I remember reading this when it was originally posted years ago and have had time to think about the implications. I am just over 40, so most of my class reunions were organized through Facebook and was amazed at the turn-out possible because of these new social networks. For my mother, there were simply people she no longer knew how to reach — including one of her best friends from childhood. Years went by until Facebook gained traction and they were reunited.
The point being, it is just as likely that the writer of this post wasn’t left out any more than he would have been in the past. What has possibly changed is that a funeral lightly attended by only a few in the past could now reach the many. In the past, he would have missed hearing about the death and would have missed the funeral. In the present, the same thing happened but now feels left out.
It’s a benefit to the mother who lost her child, but a detriment to the friend who feels left behind.
The problem is one of counterfactuals. Given the growth of the internet, something that provides the value of Facebook to people was inevitable. What wasn't inevitable was that it take on the form of a centralized service that ended up enveloping the world. In the past, centralized services gave way to shared internet protocols before they reached the size and scale Facebook has.
There are certainly other paths the world could have taken where such power and control would not be in the hands of one company (and one person, really) but that's not what happened and it's worth lamenting if you believe the problem of "keeping friends connected through the internet" could have taken on radically different forms.
I am around your age, and my 10 year reunion had its own domain name and website (still up - not sure who is paying for it or hosting), but my most recent reunion (20 year) was only on Facebook, and since I have never had a Facebook account, I did not find out until about a week beforehand (second-hand from a friend who was not attending).
Please be aware, this is a cohort that has mostly been together since elementary/middle school, learned Logowriter together, and had an HTML CD-ROM yearbook.
Facebook has made everybody lazy and cheapened our relationships.
> The point being, it is just as likely that the writer of this post wasn’t left out any more than he would have been in the past.
Although this may apply to OP's problem(s), it's not really the case everywhere. I'll give you two counterexamples:
1) A friend of mine is required to have a facebook account for school (woodworking trade school). They say "you can always create one with a fake name" but that's obviously a TOS violation and may cause the account to be deleted at any time (making schoolwork really difficult).
2) My basketball group has decided to organize things on WhatsApp, again requiring you to accept FB's EULA. I refuse to do so, which results me in missing quite a few occasions to play and finding myself alone in the gym when practice has been called off.
Neither of these things were done on facebook in the past. Yes, it might be more convenient to do so (for the organizing party) but it'll leave a bunch of people out who refuse to sign carte blanche EULA for a company that preys on our personal information and influences our voting behavior.
Both of these cases are examples where email or phone would be acceptable, but it's (only) slightly more convenient to use social media for those who are a part of it.
Agreed. Furthermore, Facebook doesn't require your work history or any of the other things the author claims is it's blood payment cost of entry. Last I checked it needs a valid email address, name, and password.
I've stripped most of my personal information off Facebook and now just use it as a messaging app and a "find me by name" sort of internet yellow pages thing.
Facebook's primary feature is a newsfeed which uses an algorithm to shape and influence who you ultimately interact with. If you consign your interpersonal relationship to Facebook's algorithms then it has become normal for facebook's algorithm to shape and control the opinions and relationships of people en-masse.
Whether you consider facebook's algorithms benevolent or not, the danger actually lies in the fact that people's opinions and friendships are not forming in a more natural and organic way. If relationships and opinions are shaped by an algorithm from a single source, it's more prone to failure, influence, if not by malevolence than by simple incompetence of not knowing the macro effects of a line of code applied to hundreds of millions of people.
Right. Features are for customers. Facebook's primary feature is ubiquitous surveillance of 2 billion users. The newsfeed is a use of that feature, where advertisers and "Facebook partners" can pay to manipulate targeted portions of those 2 billion users.
To Facebook _users_, the newsfeed is just a gimmick they use to get you to reveal more about you and your friends/connections than you would otherwise.
A few months ago I won about $200 worth of Amazon gift card codes. Since nothing from Amazon delivers to my country I decided to give them to an American friend of mine. I remember it was late for him when I sent him the codes over Facebook so he only used up one right away and then went to sleep.
