I take a facebook "sabbatical" every couple of years where I delete my account completely and permanently, and then come back with a brand new account a few months later. It irritates my friends but I love it.
Why? I've turned my account off before in attempt to walk away... Curious why you would set out to do that as an policy. Why not just turn notifications off and share little to avoid cacheing of data?
I go back because I derive enjoyment from sharing with my family who I don't see as often as I'd like. I have kids and they do amazing things (amazing meaning boring average things every kid does) and I want to show someone. FB is best way I know how to do that.
For me it's a self control thing. If I just deactivate, I know I can go back at any time, and then I do. For permanent deletion, you have to remain logged off for two weeks, and then you're done. The time constraint helps me.
Why do I do it at all? Being off Facebook is good for my mental health-- this is the main reason. Privacy reasons are secondary but also important. I've posted some really stupid stuff in 2004 that I'm glad is (theoretically!) stricken from the record.
"When you delete your account, people won't be able to see it on Facebook. It may take up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status updates or other data stored in backup systems. While we are deleting this information, it is inaccessible to other people using Facebook."
I would imagine that they are either deleting it entirely internally or selectively deleting the data entirely in localities where the law requires them to do so. So far, only the EU has strict regulations requiring businesses to comply with valid requests to delete personal information. (EU GDPR)
From a Facebook-makes-money-from-retaining-user-data perspective, I would imagine they are making every effort to ensure they're permanently deleting user data only where legally compelled to do so.
The easier way is for FB to wait until the GP friends the friends, and with some or many of them having already synced their contacts/address book with FB, tie the GP back to the old ("deleted") identity using the phone number. This is a simplistic explanation, but there are more ways to identify people based on the name and other attributes one's "friends" upload on to FB.
In effect, what the GP does in no way helps provide more privacy from FB for the GP.
I've done this a few times too. Facebook still knows who I am even though I sign up with different email addresses. I do have an account right now but I only really use it to authenticate on third party sites.
It's interesting to me that my friends ask did you see my X post on FB instead of telling me about things in their life.
Don’t confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That’s because you want privacy, not secrecy. (From I have nothing to hide. Why should I care about my privacy? : https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide-why...)
This. The military has secrets, but should have no privacy. Same with the government. Privacy is the opposite of transparency. We can have secrets while we know exactly what we are keeping secret, such as Private Keys and passwords. Secrets do not hinder transparency.
Maybe this was meant to be a joke, but an officer's superiors would be the one's looking over the stalls. No secrets no privacy.
Privacy is a courtesy. And a right to courtesy. Secrecy should be all that is related to security. It's interesting because the military seems to know exactly what a secret is. It'd make more sense to have secrecy laws alongside privacy laws for citizens. Privacy laws are not secrecy laws. Hence the NSA get's to do what they did, and hence they trampled on everyone's privacy outright violating all courtesy. They then make it a security issue.
As it stands, citizens are entitled to no secrets. Hence it's the wild west and we're left encrypting ourselves and standing in direct conflict with the government that would do far better helping us than being rude and insecure. Insecure is what they are. They have no trust or confidence in the people.
It was being facetious of course. But as to your second point, I really believe we are entitled to secrets, at least from my own reading of the 4th amendment to our constitution:
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches
This, to me a layman citizen of our country, means we are emphatically and explicitly granted the right to privacy against our government. Then again, we live in a time where a secret court can grant an order that tramples on our constitution. Apparently our government believes on it is allowed privacy.
You ever hear about this secret court orders and ask yourself, "Are we both reading the same constitution??"
No. They can tell us exactly. And they can be accountable. We just don't get to see them with their clothes off.
It's odd because apparently citizens get to have no secrets. Laws protect government secrets, but as far as I know the law is just as confused about privacy and secrecy as we are when it comes to its people.
In the real world, though, 99% of the time, we DO know. And even if we don't know exactly, we can narrow it very closely. We either shit, take a bath, masturebate or whatever. We still want privacy of any of those things.
He said you can have privacy without secrets. But suppose there exists a room with a door where you don't know what someone is doing behind it. The activity behind the door is the secret. The door is still representing privacy (not secrecy). That was the point of the analogy.
You're adding an element of your own subjective knowledge/awareness. You could not know a secret or something kept private. The only thing that is the same is your not knowing. What you don't know could still be a secret, something private, or even public knowledge for that matter. The point is, you not knowing doesn't make anything anything.
A secret is an attribution to the contents of a description which are withheld for security reasons. Or at least, that's what it should be. And that's what it appears to be with the military.
Privacy is a right to withhold information based on a fair desire to not have that information be known.
Invasion of privacy is someone pulling the curtains when you're showering or opening the door when you're in the bathroom.
That should not be confused with invasion of secrecy.
Either way, the main point is that these two terms are confusing, and even the law confuses them. And yes, people would consider something they don't know a secret also, and your use of the word is intuitively correct. But a clearer distinction could and should exist, and we should all work towards that clearer distinction. I believe the words are already more than adequate, since we already see the correct (most practical and fitting) distinctions used where they are most needed in practice (military).
>You might think you know what I'm doing in the bathroom.
Well, even for the times that I know EXACTLY what are you doing (e.g. because I saw you gulp down 10 big Macs and a box of laxatives before rushing to the bathroom) you still want privacy.
Privacy is required for secrecy, but secrecy may not (per the upthread distinction) always come along with for privacy. (Though I think the second part is dubious; yes, you have an idea of what I might be doing in the bathroom, but you don't actually know and moreover you don't know exactly what I look like doing it, and that is because privacy always requires some measure of secrecy.)
> Secrets do not hinder transparency.
