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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

#221

Post by 0xbear »

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.…

You can't avoid FB either. It tracks you even if you're not logged in, and even if you don't have an account. And by tracking you across sites it can infer your age group, gender, sexual orientation, political leanings, income bracket, and other personal preferences through simple co-visitation mining. And they know your rough location via geolocation, too, as well as how many people live in your household, whether you have kids and how old they are (assuming they browse the web), etc. None of this requires you to volunteer any data about yourself, and none of this (in the US) requires your consent.

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

#222

Post by nithinm »

markyuckerberg wrote: post #211
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing HN users who clearly have an irrational hatred of Zuckerburg trot out this stupid quote as if it proves anything , let alone that he's some kind of megalomaniac. Just really annoys me. It always reeks of jealousy and sour grapes to me :)

This is like saying people who are defending FB have some agenda where they don't like seeing criticism against it. For example, you could be someone who coaches freelancers who might hang out on HN and also be coaching them on using FB ads. Remember that when you point out that others may have agendas, there is always the issue that you could be subject to the very same suspicion. In any case, the real issue isn't t…

Thanks, was scrolling for a clear cut argument.

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

#223

Post by dredmorbius »

narrator wrote: post #74

I post all my daily thoughts and pictures and lots of personal details of my day to day activities TO MY OWN PRIVATE MASTODON SERVER. This is hosted on a VPS. I give accounts to my close friends and it gives me no impulse to use traditional social media for other than professional purposes. If friends want to know what is the latest on my life, they can just log in and read my activity feed. My default search is duck…

Protonmail is adequate. The client (Android) is quite limited, and neither POPD nor IMAPD access are supported.

I'm pretty close to giving up on email entirely based on its deep and pervasive privacy flaws, and for the most part don't rely on it. (I'm lucky to have that option.)

Unfortunately, I don't see an open alternative on the horizon either.

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

#224

Post by xiaoma »

kuschku wrote: post #157
hutzlibu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Too many Gmail horror stories." share one pls?

Someone hijacked an older google account of mine, the phone number used had since run out and been sold to another user. Google asked me to either have access to the phone number, and the old password, or to know the security question, have access to the backup email, and know the exact day the account was created on. Google was not willing to provide any help, not even via the Nexus phone support, and even after a f…

Asking for a phone number as a verification method is particularly toxic for users such as myself who do a lot of international travel and essentially just use phones for data plans.

Due to a close call with one of my own accounts, I absolutely refuse to link a phone number to any online account, for fear of it being required months later when I'm in another country. I still nearly gotten bitten by this problem when Google wanted to use my old android phone itself as a secondary identification method. AFICT, the only safe solution is to also avoid using Android phones (or have no Google accounts you'd care about losing).

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

#225

Post by stinos »

saywatnow wrote: post #195
mattmanser wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 find it hard to believe if you're a programmer Some people work better with reference documentation, books and their brain than SO "answers". Google for "complex programming questions" is laughable and honestly a bit insulting to the profession.

SO "answers"

That is also laughable and more than a bit insulting:

- most of the answers (I encountered) are in fact proper and correct answers because bascially it's a peer-reviewed environment, so no need for those snarky quatation marks. I, and many others, have spent hours and hours writing down good answers, and learning quite a bit while doing so.

- DDG/Google/... know about SO so it is often possible to get these answers way faster than when using the reference documentation, and your brain cannot change much about it

- you'll find answers which are nowhere to be found in the reference documentation - I assume your point is that with enough reference documentation and thinking any complex programming problem can be tackled. Well, yeah I guess, but it takes way more time than needed and anecdotally I have seen code written by people thinking that and it was one horrid mess. Mostly because stuff like 'good practices' and insight in design principles and patterns and whatnot isn't found in reference documentation. While via frequenting SO (and similar, before that existed) you pick up this stuff automatically and it makes you reflect on programming which in turn makes you better. If you use your brain, that is.

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

#226

Post by statguy »

shubb wrote: post #152
glandium wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For what it is worth, as of June 2017 gmail no longer scans email content for ads The important part of that sentence is "for ads". Obviously, they don't do antispam out of thin air, they still have to scan email for it.

Lately, they are offering quite good context sensitive caned responses. For instance I got an email earlier confirming a cancellation due to illness. It suggested I respond 'Thank you for your understanding'. That's some quite good natural language stuff running on every email, presumably building a model.

Yes, some details are here: https://research.googleblog.com/2015/11/computer-respond-to-... https://research.googleblog.com/2017/05/efficient-smart-repl...

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

#227

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

If I could point to the flaw in both your and the article's arguments, it's trying to paint either as worse than the other.

Both are exceedingly bad. Both have proven exceedingly harmful (and, yes, useful, which is actually a reason why they're so perniciously harmful).

I never fell into Facebook's maw, though that's cost some inconvenience.

I've somewhat extracted myself from Google's, though still only partially:

DuckDuckGo for search. It's quite good, and I prefer bang search and actual, direct links rather than Google redirects. Though I still miss ranged date search.

OpenStreetMap for maps.

ProtonMail for email. It's not everything it could be, the client has some annoying limitations, and neither IMAPS nor POPS are supported. But at least it's not Gmail. There are other options as well.

My router blocks Google analytics, and a large set of other adtech hosts.

Despite being known as a critic of it, I use G+ heavily. With appropriate pruning and blocking, it's useful.

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

#228

Post by rtpg »

dTal wrote: post #56
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…

Neither is "fundamentally evil", and also both are. They are both corporations attempting to keep you in their ecosystem, using similar methods, that fundamentally make their money from targeting ads to you. There's no evil overlord at the top of either company (I hope) - their evilness must be judged by how likely each of them are to lead us into a techno-dystopia. And the more you consolidate to Google, the closer…

I think the argument that they're trying to lick you into their ecosystem is a bit dishonest.

I don't recall FB doing much for lock-in. They basically have only three products, and two of them are just as integrated with things like Twitter as with FB (modulo inline picture expansion of Instagram, which is Twitter's doing)

Google uses your emails to put reminders into your Google Calendar. Uses your Google Calendar to add context to Maps.

The simple reading is just that they had an opportunity to integrate their products. In theory they could offer this integration with other mail providers or calendars.

In practice , do you think MSFT or Yahoo are going to let Google check your emails? Probably not.

Not that Google hasnt done a couple uncompetitive things (Chrome advertising when using FF is a bit much). But the reality is that Google has access to data that can make better usability. And it's kinda hard to do with third party services that are all also building Google-like ecosystems too.

But I have a bunch of third party calendars in Google calendar. I email other people with my Gmail account. I can install Firefox on my Android phone. I can Google search through DDG.

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

#229

Post by codeisawesome »

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…

If there's a series of news articles on Shaq, even more data than just GA can now be collected thanks to no-opt-out AMP

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

#230

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

papa_bear wrote: post #169
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh! And don't forget a hat and sunglasses to avoid the myriad of cameras I'd come across in my day to day as a metropolitan. Gait analysis can be used to identify individual people.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gait_analysis#Biometric_identi...

Walk without rhythm and we won't attract the worm

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