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Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

righteousruminations.blogspot.com

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Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#51

Post by tzs »

> I hate that, if I somehow don’t want to consign my personal data, beliefs, preferences, relationships, work history, daily plans, and private messages to a massive advertising corporation, I have to risk missing out on seminal life events.

Why not have a Facebook account but only use it read-only for the most part? Nothing requires that you post your beliefs, work history, daily plans and such.

That's what I do. I do post a couple of times or so a year, just to keep the account looking used, but those posts are always just something innocuous. Usually just a link to something funny I saw on Reddit, but sometimes a photo or video of mine. The latest, for example, was a link to this video of several Chestnut-backed Chickadees that landed on my hand to eat peanuts out of my palm [1].

I do the same thing on Twitter.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShPgZhSbxU0 If you watch, I recommend a second viewing going frame by frame as they land and takeoff.

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#52

Post by bigiain »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
graeme wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even on iphone with content blockers running and location services disabled for most apps except while using? Referring to ad companies here, not NSA etc

Yep. Unless you disable your WiFi and only use a VPN while you are connecting to the web via your phone.

Even that doesn't solve the problem...

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/FCC-Mobile-Devices-iPhone-Andro...

"Devices that are not GPS-enabled must be tracked via triangulation with local cellular towers, a time consuming process that can only give an approximate location and can dangerously delay critical assistance. The new regulation will allow almost universal pinpoint location of 911 callers by emergency responders. No date was given for when non-GPS enabled devices must be discontinued, but given FCC estimates that by 2018, 75 percent of all mobile devices will be GPS capable, it is likely that the assumption is the sunsetting of obsolete devices will occur naturally as consumers chuck outdated gadgets for shiny new ones."

I'm really curious to know whether this means my iPhone will give up my GPS location against my preference setting if I call 911, or if it means the carriers are going to be required to improve non-gps derived location data from cell towers to "allow almost universal pinpoint location of 911 callers by emergency responders"...

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#53

Post by mung »

tunesmith wrote: post #4

Honestly, this is true even if you're on facebook, if the algorithms don't feel like putting the event in your feed.

Yes, exactly. You can sign up to Facebook, but you may not get the notifications you were expecting. You can even set up notifications via email or text message so that you don't have to log in to the site, but what you will get is a stream of of crap as a Facebook AI's feeble attempt to draw you back in to Facebook. But the notifications that you might actually want? Not so much. And even if you do they will be drowned in spam.

Also, in order to have got reunion messages from his school, he'd have to have 'liked' their page. It's kind of a dopey way to advertise a reunion really.

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#54

Post by glangdale »

I will say that if you are organizing an event on Facebook, and you actually have a list of people you'd like to see there or who should be there, then if you don't make an effort to contact the non-FB people, you're a bit of a jackass.

We put together a big list of people for a HS reunion, and used real-life social networks to (try to) reach the names that weren't on FB. Mostly successful and with a large nucleus who were on FB, easy to distribute the workload.

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#55

Post by Franciscouzo »

travv0 wrote: post #49
sparkie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every website you visit that has a Facebook beacon on it. They collect this even if you're not a Facebook user.

I've been aware of this for a while but haven't done anything about it, but since you mentioned it I might as well ask: Is there an easy way to block this beacon? Is it something an adblocker would block by default?

Most adblockers include a list that blocks those beacons by default, such as EasyPrivacy or Fanboy’s Social Blocking List.

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#56

Post by vanilla_nut »

tim333 wrote: post #37
vanilla_nut wrote: post #31

I really sympathize with statements like this: >I hate that, if I somehow don’t want to consign my personal data, beliefs, preferences, relationships, work history, daily plans, and private messages to a massive advertising corporation, I have to risk missing out on seminal life events. I feel very much the same way. Social media is a tool that we can use to make social interaction more convenient, but it should not…

I would have thought a simple solution to >I somehow don’t want to consign my personal data, beliefs, preferences, relationships, work history, daily plans, and private messages to a massive advertising corporation, I have to risk missing out on seminal life events Is just to have a facebook account with you name and picture and limit to that? Log in in an incognito window if you really don't want them to know what y…

A fair point, but I would rather they didn't have knowledge of my social graph at all. The minute I make an account, events, friend connections, private messages, and more all start aggregating there. Then you have to log in to check when you get messages and invites, and they know where you connected from and when you connected -- even more data.

And since Facebook is tracking the phone calls and text messages of at least some of my Android-using friends, there goes even more privacy, this time completely out of my control to keep private. Unfortunately Facebook is pretty good at being "sticky".

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#57

Post by ExcelSaga »

jakequade wrote: post #41
ExcelSaga wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that, if I somehow don’t want to consign my personal data, beliefs, preferences, relationships, work history, daily plans, and private messages to a massive advertising corporation, I have to risk missing out on seminal life events. Not being on Facebook is sort of like not having a cellphone. Sure, me and a small number of weirdos can opt out, but we are increasingly disadvantaged by it. I think that’s a good…

There's a huge leap between using the platform and giving them all of your data. Be restrictive around what you put up, and the permissions you give it. Sure, it's some measure of personal involvement, but it's necessary for the most basic of access. Shouldn't it also be the case that, if you're the one not on a widespread platform that - clearly - a lot of people are using to communicate, it's on you to make the eff…

It’s not about what you share. See responses to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675819

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#58

Post by rdiddly »

sandov wrote: post #12

You don't hate facebook. You hate people who think facebook = life.

Exactly what I was going to say. I'm disgusted with all the people who have sold themselves out so egregiously like so many cattle to the slaughter, and now even if they still remember there's a world outside Facebook, they are too lazy to care about it. Makes me not care about them either.

Bring your shitty butt-hurt downvotes.

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#59

Post by skinnymuch »

apo wrote: post #36

Not being on Facebook is sort of like not having a cellphone. As someone who has never had a cell phone, I can say that living this way in a first-world country is challenging. I've been in situations where it's assumed I do have a cell phone, and the result ranges from awkward to maddening for the other party. I also don't have a Facebook account. Not having a cell phone is much more troublesome. The pull of network…

You don’t even have a dumb or basic phone?

Re: Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

#60

Post by jacquesm »

hueving wrote: post #33
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Unless you disable your WiFi and only use a VPN while you are connecting to the web via your phone.

How does wifi impact it if location services are disabled? Or are you referring to apps that have permissions to list wireless networks?

You can safely assume the GPS coordinates of just about every WiFi egress IP address to be known.
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