I hope the NY Times considers "Facebook sells access to you" and "data mining can have unfair consequences when exploited by unaccountable credit rating agencies" to be facts that are not new, but are worth repeating again and again.
Facebook Is Using You
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Re: Facebook Is Using You
#32This is what Freedombox is for (also Diaspora). Freedombox is one of the few projects I make time to contribute to. I'm surprised it isn't one of the more popular projects among this community. Anyway, here are some links and background if you aren't familiar with it. From http://freedomboxfoundation.org and http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn What is FreedomBox? Email and telecommunications that protects privacy a…
You guys need a much simpler "what is freedombox". From the /learn text I only get the impression that it is "Tor in a dedicated box". Where is the social network?
Re: Facebook Is Using You
#33It IS using you and if you aren't smart enough to figure that out then you're living in a bubble universe. FB is an awful, monstrous growth on society. I'm sorry if this sounds like an over-reaction, but its pure, undiluted evil. Its reach is just way far too pervasive and the tracking on non-members is just plain illegal as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, people seem to have come to believe that society couldn'…
>FB is an awful, monstrous growth on society.
I can think of many things I'd apply that label to (Such as DHS, the republican party, ACTA), but applying that to a service that people voluntarily sign up and use is a bit absurd, don't you think?
This just in: Advertising companies track people. Film at 11.
It's possible to completely avoid facebook and their tracking with the most minimal of effort. I wonder when we're going to stop seeing these breathless "zOMG EVIL!!1" rants against commonly used services and stop diluting the meaning of the word "evil".
Showing you advertisements is not "evil". Using cookies is not "evil".
Re: Facebook Is Using You
#34[deleted]
Re: Facebook Is Using You
#35Well the credit card example is not new. I remember reading, in the NYTimes, about several people who had their credit limits reduced significantly after the 2008 crash, and the reasoning they were told was the type of places they used their credit cards, and usually it had to do with certain bars in certain neighborhoods where many others who used those establishments defaulted on their credit card bills. I believe the other method employed by these banks were to increase the minimum payment substantially as well.
This article does not really reveal anything that has not been already well documented, and most likely on the NYTImes.
Re: Facebook Is Using You
#36There have been a lot of stories like this one and they usually show up on HN. This one is particularly good at drawing out the consequences.
But as these stories become more commonplace and the general public becomes informed of the true Facebook, I'm wondering if there will actually be people that care.
I can see as the kids that grew up on Google and Facebook become older that the idea of "privacy" becomes more obsolete and that they inherently trust the algorithms because they have always worked for them in the past.
I'm not saying that I agree with this and that I hope this is how it turns out, But maybe The Zuck is right after all.
Re: Facebook Is Using You
#37I think this is a terrible headline that masks an interesting philosophical debate. Especially at this community, we feel we intuitively understand that we get the convenience and social value from Facebook for $0, and we pay in our personal data they use to serve up advertisements. That to me is hardly newsworthy and a relatively uninteresting piece. But- there is an interesting question in what is an appropriate us…
This was also my immediate reaction, agreed. I wrote an article a while ago that talks about a similar thing, but concludes more along those lines - facebook offers us the service for free, and as far as we know they do not sell our personal data. Until they do, we don't need to worry. http://carrotblog.com/facebook-is-watching-you/
Psst. We know they sell our personal data. Start worrying!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/11/29/facebooks...
HN Thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3292225
"Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers. It did."
I wonder why so few news sites picked up on this.
Re: Facebook Is Using You
#38Seeing how a lot of people on Facebook use fake names, I don't how the information Facebook provides for potential data buyers can be deemed as trustworthy enough to be used to lower credit ratings, or as basis for hiring. Granted, if a person has a history of bad-mouthing previous employers (which is the person's responsibility in the first place), it can be used against the person. But that can happen if an employer connects with the potential employee and checks the ever-helpful Timeline, without Facebook having to sell the data.
Re: Facebook Is Using You
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I follow a few high profile tech news source, but I never heard of Freedombox. One major worry I have about decentralized systems is crackers. It's hard enough to secure centralized systems using proprietary code behind firewalls managed by an army of experts. How can a decentralized system possibly avoid becoming a 0day distributed botnet?
> It's hard enough to secure centralized systems using proprietary code behind firewalls managed by an army of experts. How can a decentralized system possibly avoid becoming a 0day distributed botnet? I do not understand your concern. Centralized systems are easier to crack, not harder. Proprietary code may or may not be easier to crack, but I'd lean towards easier. Distributed systems do not require you to not have…
The point of Freedombox is that everyone has his data in his own home. If average Joe wants to share this data with his friends, average Joe is going to run a server in his home. If the server code has a 0day exploit, average Joe server easily becomes a node in a botnet.
How do you address the problem of managing a fleet of 800 Million servers running in 800 Million homes? Who are the experts that manage this problem and who finances their work? Why would average Joe trust them with his data? What is the technical device through which they have admin access to 800 Million servers in 800 Million homes?
Re: Facebook Is Using You
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
they do just not in a monetary form, but by letting you use their services for free. it cost more to run, for example Facebook site, than $1.
that's true. but then again, how much would their service be worth without the user's generated content?
How much would their service be worth to you without other user's generated content? If it's more important to you to see other people's content than you putting out your content, then you should be the one paying them to access other's content.