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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?

#151

Post by scholia »

ljk wrote: post #113
cJ0th wrote: post #79

The funny thing is, these are exactly the things I think about while on facebook. By being online for almost two decades I've developed a 6th sense for sketchy services and the whole UI of Facebook screams "SCAM!". The periodically reoccurring messages harassing you into uploading a picture of yourself, the prompt to denounce people who you believe are using a fake name or the vaguely described privacy settings don't…

> the prompt to denounce people who you believe are using a fake name They actually do this? That's pretty scary

Facebook has always been based on real people using real names. Originally, it was your official university email address. That's what makes it much more useful than Twitter or Reddit etc. If you want to be anonymous, use a different site.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#152

Post by gburt »

siegecraft wrote: post #32
daemonk wrote: post #21

Can someone make a browser plugin that will send fake data to facebook? Instead of hiding your own behavior, might as well poison their database.

I like this idea (a sort of adnauseum for facebook) but I wonder how trivial it would be for facebook to filter out obviously random/fake/noisy data given the mammoth set of real data they already have. Maybe introduce some more subtle off-by-one errors into their data or just make it a tiny bit fuzzier? Hopefully one wouldn't need a detailed knowledge of their data structures to do something impactful, although the…

Instead of transmitting obviously fake data, record the genuine data of other users (randomly and anonymously, of course) and retransmit it. It poisons the association while being much more difficult to fuzz out.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#153

Post by mulmen »

bogomipz wrote: post #104
treehau5 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Facebook is the ultimate realization of the American concept of "friendship" (maybe not your specific case) contrasted to the German version of friendship. In Germany, to call someone your friend, it is a great honor, it means something, it is an investment. Here in the states, "everyone is friends!" Yet it feels so superficial. Now we can just check in on them a couple times a day on their posts without the…

This is completely untrue. What you are describing is how Facebook has colloquialized the word "friend." The American concept of actual friendship is no different than the German or the Japanese one. A "true friend" is a pretty universal concept. Nobody mistakes a "FB only friend" for a true friend. There's no reason for you to bash Americans. Frankly you are unlikely to make meaningful connections with any other nat…

I didn't read GPs comment as passing judgement, just that the American concept seemed different to what they are familiar with. The word "friend" is overloaded here, we just don't have a problem with that because lots of words are overloaded.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#154

Post by netsharc »

vgy7ujm wrote: post #8
johnchristopher wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now I am working as some kind of developer/marketing/communication 5 legged unicorn and Facebook-based PR is the go-to strategy for everything and anything. I also hear some organisations thinking out loud about completely ditching their websites in favour of Facebook/Twitter presence. (tourism sector)

It's madness. And only works because the train is already rolling and most people are blind of what FB is doing behind the curtains. Twitter is actually OK in my opinion as it is obviously a more PR like channel by design. (Also Instagram for showcasing new products etc.) I think that FB sites are a poor substitute for well designed unique websites with depth and relevant information. The question is how to get viewe…

The walled-gardenness is what annoys me. It's your communication and publishing medium owned by several big corps. Want to post piratebay links? Facebook blocks you from doing that. Want to post a link to a Chrome extension that lets you filter FB, remove ads, hide posts based on keywords? They block that calling fbpurity.com a malicious website.

Want to post a pic of the Statue of David? Too much nudity. The Vietnamese girl running away from napalm? Same.

Twitter and GMail ar a bit better, but the worry is there. Some Chinese people were worried because their phone disconnected after they said particular keywords. Coincidence, or actual real time monitoring? On Facebook we can see that they are actively monitoring and censoring us, but we keep using them!

Imagine of things like the pipeline protest get classified as "terror events" and Trump-supporting Zuckerberg (Facebook hosted a party with right wing website The Daily Caller, who used Facebook Live Video to spread Trump propaganda to great success, guess who wanted to celebrate that) agrees that talking about it amounts to "support of terrorism". The current occupying regime can even provide fake evidence to suggest "terrorist level" aggression, and if the people on the ground want to refute it, hah, which communication medium do they want to use that would allow that attempt?

