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To Delete Facebook or Not to Delete Facebook? That Is Not the Question

187 points by DiabloD3 9y ago

some_weirdo 9y ago
The obvious answer is #DeleteFacebook
rgbrenner 9y ago
How is that not the question? Do you believe Facebook violated their users privacy rights? Do you believe in accountability? Then the question is why not delete facebook? If you hold facebook accountable, then you send a message: users DO value privacy, and any platform that abuses the privilege may find themselves with far fewer users and a less profitable product. Don't hold them accountable, and you'll get a sorry note from Zuckerberg, and he'll violate it later when you aren't looking. In fact, this article raises another question: how much does the EFF value privacy? Apparently violators just need to say "I'm sorry" and continue what they were doing, and the EFF will argue on their behalf that the benefits of their service outweigh the cost of your lost privacy.
- SllX 9y ago
  If you look beyond just Facebook, these are issues that will continue to crop up no matter what platform you use. The EFF also makes the claim that there are people for whom deleting Facebook is not a viable or tenable option, and maybe they're right, maybe the tools for them to drop Facebook altogether just don't exist. In that case, they should still have an expectation of privacy and data portability. Facebook's practices are a societal problem, but theirs aren't the only ones, and services that have the same exact problems are probably being developed right now or will be developed within the next few years. So my takeaway from this, reading the EFF's post is 1. we should be looking beyond hashtag campaigns targeted at one specific corporation and 2. if for whatever reason #DeleteFacebook is not a viable option, then you should still have your privacy protected and 3. the subtext to point two reads to me as: if you can #DeleteFacebook, you should, but we're not in the business of telling you what services to use wink wink nudge nudge.
  - rgbrenner 9y ago
    If the EFF wants to write an article arguing that privacy violations are widespread, and therefore viable privacy-respecting options aren't available.. then I'm all ears. Here's what the EFF says about Facebook: "Deleting Facebook is not a choice that most of its 2 billion users can feasibly make. ... Without viable general alternatives, Facebook’s massive user base and associated network effects mean that the costs of leaving it may not outweigh the benefits." Imagine that, a service a little over a decade old is now a dependency for life. It's not "feasible" to leave. Apparently privacy violations must be weighed against the size of the user base and network effects. Last I checked, phones still worked. Messaging still worked. All of the solution that existed a decade ago are still there. You CAN leave. I look forward to the EFF proposing a legal solution to privacy such as GDPR in the US. They haven't done that, and in the meantime, there should be consequences for Facebook. The EFF shouldn't be arguing for the lack of consequences for this specific privacy violation, without proposing a solution to the problem across the industry.
    - SllX 9y ago
      I am much more in your court than you think, yet somehow Facebook has become a way to make and break relationships and/or businesses for people who are not us. I'm not going to pretend to know what all the individual edge cases are spread out across 2 billion people preventing some of them from leaving, but I'm not going to dismiss the notion simply because I don't personally have that problem and I generally expect the people I associate with to not have that kind of problem. There absolutely should be consequences for Facebook specifically, I vehemently agree with you! I don't think even the EFF is saying there shouldn't be, just that it is not part of their mission to advocate one way or another on that matter. That said, I think, and I think what the EFF is saying here, is that it is unproductive to contain the conversation solely to Facebook. Facebook is the problem right now, and probably not the only one, and definitely not the last one to be developed with that business model. Whatever services we use, there needs to be a baseline for what we should be able to expect in terms of privacy and data portability, a baseline that favors the users of the platform. Personally, I think #DeleteFacebook does matter, and I think people honestly should, but now is the time to be thinking about the long term. GDPR-like laws are one possibility, and as a society we should be figuring out if we want to go that route, or a different route altogether.
- amarkov 9y ago
  It's the EFF's mission to ensure that everyone gets privacy, not just those who are connected enough to know which apps they should delete.
- hsljekskfh 9y ago
  ok, do you think we should #deletegoogle too? i hate facebook but a lot of companies do this
tomglynch 9y ago
I'm doing some research on alternatives to facebook. Social networks with different business models. Hopefully will have a spreadsheet with descriptions and info in the next few days.
- diasp 9y ago
  https://the-federation.info https://the-federation.info
- PeterStuer 9y ago
  As a user the value is not in the technology, but in the 'other users', yes, the old 'network effect'. So the essential question is ho to get overnight adoption of one of those alternatives by all your friends, which means, by extension, everyone. Since this is unlikely, regulating Facebook into a privacy respecting business, hard and erring on the safe side, is the true alternative.
eksemplar 9y ago
The annoying thing about Facebook from a Danish perspective is that everyone uses it to plan social events. There are a lot of articles on how you’ll get a richer social life and still get invited, but the truth is that you become a bit of a hassle for everyone else. They have to text you the details outside of Facebook, or alternatively, have to adopt a new platform because of you. Of course I still think you should delete Facebook. With all this recent controversy they had a chance to right the wrong, instead they chose to double down on exploiting their user base - not only in the legal department but also by quickly running their facial recognition stuff before the GDPR goes into effect. On the plus side, the more people leave, the less Facebook will lose its justification because right now, the sole reason to be on Facebook is that it’s where everyone is.
- hamandcheese 9y ago
  Events is probably the only thing keeping me on the platform.
  - anoplus 9y ago
    Same for me. I think Events are the oxygen of facebook
    - amelius 9y ago
      Yes. Yet I often struggle with the UI. E.g. on mobile, when searching for events, you have to swipe a menu to the right and click "events", which is not obvious. Also getting a list of RSVP'd events is not trivial.
- J-dawg 9y ago
  > but also by quickly running their facial recognition stuff before the GDPR goes into effect. Could someone explain what this means? Is Facebook’s facial recognition illegal under GDPR?
  - SahAssar 9y ago
calimac 9y ago
Facebook is a lost cause. Nobody needs it. In reality it's cancerous. This will be obvious in a year or two.
JeanMarcS 9y ago
