31–40 of 85 posts
I'm malicious, so I wouldn't actually delete my account. I'd just gradually falsify all my information. That way they don't get any data mining benefit from my account, in fact, their data collection is being confounded by it. ;)
With the possible drawback that anyone who you're connected to thinks that you're becoming a Belgian monk with a goat fetish.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Don't you think you should be entitled to earn some of that money that Facebook is making off of your information?" Out of curiosity, do you hold AdSense to the same standard? After all, a pixel and a cookie on 70% of websites by hit is being used to infer your interests, location, demographics, and purchasing history, all so ads can be better targeted at you. Why is it more shady for Facebook to do this with inform…
If I'm reading a magazine that has advertisements that is fine. They help cover the costs of production. If I join a club and they sell my information (where I live, who referred me, what actions I perform in the club) to another company that is an entirely different matter. Tracking via cookies/pixels,etc is getting pretty invasive too. When google does it, it is just as bad. Look at Buzz, have we already forgotten…
I agree, and it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand: facebook does not do this, and never has.
Don't just tell me what you're collecting, and what you do in abstract terms, show me exactly what you have and how you use it. If you have data on the frequency with which I visit friend's profiles, I should be able to see it. If you have data on external links that I've followed, I should be able to see that too. I should be able to see the amount of time I spend logged in, if they track that.
Everything. There should be not one thing that is not available to me through the basic interface. It doesn't have to be on the front page, but there should be an interface and you shouldn't have to be a developer to know how to use it.
I would always favor a company that was open about every piece of data that it held about me, AND everything it did with that data.
I'm malicious, so I wouldn't actually delete my account. I'd just gradually falsify all my information. That way they don't get any data mining benefit from my account, in fact, their data collection is being confounded by it. ;)
EDIT:
You know, in the last day I've changed my mind on this deletion thing. I have my own domain name in the form firstnamelastname.com, and with all the will in the world, Facebook can be such a timewaster. Maybe I should just put up a little contact form on my website so anyone who doesn't have my email/number can contact me and be done with it. I don't want to have to dig through a load of obscure privacy settings every time there's a tweak to the site.
I'm malicious, so I wouldn't actually delete my account. I'd just gradually falsify all my information. That way they don't get any data mining benefit from my account, in fact, their data collection is being confounded by it. ;)
With the possible drawback that anyone who you're connected to thinks that you're becoming a Belgian monk with a goat fetish.
Which is fine, because with the new tools they're coming close to the position where an app can get so much data that it'll be possible for a competitor website to allow you to authorise it to import everything from Facebook -- friends list and all.
On that day there'll be a huge opportunity for someone to start a site offering to be what Facebook used to be: a truly private yet still social network.
A few pledges not to ever force you through hoops to try and retain your privacy, to never make your baby pictures public by default, and to never share your data, and there will be more than enough switchers to get the new place up and running.
Can't wait, tbh.
FB is ingenious in how it leverages three amazingly powerful forces: Advertisers, individuals' Ego, and Group Psychnology (put more bluntly, herd mentality). FB and the Advertisers are harvesting value from the herd, day after day. Brilliant (I'm not being facetious....this time).
They're estimating $1B or so in revenue for 2010, that sounds like a lot of money, but that's an ARPU of about $2 or so -- most real businesses do 50 times that.
I don't begrudge them finding some way to get value out of their community, otherwise they'll be a day when they can't afford to run it, or decide to scale it down to something much smaller but much more profitable.
Any alternative offering is going to face the same problems; it's tough to monetize social traffic; I know sites that have incredible user engagements for communities in the 50k user range, but can't scratch together $800 a month to pay for the servers, never mind to pay for anybody's time to develop and maintain the system.
You've just arbitrarily illustrated their trend towards fewer privacy restrictions in a way that will certainly sway people to your argument but only represents your sentiments and nothing concrete about the actual situation.
While I agree with your argument, this really bugs me, particularly in dealing with the audience you've chosen to address and the false authority it might lend you to those outside of it.