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Facebook Lies

iain.learmonth.me

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Re: Facebook Lies

#131

Post by quadrangle »

r00fus wrote: post #95
komon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote incoming: I've turned off every notification setting possible on my Facebook account. The issue is that every time they add a new notification "feature" it seems like they flip all of them back on again. All as if to say, "Everybody wants a daily/weekly rollup of what happened on Facebook! Subscribe everybody by default!" So I feel the GP's pain, I've taken to marking them as spam as well because I know that…

The growth hacker mentality was cute when FB was a scrappy little startup. Now they're dominant, it's just creepy.

It was always creepy.

Re: Facebook Lies

#132

Post by ballenf »

dnel wrote: post #33
bmelton wrote: post #26

I've tried (and failed) to delete my Facebook a couple times in the past, so this most recent go, when I quit using Facebook, I just quit using Facebook -- I uninstalled the apps from my phone, and mapped 'facebook.com' to localhost in my /etc/hosts files. The result was... amusing. Facebook kept emailing me the "Hey, did you see what so and so posted?" emails, knowing full well that I didn't see them. But then, afte…

I deactivated first for about 6 months, didn't get any communication from them. Eventually I went to delete and used a link from deletefacebook.com taking me straight to the right page. Maybe it was because I was on mobile but there wasn't any emotional blackmail begging me to stay and it was done. I was expecting much worse but the experience was quite smooth for me and I'm happily free of Facebook for good now.

Psychological lesson in that:

The best advice I've ever read for the spouse who is on the receiving end of a divorce request/demand and wishes for reparation is to acquiesce quickly and approach the ordeal as a business transaction. You'll find story after story of anecdotes of that working to allow a couple to repair relations and figure out what was broken. Much better than being very emotional and otherwise reinforcing the reasons for the divorce request in the first place.

I think FB is being wise in taking this approach considering how difficult it is to find the real "delete" as opposed to "pause" button.

That's a lesson I've applied to many areas of business to very good outcomes -- customers wishing to terminate, etc.

Re: Facebook Lies

#133

Post by quadrangle »

epicide wrote: post #99
dahart wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the person above only had an account to stop using because Facebook wouldn't delete it when asked, similar to the OP's post. Reasonable / normal expectation is that notifications should have stopped the first time.

Regardless of account deletion attempts, they knew they had an active account and didn't change any notification settings. They still expected Facebook to magically know to stop sending them notifications. That is weird.

That's not what they expected. They didn't explain expectations. They didn't expect what happened though: FB notifications got more and more pushy over time. That's interesting to remark on regardless of whether or not you'd expect it.

Re: Facebook Lies

#134

Post by imustbeevil »

Chaebixi wrote: post #106
imustbeevil wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If every email they send has an unsubscribe link and you don't click it, you're kind of losing the reasonable grounds to expect them to stop emailing you. I've done this before, just let myself keep getting emails and hoped they stopped. Then I just clicked all of the unsubscribe links they are legally required to put in every email, and I never got an email again. You don't have to hope for what you want, you can ac…

> If every email they send has an unsubscribe link On Facebook, the unsubscribe link is very fine-grained, and is specific to the exact type of notification the link appeared on. I don't think you can fault anyone for giving up on them if you use one but still get Facebook spam. In fact, those unsubscribe links are the only fine-grained way to control notifications. You can't only preemptively subscribe to the specif…

> It's so bad to the point where I don't think any user can be faulted for not knowing how get it to do what they want.

I just don't buy this. I don't get emails. I didn't have to contact customer support. I didn't have to ask for help. I just clicked the link in the email and turned everything off.

Re: Facebook Lies

#135

Post by devrandomguy »

emddudley wrote: post #125
thefifthsetpin wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advice I got was to never click any links in spam email. I think the rationale was three part: 1) Clicking "unsubscribe" confirmed that you received the spam mail, so spammers would activate your email address on their other lists, thereby increasing the amount of spam you received. Otoh, acting like /dev/null increased the chance that spammers culled your address to increase their apparent delivery ratio. 2) Fol…

That applies to spam from an unknown sender, not a bona fide company you have a relationship with. Messages from Facebook about your account are hardly unsolicited. I don't think it's useful to call every email you don't like "spam".

If the user didn't opt in to a notification, then by definition, it is unsolicited.

Re: Facebook Lies

#136

Post by marcosscriven »

bmelton wrote: post #26

I've tried (and failed) to delete my Facebook a couple times in the past, so this most recent go, when I quit using Facebook, I just quit using Facebook -- I uninstalled the apps from my phone, and mapped 'facebook.com' to localhost in my /etc/hosts files. The result was... amusing. Facebook kept emailing me the "Hey, did you see what so and so posted?" emails, knowing full well that I didn't see them. But then, afte…

I get a monthly email from Facebook entitled "Help your friends recognize you".

