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Get your loved ones off Facebook

salimvirani.com

111–120 of 310 posts

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#111
post #59

You could replace this whole article by saying "facebook is a private company and they have all your data, from posting and messaging as well as their cookies". Its just a bad idea at its very core. All these examples are trivial, who cares if they fake endorsements and track your location? Its like building a house out of sand and then people point out that a chunk fell off here or there. Its a house of sand, it was…

Nope. The article makes pointed and convincing arguments and it doesn't rely on unsupported assertions like your comment.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#112

"Addiction: (noun) Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, despite adverse consequences." I would get my family off of Facebook because they cannot stop using it even though it makes them feel bad after being on it. That's reason enough for me.

I feel like I have been lucky to have not been peer pressured into Facebook because of the brain chemistry aspect. I also avoided class A drugs which have had a similar availablity level - there if you insist, seemingly in general circulation. Obviously a heroin addiction would not be what you want in life, I am thinking that constant checking in to Facebook is in a similar league of must avoid.

I used to work for a social network. We had meetings every day about how to "engage the users' dopamine systems." As a psychologist, this was an anathema to me - we call that process addiction.

Check out Lyra instead (www.hellolyra.com), it's a conversation service that requests language and attention. We are also a nonprofit and solicit no investment.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#113
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

I think you are taking this a little out of context. The best part for me is the feed into other peoples lives. It's a service I'd be sad to loose. It's interesting to find someone on here who maintains all of their files/email/photos/etc locally in a redundantly backed-up manner at home on their own personal server. How did you do that? Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person? If you don't t…

I know it may have been rhetorical, but I just don't think managing your own data is possible (yet) for the truly non-technical person, at least at a level that competes with FB in both price and simplicity; it's still a choose-2 situation.

You can get a pretty good system set up with rsync, ZFS, RAID, etc. distributed between multiple machines and multiple sites, and have good security at a low price at the cost of a high knowledge bar.

Alternatively, you can have a pretty simple cloud backup system through Backblaze, Carbonite, Crashplan, etc., which should provide good security to people with relatively basic technical knowledge, but at a non-negligible cost (compared to free).

Finally, you've got the current cloud "ecosystem" players like Apple, Google, FB, etc., who can offer good technical security (ignoring the "we have locked your account" arguments) to absolutely all skill levels, with zero perceived cost.

That being said, I think the kinds of people who (A) actually even think about the privacy of online services, and (B) care enough to do something about it, probably have sufficient technical skill to choose other options. They can decide how important that privacy is to them, in terms of investing time, money, or both to solve these problems.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#114
post #108
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the military uses the bathroom with the door open, but... we don't know what they're doing in there?

No. They can tell us exactly. And they can be accountable. We just don't get to see them with their clothes off. It's odd because apparently citizens get to have no secrets. Laws protect government secrets, but as far as I know the law is just as confused about privacy and secrecy as we are when it comes to its people.

Then you misinterpreted the analogy. Bathroom door = privacy. Bathroom activities = secrets.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#115
A while back I purged my Facebook account of all content. This was a long and tedious process, deleting things one-at-a-time, as there appears to be no way to do this in bulk. My account is now a blank page, no photos, tags, profile information, likes, etc. All they have is my name and birthdate (and that is set to hidden). I imagine Facebook hasn't actually deleted anything, but no one else, at least, can see anything.

I wish I could entirely close my account, but unfortunately there are too many people who only use Facebook to contact me, and there are a few groups that I need to participate in.

As for the apps: On iOS, at least, you can turn off location services and access to your contacts. Everything still works just fine.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#116
post #97

Useful hints: - Put anything on Facebook you're willing to have on a public web page. Stop there. - Don't use Facebook's messaging or email. - On desktops and laptops, run Ghostery and Privacy Badger. This keeps Facebook's "like" buttons from tracking your browsing. - Don't run Facebook's phone app. It's way too intrusive; it gives your contact list to Facebook, just for starters. - Remember, sharing is spamming. Don…

> - Don't use Facebook's messaging or email.

I'd love to not use FB's messaging, especially since they recently changed the email message notifications to say "you have a message. log in to see it" instead of giving a preview of the message like it used to. However, I can't figure out a way to keep a minimal FB account and not use their messaging. Some of my friends do have the vile Messenger app on their phones and default to using FB messages for communication. I've just not been able to ignore those, as a bunch of the time it's message of the form "hey, let's do X."

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#117
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the military uses the bathroom with the door open, but... we don't know what they're doing in there?

Only if you're standing above them and looking down.

Maybe this was meant to be a joke, but an officer's superiors would be the one's looking over the stalls. No secrets no privacy.

Privacy is a courtesy. And a right to courtesy. Secrecy should be all that is related to security. It's interesting because the military seems to know exactly what a secret is. It'd make more sense to have secrecy laws alongside privacy laws for citizens. Privacy laws are not secrecy laws. Hence the NSA get's to do what they did, and hence they trampled on everyone's privacy outright violating all courtesy. They then make it a security issue.

As it stands, citizens are entitled to no secrets. Hence it's the wild west and we're left encrypting ourselves and standing in direct conflict with the government that would do far better helping us than being rude and insecure. Insecure is what they are. They have no trust or confidence in the people.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't delete your account. You can disable it, and the moment you log back it, it's as if you have never left.

You can delete your account... I had one that I requested deleted back in 2009, and then had "reason" to get back on, and when I created my new account my prior data from 2009- was not there.

Doesn't imply that they deleted your node from the graph, only that you created a new one that might have gotten linked to the first ("disabled") one.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#119
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They can tell us exactly. And they can be accountable. We just don't get to see them with their clothes off. It's odd because apparently citizens get to have no secrets. Laws protect government secrets, but as far as I know the law is just as confused about privacy and secrecy as we are when it comes to its people.

Then you misinterpreted the analogy. Bathroom door = privacy. Bathroom activities = secrets.

No. I corrected it. The analogy is wrong. (edit; to be more accurate, bathroom activities are no secret)

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#120
post #97

Useful hints: - Put anything on Facebook you're willing to have on a public web page. Stop there. - Don't use Facebook's messaging or email. - On desktops and laptops, run Ghostery and Privacy Badger. This keeps Facebook's "like" buttons from tracking your browsing. - Don't run Facebook's phone app. It's way too intrusive; it gives your contact list to Facebook, just for starters. - Remember, sharing is spamming. Don…

Uninstall Facebook's phone app and check out mbasic.facebook.com. It doesn't require javascript to run. You can access Messenger and everything.

I heard somewhere that version of FB was going to be depreciated at some point?
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