was important to the users making decisions. I finally realized that the purpose of this document was to help these folks decide if and how to use this organization's resources. My audience was technically-oriented but not necessarily technically proficient to understand the implications in the dry inventories that were the document's start.
The end result of this half-year stint as a technical writer has had a more profound affect on my career than any other part of my education or early experience. I no longer hate writing. When I need to do it, I can create appropriate readable and useful documentation quickly. Most of the suggested changes I get on my documentation are based on business concerns of which I wasn't aware, and even those have faded somewhat over time as I have matured.
The contempt the engineers of my generation felt for writing as a skill has been replaced by apathy and indifference today. With email, IM, text messages, social media, and so on, all of you write... a lot. The problem is the writing is ephemeral and you take the view that the quality of it doesn't matter, only the speed with which you respond is important. You can see evidence of this here on CP. Over time the writing quality in the articles has shown a steady decline. In many of them the text is only a delimiter for links to the code and sample executable. Even in cases where there is a fair amount of text in the article, it's poorly organized and doesn't express itself clearly. I'm not faulting the CP editors here, by the way. They have a thankless task just ensuring that links work and that article submissions aren't camouflaged political screeds.
The realization expressed in this Insider article is simple: maybe there is something important after all about the way we express ourselves in written text.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Agree 100%
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I’d say, “Here, here”, but that seems a trivial response to a well-expressed post. Thank you for this.
TTFN - Kent
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Online users are more likely to reveal private information based on how website forms are structured to elicit data, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers have determined. Totally unrelated, but what's your mother's maiden name, the street where you grew up, and the name of your first pet?
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Manipulated?
There is a big bunch of people willing to do it... and not only for free, but accepting to be the product.
If not, FB would have never been so successful in the first place.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Totally unrelated, but what's your mother's maiden name, the street where you grew up, and the name of your first pet?
Oddly, Frankenstein, Frankenstein and Frankenstein.
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You're Frankenstein's monster?
TTFN - Kent
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In new proof that 2020 has been a crappy year basically everywhere, scientists have captured video evidence of octopuses randomly punching at fish, possibly for no reason other than being spiteful. Not technical, I just empathize with the octopodes
Yes, I know that's the wrong plural, but it's the coolest looking, and octopuses are cool, right?
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We’re excited to announce the general availability of .NET 5.0 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. For those that like peanut butter on their chocolate
Or possibly in this case maple syrup on their Brussel sprouts
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Kent Sharkey wrote: and Red Hat OpenShift Container
I had to read it twice... the first time my eyes didn't want to see the "f"   
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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