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In theory I'd be happy to pay for a service such as Facebook's groups and events if it could be proven that it was preserving my privacy. Unfortunately, I doubt

In theory I'd be happy to pay for a service such as Facebook's groups and events if it could be proven that it was preserving my privacy. Unfortunately, I doubt that Facebook can be trusted.

delecti 9y ago
Doesn't meetup.com fit that description?
- gvurrdon 9y ago
  I think so. But, the people who organise events I'd like to attend and discuss topics of interest to me use Facebook to do so, and cannot be persuaded to do otherwise.
kardos 9y ago
Indeed.... if you pay anything to FB, you reveal a propensity to spend money online and self-select into a group of prime targets for adtech. FB is an ad company, they will not be able to resist brokering deals for access to that group. You can't beat FB through playing by their rules. Rather we need to change the game.
- lithos 9y ago
  Also worth mentioning that for each "paying target" you remove from an ad economy, is a devaluing of that economy.
  - kardos 9y ago
    Indeed -- FB will not have a hand in the solution. Cracking the micropayments egg might be the new game that unseats the adtech scourge. One can hope.
- Yetanfou 9y ago
  When it comes to playing games with partners like these the only winning move is not to play. Since personally identifying data is valuable and companies like Facebook have made a business of cashing in on that value there is no way for you to be sure that they won't overstep any artificial bounds which have been set by law. If you don't want them to run amok with your data you need to make sure they don't get your data, first and foremost by not voluntarily handing it to them (i.e. don't use Facebook-the-product or any of Facebook-the-company's other products), second by making it harder for them to collect data through other means. The former is easy, the latter can be harder. Blocking Facebook assets at ingress points and in ad blockers only goes so far and is made more difficult by sites using material from *.fbcdn.net (e.g. react components, etc), not to mention those Facebook holdouts who insist on tagging photo's with your name etc.

In theory I'd be happy to pay for a service such as Facebook's groups and events if it could be proven that it was preserving my privacy. Unfortunately, I doubt that Facebook can be trusted.

delecti 9y ago

Doesn't meetup.com fit that description?

gvurrdon 9y ago
I think so. But, the people who organise events I'd like to attend and discuss topics of interest to me use Facebook to do so, and cannot be persuaded to do otherwise.

kardos 9y ago

Indeed.... if you pay anything to FB, you reveal a propensity to spend money online and self-select into a group of prime targets for adtech. FB is an ad company, they will not be able to resist brokering deals for access to that group. You can't beat FB through playing by their rules. Rather we need to change the game.

lithos 9y ago
Also worth mentioning that for each "paying target" you remove from an ad economy, is a devaluing of that economy.
- kardos 9y ago
  Indeed -- FB will not have a hand in the solution. Cracking the micropayments egg might be the new game that unseats the adtech scourge. One can hope.
Yetanfou 9y ago
When it comes to playing games with partners like these the only winning move is not to play. Since personally identifying data is valuable and companies like Facebook have made a business of cashing in on that value there is no way for you to be sure that they won't overstep any artificial bounds which have been set by law. If you don't want them to run amok with your data you need to make sure they don't get your data, first and foremost by not voluntarily handing it to them (i.e. don't use Facebook-the-product or any of Facebook-the-company's other products), second by making it harder for them to collect data through other means. The former is easy, the latter can be harder. Blocking Facebook assets at ingress points and in ad blockers only goes so far and is made more difficult by sites using material from *.fbcdn.net (e.g. react components, etc), not to mention those Facebook holdouts who insist on tagging photo's with your name etc.