The question is: what signal do we want to send ? Please go on (FB or every over ones sitting on privacy, past or future companies), or the game is over. Perhaps, with the actual attention of the medias, it’s the right time to make a point, whatever it is.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
anothername2 9y ago
honest question: aside from the attempted collection of data on non-users of the system, why are people angry about this? to me, anger implies being surprised here. but at the same time, usage of the system implies being smart enough to understand the risks inherent in making your information public, so there really should be no surprise, and therefore, no anger. being angry at this really is just an admission of ignorance and/or stupidity. it's kinda like people being surprised when snowden told them the government was spying on them, except dumber because you're willingly giving up your information here... fuck, you people make me sad
- shervinafshar 9y ago
  No anger. Only demanding responsible handling of users' information. If Facebook or any other social platform doesn't deliver, users could go elsewhere. I also think that there is not much honesty in your question, by the way. Read the EFF post again.
  - mirko22 9y ago
    EFF post gives reasons similar to many people on HN who claim that Facebook is necessary. Why is it hard to understand that not all people feel like this thus find these reasons unreasonable?
    - shervinafshar 9y ago
      Inaccurate. Quote: > We are here to hold Facebook accountable no matter who’s using it, and to push it and other tech companies to do better for users. In other words, regardless of whether something is necessary or not, if users are using it, EFF would be watching. And I don't even think Facebook is "necessary" as assumed. Hence, I find it irrelevant to go meta and discuss my assumed understanding or consideration, or lack thereof, of others feeling.
      - mirko22 9y ago
        and my point is as it not necessary in way electricity is, we should be careful of regulating it.
jankotek 9y ago
I think most people including journalist are basically computer illiterate. Facebook has web interface. Uninstall the app from phone, and login once a week to check messages and to plan events.
- xab9 9y ago
  Yep, couple of weeks ago guy showed me how he "deleted facebook". He removed it from his phone (but still using the messenger app).
- shervinafshar 9y ago
  I found the generalization above regarding computer literacy of "most people" unfounded and very troubling. This comment also handwaves the inconvenience caused to users who were promised access to the information they need across their devices.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  One, we are in a market failure. Unilateral withdrawal is difficult. Two, even if I withdraw, I am still subjected to Facebook’s surveillance and negative effects on my democracy. The latter is what pisses me off. (The cluelessness of Facebook’s management and culture, in respect of this problem, coming in at a close second.)
  - mirko22 9y ago
    How are you still subject to facebook surveillance and “effects on democracy”? For surveillance you can say same for Google and their analytics code installed everywhere. For democracy, i ap pretty sure same tactics are used in any media channel...
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > For democracy, i ap pretty sure same tactics are used in any media channel Facebook's uniqueness, in reach, magnitude of damage, and negligence, has been qualitatively demonstrated, by its actions and employees' defenses of said actions, over the past months.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dosycorp 9y ago
What I really like about this is what the "hashtag" #DeleteFacebook says about us and our time right now. Firstly, it speaks of how ignorant we all are, as a public mass, of how the world actually works, even the reality of an "obvious" situation we aspire to be commenting about. Because you cannot actually "delete facebook". Neither can you "delete" the entire service as if it is some "app" on your phone, or old-skool word document on your laptop, nor can you delete the data it knows about you. Even if FB actually deleted the data they had about you, you can't make their AI's "unlearn" everything they got from you, and you can't make their 3rd-parties delete your data as well ( no matter what you well-intentioned t&cs-ninnies might say to counter this, I just don't believe you that there's anyway to make these things happen ). So you can't Delete Facebook. The first rule of Facebook is: Facebook is eternal. Secondly, even if you go ahead and delete your account, your protest is impotent. Your victory is symbolic. Your effort at self determination will be undone. Because it's sort of like people saying they were going to leave California ( or the US ) if Trump got elected. So you can do it, but it won't change anything. It will probably end up severely disrupting / hurting your life. And in the end, you most likely won't do it. What this reveals about our ignorance is how powerless we actually are, and how ignorant we are of what Facebook has become. It has become a utility. It is ( mostly ) essential. Even if you do not use it, other services assume you do, and your access to those is gatekept by your ( non-existant ) FB account. And if you do use it, or use Messenger, or Whatsapp, then it is a good way to stay in touch with people you know. And if you really use it then of course you know why you need it. Second rule of Facebook is: Facebook is necessary. So the third thing I like about this is, how ignorant this hash tag reveals us to be with regard to the way to deal with Facebook. It's not about individual actions. It's about the collective. FB has begun to impinge upon the collective. It has become a utility. And it exists forever, despite the actions of individuals. When it goes rabid / stray, what is needed is collective actions to bring it back under control of the commons. Within the bounds of the common good. Only regulation can subdue Facebook to the useful and the good. Not protest. The third rule of Facebook is: It's a utility, stupid. Regulate it.
- mirko22 9y ago
  Facebook is not a utility by it self, it is a web site, if you start regulating it what stops the government to regulate pretty much anything on the internet?
tempodox 9y ago
> Facebook and other companies must respect user privacy by default and by design. That would be really nice, but before that happens a major cultural shift would have to take place and I can't see that on the horizon anywhere. Until then, the only language those companies understand is losing users, or not gaining them in the first place. And that's only the part where we consciously decide whether we're users or not. It still doesn't touch the part where our data is grabbed beyond our influence.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > the only language those companies understand is losing users, or not gaining them in the first place Or being broken up. This is a classic case of market failure. Waiting for users or advertisers to force a change is futile, and not their faults.
- anoplus 9y ago
