121–130 of 182 posts
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You are going to be in for a real shock if you ever see a phone book. Pages upon pages of names matched with phone numbers!
But a phone book doesn't show connections between people nor have people's unlisted numbers, like somebody's phone contacts might.
Is this it? This is our brave new world of pervasive data gathering, social network analysis, and the dying gasp of any shred of privacy? This is the future we've built for ourselves? I haven't had a facebook account for 3 years. I'm certain FB has a shadow profile for me today and there's nothing I can do about it. My friends don't understand (or don't care about) the implications of everything they do online being…
I wonder if FB also has deep facial recognition data sets for these shadow profiles?
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You are correct. Facebook was not the first social network and they will not be the last. I guess I'm more concerned about the precedent they've set, in terms of (mis)handling user data, and how other companies seem to be falling over themselves to add 'social' features. Very few companies begin with a commitment to user privacy. My fear is that FB has done some kind of irreversible damage, even if only as measured i…
I think that Facebook has a social duty to set the bar in terms of what is acceptable to do with this wealth of user data. Never before has there been one place that has so much detailed information about so many people - with great power comes great responsibility. The rules are still being refined. Things get tried - some work, some don't - then from this, lessons are learnt.
Serious question here. Why should I care? Convince me why I should close my facebook account. Why I shouldn't purposely feed google with infos. Why I shouldn't answer to phone surveys. Hell. I /like/ having accurate ads on the web. I like reading meaningful spam that sells me the products I want for half the price. Anybody can already look up my name on 411 and get all my infos. Why should I care if the big corps als…
I actually like to see good ads online too and often find them useful. For most people, trading some data for better ads and free services is a deal that they're willing to make - most people don't have the mentality of RMS. I might be willing to trade some data about myself voluntarily so I'll see some ads about products I might actually buy instead of ads for viagra and other penis-related things.
What Facebook and Google is doing here would not be nearly as troubling without this NSA data collection stuff. As annoying as online advertising can sometimes be, generally that information that companies gather about people from online ads isn't going to wreck anybody's life in any serious way and there are always ad-blockers and things to use to limit that if a site is annoying you.
But if the NSA's algorithms use some random meta-data and Facebook likes and search keywords to somehow determine that you're a potential "terrorist sympathizer" or something and you get placed on some no-fly or watch list with no recourse, that can put your livelihood or ultimately even your life in danger. We don't yet know the full extent of these programs or how the data is used and I'm not trusting the same politicians that hid this from us and lied to us and have always lied to us for more power.
The groundwork is in place for the next politicians that come into power that are unlimited by ambition to create a nearly perfect political dictatorship. This isn't a situation we should be in.
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Fast forward two months, and I decide to sign up for facebook. And this is where your use case fails: some of us already know about Facebook and will never, ever sign up. Don't track us until we ask you to, full stop.
If you don't want to use the service, nobody says you have to. Facebook having your name and phone number doesn't actually mean anything until you sign up and so if you never do, the situation doesn't change.
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You meet $g at a caffeinated yogurt startup tasting party. You want to form an intimate relationship with person $g. $g looks you up on SureEros.com and finds a bogus profile for you claiming you actually don't like milk products or stimulants. $g figures you lied to get into $g's pants and you look like a lamer. Race or religion $x takes over a large portion of the local government. You belong to race or religion $y…
You present a compelling case for having profiles on major social network platforms, with you controlling the shared information. I also don't know why I should desire to work at company $q which is has a completely incompetent hiring department. And governments are pretty good at progroms and determining ethnicities without using social media platforms - they've done this literally since dawn of time. If you add thi…
Then you should not try getting a job at all, since many companies have similarly incompetent HR departments, which gather background information on you that you might not otherwise wish for them to use when weighing your application.
I wish Facebook fades into oblivion like Myspace.
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Facebook has nothing to do medicine, exploration, or improving the human condition. Facebook isn't a business created to fund biomedical research or somehow make the world a better place, Facebook exists to collect personal data and serve advertising.
I think it is arguable that Facebook has improved the human condition based upon anecdotal evidence of it mostly being positively regarded in our culture for exactly the mission statement above.
Whether we personally agree or disagree with this, right now, most of the world's population still seems to believe that Facebook is a net positive, and I would argue that even if people turned away from Facebook, it would still be positively regarded with some nostalgia by the majority of its members after its obsolescence.
Perhaps Facebook has strayed from that optimistic (and potentially naïve) goal, but in its infancy it didn't even have advertising, then had shitty banner ads, then had a pretty bad ad product, etc. Now they have a decent ad product. That is not very indicative of some type of pervasive corporate culture that exists to serve advertising.
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Define privacy. If I tell my mother what my girlfriend's name is, that's not an invasion of privacy. If my friend tells Facebook what my phone number is, that's not an invasion if privacy either. If I share my phone number with my friend, under the agreement that my friend will not share it with others, and he shares it with Facebook, then my friend has violated my privacy... not facebook.
> "... and he shares it with Facebook, then my friend has violated my privacy... not facebook." I disagree. Your argument assumes that everyday people are aware of all the things going on with the multiple apps they install and the permissions they ask for. I'd argue that they're largely ignorant of what it means to grant something like Facebook access to your phone (contacts etc). This is because apps from companies…
Being ignorant of how information you've divulged to people is used, does not make that information private.