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Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

dnalounge.com

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Re: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

#21
post #9

So we are tracked by facebook if we are logged in and see the like button on a different page. Does this mean that other sites are doing the same, if we see a button for their sites, like twitter or p interest? Or is facebook the main perpetrator here?

I don't know about Twitter or Pinterest's tracking, but I do know that most ad networks will also track you as much as they can between all the sites.

There are several products that help deal with this, but they don't get nearly enough attention. The one I'm familiar with is PrivacyFix [1], but there are several others that should also be investigated if this matters to you.

[1] https://www.privacyfix.com/start/install

Re: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

#22
post #6

I don't really get the pointed outrage. But this isn't hugely different than anything anybody else does. - Individual products like AdRoll and Perfect Audience let you track users and show them ads. Ever been to a site and had their ads pop up everywhere afterwards? Ever looked at a product then gotten ads for _just that product_? Yeah, that. - Google lets you track conversions based on a ton of information. What Goo…

Speaking of retargeting, something fascinating happened to me yesterday: I was using Chrome, and searched for some particular product (e.g. "buy [product] [city]" in the address bar) to see who had it locally available.

After opening a few tabs, I switched back to the address bar and started typing "[store name] " (where [store name] is a department store that sells all sorts of things.)

"[store name] [product]" was the very first suggested search result in the address-bar drop-down.

I don't think the suggested query service includes Adwords results. This would suggest, then, that Google added a retargeting feature for its own sake, to help users; or, in other words, retargeting is something that just falls out of optimizing suggestions for relevancy!

Re: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

#24
post #10
post #7

I don't like facebook either, but can't we just not use something without making a huge sensational scene about it? Also, for those whose eyes hurt from the matrix color theme the site uses, you can change the colors by opening up console and running: document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].setAttribute("style", "color: #333; background-color: #ddd");

Normally I'm in favor of the "don't use it, then" approach. But it doesn't work with Facebook, because you're on it whether you want to be or not. Even if you've studiously avoided using it, you most likely have friends who use it and have given Facebook enough knowledge to identify and track you.

True story. I created FB account in 2012 - when I needed to log in so I could access their API documentation.

And what did I find? There was a 90% complete profile waiting for me. All my friends were already lined up, my personal data was already there, my photos were already there.

And thus I learned to love the Big Brother.

Re: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

#25
post #20

If you feel trapped inside Facebook b/c your friends keep you there, you can start a Campaign for your favorite new/open social network on https://www.iWouldDo.it/ and start having your friends migrate. This new tool specifically offers a way to beat the "prison effect" of products that are subject to the network effect.

I still think it's futile for most people. Like a lot of other people, I begrudgingly use Facebook because it's an easy way to engage in "low priority" communication with lots of friends and family. Mass emails or texting is too demanding whereas the Facebook style of communication you can take or leave when you feel like logging in to read random posts.

The issue you touched on won't be easy to fight. I think that as long as these social platforms don't need to use any common protocol (like email), the natural state is to have a single major player with smaller ones maintaining pressure to improve and add new features.

I'm apparently one of the only people who likes Google+ for this sort of thing but no matter how hard I decided to bug and annoy people, there's no way I'd convince enough of them to migrate all of that stuff over there. Same goes for any other competitor. And unless you want to maintain redundant profiles for more effort (and more of the unavoidable marketing stuff) you can't just strike out on your own without defeating the purpose.

The fact that Facebook was the first to get your mom and your professor and your boss and your mailman to sign up means that they've got an incredible advantage. There's just no way to get that many people to opt into something else, especially as resistant to change as many are.

And unlike email, I can't just switch to G+ and keep bullshitting with my friends on Facebook like I switched to Gmail and kept emailing friends at Yahoo or Hotmail. Imagine if in order to change email providers, you had to convince everyone else to switch as well. We'd still be using our AOL addresses from 1993.

Re: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

#26
post #8

For the Like button issue, there's Shariff, which provides a privacy friendly social button bar: https://github.com/heiseonline/shariff It only tracks when you actually use the button. (also mentioned in the comments of the original article, but IMHO worth spreading)

There's also https://github.com/tfrce/social-buttons-server , from https://taskforce.is/

Re: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

#27
post #20

If you feel trapped inside Facebook b/c your friends keep you there, you can start a Campaign for your favorite new/open social network on https://www.iWouldDo.it/ and start having your friends migrate. This new tool specifically offers a way to beat the "prison effect" of products that are subject to the network effect.

I still think it's futile for most people. Like a lot of other people, I begrudgingly use Facebook because it's an easy way to engage in "low priority" communication with lots of friends and family. Mass emails or texting is too demanding whereas the Facebook style of communication you can take or leave when you feel like logging in to read random posts. The issue you touched on won't be easy to fight. I think that a…

> There's just no way to get that many people to opt into something else

Not in one day. It's always a process. And with a system like iWouldDo.it, you "switch hypothetically" (using a pledge with a condition) and when your condition is met (i.e. "Alice, Bob and Chris are ready to switch, too"), you switch for real. Which results in other peoples' conditions being met, which makes them switch as well, etc. etc.

Re: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

#28
post #7

I don't like facebook either, but can't we just not use something without making a huge sensational scene about it? Also, for those whose eyes hurt from the matrix color theme the site uses, you can change the colors by opening up console and running: document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].setAttribute("style", "color: #333; background-color: #ddd");

That makes a great bookmarklet, thanks!

> I don't like facebook either, but can't we just not use something without making a huge sensational scene about it?

We are social creatures who could never survive alone without communicating information about how to interact with our environment. Cyberspace is now our environment.

Even that crazy Luddite in a cabin in the woods learned to skin a deer from his Grandpaw.

Re: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon

#29
post #6

I don't really get the pointed outrage. But this isn't hugely different than anything anybody else does. - Individual products like AdRoll and Perfect Audience let you track users and show them ads. Ever been to a site and had their ads pop up everywhere afterwards? Ever looked at a product then gotten ads for _just that product_? Yeah, that. - Google lets you track conversions based on a ton of information. What Goo…

> I get that it's kind of scary, but it's not just Facebook,

It's scary because it is unregulated, automated harassment. What if you have compound PTSD? Does google know what to remind me of and what not to?

> digital equivalent of reading body language on people in your store.

Yes, data is the body language of the digital world. Thank you, that is the perfect equivalent.

It's not 100% reliable, and an intelligent person has the capacity to subvert it, in order to establish their own personal privacy.

I care more about intellectual privacy than I do about any other form of it. If people believe it is 100%, then they have to prove telepathy exists.

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