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Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

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Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#181

Post by et1337 »

mattmanser wrote: post #176
StavrosK wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the opposite experience. I've been using it for many months and I only !g code searches or searches where DDG's results were disappointing, most of which end up disappointing on Google as well.

I find that hard to believe if you're a programmer, as any complex programming question !g is almost always better. As well as anything local. If you search for a fairly common venue name, google will always get you a much better result.

I've also used DuckDuckGo for years now, often for programming questions, and the handful of times I've resorted to !g it was 50/50 as to whether Google had better results.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#182

Post by severine »

xj9 wrote: post #120
lobotryas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google can be as evil as Facebook Personally I believe Google _IS_ much worse than FB for one simple reason: it's much easier to avoid FB than Google. With FB the story is simple. You'll miss out on some news/invites from FB-centric friends, but it's pretty easy to go without (or to even find new friends who aren't as hooked on FB as needed). "Avoiding" Google in your daily life is much, much harder. Their free mai…

it really isn't that hard to get away from GOOG I run copperhead on a nexus device (no gapps) use fastmail for email contacts and calendars duckduckgo for search plex and icecast for media matrix for chat mastodon for social media fix standard notes for note taking YouTube is a challenge, but you can always use youtube-dl and watch via plex asynchronously the only missing but for me is replacing photos. Plex does and…

> YouTube is a challenge, but you can always use youtube-dl and watch via plex asynchronously

Check the Video Assistant extension to play embedded videos in external player:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/video-assistant/

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#183

Post by [deleted] »

dannysu wrote: post #35
Deimorz wrote: post #9

Personally, I think Google is just as terrifying, possibly more. As an example, just take a fairly normal life situation like going out for dinner with some friends, and think about how much of it goes "through" Google: --- One of your friends sends an email to 6 others, to ask if everyone's free for dinner on Friday. 5 of the 7 people involved use gmail or a google apps address. You've never heard of the restaurant…

Facebook is like a Casino. They'll try to maneuver to keep you engaged and contain you in their bubble. However, if you're able to leave or cut your usage, they extend no influence whatsoever. (Don't have mobile apps installed, block their trackers, don't use Facebook login, etc) There are lots of ways to communicate outside of Facebook, including other messaging apps that help you form social networks outside of it.…

[deleted]

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#184

Post by hyperdunc »

Micoloth wrote: post #34
cisanti wrote: post #4

The authoritarian regimes' secret police would be delighted at something like this. People actually (well, not all of us) give them information themselves, and those who don't, sure do get tracked across the web. "Thoughts control" is very much a real problem, as the Google Memo scandal showed us. People dug out the irrelevant donation of Brendan Eich. Think about the power FB has, they know exactly who is the enemy…

I more than agree with you. The only thing, why do you assume that only people "on the left" could be intrested in using these tools? Sure it's people "on the left" that are creating them and control them now, and yet thought control is DEFINITELY not a thing right parties have ever had problems using lol. Am I wrong?

At the moment the left is more of a threat, but this shouldn't really be a left-right comparison.

A better way of framing it is authoritarian-libertarian. Some authority is useful, but too much is highly corrupting.

Currently a section of the left is rather authoritarian and dogmatic. In the past the same has been true of the right.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#185

Post by giosch »

kuschku wrote: post #155
aphextron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conclusion I've come to regarding Google is that you just have to accept it for now. The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Google search is an order of magnitude above the competition. There is no serious alternative to Google maps. The level of integration that Google Calendar has with practically everything…

Here Maps is a serious competitor to Google maps, in many regiona being far superior. For Google calendar, almost any self hosted calendar service can easily compete with that. Email is also easy to run yourself, as is Google Photos. "Easy" meaning a task a CompSci student can accomplish during a summer or two of coding.