  The public needs to demand anything like respect for user privacy by putting pressure on the company. For that, the public needs to be aware of the issue. And for awareness a discussion needs to be kept alive. Like we do here in this post. So posting and commenting in HN matters. I was participating this year in a big street protest calling for police to keep investigating the prime minister for corruption. The pressure lead to public exposure and accelerated investigation immediately.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Deletion is too extreme for most people. Facebook is a monopoly for users and in an oligopoly for advertisers. This is a market failure [1]. More reasonable: escalating partial dis-engagement. Here's what I did, sequentially, over the years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure
- cdancette 9y ago
  Turning off messenger notifications seems drastic and unnecessary (it's real people contacting you). It's like turning off sms notifications of call notifications, I do it whenever I need to concentrate , but not by default. The problem are apps that notifies us about useless or non direct communication stuff.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > Turning off messenger notifications seems drastic and unnecessary In my experience, it has been neither. My friends effortlessly filter what I need to hear into iMessages, e-mails, phone calls and face-to-face shares. Human communication is as easy to hack as it is fluid and resilient.
  - DeusExMachina 9y ago
    This is only if you consider that every message is urgent and must be seen immediately, which is rarely the case. I turned of notifications because they were too distracting, and that only made things better. I still chat with my friends, but I do so only when I pick up my phone voluntarily. People get also use to the fact that they don’t get an immediate reply when they write you, and they stop expecting it. Interactions are more relaxed.
amelius 9y ago
We need an API to interact with Facebook, so that other tools can shield us from it and help us migrate away. Facebook will never build this API, but perhaps someone can use DOM traversing as the underlying mechanism for an open source service that provides the API.
- ClintEhrlich 9y ago
  Some of us are working on it: https://urbit.org/posts/overview/ https://urbit.org/posts/overview/
  - ibidibi 9y ago
    Can I, somehow, take my downloaded Facebook .zip data and import it into something Urbit'ish, yet still give me control over it?
lordnacho 9y ago
For me, the answer is to not put your personality on FB. Just put on the platitudes of your life, and like the platitudes of your friends' lives. "Look my kid did this". "Isn't the weather great today". "Glad you weren't hurt in that disaster". I log in most days, but all I do is ack my friends. When I put something on, it's some BS that lets them ack me. I don't think it takes me more than a few seconds to scroll through and hit like. Next to that there's the occasional "I'm in town" which is a call for a face-to-face.
- psyc 9y ago
  My friends behaving like this is the reason I quit.
ggm 9y ago
Wean your contacts off the messenger and #deletefacebook
ibidibi 9y ago
I wonder if there are any other tools out there that are capable of mining valuable data (for the personal user) from the "Download my Facebook" .zip file dump .. it seems like this is a data format that is ripe for exploitation by other apps/services in the effort of freeing Facebooks' grip over peoples faces. Has anyone looked into the data that Facebook provide, to see what potential apps/services could be built on it? It seems really ripe for exploitation, to me .. but I have yet to download the .zip and inspect its contents. Off to do that now...
glogla 9y ago
Everyone is using facebook ... because everyone is using facebook. The more people delete it, the weaker will the network effect be. I would say that as a person who understands technology and the ramifications of facebook, you have a moral duty to not use it. And you have a duty of educating people about facebook. You can't stop it alone (no single person can - even shooting Zuck would probably not stop facebook) but you can stop voting for it, just like you probably aren't voting for alt right/nazi parties in your local elections.
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
I think "Social Media" is a complete abomination and should be burned to the ground and the earth salted that nothing may grow there. But! Facebook has some really useful features. I used to engage quite a lot with the social features of Facebook, but now I only use it for a few of things: 1. Facebook Marketplace has now become more useful than Gumtree which used to dominate the local secondhand goods market; 2. Events; 3. Facebook Messenger. I couldn't give a flip about reading anyone's opinion, posting my own, or looking at your photos. But what I don't get is, the elephant in the room: why haven't the FBI raided Facebook HQ and seized control of all their data centres: it should obvious to everyone that minors have used Messenger to share lewd pictures and videos with each other, and we all now know that Facebook doesn't actually delete anything because they let download all your data and that data includes pictures and videos you've "removed / delete", and even ones you took with the Messenger app but didn't send! Zuckerberg is literally sitting on a mountain of child porn!
- warent 9y ago
  You mean literally figuratively
tomxor 9y ago
> As a social media user, you should have the right to leave a platform that you are not satisfied with... Furthermore, if users decide to leave a platform, they should be able to easily, efficiently, and freely take their uploaded information away and move it to a different one in a usable format. Data is not the one thing stopping people leaving facebook... friends are. This force stopping people leaving is the same one that drove social media into a monopoly - there is no cross platform protocol. Platforms do not communicate with each other like email clients. In this scenario the very nature of communication encourages people gather into a single large group for convenience (if it wasn't facebook it would have been another). The abuse of a company in such a position is inevitable. The _question_ is not going to be how can we make a protocol now (it's too late, facebook doesn't care), the question is how long will it take for enough people to become disgusted enough to switch to something more open where protocols could be developed, or where the platform is open source anyway and corporate forces are not an issue.
- amelius 9y ago
  > the question is how long will it take for enough people to become disgusted enough to switch to something more open where protocols could be developed, or where the platform is open source anyway and corporate forces are not an issue. There are some other options: - Phone makers create a "message center", a central place where emails and feeds are shown. Facebook must now adhere to these standards, and they lose their "gatekeeper" position. - Someone develops an API to interact with facebook on behalf of a user. This API performs a live export of friends, feeds, etc, so that other applications can use them. After a while, people will use those applications instead of facebook itself, and are ready to leave facebook.
  - exodust 9y ago
