Shadow Facebook profiles are a thing, and given the fact that the Facebook sdk is spread like a plague amongst everyday 3p mobile apps in-use, there doesn't seem to be an end to this madness in sight. I personally block Facebook domains at dns-level on my phone but not everyone does.
And that is not even enough given the fact that Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, their presence grows ever more ominous given their ubiquity.
Adblock+ with some lists, Privacy Badger, and NoScript can wipe all FB interference. A solid hosts file can also add one more layer to eliminate exposure to FB, Pinterest, and other fancy trackers.
Btw, yes it is easy. I have stopped using FB for so long that in order to log back in to delete my account they are asking me to be verified via "friends" (people I haven't worked with or talked to for years).
It is not that simple. I do not use it. Yet someone can upload an image I send them, or my photograph without my knowledge. It needs to be strictly regulated.
I m looking forward to the time when facebook is banned, people turn to proper decentralized alternatives, and panic when they realize they can no longer delete their pics from the net
My understanding is, that people have been falsely led to believe the opposite. The rise of snapchat ( a total hack in terms of keeping things impermanent), various promises from social media companies, and the constant insinuation by news articles that it is possible to be private on the internet have created a totally false belief. People used to be conscious about what they put online, nowadays it doesnt seem they are.
While all that has happened, I don't think, that's the reason for people's behavior. So many people (also smart people) just don't care about privacy #nothingtohide.
And, secondly, nowadays the web is a lot more crowded, all the less technically minded people go online with a very sparse understanding of the web. Early adopters had a different demographic than the current userbase.
The less tech minded usually do what the more tech minded tell them. The problem is we 've lulled people with "security", green lock icons. We all know that all security is temporary, but we also chose to appeal to people's natural need for safety. The point is even the best digital security measure is nowhere near good old physical security.
that won't happen. Something that is decentralised but still runs on public infrastructure can be blocked or legal entities can be held accountable. Something that is floating around in the "dark web" or some obscure private server is for practical purposes not accessible to vast amount of users.
You don't need to look to the future. We already have p2p solutions and encryption that if hacked together could serve as some sort of decentralised storage. The public doesn't use it.
> We already have p2p solutions and encryption that if hacked together could serve as some sort of decentralised storage. The public doesn't use it.
The public doesn't use it because it hasn't been hacked together and that for all intents and purpose the experience has more friction than what is available today.
Just think of the real world analogue. I give you access to my stuff. Maybe I lend it to you, maybe I let you crash at my place. That doesn't let you do whatever you want. If I lend you my car and you take it to a car crusher, that's messed up and regulations protect it.
That's conflating two different problems. The issue of someone posting something without permission is one, and what Facebook does with what it distributes is another, entirely different second issue. We are discussing the second.
Is it dystopian to regulate that sites cannot host and distribute pedophile content for instance ? Regulations are needed, in the internet as much as anywhere else.
yes, and it's crazy annoying! some of us have very old facebook accounts from back when it all started. nowadays photos of you showing up at events are being tagged by friends and relative. soon the machine would have learned enough on its own to start tagging you by itself. that passive social media activity is stunning and amazing to witness happen...
Yes as an example of this: our daughter's school gives a form where you can indicate where photos of her can be used. This is probably required by the GDPR, but it is nice of them to do it anyway, and they try to hold up their end. We never give permission to anyone to share pictures of our daughter on social media. We believe she has the right to choose what she publishes when she is grown up.
So, the school photographer comes. It's the usual think where they make pictures, and you can order some copies. This year they only made class photos. They send you some link where you can log in to see a watermarked version of the photo, you can then order a digital copy or a printed copy.
However, they also put a Facebook share link on the page where people can share the class photo with one click. I am sure there are a lot of parents who do not even think about the rights and wishes of other parents and just share the photo.
So, we are in a bad situation where we explicitly disallow people to upload photos of our daughter, but not can people upload pictures anyway against our wishes, companies are actively pushing people to do so.