The next morning, however, the other coupons were all used up. He claims nobody else has access to his FB messages and I never bothered to actually check the validity of the codes on Amazon, so there is enough room for plausible deniability, but this coincided in time with this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/79x7u3/facebook_em... and now there's that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that some underpaid 3rd world facebook employee read through the messages and decided to use the codes themselves.
I don't know, this is all probably a stretch, but that moment reached a new low for Facebook in my mind (not that my opinion of them was high before).
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.
I empathize a lot with this guy. I wanted to share my recent story:
I unfollowed every single person and page I'm connected to on Facebook a month and a half ago.
Every time I look at a Facebook there's just about no value. My feed is empty. Nevertheless, I'll visit it by habit. It's weird to see how that persists.
I am not posting (never really did anyway), and I have no idea what's going on with the people I didn't really interact with that much anyway.
What put me over the edge was answering the question: "Does anyone that I deeply care for post anything (at all)?"
Answer for 90% was no. And there rest I still have phone/text to communicate.
This has all made me consider what relationships in my life are important. And it's made me consider how susceptible I was to a fine-tuned algorithm hungry for outrage and virality, and how that influenced my relationships and myself.
I feel great opting out. I hope to fully delete the whole thing soon. Weird that I can't just do that.
I remember when I tried to do the same thing three years ago (the year before I deleted my account) – Unfollow every person. AFAIK I had 600+ contacts.
What was funny, after ~300 clicks I got the captcha to fill and 14 clicks later week block with a message: "This is not a proper using of the function". Also, FB was hypocritical. It allowed me to click to follow again, just unfollow was blocked. :-)
I did the same thing: Unfollowed everybody except for the people I truly cared about. Needless to say the news feed wasn’t nearly as full, and a lot of the content was redundant because I had a real “off network” relationship with the people I still followed. It became unnecessary to check Facebook at this point, and now I rarely log in, if at all.
I also highly recommend curating who you follow, you may realize you don’t need FB after all.
You don't have to delete it. I signed in my Facebook account for a first time in about 5 years, and find I lose nothing. I did not unfollow anyone I followed, and spent 5 minutes reading about some recent news, feeling guilty of wasting that time.
> Every time I look at a Facebook there's just about no value. My feed is empty. Nevertheless, I'll visit it by habit. It's weird to see how that persists.
> 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.
This captures perfectly my reasons for getting on Facebook in ~2007. One of my best friends had a baby and I was the only one who didn't know because I wasn't on there. I'd also been one of the last of my friends to get a cellphone 3 years before, and was starting to worry that I was just a jerk about keeping in touch.
It's really interesting to compare those two decisions now. The slider phone I got in 2003 was nothing like what we have today, but buying it let me participate in a communication ecosystem that's still evolving fast.
Facebook feels really stagnant by comparison. Its core mechanics, at least the ones I care about, are unchanged. Everyone's usage of it long ago stagnated into the same patterns. I still check it because I have to for life events, but it's not something I look forward to.
>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 replace real social interaction. Writing a letter, an email, calling a friend, or even sending a text should not be replaced by Facebook because it is ultimately a corporation that seeks to exploit those very interactions for its own profit through means you may not agree with -- that is, selling off your personal data to advertisers.
That being said, it's fine to use Facebook occasionally to check up on what's happening with your friends across the globe. But I really think that everyone should consider removing their "close" friends from Facebook and moving that communication to in-person talks, phone calls, or even text messages. If you're logging onto Facebook even once a day, you're playing into their psychological traps: it's probably best reserved for a lazy Sunday afternoon, something like how older folks treat email. You certainly don't need it on your phone.