    Yes good ideas. Hhonestly I thought we'd have it by now. I've been waiting to have my social account outside of Facebook that could connect with contacts who "live" inside its walls. Why is everyone so happy to be with one company? Why are they happy to allow one company to manage their social connections and notifications for life? Social connection technology shouldn't be tethered to one company, everyone huddled under its "protective" wing. That is typical early 21st century thinking. It's eco-system lock-in mentality, which works against users in the end. I heard a journalist recently call Facebook the "modern day telephone" (Leigh Sales, ABC), which is a stupid thing to say. Facebook is not the technology, it's a service that uses modern technologies. Imagine if there was only one phone company or ISP everyone in the world used. Not a great scenario for competition, innovation, safety, privacy and open standards evolution. We need those new protocols and ways to connect by easily talking between social media platforms.
ratsimihah 9y ago
I left because it had developed into a bad habit of scrolling through a meaningless feed for me. The data leak was just the trigger to take the jump.
nkkollaw 9y ago
Oh, cool. I was really missing the daily post about deleting Facebook.
stratigos 9y ago
Zuckerberg revealed his true colors years ago. I had a facebook for a moment in perhaps 2005-06. I deleted it. I have never regretted that, quite the contrary. I have enjoyed a life free of social media, and free of its trappings and influences. I watch my friends get sucked into "comparing mind," scroll through streams of advertorials and recieve the corresponding subliminal stressers, and constantly have their mindfulness interrupted by notifications. I think the general concept of social media is great, and a necessary thing for the world at large. I think facebook is evil, and it blows my mind that people still continue to use this platform (And similar ones) even though the company sells users out again and again. This era goes way beyond "jump! how high?"
alecco 9y ago
Outside US many events are organized via WhatsApp (I guess that’s why FB acquired it for 19bn)
4lch3m1st 9y ago
I think the thought of deletion is pretty much just one of the problems. I managed to delete my Facebook profile a few months ago, but the amount of pressure I often receive from people so that I create a new account is what impresses me the most -- not from the personal level, since I already made up my mind, but from the point that most of the people think Facebook is just an essential, irreplaceable tool which everyone MUST have. I'm glad this did not yet affect my work or study, but this "disease" seems to have already infected most of my family and friends. Now personally, I think people fool themselves most of the time to find what seems to be a reasonable answer to why they use Facebook: be it networking, be it a way to communicate with family and friends, be it a way to stay "in touch" with the news (and that also opens up for the whole fake news discussion, but oh well). I'm not saying those are not legitimate reasons to have a Facebook account (these are actually the primary services that it claims to offer), but I really wish people could see that there are other means to that. Some don't even involve having any social media accounts.
davidy123 9y ago
Many people are just focusing on the social networking aspect of Facebook, which can provide cohesion, but it's more than that, and some aspects are profoundly useful. It connects people around the world, it makes event planning easier, it digitize communication to provide opportunities for augmentation, and it has elevated consumer advocacy. In the global and online trade age, it's important for companies to be more conscious of their image, and consumers to be able to organize. Raising a complaint on Facebook is one of the best ways to have an issue resolved these days. Taking away these facilities would be a giant step backwards, like removing telephone lines or postal routes. It's really a matter of defining who has the authority of this position and how the information is distributed, where Facebook is problematic.
shmerl 9y ago
Don't register there to begin with.
unicornode 9y ago
Stallman was right.
christofosho 9y ago
My only connection to other people outside immediate family was Facebook. I deleted mine, and now am stuck with no methods of contacting many people I know or once knew. I miss most of the major events in their lives. It's interesting to see how easily disconnected one can be when you're no longer seeing people involuntarily in classes and through a university community.
slim 9y ago
The problems that Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal highlight—sweeping data collection, indiscriminate sharing of that data, and manipulative advertising No. The problem is that Facebook as a company has the data and the capacity to manipulate any election in any country. And there is no law that is forbidding them from doing that. That's what the Cambridge Analytica scandal proved
chrischen 9y ago
I’m not sure it’s possible for facebook to fundamentally respect privacy by default. It is completetly antithetical to both their stated mission of “connecting people” and their defacto mission of making money off advertising. In order for them to achieve either of those goals, they have to increase time spent on site and engagement, in order to maximize ad revenue. That results in them serving content the user wants to see at all costs. Besides the fact that content a user wants to see may not be the best for the user, and can simply waste time, this can also mean a massive echo chamber reaffirming peoples’ own beliefs. While it may serve to connect them with their like-minded peers, it emotionally and intellectually results in disconnecting them from the rest of society. This results in a dangerous shift in factionism and idealogical siloing. So the negative effects of simply serving what the user wants to see at a primitive level is fundamentally tied to an advertising business model. This makes it probably impossible for facebook to positively incentivize users without fundamentally changing their own incentive structures. You may think there’s nothing wrong if facebook is merely delivering what users want, but facebook uses manipulation to only deliver what users want in the short term for immediate gratification. It’s similar to addictive drugs and cocaine. People’s long term thinking know it’s bad for them even thhough their short term brain wants it now. Therefore if anyone is to create a facebook killer, all they have to do is provide a social platform that has a business model that is both sustainable and not reliant on short term engagement and selling ads. Instead it should focus on ceding control of social interaction to the user, rather than it being the byoroduct of manipulative user experience. It should tie its own success to ensbling users to achieve their own long term social goals. Since it would be the antithesis of facebook, they’d have too much inertia in their ad model to effectively clone it. Any other social platform can simply be cloned by facebook.
hordeallergy 9y ago
Every time there's a scandal and you don't delete your Facebook account, you're telling them that you're fine with that behaviour and that they're welcome to abuse you further. They'll keep pushing, whittling their users to a group who tolerates anything.
regeland 9y ago
Disclaimer - I was subscriber 7454 to FB, however I moved on and never used it. I'm a little surprised that the EFF didn't mention the proprietary nature of FB in the article. The EFF used to champion open standards... what has changed?