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#155

Post by rak00n »

city41 wrote: post #150
afandian wrote: post #37

This is an excellent blog post, though it made me sick reading it. I recently made the switch. I went from trying to limit how much I log in (to once or twice a week), to actually not logging in. I've been cold-turkey for two months (except for a couple of times when I had a very specific reason to check something). I thought it would be difficult. Turns out it's not so hard, and it's the fear of reduced social conta…

I deactivated my account over a year ago. Facebook will not delete your account, deactivate is the best you can do. Interestingly I went to a Facebook event at their headquarters and when I signed in, there was my profile picture staring back at me. I thought pulling it out of my deactivated account was in poor taste. Anyway, I can say I'm happier without it. I'm now seriously considering deactivating my Twitter acco…

I thought Facebook does delete your account. Do you have a source?

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#156

Post by netsharc »

malz wrote: post #111

>As you are crafting your message, Facebook collects your keystrokes. Does anyone have evidence of this? Not surprising or difficult, of course, but while watching ajax traffic and typing into a status box I don't see obvious posts with either the text I'm typing or obscured blobs. On the other hand, there's plenty of ajax traffic polling for updates and sending other analytics.

I recently got the option to save post drafts, so I could type something, it would save it automatically, and I could continue that post in another browser if I wanted (similar to Gmail's compose window). But the option was very visible. I can't recall if I dismissed it forever or it disappeared by itself.

If they're malicious they could wait a few minutes before reporting what you were thinking of posting.. or they're using websockets, which you may have missed.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#157

Post by rak00n »

Chathamization wrote: post #117
Kluny wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turns out it's not so hard, and it's the fear of reduced social contact (or dopamine withdrawal more likely) that was stopping me. If you have a plan to replace the social interactions with other forms, you realise that the rest is just dross. This is the problem for me right now. I don't have a plan for replacing the social contact of facebook (and facebook isn't giving me anywhere close to what I need). I'm also…

I found meetup.com is a pretty good place for this, depending on where you are. It's a bunch of people looking for some kind of communal group based on shared interests (programming, political philosophy, SciFi, religion, learning Italian, hiking, etc.). Of course you have to find the right group that fits you, but when you do it's great. Other places I've had success is with local political/activist groups and hobby…

It's not always true. In San Francisco the people I meet in meetups are often broken and puts little trust in strangers.

TBH, I never met so many lonely broken people in other parts of the world.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#158

Post by olkid »

OliverJones wrote: post #55

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...

Fascinating read! I am enlightened.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#159

Post by e40 »

netsharc wrote: post #147
0xcafecafe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few of us were joking about poisoning the location tracking database of site along a similar vein. Have an app masking your location to some place in the pacific ocean to any app running in the background asking for location (without the user's intent of using it).

On Android, Xprivacy uses hooks provided by Xposed to "MitM" a lot of functiom calls. Don't want an app to know your phone's serial number? That function call returns a spoofed one. Same with GPS location.

I love Xposed. I just wish using it didn't mean I couldn't get regular Android updates (I have a 5x).

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#160

Post by rolodato »

city41 wrote: post #150
afandian wrote: post #37

This is an excellent blog post, though it made me sick reading it. I recently made the switch. I went from trying to limit how much I log in (to once or twice a week), to actually not logging in. I've been cold-turkey for two months (except for a couple of times when I had a very specific reason to check something). I thought it would be difficult. Turns out it's not so hard, and it's the fear of reduced social conta…

I deactivated my account over a year ago. Facebook will not delete your account, deactivate is the best you can do. Interestingly I went to a Facebook event at their headquarters and when I signed in, there was my profile picture staring back at me. I thought pulling it out of my deactivated account was in poor taste. Anyway, I can say I'm happier without it. I'm now seriously considering deactivating my Twitter acco…

It is possible to permanently delete a Facebook account. It's not known whether this truly deletes it, but it's a more permanent measure than deactivation: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=relate...

This is a nefarious dark pattern though - I don't think there's any way to find the delete option through menus, you have to search through Google or Facebook's help center.

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