If you're concerned that you'll lose friends by deleting your Facebook, you can always keep a Messenger account connected to your phone number and not miss out on group communications. If you're a mover and shaker in your social groups, try pulling your groups away from Facebook. Organizing an event? Offer to send out a mass email to people instead of using Facebook. Or text people yourself instead. Decoupling yourself from Facebook only gives you more power when they decide to do misbehave (do you really think this is the last or worse scandal we'll see from Zuck), and if you're really successful, your friend group will eventually start to realize that they don't need Facebook any more either. Everyone isn't going to delete their Facebook overnight, but if folks start to disconnect bit by bit we'll a) all be better off and have more future options when it comes to Facebook's manipulation and b) start to make Facebook less and less valuable, so eventually people won't even want to join in the first place. "What is an ocean... but a multitude of drops?"
>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 you are browsing?
On a related note. A couple of years ago I was really annoyed by all the notifications FB emailed me. I went to settings trying to change it so that FB only sends me emails if someone is tagging me or sending me a message. Maybe I'm stupid, I just couldn't figure it out. They made it so confusing and after a few attempts I just stopped receiving any notifications, missing out some important messages from people. I don't think it's just a bad UX (which it is). It's probably by design, intentionally making it hard for people to disconnect.
And as a counterpoint, I will say that after I deleted my Facebook, I feel a lot more connected to the people I do see, when I see them, because I cannot assume I know anything about their life, and, I have to, yknow, be present with them? i’m
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 effect doesn't just mean that people join for opportunity. If sufficiently insinuated into daily life, some become compelled to join out of necessity.
But with Facebook and Cell Phones, joining this club takes a major toll one's privacy.
That's the dilemma anyone resisting network effect faces.
Not having Facebook and not having a cellphone are two completely different things. If you don't have Facebook, you might miss out on some social stuff. Not having a cellphone is a bad idea, even just from a safety standpoint.
What if there is an incident and you need to call emergency services? Maybe you crash your car? Maybe you come across another crashed car, and can't contact emergency services because you don't have a cellphone?
I understand why you wouldn't want to carry around a cellphone all the time for privacy reasons (government tracking etc.), but why not get a $10 dumbphone and keep it turned off and in your backpack, or in your glovebox in your car? Nobody can track you if it's turned off.
I'm not sure about the USA, but at least in New Zealand, you'd only have to top up a few dollars every 6 months to keep your SIM active, and you don't need to register SIM cards in your name (although I know that other countries, like Australia, require this). Even without a SIM in your phone, you can still ring emergency services. There's no reason not to buy a $5 phone and keep it around just in case.
Its not a matter of trading personal information for access to a social network, which is a reasonable thing to do.
Its a matter of letting a nefarious actor into your life to feed you addictive poison, torpedo your well being, and feed you propaganda. Each new revelation makes this increasingly clear.
I can relate to this since I'm an introvert to and don't like social media in general but I do realize that this is how the current generation of society works. If I want to participate in it I have to adapt too.
[Without Facebook], I have to risk missing out on seminal life events
Is missing a high school reunion or the funeral of a long-list friend really "seminal"? Socially awkward, perhaps, but seminal? No, not really. Seminal is getting married, the death of a parent, birth of a child, finishing college. Not getting drunk with a bunch of people you barely know any more.
Seminal literally means "of seed." Seminal moments are the moments in life that "seed" your future. 99.99% of the time your life continue on exactly the same if you attend a funeral or you don't and if you attend a class reunion, or you don't.
> 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].
> Nothing requires that you post your beliefs, work history, daily plans and such.
Except a lot of information about these things can be inferred simply from using the network, through metadata and behavioral analysis. Facebook will also use their software running on your machine to steal just about every piece of information they can access at rest there.
This is actually the reason I quit FB. Nobody was saying anything, but being on FB seemed to replace normal modes of checking in with distant friends and family. Instead of long emails, texts, or phone calls it felt like everyone just defaulted to posting the occasional link or super insidery update.
Closed platforms recreate all previously-solved problems, too, usually requiring you to wait for the gatekeeper to get around to offering a solution.
We have ways to track contacts, organize E-mail threads, view restaurant web sites, etc. and all those tools are uninvented when the data is only visible through Facebook. Even when Facebook graciously permits you to keep using one of your tools (like a web browser), it’s still effectively broken until you log in.
