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I think a main point is about indirect effects of privacy loss that are hard to see and reason about directly. Example #1: You visit a website completely unrel

by bo1024 12y ago

I think a main point is about indirect effects of privacy loss that are hard to see and reason about directly. Example #1: You visit a website completely unrelated to facebook. The site has a "like" button on the page enabling them to access Facebook's data about you (depending on cookies etc). You observe advertisements or content tailored based on your personal information or things you like. Maybe you are offered different prices for the same product depending on your age, gender, location, etc. Example #2: A potential employer accesses, perhaps indirectly, information about you that would be illegal to ask you directly (marital status, etc). Example #3: One of your facebook "friends" signs up for some arbitrary service enabling that service to access your contact and personal information and connect it with e.g. the photos you mentioned. Arbitrary things happen, e.g. your photos are used to advertise some product you find distasteful, your contact and personal information is sold to telemarketers or spammers, and so on.

yeukhon 12y ago
1) This is more of how Facebook makes money with ads and providing "personalized experience" just as Google does. Fundamentally not a flaw in Facebook, but a debatable practice. And do you have source Facebook would share my age and my gender to third-party even if I list them to be private? The only thing that might be possible is Facebook internally does the calculation. Giving away to third-party vs FB doing the computation aren't exactly the same. 2) If you join an online community, you have to pay a price. You might tagged your friend or your friend tagged you and the setting is not strict enough, then how is that Facebook's fault? 3) Again, that's the price a social network has to pay. Back in the days people take film-based pictures and there is no way to massively store and distribute to the world. Now the digital age has changed the way we distribute information about one another. Doesn't matter if Facebook is 100% free software and decentralized. One person leaks everything leaks. There is no real 100% anonymity. You have to make contact with another human being.

by bo1024 12y ago

yeukhon 12y ago

1) This is more of how Facebook makes money with ads and providing "personalized experience" just as Google does. Fundamentally not a flaw in Facebook, but a debatable practice. And do you have source Facebook would share my age and my gender to third-party even if I list them to be private? The only thing that might be possible is Facebook internally does the calculation. Giving away to third-party vs FB doing the computation aren't exactly the same. 2) If you join an online community, you have to pay a price. You might tagged your friend or your friend tagged you and the setting is not strict enough, then how is that Facebook's fault? 3) Again, that's the price a social network has to pay. Back in the days people take film-based pictures and there is no way to massively store and distribute to the world. Now the digital age has changed the way we distribute information about one another. Doesn't matter if Facebook is 100% free software and decentralized. One person leaks everything leaks. There is no real 100% anonymity. You have to make contact with another human being.