187 points by DiabloD3 9y ago

The obvious answer is #DeleteFacebook

How is that not the question? Do you believe Facebook violated their users privacy rights? Do you believe in accountability? Then the question is why not delete facebook? If you hold facebook accountable, then you send a message: users DO value privacy, and any platform that abuses the privilege may find themselves with far fewer users and a less profitable product. Don't hold them accountable, and you'll get a sorry note from Zuckerberg, and he'll violate it later when you aren't looking. In fact, this article raises another question: how much does the EFF value privacy? Apparently violators just need to say "I'm sorry" and continue what they were doing, and the EFF will argue on their behalf that the benefits of their service outweigh the cost of your lost privacy.

SllX 9y ago
If you look beyond just Facebook, these are issues that will continue to crop up no matter what platform you use. The EFF also makes the claim that there are people for whom deleting Facebook is not a viable or tenable option, and maybe they're right, maybe the tools for them to drop Facebook altogether just don't exist. In that case, they should still have an expectation of privacy and data portability. Facebook's practices are a societal problem, but theirs aren't the only ones, and services that have the same exact problems are probably being developed right now or will be developed within the next few years. So my takeaway from this, reading the EFF's post is 1. we should be looking beyond hashtag campaigns targeted at one specific corporation and 2. if for whatever reason #DeleteFacebook is not a viable option, then you should still have your privacy protected and 3. the subtext to point two reads to me as: if you can #DeleteFacebook, you should, but we're not in the business of telling you what services to use wink wink nudge nudge.
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  If the EFF wants to write an article arguing that privacy violations are widespread, and therefore viable privacy-respecting options aren't available.. then I'm all ears. Here's what the EFF says about Facebook: "Deleting Facebook is not a choice that most of its 2 billion users can feasibly make. ... Without viable general alternatives, Facebook’s massive user base and associated network effects mean that the costs of leaving it may not outweigh the benefits." Imagine that, a service a little over a decade old is now a dependency for life. It's not "feasible" to leave. Apparently privacy violations must be weighed against the size of the user base and network effects. Last I checked, phones still worked. Messaging still worked. All of the solution that existed a decade ago are still there. You CAN leave. I look forward to the EFF proposing a legal solution to privacy such as GDPR in the US. They haven't done that, and in the meantime, there should be consequences for Facebook. The EFF shouldn't be arguing for the lack of consequences for this specific privacy violation, without proposing a solution to the problem across the industry.
  - SllX 9y ago
    I am much more in your court than you think, yet somehow Facebook has become a way to make and break relationships and/or businesses for people who are not us. I'm not going to pretend to know what all the individual edge cases are spread out across 2 billion people preventing some of them from leaving, but I'm not going to dismiss the notion simply because I don't personally have that problem and I generally expect the people I associate with to not have that kind of problem. There absolutely should be consequences for Facebook specifically, I vehemently agree with you! I don't think even the EFF is saying there shouldn't be, just that it is not part of their mission to advocate one way or another on that matter. That said, I think, and I think what the EFF is saying here, is that it is unproductive to contain the conversation solely to Facebook. Facebook is the problem right now, and probably not the only one, and definitely not the last one to be developed with that business model. Whatever services we use, there needs to be a baseline for what we should be able to expect in terms of privacy and data portability, a baseline that favors the users of the platform. Personally, I think #DeleteFacebook does matter, and I think people honestly should, but now is the time to be thinking about the long term. GDPR-like laws are one possibility, and as a society we should be figuring out if we want to go that route, or a different route altogether.
amarkov 9y ago
It's the EFF's mission to ensure that everyone gets privacy, not just those who are connected enough to know which apps they should delete.
hsljekskfh 9y ago
ok, do you think we should #deletegoogle too? i hate facebook but a lot of companies do this

tomglynch 9y ago

I'm doing some research on alternatives to facebook. Social networks with different business models. Hopefully will have a spreadsheet with descriptions and info in the next few days.

diasp 9y ago
https://the-federation.info https://the-federation.info
PeterStuer 9y ago
As a user the value is not in the technology, but in the 'other users', yes, the old 'network effect'. So the essential question is ho to get overnight adoption of one of those alternatives by all your friends, which means, by extension, everyone. Since this is unlikely, regulating Facebook into a privacy respecting business, hard and erring on the safe side, is the true alternative.

eksemplar 9y ago

The annoying thing about Facebook from a Danish perspective is that everyone uses it to plan social events. There are a lot of articles on how you’ll get a richer social life and still get invited, but the truth is that you become a bit of a hassle for everyone else. They have to text you the details outside of Facebook, or alternatively, have to adopt a new platform because of you. Of course I still think you should delete Facebook. With all this recent controversy they had a chance to right the wrong, instead they chose to double down on exploiting their user base - not only in the legal department but also by quickly running their facial recognition stuff before the GDPR goes into effect. On the plus side, the more people leave, the less Facebook will lose its justification because right now, the sole reason to be on Facebook is that it’s where everyone is.

hamandcheese 9y ago
Events is probably the only thing keeping me on the platform.
- anoplus 9y ago
  Same for me. I think Events are the oxygen of facebook
  - amelius 9y ago
    Yes. Yet I often struggle with the UI. E.g. on mobile, when searching for events, you have to swipe a menu to the right and click "events", which is not obvious. Also getting a list of RSVP'd events is not trivial.
J-dawg 9y ago
> but also by quickly running their facial recognition stuff before the GDPR goes into effect. Could someone explain what this means? Is Facebook’s facial recognition illegal under GDPR?
- SahAssar 9y ago

calimac 9y ago

Facebook is a lost cause. Nobody needs it. In reality it's cancerous. This will be obvious in a year or two.