Sure, they do. Secrets on matters that aren't the subject of concern don't hinder transparency on the subject of concern, but that's not because secrets don't hurt transparency but because the specific secrets at issue are outside of the area where you are looking for transparency.
This analogy works pretty well. The door gives both secrecy and privacy. If you want to keep people from doing drugs in the bathroom (their secret) you'll have to give up some privacy(people seeing things they know you're doing).
First of all, I love that this prompted you to create an account.
The author of the parent comment might not care as much if it is on Instagram, because one doesn't give away just as much information there, compared to facebook; and there's no equivalent to the "Like" button that tracks you across third-party websites.
> wonder if I should get on Facebook so my family can see pictures of my kids
I had a realization: those who really want to see photos of my kids will simply ask me for them so i never posted their photos (pull not push)...so far, about four people have asked which made me very happy that someone is really interested in seeing them and also that my kids didn't become a source of nuisance for many others.
FYI - my parents refused to join Facebook, so they started a Cluster account. I have no idea and the privacy and stuff for that, but it works for them.
Been off FB for years. For kids photos, I setup an "announcement-only" mailman list on my VPS for family, and routinely email photos to members, with a footer requesting they not be re-shared without permission.
As a result I share fewer photos, but the ones I do share are precious and well-received.
I never did delete my account, but I access it maybe once a year. Whenever I hear that someone I had friended had something happen, such as a death in the family or a marriage, I'll log in once to post a message, maybe once or twice more to see if there are any responses, and then log out again and go take a long shower. I'm like the Lone Ranger riding in when needed and then riding off into the sunset when done.
In between, I keep my privacy shields up and relegate all the FB notifications to the trash. There is only so much social interaction I can handle at a time anyway.
1. Did not delete my account, an attempt to guard against someone impersonating me there.
2. Deleted all content I had stored there. Obviously I don't believe FB actually deleted it, but I figured their soft delete is as good as it will get.
3. Asked all FB friends to kindly ignore my account, not to tag me or post pictures of me, and that if they saw activity from my account they can be assured it was not from me.
It did not bother me at all not being on Facebook, and still does not. There seem to be no drawbacks whatsoever. When I read about people feeling that their lives would be ruined and that they have no social life without FB, I kind of just shake my head.
Gosh, that sounds an awfully lot like ending a nasty drug habit:
- Quit smoking.
- 1st week, light up a cigarette in a stressful situation, enjoy it...
- 2nd week, light up a cigarette and immediateley regret it...
- 3rd week, wonder why you still have this package of ciggis at home (and the inner schweinehund responding: they are for emergency situations, EMERGENCY IS NOW!!!)
- 4th week, throw away the "emergency"-package, lighters and ashtrays, just to be sure...
No shit, I never used facebook, but it seems like it has a similiar addiction-potency as nicotine (wich is quite high).
"Addiction: (noun) Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, despite adverse consequences."
I would get my family off of Facebook because they cannot stop using it even though it makes them feel bad after being on it. That's reason enough for me.
I feel like I have been lucky to have not been peer pressured into Facebook because of the brain chemistry aspect. I also avoided class A drugs which have had a similar availablity level - there if you insist, seemingly in general circulation.
Obviously a heroin addiction would not be what you want in life, I am thinking that constant checking in to Facebook is in a similar league of must avoid.
I used to work for a social network. We had meetings every day about how to "engage the users' dopamine systems." As a psychologist, this was an anathema to me - we call that process addiction.
Check out Lyra instead (www.hellolyra.com), it's a conversation service that requests language and attention. We are also a nonprofit and solicit no investment.
I'm off of it and I could not be happier about the decision. Concerns about privacy aside, I realized how much time I was wasting scrolling through ads and news stories instead of photos and thoughts from friends and relatives. I didn't mind the Facebook of old where the content was mostly interesting to me, but today it is mostly full of ads, memes, fake news, and clickbait.
Facebook started to get worse after the first 3 or 4 major privacy calamities. When nobody left Facebook must have figured, well, great to heck with it then. Because beyond that point they just started straight up selling data.
People stayed on.
I needed an account again after nearly 8 years, just for one (very) important group I needed to take part in temporarily. Not only did Facebook somehow know who I used to know (and had absolutely no interest in speaking to) but every time someone visited my page it would tell me. That wasn't a feature that was there a long time ago.
Doesn't it bother anybody there, when they visit someone's page the fact you did that shows up for them? Isn't that exceedingly creepy? I think it is. Terribly creepy. It also one day knew I met someone the day before on the street, as their face showed up as a recommendation.
Queue the onslaught of "I haven't used Facebook in.... years!" comments. You're probably already hitting the down-vote button.
I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN? Maybe it has to do with the software engineers tending to be less social and introverted, therefore a social service appears to have less worth? Just speculating.
As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach.
If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github.
Do you mind if I word for word quote your above to see if I get downvoted too? I want to repost with just the last two paragraphs to see what happens. I'm curious how this post would have been received without the intro.
I think only the first two paragraphs are controversial, I am sitting at 9 points on my post (which is the exact same) but someone else may have upvoted, or someone who saw this might have upvoted. IDK but it's an interesting experiment.
I share your concerns about losing Facebook data of the past, but frankly you didn't address any of the concerns that were listed in the article.
The issue is what they do with our data and whether you'd be comfortable letting them use your data this way. It's also due to their shady practices like not disclosing changes to privacy policy. This is especially worse with non-technical people like my mom using their platform. Who knows what kind of bs they're peddling onto her wall.
I think it's awesome that people are finding ways to get off Facebook. It's like getting out of a heroine addiction or something:)
>didn't address any of the concerns that were listed in the article. ..
