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24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

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Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#71
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit, it is not "completely voluntary". When everyone is using a communication service and there is no alternative. They claim to have a billion users. Short it is a monopoly, they have a lot of power and when you start to abuse it, like forcing users to accept your unfair terms of service, the government comes into play. I never heard that Google doesn't remove stuff when you remove them inside your service. The…

It is 100% completely voluntary. Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook. It is not even remotely close to the only communication service. I don't personally use Facebook and have no problem leading an active social and business life. Sure, a large portion of my friends use Facebook, but they also make phone calls, send text messages, email (through multiple different services), LinkedIn, Flickr, etc etc etc. So how do…

You are not using it? This is maybe the reason why you don't understand this.

For most people like me it is a tool to communicate to over 150 people and they expect me to have it. With most of them i can't communicate with mail any more.

Facebook himself says it's Messaging is replacing Mail for young people, now they have to act responsible about it.

It is like a telephone number you give to all your friends and someone says "Hey when you don't like something about it, just don't use it". You are invested in these things, it is not that easy.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#72
post #14

Maybe it's my unenlightened American perspective coming out here, but why is this a big deal? You chose to use the Facebook service, you chose to provide this information to them, and you chose to agree to their terms of service. Facebook isn't a government agency, it's a private organization that has persuaded people to give it armloads of data about themselves, and uses that for whatever completely legal purposes i…

The crux of the issue as far as I see it is that Facebook aren't exactly being open and transparent about the data that they're holding on you, or how it's being used. If you don't know that, there's no tradeoff being made. And in a lot of cases, there's data being gathered about people who haven't opted in.

Seriously, read through the list of complaints:

Shadow Profiles Facebook is collecting data about people without their knowledge. This information is used to substitute existing profiles and to create profiles of non-users.

Messages Messages (incl. Chat-Messages) are stored by Facebook even after the user “deleted” them. This means that all direct communication on Facebook can never be deleted.

Data Security In its terms, Facebook says that it does not guarantee any level of data security.

Applications Applications of “friends” can access data of the user. There is no guarantee that these applications are following European privacy standards.

I mean, really? None of these give you any pause for thought whatsoever?

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#73
post #31
post #14

Maybe it's my unenlightened American perspective coming out here, but why is this a big deal? You chose to use the Facebook service, you chose to provide this information to them, and you chose to agree to their terms of service. Facebook isn't a government agency, it's a private organization that has persuaded people to give it armloads of data about themselves, and uses that for whatever completely legal purposes i…

Spying on people is still evil if it is a government institution or a private one. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks People don't choose to be tracked on other websites by facebook. People don't even read the terms service. Most people just want to read what their friends write, and look at pictures of cats.

[deleted]

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#74
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why is nobody complaining about NTFS or ext3/4 not actually zeroing out the file space when you delete something, and instead just 'marking it deleted' or 'removing the pointer in the inode'? you have obviously never dealt with DoD or anybody close to it or even just with a serious enterprise/bank.

Actually, I have. Shredding, NIST, the whole nine. Facebook isn't protecting classified nuclear secrets, or the keys to the financial kingdom, it's protecting pictures of cats and drunk college parties. And outside of a few special places, such as the DoD, NOBODY CARES about the file system issues.

>...it's protecting pictures of cats and drunk college parties

While that summary is not incorrect, I think it's worth noting those pictures you mentioned are valued somewhere above $80,000,000,000 (http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/27/facebook-valuation-sharesp...) Maybe there's more to it than that.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#75

"So many people applied for their own CDs that Facebook had to send out an email indicating it was unable to comply with the requirement that it provide the information within a 40 day period." Has Facebook considered using benefits of modern technology and delivering the requested info electronically by, for example, setting up a web site where users could access/browse/download the requested info and may be even le…

The law requires they send a hard-copy. It's one of the little loop-holes.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#77
post #45
post #14

Maybe it's my unenlightened American perspective coming out here, but why is this a big deal? You chose to use the Facebook service, you chose to provide this information to them, and you chose to agree to their terms of service. Facebook isn't a government agency, it's a private organization that has persuaded people to give it armloads of data about themselves, and uses that for whatever completely legal purposes i…

Bullshit, it is not "completely voluntary". When everyone is using a communication service and there is no alternative. They claim to have a billion users. Short it is a monopoly, they have a lot of power and when you start to abuse it, like forcing users to accept your unfair terms of service, the government comes into play. I never heard that Google doesn't remove stuff when you remove them inside your service. The…

Completely off topic, but did you just link me to halfway though a you-tube video? That's Fantastic, ya lean somethin new every day.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#78
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is 100% completely voluntary. Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook. It is not even remotely close to the only communication service. I don't personally use Facebook and have no problem leading an active social and business life. Sure, a large portion of my friends use Facebook, but they also make phone calls, send text messages, email (through multiple different services), LinkedIn, Flickr, etc etc etc. So how do…

You are not using it? This is maybe the reason why you don't understand this. For most people like me it is a tool to communicate to over 150 people and they expect me to have it. With most of them i can't communicate with mail any more. Facebook himself says it's Messaging is replacing Mail for young people, now they have to act responsible about it. It is like a telephone number you give to all your friends and som…

>You are invested in these things, it is not that easy.

By analogy with predatory lending, i'd name it predatory social network lock-in. Hook 'em while they're young, while they don't know any better and while they not able to analyze consequences, ie. while they not able to make an informed decision.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#80
post #35

There are a few comments here questioning why it's really important to actually delete data. This is a serious issue for a few different reasons. If I believe that I've deleted something, then there should be no way for anyone to retrieve the information -- I no longer have to worry about security breaches at Facebook (internally or externally), Government warrants, or Facebook accidentally reinstating the informatio…

Facebook could make data removable by users if they engineered their site to allow that. The problem is that they haven't, and it appears they've in fact done the opposite. We need data protection laws like this to put the onus on the service providers to make giving users control of their data a priority.

Deleting data in a complicated system is not at all a trivial task as data integrity can easily be impacted. So Facebook's excuse that they can't delete data at their scale is probably not just PR speak. For them there is no downside to keeping data besides a minority of their userbase complaining. Meanwhile the downside to deleting data is potentially huge and a mistake would be nonrecoverable. I wouldn't expect them to start deleting data anytime soon unless legally required to do so. I do agree that the verbage used on their site should more accurately reflect the actions occuring on their backend.
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