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I'm not sure I follow you. Right now, Facebook knows roughly this much about me: 1) All of the people I have legitimated as Friends. 2) Screeds and screeds of

I'm not sure I follow you. Right now, Facebook knows roughly this much about me: 1) All of the people I have legitimated as Friends. 2) Screeds and screeds of data about the quality of all my connections with those friends (have I hid them from my news-feed? how much do I interact with their posts? how much do I interact with them? talk to them? share with them? stalk them? how much time do I spend in interactions with them? how do the patterns of my interactions change with them (mouse-click patterns, scroll patterns, typing patterns)? do I use different words (different emotions/more formal/informal language/different function word patterns?) 3) People I've stalked but haven't friended 4) Brands, companies, causes, ideas, things from history, all sorts of random shit I've liked (along with similar data to 2)) 5) What sorts of things I click on, how I leave the site and where I go. And certainly more. Etc., etc., etc. Facebook didn't manifest my entire social life. They just built a platform which allowed me to socialise orders of magnitude more efficiently than before, a platform of great benefit to me, and one into which I've poured vast quantities of data (and the amount, quality and variety of the data is only set to increase as we open up more input modalities - eg eye-tracking, gesture-tracking, and biometrics). the data is all there. All facebook is doing is cobbling together some of the most very basic tools one might use to make sense of a subset of that data.

psbp 14y ago
Do any of your family members under 12 have facebook? Imagine the aggregate of all their experiences in a decade or more.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  My little brother and sister had it from 11 and 12 respectively. Yes, it's quite interesting to think about. Anyway, what's your point? By the way, you're discussing this with someone who believes that in the future we will record and utilise orders of magnitude more amount of data about our lives and our planet than we do now, enough to make your eyes water, and furthermore, that we are inexorably fated to do so, and furthermore, that it's a really, really good trend, one which is going to play out in highly unpredictable and surprising ways.
  - psbp 14y ago
    Data doesn't need to be implicitly tied with self-expression.
    - corporalagumbo 14y ago
      ... Dude, what does that even mean?
      - psbp 14y ago
        Think it through silly. What do you think your little brother and sister are doing at 11/12? Their "data" doesn't mean anything. The way in which they're forging their identity, their opinions, their sense of community and relationships is what's important. It's necessary for these types of environments not to disparage diversity or authentic forms of expression. The way facebook monetizes and encourages users to use its service very much does that as exhibited in the images above. A multifaceted sense of self can not be easily created using facebook because that's antithetical to facebook's model. Facebook would rather you offer clarity and conformity to your identity which is easily digestible by the your peer groups or the public at large.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - exodust 14y ago
    So you're a fan of data, that's fair enough. Who isn't a fan of data? The issue is, who owns and controls that data? You, the true owner and source of the data, or some big advertising-driven tech giant with it's own crappy hollywood movie? Not only that, but in order to make money from advertising, they link all this wonderful data (your data) with advertiser interests. Much of this linking is done under the radar, via rules you are not allowed to see. It's very important to distinguish the benefits of shared data with ownership and control of the data, and the rules by which it is mined and accessed. BTW, a lot of Facebook data is "self-expression" and if given the choice in real-time, many people would elect for NOT for their contribution to go into the tech-giants mainstream database. Going into "settings" and messing around with broader privacy options for content types and particular people is an absolute joke in terms of UX and human experience in relation to expressing personal views or communicating with friends. "Privacy settings" does not come naturally in communication. Facebook knows this, and knows people will not bother or become lazy with privacy. Bottom line is, Facebook is an inappropriate platform for the collected data that is your life.

psbp 14y ago

Do any of your family members under 12 have facebook? Imagine the aggregate of all their experiences in a decade or more.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
My little brother and sister had it from 11 and 12 respectively. Yes, it's quite interesting to think about. Anyway, what's your point? By the way, you're discussing this with someone who believes that in the future we will record and utilise orders of magnitude more amount of data about our lives and our planet than we do now, enough to make your eyes water, and furthermore, that we are inexorably fated to do so, and furthermore, that it's a really, really good trend, one which is going to play out in highly unpredictable and surprising ways.
- psbp 14y ago
  Data doesn't need to be implicitly tied with self-expression.
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    ... Dude, what does that even mean?
    - psbp 14y ago
      Think it through silly. What do you think your little brother and sister are doing at 11/12? Their "data" doesn't mean anything. The way in which they're forging their identity, their opinions, their sense of community and relationships is what's important. It's necessary for these types of environments not to disparage diversity or authentic forms of expression. The way facebook monetizes and encourages users to use its service very much does that as exhibited in the images above. A multifaceted sense of self can not be easily created using facebook because that's antithetical to facebook's model. Facebook would rather you offer clarity and conformity to your identity which is easily digestible by the your peer groups or the public at large.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- exodust 14y ago
  So you're a fan of data, that's fair enough. Who isn't a fan of data? The issue is, who owns and controls that data? You, the true owner and source of the data, or some big advertising-driven tech giant with it's own crappy hollywood movie? Not only that, but in order to make money from advertising, they link all this wonderful data (your data) with advertiser interests. Much of this linking is done under the radar, via rules you are not allowed to see. It's very important to distinguish the benefits of shared data with ownership and control of the data, and the rules by which it is mined and accessed. BTW, a lot of Facebook data is "self-expression" and if given the choice in real-time, many people would elect for NOT for their contribution to go into the tech-giants mainstream database. Going into "settings" and messing around with broader privacy options for content types and particular people is an absolute joke in terms of UX and human experience in relation to expressing personal views or communicating with friends. "Privacy settings" does not come naturally in communication. Facebook knows this, and knows people will not bother or become lazy with privacy. Bottom line is, Facebook is an inappropriate platform for the collected data that is your life.