>The issue is what they do with our data and whether you'd be comfortable letting them use your data this way
I believe that I have addressed these issues by still utilizing the service.
They're well known to the HN community. They're not new. They just don't matter to me. Nor to most of the rest of the market, because billions still use it.
That's totally fine, as long as you are aware of the problem and decide that it doesn't matter to you.
But they have the moral(legal?) obligation to let us know how they're using our data.
i'm extroverted and the only facebook product that i interact with regularly is messenger. i use it because my family uses it. i treat my wall (and instagram profile) as write only. i don't get notifications or interact with anyone, but i do post.
facebook has its uses (i've had acquaintances reach out for help in the past), so i keep the account, but i have better ways of connecting to the people i love. weak connections are meh imo
i use instragram because i like their mobile photo editing tools, but i'm sure i can find a suitable alternative. i'd prefer to publish them somewhere where i can easily (and obviously) include the cc-by-sa license info.
honestly, i get very little out of these products. there's no way i can care intimately about 500 people. the people i do care about are the ones that i keep in touch with on snapchat or via sms/im. discussions are often overly emotional and barely stimulating. reddit was better for a while, but i spend most of my online time on gnu/social these days.
i would be super happy if facebook, google, and github burnt to the ground. there are better, decentralized and non-corporate options out there that provide adequate service and are actually aligned with my interests.
> I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN?
Well, for starters, the article posted went through many reasons why one might find Facebook hostile, and therefore be very much against it. Anyways, that's not really why I wanted to reply, so here:
> As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike
> any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids
> grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share
> with my family when something great has happened. It's
> absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes
> close to its reach.
>
> If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel
> devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom,
> all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke
> a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google
> and maybe Github.
Now, this is HN so I imagine while I'll come off as very negative, this sentiment isn't all that strange. The problem I see here is that you seem to think you need Facebook to have these same connections. If you want to reminisce on old photos, you can just as easily save them locally. If you wanted to have conversations and save them later, you could use a messenger that isn't trying to mine your data while pulling your heart strings. And yeah, a lot of this type of advice comes off as "there's another product for everything," and "don't put your eggs in one basket," and all that, but there's actually a really strong point here that you're overlooking.
Facebook isn't necessary for any of those experiences. In fact, you state how you wouldn't be able to see your friend's kids grow up, or comfort your friends when they lose someone they love. But was Facebook really the only way for you to do that? It seems to me like you're attributing to Facebook quite a few characteristics that aren't really there. Ditching Facebook and actually meeting with people or staying in touch with the occasional phone call is a hell of a lot more personal. As for all of your memories, fortunately you still have those in your brain. They don't need to be in an advertising archive to be more real.
I don't care at all whether people want to sell their lives to a company. If they want to use Facebook, they're free to do so.
What I care about is Facebook creating a shadow profile on me, even when I explicitly go out of my way to block them.
If it would only affect those people that are on Facebook, I wouldn't give it a second thought. But it doesn't. It also affects those that want nothing to do with it, in part through the people that are using it, and that is the major reason for all the Facebook hate.
"If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github."
Hey! What are the odds you and some other user commenting here both have such similar experiences?! You should connect with them on Facebook! Maybe Github?
Back in 2013, I decided to delete my account because was spending more than 8 hours per day on it (mostly on groups and managing pages for fun).
Back then there was no option to remove it - the only option was to convert it to a page with the mention that all your friends will become page likes. Then you will lose all your content posted (statuses, pictures, messages, etc). It was written red on white as a warning prevention. They said it was not possible to revert back.
Id did that, and the next day I felt so good afterwards. No guilt or fear of missing stuff. There were other means to stay in contact with people.
Forward two years later I wanted facebook back because I moved to another country.
I searched if there is an option to recover an old profile, and it was (even before they explicitly said there is none, and all your data is lost). I got back all that I've posted, only friends I needed to add back manually.
Now I use news feed eradicator and I don't see anything. Also, I don't have that urge to scroll feeds anymore. Basically, I wanted only messenger, but back then there was no such option.
I like Facebook, it serves a lot of good roles in my life (including my job) so I can't just quit and/or block Facebook. But I was spending pointless hours a day reading my news feed, disgusted with my own lack of productivity.
This extension kills the home page feed, but nothing else.
I still have access to messages, profiles, events, invites, etc. I can still find everything I search for if I seek it out, only difference is it's not drip-fed into my eyeballs with an endless scroll.
My productivity (and happiness) immediately took a step up.
For what it's worth, you can now deactivate your Facebook, but maintain Messenger. It's what I've done in the interim while I figure out how much of Facebook I actually want.
Unfortunately, none of my friends and family members who are on Facebook really care, and the reasons cited in this article aren't going to sway them. They don't take privacy seriously, and view people who worry about privacy as paranoid kooks.
They also see Facebook as the way to stay in touch with their own friends and family, and that's probably the biggest draw to staying on. Until that changes, I don't see them leaving.
I too find it very difficult to dissuade people away from FB or to convince people about the value of privacy and why it's important for us as a society to function better and retain more freedom. Almost everyone I know values what FB offers them, and don't care much about how we all are paying for it.
I have a question regarding this: "tracking everything you read on the internet"
I recently disabled third party cookies in Chrome and it's had no negative effect. Can someone tell me if this will block the Facebook code that's embedded in nearly every web page from reading my Facebook cookie and identifying me?
No it only blocks cookies, but not the javascript code from facebook that gets loaded on the pages you visit. If you want to get rid of that, install a browser plugin like Ghostery (0).
But wait... can they still identify you that way? I'm not on facebook, so maybe it's moot in my case. But are you saying that blocking third-party cookies is not enough to keep facebook from tracking your other browsing activity?
