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Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

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Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#81

Post by stinos »

Animats wrote: post #24

Maybe there's an opportunity here for someone to do to Facebook what Craigslist did to print newspapers. What people want is a way to keep in touch with their friends. But that's not a big revenue generator. So the "social networks" put in ads, "sponsored tweets", and other crap. Then users get fed up and leave. (Doubling down on ads as the number of users drops is called "pulling a Myspace"). A basic friends-only sy…

What people want is a way to keep in touch with their friends

Well, that, and the other thing FB got really really good at: I hardly use FB for friends. I use it to track all sports/music/scenes I'm interested in. It has become my number one source for tracking events. There's, as far as I know, nothing which comes closes in aggregating all of that.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#82

Post by esalman »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #76
esalman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny because just this morning I came across and read through an article on how hard it has become for progressive minded people to run for, let alone actually get to the office. Here's the link if anyone is interested: http://idlewords.com/2018/10/portrait_of_a_campaign.htm Sorry if it sounds offensive, but I feel that we (hacker news crowd) really overestimate ourselves. Each one of our votes has the same wei…

That's a very sobering article.

Isn't it?

It's sad that this wave of nationalist and right-wing mentality is taking over the world, Brazil being the latest example. My worst fear is that someone like, or worse, than Hitler will have to come along until this trend reverses itself.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#83

Post by stinos »

Zelphyr wrote: post #36
dabockster wrote: post #4

I only largely use Facebook for the events calendar anymore. Big brands and community groups use that part of the site heavily for event promotion. If we want Facebook to become obsolete, we would need to create a comparable event promotion experience elsewhere. So far, though, I've only seen inroads into discovering events already being promoted. The real money is disrupting how events are promoted so the customer d…

My apologies for the accusatory tone but aren't you kind-of proving the point of the article? Keeping your Facebook account because of the events calendar means you place more value in convenience than you do privacy, Facebook knows it, and they're not going to change.

Unless OP uses a dummy/fakse account in a container maybe; I wonder what FB still knows about the real you then?

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#84

Post by fx32s »

esalman wrote: post #51
fermienrico wrote: post #9

It’s very simple: As a consumer, we cannot trust any advertisement company. Their goals are in direct conflict with user privacy. In fact it’s not a wishful goal, it is their business model. Our attention is very expensive and everything is designed around us to grab us by the neck so to speak. Flashing ads, stories and feeds. I cannot, absolutely cannot, trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, Visa, Amex,…

The problem is that people who understand the value of privacy are probably less than 1% of the total population. The rest don't understand or don't care and they are the target consumers of the said corporations. So simply logging out of Facebook or start buying Apple products yourself is not enough anymore. For the same reason I can't buy your prediction about next big successful companies, even if I would like to.

I feel the common rhetoric here is to dictate people what's ok and what's not under the assumption they don't understand.

Many people (including myself) are fine with the price we pay for free online services and understand the downsides. I really don't mind companies trying to show me more relevant ads by tracking and analyzing what I interact with in return for most of the products I use being free.

Obviously a large group of people does either not understand the implications or does not think they are worth the services but I think it's wrong to assume you know what's best for every user.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#85

Post by codyb »

Zelphyr wrote: post #36
dabockster wrote: post #4

I only largely use Facebook for the events calendar anymore. Big brands and community groups use that part of the site heavily for event promotion. If we want Facebook to become obsolete, we would need to create a comparable event promotion experience elsewhere. So far, though, I've only seen inroads into discovering events already being promoted. The real money is disrupting how events are promoted so the customer d…

My apologies for the accusatory tone but aren't you kind-of proving the point of the article? Keeping your Facebook account because of the events calendar means you place more value in convenience than you do privacy, Facebook knows it, and they're not going to change.

Wouldn't facebook already have his data anyways even if he deleted his account? I thought they were even making shadow profiles of people who didn't exist?

So if he's not adding new information the only info he's giving them is by what events he clicks which is still valuable.