I find a silver lining in this by making it as friction-full as possible for me to view Facebook content. For example, having to unblock domains and log in every time (never saving passwords, etc.). It works: it makes me consider whether or not I really want to spend time viewing whatever silly video/rant/whatever I initially thought was interesting. And of course then I am not sucked into an hour of grazing the rest of the feed.
Note that carrying a smartphone and using a credit card is entrusting a great deal of information to advertising companies. All major phone and credit companies are selling your data (anonymized, to the degree they feel is optimal). I'm not sure that Facebook is any worse.
To be more clear: They know where you go, who you call and text, and what you buy.
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.
The major complaint here is that not being on Facebook leaves him out of things that are now on Facebook. And I get that, for a good while I was off facebook entirely and felt quite left out. But still... it doesn't really make sense to me for that to be your primary complaint. You could make the same complaint about email, or the internet in general.
That said, I think it is a terrible shame more efforts haven't gone into making an alternative -- and at this point, it would need to be a compatible alternative -- that is not controlled by a single for-profit organization.
Communicating in a way that is mutually agreeable is a more powerful enabler of friendship than the existence of an entry in Facebook's database.
I put it to you that Facebook is about group communication, whereas friendship is about one-on-one communication. As such Facebook has nothing to do with friendship, and it is a delusion to think otherwise. Those Facebook "friends" are actually acquaintances, and your friends are those smaller number of people whom you talk to outside Facebook.
[+] [-] brianfitz|8 years ago|reply
The point being, it is just as likely that the writer of this post wasn’t left out any more than he would have been in the past. What has possibly changed is that a funeral lightly attended by only a few in the past could now reach the many. In the past, he would have missed hearing about the death and would have missed the funeral. In the present, the same thing happened but now feels left out.
It’s a benefit to the mother who lost her child, but a detriment to the friend who feels left behind.
[+] [-] gfodor|8 years ago|reply
There are certainly other paths the world could have taken where such power and control would not be in the hands of one company (and one person, really) but that's not what happened and it's worth lamenting if you believe the problem of "keeping friends connected through the internet" could have taken on radically different forms.
[+] [-] gm-conspiracy|8 years ago|reply
I am around your age, and my 10 year reunion had its own domain name and website (still up - not sure who is paying for it or hosting), but my most recent reunion (20 year) was only on Facebook, and since I have never had a Facebook account, I did not find out until about a week beforehand (second-hand from a friend who was not attending).
Please be aware, this is a cohort that has mostly been together since elementary/middle school, learned Logowriter together, and had an HTML CD-ROM yearbook.
Facebook has made everybody lazy and cheapened our relationships.
[+] [-] pmlnr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exDM69|8 years ago|reply
Although this may apply to OP's problem(s), it's not really the case everywhere. I'll give you two counterexamples:
1) A friend of mine is required to have a facebook account for school (woodworking trade school). They say "you can always create one with a fake name" but that's obviously a TOS violation and may cause the account to be deleted at any time (making schoolwork really difficult).
2) My basketball group has decided to organize things on WhatsApp, again requiring you to accept FB's EULA. I refuse to do so, which results me in missing quite a few occasions to play and finding myself alone in the gym when practice has been called off.
Neither of these things were done on facebook in the past. Yes, it might be more convenient to do so (for the organizing party) but it'll leave a bunch of people out who refuse to sign carte blanche EULA for a company that preys on our personal information and influences our voting behavior.
Both of these cases are examples where email or phone would be acceptable, but it's (only) slightly more convenient to use social media for those who are a part of it.
[+] [-] komali2|8 years ago|reply
I've stripped most of my personal information off Facebook and now just use it as a messaging app and a "find me by name" sort of internet yellow pages thing.
[+] [-] chrischen|8 years ago|reply
Whether you consider facebook's algorithms benevolent or not, the danger actually lies in the fact that people's opinions and friendships are not forming in a more natural and organic way. If relationships and opinions are shaped by an algorithm from a single source, it's more prone to failure, influence, if not by malevolence than by simple incompetence of not knowing the macro effects of a line of code applied to hundreds of millions of people.