Every time you go to a website with the Facebook like button, they see your IP address and the website you're on. Go to enough websites from that IP address and they can get a good idea of what you like. In addition, it is very easy to get your real address from your IP address, or at least your general area. Combining these gives them a good idea of who you are.
Technically Facebook can by using the requests your browser sends for their ubiquitous sharing widgets on many websites. Your browser very probably has a unique fingerprint¹, so you might want to block those widgets as well (Privacy Badger does this).
Because Facebook's profits come from advertising and that understanding our browser habits is a requirement for their core business, it is not too far-fetched to believe that they track non-users as well.
I use the Disconnect-plugin[0] for these concerns. It disables loading (and executing) javascript, cookies and graphics from the most notorious tracking sites.
A better and more holistic approach, IMO, which I use with Firefox (sorry, I don't use Chrome as often, and in my limited experience I haven't seen it having as many extensions), is to use FB with these browser extensions:
1. Privacy Badger (from EFF)
2. Clean Links (removes all the redirect links from several sites, including FB)
3. Self-Destructing Cookies (destroys cookies when tabs of a particular site are all closed; default time to delete after tab closure is 10 seconds, which I reduce on my installations)
4. uBlock Origin (blocks ads and trackers)
5. BetterPrivacy (deletes "super-cookies" from things like Flash)
I don't use Ghostery because its business model depends on advertisers. Same goes for Adblock and its cousins too.
Even with all of the above, FB may still be able to track because there are many ways apart from cookies to do it. There could be browser fingerprinting [1] using various other indicators.
All the other things everyone else here said plus: Quick Javascript Switcher (Chrome) or equivalent in FF. They can't track you if they can't run their Javascript (and you don't request pages from them or their friends). You can turn it on for domains you need it on. I truly wish this was the default state of browsers and that it had a counter of lines of JS blocked. I'd probably be in the billions easily by now.
I want to be listed on their site so people can find me (and don't think I'm a serial killer because I don't have an account), be able to SSO log in through Facebook when unavoidable, and be able to add people to my friends list if want to have them in my address book and reach out to them through Messenger.
Outside of that I actually never want to log into facebook or use any of its other functionality. How do I accomplish that?
Just don't login there. I use the Messenger and Events apps on my phone and log in to Facebook on desktop once a month to accept/decline friend requests.
For me the reasons to stay in Facebook are
1) I can contact pretty much anyone via the Messenger - only a handful of the people I usually talk to use (for example) Signal.
2) I get event invitations. For that the Events app is perfect.
For me, these are the biggest concerns that motivate me to consider deleting my account (which I don't use actively, only occasionally):
- Facebooks creates false endorsements for products from you to your friends without revealing this to you.
- Facebook filters out your posts based on whether or not people will use Facebook more if they don’t see it.
I don't mind/can put up with the rest, but those two things really bug me.
But my concern is that there are some people I would lose the ability to contact if I delete my fb. Maybe I should ask those people for their email, etc., then proceed.
> Facebooks creates false endorsements for products from you to your friends without revealing this to you.
Not sure anything guarantees they'll stop doing this after you delete your account.. They knew your name before you created it, and they'll know it after you close it.
That's a good point, which further motivates the desire not to have an account or do anything to support the product.
While there are no guarantees, it still helps a little, since your endorsements are less likely to appear as genuine to those who know you're not on Facebook.
You can delete your account... I had one that I requested deleted back in 2009, and then had "reason" to get back on, and when I created my new account my prior data from 2009- was not there.
You can remove it from public view and remove your ability to log into it, but you can't remove any data. Facebook was never designed to "delete" that data, hence all you can really do is permanently disable your account, with the illusion of having it deleted.
As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach.
If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github.
Same here. I use facebook because I enjoy the content that my friends share.
I am not using it because I believe “I have nothing to hide”.
I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get.
But I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me. I get more value out of facebook than the countless other services that spy on me.
For example, just a few weeks ago I got a fake hand written letter from a car dealership telling me exactly how many miles I have on my car and how I should trade it in.
My ultimate conclusion about privacy is that you should take steps to protect with you want to remain private. Because even if facebook disappears tomorrow, something else will take its place, including things created by our own government.
It's sad to think that, but it keeps me from naively thinking that what I share online is somehow private... because it's not, and never will be.
That includes places like HN and Reddit. The government has programs to monitor all our profiles on these sites. I am aware of that, and I live my life accordingly.
You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me". That's the problem. The government has never had a tool like this before and because of the social graph that facebook created, will likely not have another one like it anytime soon. Unfortunately for the average user (and even very advanced users) leaving Facebook altogether is the only option to maintaining secrecy of any kind. FB updates ToS far too often and nobody bothers to stay up to date with it. Using the service is admitting that you are willing to give up all secrecy and privacy (thanks to their chat being completely centralized). IMO, using Facebook implies you don't care about secrecy or privacy.
> You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me".
This is not a contradiction. Someone with privacy has the right to decide what they do and don't want to share publicly. Like you, I am concerned by how Facebook is used, and some of its societal implications, but this sort of extremist attitude helps nothing.
> Unfortunately for the average user (and even very advanced users) leaving Facebook altogether is the only option to maintaining secrecy of any kind. FB updates ToS far too often and nobody bothers to stay up to date with it.
This isn't true at all. While Facebook is somewhat sketchy about changing their privacy rules, if you don't want certain information made publicly available, you can just not put that information into Facebook (and yes, that includes Messenger). Any non-technical person can understand this.
