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I wonder how could any Facebook replacement (or Facebook itself) allow somebody to support some group while not telling anyone. Of course it's possible, donate

by thingie 16y ago

I wonder how could any Facebook replacement (or Facebook itself) allow somebody to support some group while not telling anyone. Of course it's possible, donate some money, do some job for them, but… on Facebook or something like Facebook? How?

sounddust 16y ago
Facebook itself used to have this level of privacy protection. You could join a group and post on the wall and in the forums for that group privately. If your privacy settings were to disallow non-friends from seeing your profile, then it would just show your first name and a generic placeholder as your photo. Your name would be unclickable and therefore untraceable to you unless you had a unique first name. Ironically, right before the big push to erode users' privacy, it seemed that they might have taken it a step further and replaced your name with "facebook user", removing even your first name (I was never sure if this was intentional or a bug, but in any case it didn't last long as the big privacy changes came soon after).
- gaius 16y ago
  The thing is, this doesn't even make sense for FB to do. I've removed my interests and activities from my profile. Before the ads I got shown were basically relevant - they were mainly for products and services connected to those sports I listed, for example. Now the ads I get shown are fairly random. So Facebook have reduced my value to them as a set of eyeballs to show ads to. How can anyone at FB have thought this was a good idea?
  - krschultz 16y ago
    I've done the same thing as you and noticed the same effect on the ads shown to me, but when I mentioned my privacy concerns to some friends the other night, most just said "so what, I don't have much of value on Facebook anyway". I think the mass of people (even intelligent people) don't have the same privacy concerns as a lot of the "tech informed" crowd does. We know how valuable the data is and what can be done with it, that makes us much more sensitive to giving it up.
mbrubeck 16y ago
Facebook is also a way for groups to communicate with their supporters, plan private events, and let members locate each other. It would be useful for many groups to do that without broadcasting group membership.
- Gormo 16y ago
  Meetup?

by thingie 16y ago

sounddust 16y ago

Facebook itself used to have this level of privacy protection. You could join a group and post on the wall and in the forums for that group privately. If your privacy settings were to disallow non-friends from seeing your profile, then it would just show your first name and a generic placeholder as your photo. Your name would be unclickable and therefore untraceable to you unless you had a unique first name. Ironically, right before the big push to erode users' privacy, it seemed that they might have taken it a step further and replaced your name with "facebook user", removing even your first name (I was never sure if this was intentional or a bug, but in any case it didn't last long as the big privacy changes came soon after).

gaius 16y ago
The thing is, this doesn't even make sense for FB to do. I've removed my interests and activities from my profile. Before the ads I got shown were basically relevant - they were mainly for products and services connected to those sports I listed, for example. Now the ads I get shown are fairly random. So Facebook have reduced my value to them as a set of eyeballs to show ads to. How can anyone at FB have thought this was a good idea?
- krschultz 16y ago
  I've done the same thing as you and noticed the same effect on the ads shown to me, but when I mentioned my privacy concerns to some friends the other night, most just said "so what, I don't have much of value on Facebook anyway". I think the mass of people (even intelligent people) don't have the same privacy concerns as a lot of the "tech informed" crowd does. We know how valuable the data is and what can be done with it, that makes us much more sensitive to giving it up.

mbrubeck 16y ago

Facebook is also a way for groups to communicate with their supporters, plan private events, and let members locate each other. It would be useful for many groups to do that without broadcasting group membership.

Gormo 16y ago
Meetup?