Facebook

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Why do people still use Facebook? There have been problems with privacy and security since it began. Are people that desperate for any kind of human contact that they willing expose themselves to these risks?

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Name the alternative for sharing with remote family and friends without having to repeat yourself or subject unwilling participants to slide shows!

Bonus points if my remote friends and family are already using it.

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Only if you agree to their TOS. Otherwise, your friends and family being on it doesn’t do you any good.

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First, your second point. I have to agree to the TOS to use it, so we can take it as a given that all users at least tacitly accept the TOS.

Secondly, your first point:

  • Google+: I think my family count on here maxed out at 3 or so, despite me and my brother campaigning fairly hard to get people to move or at least duplicate their space.
  • Facebook: My entire family is on here. We’re talking a core of 20-30 people that need to be on a service to make it attractive.
  • Twitter: Not the same as the above 2.
  • Qzone: those core people are not chinese (though 1 speaks mandarin)
  • Sina Weibo: microblogging, not the same as facebook/G+
  • Instagram: Not the same use-case.
  • Habbo: TEEEEEEEEEEENS.

As we get to Habbo, we’re already at 250k and falling registered users. That’s compared to G+ and Facebook’s 1.6 and 1.2 million. That order of magnitude is significant.

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When, at a family gathering, my family asked me why I don’t use Facebook, I pointed out their TOS. They all laughed and said that nobody actually reads those things. None of them were even the slightest bit concerned with the pseudo-legal minutiae they were supposedly agreeing to. Maybe this is why many people don’t read TOS and EULA - because it would be inconvenient to need to actually consider them. Is one willing to revise it? Or use something else? If the answer is “no”, this could be interpreted as saying “fine, lock me in, I don’t care about the consequences”. And then people wonder why Facebook operates this way! Because you agreed to it, of course.

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Did you mean Facebook? Or indulging your view of humanity? Facebook is the less toxic of those two as I see it.

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An additional problem is that if your family and friends use facebook, you’re also represented as a shadow profile on Facebook (and Linkedin, and Google). And you can’t opt-out of that.

Then there’s all sorts of data about you that can be leaked/used/sold without your knowledge.

I assume people don’t generally read EULAs for a couple reasons:

  1. They’re not lawyers, and can’t process the entire legal ramifications of a document written by lawyers for lawyers.
  2. They don’t have time to read and comprehend 2000 words of jargon and “legalese”.
  3. They really don’t care, they just want to use this (demonstratably valuable) service.

I’d wager that for most people, the net-positive of Facebook outweighs the negatives. Perhaps they’re dying from the wounds of a thousand cuts, but I doubt anyone of them notices or cares.

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Such information would need to be provided to them from somewhere, it doesn’t pop into their database automatically.

But unlike a member, I never agreed to them using it for free. So I can charge them for it. This seems like an obvious alternative to companies making money by using information about me (or anybody) as a commodity. Why is it “personally identifiable information” if a stranger doxxes me, but not if companies buy and sell dossiers about me? Charge them for it, instead of paying for their free lunch.

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You didn’t let them have it for free, but someone else did. Anyone who has this contact info tends to leak it to Facebook whether they want to or not.

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My point was not that they couldn’t get it. My point was that those who never agreed to their terms are not obliged to let them use such information for free. If people start charging them, it will change how they do business.

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Are you so certain that those of us who do still use Facebook (for personal or professional reasons) are unable to balance the risk factors?

What is the specific harm you’re concerned about?

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Did they read your EULA the way your friends read theirs?

Sanctimony is great fun, but your blowing hot air right now.

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People who use unlicensed content never even got an EULA, that doesn’t exempt them.

And you seem oddly eager to make every discussion a into personal problem.

We could apply the same precedent used in oh-so-trendy copyright law. Just because they took it for free, without involving me directly, in no way suggests that they are using such data legitimately. If the license holder automatically gets the benefit of doubt in modern legalese, why shouldn’t that apply to me and my content?

I am not saying that people should, I am pointing out that there is a lot of inconsistency here.

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You can’t revise a clickwrap. The company gives you two options:
1.) Take it as is. We will not negotiate with anyone who has less than 10 billion dollars, and even in that case, they have to give us some of those billions.
2.) Leave it.

Which option do you pick? Because as hard as you’ll campaign for an even playing field, Facebook is under no obligation to negotiate with you. So you can agree to what everyone else has already agreed to, or you can fuck off. It’s just that simple, you free spirit, you.

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Firstly, if you believe that they’re using your data without authorization, there’s nothing you can do to make them stop short of passing legislation, and even then, I doubt they’d comply. They’d just keep using your information without telling anyone.

Secondly, Facebook isn’t obligated to pay you a thin dime no matter how much you demand. It’s not like you own your information. You can’t touch or be loved by or converse with your information, so how could “owning” it make any kind of logical sense? You can’t control its use, and you can’t stop others from seeing it, so you might as well treat information about you like how you treat property rights. Now give me your SSN.

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I do not mean to be rude, but

I am pointing out that your hyperbole was a bit over the top. You can take that personally if you must. but come on. Really?

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I really don’t know what you thought was sanctimonious hyperbole, you haven’t really said.

I think of my position here as being something obvious which somehow most people seem to never think of or do. Taking such companies to task by using their own kinds of tactics against them is a practical approach. Certainly more practical than setting a precedent of being exploited.

If you disagree, that’s fine.

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