I think my friends recognize me thank you very much Facebook, otherwise they're not, you know, my actual friends?

Re: Facebook Lies

#137

Post by macNchz »

komon wrote: post #81
imustbeevil wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a weird thing to think. You can turn off all notifications and they'll never contact you, ever. I stopped using Facebook 6 years ago and haven't gotten a single email / sms from them since then, because I used the settings properly. Yeah, if you just ghost them and never click "update your email settings" at the bottom of every email they send, they'll keep sending them.

Anecdote incoming: I've turned off every notification setting possible on my Facebook account. The issue is that every time they add a new notification "feature" it seems like they flip all of them back on again. All as if to say, "Everybody wants a daily/weekly rollup of what happened on Facebook! Subscribe everybody by default!" So I feel the GP's pain, I've taken to marking them as spam as well because I know that…

For a long time I intentionally configured Facebook to only send me notifications by email and only when someone added me or tagged me, since I almost never actually signed in to see those things.

At some point or another they decided to expand this to include re-engagement garbage like "{{Some person you haven't interacted with in 10 years}} {{ commented on their status || uploaded a photo || added a video}}!", so now I've turned off everything but security alerts.

My current frustration is how they won't let you get notifications about new messages by email. I don't want the app, I don't want to 'delete' my account since we know it doesn't really remove anything and I'd rather retain a semblance of control, but I also don't want to leave the occasional person hanging who tries to contact me via Facebook Messenger, since people can still message you even if you mark yourself 'offline'.

I know this is completely intentional and designed to get me to install the Messenger app and look at their ads, but damn if it doesn't grind my gears. If I could go back to 2005 I never would have made a Facebook account to begin with.

Re: Facebook Lies

#138

Post by Romanulus »

bmelton wrote: post #26

I've tried (and failed) to delete my Facebook a couple times in the past, so this most recent go, when I quit using Facebook, I just quit using Facebook -- I uninstalled the apps from my phone, and mapped 'facebook.com' to localhost in my /etc/hosts files. The result was... amusing. Facebook kept emailing me the "Hey, did you see what so and so posted?" emails, knowing full well that I didn't see them. But then, afte…

They really, really want you to be their product.

Re: Facebook Lies

#139

Post by eighthnate »

dnel wrote: post #33
bmelton wrote: post #26

I've tried (and failed) to delete my Facebook a couple times in the past, so this most recent go, when I quit using Facebook, I just quit using Facebook -- I uninstalled the apps from my phone, and mapped 'facebook.com' to localhost in my /etc/hosts files. The result was... amusing. Facebook kept emailing me the "Hey, did you see what so and so posted?" emails, knowing full well that I didn't see them. But then, afte…

I deactivated first for about 6 months, didn't get any communication from them. Eventually I went to delete and used a link from deletefacebook.com taking me straight to the right page. Maybe it was because I was on mobile but there wasn't any emotional blackmail begging me to stay and it was done. I was expecting much worse but the experience was quite smooth for me and I'm happily free of Facebook for good now.

> Eventually I went to delete and used a link from deletefacebook.com taking me straight to the right page.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know whether by "deleting" your account, facebook removes your account/data completely or do they just mark your account deleted?

Is facebook required to remove your account from all data sources ( dbs, failover sites, recovery sites and even the backup tapes )?

I know certain sites, when you "delete" your account, it just updates a column marking your account "deleted" or "inactive".

But I'm most curious about the backup tapes of logs/data.

Re: Facebook Lies

#140

Post by kbenson »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #73
659087 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And besides, they take nothing that you don't give them. This isn't true, at all. Facebook collects plenty of data that users and non-users don't directly give them.

I think it's important to make a couple of distinctions here. 1. Facebook collects on you when you interact with their systems 2. You can purposefully interact with facebook systems by requesting content from a Facebook registered IP (eg, FB.com, whatsapp, IG, Messenger, comment widget etc...) 3. You can passively interact with facebook systems by accessing a website that posts metadata/telemetry to a Facebook regist…

> It's also not hidden at all, you can inspect the page and see the requests clearly

It's sort of a grey area. The average person doesn't know that the functionality for the buttons is loaded by Facebook, and thus they are requesting information from Facebook that exposes information about them on every page that has a like button. It's "not hidden" in the same way that a pervasive network of closed caption cameras at all the businesses you frequent being owned by one company and having access to all your interactions at all those companies. Sure, the camera is in plain sight, and if you went up to it you might see a tag that says owned and operated by Facebook if you looked, but the normal expectation is that each business would have their own recordings, not that one company would be compiling all your transactions together to track your habits and make a profile. It's not hidden per se, but it's definitely not obvious and not what is expected by the average person.

Actually, I'm wondering is someone could sue Facebook under existing stalking laws.[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking#United_States_2

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