And then of course if he browses the web with the facebook cookie that probably gives them a significant amount of browser habits, no? Which i feel like really doesn't get enough attention.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#86

Post by hathawsh »

jasode wrote: post #65
Animats wrote: post #24

Maybe there's an opportunity here for someone to do to Facebook what Craigslist did to print newspapers. What people want is a way to keep in touch with their friends. But that's not a big revenue generator. So the "social networks" put in ads, "sponsored tweets", and other crap. Then users get fed up and leave. (Doubling down on ads as the number of users drops is called "pulling a Myspace"). A basic friends-only sy…

>A basic friends-only system isn't that expensive to run. The expense depends on what the baseline for "basic" is. I believe today's average consumer would want basic features to include photos and video sharing. (This consumer expectation having been conditioned by previous $0/month social networks like Facebook.) Needless to say, this requires expensive datacenters with petabytes of harddrives. Rising storage infra…

One idea: let people pay if they want to, move old posts and videos to Amazon Glacier or similar long-term storage, and let paid users expedite the retrieval. Matching the Glacier terms, free users have to wait 5-12 hours to see old posts and videos, while paid users can see them in 1-5 minutes.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#87

Post by Aunche »

esalman wrote: post #51
fermienrico wrote: post #9

It’s very simple: As a consumer, we cannot trust any advertisement company. Their goals are in direct conflict with user privacy. In fact it’s not a wishful goal, it is their business model. Our attention is very expensive and everything is designed around us to grab us by the neck so to speak. Flashing ads, stories and feeds. I cannot, absolutely cannot, trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, Visa, Amex,…

The problem is that people who understand the value of privacy are probably less than 1% of the total population. The rest don't understand or don't care and they are the target consumers of the said corporations. So simply logging out of Facebook or start buying Apple products yourself is not enough anymore. For the same reason I can't buy your prediction about next big successful companies, even if I would like to.

> people who understand the value of privacy are probably less than 1% of the total population

Am I so out of touch? No it must be 99% of people who are wrong.

What exactly is the value of privacy besides the satisfaction that big tech companies aren't making as much money from me?

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#88

Post by shmerl »

seppin wrote: post #31
shmerl wrote: post #25

Don't use Facebook, as simple as that. Prefer decentralized social networks if you need them, ones that aren't built around profiting on your profile.

> decentralized social networks I'm sorry but what would the point of this be? A social network is only as useful as it's centralization.

Nope, decentralized doesn't mean disconnected. It means it's not owned or controlled by any one entity and runs on many independent but connected nodes.

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#89

Post by Kalium »

fermienrico wrote: post #9

It’s very simple: As a consumer, we cannot trust any advertisement company. Their goals are in direct conflict with user privacy. In fact it’s not a wishful goal, it is their business model. Our attention is very expensive and everything is designed around us to grab us by the neck so to speak. Flashing ads, stories and feeds. I cannot, absolutely cannot, trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, Visa, Amex,…

I find some of the implications here very interesting.

Apple is rapidly approaching the status of being a luxury goods brand. They certainly charge luxury goods prices. This implies that privacy is a luxury good.

That isn't wrong, in a strictly factual and financial sense. There's money to be made invading privacy that certainly can help defray device costs.

It's possible that some might opine that this might be less than fully right in an ethical sense, however...

Re: Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data

#90

Post by dsfyu404ed »

merpnderp wrote: post #72
zer0zzz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one cares. The entire tech industry is built on producing products people don’t need to connect you to people you don’t like. The masses of people don’t care about any of this, and that includes the people that have the luxury to spend extra money on privacy.

That's a good point about "connect you to people you don't like." I was just thinking the other day about how the people I know in real life are likeable, but their online personalities are petty, bigoted, closed minded, and mean spirited. I don't know who's the real them, the people I know in person, or the person online. But for the most part, I wish I didn't know their online persona.

There's not much to be gained by not flinging poo online when everyone else is doing it. It's not like there's any reward for exceeding the lowest common denominator.
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