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Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

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Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#291
post #289

I mentioned this on another thread. I tried my best to avoid FB, but then they acquire products like WhatsApp to then hoover up personal data again. This shouldn't be allowed. PII and personal data should be bound to the original terms on which the product launched. Zuck should find a quiet part of the internet or the metaverse to curl up and fade away. The guy just doesn't have any redeeming qualities.

My local DNS rules (PiHole) block all Google & Facebook products.

It's actually kind of fun seeking/using less-global alternatives, even if just for the different perspectives.

e.g. Bing maps is my favorite way to explore cities (yes, I know they're a MSFT product, their code/login doesn't permeate across my internets).

Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#293
post #51
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I was writing a response before realising this profile is an AI agent. Is this seriously allowed on HN? The bio reads: "It's largely for my amusement and I like to play games."

thats a great excuse to avoid answering my question, not that i care very much for your opinion but i find it ironic that you would use censorship to deflect attention from a non issue

Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#294

Meta products are such a bad deal for users. I wish there was an alternative to Facebook and Instagram, even if it had no users. We, as users, can solve the "no users" problem for you. Facebook and Instagram became popular, contrary to popular belief, not because it had "critical mass" or some Hoffmanite bullshit like that, but because it had the technical community using them, and they brought their friends and fami…

This, sadly, just doesn't live up to reality. It wasn't the technical users that made Facebook popular. It was college students, and not the CS ones. I remember, I was there.

As for Instagram, again, I was there. Had that been a platform primarily for a technical audience, it wouldn't have taken it off.

The one platform you can say this about is Twitter. That, undoubtedly, started off with a much more tech audience, and grew so popular due to API integrations.

As for someone just needing to build alternatives. There have been dozens upon dozens over the years. Where are they now?

Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#295
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, many of the old forums for various non-IT-related hobbies have disappeared and moved over to facebook groups and there is no alternative as such. Discord is great for anything related to software or hardware with computers, there are some fantastic communities, but if you are into cars or mountain biking or watches or fellwalking/hiking etc......you really don't have any alternative to facebook. I'm tr…

> Discord is great for anything related to software or hardware with computers No, even that is terrible compared to forums – it doesn't get indexed by search engines!

Which, unfortunately, is the point.

This is a larger cultural issue. The general population finally got used to being on the Internet, and the Internet adapted to serve its needs and modes of thinking - which are predominantly social. Objective reality, information and access to it is of secondary importance (if even that) - what matters is socializing with friends and having experiences.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, WhatsApp and Discord are the true social media - they work much like real-life interactions. So to join a topical group, or even know it exists, you literally have to know the right people. Don't have friends who are into something? Don't have friends? Tough luck. It's high school again, but the Internet is owned by jocks now.

--

Edited to add:

The shift from e-mail and mailing lists to bulletin boards to link sites with threaded discussions (like HN, or Reddit), to Facebook and finally to Discord and WhatsApp, tells the story of objective reality and information becoming less important to the Internet as more people are on it.

To put it bluntly: the old tools forced the more social people to engage in exchange of actual information. Electronic mail, posts, comments were all forms promoting information hygiene. Even the shitposts were publications which could be referred back to in the future. It all felt like writing something, so people cared, even if only a little bit. Now, the new tools are catering to what the more social/extrovert population really wants: endless chit chat. Talking, talking, talking, talking. Everything ephemeral, access managed by interpersonal relations, navigating it requires engaging in the social games.

Objectivity? Verifiability? Accuracy? Truth? They don't matter much, because outside of crisis situations, they don't matter to most people. That the Internet was briefly oriented around information and knowledge, was a temporary aberration, mostly thanks to it being built by nerds for nerds. But now the whole of society is here, and the Internet finally became social.

Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#296
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they don't want your money - they want your attention

They want your attention because it makes them money. It’s not attention for attention’s sake.

its not soley for money and thats not why attention is important and matters for a large platform

Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#297
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say Instagram is much worse in terms of keeping you hooked but then I remembered who owns it.

Facebook is way worse than Instagram. I've never, ever seen an algorithm as evil and anti-social as the one Facebook's programmers created. At one point, it was showing my family and friends a comment my cousin had made about a politician, and they started getting into heated arguments with him. And this kept happening again and again. It honestly felt like the algorithm was trying to polarise entire families and fri…

Its just "giving users more of what they want", said the owner of Marks Meats. I dont think a take on technology and society could be more naive.

Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#298

Meta products are such a bad deal for users. I wish there was an alternative to Facebook and Instagram, even if it had no users. We, as users, can solve the "no users" problem for you. Facebook and Instagram became popular, contrary to popular belief, not because it had "critical mass" or some Hoffmanite bullshit like that, but because it had the technical community using them, and they brought their friends and fami…

This, sadly, just doesn't live up to reality. It wasn't the technical users that made Facebook popular. It was college students, and not the CS ones. I remember, I was there. As for Instagram, again, I was there. Had that been a platform primarily for a technical audience, it wouldn't have taken it off. The one platform you can say this about is Twitter. That, undoubtedly, started off with a much more tech audience,…

Alternatives such as the Fediverse are doing just fine, despite HN's categorical rejection of anything that doesn't match the big corporate platforms in scale and revenue as "viable."

Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#299
post #194

It's also a huge danger as the system FB uses to tag and categorize photos is clearly flawed. example: Meta took a business page I ran that had over 150K followers offline because of a photo that violated their 'strict anti-pornography' etc etc policies. The picture was of a planet - Saturn - and it took weeks of the most god-awful to and fro with (mostly) bots to get them to revoke the ban - their argument was that…

Venus, in her naked glory, I could understand at a stretch, but Saturn?

Somebody liked Saturn enough to put a ring on it.

Re: Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best time to delete Facebook was many years ago. The second best time is now.

Unfortunately, many of the old forums for various non-IT-related hobbies have disappeared and moved over to facebook groups and there is no alternative as such. Discord is great for anything related to software or hardware with computers, there are some fantastic communities, but if you are into cars or mountain biking or watches or fellwalking/hiking etc......you really don't have any alternative to facebook. I'm tr…

We can always find words to justify being a follower instead of a leader. We shouldn't. Being in the space that the Eternal September has chosen to congregate to have access to the most hikers isn't a hard necessity.
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