You don't want to run your own mail/web server. At least, you do not want a lot of people doing it. Because most of the will get the security part wrong. Horribly wrong.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#186

Post by ryanwaggoner »

snarf21 wrote: post #167
Joeri wrote: post #138

May 26 2018 is going to be a very interesting day. The GDPR will trigger across Europe, and Facebook will become legally compelled wrt any European citizen to share everything they know about them, discard data not relevant to delivering the Facebook service, and allow users to correct any of the data, or remove all of it. It will be fascinating to see what exactly they know about me. In theory, not that much, since…

One thing people are oblivious about is they say "Facebook is awful, I only use Instagram and WhatsApp" and forget that the whole network is insanely large and growing. People lose sight that FB and Google account for 99%+ of all online advertising in the US. Social has become such an echo chamber and so manipulative.

99% sounded like a made-up statistic, so I looked it up [1].

What do you know, it's more like 60% combined. What's the purpose of throwing out numbers like this? It only hurts whatever point you're trying to make.

(Edited for tone)

1. http://www.adweek.com/digital/u-s-digital-advertising-will-m...

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#187

Post by snarf21 »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #186
snarf21 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing people are oblivious about is they say "Facebook is awful, I only use Instagram and WhatsApp" and forget that the whole network is insanely large and growing. People lose sight that FB and Google account for 99%+ of all online advertising in the US. Social has become such an echo chamber and so manipulative.

99% sounded like a made-up statistic, so I looked it up [1]. What do you know, it's more like 60% combined. What's the purpose of throwing out numbers like this? It only hurts whatever point you're trying to make. (Edited for tone) 1. http://www.adweek.com/digital/u-s-digital-advertising-will-m...

I apologize, I misremembered the statistic from an article I read months ago. They only account for 99%+ of the growth in the last year, according to this article.

[http://fortune.com/2017/04/26/google-facebook-digital-ads/]

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#188

Post by amingilani »

Hrm. This article is functionally suspiciously like a banner-ad for the Nexus social network's ICO.

I'm not saying that it may have intended to be one, or that it isn't about Facebook taking over our lives. But it starts with how bad our privacy is, tells us how we can take control over messaging and our mic, and then ends with a switching to Nexus, and whose ICO starts in three days. Functionally speaking, it has the same impact as a sponsored article written for the ICO.

I mean, I use Telegram myself, but it doesn't replace Messenger for me. While we're on the subject, Whatsapp also provides end-to-end encryption, is owned by Facebook and is definitely a Telegram competitor.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#189

Post by im3w1l »

adventured wrote: post #135
Micoloth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I more than agree with you. The only thing, why do you assume that only people "on the left" could be intrested in using these tools? Sure it's people "on the left" that are creating them and control them now, and yet thought control is DEFINITELY not a thing right parties have ever had problems using lol. Am I wrong?

> The only thing, why do you assume that only people "on the left" could be intrested in using these tools? Sure it's people "on the left" that are creating them and control them now Your critique is correct, the right is every bit as brutal about censorship when it comes to a context of authoritarianism. The left in the US is progressive (to varying degrees) in mentality, adopts technology much faster, and gets to u…

> They're also fast adopters of technology. In my opinion people in the more left half of the political spectrum (call them Democrats or whatever makes sense), on average, move substantially faster as adopters of technology (Clinton & Obama were far more technologically progressive than the Bushes or Trump). The big platforms are all extremely left in their political bias, deriving from the people who work there, the memo was correct in that regard.

Disagree. The internet used to be more libertarian, even just a few years ago. This turn to authoritarianism coincides with an influx of late adopters.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#190

Post by bobsgame »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #99
aphextron wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no evil overlord at the top of either company (I hope) We'll have to disagree here. I think Zuckerberg is an evil, amoral person to his core. This hardly needs reposting, but I can't recall Brin or Page ever going on the record calling their users "dumb fucks".[0] [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/embarrassing-and-damaging-zuc...

This is such a stupid argument. He was what, 20 years old? And FB was a tiny nothing at that point. And let's face it, he probably wasn't wrong to think that users were dumb to upload private data to some random POS website. I'm sure you never said anything at 20 on IM with a friend that could be used in isolation more than a decade later to show that you're an evil person, right?

Thanks for this.
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