The article contends that this isn't actually true - or, more accurately, that Facebook's heavy instrumentation, both of the web and of its own properties including mobile apps, combine with some pretty sketchy behavior and ToS language to make "not put[ting] that information into Facebook" nearly impossible without stringent, conscientious, and perfectly applied opsec.
> This is not a contradiction. Someone with privacy has the right to decide what they do and don't want to share publicly. Like you, I am concerned by how Facebook is used, and some of its societal implications, but this sort of extremist attitude helps nothing.
What you call an "extremist attitude" I call "info security common sense". Companies like Facebook are well known to lull their users into a false sense of being in a "safe, governed social utopia" all while profiting from vast amounts of data both explicitly provided by users and implicitly
provided through data analysis. Anyone even remotely close to fields like infosec, cyber security, or data engineering know that Facebook is quickly becoming a giant spider web for its users. While I agree with you that an extremist attitude is not helpful, it's come to a point where I just know too much about the background of companies like Facebook to simply ignore these issues.
> Anyone even remotely close to fields like infosec, cyber security, or data engineering know that Facebook is quickly becoming a giant spider web for its users.
Exactly. Everytime I see a person using Facebook (so basically every day) I think: Gosh, again a guy or girl not getting paid and yet eager to work. What a world do we live in?
Please. Everyone who has their entire life on Facebook put it there voluntarily. You are completely ignoring the people who put and small amount of information on Facebook and retain a large amount of privacy. And despite your not so subtle implication that you are smarter than anyone who disagrees with you, you have completely failed to defend your premise that using Facebook is fundamentally incompatible with privacy.
So your stance is that as a competent, technically savvy person, you are able to maintain your secrecy and/or privacy on Facebook? Are you aware of the vast amount of implicit data they receive just by you logging in and viewing your friend's posts? The amount of resources FB has dedicated to tech like fingerprinting (both browser based and behavioral) is enough to harvest vast amounts of data from even the most technically savvy people such as yourself.
I think that this is not an argument pro Facebook but against Facebook.
It demonstrates that it is a bad idea to trust important information into the hands of a third party.
If Facebook offers you a way to make a backup of your account then you should seriously consider to use it to have an alternative copy of your important memories.
I've never used Facebook. But if I had, to the extent you have, it would horrify and frighten me to reflect upon the fact that so much of my emotional life were all but inextricably tied into one private company, such that staying in that company's good graces had become a necessary part of maintaining access to my own memories.
I think you are taking this a little out of context. The best part for me is the feed into other peoples lives. It's a service I'd be sad to loose.
It's interesting to find someone on here who maintains all of their files/email/photos/etc locally in a redundantly backed-up manner at home on their own personal server. How did you do that? Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person?
If you don't then it would horrify and frighten me to reflect upon the fact that so much of my personal data was tied up into one private company. See what I did there?
Again, just to reiterate it's about the feed, and the loss of that connection to the people in my feed. I mean what would you do if apple/google wrote an update to their os that wiped all of your contacts for good? It's not going to happen, just like your example of loosing access to my memories because Facebook decides to destroy it's own brand.
I know it may have been rhetorical, but I just don't think managing your own data is possible (yet) for the truly non-technical person, at least at a level that competes with FB in both price and simplicity; it's still a choose-2 situation.
You can get a pretty good system set up with rsync, ZFS, RAID, etc. distributed between multiple machines and multiple sites, and have good security at a low price at the cost of a high knowledge bar.
Alternatively, you can have a pretty simple cloud backup system through Backblaze, Carbonite, Crashplan, etc., which should provide good security to people with relatively basic technical knowledge, but at a non-negligible cost (compared to free).
Finally, you've got the current cloud "ecosystem" players like Apple, Google, FB, etc., who can offer good technical security (ignoring the "we have locked your account" arguments) to absolutely all skill levels, with zero perceived cost.
That being said, I think the kinds of people who (A) actually even think about the privacy of online services, and (B) care enough to do something about it, probably have sufficient technical skill to choose other options. They can decide how important that privacy is to them, in terms of investing time, money, or both to solve these problems.
> I know it may have been rhetorical, but I just don't think managing your own data is possible (yet) for the truly non-technical person, at least at a level that competes with FB in both price and simplicity; it's still a choose-2 situation.
That's what I was trying to show. It's hard to not rely on some sort of third party service in life. I think a lot of people here just don't like Facebook.
I should probably create a Flex server at home to do this for my friends and family who aren't technical, but again if I host that on Amazon then I'm again relying on someone else.
There are differences between relying on the existence of a commodity service/product or of a unique one. If my VPS provider boots me off or shuts down, I just move to another. I won't lose a single email, and just a few IRC messages during the transition.
Meanwhile, if FB boots you off, you lose everything, and must hope they at least allow you to create a new profile.
> It's interesting to find someone on here who maintains all of their files/email/photos/etc locally in a redundantly backed-up manner at home on their own personal server. How did you do that? Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person?
...You don't do that? If you don't have local "gold master" copies of your files, then you don't own your files. And if you don't copy them onto multiple devices, then you have a single point of failure.
> I mean what would you do if apple/google wrote an update to their os that wiped all of your contacts for good?
I'd be very impressed that they could also reach my copies of that data that aren't stored on Apple/Google services...
> It's interesting to find someone on here who maintains all of their files/email/photos/etc locally in a redundantly backed-up manner at home on their own personal server. How did you do that? Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person?
You missed a very important point I'm trying to make with my question.
Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person?
Many people on HN forget that there are many non-technical people in the world and that they don't have a data server
with raid drives in their house running OwnCloud/Flex for all of their backup needs. Hence why they use the cloud and that shouldn't be appalling.
