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“How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

whatsapp.com

231–240 of 319 posts

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this idea (if only for the motivation behind it). How would your "normal" mail client filter out the messages that are for this app? People have lots of different mail clients which they might not be able (or willing) to configure. Or would you expect a dedicated address.

The problem, of course, is who builds/maintains this, how do they get paid, and how do you pay the server fees.

The app would run on the user's local PC or phone, and it would access data directly from their mailbox (and create a local DB from that data). So no backend server to worry about.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about building something that gives a social network type experience that is built on top of email. Any status update would get sent out to an email list of your connections, and all the emails could be put in a specific mail folder using standard rules. A front end app would then scan that folder and give you a personalized page that represents the latest status based on what it sees in that folder. The…

I love this idea (if only for the motivation behind it). How would your "normal" mail client filter out the messages that are for this app? People have lots of different mail clients which they might not be able (or willing) to configure. Or would you expect a dedicated address.

Almost all email clients have some sort of filtering. And the email messages would all have a keyword in the subject line, so filtering could be accomplished by that (or via an x-header). The app itself could automatically create the filters for various web hosted email systems too.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about posting some really over-the-top shock/porn imagery to my Facebook wall, basically making it look like it was hacked. Maybe then they'll cancel my account, like I've asked them to do several times.

Random evil thought: could you sell your Facebook account to hackers? You've built up a multi-year reputation as a "known good" account; that'd be incredibly valuable to someone trying to generate cross-correlations between your interests and their product. After all, the whole reason Facebook is worth $300B is because they have all this data on their users; since it's your data to begin with, shouldn't you be able m…

I'll start the bidding at 33 cents.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#234

This is an incredibly ugly dark pattern. The 'share information with Facebook' nugget is hidden behind a toggle at the bottom of the screen, and will be guaranteed to be missed by the 99% of users who just want to talk to their friends. Then, once you've agreed to the terms and conditions, you've got a completely arbitrary 30 days to read an online article which tells you what you've signed up for before WhatsApp is…

It's right next to the sign saying "Beware of the leopard". How could you miss that?

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#235
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random evil thought: could you sell your Facebook account to hackers? You've built up a multi-year reputation as a "known good" account; that'd be incredibly valuable to someone trying to generate cross-correlations between your interests and their product. After all, the whole reason Facebook is worth $300B is because they have all this data on their users; since it's your data to begin with, shouldn't you be able m…

Someone needs to make a good market for this.

Already exists for Twitter and reddit accounts. I'm sure spammers will pay for good fb accounts too.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#236

This is an incredibly ugly dark pattern. The 'share information with Facebook' nugget is hidden behind a toggle at the bottom of the screen, and will be guaranteed to be missed by the 99% of users who just want to talk to their friends. Then, once you've agreed to the terms and conditions, you've got a completely arbitrary 30 days to read an online article which tells you what you've signed up for before WhatsApp is…

Sorry, having a hard time getting this.

From: https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

>You will see a control at the bottom of the screen. If you do not want your account information shared with Facebook to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences, you can uncheck the box or toggle the control

Where is all the: "...before WhatsApp is irrevocably sharing your data with Facebook."

From the page, I understand that my data won't be shared except to other FB companies for stated purposes (marketing and Ads not being one of those).

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#237
I just got the prompt to accept the new terms.

1) you did not have to scroll to opt out. 2) opting out brought up a toast saying "when you tap 'agree', your account info will be used to improve your Facebook ads and product experiences" 3) there was a " X not now" option in the top right corner.

I chose that.

Edit: no app update was required. I'm guessing in the future, the could push ads the same way

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#238
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you will try to actualy delete your fb account (at least when i did it some time ago). Its a minefield of dark patterns. First you need special link, because you can only deactivate from settings. Then you will have to go through pile of emotionaly draining photos of friends with claims that they will mis you and you wont be able to see what they are doing with their lives. Then few traps with agreeing about del…

I've heard that rather than deleting your FB account, it's better to turn it into a piece of obviously-fictitious performance art. Don't try to remove your data from the Internet (which is futile; you know Facebook still has it on some archive somewhere anyway). Instead, replace it with nonsense. Set your interests to your competitors so that you get notifications everytime they release a new feature, and full inform…

Sounds like you could achieve this easily by feeding your facebook account's updates from a markov chain bot set to train on the @realDonaldTrump twitter feed.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#239

Man, remember the late 90s and early 2000s, when the IM scene was a mess of incompatible networks like ICQ and AIM and MSN Messenger, and people were like "fuck this" and came up with this protocol that was interoperable with all the others through gateways and also it was extendable, and we could all be happy together?... /grump The worst part is that WhatsApp is actually based on Jabber >:(

I recently started looking into XMPP again a few days ago. I have a few ideas for projects built on top thereof. Can anybody recommend XMPP servers? I know duckduckgo has an XMPP service up and running, but I can't seem to find any relevant API documentation. All I found was this [0], which doesn't go into details about encryption settings and isn't very useful for programmatic interaction. [0] https://duck.co/blog/p…

Consider looking at matrix.org and vector.im as an alternative that won't make your eyes bleed from the Xcessive nature of XMPP.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't use these tools if you value privacy" is not that far off from "If you have nothing to hide, why are you afraid of surveillance?" An observed life is not a free life. Many people have to use social media to communicate with family, work associates, etc... In many cases, facebook messaging has replaced methods of communication that did not rely on the content or metadata of messages for profit. All that really…

You said a whole lot but never actually articulated your point. I'm assuming it's something about how it's not fair that you find Facebook to be useful. Could you clarify?

I find Facebook to be a boring site, with friends complaining about the same things day in and day out, with an occasional link about something interesting, but mostly filled with inspirational memes and images that I don't particularly find relevant. Sure, I could better curate my friends list and follow a wider range of pages and topics, but then aren't we back at something like MySpace, where the idea was to follow everyone and everything you found interesting?

The problem with Facebook's usefulness isn't that I find it useful, it's that everyone else in my circle finds it useful. This means that any event, major life change like marital engagements and announcements of expectancy or child birth, and general updates of wellbeing from my elderly family are all communicated via Facebook. For example, a friend of mine from high school recently had a child. I had not logged into Facebook for over a year, and suddenly found myself embarrassed for my lack of keeping up with her when I ran into her at the grocery store while she was chasing down a toddler who had escaped down an aisle. I did not have the slightest clue as to her family status, because I stopped logging into Facebook to receive those updates and she stopped going out to parties and bars where we normally would run into each other (to avoid drinking and cigarette smoking), and it just appeared like we drifted apart.

Even now, some friends of mine are planning a trip together, and it's entirely done within a closed group on Facebook. There is no way for me to participate in this trip without maintaining some status on Facebook, else my significant other will have to just relay all that information, which is tiring, and prone to the "telephone" effect.

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