All the tracking and unwanted uploads of personal information (though friends' address books), photos, etc. without any explicit permission is a disgrace. I hope that the EU keeps hitting these companies with the GDPR until they respect people's privacy. Sure, if you decide to share your life with Google, Facebook, and a countless tracking companies, that's up to you. But this unwanted slurping of every bit of information has to end.
The only useful regulation would be to forbid it and it probably won't happen. It also cannot prevent governments from doing it. Apart from regulation, we also need technical solutions.
Don’t forbid Facebook. It is a good tool that can be used for good.
Forbid stalking, dark patterns, lies (aka fraud) and their overall lack of morals & ethics. Facebook will be welcome to adapt and behave like a well-meaning member of society.
> Forbid stalking, dark patterns, lies (aka fraud) and their overall lack of morals & ethics.
So essentially forbid everything that makes them the most amount of revenue from advertising? I don't see that likely to happen.
The problem with Facebook is not exclusive to Facebook Inc. It's a common symptom of advertising-based and similarly nefarious business models used by the richest modern corporations. Investors want their ROIs and optimizing for advertising delivers that easily when the business handles extraordinary amounts of personal information.
There are many ways of breaking out of this corrupt model. Creating new business models not dependent on advertising is a no-brainer, but so is creating tools that enable people to keep control over the data they share online. There's a lot of emphasis on distribution and cryptocurrencies recently, which is great, but we have a long ways to go to make the importance of these systems understandable by the general public, while also making them approachable and easy to use.
Agreed. Facebook is like a commercialized implementation of CIA and other miscellaneous intelligence practices. And its commercialization is skewed towards benefitting the advertising companies. This is a double negative.
There motto could have been to SERVE THE USER. Instead it became FOCUS on the user. They focus their product towards three dark patterns: extracting data from the user, manipulating the user, and addicting the user. For now it is towards the benefit of advertisers which is Relatively harmless in the future scheme of things.
A more benign use could have been connecting users across the world to each other and to other companies for healthy conversations. To be what FRIENDS were meant to always be.
Facebook isn’t even the only problem. I see the same scummy behaviour across a big chunk of the tech scene. Even in products you do pay for, stalking & fraud is commonplace.
Regulations also raise the bar for new platforms to enter the space. We may come to the point where a person would need to obtain a license just to make a website with login.
Any other form of communication – email, IMs, phones etc. If you're not having a conversation but just "like" each other's photos it's not "maintaining a remote friendship" anyway.
Yeah, good point. I often find myself wanting to follow what some people are up to (friends or not), and it's always frustrating how it requires you to be a part of a certain platform to do that – you can't follow anyone's instagram, facebook, twitter etc without an account, and even then you still need to go on instagram/facebook/twitter to actually check it out.
I recently created myself a Pixelfed (a federated instagram, basically) and was pleasantly surprised how my profile has a plain, old RSS feed, so that anyone can "track" me without ever visiting a website (which is something that ActivityPub itself also allows, but AP still forces you to be a part of the "system", so to say).
I'd much prefer that kind of Federated world, but I don't see how we can get there in any other way than spreading awareness about it and basically nagging our friends (at the risk of isolating ourselves) – “I wish I could follow your adventures and thoughts, but I don't want a facebook account”. This of course requires a critical mass for basically each person, and probably a way of automatically updating the locked-in platforms (for each post you push to pixelfed/blog it updates your instagram/facebook) so that the ones who take a step out don't need to leave their locked-in friends behind.
I’m still a Facebook user, but I’m thinking more and more about leaving. Not so much because of the tracking as for the expectation of maintaining tens of hundreds of “friendships”. Keeping track of what former colleagues are up to, meeting someone at a conference every other year and the conversation is 90% “I saw online that you (...)”, and having less time for proper conversations with actual remote friends.
I don’t know how it will end, but I’m confident that I’ll keep in touch with the friends that are actually important. Not staying in semi-touch with people I don’t feel the urge to call, send a mail, or invite/travel to is something I look forward to :)
Since leaving facebook, I've found the lack of passive interactions has increased the number of active interactions I have with my friends. Leaving facebook has strengthened a number of my friendships.
