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You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

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Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#161

Post by krichman »

quantumpotato_ wrote: post #160
otakucode wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your recommendations are great - keep talking about it and DON'T CODE BAD SHIT (if you do, no matter if you think its just to feed your kids or whatever, you're a bad person).... there's more we can do. The NSA and their ilk think they can take the knowledge of CS, and other aspects of information science, and use it against us. But what is preventing us from defending ourselves with that same knowledge? Surely…

Personally, I don't give a shit about a politican adultering. How did they vote when it came to my rights?

Yes I'd rather have a politician who regularly attended brothels than voted for SOPA. Raising alarm over OMG sex is a great way for media to control the dialog away from actual issues.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#162

Post by JanezStupar »

skeletonjelly wrote: post #155
JanezStupar wrote: post #140

I joined Facebook last year and my profile was 80% done and waiting for me to claim it. It was beyond creepy.

That is creepy. To be fair that 80% metric is something that Facebook has "measured" and told you, and is probably gear to coax people into finishing things that are unfinished. Some smart social engineering.

Oh no... 80% is my own estimate. I even had pictures of me in the gallery.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#163

Post by shocks »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #92
shocks wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can "disable" it through the Applications menu under Settings.

I had to uninstall updates (the option where disable normally is), and then I could go and disable it, weird. Thanks though, disabled and uses about 1/6 of the space of the updated one :)

Excellent. :) It's not the best solution, the best solution would be the ability to uninstall it completely, but it's better than nothing.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#164

Post by brymaster »

novum wrote: post #124
webvictim wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. However, I believe Facebook has a history that shows it repeatedly failing to be trustworthy enough to make those decisions.

> I believe Facebook has a history that shows it repeatedly failing to be trustworthy

You can say that again. Here's a great list from over the years: http://pleasedeletefacebook.com

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#165

Post by brymaster »

hyperplane wrote: post #129
kintamanimatt wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to Facebook[1], they exist to "give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected." 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…

Nope, Facebook is still in business to serve advertising. Their very long history of privacy snafus, especially Beacon, is quite indicative of this. Oh, and that part where they're a publicly traded company and 100% of their revenue comes from ads, user data being their product.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#166

Post by cJ0th »

jagira wrote: post #37

I wish Facebook fades into oblivion like Myspace.

In my opinion that is highly unlikely.

For one thing, myspace was largely a network of early adopters. Therefore it was not a surprise these people would look for something new soon.

For another thing, "everyone" is on facebook and thus it is not convenient to leave. Most people don't like change after all. We all know how long people stuck with IE6 (and that was just a browser).

I'd say we have 2+ decades of FB ahead of us.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#167

Post by narag »

kamjam wrote: post #110
reinhardt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LinkedIn's "people you may know" is notorious for its creepy accuracy. Not only colleagues, current and past, but friends, acquaintances, ex girlfriends, university professors, landlords, hairdressers and more.. The least paranoid explanation is that, unlike me and you, many others click "find my friends" and let LinkedIn slurp their thousand-entries address books.

I imagined so too, but what were they basing this match on? The people they were suggesting did not, or at least should not, have had this particular email address since it was created after I had worked with them. They only ever emailed (for group meetups/drinks) on my "personal" email address. Now I can recommendations for other people in the same company, previous colleagues who were at the same company at the sam…

The connection point might be your name.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#168

Post by dredmorbius »

VMG wrote: post #101
diydsp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If all companies are $q and the undesirable skill you have happens to be, oh, say, your skin color, ancestry, religion, or sexual preferences, things rather go out the window for you.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#170

Post by pdkl95 »

throwaway420 wrote: post #125
Raphmedia wrote: post #67

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…

This debate isn't about online ads or even spam anymore. 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…

> This debate isn't about online ads or even spam anymore.

While privacy and the mess regarding the NSA are problems, to be sure, I'd like to suggest the real problem with facebook is trying to be the ultimate middleman in society. They have the potential to become the worst "rent seeking" business we have ever seen.

Crap like their embed-in-any-webpage login and comment services are good examples of how they seduce people into their walled garden. I've already seen websites that only supported facebook logins, and one "trendy" restaurant in SF that only accepted their payment service.

Worst of all, most people seem to be able to separate the middleman threat (when it is acknowledged at all) from the privacy threat. Even when talking to friends that should know better (several engineers, one bio PhD), any time I bring up the subject. The response is _always_ something about how they don't give facebook their REAL information anyway or similar privacy-based argument. They are assisting in the creation of yet another long-term barrier-to-entry and can't even see it.

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