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Get your loved ones off Facebook

salimvirani.com

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Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#151

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

Fezzik wrote: post #138
joshstrange wrote: post #128

It won't be a popular opinion here but here it goes: Well if it all goes to hell we will all be in the same handbasket. I'm simply not willing to cut people out of my life and miss out on things that are important to me because my data is mined and might be used against me. All these distributed platforms are a joke, no really they are technically cool but no one I care about is on them. Maybe if your entire social c…

But what's the advantage of Facebook over email and/or texting? I feel like for anything other than wasting time Facebook is sluggish compared to either. If you're a Facebook user you have a cellphone and/or a computer, and can do everything Facebook does: share pictures, plan events, check-in with friends, family, and groups of people. And not share data* or be peppered with garbage advertisements. * I personally pa…

Facebook means I see all kinds of things people are doing and thinking and saying without having to be sent it deliberately. I can message them with this context sparking a new conversation, learning something about them - or even just ask if I can join them at an event.

People who can't see the difference between email and Facebook are not even trying to get what they can from Facebook.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#152

Post by squeaky-clean »

milcron wrote: post #109
Animats wrote: 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.

messenger.com also works well on the desktop to chat and avoid the newsfeed.

Unfortunately it redirects to the app/play store on mobile, and has a terrible layout if you force desktop mode.

I think a good enough compromise for me is to only use the messenger and contacts, and avoid the newsfeed/posts/pages.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#153

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

milcron wrote: post #109
Animats wrote: 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.

F-Droid has quite a few open-source wrapper apps around facebook's mobile site which improve usability and isolation.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#154

Post by bargl »

gervase wrote: post #113
bargl wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

That's what I was trying to show. It's hard to not rely on some sort of third party service in life. I think a lot of people here just don't like Facebook.

I should probably create a Flex server at home to do this for my friends and family who aren't technical, but again if I host that on Amazon then I'm again relying on someone else.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#155

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

berdario wrote: post #135
iak8god wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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…

My solution is: go through every chat that you had in the last 2 years, and "mute" it. That way you won't get the red dot notifying you about it when you log into Facebook, and you can blissfully ignore any message there. You might still want to check messages there every once in a while (every couple of weeks, maybe) If you have other contacts (advertised on your Facebook about page, even!) and you let your friends…

here's an easier protip: use uBlock Origin, and completely hide the right-hand column.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#156

Post by matt_wulfeck »

unabst wrote: post #117
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It was being facetious of course. But as to your second point, I really believe we are entitled to secrets, at least from my own reading of the 4th amendment to our constitution:

> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches

This, to me a layman citizen of our country, means we are emphatically and explicitly granted the right to privacy against our government. Then again, we live in a time where a secret court can grant an order that tramples on our constitution. Apparently our government believes on it is allowed privacy.

You ever hear about this secret court orders and ask yourself, "Are we both reading the same constitution??"

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#157

Post by flubert »

joshstrange wrote: post #128

It won't be a popular opinion here but here it goes: Well if it all goes to hell we will all be in the same handbasket. I'm simply not willing to cut people out of my life and miss out on things that are important to me because my data is mined and might be used against me. All these distributed platforms are a joke, no really they are technically cool but no one I care about is on them. Maybe if your entire social c…

>Like it or not there is a social stigma around NOT having a FB account. In fact I've thought on multiple occasions that someone is hiding something if they don't have one.

Anyone have a source of "further reading" on perceptions towards people not on facebook? And does anyone have statistics on how many people in the U.S. are not on facebook?

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#158

Post by ghughes »

joshstrange wrote: post #128

It won't be a popular opinion here but here it goes: Well if it all goes to hell we will all be in the same handbasket. I'm simply not willing to cut people out of my life and miss out on things that are important to me because my data is mined and might be used against me. All these distributed platforms are a joke, no really they are technically cool but no one I care about is on them. Maybe if your entire social c…

> The best doesn't win, the easiest does.

Exactly. Diaspora and its ilk miss this point entirely. If users have to set up their own infrastructure or even think about how it works then it's never going to scale.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#159

Post by williamle8300 »

lyra_comms wrote: post #146
williamle8300 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks beautiful! It reminds me of Gingko ( https://gingkoapp.com ) and Pinboard. How are you guys going to make money? I understand it's a non-profit but you're gonna still need money for servers and man-hours.

Thank you! We charge £2.99 per year ($3.80) to users in developed countries. We aim to keep access free for users in developing countries.

Awesome. Do you do photo-hosting? I could see that easily sapping away all of your money. Or is it just text?

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#160

Post by khedoros1 »

bargl wrote: post #131
khedoros1 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? ...You don't do that? If you don't have local "gold master" copies of your files, then you don't own your files. And if you don't copy them onto multiple device…

> 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? You missed a very important point I'm trying to make with my question. Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person? Many people on HN forge…

> Many people on HN forget that there are many non-technical people in the world and that they don't have a data server with raid drives in their house running OwnCloud/Flex for all of their backup needs. Hence why they use the cloud and that shouldn't be appalling.

Right...but they've probably got a laptop and a USB flash drive. That's all you need to keep your own copy around. I don't maintain an always-on server, OwnCloud, etc...but I certainly have multiple copies of everything, such that if Google, Facebook, and other services disappeared, I wouldn't lose any very-important data. Doing it with less automation takes a little more manual work, but that's the way I'm doing it right now myself, and I don't think it's unreasonable.

Even taking the option of cloud-only storage, set your phone to strip EXIF and upload to multiple unrelated accounts, preferably not connected to a social network.

> And PLEASE don't tell me if your bank was all of a sudden taken to a negative balance you wouldn't be sad, mad, angry, etc.

Why would I tell you that? Money isn't a copyable asset, and I keep mine spread among multiple federally-insured banks that operate under different business models. It's the same idea: Don't put all your eggs in one basket, no matter how attractive that basket is.

> The point is, many people don't like Facebook, Microsoft, etc. and they press that opinion on others in a manner I don't always appreciate.

There are a lot of things that people do that I think are stupid...but they don't need to know that. I don't express most of my opinions (including these) without some form of invitation to do so. Facebook's currently a somewhat-necessary evil. It's a company that offers a service that I used to like, until around 2008. I thought it was at its height of charm when it was still a college-only service, and has become steadily less likable since that changed. It would be inconvenient if it disappeared, but I think it would ultimately be a good thing.

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