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Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

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Re: Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

#71

Post by eertami »

orthoganol wrote: post #43

I find it hard to grasp why any intelligent individual who knows what goes on with Facebook would still voluntarily remain on Facebook. "Ah but the social ostracization!", seemingly the main reason why otherwise intelligent, informed people do stay on Facebook, just doesn't hold up anymore, as too many cool, socially active 20-somethings I know or are acquainted with have moved off of Facebook, mostly in last 1-2 yea…

What are the downsides to using Facebook as a communication tool? I have: a fake email, a fake name, no mobile number attached and I don't post statuses.

Facebook groups and messages however are just so incredibly convenient and ubiquitous that you won't be able to convince entirely separate groups of people to leave and use a service you mandate - unless you are friends with solely technical people.

Could I be a member of the groups and organizations I am without being in the Facebook groups? Sure - but it would inconvenience everyone, if there's a discussion in a group, and someone tags me to get my opinion on something, I can fire back a reply. They don't have to call or email me separately.

Re: Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

#72

Post by corobo »

morganvachon wrote: post #67
corobo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know it and can prove it, it's not a secret. Advertisers definitely not secretly, you can easily see what information advertisers see at facebook.com/ads Facebook only knows what you are telling it, maybe don't announce your next bank robbery on your status update and you'll be alright

> Facebook only knows what you are telling it, maybe don't announce your next bank robbery on your status update and you'll be alright Right, because only criminals have something to hide. Maybe it's my generation, but I don't automatically trust Facebook (or the government for that matter, hello IRS) with the safety and security of my personal information. There are plenty of bad actors out there who can take my per…

That was my point made with an exaggerated example. If you don't want Facebook knowing where you work, where you went to school, etc - Don't give Facebook that information.

If that means you don't want to give Facebook anything at all, you're allowed to do that too. Don't register an account, block their domains with your hosts file, block their networks with your firewall.

Re: Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

#73

Post by morganvachon »

corobo wrote: post #72
morganvachon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook only knows what you are telling it, maybe don't announce your next bank robbery on your status update and you'll be alright Right, because only criminals have something to hide. Maybe it's my generation, but I don't automatically trust Facebook (or the government for that matter, hello IRS) with the safety and security of my personal information. There are plenty of bad actors out there who can take my per…

That was my point made with an exaggerated example. If you don't want Facebook knowing where you work, where you went to school, etc - Don't give Facebook that information. If that means you don't want to give Facebook anything at all, you're allowed to do that too. Don't register an account, block their domains with your hosts file, block their networks with your firewall.

I think it was a hostile way to make your point, that's what I was calling out. You basically said "if you have something to hide, you're a criminal". There are better ways to get your point across.

Re: Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

#74

Post by corobo »

morganvachon wrote: post #73
corobo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my point made with an exaggerated example. If you don't want Facebook knowing where you work, where you went to school, etc - Don't give Facebook that information. If that means you don't want to give Facebook anything at all, you're allowed to do that too. Don't register an account, block their domains with your hosts file, block their networks with your firewall.

I think it was a hostile way to make your point, that's what I was calling out. You basically said "if you have something to hide, you're a criminal". There are better ways to get your point across.

Fair comment, I'll take that on board when making future points

Re: Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

#78

Post by darklajid »

lmm wrote: post #63
darklajid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a rather harsh argument and we could (not trying to derail this) proceed and say the same thing about people that use Google products, Twitter, WhatsApp, 'the cloud' etc. - and in the end we'll finally agree with Stallman. I don't have a Facebook account and have to admit that I never truly understood the benefit, the appeal. It seemed full of ads, games, random pictures and without structure - i.e. you might…

> Plus, as soon as email isn't a suitable format to exchange information, I have the impression that the communication is either too broad (shout to the public) or trivial (one liners about nonsense). I don't get it. What do you do when you want to organize a party/group trip to a concert/etc. and invite several people? * Email and reply-all? This means you annoy people who can't make it (they keep seeing all the rep…

Not sure if your question was real or merely a set-up for your bullet points. If the former:

Email. I don't tend to organize things with dozens of people on the list (for that I might be convinced that random mail threads might become cumbersome - I'm not convinced that FB is a solution!). If I want to go to a concert and discuss that with I don't claim that you make this issues up or that these things cannot be a nuisance for some people. I .. just don't have these problems, mails work just fine in all cases here.

I agree that a calendar is missing. I tend to use various things for that and don't have a good solution for this so far. Most of the time it's probably 'no calendar' and only a poll of sorts (think doodle or something similar).

Re: Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

#79

Post by tdkl »

lmm wrote: post #63
darklajid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a rather harsh argument and we could (not trying to derail this) proceed and say the same thing about people that use Google products, Twitter, WhatsApp, 'the cloud' etc. - and in the end we'll finally agree with Stallman. I don't have a Facebook account and have to admit that I never truly understood the benefit, the appeal. It seemed full of ads, games, random pictures and without structure - i.e. you might…

> Plus, as soon as email isn't a suitable format to exchange information, I have the impression that the communication is either too broad (shout to the public) or trivial (one liners about nonsense). I don't get it. What do you do when you want to organize a party/group trip to a concert/etc. and invite several people? * Email and reply-all? This means you annoy people who can't make it (they keep seeing all the rep…

From my experience this is all depends on people in question. We've been experimenting in my circle of friends of about 20-30 people over these years with trying different solutions for event invitations : email, g+ events, FB events, SMS, various chat services.

The outcome was that some people simply aren't reliable to follow up if they're fine with the event terms or not, no matter what medium. It's not a tech problem, it's a people problem and everyone's responsible.

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