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What should you think about when using Facebook?

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Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#51

Post by renaudg »

spraak wrote: post #13
nnd wrote: post #11

Even though Facebook by itself doesn't seem to provide much value anymore, it's incredible how much of a platform lock-in the have. For example, Facebook login becoming essentially a universal identity provider. The worst thing is even when you create a new account under a different name they still manage to track you down, and start suggesting adding friends from the old account. I wonder how they do this, by tracki…

I've wondered this too. I have friend suggestions for my work colleagues, even though my Facebook email is my own private address and I've never emailed them from that address. It's amazing and bothersome

You've probably shared an IP address (work).

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#53

Post by Broken_Hippo »

bluGill wrote: post #39
jgrahamc wrote: post #15

A related question is "Should you sign up for Facebook today?". Five years ago I killed my Facebook account (and LinkedIn and G+) and it hasn't bothered me, but... am I missing out on something?

Facebook it the only way I see my second cousin's kid's piano recital. It is a valuable way for me to know something like that happened (they live more than a thousand miles away). It lets me keep up some of the people who I went to high school with - we were not really friends but we had a connection. Facebook is the easiest way to ensure my parents (300 miles away) see pictures of their grandkids doing cute things.…

This is me - only I'm on the other side of the Atlantic from family. In fact, this was the only reason I signed up for facebook 3 or so years ago. It is also the reason I have some loyalty: The main drawback of other social networks is the lack of cross communication between chats and some people's pages.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#55

Post by OliverJones »

Another comment has mentioned poisoning the FB database with fake clickstreams, etc.

It looks like skillful black hat marketers have already succeeded at poisoning FB's content. Read this Vice story, then delete your FB account and delete the cookies from your browser. Friends don't let friends use FB.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/big-data-cambridg...

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#56

Post by Domenic_S »

anondon wrote: post #36

Genuine question : do you think a privacy oriented social network where users pay a small annual fee (around $5) would work? Think Whatsapp (use phone number as an id, no native discovery, only connect through phone contacts, encrypted user data only to prevent database leaks from causing damage) + Facebook (feed like feature, share photos, videos, direct messaging, group messaging). No user tracking, no ads, just a…

Hate to say it but I think the lack of privacy is a big part of what makes social networks sticky in the first place. Facebook noticed that I went to a restaurant and now it suggests other similar places; uses social graphs to suggest new friends; tracks my clicks to give me a more engaging feed...

MySpace died because they weren't evil enough.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#57

Post by newscracker »

anondon wrote: post #36

Genuine question : do you think a privacy oriented social network where users pay a small annual fee (around $5) would work? Think Whatsapp (use phone number as an id, no native discovery, only connect through phone contacts, encrypted user data only to prevent database leaks from causing damage) + Facebook (feed like feature, share photos, videos, direct messaging, group messaging). No user tracking, no ads, just a…

> do you think a privacy oriented social network where users pay a small annual fee (around $5) would work?

I don't think it would work in the world we live in because people are long used to getting things for "free" (from the days of "free email"), where they exchange their attention and personal information for some services. Somehow people have also been trained to avoid even tiny costs in monetary terms (one reason why iOS App Store pricing is always a bad trap for most developers). In my own experience, the cost-benefit ratio takes a longer time to analyze and convince myself of in certain cases.

But if there were such a platform, I would certainly want to try it if it provided similar features (not lagging like Google+ and not including features in "New" that were in "Classic").

When Ello started a few years ago, I really wanted to use it and see it grow fast. But it turned out to be a platform that self-targeted some niche artistic crowd and didn't focus on features I wanted (like groups).

I keep pushing people in my circle to try new things as much as I can possibly do (like Telegram, Wire, Signal). So I'd be very interested in breaking out of Facebook.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#58

Post by macintux »

renaudg wrote: post #48
anondon wrote: post #36

Genuine question : do you think a privacy oriented social network where users pay a small annual fee (around $5) would work? Think Whatsapp (use phone number as an id, no native discovery, only connect through phone contacts, encrypted user data only to prevent database leaks from causing damage) + Facebook (feed like feature, share photos, videos, direct messaging, group messaging). No user tracking, no ads, just a…

Not a chance. You want people to pay for that ? Even free alternative social networks like Diaspora or Ello failed to gain any traction. The network effects are just too strong. The next wave that will eventually unseat Facebook (the product) will have to be something entirely different. And it might even come from Facebook (the company).

Agreed. app.net was such an attempt to offer a paid alternative to Twitter, and that went exactly nowhere.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#59

Post by anondon »

phatbyte wrote: post #44

Last week I permanently deleted my FaceBook account. All my data since 2007 (10 years) and friends gone. Well...apparently my data is still somewhere to be used as metadata... Still, I must say, this was a liberating experience. I don't go there anymore to see another cat/new born/fake news posts. I don't get get angry with dumb comments. I don't have to see at my friends are eating, selfies, etc.. My closest friends…

Facebook provides an option to download an archive of your data, you should have downloaded it before deleting your account. Apart from having all your data, it would have been the final nail in your Facebook coffin. To say the least, the data scared the f*ck out of me : they knew me better than any of my family or friends. The ad tracking data was...bang on target, they had facial recognition data, all the locations I signed in from. I sometimes joke that Fb knows more about people than the Government of the user. It's true!

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#60

Post by xherberta »

nefreat wrote: post #14

Many people in the tech industry don't realize the tradeoffs they are making by participating on FB. This is to say nothing of the nontechnical crowd who make up the overwhelming majority of the site. My wish is that mainstream news media would cover these issues. It'd be great if most of FB's users thought about the troves of personal info that they are providing not just about themselves but their friends as well.

UK press has been covering this, and the EU has frequently shown itself ready to push back: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-...
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