[+] [-] bigiain|8 years ago|reply
To Facebook _users_, the newsfeed is just a gimmick they use to get you to reveal more about you and your friends/connections than you would otherwise.
[+] [-] osoba|8 years ago|reply
The next morning, however, the other coupons were all used up. He claims nobody else has access to his FB messages and I never bothered to actually check the validity of the codes on Amazon, so there is enough room for plausible deniability, but this coincided in time with this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/79x7u3/facebook_em... and now there's that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that some underpaid 3rd world facebook employee read through the messages and decided to use the codes themselves.
I don't know, this is all probably a stretch, but that moment reached a new low for Facebook in my mind (not that my opinion of them was high before).
[+] [-] cconstantin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glangdale|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] osogolo|8 years ago|reply
I unfollowed every single person and page I'm connected to on Facebook a month and a half ago.
Every time I look at a Facebook there's just about no value. My feed is empty. Nevertheless, I'll visit it by habit. It's weird to see how that persists.
I am not posting (never really did anyway), and I have no idea what's going on with the people I didn't really interact with that much anyway.
What put me over the edge was answering the question: "Does anyone that I deeply care for post anything (at all)?"
Answer for 90% was no. And there rest I still have phone/text to communicate.
This has all made me consider what relationships in my life are important. And it's made me consider how susceptible I was to a fine-tuned algorithm hungry for outrage and virality, and how that influenced my relationships and myself.
I feel great opting out. I hope to fully delete the whole thing soon. Weird that I can't just do that.
I recommend the unfollow thing.
[+] [-] vmokry|8 years ago|reply
What was funny, after ~300 clicks I got the captcha to fill and 14 clicks later week block with a message: "This is not a proper using of the function". Also, FB was hypocritical. It allowed me to click to follow again, just unfollow was blocked. :-)
[+] [-] davidbiehl|8 years ago|reply
I also highly recommend curating who you follow, you may realize you don’t need FB after all.
[+] [-] eye900|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MasterScrat|8 years ago|reply
To eliminate this behavior I use the Crackbook extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/crackbook-revival/...
It acts as hinted in this comic: https://xkcd.com/862/
[+] [-] evrydayhustling|8 years ago|reply
This captures perfectly my reasons for getting on Facebook in ~2007. One of my best friends had a baby and I was the only one who didn't know because I wasn't on there. I'd also been one of the last of my friends to get a cellphone 3 years before, and was starting to worry that I was just a jerk about keeping in touch.
It's really interesting to compare those two decisions now. The slider phone I got in 2003 was nothing like what we have today, but buying it let me participate in a communication ecosystem that's still evolving fast.
Facebook feels really stagnant by comparison. Its core mechanics, at least the ones I care about, are unchanged. Everyone's usage of it long ago stagnated into the same patterns. I still check it because I have to for life events, but it's not something I look forward to.
[+] [-] renegadesensei|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vanilla_nut|8 years ago|reply
>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 replace real social interaction. Writing a letter, an email, calling a friend, or even sending a text should not be replaced by Facebook because it is ultimately a corporation that seeks to exploit those very interactions for its own profit through means you may not agree with -- that is, selling off your personal data to advertisers.
That being said, it's fine to use Facebook occasionally to check up on what's happening with your friends across the globe. But I really think that everyone should consider removing their "close" friends from Facebook and moving that communication to in-person talks, phone calls, or even text messages. If you're logging onto Facebook even once a day, you're playing into their psychological traps: it's probably best reserved for a lazy Sunday afternoon, something like how older folks treat email. You certainly don't need it on your phone.
If you're concerned that you'll lose friends by deleting your Facebook, you can always keep a Messenger account connected to your phone number and not miss out on group communications. If you're a mover and shaker in your social groups, try pulling your groups away from Facebook. Organizing an event? Offer to send out a mass email to people instead of using Facebook. Or text people yourself instead. Decoupling yourself from Facebook only gives you more power when they decide to do misbehave (do you really think this is the last or worse scandal we'll see from Zuck), and if you're really successful, your friend group will eventually start to realize that they don't need Facebook any more either. Everyone isn't going to delete their Facebook overnight, but if folks start to disconnect bit by bit we'll a) all be better off and have more future options when it comes to Facebook's manipulation and b) start to make Facebook less and less valuable, so eventually people won't even want to join in the first place. "What is an ocean... but a multitude of drops?"
