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DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

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Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#91

Post by rublev »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #82

For the life of me I can't remember where I originally read this quote, but it forever changed my perspective of FB. Paraphrased: "Facebook is 3 things: the wall, the messaging, and an automatically updating rolodex." Many apps fill 1 and/or 2, but nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative. For better or for worse: I want to stay in touch with people I've met in the oddest places. In the middle of bumsquash Urugu…

Delete facebook and 5 seconds later you won't remember most of the people you keep in contact with as those connections don't matter.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#92

Post by Goronmon »

ld00d wrote: post #59

Mastodon is cool technology. The problem is Facebook fills a hole that Mastodon does not. Facebook connects people in real life. Folks from varying distances are able to keep up with their friends and family. There's a built-in desire to monitor their conversations. They're rewarded with "reactions". Facebook provides value for a very large group of people. A relatively small group of people saw a problem with Facebo…

I'd also add that Mastodon is more of a Twitter replacement than a Facebook replacement. Facebook is better at isolating your feed into your group of "friends". Mastodon is more of a river of information from folks you follow (many of whom you will never meet in real life.)

I noticed this as well, and it's something I've come across in the past when checking out Facebook alternatives. Most seem to only be a replacement on a superficial level.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#93

Post by leadingthenet »

naravara wrote: post #54
jdlyga wrote: post #42

Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. If a fully featured app or service is free, then you are the product. Collecting and selling user information is pervasive.

>If a fully featured app or service is free, then you are the product. Depends on the business model. Wikipedia, for example, is a non-profit. You can also theoretically have a public benefit corporation that is structured to protect data privacy, but I don't know of any.

Mozilla?

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#94

Post by Mononokay »

bittercynic wrote: post #88
Mononokay wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptography is, at its core, easy to explain to the layman. (PBS explained it fairly well on a kids' show a while back, I believe.) A GUI wrapper made to send secure emails isn't a particularly difficult thing for your average user, either. You could make it as simple as downloading an app, going to get you physically registered, having the govt. official input relevant keys into the app, and then: Type In Your Pref…

Though it is possible to set up a GUI to do that, I don't think it is possible to do it in a way that makes it easy to confirm that the app is really doing what it claims to. You may be able to create a system where experts can verify the integrity, but I don't think you can create a computerized system where average people can independently verify the integrity of the system. Paper, managed by trusted humans, really…

Open-source the application, and have people check the checksums of the .IPAs and .APKs if they want to verify. A simple GUI wrapper for email wouldn't be particularly complicated implementation-wise, so it wouldn't take a security analyst to vet, either.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#95

Post by petercooper »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #82

For the life of me I can't remember where I originally read this quote, but it forever changed my perspective of FB. Paraphrased: "Facebook is 3 things: the wall, the messaging, and an automatically updating rolodex." Many apps fill 1 and/or 2, but nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative. For better or for worse: I want to stay in touch with people I've met in the oddest places. In the middle of bumsquash Urugu…

For me there's a #4: shared interest groups. There is nowhere else online that people in my town are all discussing local matters together, or.. things like the New York Times podcast listeners club, various car groups, etc.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#96

Post by nopreserveroot »

oldsklgdfth wrote: post #85
nopreserveroot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can collect all they like, but if you never see any advertisements, it has little influence over you. I was not commenting on the violation of privacy these bad actors commit through the collection.

It's easy to ignore the ads if you know they are ads. What about sponsered content in movies, music, tv, news, etc? We have seen all of these used. The drive to promote a message to someone goes waay beyond advertising.

This discussion is veering off course. Well made adblocking removes 'native' ads as well. Product placement is irrelevant to my point, as it does not utilize my stolen demographic info to drive marketing decisions. And though you delude yourself into thinking that you are successfully ignoring ads they are still influencing you in subtle ways.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#97

Post by Mononokay »

onychomys wrote: post #84
Mononokay wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have just realized that democracy and widespread, instant communication are incompatible. I'd say that's absolutely not true - it's a demonstration that the republic system is broken. He lost the popular vote, yet still won. That's anti-democratic, whilst being pro-republic. True democracy would still work fine if done pragmatically - have people, when registering to vote, be given a PGP key. Have them send in a…

But the problems we had with the last election weren't caused by fraudulent voting. Everyone voted properly, it's just that another country spent some money convincing us to vote the way that they wanted us to. Even if we moved to a direct democracy system and gave everybody unbreakable crypto, it wouldn't stop them from watching TV and sharing junk on social media.

Remember, Trump lost the popular vote. If we had moved to a direct democracy system, assuming as little changes as you say will, he wouldn't be standing in the White House now.

The reason for crypographically secure voting is to stop any form of election-interference that could happen, because that naturally would be the biggest concern from moving to a digital solution.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#98

Post by walterstucco »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #82

For the life of me I can't remember where I originally read this quote, but it forever changed my perspective of FB. Paraphrased: "Facebook is 3 things: the wall, the messaging, and an automatically updating rolodex." Many apps fill 1 and/or 2, but nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative. For better or for worse: I want to stay in touch with people I've met in the oddest places. In the middle of bumsquash Urugu…

Ask them for their email address and/or phone number, while telling them you're leaving Facebook

Whoever writes you back is worth keeping as a contact

When I moved to another city my flatmate threw a secret party at my favourite bar

400 people showed up

After 5 years I still keep in touch with at most 20 of them

With most of them I've been friend since long before that night

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#99

Post by oldsklgdfth »

fancyfacebook wrote: post #37
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #10

I'm reposting this comment because I would like to open the discussion up beyond facebook and social media and into the reality that technology has provided marketing with some pretty ridiculous tools. : I feel like you used to be able to avoid getting swindled by ignoring the swindler, ex. close the door to the saleman, or ignore the gypsy pear salesmen at the market. Today, marketing is engineered at such a level t…

Gypsy is considered a slur by some nowadays, probably shouldn't drop that casually anymore. Sorry, I hate language police too, I'm not actually offended just letting you know in case you drop it in a meeting someday. I'd argue it's still possible to ignore it all, but you need three browser extensions and two mobile apps, a vpn, and probably a few other measures in place to pull it off. I feel like I'm sailing out to…

Technology is not bad. There are bad people that use it. Generic i know, but these technologies had the potential to provide solutions to some problems we as a world we face.

Nuclear energy could have been proliferated to move to different energy source, instead it is was weaponized and used as a tool of politics. Cool for those guys i guess.

The same goes for big data. We could have collected data on everyone and mined that shit to gain more insight into all sort of things from medical to societal information that you just can't see in studies. We could have learned so much. But instead some smart guys figured out how to use it to convince you that you need a wi-fi crockpot and gerrymander districts in their favor.

Guns made killing people easier, ok. But you can't kill everyone in the world with one gun. Marketing used to be billboards, now it's in your life. The issue I have is that scale of the whole thing.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#100

Post by kmonsen »

gooseus wrote: post #41
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #10

I'm reposting this comment because I would like to open the discussion up beyond facebook and social media and into the reality that technology has provided marketing with some pretty ridiculous tools. : I feel like you used to be able to avoid getting swindled by ignoring the swindler, ex. close the door to the saleman, or ignore the gypsy pear salesmen at the market. Today, marketing is engineered at such a level t…

> People with power and wealth could still be toppled when you exposed them to the truth. How in the fuck does that even come close to happening today? I have doubts that this happened regularly in the past, usually wealthy/powerful were allowed to be toppled by their enemies. I don't know the details of how Weinstein got toppled after so many years of being protected, but my gut says that the people who were protect…

I think the age of ai and robots will change this. Revolutions happened when the army out police swapped sides, but computers don't really do that.
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