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Facebook Analytics will no longer be available
- oblib 6y agoPretty sparse notification. They don't give a reason at all.
- Syonyk 6y agoSadly, this is unlikely to be because Facebook, entirely, is going away.
- oblib 6y agoI don't get what you mean. Please explain.
- gigatexal 6y agoFacebook needs to be shutdown as it poses an existential threat to democracy because it provides a platform for the worst of us to amplify their messages of hate and division and to spread conspiracies. It facilitates people who would otherwise not be able to find others like them to organize. So instead of the crazy person on the corner with a sign condemning homosexuals or spouting conspiracies that most would look at and laugh these people find others like them and become ever more extreme. Addendum: This isn’t about Zuckerberg. Any other dominant social network will be co-opted in the same way because of inherent flaws in people: we are prone to groupthink and as demographics change such that there’s an ever growing acceptance of conspiracy theories and greater division in American politics for example Facebook will continue to drive discord and thereby profits from further engagement on its service by exploiting these inner human vices.
- johnwheeler 6y agoNot only that but it’s changed the social dynamic in a shitty way.
- throwaway1777 6y agoSocial networking has its issues but it’s not the root of all evil. These copypasta-esque rants about FB being a threat to democracy are as bad as anything you’d see on FB itself.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bluescrn 6y ago-
- iamacyborg 6y agoCitation needed
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sagolikasoppor 6y agoYou americans are really good at sounding intelligent while you just spew out shit, I gotta give you that.
- dang 6y agoPosts like this will get you banned on HN. Please don't post nationalistic or personal attacks. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- apples_oranges 6y agoFor some odd synapse firing reason this quote popped into my mind while reading your comment: "It tells me that goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of BURNING them!" - Henry Jones - Last Crusade - Not wishing to insult you but you want to get rid of a service that you personally dislike. Newsflash: Many people don't share that opinion. (And I'm frankly almost as tired of hearing it as I am tired of hearing about the amazing benefits of crypto currencies.)
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agojust because we are all tired of this fight is no reason that the fight and outrage should stop. if anything it means that FB has won and US propagandists have achieved their goal: exhaustion of the enemy. anyone in this thread arguing in defense of FB has never supported the #DeleteFacebook movement in the first place (perhaps because they're eyeing a job in that firm or are already working there). It doesn't change the fact that facebook (and other BigTech) needs to be fought like cancer: Either we survive BigTech by fighting it perpetually to the teeth or it's going to kill us (in some cases quite literally - see Rohinga or similar). the problem is larger than FB. it's rampant in all areas of BigTech and chances are high many here are guilty for working on the destruction of society. See for example Stripe (an "innocent" payment processor) which processes payments for the Proud Boys: https://www.ourfreedomfunding.com/campaign/19/freespazzo-dominic-pezzola https://www.ourfreedomfunding.com/campaign/19/freespazzo-dom... https://www.ourfreedomfunding.com/campaign/23/financial-aid-for-ethan-nordean-rufio https://www.ourfreedomfunding.com/campaign/23/financial-aid-... See also Cloudflare which is happy to protect such sites as the one above (and has a history of doing so): https://www.fastcompany.com/90312063/how-cloudflare-straddles-its-role-as-privacy-champion-and-hate-speech-enabler https://www.fastcompany.com/90312063/how-cloudflare-straddle... The real problem comes from having a small highly paid and entitled circle of Tech people in the US be the arbiter of truth and social values worldwide.
- headmelted 6y agoYour suggestion is fighting fascism with fascism, and it reads like maybe you don’t realise that? “BigTech needs to be fought like cancer”. When did we all agree to this?
