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Hear hear. If you're worried about the privacy implications of Facebook, don't use it. I don't have a facebook account and I'm still alive. I talk to my friends

Hear hear. If you're worried about the privacy implications of Facebook, don't use it. I don't have a facebook account and I'm still alive. I talk to my friends via text or email or in person. It's possible that I'm missing out on something great, but, whatever. I have other friends that don't use facebook either, and we feel no sense of loss. Thinking about it though, the NSA probably knows as much about me as they would if I had a facebook account. My social network can be put together from texts, phone calls and emails, plus potential access to the content of all of those things. My Google history would fill in any gaps about my interests or moods. I can't think of a lot of things that people put into facebook that wouldn't be reflected somewhere else. Screw it, use facebook. If the government paints a target on you, it doesn't matter what you do. Any privacy concerns may be best addressed through legislation and oversight.

selmnoo 12y ago
> Hear hear. If you're worried about the privacy implications of Facebook, don't use it. I don't have a facebook account and I'm still alive. I hear that a lot, and it frustrates me very much, because it fundamentally betrays an understanding of Facebook's true nature. I do not have a FB account, never have, and never will. Yet, my pictures are on there. Because my peers inevitably do use FB and take pictures of social gatherings where I'm at... and I get tagged. I have really no real recourse to this. At this point I actually cannot tell my friends to not take pictures of me... because that is not a reasonable request. A group picture has me in addition to other folks... the other folks may want the picture to be up on FB. So now, if I don't want to be on Facebook, I have to kill my social life.
- tedunangst 12y ago
  What happens if your friends post a picture of you on flickr? or wordpress? or livejournal? Or is FB the only picture service your friends use?
  - acqq 12y ago
    FB is much worse. When my girlfriend logs in from some device for the first time, FB asks her to write who is on some picture to let her in. So even initially untagged pictures can get tagged for FB and even double/triple checked -- people who know that the wrong answer would keep them out of FB will tell the truth. And everything goes to THE DATABASE. Recently I haven't seen this, but I saw it personally more times.
    - dTal 12y ago
      Bloody hell, so Facebook is basically crowdsourcing facial recognition a la Mechanical Turk by making it a mandatory part of the login process, and calling it security? That's diabolically clever.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - acqq 12y ago
        It's nothing new for FB. Their main difference from Google was from the start: "we don't have to use algorithms to analyze the users, they fill in our database entrie themselves."
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
You are aware that that argument can be used to essentially justify anything? If you are worried about police violence, just leave the country! And screw it, why not give a DNA sample for the federal database? If the government paints a target on you, they can get a blood sample anyhow! That something else is also bad is not a reason for progressing further in that direction. Yes, mass surveillance is bad in any form, that's not a good reason for creating more structures that are prone to mass surveillance. If anything, it's a reason to get rid of those old services that are from a time when mass surveillance was still technically challenging and replace them with something that protects your privacy, rather than something that destroys it for good. Also, no, addressing a problem through legislation and oversight that can much more effectively be addressed by other means, is not a sensible idea. We don't build bridges that can't carry the load that normal citizens without special training are likely to put on them and then legislate to keep them from destroying the brige, we build bridges that simply work, as that's much more efficient. Similarly, it's much more efficient to build a system that doesn't present a gigantic abuse potential and to then try and legislate that problem away. In particular, when the thing that's at risk is the ability to legislate. If centralized communication hubs get too much power, that risks undermining democratic decisionmaking.
- kelvin0 12y ago
  As they say in Quebec: coliss d'innocent...
- rtpg 12y ago
  "Just leave the country" and "Just don't use facebook" are two very different propositions, the actionability of which is very different. Hell, even "Just don't use the internet" and "just don't use FB" are two extremely different propositions.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
    Sure it's different. But first of all, leaving a country isn't actually that difficult, depending a bit on where you live, of course (within the EU it's outright trivial, for example, you just move to another country, no different than if you were to move within a country), and secondly, part of the problem with network effects is that they tend to only make it harder over time to avoid the network. Also, the social cost is actually pretty similar.

selmnoo 12y ago

> Hear hear. If you're worried about the privacy implications of Facebook, don't use it. I don't have a facebook account and I'm still alive. I hear that a lot, and it frustrates me very much, because it fundamentally betrays an understanding of Facebook's true nature. I do not have a FB account, never have, and never will. Yet, my pictures are on there. Because my peers inevitably do use FB and take pictures of social gatherings where I'm at... and I get tagged. I have really no real recourse to this. At this point I actually cannot tell my friends to not take pictures of me... because that is not a reasonable request. A group picture has me in addition to other folks... the other folks may want the picture to be up on FB. So now, if I don't want to be on Facebook, I have to kill my social life.

tedunangst 12y ago
What happens if your friends post a picture of you on flickr? or wordpress? or livejournal? Or is FB the only picture service your friends use?
- acqq 12y ago
  FB is much worse. When my girlfriend logs in from some device for the first time, FB asks her to write who is on some picture to let her in. So even initially untagged pictures can get tagged for FB and even double/triple checked -- people who know that the wrong answer would keep them out of FB will tell the truth. And everything goes to THE DATABASE. Recently I haven't seen this, but I saw it personally more times.
  - dTal 12y ago
    Bloody hell, so Facebook is basically crowdsourcing facial recognition a la Mechanical Turk by making it a mandatory part of the login process, and calling it security? That's diabolically clever.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - acqq 12y ago
      It's nothing new for FB. Their main difference from Google was from the start: "we don't have to use algorithms to analyze the users, they fill in our database entrie themselves."
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago

You are aware that that argument can be used to essentially justify anything? If you are worried about police violence, just leave the country! And screw it, why not give a DNA sample for the federal database? If the government paints a target on you, they can get a blood sample anyhow! That something else is also bad is not a reason for progressing further in that direction. Yes, mass surveillance is bad in any form, that's not a good reason for creating more structures that are prone to mass surveillance. If anything, it's a reason to get rid of those old services that are from a time when mass surveillance was still technically challenging and replace them with something that protects your privacy, rather than something that destroys it for good. Also, no, addressing a problem through legislation and oversight that can much more effectively be addressed by other means, is not a sensible idea. We don't build bridges that can't carry the load that normal citizens without special training are likely to put on them and then legislate to keep them from destroying the brige, we build bridges that simply work, as that's much more efficient. Similarly, it's much more efficient to build a system that doesn't present a gigantic abuse potential and to then try and legislate that problem away. In particular, when the thing that's at risk is the ability to legislate. If centralized communication hubs get too much power, that risks undermining democratic decisionmaking.

kelvin0 12y ago
As they say in Quebec: coliss d'innocent...
rtpg 12y ago
"Just leave the country" and "Just don't use facebook" are two very different propositions, the actionability of which is very different. Hell, even "Just don't use the internet" and "just don't use FB" are two extremely different propositions.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
  Sure it's different. But first of all, leaving a country isn't actually that difficult, depending a bit on where you live, of course (within the EU it's outright trivial, for example, you just move to another country, no different than if you were to move within a country), and secondly, part of the problem with network effects is that they tend to only make it harder over time to avoid the network. Also, the social cost is actually pretty similar.