Thinking about Facebook

[StuckinaDumpster]

Recently, people have been concerned with Facebook's role in selling user's personal information for financial gain.

I wanted to point out that we, as users to any website, voluntarily hand over out information of our own free will.

And there is nothing saying that we have to tell the truth.

My Facebook account / profile is complete BS. I made up everything about 12 years ago. I even had some fun with it, filling out my job history (fictional employers) and my birthday (I'm 102 years old). Even my login email address is fake. My trusted friends and family know that it's me, but the majority of the world see me as a stranger. It's also a nice way to keep unwanted people from finding you. Think of it as your own personal VPN.

Just something to consider. If FB is guilty of crimes A, B, and C, we also have to look at our role as users.

 

[Odin]

Nicholas Cage is that you?



My Man!

 

[Odin]

On the topic... I agree that people need to be more cognizant of these factors with the Internets. It's the wild west out der

Speaking of which on a related subject of privacy I hear mention that the chinese are using mind reading head gear on they're populace...

No seriously... look it up. Big Fucking Brother is here... Think I'll make a thread.

 

[StuckinaDumpster]

Nicholas Cage is that you?

haha! I get a lot!

 

[tony longshanks]

At last after ten grueling years, I kicked my Facebook habit to the curb like a deceased & unwanted cockroach. I instagram once in a bit, though... hey, who are you calling Gen X??

 

[Tude]

NoOooOOoOoooo... say it isn't true - you mean what I've been reading on facebook profiles isn't true?? My one friend is not 3rd in line to the spanish throne?? hehe jk. I started my fb out being shamefully truthful and then realized hmmm - way too many can see this stuff and have slowly over the years reduced what I have out there, limited as much as possible what the public can see and also inspect my timeline for things that should not appear on there (I am friends with many co-workers - and then in talking with a co-worker as she and I are working together to hire some temporary custodial workers - that she may if she gets a chance search for possible candidates on facebook - looking for "things" - not sure what she was looking for). So I prefer as skinniest fb profile as possible.

 

[Dameon]

The whole Facebook/Cambridge thing is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Nearly every website you go to tracks your activity, and generally they're part of a network that tracks your activity on a wide scale, even going so far as to use AI to analyze the way that you move your mouse to track you as a unique individual. Lying on Facebook isn't actually protecting yourself very much; the real information on you comes from visiting Facebook-affiliated sites that track your every click, where you spend your time on the internet, what kinds of things you like and dislike, when you tend to spend and what you spend it on, and more. Analytics is a pretty scary business, and the companies that specialize in it don't tend to publicly advertise the real extent of their tracking.

The good news is that you can protect yourself some, by using Adblock and Privacy Badger (for Chrome). The bad news is that, short of some pretty extreme measures, you can't protect yourself completely, and true protection from this kind of stuff has to come from legal measures, which isn't likely to happen any time soon since the legislators are mostly so far behind the times that this stuff doesn't make sense to them, and the dangers of it aren't immediately apparent.

 

[marmar]

There is real good book on the subject called 'feeling the void: emotion, capitalism and social media'. I quit using fb and ig after reading it, because came to realization about addiction to social media that I think everyone in my generation (melenials) have.
Facebook definitely helps the governing body to have people under surveillance and control. I've never used it under my real name, neither anything on the internet. But that doesn't mean they can't find out my identity, if they need to. Even when setting up new email account giants or corporate internet want to get as much personal info from you as they can, phone number, previous emails, so you are trackable. It's big brother as it was predicted by progressives of early 20s century. Here we have it.

 

[Deleted member 20683]

I don’t think the problem with social media is (just) what they will do with the info you give them as an individual (which, as pointed out, is basically always more than just what you type in and deliberately give out). It’s that it’s a tool for powers that be to study, analyze and manipulate populations on the one hand, and on the other it trains users in how to think of and present themselves and their relationship to society.

I’ve thought about how often the fascists and misogynists of today talk about the ‘red pill’. It’s from the matrix where it wakes people up to the fact that what they think is reality is a vast networked data environment that controls them. Only now it means almost the exact opposite, a way of denying reality to live in the frame of a bunch of bs they read online (especially on social media).

 

[Preacher]

If it's because of something I did, some page I went to, some app I used. Yes. But my info went to Cambridge Analytica because someone ELSE used My Digital Life. It scraped my info because I was friends with them. Granted, they got nothing useful, but OP's argument in this case is not valid. I didn't do what triggered that data capture. Granted, they didn't get anything useful, but it's the principal. I take all the cautions, use ad-blockers, don't use facebook apps and because of someone else's carelessness, facebook's negligence and Cambridge Analytica's lack of ethics what should be private, personally identifiable data was taken.

Edit Add: And just because they didn't get a real birthdate or birth city or whatever, they still scraped my likes to build a profile of that facebook member.