[+] [-] tim333|8 years ago|reply
>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 you are browsing?
[+] [-] tinyhouse|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambdasquirrel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apo|8 years ago|reply
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 effect doesn't just mean that people join for opportunity. If sufficiently insinuated into daily life, some become compelled to join out of necessity.
But with Facebook and Cell Phones, joining this club takes a major toll one's privacy.
That's the dilemma anyone resisting network effect faces.
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|8 years ago|reply
What if there is an incident and you need to call emergency services? Maybe you crash your car? Maybe you come across another crashed car, and can't contact emergency services because you don't have a cellphone?
I understand why you wouldn't want to carry around a cellphone all the time for privacy reasons (government tracking etc.), but why not get a $10 dumbphone and keep it turned off and in your backpack, or in your glovebox in your car? Nobody can track you if it's turned off.
I'm not sure about the USA, but at least in New Zealand, you'd only have to top up a few dollars every 6 months to keep your SIM active, and you don't need to register SIM cards in your name (although I know that other countries, like Australia, require this). Even without a SIM in your phone, you can still ring emergency services. There's no reason not to buy a $5 phone and keep it around just in case.
[+] [-] xkjkls|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skinnymuch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjkennedy98|8 years ago|reply
Its a matter of letting a nefarious actor into your life to feed you addictive poison, torpedo your well being, and feed you propaganda. Each new revelation makes this increasingly clear.
[+] [-] matz1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alistairSH|8 years ago|reply
Is missing a high school reunion or the funeral of a long-list friend really "seminal"? Socially awkward, perhaps, but seminal? No, not really. Seminal is getting married, the death of a parent, birth of a child, finishing college. Not getting drunk with a bunch of people you barely know any more.
[+] [-] astura|8 years ago|reply
Seminal literally means "of seed." Seminal moments are the moments in life that "seed" your future. 99.99% of the time your life continue on exactly the same if you attend a funeral or you don't and if you attend a class reunion, or you don't.
[+] [-] tzs|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] etiam|8 years ago|reply
Except a lot of information about these things can be inferred simply from using the network, through metadata and behavioral analysis. Facebook will also use their software running on your machine to steal just about every piece of information they can access at rest there.
[+] [-] Cd00d|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makecheck|8 years ago|reply
We have ways to track contacts, organize E-mail threads, view restaurant web sites, etc. and all those tools are uninvented when the data is only visible through Facebook. Even when Facebook graciously permits you to keep using one of your tools (like a web browser), it’s still effectively broken until you log in.
I find a silver lining in this by making it as friction-full as possible for me to view Facebook content. For example, having to unblock domains and log in every time (never saving passwords, etc.). It works: it makes me consider whether or not I really want to spend time viewing whatever silly video/rant/whatever I initially thought was interesting. And of course then I am not sucked into an hour of grazing the rest of the feed.
[+] [-] xapata|8 years ago|reply
To be more clear: They know where you go, who you call and text, and what you buy.
[+] [-] graeme|8 years ago|reply
Referring to ad companies here, not NSA etc
[+] [-] tunesmith|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FargoPelz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mung|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] robbrown451|8 years ago|reply
That said, I think it is a terrible shame more efforts haven't gone into making an alternative -- and at this point, it would need to be a compatible alternative -- that is not controlled by a single for-profit organization.
[+] [-] femto|8 years ago|reply
I put it to you that Facebook is about group communication, whereas friendship is about one-on-one communication. As such Facebook has nothing to do with friendship, and it is a delusion to think otherwise. Those Facebook "friends" are actually acquaintances, and your friends are those smaller number of people whom you talk to outside Facebook.