I mean this analogy can be taken to some extreme places if you start looking at the fact that you trust a bank, the stock exchange, a government, etc. You could minimize how much you trust each of them because your personal happiness is based on them. And PLEASE don't tell me if your bank was all of a sudden taken to a negative balance you wouldn't be sad, mad, angry, etc.
The point is, many people don't like Facebook, Microsoft, etc. and they press that opinion on others in a manner I don't always appreciate. It's a company that offers a service I like. If it goes away I'll be sad, but life will go on.
> Many people on HN forget that there are many non-technical people in the world and that they don't have a data server with raid drives in their house running OwnCloud/Flex for all of their backup needs. Hence why they use the cloud and that shouldn't be appalling.
Right...but they've probably got a laptop and a USB flash drive. That's all you need to keep your own copy around. I don't maintain an always-on server, OwnCloud, etc...but I certainly have multiple copies of everything, such that if Google, Facebook, and other services disappeared, I wouldn't lose any very-important data. Doing it with less automation takes a little more manual work, but that's the way I'm doing it right now myself, and I don't think it's unreasonable.
Even taking the option of cloud-only storage, set your phone to strip EXIF and upload to multiple unrelated accounts, preferably not connected to a social network.
> And PLEASE don't tell me if your bank was all of a sudden taken to a negative balance you wouldn't be sad, mad, angry, etc.
Why would I tell you that? Money isn't a copyable asset, and I keep mine spread among multiple federally-insured banks that operate under different business models. It's the same idea: Don't put all your eggs in one basket, no matter how attractive that basket is.
> The point is, many people don't like Facebook, Microsoft, etc. and they press that opinion on others in a manner I don't always appreciate.
There are a lot of things that people do that I think are stupid...but they don't need to know that. I don't express most of my opinions (including these) without some form of invitation to do so. Facebook's currently a somewhat-necessary evil. It's a company that offers a service that I used to like, until around 2008. I thought it was at its height of charm when it was still a college-only service, and has become steadily less likable since that changed. It would be inconvenient if it disappeared, but I think it would ultimately be a good thing.
Instructions for non-technical person:
1) Make a folder.
2) Save the file in the folder.
3) Every now and then, copy the folder to some other place (let's say a thumb drive or other USB device).
> If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone).
What did I take out of context?
And it's worth considering: "Facebook [being] suddenly gone" doesn't have to mean the service shuts down. It could just mean your account's been suspended for what some algorithm, opaque even inside the company and utterly occult from without, calculates is sufficiently probable cause. At best, it's going to take a while to resolve the problem via Facebook's famously helpful and proactive customer service. At worst, your account is gone forever. Maybe you can make a new one and start all over!
From your perspective, there's no distinction to be drawn between "Facebook is gone" and "Facebook is gone from me". Except that, in the former case, you're probably much better off, because in the latter case everyone else is still there - and it feels as much to them like the only way to keep in touch as it feels to you right now, and keeping in touch with anyone who isn't there feels like just enough of an imposition that, over time, they stop bothering.
(And if this seems like something that could never happen - that people would never just forget there are ways other than Facebook to stay tied into one another's lives - well, it can. Ask me how I know.)
As for the rest of your comment - I don't know to whose claims you're responding, but I'm pretty sure they're not ones I've ever actually made...
> If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone).
I may not have articulated how I feel very well in that post. I should edit it to miss out on the things in other peoples lives I got to see and things I got to share with them because of Facebook. So you didn't take it completely out of context but you only commented on 1/2 of my post ignoring the fact that a lot of the value I get is from the feed aspect.
>From your perspective, there's no distinction to be drawn between "Facebook is gone" and "Facebook is gone from me"
Not true, If I lost account access to Facebook, I'd create a new account and build my network again. Not a huge deal.
>Except that, in the former case, you're probably much better off, because in the latter case everyone else is still there - and it feels as much to them like the only way to keep in touch as it feels to you right now, and keeping in touch with anyone who isn't there feels like just enough of an imposition that, over time, they stop bothering.
This is something I have experienced because I only recently started using facebook again. I use it to reach some friends but not all of them. I know that. What you are describing ticks me off too but it's the same with people who don't have phones/email/etc. Except in this case it's not a generic protocol but a specific service. That's probably more the issue with facebook/twitter than anything else. They created a closed ecosystem that people rely on not a protocol that can be implemented by anyone.
>As for the rest of your comment - I don't know to whose claims you're responding, but I'm pretty sure they're not ones I've ever actually made...
I was using a fake example to make a point. We all rely on services that are hosted by private parties and the fact that you're horrified by my choice seems a little extreme. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, if you felt that way then my bad.
> If I lost account access to Facebook, I'd create a new account and build my network again.
If Facebook permits you to do so. They don't have to let you, and it is within their power to stop you. Whether they choose at this time to exercise such power seems to me less important than that they can, and that it's only up to you whether you participate in Facebook's privileged access to your friends, family, loved ones, and confidants, insofar as Facebook suffers it to be.
> Except in this case it's not a generic protocol but a specific service. That's probably more the issue with facebook/twitter than anything else. They created a closed ecosystem that people rely on not a protocol that can be implemented by anyone.
Yes, that's the point I'm making. They - and here I mean mainly Facebook, which is the only one of those two actually thriving - created a closed ecosystem which is entirely mediated at the whim of its creator, whose motives and methods are almost entirely obscure. And it has over a billion people using it - for many of whom it's the primary medium of social interaction.
That one relatively small and relatively secretive private corporation should have such astonishing insight into, and power over, the social interactions of such a significant fraction of the human species as a whole, is a new thing in history. To be sure, we live in an era of such novelties. But I think it's reasonable to question the worth of this one, as compared with the extent of damage it might be able to do.
