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Facebook Lies

iain.learmonth.me

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Re: Facebook Lies

#191

Post by majewsky »

wpietri wrote: post #179
majewsky wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He probably has opted in without noticing. Quick show of hands: How reads all ToS that they agree to?

Whatever the fine-print legalities, if you didn't notice, I don't think it can count as opting in.

No disagreement from my side, but that's how the law generally [1] works.

[1] In Germany, there is a specific section of the public code governing ToS ("AGB-Gesetz", part of the BGB). Among other things, it forbids "unexpected" terms, acknowledging that people usually cannot read all the ToS that they have to agree to in practice. Quite a few ToS have been nullified by courts because of that rule.

Re: Facebook Lies

#192

Post by dnel »

eighthnate wrote: post #139
dnel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know how certain we can really be, I had the same concerns myself, I could just keep my account disabled and stop feeding information to Facebook but still keep access to it myself if I ever needed it. Or I delete my account, Facebook maybe has access to that data but I do not, it was a thought process that delayed my action for a while.

This non-committal situation created some anxiety for me, it was a decision that still needed to be made in my mind so wouldn't go away.

Then Bryan Lunduke went through the process on his YouTube channel and he claims his contacts at Facebook were unable to find his data once it was deleted, so that was good enough to push me off the fence and I finally made the decision to delete.

I can never be absolutely certain but there's really not much more I can do besides use European privacy laws to try and force the issue, but that probably won't do much about the NSA backup. ;) But my mind is at rest now, I don't worry about it apart from doing my best to limit tracking online but that's another story.

Re: Facebook Lies

#193

Post by kristianc »

nathantotten wrote: post #4
Artemis2 wrote: post #2

Quite looking forward to GDPR forcing Facebook to actually remove all records they have on me. It’s a pain to implement for businesses, but it’s ultimately the right move.

At least for European customers. This won’t help everyone.

GDPR refers to any business that transacts with the European Union, so businesses outside the EU (and the UK) are included.

Re: Facebook Lies

#194

Post by collyw »

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 got similar crap from them after two and a half weeks in Africa on holiday a year ago, because the internet so slow it wasn't worth checking Facebook.

Recently I have been busy with a new job, started meditating and reading my Kindle rather than a backlit screen. I use Facebook maybe 15% compared to a month ago. Life feels a bit better better as a result. Kind of like giving up smoking, or cutting down. It's just mental clutter.

Re: Facebook Lies

#195

Post by epicide »

dahart wrote: post #186
epicide wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not weird nor is it magic to expect Facebook to stop the notifications. That's what pretty much all other web sites and services currently do. No, it's not. This would be like if my post office stopped delivering my mail because I didn't call them up and tell them to keep delivering my mail.

The post office isn't a web site. Many web sites do stop delivering mail, I know because I've checked, and because I run one. The post office does stop delivering your mail if it's returned to sender multiple times. The post office will also respect your first cancellation request, and they don't send you letters or text you every day reminding you to use the post office more because they noticed you haven't sent a l…

Alright, let's ignore the analogy, then.

What is the correct functionality for Facebook given this user's settings?

I do not agree that it should stop sending notifications. Let's say I _want_ to keep getting notifications via email without having to open Facebook every so often. I would have my settings match theirs and I would be quite annoyed if it just stopped working because I didn't log in.

Re: Facebook Lies

#196

Post by dahart »

epicide wrote: post #195
dahart wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post office isn't a web site. Many web sites do stop delivering mail, I know because I've checked, and because I run one. The post office does stop delivering your mail if it's returned to sender multiple times. The post office will also respect your first cancellation request, and they don't send you letters or text you every day reminding you to use the post office more because they noticed you haven't sent a l…

Alright, let's ignore the analogy, then. What is the correct functionality for Facebook given this user's settings? I do not agree that it should stop sending notifications. Let's say I _want_ to keep getting notifications via email without having to open Facebook every so often. I would have my settings match theirs and I would be quite annoyed if it just stopped working because I didn't log in.

You don't have to open Facebook, you just have to receive your notification, e.g., read their email. They know when their reminders to use Facebook are being avoided.

You might be lumping all notifications into the same bucket. There's a difference between a Facebook message that notifies you of someone else IMing or commenting on your photo, and a Facebook message that reminds you to use Facebook or upsell you on services.

That difference has standard terminology in the web business sphere: transactional email vs marketing email. Generally speaking these things have a hard line between them, and are easy to define & separate. Marketing is sales, and transactional is private notifications about your account activity & private notifications from social contacts. Marketing is what other sites stop sending after too much inaction, and marketing is what Facebook is increasing in response to inaction. Transactional notifications don't stop, and they shouldn't stop. I suspect you're misunderstanding me and assuming I'm talking about all email, and not just marketing.

Re: Facebook Lies

#198

Post by _jal »

659087 wrote: post #51
_jal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set one up with my primary email address probably 10 years ago just to block someone else doing it. I keep their IP space blocked on my local network (but not my mail server - I try to be a good netizen). I have probably seen a facebook.com page three or four times since then - misclicks at work, etc. And never while 'logged in'[1]. I still get an endless stream of spam from them. "Facebook - more AOL than AOL ever…

> (but not my mail server - I try to be a good netizen) Blocking sources of spam is part of being a "good netizen".

Being reachable by other admins is what I was referring to[1]. I do aggressively block pure-spam hosts, of course, but I can't consider FB one of those.

[1] I find it exceedingly unlikely that FB mail admins would need to reach me to troubleshoot something, but it is the principle.

Re: Facebook Lies

#199

Post by AmrEldib »

Netflix also does this. I unsubscribed and many months later subscribed again only to find that all my everything was exactly the same. They never deleted my account.

With regard to Facebook, not exactly the same thing, but in August, I tweeted that I haven't logged in to Facebook in over a month. The next day, I got an email from Facebook asking if I'm having trouble logging in to Facebook. I never gave Facebook my Twitter account. https://twitter.com/AmrEldib/status/899423898139148289

Re: Facebook Lies

#200

Post by Chaebixi »

imustbeevil wrote: post #134
Chaebixi wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I just clicked the link in the email and turned everything off.

That's false; Facebook demonstrably does not work that way at present. If you're getting Facebook emails, the unsubscribe link is scoped only to the particular type of email notification it appeared on. You'll continue to get all the others until you click unsubscribe on each individually, or go into the settings and disable email notifications totally.

Again, they use dark and overly complicated UX patterns to make difficult for people to unsubscribe totally, and this is almost certainly intentional (but deniable). I think it's totally reasonable for someone just assume Facebook's whole unsubscribe system doesn't work, as it's not really reasonable to expect people to invest the time to learn Facebook's deliberately bad unsubscribe system.

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