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Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

nytimes.com

201–210 of 240 posts

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#201

I wish quite badly that the benefit of deactivating FB would outweigh the inconvenience, but FB has become such a mainstay that I'd lose touch with lots of people I really have no other way of contacting. I could say "good riddance," if there is no other way to contact them then perhaps they are not important enough to my life, but that's just not true. Or what about all the local forums (FB groups) in my city that h…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#202
post #157

Serious question, to where are companies who were previously dependent on FB moving their advertising and marketing?

That's a very good question. As a business owner, as far as I'm concerned I'm tied to Facebook. As someone who writes a local blog, Facebook is where I get most of my information about my city.

The Internet (and this thread) is full of people telling you to get off Facebook and go to something else, but especially for businesses, what else is there? I have thousands of followers on Facebook and Facebook drives 90% of the traffic to my site, meanwhile my email newsletter has 6 subscribers.

When I'm walking, I like to know where my next step is before I take it. Without that, shutting down Facebook means shutting down my business.

A lot of people here are telling me to take the step, but can anyone tell me where my foot is going to land when I do?

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#203
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. What upset me though was the conclusion that it's "impossible" to leave Facebook. Everything is possible, including walking instead of driving, not eating meat, etc. Some things are more inconvenient than others, but if convenience trumps everything and you can't accept to make any sacrifice whatsoever then maybe you deserve to be taken advantage of.

I wish there was a name for this fallacy because it comes up so often. When you have a systemic problem, you do not have a viable solution if your solution requires the conscientious choices of every affected individual. If that worked, we would have already solved car accidents (obey all the traffic laws!), suicide (don't kill yourself!), obesity (don't eat too much unhealthy food), debt (don't spend more than you m…

There probably is a term for it, and tragedy of the commons is pretty close to being appropriate

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you just figured this out now? This is like saying "wow, who knew we would get so fat by feeding only on pizza, hamburgers and coke, aren't those companies evil". No. Zeynep Tufekci (the author of the article) has written about this for years, including a book about social media in political movements ( Twitter and Tear Gas ), a popular TED talk ( https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...…

I just said this in another comment but it so belongs here, I'll try to say it in just one sentence: there was a feel-good narrative to Obama that's just impossible now.

So far, no POTUS' actions (taken as a whole) support a feel-good narrative. Unpleasant compromises, manipulation, and dishonesty may be inherent to winning a national election and then running a 330-million-person organization.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#205
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to good ol' emails? Serious question... Can't you organize amongst friends with emails? I hate to suggest Slack as well... But there are alternatives is the point... What about Meetup.com for bigger groups?

How old are you? I am asking because I remember full well the pre-facebook days when people would send around 'funny videos' to groups of friends, with no chance of opting out, getting your email address shared with people you don't know, filling your inbox with crap, etc... Something like FB is hundreds times more convenient

wat

It's insanely easier to filter those things out with email.

It's been years since I've used FB, but I don't recall any very good filters for those types of things, and in fact they are incentivized to show you more of them.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#206
post #66

> Facebook makes money, in other words, by profiling us and then selling our attention to advertisers, political actors and others. These are Facebook’s true customers, whom it works hard to please. And you just figured this out now? This is like saying "wow, who knew we would get so fat by feeding only on pizza, hamburgers and coke, aren't those companies evil". Well, yes, companies are evil. They don't work for you…

> Should we all just leave Facebook? That may sound attractive but it is not a viable solution. Leaving not just Facebook, but Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media of its ilk is an extremely viable solution. It's like quitting smoking. For the first month or so you feel off-kilter, but, after a while, you can't imagine going back. Life is quantifiably better without it. Realizing that I don't need up to the…

Your life might be better, but mine wouldn't be. I use FB to keep up with loved ones and discover local events. That's it. It's not toxic or upsetting to me. All news is filtered out of my timeline.

The privacy issues are my only motivation to quit, and between Google, LinkedIn/Microsoft, and FB, my privacy is irreparably fucked anyway, so it feels futile to try to fix it now.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#207
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untethered standalone VR devices are likely a prerequisite to any mainstream adoption and are shipping this year. Your guess is as good as mine if they will reach mass appeal, but to assume VR is not viable before these devices are available at low prices is probably wrong. The one to keep your eye on is the Oculus Go which is a self contained device for $199. (Also a Facebook product, probably going to have all this…

> Untethered standalone VR devices are likely a prerequisite to any mainstream adoption and are shipping this year Not good ones though. Any VR headset without positional tracking is essentially a google cardboard.

I don't agree with this sentiment. VR enthusiasts tend to cite 3dof tracking as a non-starter but I have seen enough evidence to suggest that 3dof head tracking is sufficient to deliver comfortable, long sessions for social VR applications. The reason 3dof is not a non-starter is because you can still interact with people in a very natural way in VR with these devices, and the low cost enables access to the experience for people who literally have no other means to interact with people in this way. For many social VR applications people simply need to be able to look at one another, make eye contact, and be able to explore a virtual space together. A 3dof head tracker with a 3dof controller, if comfortable to wear and easy to set up, can deliver this.

What is a non-starter are dropped frames, overheating, or other issues around comfort and ease of use. All of these are solved by Oculus Go (and a subset are solved by GearVR) in a way that are not solved by google cardboard. If a device can hold up for 60 minutes, doesn't hurt to wear, has no cables or messy setup steps, and includes asynchronous timewarp to generate missing frames, I believe that is a sufficient device that could takeover the market for a wide variety of communication use cases and is exactly what Oculus Go is the first to offer in full.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#208

In many cases, industry self-regulation can be a good solution to protecting customers from being wronged. PCI is a great example- there can be huge fines on merchants that don't meet strict regulations for handling customer financial transactions according to the strict standards set by PCI. What has become extremely clear from this situation is that we are far past the point of self-regulation being the answer for…

As someone who has worked with PCI compliance, I'm not sure I'd say it's a great example.

Sure, it's better than nothing, but it's also relatively trivial to bypass, and is done so regularly. I think the governing organization should have much sharper teeth.

That's not to say that self-regulating won't work, but I don't think PCI is a great example of it in action.

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems incredibly bizarre to me that the author says that. She lists all the privacy and user trust violations, future social health concerns, but then says leaving Facebook isn't viable? I have little faith in the US government regulating Facebook's privacy and data mining and even less faith that Facebook would take any action on behalf of its users privacy. Leaving Facebook is the only viable solution.

"Leaving" Facebook is close to impossible. They track you and keep a profile on you no matter what. Other than that, there's no competitor to Facebook that exists in the same market. My favorite stores and restaurants downtown have events and sales and information that is only on Facebook. Saying "just quit Facebook" is like saying "just stop making phone calls" or "just get rid of your mailbox" or "just stop reading…

> They track you and keep a profile on you no matter what.

This is only true because the voting US public believes it to be true.

Meanwhile, the EU simply wrote a law against it. Now any EU citizen can simply withhold consent, and if FB continues to process datasets with their PII they will be brought to court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

#210
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just said this in another comment but it so belongs here, I'll try to say it in just one sentence: there was a feel-good narrative to Obama that's just impossible now.

Obama had the Obama 2012 app ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nafYT7_i4as ). Anyone downloading it knew that the goal of it was to help get Obama elected. CA ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ ) tricked people into giving up their data and used it to spread targeted propaganda. How is this the same?

> Anyone downloading it knew that the goal of it was to help get Obama elected.

Was Obama 2012 restricted to collecting information of its downloaders? Or did it collect all of the downloaders' friends' information as well? Facebook certainly allowed for this (until 2014, that is).

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