Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/03/facebook-caught-asking-for-new.html
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Linkedin did this early on. Flat out asked for your email password and then scraped your contacts.
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Facebook has had its fifteen minutes. It’s time for FB to go away.
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Indeed - I’ve deleted my account but these headline still irk me.
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For this ‘feature’ to get deployed, how many managers signed off on it? How many more-or-less senior employees said “Yeah, we’ll just ask for people’s passwords. No possible issues there”?
Or did someone say “Listen, they think we’re creepy privacy-violators anyway. Might as well go for broke, see what we can get away with”?
Either way, it’s confirmation — if any were needed — that the decision-making process in big corporations is hopelessly broken.
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I’ve gone ahead and deleted my account. I had deactivated it more than a year ago, figuring that if I hung onto the account, then it might give me a modicum of control over it (for example, whenever Facebook deployed the"clear history" function that they promised to Congress), as opposed to no control over a shadow profile. But it’s been almost a year since the visit to Congress, and they’ve evidently spent that time working on something else. I’m out.
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This is really bad. I really would like to delete my account, but the fact is, I use Facebook, and there isn’t a real alternative out there. Not one that actually has the people I keep in touch with on Facebook.
We need some regulation all up in this shizzy asap.
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What I want to know is, why doesn’t Zuckerberg have a mouth in place of both of his eyes?
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If that’s what’s required to sign up with Facebook,you’re better off not being on Facebook.
Needed an edit
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FB is the d*ck that wants into your britches, and will constantly and shamelessly lie to get there.
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I’d love to leave Facebook for good. But I run a very small theater company, and it is, hands-down, the best way to advertise our shows. We can reach about 1,000 people on Facebook, free, whereas our other options are postal mail (prohibitively expensive), newspaper coverage (our local newspaper does not cover the arts anymore, thanks to Gannett), or… what? Buying ad space? Where would we buy it?There’s no central media where we can be sure of reaching our audience.
So yeah. Facebook is a horror in a lot of ways, but I really don’t know of another equivalent option for us right now. If anyone has suggestions I’m all ears.
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It’s simple. Find some shady webmail, the shadier the bettet, create an account, use it to register to faceadvert and forget the password…
I’m sure she is saying something about feathers.
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I think the possibility has existed for a long time. I think google also has that feature, so that “you can read all your mail in gmail”.
I am not aware that it is a requirement. On the other hand, just presenting it as a convenience to unsuspecting new users is probably sufficient to ensure a high adoption rate…
How about something like MailChimp? Obviously you’d need a mailing list. I am guessing that, where you would previously have had an email signup sheet by the door, you’ve spent the past few years just telling people to follow you on Facebook instead. Which plenty of people would have told you was a mistake. And I’m not saying it serves you right. But, if you are regretting the choice to make Facebook your only way of communicating, that’s hardly a strong argument to double down on it.
How about a Facebook post along the lines of “Facebook is bad for our patrons and we want to stop using it. Please join our mailing list so we can keep doing shows”?
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Right now the only other alternative i see (for me) would be to use Whatsapp… which is owned by FB. So that alone is a pass though even if it wasn’t owned by them i still don’t really like the user experience on the app. I’m also still waiting for an alternative to take off.
I don’t agree with the article. With newsletters you still have an algorithm to fight: the one classifying your mails as spam.
I have been responsible for managing newsletters the past 10 years. The letters were requested by the receivers and I could also contact some of them personally to find out directly what they thought of it.
I cannot really quantify it, but my feeling is that the vast majority of the mail never arrives. The majority of users use major email providers like google and these providers are financed by advertising. They simply classify as spam anything received from several accounts. It is their business to sell advertising, they have no incentive to deliver your mail.
Then, there is the user part. It has gotten better in the past 5 years but before that time a surprisingly high percentage of users would change mail every 6 months: lost passwords, virus trashed the computer, too much spam, you name it. I still have to deal with the users who give me a work mail and change jobs.
Last but not least, a surprisingly high percentage of users simply never read their mail. They will have something like 5000 unread messages and do not care. Some members of my family told me that, if I want to send them mail, I should phone, sms or facebook them to inform them that I sent mail or they would not check it. Really. My feeling is also that users below 25 simply do not use mail any more, unless applying for a job.
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Hm. I could throw a quarantined Pi at the problem.
SueDNym@umbraxenu.no-ip.biz
But then I’d want to do a procedurally-generated vast secret criminal organization for them to harvest.
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