JeanMarcS 9y ago

The question is: what signal do we want to send ? Please go on (FB or every over ones sitting on privacy, past or future companies), or the game is over. Perhaps, with the actual attention of the medias, it’s the right time to make a point, whatever it is.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

anothername2 9y ago

honest question: aside from the attempted collection of data on non-users of the system, why are people angry about this? to me, anger implies being surprised here. but at the same time, usage of the system implies being smart enough to understand the risks inherent in making your information public, so there really should be no surprise, and therefore, no anger. being angry at this really is just an admission of ignorance and/or stupidity. it's kinda like people being surprised when snowden told them the government was spying on them, except dumber because you're willingly giving up your information here... fuck, you people make me sad

shervinafshar 9y ago
No anger. Only demanding responsible handling of users' information. If Facebook or any other social platform doesn't deliver, users could go elsewhere. I also think that there is not much honesty in your question, by the way. Read the EFF post again.
- mirko22 9y ago
  EFF post gives reasons similar to many people on HN who claim that Facebook is necessary. Why is it hard to understand that not all people feel like this thus find these reasons unreasonable?
  - shervinafshar 9y ago
    Inaccurate. Quote: > We are here to hold Facebook accountable no matter who’s using it, and to push it and other tech companies to do better for users. In other words, regardless of whether something is necessary or not, if users are using it, EFF would be watching. And I don't even think Facebook is "necessary" as assumed. Hence, I find it irrelevant to go meta and discuss my assumed understanding or consideration, or lack thereof, of others feeling.
    - mirko22 9y ago
      and my point is as it not necessary in way electricity is, we should be careful of regulating it.

jankotek 9y ago

I think most people including journalist are basically computer illiterate. Facebook has web interface. Uninstall the app from phone, and login once a week to check messages and to plan events.

xab9 9y ago
Yep, couple of weeks ago guy showed me how he "deleted facebook". He removed it from his phone (but still using the messenger app).
shervinafshar 9y ago
I found the generalization above regarding computer literacy of "most people" unfounded and very troubling. This comment also handwaves the inconvenience caused to users who were promised access to the information they need across their devices.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
One, we are in a market failure. Unilateral withdrawal is difficult. Two, even if I withdraw, I am still subjected to Facebook’s surveillance and negative effects on my democracy. The latter is what pisses me off. (The cluelessness of Facebook’s management and culture, in respect of this problem, coming in at a close second.)
- mirko22 9y ago
  How are you still subject to facebook surveillance and “effects on democracy”? For surveillance you can say same for Google and their analytics code installed everywhere. For democracy, i ap pretty sure same tactics are used in any media channel...
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > For democracy, i ap pretty sure same tactics are used in any media channel Facebook's uniqueness, in reach, magnitude of damage, and negligence, has been qualitatively demonstrated, by its actions and employees' defenses of said actions, over the past months.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dosycorp 9y ago

What I really like about this is what the "hashtag" #DeleteFacebook says about us and our time right now. Firstly, it speaks of how ignorant we all are, as a public mass, of how the world actually works, even the reality of an "obvious" situation we aspire to be commenting about. Because you cannot actually "delete facebook". Neither can you "delete" the entire service as if it is some "app" on your phone, or old-skool word document on your laptop, nor can you delete the data it knows about you. Even if FB actually deleted the data they had about you, you can't make their AI's "unlearn" everything they got from you, and you can't make their 3rd-parties delete your data as well ( no matter what you well-intentioned t&cs-ninnies might say to counter this, I just don't believe you that there's anyway to make these things happen ). So you can't Delete Facebook. The first rule of Facebook is: Facebook is eternal. Secondly, even if you go ahead and delete your account, your protest is impotent. Your victory is symbolic. Your effort at self determination will be undone. Because it's sort of like people saying they were going to leave California ( or the US ) if Trump got elected. So you can do it, but it won't change anything. It will probably end up severely disrupting / hurting your life. And in the end, you most likely won't do it. What this reveals about our ignorance is how powerless we actually are, and how ignorant we are of what Facebook has become. It has become a utility. It is ( mostly ) essential. Even if you do not use it, other services assume you do, and your access to those is gatekept by your ( non-existant ) FB account. And if you do use it, or use Messenger, or Whatsapp, then it is a good way to stay in touch with people you know. And if you really use it then of course you know why you need it. Second rule of Facebook is: Facebook is necessary. So the third thing I like about this is, how ignorant this hash tag reveals us to be with regard to the way to deal with Facebook. It's not about individual actions. It's about the collective. FB has begun to impinge upon the collective. It has become a utility. And it exists forever, despite the actions of individuals. When it goes rabid / stray, what is needed is collective actions to bring it back under control of the commons. Within the bounds of the common good. Only regulation can subdue Facebook to the useful and the good. Not protest. The third rule of Facebook is: It's a utility, stupid. Regulate it.

mirko22 9y ago
Facebook is not a utility by it self, it is a web site, if you start regulating it what stops the government to regulate pretty much anything on the internet?

tempodox 9y ago

> Facebook and other companies must respect user privacy by default and by design. That would be really nice, but before that happens a major cultural shift would have to take place and I can't see that on the horizon anywhere. Until then, the only language those companies understand is losing users, or not gaining them in the first place. And that's only the part where we consciously decide whether we're users or not. It still doesn't touch the part where our data is grabbed beyond our influence.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> the only language those companies understand is losing users, or not gaining them in the first place Or being broken up. This is a classic case of market failure. Waiting for users or advertisers to force a change is futile, and not their faults.
anoplus 9y ago
The public needs to demand anything like respect for user privacy by putting pressure on the company. For that, the public needs to be aware of the issue. And for awareness a discussion needs to be kept alive. Like we do here in this post. So posting and commenting in HN matters. I was participating this year in a big street protest calling for police to keep investigating the prime minister for corruption. The pressure lead to public exposure and accelerated investigation immediately.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