That's why - while I'm not horrified by your choice - it would horrify me to realize, in retrospect, that I had inadvertently made such a choice in my own life. To the extent it is a choice, of course - when, as my own experience demonstrates, while one may indeed demur, to do so often incurs a peculiar new sort of social nonexistence by way of punishment.
None of this is simple, just as nothing else is, and I don't mean to suggest that only your choice, and not mine, bears a potential cost. It's only that, while I know in very real terms what my choice cost, the cost of yours has been a very abstract thing to me - as I said before, I've never actually used Facebook. I suppose the way you described it just brought it home to me in a way nothing had before.
Thanks for saying so! I've put considerable effort into the skill, and it's always nice to hear that that's paid off in some way.
I hadn't previously seen your comment [1] describing your experience of not being on Facebook. There is much you recount with which I'm also familiar! But I hadn't thought it through to the extent you have, and your point about unplanned interactions, which had previously not occurred to me, is extremely well taken. I'll certainly be including that in my future commentary on the subject, here and elsewhere, and thanks again!
> Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person?
1) Use IMAP with copy-to-local-drive for email; Thunderbird or Apple Mail or a variety of other applications will do this reasonably for a non-technical person.
2) Store your files and photos on your hard drive, or a hard drive plugged into your wireless router which can then expose it as a network drive (e.g. Apple's Airport Extreme can do this, as can other wireless router).
3) Use Crashplan for backups. This is fairly easy to set up, even if you're non-technical, if you back up to their server.
This does rely on Crashplan, but they're the backup, not the only copy of the data.
> I mean what would you do if apple/google wrote an update to their os that wiped all of your contacts for good?
Restore from the contacts backup I store on my hard drive every so often (and which hence gets backed up via Crashplan). This part is fairly rocket-science for non-technical people, unfortunately.
> just like your example of loosing access to my memories because Facebook decides to destroy it's own brand.
The real question is what happens if/when Facebook goes out of business...
>If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone).
WTF? How would they be "gone"? Facebook does not control your memories. So what else would you be losing if Facebook suddenly disappeared? Photos or videos? You don't say exactly, but I suspect this is the case. If so, then that's your own stupid fault for not keeping personal copies of that stuff. If you don't value that data enough to keep your own personal copies of it, then you don't deserve to have it IMO. Portable hard drives are not expensive these days, and store literally terabytes of data (I just bought a 4TB USB drive a couple months ago for just over $100). USB thumb drives are less than $10 for smaller sizes which will still probably hold everything that's on your phone now. There is absolutely no excuse for not having copies of data that's most precious to you.
Photos and videos might be easy to keep a local copy of, because you would be uploading from your phone or computer onto Facebook.
But memories cover many other aspects as well. Such as the descriptions that you write on your Facebook photos. The conversation threads that ensue. The face tags that you add and other people add to your photos. The set of photos that you selected for upload (rather than the outtakes). The way you name, organize, and describe albums.
Storage may be cheap these days, but ensuring that you have copies of your data in multiple places - such as hand-typed text - can be very time-consuming.
Not all the memories I value on Facebook are my own posts. Most people don't have copies of the photos they've been tagged in unless they manually downloaded them.
>Do you mind if I word for word quote your above to see if I get downvoted too? I want to repost with just the last two paragraphs to see what happens. I'm curious how this post would have been received without the intro.
I'm curious of the other services you tried that preexisted facebook, and how they hindered you from connecting emotionaly ?
I think facebook has unique features, in particular a true global scale, but for the emotional side, is there anhthing inherent to facebook that makes connection deeper ?
To be honest, I still feel that the 'real identity' concept is a big hurdle to participate freely, and stops me from posting some of the more personal stuff that I was posting before under nickname based anonimity (even if my contact are all offline relations). A lot of people don't seem to get along with the idea of having multiple profiles targeted to different circles, and switching profiles is actually a PITA in facebook when using it mainly on mobile.
I switched to instagram for a while, but it is yet another niche that doesn't really overlap with what other social services where filing.
I never got into Facebook. I made an account about ten years back, and I used to check it every year. But lately I can't be bothered. I agree with the article that it doesn't seem to make people happy. Mostly it seems to make them sad and angry.
I mainly use FB as an RSS reader for the bands I like (because they obviously not having feeds). It saves me time for not having to go on each websites to check the news section.
And not in my main web browser. For obvious privacy reasons.
Are people really concerned of privacy, or just witch hunt against some companies? Bigger privacy threats I see are always tracking, always listening device we keep in pocket, which sends it all to cloud. Still I see know serious effort to mitigate that, efforts by like of Firefox/Ubuntu are dissed as distractions.
Developers on HN regularly proclaim wonders of Chromebook/Google Docs without any corresponding rhetoric about privacy.
Regarding this question about a "witch hunt". What would a legitimate objection to an institutional practice look like?
Would it not be a witch hunt against Google if people here complained about Google Docs? Would it not be a witch hunt against facebook if people here also complained about Google Docs?
I'm putting "witch hunt" on my list of stop words. I don't see the phrase being used in utterances that move a discussion forwards.
You could replace this whole article by saying "facebook is a private company and they have all your data, from posting and messaging as well as their cookies". Its just a bad idea at its very core. All these examples are trivial, who cares if they fake endorsements and track your location? Its like building a house out of sand and then people point out that a chunk fell off here or there. Its a house of sand, it was a retarded idea to live in there from the outset, of course chunks are falling off -- the whole thing will be in peices soon. Because facebook is an anxiety enducing and artificial experience, users will start leaving. Users who seem to need facebook in order to stay up to date with their friends, and who seem to have an interest in watching other peoples kids grow up (?) such as the one poster above me (and whos post will inevitably remain above mine) will stay -- but they will be the minority. Kids will stop signing up and at some point there will be a leak and the death of facebooks public image will finally be complete after starting years ago.
