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Get your loved ones off Facebook

salimvirani.com

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Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#61

Post by benchaney »

haggy wrote: post #54
vinhboy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I use facebook because I enjoy the content that my friends share. I am not using it because I believe “I have nothing to hide”. I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get. But I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me. I get more value out of facebook than the countless other services that spy on me. For example, just a few weeks ago I got…

You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me". That's the problem. The government has never had a tool like this before and because of the social graph that facebook created, will likely not have another one like it anytime soon. Unfortunately for the average user (and even v…

> You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me".

This is not a contradiction. Someone with privacy has the right to decide what they do and don't want to share publicly. Like you, I am concerned by how Facebook is used, and some of its societal implications, but this sort of extremist attitude helps nothing.

> Unfortunately for the average user (and even very advanced users) leaving Facebook altogether is the only option to maintaining secrecy of any kind. FB updates ToS far too often and nobody bothers to stay up to date with it.

This isn't true at all. While Facebook is somewhat sketchy about changing their privacy rules, if you don't want certain information made publicly available, you can just not put that information into Facebook (and yes, that includes Messenger). Any non-technical person can understand this.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#62

Post by ryandrake »

sergiotapia wrote: post #7

Delete timeline for me: - Delete account - 1st week, open facebook tab close facebook tab. - 2nd week, visit facebook once a day by accident don't login - 3rd week, visit facebook once a week, don't login - 4th week, stop visiting altogether It's been about 6 months now without an account and my wife and I are really happy about no longer have it. Try it!

Off since, I don't remember--roughly 2011.

1. Did not delete my account, an attempt to guard against someone impersonating me there.

2. Deleted all content I had stored there. Obviously I don't believe FB actually deleted it, but I figured their soft delete is as good as it will get.

3. Asked all FB friends to kindly ignore my account, not to tag me or post pictures of me, and that if they saw activity from my account they can be assured it was not from me.

It did not bother me at all not being on Facebook, and still does not. There seem to be no drawbacks whatsoever. When I read about people feeling that their lives would be ruined and that they have no social life without FB, I kind of just shake my head.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#63

Post by brightball »

bargl wrote: post #27

As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach. If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased fat…

Download your Facebook history.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#64

Post by ThatGeoGuy »

aantix wrote: post #14

Queue the onslaught of "I haven't used Facebook in.... years!" comments. You're probably already hitting the down-vote button. I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN? Maybe it has to do with the software engineers tending to be less social and introverted, therefore a social service appears to have less worth? Just speculating. As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other servic…

    > I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN?
Well, for starters, the article posted went through many reasons why one might find Facebook hostile, and therefore be very much against it. Anyways, that's not really why I wanted to reply, so here:

    > As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike
    > any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids 
    > grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share
    > with my family when something great has happened. It's 
    > absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes 
    > close to its reach.
    > 
    > If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel 
    > devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom,
    > all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke
    > a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google
    > and maybe Github.
Now, this is HN so I imagine while I'll come off as very negative, this sentiment isn't all that strange. The problem I see here is that you seem to think you need Facebook to have these same connections. If you want to reminisce on old photos, you can just as easily save them locally. If you wanted to have conversations and save them later, you could use a messenger that isn't trying to mine your data while pulling your heart strings. And yeah, a lot of this type of advice comes off as "there's another product for everything," and "don't put your eggs in one basket," and all that, but there's actually a really strong point here that you're overlooking.

Facebook isn't necessary for any of those experiences. In fact, you state how you wouldn't be able to see your friend's kids grow up, or comfort your friends when they lose someone they love. But was Facebook really the only way for you to do that? It seems to me like you're attributing to Facebook quite a few characteristics that aren't really there. Ditching Facebook and actually meeting with people or staying in touch with the occasional phone call is a hell of a lot more personal. As for all of your memories, fortunately you still have those in your brain. They don't need to be in an advertising archive to be more real.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#65

Post by roryisok »

natoliniak wrote: post #36
jtraffic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been since 2009 since I deleted my Facebook account, and my timeline was roughly like yours for weeks 1-4. Then: - 2nd year, wonder if I should get back on to 'stay in touch.' - 3rd-5th year, never think about it - 6th year, wonder if I should get on Facebook so my family can see pictures of my kids. But, my wife does Instagram. - 8th year, smug comment on HN to show how long I've been off Facebook :).

> wonder if I should get on Facebook so my family can see pictures of my kids I had a realization: those who really want to see photos of my kids will simply ask me for them so i never posted their photos (pull not push)...so far, about four people have asked which made me very happy that someone is really interested in seeing them and also that my kids didn't become a source of nuisance for many others.

I convinced my family to install telegram and we set up a telegram group to share baby photos and news. It works very well for us

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#66

Post by gavinpc »

stdclass wrote: post #28
exhilaration wrote: post #18

I have a question regarding this: "tracking everything you read on the internet" I recently disabled third party cookies in Chrome and it's had no negative effect. Can someone tell me if this will block the Facebook code that's embedded in nearly every web page from reading my Facebook cookie and identifying me?

No it only blocks cookies, but not the javascript code from facebook that gets loaded on the pages you visit. If you want to get rid of that, install a browser plugin like Ghostery (0). 0: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery/mlomiejdf...

But wait... can they still identify you that way? I'm not on facebook, so maybe it's moot in my case. But are you saying that blocking third-party cookies is not enough to keep facebook from tracking your other browsing activity?

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#67

Post by aantix »

ykumards wrote: post #41
aantix wrote: post #14

Queue the onslaught of "I haven't used Facebook in.... years!" comments. You're probably already hitting the down-vote button. I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN? Maybe it has to do with the software engineers tending to be less social and introverted, therefore a social service appears to have less worth? Just speculating. As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other servic…

I share your concerns about losing Facebook data of the past, but frankly you didn't address any of the concerns that were listed in the article. The issue is what they do with our data and whether you'd be comfortable letting them use your data this way. It's also due to their shady practices like not disclosing changes to privacy policy. This is especially worse with non-technical people like my mom using their pla…

>didn't address any of the concerns that were listed in the article. ..

>The issue is what they do with our data and whether you'd be comfortable letting them use your data this way

I believe that I have addressed these issues by still utilizing the service.

They're well known to the HN community. They're not new. They just don't matter to me. Nor to most of the rest of the market, because billions still use it.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#68

Post by throwanem »

benchaney wrote: post #61
haggy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me". That's the problem. The government has never had a tool like this before and because of the social graph that facebook created, will likely not have another one like it anytime soon. Unfortunately for the average user (and even v…

> You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me". This is not a contradiction. Someone with privacy has the right to decide what they do and don't want to share publicly. Like you, I am concerned by how Facebook is used, and some of its societal implications, but this sort of…

The article contends that this isn't actually true - or, more accurately, that Facebook's heavy instrumentation, both of the web and of its own properties including mobile apps, combine with some pretty sketchy behavior and ToS language to make "not put[ting] that information into Facebook" nearly impossible without stringent, conscientious, and perfectly applied opsec.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#69

Post by eveningcoffee »

bargl wrote: post #27

As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach. If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased fat…

I think that this is not an argument pro Facebook but against Facebook.

It demonstrates that it is a bad idea to trust important information into the hands of a third party.

If Facebook offers you a way to make a backup of your account then you should seriously consider to use it to have an alternative copy of your important memories.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#70

Post by throwanem »

bargl wrote: post #27

As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach. If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased fat…

I've never used Facebook. But if I had, to the extent you have, it would horrify and frighten me to reflect upon the fact that so much of my emotional life were all but inextricably tied into one private company, such that staying in that company's good graces had become a necessary part of maintaining access to my own memories.
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