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What should you think about when using Facebook?

veekaybee.github.io

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Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#41
post #38
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you trust anything by FB? Signal seems ok. Haven't looked too closely at it though.

Whatsapp adopted Signal's security mechanism last year. https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

That's good. But FB ownership is black clouds in the sky...

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#42
post #21

Can someone make a browser plugin that will send fake data to facebook? Instead of hiding your own behavior, might as well poison their database.

I like this idea (a sort of adnauseum for facebook) but I wonder how trivial it would be for facebook to filter out obviously random/fake/noisy data given the mammoth set of real data they already have. Maybe introduce some more subtle off-by-one errors into their data or just make it a tiny bit fuzzier? Hopefully one wouldn't need a detailed knowledge of their data structures to do something impactful, although the…

Yeah some kind of slow incremental behavior shift towards something would be more insidious. Maybe allow the user to define a rotating theme of the week. This week I like dinosaurs, so the plugin will slowly ramp up dinosaur related behaviors (whatever that may mean :)). Next week I like unicorns...etc.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#43

This is an excellent blog post, though it made me sick reading it. I recently made the switch. I went from trying to limit how much I log in (to once or twice a week), to actually not logging in. I've been cold-turkey for two months (except for a couple of times when I had a very specific reason to check something). I thought it would be difficult. Turns out it's not so hard, and it's the fear of reduced social conta…

I found it interesting for the opposite reason: I've avoided Facebook up to now, but there are enough inconveniences that my resistance is wearing down.

They might be clunky, but I'm sure there are adequate means of doing everything you'd want to do.

The problem many people have is convenience. For example if you are forced to use Facebook in order to log into a Hotel Wifi (as I recently was) then you have to say "I don't want the Wifi more than I want to log in with Facebook". It's not an essential.

Or, it might be more difficult to spend the effort keeping in touch with people on a personal level, but it's not impossible. It just doesn't have the convenience that Facebook gives. But it also doesn't have the costs.

I'm not trying to convince anyone. But I do find it increasingly interesting (as I pay more attention to it) how many people confuse 'convenient' for 'essential'.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#44
Last week I permanently deleted my FaceBook account. All my data since 2007 (10 years) and friends gone. Well...apparently my data is still somewhere to be used as metadata...

Still, I must say, this was a liberating experience. I don't go there anymore to see another cat/new born/fake news posts. I don't get get angry with dumb comments. I don't have to see at my friends are eating, selfies, etc..

My closest friends and family are reachable one whatsapp/imessage/phone call away. The other hundreds "friends" I had on FB, I don't even remember their names anymore...

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#45
Does anyone have suggestions or best practices for using facebook securely (ie to maintain an account but not let it be linked w/ all of your other browsing activities)? I was thinking something like hosting a hardened/non-fingerprintable browser from a VPS/cloud provider somewhere and only using that to interact with the site.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#46
post #36

Genuine question : do you think a privacy oriented social network where users pay a small annual fee (around $5) would work? Think Whatsapp (use phone number as an id, no native discovery, only connect through phone contacts, encrypted user data only to prevent database leaks from causing damage) + Facebook (feed like feature, share photos, videos, direct messaging, group messaging). No user tracking, no ads, just a…

I don't think you can get such a service for "average joes."

Though...Bloomberg Chat meets your criteria (ex-fee). It consists of ~300K financial users who pay ~$25K/year/terminal. Many argue this is the killer feature of Bloomberg. I agree. It's like an exclusive, digital country club.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#47
post #4

I treat everything I do on Facebook as public and permanent information. With that mindset the experience is rather pleasant.

Not public, privately own by facebook (and partners and clients) and aggregated with everything that is actually public and every other privately own data they could gather.

Then used to target you in every possible ways.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#48
post #36

Genuine question : do you think a privacy oriented social network where users pay a small annual fee (around $5) would work? Think Whatsapp (use phone number as an id, no native discovery, only connect through phone contacts, encrypted user data only to prevent database leaks from causing damage) + Facebook (feed like feature, share photos, videos, direct messaging, group messaging). No user tracking, no ads, just a…

Not a chance. You want people to pay for that ? Even free alternative social networks like Diaspora or Ello failed to gain any traction. The network effects are just too strong.

The next wave that will eventually unseat Facebook (the product) will have to be something entirely different. And it might even come from Facebook (the company).

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#49

Does anyone have suggestions or best practices for using facebook securely (ie to maintain an account but not let it be linked w/ all of your other browsing activities)? I was thinking something like hosting a hardened/non-fingerprintable browser from a VPS/cloud provider somewhere and only using that to interact with the site.

Noscript can block js from Facebook, except when you're on Facebook.com.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#50

This is an excellent blog post, though it made me sick reading it. I recently made the switch. I went from trying to limit how much I log in (to once or twice a week), to actually not logging in. I've been cold-turkey for two months (except for a couple of times when I had a very specific reason to check something). I thought it would be difficult. Turns out it's not so hard, and it's the fear of reduced social conta…

I did something similar. I deleted the facebook app from my phone (originally due to battery usage). Then eventually I deactivated my account. I believe I have been facebook free for two weeks.
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