Based on our investigation, you don't appear to have logged into "This Is Your Digital Life" with Facebook before we removed it from our platform in 2015.
However, a friend of yours did log in.
As a result, the following information was likely shared with "This Is Your Digital Life":
Your public profile, Page likes, birthday and current city

And that info was sold to Cambridge Analytica facebook says.

 

[Deleted member 20683]

If it's because of something I did, some page I went to, some app I used. Yes. But my info went to Cambridge Analytica because someone ELSE used My Digital Life. It scraped my info because I was friends with them. Granted, they got nothing useful, but OP's argument in this case is not valid. I didn't do what triggered that data capture. Granted, they didn't get anything useful, but it's the principal. I take all the cautions, use ad-blockers, don't use facebook apps and because of someone else's carelessness, facebook's negligence and Cambridge Analytica's lack of ethics what should be private, personally identifiable data was taken.

I think the point is that you were on there at all, and trusted a corporation to respect your privacy...in capitalism, nothing is free; if you’re getting something for ‘free’ it’s because you are actually the product! The real consumer is whoever gets to sift through all the data.

 

[r3yn]

If you don't know about the NSA's PRISM PROGRAM, please do yourself a horrifying favor and at least read the introduction of the Wikipedia article.

Like Dameon said, above, it doesn't only matter that you supply fake information (although that definitely helps somewhat). Another issue is what William Binney calls your digital "domain", which is a filed network of all your linked online activity (it creates a "virtual you", so to speak). Facebook Corporation is the worst for this, as they own so many big and small companies (i.e. WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.), and even most other online platforms let you "Sign in with Facebook". This means they track everything most people do on the internet, and create profiles about you, which then automatically goes to the government intelligence server farm (Data Center in Utah) -- not to mention they also sell "you" to a bunch of companies. Unless you browse in private tab mode, or close your browser after using facebox (and delete cookies), and ideally use a VPN, they will track you across multiple websites. STELLAR WIND used mass metadata surveillance since the early 2000s, and more recently (and now) PRISM and some new SigInt programs are compiling all this information about you from all the sources you let them. Then they share it all with FiveEyes.

It's getting more and more scary the more and more I learn about our digital (lack of) privacy and surveillance. Besides using TOR or at least a VPN, I think there's not much way for people to remain anonymous and have privacy on the internet. And what's more: there's not much way to avoid eventual persecution -- or maybe, soon enough, conviction -- for your "digital tattoo".

 

[Older Than Dirt]

Look into whether you can install the Electronic Frontier Foundation' s browser add-on Privacy Badger, which will stop a lot of these evils.

I have never had an account on Fecesbook, and use my wife's on the rare occasions i need to find/reach someone i can't find/reach any other way.

My attitude has always been that if The Man wants to surveil me, let the motherfuckers work at it, the old-fashioned way, by sitting in a car in front of my house and trying to follow me around- why would i want to do all that hard work of surveillance for them, by posting a publicly available list of who my friends/family are, and what i do?

Of course there is the U.Utah Philips attitude- he had a comedy riff about the Feds opening his mail, and figuring as how "them birds" had to learn about left theory, and the need for revolution, some kind of way, and it might as well be by reading his mail. The punch line is where he gets them to do his spring garden cultivation for him while he's on the road touring by writing home "Whatever you do, don't dig up the back yard, that's where the guns are buried!"

 

[The Thirteenth Orphan]

You can have a completely doctored profile and still be contributing information unique to you which can be used to identify you later. Someone already mentioned fb affiliated links. Have you ever once logged in on your phone? Have you hand stripped metadata from any photo's you have uploaded? Do you use chrome to browse it? For that matter, do you keep your browser from being maximized when viewing it?

Fake emails, VPN's etc. are useful tools but if you think that is all it takes to out wit the good folks at fb or other data mining organizations, then you're naive. To prove my point; are your trusted friends and family similarly obfuscated at all times? I doubt it. If they are in any way linked/messaged your dummy profile, then a web is already built to discern who you really are.

 

[Exprswy2urSkull]

Facebook isnt "connecting people" like they say- its SELECTING people. Comments i made on fb a couple years back in the "land of free speech" is how I got put on a government watchlist, & became a targeted individual. My life has been systematically destroyed by random strangers & "the powers that should not be" ever since.. no doubt, BEWARE!!!!!

 

[Exprswy2urSkull]

..And btw, all my personal info on my fb account was bogus, BUT THEY STILL KNEW EXACTLY WHO I WAS. Believe me, that doesn't protect you!

 

[Deleted member 29173]

Comments i made on fb a couple years back in the "land of free speech" is how I got put on a government watchlist, & became a targeted individual.

How did you find this out? I've heard of this happening before and those people found this out when they were about to get on a flight and were detained. But I haven't heard of other ways.