Deletion is too extreme for most people. Facebook is a monopoly for users and in an oligopoly for advertisers. This is a market failure [1]. More reasonable: escalating partial dis-engagement. Here's what I did, sequentially, over the years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

cdancette 9y ago
Turning off messenger notifications seems drastic and unnecessary (it's real people contacting you). It's like turning off sms notifications of call notifications, I do it whenever I need to concentrate , but not by default. The problem are apps that notifies us about useless or non direct communication stuff.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Turning off messenger notifications seems drastic and unnecessary In my experience, it has been neither. My friends effortlessly filter what I need to hear into iMessages, e-mails, phone calls and face-to-face shares. Human communication is as easy to hack as it is fluid and resilient.
- DeusExMachina 9y ago
  This is only if you consider that every message is urgent and must be seen immediately, which is rarely the case. I turned of notifications because they were too distracting, and that only made things better. I still chat with my friends, but I do so only when I pick up my phone voluntarily. People get also use to the fact that they don’t get an immediate reply when they write you, and they stop expecting it. Interactions are more relaxed.

amelius 9y ago

We need an API to interact with Facebook, so that other tools can shield us from it and help us migrate away. Facebook will never build this API, but perhaps someone can use DOM traversing as the underlying mechanism for an open source service that provides the API.

ClintEhrlich 9y ago
Some of us are working on it: https://urbit.org/posts/overview/ https://urbit.org/posts/overview/
- ibidibi 9y ago
  Can I, somehow, take my downloaded Facebook .zip data and import it into something Urbit'ish, yet still give me control over it?

lordnacho 9y ago

For me, the answer is to not put your personality on FB. Just put on the platitudes of your life, and like the platitudes of your friends' lives. "Look my kid did this". "Isn't the weather great today". "Glad you weren't hurt in that disaster". I log in most days, but all I do is ack my friends. When I put something on, it's some BS that lets them ack me. I don't think it takes me more than a few seconds to scroll through and hit like. Next to that there's the occasional "I'm in town" which is a call for a face-to-face.

psyc 9y ago
My friends behaving like this is the reason I quit.

ggm 9y ago

Wean your contacts off the messenger and #deletefacebook

ibidibi 9y ago

I wonder if there are any other tools out there that are capable of mining valuable data (for the personal user) from the "Download my Facebook" .zip file dump .. it seems like this is a data format that is ripe for exploitation by other apps/services in the effort of freeing Facebooks' grip over peoples faces. Has anyone looked into the data that Facebook provide, to see what potential apps/services could be built on it? It seems really ripe for exploitation, to me .. but I have yet to download the .zip and inspect its contents. Off to do that now...

glogla 9y ago

Everyone is using facebook ... because everyone is using facebook. The more people delete it, the weaker will the network effect be. I would say that as a person who understands technology and the ramifications of facebook, you have a moral duty to not use it. And you have a duty of educating people about facebook. You can't stop it alone (no single person can - even shooting Zuck would probably not stop facebook) but you can stop voting for it, just like you probably aren't voting for alt right/nazi parties in your local elections.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

I think "Social Media" is a complete abomination and should be burned to the ground and the earth salted that nothing may grow there. But! Facebook has some really useful features. I used to engage quite a lot with the social features of Facebook, but now I only use it for a few of things: 1. Facebook Marketplace has now become more useful than Gumtree which used to dominate the local secondhand goods market; 2. Events; 3. Facebook Messenger. I couldn't give a flip about reading anyone's opinion, posting my own, or looking at your photos. But what I don't get is, the elephant in the room: why haven't the FBI raided Facebook HQ and seized control of all their data centres: it should obvious to everyone that minors have used Messenger to share lewd pictures and videos with each other, and we all now know that Facebook doesn't actually delete anything because they let download all your data and that data includes pictures and videos you've "removed / delete", and even ones you took with the Messenger app but didn't send! Zuckerberg is literally sitting on a mountain of child porn!

warent 9y ago
You mean literally figuratively

tomxor 9y ago

> As a social media user, you should have the right to leave a platform that you are not satisfied with... Furthermore, if users decide to leave a platform, they should be able to easily, efficiently, and freely take their uploaded information away and move it to a different one in a usable format. Data is not the one thing stopping people leaving facebook... friends are. This force stopping people leaving is the same one that drove social media into a monopoly - there is no cross platform protocol. Platforms do not communicate with each other like email clients. In this scenario the very nature of communication encourages people gather into a single large group for convenience (if it wasn't facebook it would have been another). The abuse of a company in such a position is inevitable. The _question_ is not going to be how can we make a protocol now (it's too late, facebook doesn't care), the question is how long will it take for enough people to become disgusted enough to switch to something more open where protocols could be developed, or where the platform is open source anyway and corporate forces are not an issue.

amelius 9y ago
> the question is how long will it take for enough people to become disgusted enough to switch to something more open where protocols could be developed, or where the platform is open source anyway and corporate forces are not an issue. There are some other options: - Phone makers create a "message center", a central place where emails and feeds are shown. Facebook must now adhere to these standards, and they lose their "gatekeeper" position. - Someone develops an API to interact with facebook on behalf of a user. This API performs a live export of friends, feeds, etc, so that other applications can use them. After a while, people will use those applications instead of facebook itself, and are ready to leave facebook.
- exodust 9y ago
  Yes good ideas. Hhonestly I thought we'd have it by now. I've been waiting to have my social account outside of Facebook that could connect with contacts who "live" inside its walls. Why is everyone so happy to be with one company? Why are they happy to allow one company to manage their social connections and notifications for life? Social connection technology shouldn't be tethered to one company, everyone huddled under its "protective" wing. That is typical early 21st century thinking. It's eco-system lock-in mentality, which works against users in the end. I heard a journalist recently call Facebook the "modern day telephone" (Leigh Sales, ABC), which is a stupid thing to say. Facebook is not the technology, it's a service that uses modern technologies. Imagine if there was only one phone company or ISP everyone in the world used. Not a great scenario for competition, innovation, safety, privacy and open standards evolution. We need those new protocols and ways to connect by easily talking between social media platforms.

