281–290 of 734 posts
I'm only somewhat kidding. I imagine a flood of super cheap, but decent spec Androids would be pretty disruptive, despite sending everything to the FB mother ship.
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>A message that said "Cigarettes will kill you" didn't stop smokers Nicotine is as hard to quit as heroin. The fact that we still punished smokers through public shaming, exclusion and excessive fines just shows how unsympathetic our culture is to perceived "moral failings." https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/10/17/why-its-so-hard-to-...
Ex-smoker here. So, what do you advocate? Reward smokers? Encourage smoking?
P.S. Before the downvotes come, I'm rather fat and a mostly ex-smoker, so I'm not attacking obese people, just wondering at the inconsistency.
Apple should be applauded for this. Their revenue does not depend on software to clandestinely steal and sell users data. One day, we will look back at history and see facebook similar as to how people view myspace now (junkyard of software). Good on Apple not selling devices with a facebook backdoor in them. I know apple probably has deals with malicious governments regarding data access, but at least they are stand…
Between this privacy fight and the form factor of the iPhone Mini, there's a 90% chance my next phone will be an iPhone after more than a decade on Android. I'm done with this ad-sponsored trash ecosystem.
https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/10/15/apple-to...
And so many others. Apple phone users weren't allowed by Apple to have Spotify as their default music program until recently.
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Apple are also assholes to users in places (no own software, no simple customization, absurd seeming prices, extremely limited and proprietary connectivity) ... but they also protect them like nobody else and are unusually reasonable in places, like with their software update policy. It's a reason I keep thinking about replacing my current phone with a used iPhone X, though the 12 mini would be nicer for the screen s…
Apple isn't perfect, I'll admit that all day long. But, frankly, the "absurd prices" argument just doesn't hold water to me. I paid almost $3000 for the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on--eight years ago. Meanwhile, everyone I know that has had PC's have gone through at least two replacements during that time. A little over $300/year for a computer is a bargain. I pay three times more for Internet access!
People with apple products tend to keep better care of the products than the latter too.
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It's a nice bit of semantic ju-jitsu to say "they take this data and sell a service that wouldn't be possible without it" isn't the same as "selling this data," isn't it? Especially given that the targeting mechanisms don't have any k-anonymity guarantees, and I'm aware of at least one paper showing information leaks through the ad portal [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_events/122...
Seems to me like you're more playing "semantic ju-jitsu" than OP. Facebook collect data to sell targetted adspace, they do not sell data. This is a plain fact.
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I wholly internalized that there was a real problem when I started taking my phone to other parts of the house, placing it in a drawer before returning and shutting the door to have an in person conversation with someone.
I'm not sure why this is getting down-voted, but I think the point here is the _fact_ that you have been put in a situation where, as an individual, you are concerned enough to do this is telling, crazy or not
(I'm not making a claim either way on whether or not in this case it's true that devices are spying on us, just that this line or thinking is absurd that it doesn't really matter if a given thing is true)
Apple should be applauded for this. Their revenue does not depend on software to clandestinely steal and sell users data. One day, we will look back at history and see facebook similar as to how people view myspace now (junkyard of software). Good on Apple not selling devices with a facebook backdoor in them. I know apple probably has deals with malicious governments regarding data access, but at least they are stand…
> [FB revenue model] depend[s] on software to clandestinely steal and sell users data Isn't it opt-in by using their platform? Or is your argument that targeted ads are not common knowledge to Facebook users? I likely wouldn't use Facebook or Google etc. if I had to pay cash; fine with paying with personal data; but for people who aren't fine with that, they shouldn't use it. I realize that any attempt to discuss thi…
The dialog pops up and you give your consent for the FB app to track whatever it wants, because you're fine with that.
Other users similarly are allowed to make their own choice as to whether they accept that trade off.
User can still easily opt-in to tracking - so saying this is bankrupting small businesses is really admitting that they need users to be tracked without their knowledge and/or against their will . I mean, it was always kinda obvious, but seeing them confirm it out right is interesting, to say the least.
E.g. if anti-vaxxers started pushing a campaign saying "doctors want to stab your arms with needles", I'd expect a similar pushback from the medical community about the perception-coloring of this phrasing (even if it's technically true). In both cases, it seems like the argument is more of "Yes people can opt in to that, but the opt-in process shouldn't bias you against opting in"
Whether that's a fair argument or not, I'll leave to society.
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> Nothing existential about it at all. It's an actual threat to Facebook's business model. "Existential threat" means a threat to the very existence of a thing, so a thing that is an "existential threat" is a very big actual threat. I think maybe you're confusing "Existential" with "Hypothetical"?
"Existential threat" means an implied, or perceived threat. Politicians started using that phrase en masse about a year ago, and the internet has latched onto it and now misuses it all the time.
"Existential threat" means something so devastating it threatens the subjects very existence.
It's meant that for as long as the phrase has been in use.