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago> Facebook needs to be shutdown as it poses an existential threat to democracy I really would welcome that but no way it will. 1) even if it were banned in many countries it would still survive in the US for Intel/NatSec reasons. 2) it's so ingrained in society that it's unthinkable that it could disappear. In many countries facebook _is_ the Internet and large parts of the economy and social fabric (as toxic and shitty as it is) depend on it. This has implications to 1) (e.g. NatSec) above, because 3) FB is part of the US propaganda[1] machine. Radio free Europe or VoA, etc dwarf in comparison of what US dominated BigTech does[2]. See also trending here recently [3] note especially the title changed from the original official title (presumably to be less inflammatory even though the original title made exactly that point and the new title does the bidding for the propagandists). FB is too big too fail in every sense. It is impossible to fight legally (or with illegal means it will survive like the stubborn parasite it is) [1] Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512 https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512 [2] https://thenextweb.com/distract/2020/12/21/how-netflix-shapes-mainstream-culture-explained-by-data/ https://thenextweb.com/distract/2020/12/21/how-netflix-shape... [3] How Netflix is creating a common European culture https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26696396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26696396
- disabled 6y agoThis is very thoughtful. I do not know why people downvoted your comment. I personally despise Facebook and all of its services.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago> I do not know why people downvoted your comment. reason why people call me out for my behavior is this: > I personally despise Facebook ^^ I do not agree with the mainstream view which is to hold companies liable for their actions. Instead my attitude (and I get why people have a hard time with it) is to direct my anger at the individuals hiding behind these big-corps. I'm making it personal because for me it is. We (humans in most "civilized" countries) made a huge mistake by allowing a company to be a "legal" person which gives people the ability to hide their ghoulish behavior behind the legal facade of a company. You can not win a fight as a person against a company (only in rare cases that don't matter much). As a legal person I can fund terror with shell/shelf companies and get away with paying 0% income tax (e.g. Netflix, Google and all other cancerous US companies registered in Ireland or Luxembourg) while as a natural person I get away scot-free. My solution to the problem is too radical for most as it calls out the Zuckerberg's, Eric Princes, Peter Thiel, Bezos, Musk, Koch, Trumps and hundreds of others. People here absolutely hate that and (in some cases rightfully) attack me because what I propose is against the law and probably violates my own code of human rights. If laws don't serve us we have to change them and in many cases this will not be possible without violence. I'm not saying I have a solution[1] for it but I also can't see how companies should continue to get away with destruction of society (and the environment). Until we start eating the rich (metaphorically) and they start fearing the rest of us (again) nothing will change. [1] my pov is constantly evolving and in many regards half baked, e.g. I also am deeply suspicious of more government power to solve these issues or any form of "seizing the means of production". and I think that technology (science) will even less be able to provide a cure for something that isn't a technological problem (see Jacques Ellul "The Technological Society"). again I absolutely need to stress that I have no solution either.
- headmelted 6y agoYou’ve basically just described an Eternal September which pre-dates Facebook by about a decade. Taking away the platform doesn’t change the inherent nature of these people, who could easily educate themselves with actual facts if they chose to do so.
- gigatexal 6y agoKey is “if they chose to” do so. But to overcome one’s own ethnocentrism and cognitive biases is proving to be difficult.
- headmelted 6y agoI agree, I just feel like it’s worth calling a spade a spade. People believe horrible falsehoods because they are simpler, more convenient and (critically) more exciting than taking the time to understand actual facts. That’s laziness, with victims.
- kyrra 6y agohttps://www.adexchanger.com/analytics/facebook-analytics-will-shut-down-on-june-30-heres-why-that-is-and-isnt-a-big-deal/ https://www.adexchanger.com/analytics/facebook-analytics-wil... The above seems to go into guesses as to why it's going away. A lot more informative than the original link.
- robryan 6y agoAs that article states it was potentially a useful source for age and gender demographic data. Google Analytics has this as well but I’d assume more people have given more precise data about their age and gender to Facebook than they have to Google.
- m463 6y agoI wonder if this boils down to - who has provided more labeled photos of themselves?
- busymom0 6y agoI would have thought the opposite - that more people would have given accurate info about age and gender to Google than Facebook. After all, your search results on Google, YouTube etc, your premium subscriptions to YouTube or Google drive etc all provide accurate info to Google. Btw by saying this, I don’t mean to say I trust Google more than FB. I trust neither and prefer DuckDuckGo.
- garbagetime 6y agoDo you trust DuckDuckGo?
- samstave 6y agoMore than goog or FB? Held yeah. FB is like. Creepy stalker sways hiding upside every window and spying on you when it’s completely unrelated to your relationship with FB. Goog is more like the gestapo eavesdropping on every phone call you have and visit to the library you make DuckDuckGo is like asking a stranger for directions who’s going to forget they ever met you in a few minutes.
