21–30 of 61 posts
The 21st century is all about UX, i.e. power to the people. Entities who do not recognize this will not thrive in the long-term.
This is enough to make me want to use a separate browser just for facebook, to make sure that facebook doesn't know anything about me that I don't consciously decide to tell it. Hmm, startup idea: a browser designed specifically to keep facebook in its place.
This is called "New Incognito Window" in chrome/chromium, or a separate profile in Firefox. What would be really nice, though, is the ability to have a bookmark open in an incognito window. The separate profile in Firefox is better because it'll keep cookies between sessions so you don't need to keep logging into facebook.
The problem with Facebook is and will always be this: when you signed up, you signed away your rights to privacy. If you think publishing into their social graph is worth letting them spy on you, go for it. If you want access to their social graph so you can unearth long-lost friends, feel free. Personally, I don't see how any of it adds up to a fair deal in anyone's mind, but I very often am unable to understand why…
"It’s called ad re-targeting, and it’s the most effective innovation online ads have seen in a while." I can not believe that Google & other ad networks have not been doing this for years already. (That's why they are networks).
The problem with Facebook is and will always be this: when you signed up, you signed away your rights to privacy. If you think publishing into their social graph is worth letting them spy on you, go for it. If you want access to their social graph so you can unearth long-lost friends, feel free. Personally, I don't see how any of it adds up to a fair deal in anyone's mind, but I very often am unable to understand why…
You've listed the upsides, which for some people (I dare say even most people, at least outside of these circles) are quite significant - most people I know absolutely love Facebook, and feel it adds a lot to their lives. They're definitely getting something useful out of it.
But even if this advertising-pocalypse 2.0 comes to pass, what's the tangible downside for most of these people? Beyond the obvious "don't post naked pictures of yourself hitting the crack pipe right before going into your job interview" stuff, I mean.
Almost nobody actually gives a shit or a half whether some company knows what they buy, what sites they visit, what products they might be interested in, etc., as long as this stuff is not browseable by the public at large. Certainly this information could be used in ways that might hurt them, but for the most part it is merely used to try to sell them stuff that they didn't realize they might want. I just can't get behind the "ZOMG they'll try to sell me stuff that I actually might want to buy, based on what I've already bought, the HORROR!" logic, it really doesn't seem that sinister to me, and in certain contexts (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) I find it incredibly useful.
I don't use Facebook, but that's only because I value social privacy; as a rule, I don't want people I went to school with to be able to get in touch with me at all, especially not if it's as easy and impersonal as clicking a box next to my name on a list of former classmates. People that care enough can find me in any of a million other ways if they have anything specific to say to me.
But I could care less if Facebook gathers advertising data on me; I don't care one bit when Google does it, and I actually find a bit of value in it because if I'm going to be served ads, I'd prefer that they be targeted at me than completely irrelevant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is called "New Incognito Window" in chrome/chromium, or a separate profile in Firefox. What would be really nice, though, is the ability to have a bookmark open in an incognito window. The separate profile in Firefox is better because it'll keep cookies between sessions so you don't need to keep logging into facebook.
"Tools" -> "Start Private Browsing" in Firefox
But really chromium/chrome has the best implementation as it creates a new window and doesn't destroy your session.
There have been a bunch of posts about "Company X will know too much about me, . . . "
No one ever says WHY that scares the shit out of them.
What are some other dangerous scenarios that people can imagine?
Wrong. All the medium-sized sites will have it, and all the >= 2nd place large sites (bing, retailers that aren't amazon) will have it. All the top large site will have their own systems to push.
Unless this guy doesn't have any Credit Cards or specialty cards (Grocery, Gas, etc...) I think he's probably already in the position that he's scared Facebook will put him in. It's just not being run by Facebook. Really what he's doing is freaking out over Facebook because they've been open about what info they're collecting. While the Grocery store tricks him with a discount and then takes all his info on the back…
The only possibly sketchy thing is they can correlate my food purchases to me and my address. However, this doesn't bother me personally. I don't care if the world knows I buy one kind of bread instead of another, or that I buy hummus instead of butter. If there are sensitive things you are paranoid about, like personal care products, just don't use the card for those purchases.
Either way, they just wind up with spending patterns on food correlated to one individual. The horror. It's not your SSN or passport or any of that jazz. Besides, if advertising became more accurately targeted, I feel that would generally be a good thing. You'd get in touch with products you were genuinely interested in, advertising costs would plummet (causing prices to drop as well), and there'd be less utterly useless cruft in the ads you receive.