Why people still use Facebook is beyond me. I think it's just more proof that the overwhelming majority of the people are sheep, always have been, and always will be. He who controls the sheep, rules the pasture.
1. Chat - I have the chat app on my phone. The majority of my family and friends are on facebook. I can chat with them all in one application. This could be replaced by texting but facebook is simply easier and helps avoid and iOS to Android texting issues that seem so pervasive.
2. Events - I get invited to 2-3 events a week. If I'm interested in going I can let my friends know I'm going, ask questions, read event details, and even invite other friends who may be interested. This is the best use of Facebook for me now. In theory this could be replaced by something else but my parents are never going to join meetup.com
> as sickening as it is to imagine Netflix browsing your private messages
Is this really how people think of these scandals? Because I can intuit that Netflix doesn’t really care about doing this; if anything the messages’ content probably gets chucked into some big corpus of data used for analysis or training models, things like that. “Netflix” isn’t a gross guy savoring my messages one-by-one, delighting in the revelations they offer.
Thinking about this in terms of personal offense seems like missing the point. The problem is that they’re shitty stewards of peoples’ information, and they have more of it than anyone else does. They’re now so enmeshed in how so many things work that it’s hard to see how to stop giving them more of it.
Well, I shouldn’t say “the problem”, that’s just one problem. Another is that their leadership appear to be entirely soulless and lacking in remorse or anything resembling self-awareness.
This kind of breathless horror at the kind of data that Facebook had access to, and sold, is once again disingenuous. Of course they had that data and of course they sold it. They told you so. In their 'privacy policy'. Did you read it before clicking 'accept'?
No one read that ... we (the tech industry) need to move past the idea that presenting information in a privacy policy or eula is enough. To depend on that is a breech of ethics in my opinion, because no matter how much we'd like for it to be enough, Users Do Not Read Them.
It is not informed consent even if they "scroll to the bottom and click accept". Our industry has conditioned users to click yes/accept on any and all popups that block their path to doing whatever it is they're doing (using the app, playing the game, installing a program, etc).
I did, and I said "hell no", and I was outraged when similar firms (Pebble?) tried similar stunts. I'm not excusing Facebook for their invasions but I'm also not excusing the people who explicitly opted in to such violations and then acted shocked when the data they offered was used.
You are not the norm ... the very fact that you are on this website puts you in a very small cabal of users. I can guarantee you that "normal" people do not read these things, and it is disingenuous to expect that they ever will.
Yes, and look at who you are. You are a (presumably) developer, tech literate at a minimum but more likely with a strong command of how technology works and how companies like Facebook operate. You're not my dad, you're not a child, you're not someone who uses the internet to talk to their family and that's about it. You're such a small percent of the group affected by Facebook's actions that thinking everyone operates like you is disingenuous.
Consider that perhaps choice of social network is not high on most people's priority list.
1. Chat - I have the chat app on my phone. The majority of my family and friends are on facebook. I can chat with them all in one application. This could be replaced by texting but facebook is simply easier and helps avoid and iOS to Android texting issues that seem so pervasive.
2. Events - I get invited to 2-3 events a week. If I'm interested in going I can let my friends know I'm going, ask questions, read event details, and even invite other friends who may be interested. This is the best use of Facebook for me now. In theory this could be replaced by something else but my parents are never going to join meetup.com
Is this really how people think of these scandals? Because I can intuit that Netflix doesn’t really care about doing this; if anything the messages’ content probably gets chucked into some big corpus of data used for analysis or training models, things like that. “Netflix” isn’t a gross guy savoring my messages one-by-one, delighting in the revelations they offer.
Thinking about this in terms of personal offense seems like missing the point. The problem is that they’re shitty stewards of peoples’ information, and they have more of it than anyone else does. They’re now so enmeshed in how so many things work that it’s hard to see how to stop giving them more of it.
Well, I shouldn’t say “the problem”, that’s just one problem. Another is that their leadership appear to be entirely soulless and lacking in remorse or anything resembling self-awareness.
It is not informed consent even if they "scroll to the bottom and click accept". Our industry has conditioned users to click yes/accept on any and all popups that block their path to doing whatever it is they're doing (using the app, playing the game, installing a program, etc).
I did, and I said "hell no", and I was outraged when similar firms (Pebble?) tried similar stunts. I'm not excusing Facebook for their invasions but I'm also not excusing the people who explicitly opted in to such violations and then acted shocked when the data they offered was used.