- MattGaiser 6y agoI didn't even know that FB had a competing tool to Google Analytics/Mixpanel. Anyone comment on whether this is widely used?
- beagle3 6y agoI don’t know if this is related to their app SDK, but many apps use that (including e.g. Google’s own Waze) and that SDK collects analytics in its common Config (and lets you register your own events IIRC).
- borisandcrispin 6y agoWe used it a lot some years ago when we built a chatbot for FB Messenger. It was a great surprise. FB analytics was very hidden, but once you got there their product was quite good. Simple to use and gave us 95% of everything we needed to know. The problem was that you obviously needed to use it with Facebook. As we started building a FB chatbot, that was not an issue, but for any other product it didn't make sense. We considered: - Mixpanel was way too expensive for us. - Google analytics is definitely not a product analytics tool. - Game Analytics was a good tool, but too much focused on games. Analytics tools can be very expensive and there weren't many good free alternatives that we were aware of.
- esnard 6y ago> - Google analytics is definitely not a product analytics tool. Can you elaborate on this please? I'm really not used to analytics tools, but GA does look like one to me.
- unixhero 6y agoProduct analytics tool, is not the same as a web traffic analytics tool. Maybe that is what he meant.
- markdown 6y agoIt's basically a spam engine. I had to stop using GA because Google, the billion dollar company with a million software engineers, couldn't figure out how to filter out spam from their product.
- antegamisou 6y agoHere's a link to the article if you want to avoid all the innocuous trackers https://outline.com/Mvrn9u https://outline.com/Mvrn9u
- traspler 6y agoSo instead you will just be tracked by Google Analytics ;)
- ignoramous 6y agohttps://archive.is/qQinN https://archive.is/qQinN
- antegamisou 6y agoSo I just checked this from my PC and indeed uBlock Origin had blocked 3 google-analytics.com links. TIL I suppose. Unfortunately I cannot edit the OP anymore so I'll provide the original text in this comment Facebook Analytics is Going Away Facebook Analytics will no longer be available after June 30, 2021. Until then, you will still be able to access reports, export charts and tables, and explore insights. To export data into a CSV file from Facebook Analytics on your desktop, click the arrow in the top-right corner of each chart or table. Other business tools can help you understand your advertising, presences, and activities on Facebook and Instagram, including: -Facebook Business Suite allows you to manage your Facebook and Instagram business accounts and can show you detailed insights about your audience, content and trends. (This tool may not be available to you yet.) -Events Manager can help you set up and manage Facebook Business Tools like the Facebook pixel and Conversions API, and reports actions taken on your website, in your app and in your physical store.
- monsieurbanana 6y agoThe last paragraph in outline.com privacy policy is basically them laughing at you for spending time reading the whole thing. > Although most changes are likely to be minor, Outline may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Outline’s sole discretion. Outline encourages visitors to check this page for changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.
- varispeed 6y agoI keep wondering whether such tools should be even legal. Where is the line between making sure you show your advert to people most likely interested in your product and straight up manipulating people into buying something they don't need? In the past, if you sold let's say car parts, you would then naturally buy advert on a car forum, hoping that people interested in cars would click your ad and see what you have to offer. Now you that such forums are mostly gone, you have the whole science of nudging people into buying something using your personal data harvested in questionable ways, various funnel strategies and so on. Why is this socially acceptable?
- fakedang 6y agoWhile I'm a vocal critic of both Facebook and Google, do they really make people buy things they don't need by manipulating? Anecdotally, most of the marketing material and discounts that people around me get and then use to make a purchasing decision came from email. Not Google or Facebook shoving shit in their face, plain old email. Are you going to call for a ban on email? The times I've been convinced to check out a product were only because either a.) their product was really good in the ad and b.) the ad was really good. For example, I still show that Honda R button ad to people who haven't seen it. And even though that ad was still brilliant, as I type this, my Google query (to reconfirm) was "Hyundai R button ad". That's right - that unique and famous YouTube ad that I still remember from 2015 was still not enough for me to even remember the name of the company, much less the name of the product! Most ads are obnoxious and/or boring, and simply exasperating when they interrupt you in between, but nowhere near manipulative. Facebook and Google's major flaw is not in the advertising model but in the way they amplify voices of like minded people who are otherwise irrelevant personae.