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Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

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Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#241

Post by PeanutCurry »

Deimorz wrote: post #9

Personally, I think Google is just as terrifying, possibly more. As an example, just take a fairly normal life situation like going out for dinner with some friends, and think about how much of it goes "through" Google: --- One of your friends sends an email to 6 others, to ask if everyone's free for dinner on Friday. 5 of the 7 people involved use gmail or a google apps address. You've never heard of the restaurant…

I mean this without any intention to be rhetorical, but, how common is sending emails to plan an event? For anyone I meet in real life I either talk to them in real life, message them on discord, or call them on the phone. I've got nothing against email, I use it for a lot of things, but it's just too sluggish for event planning in my experience. Occasionally I might use facebook but that's for big consistent events like hosting a yearly get together because I live closest to a fairly big convention that happens in my city.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#242

Post by thrwyqwerty »

xj9 wrote: post #120
lobotryas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google can be as evil as Facebook Personally I believe Google _IS_ much worse than FB for one simple reason: it's much easier to avoid FB than Google. With FB the story is simple. You'll miss out on some news/invites from FB-centric friends, but it's pretty easy to go without (or to even find new friends who aren't as hooked on FB as needed). "Avoiding" Google in your daily life is much, much harder. Their free mai…

it really isn't that hard to get away from GOOG I run copperhead on a nexus device (no gapps) use fastmail for email contacts and calendars duckduckgo for search plex and icecast for media matrix for chat mastodon for social media fix standard notes for note taking YouTube is a challenge, but you can always use youtube-dl and watch via plex asynchronously the only missing but for me is replacing photos. Plex does and…

Newpipe is a great Youtube alternative for Android. You can download it from the Fdroid repo.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#244

Post by nebabyte »

lucaspiller wrote: post #209
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you but the state police and most toll road authorities have put an entire network of cameras on every major interstate and road system to be able to track cars.

Even outside the US this is true. I live in Lithuania and a couple years ago I started noticing cameras along the side of most highways. They've now started using them to enforce average speeds, but to everyone here it should be pretty clear they are tracking the movements of vehicles (whether intentional or not is a different question). A lot of other European countries have automated toll roads (sometimes just for…

One of the upshots at least of living in countries other than America that follow its worst practices are that they're generally much worse in execution, i.e. they end up making it obvious

So that's good at least

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#245

Post by nebabyte »

hutzlibu wrote: post #102

I wonder how many people who write about big brother and 1984, have actually read the book. Because I live a life without facebook. In 1984 there was no opt-out - full violent dominant controll, all the time. Also over the thoughts. We are maybe beeing spied on a lot, by many different organizations - but I am not going to torture/brainwashed camp, because I THINK xxx is bad. I can also say it. So continue to critici…

Outer Party members (Winston) had their opinions controlled. No one cares about what the proles think.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#246

Post by hutzlibu »

nebabyte wrote: post #245
hutzlibu wrote: post #102

I wonder how many people who write about big brother and 1984, have actually read the book. Because I live a life without facebook. In 1984 there was no opt-out - full violent dominant controll, all the time. Also over the thoughts. We are maybe beeing spied on a lot, by many different organizations - but I am not going to torture/brainwashed camp, because I THINK xxx is bad. I can also say it. So continue to critici…

Outer Party members (Winston) had their opinions controlled. No one cares about what the proles think.

Yes, proles and animals were free, but right and powerless. So they could also be killed for whatever reason. (did not happen in the book, because the proles did not matter). But you could not choose to be a prole. If you were a common outer party member - you could not change, even if you wanted to be a prole.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#247

Post by gaius »

dTal wrote: post #90
aphextron wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no evil overlord at the top of either company (I hope) We'll have to disagree here. I think Zuckerberg is an evil, amoral person to his core. This hardly needs reposting, but I can't recall Brin or Page ever going on the record calling their users "dumb fucks".[0] [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/embarrassing-and-damaging-zuc...

Sure. And former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously remarked on the subject of privacy, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Whatever you think of the people, corporations are not people and their behaviour is only partially directed by them. The most reliable predictor of their direction is their bottom line, and the intelligence of the people…

"Do know evil" is a better motto for them.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#248

Post by gaius »

leereeves wrote: post #121
aphextron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conclusion I've come to regarding Google is that you just have to accept it for now. The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Google search is an order of magnitude above the competition. There is no serious alternative to Google maps. The level of integration that Google Calendar has with practically everything…

> There is no serious alternative to Google maps. On an extended road trip last month I used both Google maps and Apple maps and found them roughly equivalent.

Here (formerly Nokia) is very good. Bing maps is perfectly adequate.

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#249

Post by ryukafalz »

AlexandrB wrote: post #158
glibgil wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn this off. You don't need to ask your friends to stop. https://www.facebook.com/help/187272841323203

I'm willing to bet the difference is purely cosmetic. Facebook likely still runs facial recognition on all uploaded photos even if it doesn't suggest tags.

Not only that, they need to do facial recognition for that setting to work.

>When you turn off tag suggestions, Facebook won’t suggest that people tag you in photos that look like you.

Otherwise, how would they know it looks like you?

Re: Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook

#250

Post by gaius »

codyb wrote: post #31
Deimorz wrote: post #9

Personally, I think Google is just as terrifying, possibly more. As an example, just take a fairly normal life situation like going out for dinner with some friends, and think about how much of it goes "through" Google: --- One of your friends sends an email to 6 others, to ask if everyone's free for dinner on Friday. 5 of the 7 people involved use gmail or a google apps address. You've never heard of the restaurant…

It's pretty incredible. Search history and e-mail alone almost certainly reveal staggering amounts of personal information about most people. I try to "spread" my data. Apple for maps/messaging/photos, Signal, DuckDuckGo, Gmail, and primarily private tab web surfing. I also use different browsers for different concerns. And of course ad blockers although I'm not sure I've installed them everywhere. With my lack of so…

t's pretty incredible. Search history and e-mail alone almost certainly reveal staggering amounts of personal information about most people

And if you are foolish enough to use 8.8.8.8 for your DNS, they get every site you visit, every network activity requiring a lookup in fact, even where you SSH to.

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