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Get your loved ones off Facebook

salimvirani.com

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Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#231

Post by rrix2 »

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…

Your parent's explicit usecase is "sometimes people make ad-hoc plans with me through messenger", and ignoring those for weeks on end sort of defeats the purpose and encourages those folks to not make plans with them...

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#232

Post by pfarnsworth »

The greatest gift Facebook gives to governments and police is tagging for the purposes of facial recognition. Basically everyone's identity and facial information is available now. And even worse, childrens' identities are on there already. Children who don't know that they want their privacies preserved are having their privacies squandered for the purpose of a few Likes. Those children who eventually grow up and become spies, police officers, etc, will have no chance of escaping identification at this point.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#233

Post by artichokeheart »

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…

>I'm simply not willing to cut people out of my life

I've never understood this reasoning

If you require Facebook to keep people in your life are they really in your life in the first place?

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#234

Post by benchaney »

haggy wrote: post #181
benchaney wrote: post #61

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". 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…

> 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. What you call an "extremist attitude" I call "info security common sense". Companies like Facebook are well known to lull their users into a false sense of b…

Please. Everyone who has their entire life on Facebook put it there voluntarily. You are completely ignoring the people who put and small amount of information on Facebook and retain a large amount of privacy. And despite your not so subtle implication that you are smarter than anyone who disagrees with you, you have completely failed to defend your premise that using Facebook is fundamentally incompatible with privacy.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#235

Post by throwaway32131 »

[offtopic]

This struck me as being very similar in goals to Aadhar and projects like GSTN and NCIL (all private entities) being pushed by its promoters in India: "mining every aspect of human life, for serving 'customers' better".

This is offtopic and political, but it's perhaps also a reification of the fears that many have for when a state entity merges with such corporates from SV.

US definitely has a better constitution when it comes to fundamental rights, but with the likes of NSA slowly chipping at it, backed by a lack of understanding of the tech in Congress, "legality" is not exactly a bulwark it was hoped to be.

Anywho, in India's case, we've a Quasi-Governmental entity (backed by private promoters) which came into being without a legal charter. Has ramrodded ("charmed") its way through two administrations. Illegally pushed for making it mandatory for access to state services, and has now made the case (via the state) that "Indians have no right to privacy or their bodies" as an argument in the Apex court (!).

Usha Ramanathan speaks in length about the play in play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJe986ADPE4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p6cPIkn48M

The tech (in contrast to SV) however is terrible, but it hasn't stopped them from getting the state to make it "mandatorily voluntary" for every single aspect of life.

The technocrats have even gone to the extent of requiring "aadhar-fingerprint" authentication so that little kids get their free meals at schools, and the poor (and I mean Indian poor) have access to food (aka "subsidies are not wasted").

These biometric identifiers are known to barely ever work, since many are involved in manual labor. A lack of authentication means lack of subsidies dispatched - these being counted in typical corporate-speak as "savings".

How Orwellian is that ? Some democracy.

Perhaps other countries can learn from India's case, and succeed in realizing how dangerous it is for corporations to be running a country, or be in charge (without adequate checks) of critical infrastructure, or indeed to have a corporate sponsored legislature.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#236

Post by mgorenstein »

newscracker wrote: post #81
mgorenstein wrote: post #72

For those interested in archiving their FB content, note that FB's download tool supplies only a subset of the content available in the activity log (namely only the content linked to your timeline). I've been working on a sustainable way to export all activity log content and will post updates here: https://github.com/IonicaBizau/reset-your-facebook-account/i...

Your current script name seems to imply that it only helps delete everything one has posted/shared. But you mention exporting as well. Is it going to be anywhere close to the paid/subscription product digi.me [1], except for not being in a proprietary format? Digi.me allows export of one's content from groups and pages too. [1]: https://www.digi.me/

I didn't create the original scripts, which are indeed focused on content deletion. Having fumbled around with various possibilities for the last week or so, I'd guess that the most robust solution to data export from FB would require use of a scraper to extract individual items from the activity log. Ideally that scraper would also visit and clone referent posts (i.e. if I once commented on a post, also save the post itself).

My best partial solution thus far has involved programmatically expanding the entirety of the mobile activity log and using Chrome's 'Save Page As.' I've written Python code to then replace all links to images in the HTML with locally stored copies that I obtain using FB's Graph API.

I'm not familiar with what digi.me offers specifically. Moving data from one closed ecosystem to another doesn't seem especially desirable. I would gladly participate in an open source effort to automate FB data export--scraping, alas, isn't my forté.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#237

Post by twothamendment »

pasquinelli wrote: post #220
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…

This is the first I've heard of a stigma against people who don't have a facebook. Anytime it comes up I don't have one -- which is rarely -- seems to either be taken as a simple matter of fact, (usually by people older than me, it seems), or as something to aspire to, like I just told them I'm a vegan or something. Maybe it's regional; I'm in portland. Back when I was on facebook I had a friend who wasn't. I remembe…

I'm a software guy. I just turned 40. I started my facebook account about a year ago. I was quite proud to not have one and there is a bit of a stigma against people who don't, but I didn't agree with them. Why did I do it? I moved to an area where the school information, community information, yard sales, just about everything is on FB. I've refused almost all friend requests because I don't really use it. It only exists so I can log in once in a while and check out the info inside the walled garden. Then I log out. How do we replace something that entire communities rely on?

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#238

Post by intended »

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…

Thank you for arguing your point.

Very often people advocating that we need to flee from social media don't get the chance to argue or at least practice arguments against someone with such a clear and obvious stance as you.

In the end, people who hold a similar position as you, must of their own volition leave the site for a general uptick in privacy.

And the only way to do that is to show someone something they want.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#239

Post by intended »

mcgrath_sh wrote: post #215
kafkaesq wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I concur that FB can be useful for finding out about stuff going in your world. But if not using a certain commercial product -- any commercial product -- means "cutting people out of your life" to any significant degree, then well... you might want to think about…

It may not be him that is dependent on a commercial product. I rarely, if ever, use Facebook as an active product. By this I mean I may post a generic status once or twice a month and may actively check my feed once or twice a week. However, if I were to completely close down my Facebook account, I would lose all of the passive information that is sent to me. This includes invitations to parties, people letting me kn…

The more people get off, the less useful facebook is - and the more currency alternative means have.

I suspect, the people you feel happy enough to call, will be people who you would be happy enough to keep in touch with no matter what the medium.

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