Do you think facebook is spying on people? (not rhetorical)

[64bitiso]

Do you consider facebook to blatantly exploit and abuse the data people upload to it, under the convenient "everyone uses it" line?

I do. I'm not here trolling - I am asking for details if any are known, since the issue of privacy is becoming more relevant to me now. Note - I'm far from paranoid about them - I have lots of photos of myself up there (carefully chosen, mind) - but if they are doing something immoral or outright exploitative, I am seriously considering "damage limitation" - IE, I cannot *undo* stuff already uploaded, but *I CAN* remove my account, and refuse to continue being a part of it. I am willing to sacrifice the "convenience" (??!! - read - ANNOYANCE! inane nature!!) of facebook, for the relative inconvenience of not being able to *immediately* contact friends and family.

Aside from the privacy issues, I feel (anti)-social media discourages people to get off their bums, WALK to someone's house and have a cuppa tea with them!

Thoughts and insight? technical as you like - thanks

[coldraven]

I don't use Facebook, I never have. I also block all Facebook trackers and buttons. Facebook can track the usage of non-Facebook users.
More to point, Facebook is free but relies on people filling it with content. Once they have done that all the content belongs to Facebook and is used by them to generate money. Personally I don't want my stuff being used to advertise unknown products.
If you want to find out how insidious these trackers are then install Collusion in Firefox, I bet you will paranoid after that
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/collusion/

P.S. I use NoScript, BetterPrivacy, RefControl, AdBlockPlus and Ghostery add-ons in Firefox

P.P.S. I tried to join Paranoids Anonymous but they wouldn't tell me where the meetings are held

[lz1dsb]

Aside from the privacy issues, I feel (anti)-social media discourages people to get off their bums, WALK to someone's house and have a cuppa tea with them!

That's a nice point. I do find that the people nowadays are more and more closed... Could be the social media, could be the way we live our lives... But definitely the social media is contributing to that...

[buzzingrobot]

You can't control how the net works. You can't remove your IP address from your packets or erase server logs. But, you can control what you publish about yourself on the net. That's the best way to protect your privacy. If you want to keep it to yourself, don't post it.

I'vre never been on Facebook. But, remember that any business needs to make money some way. Facebook makes money buy selling and leveraging the aggregate data trail left behind buy its users.

Remember, too, that most of the tracking people complain about is built into the structure of the net. It works because every device on the net is uniquely identified. If that unique ID wasn't remembered, even if only for the duration of a single packet transaction, the net wouldn't work. How long the data is retained and what's done with them then becomes a decision to be made by each of us, whether were running a browser on a laptop or running huge server farms.

Is having the tracks of your net activity show up as a few atoms of data in a giant flood of aggregated data a privacy threat? That depends on your point of view.

Is protecting yourself from deliberate efforts to target you personally a smart thing to do? Of course, but's that's more a matter of crime than privacy.

[Linuxratty]

I don't use it,never have,never will. In a nutshell,I think everyone and their brother is spying on us,tracking us and sticking their noses in our business for personal gain.

[Paqman]

Do you consider facebook to blatantly exploit and abuse the data people upload to it, under the convenient "everyone uses it" line?

I don't think there's any question of whether or not they exploit the data you give them. That's the whole point of Facebook. You provide them with data about yourself which they use to target advertising at you, and in return they provide a service that allows you to interact with people. Same as every other "free" service online really.

[64bitiso]

I don't think there's any question of whether or not they exploit the data you give them. That's the whole point of Facebook. You provide them with data about yourself which they use to target advertising at you, and in return they provide a service that allows you to interact with people. Same as every other "free" service online really.

Uhm, no - the "whole point" of Facebook, originally, was for people to connect with old friends and socialise. I'd rather I pay £10 a year and DO NOT get abused, than be abused and spammed.

Yes, I know I can leave - that's the point of me making these enquiries, in case you bring that up

[RichardET]

There is zero difference between facebook and google. I don't use facebook because I don't want to help zukkerguy become richer. But at the risk of being called a hypocrite, I do use google. But look, the phone company sells your data and the cable company knows everything about you, since you use their connectors to watch any TV. All so called serious news channels are mainly commercials, not news, and probably most of the content of any news program is designed with the advertisers in mind. "Psychology Today" never ran anti-smoking stories because the tobacco companies would pull their advertising if they did. Similarly Duke Univ. did not do much anti smoking research due to the Duke Family influence. Every time you sign up for any forum or website, you give your email address and you agree to whatever terms they demand or you can't use the service its providing. Over on the openSUSE forums, making fun of Microsoft was always allowed, until it morphed in a criticism of Novell cross licensing with Microsoft, then those posts were banned. Interesting. The point is - corporations all have way to much sway over our lives and influence and we the buying public allow it and actually want it. In China, as far as I understand it, facebook is blocked.

[Paqman]

Uhm, no - the "whole point" of Facebook, originally, was for people to connect with old friends and socialise.

Maybe in it's original university-based iteration, but once it became successful enough to become a business (ie: very rapidly) it adopted the business model I described above. These guys weren't interested in setting up a charity. They always had an eye on how to pay the bills. The idea is simple: the users are the product. Give them a service they can use for free, then you get to sell their eyeballs to advertisers. It's the same business model most online services use.

[64bitiso]

Maybe in it's original university-based iteration, but once it became successful enough to become a business (ie: very rapidly) it adopted the business model I described above. These guys weren't interested in setting up a charity. They always had an eye on how to pay the bills. The idea is simple: the users are the product. Give them a service they can use for free, then you get to sell their eyeballs to advertisers. It's the same business model most online services use.

That's all people seem to care about; convenience over freedom. Suckers are everywhere, and most people *know* that facebook can exploit them, yet, do NOTHING about it. Never ONCE have I responded to ANY advertising facebook has force-fed into my face - I just installed "adblock plus", and adios to spam, for the time whilst I am still on it (for now).

When you contemptuously FORCE ads into your user's face, that detracts and distracts massively from the "product" (let's face it - I'm using this term for recognition - it's FAR from a "product"), you are showing the utter contempt and exploitative attitude you have towards them. Where do all the billions of revenue that FB make, go? Development? I very much doubt it - the site hasn't changed substantially for YEARS, and is riddled with annoying quirks that never get fixed.

I'm unsure of whether you are *justifying* facebook by saying "it's the same as what others do" - but that's not an excuse - that's just a cop out. That makes facebook as bad (or worse!) than the others. They have a VERY unimaginative, unoriginal business plan, in that case - can't they think up an *ethical* way to operate? With the BILLIONS of dollars they leech from people, they could PAY someone to dream up a fairer way to operate - I won't hold my breath though! ^___^

What an apathetic attitude society has to being exploited.


PS: I'm sure the ridiculous amount of profit they make, MORE than "pays the bills", and then some!