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I signed up for facebook again a few days ago because I need an account to manage some events / pages whose target demo is still reachable on the platform. My
by bschne 6y ago
I signed up for facebook again a few days ago because I need an account to manage some events / pages whose target demo is still reachable on the platform.
My account was dead for about two years or so before that. Within a minute or two of signing up with my (real) email and phone number, basically my whole friend list from back when I had an account, people I've texted on whatsapp once years ago, etc. were in friend suggestions. Downright creepy.
- dimitrios1 6y agoIn a way, I see utility in companies like Facebook openly exploiting whats possible with current technologies, web APIs, and mobile platforms so that privacy laws have a target of what to address and so that the general public can get a grasp of what's going on. It's better than it happening in the dark, behind the scences. Before Facebook, if you tried to explain to a layman that your social data can be used to manipulate entire elections, people probably would have looked at you with strange and furrowed brows. Now, it's a question of the best way to address the issue.
- bschne 6y agoIsn't the existence of large enough centrally controlled networks for this exploitation to become possible pretty much inseparable from it becoming a public topic that gets addressed by governements and discussed by the wider public? I don't think facebook served as a catalyst for the public to start caring about something that was going on in the same / an equally problematic form pre-facebook.
- oblio 6y agoI didn't even have a Facebook account until about 7 years ago. I finally made one and I had neatly sorted real life friends as part of my friends suggestion. That's when I realized they already had a shadow profile of me from everyone else, all I did was activate it and increase their confidence level from 95% or something to 100%...
- bzb6 6y agoBecause you hadn’t deleted your account, you disabled it temporarily. It helps to read what one clicks.
- bschne 6y agoNot sure where you're getting this from my post, but that is false. I actually deleted it, did not log in again during the "grace period" where they will just reactivate it, and my new account I created was initially empty (no profile data, friends, message history, you name it).
- bzb6 6y agoSorry, I misread. What usually happens is that those people have you on their contact lists, which they uploaded to Facebook to find more friends.