ratsimihah 9y ago

I left because it had developed into a bad habit of scrolling through a meaningless feed for me. The data leak was just the trigger to take the jump.

nkkollaw 9y ago

Oh, cool. I was really missing the daily post about deleting Facebook.

stratigos 9y ago

Zuckerberg revealed his true colors years ago. I had a facebook for a moment in perhaps 2005-06. I deleted it. I have never regretted that, quite the contrary. I have enjoyed a life free of social media, and free of its trappings and influences. I watch my friends get sucked into "comparing mind," scroll through streams of advertorials and recieve the corresponding subliminal stressers, and constantly have their mindfulness interrupted by notifications. I think the general concept of social media is great, and a necessary thing for the world at large. I think facebook is evil, and it blows my mind that people still continue to use this platform (And similar ones) even though the company sells users out again and again. This era goes way beyond "jump! how high?"

alecco 9y ago

Outside US many events are organized via WhatsApp (I guess that’s why FB acquired it for 19bn)

4lch3m1st 9y ago

I think the thought of deletion is pretty much just one of the problems. I managed to delete my Facebook profile a few months ago, but the amount of pressure I often receive from people so that I create a new account is what impresses me the most -- not from the personal level, since I already made up my mind, but from the point that most of the people think Facebook is just an essential, irreplaceable tool which everyone MUST have. I'm glad this did not yet affect my work or study, but this "disease" seems to have already infected most of my family and friends. Now personally, I think people fool themselves most of the time to find what seems to be a reasonable answer to why they use Facebook: be it networking, be it a way to communicate with family and friends, be it a way to stay "in touch" with the news (and that also opens up for the whole fake news discussion, but oh well). I'm not saying those are not legitimate reasons to have a Facebook account (these are actually the primary services that it claims to offer), but I really wish people could see that there are other means to that. Some don't even involve having any social media accounts.

davidy123 9y ago

Many people are just focusing on the social networking aspect of Facebook, which can provide cohesion, but it's more than that, and some aspects are profoundly useful. It connects people around the world, it makes event planning easier, it digitize communication to provide opportunities for augmentation, and it has elevated consumer advocacy. In the global and online trade age, it's important for companies to be more conscious of their image, and consumers to be able to organize. Raising a complaint on Facebook is one of the best ways to have an issue resolved these days. Taking away these facilities would be a giant step backwards, like removing telephone lines or postal routes. It's really a matter of defining who has the authority of this position and how the information is distributed, where Facebook is problematic.

shmerl 9y ago

Don't register there to begin with.

unicornode 9y ago

Stallman was right.

christofosho 9y ago

My only connection to other people outside immediate family was Facebook. I deleted mine, and now am stuck with no methods of contacting many people I know or once knew. I miss most of the major events in their lives. It's interesting to see how easily disconnected one can be when you're no longer seeing people involuntarily in classes and through a university community.

slim 9y ago

The problems that Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal highlight—sweeping data collection, indiscriminate sharing of that data, and manipulative advertising No. The problem is that Facebook as a company has the data and the capacity to manipulate any election in any country. And there is no law that is forbidding them from doing that. That's what the Cambridge Analytica scandal proved

chrischen 9y ago

I’m not sure it’s possible for facebook to fundamentally respect privacy by default. It is completetly antithetical to both their stated mission of “connecting people” and their defacto mission of making money off advertising. In order for them to achieve either of those goals, they have to increase time spent on site and engagement, in order to maximize ad revenue. That results in them serving content the user wants to see at all costs. Besides the fact that content a user wants to see may not be the best for the user, and can simply waste time, this can also mean a massive echo chamber reaffirming peoples’ own beliefs. While it may serve to connect them with their like-minded peers, it emotionally and intellectually results in disconnecting them from the rest of society. This results in a dangerous shift in factionism and idealogical siloing. So the negative effects of simply serving what the user wants to see at a primitive level is fundamentally tied to an advertising business model. This makes it probably impossible for facebook to positively incentivize users without fundamentally changing their own incentive structures. You may think there’s nothing wrong if facebook is merely delivering what users want, but facebook uses manipulation to only deliver what users want in the short term for immediate gratification. It’s similar to addictive drugs and cocaine. People’s long term thinking know it’s bad for them even thhough their short term brain wants it now. Therefore if anyone is to create a facebook killer, all they have to do is provide a social platform that has a business model that is both sustainable and not reliant on short term engagement and selling ads. Instead it should focus on ceding control of social interaction to the user, rather than it being the byoroduct of manipulative user experience. It should tie its own success to ensbling users to achieve their own long term social goals. Since it would be the antithesis of facebook, they’d have too much inertia in their ad model to effectively clone it. Any other social platform can simply be cloned by facebook.

hordeallergy 9y ago

Every time there's a scandal and you don't delete your Facebook account, you're telling them that you're fine with that behaviour and that they're welcome to abuse you further. They'll keep pushing, whittling their users to a group who tolerates anything.

regeland 9y ago

Disclaimer - I was subscriber 7454 to FB, however I moved on and never used it. I'm a little surprised that the EFF didn't mention the proprietary nature of FB in the article. The EFF used to champion open standards... what has changed?