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A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

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51–60 of 76 posts

Re: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

#51

My favourite bit: "As we build our infrastructure around the world, we've chosen not to build data centers in countries that have a track record of violating human rights like privacy or freedom of expression." Facebook is literally built on violating user privacy.

So not in America. Or Britain. Or Germany.

Where are those data centers? Switzerland?

Re: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

#52

Let's say Facebook actually pulls this off. They deliver a privacy-focused social media platform. It's used by billions of people, daily. How do they make money off it? If everything is encrypted, they cannot have targeted ads. They can't read the data to push ads for different demographics. Personally, I think a (more) private social network is a great idea. But I don't see how Facebook's financial incentives align…

Do you think this privacy-oriented platform will be free?

I think it'll be: free Facebook is old Facebook (we will own your data) .. profit-Facebook is new Facebook (pay us to keep your secrets) ...

Re: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

#53
I applaud this vision, but Facebook is not the one to do it. They have gone too much in the other direction over the years.

I believe the main problem is the lack of GOOD SOFTWARE alternatives to facebook and google. How would you collaborate on a document without google docs? Or share videos without YouTube or Facebook? We have all the hardware we need but not the software. And I mean this in a big way: we don’t even have consumer software for local area networks anymore!

Watch this and let me know what you think:

https://youtu.be/OzXnVSZbvAw

Re: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

#55
post #10

The man needs to hire a copy editor. My girlfriend would have that down to 70% of its current length on the first pass.

This was my thought too, it sounds like something written for Wikipedia Simple English.

Given Facebook's massively global user base, it's not unlikely that it was edited to have a similar style as Wikipedia Simple English.

Re: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

#57
post #51

My favourite bit: "As we build our infrastructure around the world, we've chosen not to build data centers in countries that have a track record of violating human rights like privacy or freedom of expression." Facebook is literally built on violating user privacy.

So not in America. Or Britain. Or Germany. Where are those data centers? Switzerland?

Switzerland’s neutrality is entirely self serving, and they seem to have no problems with taking stolen assets from monsters if it makes them money.

Switzerland: “We don’t violate human rights, but we’re the bankers for those that do.”

Re: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

#58

Let's say Facebook actually pulls this off. They deliver a privacy-focused social media platform. It's used by billions of people, daily. How do they make money off it? If everything is encrypted, they cannot have targeted ads. They can't read the data to push ads for different demographics. Personally, I think a (more) private social network is a great idea. But I don't see how Facebook's financial incentives align…

Do you think this privacy-oriented platform will be free? I think it'll be: free Facebook is old Facebook (we will own your data) .. profit-Facebook is new Facebook (pay us to keep your secrets) ...

This isn't going anywhere :

People that don't "care" -in the sense HN does- about privacy will stay in the free tier. Why should they pay now?

People that do care have either stopped using the platform or will be not be trusting FB enough to bother.

Re: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

#59

Let's say Facebook actually pulls this off. They deliver a privacy-focused social media platform. It's used by billions of people, daily. How do they make money off it? If everything is encrypted, they cannot have targeted ads. They can't read the data to push ads for different demographics. Personally, I think a (more) private social network is a great idea. But I don't see how Facebook's financial incentives align…

They can still target ads, just not on the content of the messages. A lot of people put their birthdays and genders and like lots of brands on Facebook.

Re: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking

#60

I missed the section on: Advertising Profiles People expect that if they don't have a Facebook account we aren't mining their friends' address books to build profiles of them that can't be erased because they aren't our customers. We are sorry that we did that and after deleting them earlier this morning we will no longer operate that way... (not a quote, just what I'd like to have seen)

They'd never agree to delete their shadow profiles though. The thing about facebook is that they have over a billion users and information probably about another billion non-users.
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