> Users who seem to need facebook in order to stay up to date with their friends
It doesn't sound like you actually understand the service Facebook provides, which makes your claim that it's all about to come crashing down very suspect.
For those interested in archiving their FB content, note that FB's download tool supplies only a subset of the content available in the activity log (namely only the content linked to your timeline). I've been working on a sustainable way to export all activity log content and will post updates here: https://github.com/IonicaBizau/reset-your-facebook-account/i...
Your current script name seems to imply that it only helps delete everything one has posted/shared. But you mention exporting as well. Is it going to be anywhere close to the paid/subscription product digi.me [1], except for not being in a proprietary format? Digi.me allows export of one's content from groups and pages too.
I didn't create the original scripts, which are indeed focused on content deletion. Having fumbled around with various possibilities for the last week or so, I'd guess that the most robust solution to data export from FB would require use of a scraper to extract individual items from the activity log. Ideally that scraper would also visit and clone referent posts (i.e. if I once commented on a post, also save the post itself).
My best partial solution thus far has involved programmatically expanding the entirety of the mobile activity log and using Chrome's 'Save Page As.' I've written Python code to then replace all links to images in the HTML with locally stored copies that I obtain using FB's Graph API.
I'm not familiar with what digi.me offers specifically. Moving data from one closed ecosystem to another doesn't seem especially desirable. I would gladly participate in an open source effort to automate FB data export--scraping, alas, isn't my forté.
Scraping pages has limitations, and may also be prohibited/banned on the platform depending on how it's done (there are some Terms of Use and permission request forms to fill in if scraping is done by programs - I'm not sure if it applies to all kinds of scrapers, including personal ones).
The way digi.me and other similar solutions work is by getting the user to authorize the app and use that authorization with the Facebook APIs to retrieve content. It'd be faster than page scraping, and likely less intrusive (guessing here) on Facebooks Terms of Use.
Yeah, I'd like if there were a straightforward way to access the same content via the API, and perhaps this is possible. I was unsuccessful. I'd made an attempt to grab all photos I've ever been tagged in, which I was able to accomplish using the approach I described in my last comment, solely through the API, but was only able to access those photos currently on my timeline (a much smaller set).
My suspicion is that services like digi.me similarly won't have access to anything beyond the timeline. Have you used digi.me?
I have used it more than a year ago, at which time it was restricted to timeline and pages. It has since added exporting content from groups (and probably others). Basically anything allowed by the Facebook APIs is what it aims to support. The downside is that it stores it in its own proprietary database and needs a subscription to continue to use it (though it's quite cheap, and I certainly wouldn't put the price as a factor against it).
I loathe Facebook, and I appreciate the author putting as much effort into warning about it as he once put into endorsing it.
But Facebook has Ne10 users. I suspect this kind of blowing in the wind has the perverse effect of (edit normalizing this by) raising awareness of a problem that people are going to continue not changing (but knowingly). It's a kind of cognitive dissonance that seems (IMHO) to be one of America's main manufactures these days.
Get your loved ones on Lyra instead. Lyra is an open conversation service which respects language, puts the user in control, and is designed with harrassment protection in mind.
As I mentioned in a reply to a comment about another text-only platform, not allowing photos and videos will not attract many users. There will be a small niche of users, but it won't become massive without those. It'd be quite similar to web based forums and discussion platforms. I hope you can figure out how to keep the platform running while allowing non-text content.
One can only minimize the privacy related ill effects, not eliminate them completely. To start with, see my recommendations on using Facebook from a browser (and never an app) in another comment on this post. [1]
The issue with technical interventions is that you're still allowing FB to collect information on you via other means via their TOS. I haven't read the latest TOS but at the time I did, they could trade your data with your bank because you've allowed that.
>Facebook gives your data to “third-parties” through your use of apps, and then say that’s you doing it, not them. Every time you use an app connected to Facebook, you’re allowing Facebook to escape its own privacy policy with you and with your friends.
Has anyone checked what data is given to these third party apps that connect to Facebook?
Tangentially, I'm reminded of an Austrian that asked for all of the data Facebook had on him. Facebook then sent him a 1,200 page PDF containing the messages of every person he talked to, all of his IP addresses as well as messages that he had deleted.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 293 ms ] threadWhy do I do it at all? Being off Facebook is good for my mental health-- this is the main reason. Privacy reasons are secondary but also important. I've posted some really stupid stuff in 2004 that I'm glad is (theoretically!) stricken from the record.
"When you delete your account, people won't be able to see it on Facebook. It may take up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status updates or other data stored in backup systems. While we are deleting this information, it is inaccessible to other people using Facebook."
https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674
From a Facebook-makes-money-from-retaining-user-data perspective, I would imagine they are making every effort to ensure they're permanently deleting user data only where legally compelled to do so.
In effect, what the GP does in no way helps provide more privacy from FB for the GP.
It's interesting to me that my friends ask did you see my X post on FB instead of telling me about things in their life.
Do you have some evidence for this or just presuming?
Don’t confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That’s because you want privacy, not secrecy. (From I have nothing to hide. Why should I care about my privacy? : https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide-why...)
Privacy is a courtesy. And a right to courtesy. Secrecy should be all that is related to security. It's interesting because the military seems to know exactly what a secret is. It'd make more sense to have secrecy laws alongside privacy laws for citizens. Privacy laws are not secrecy laws. Hence the NSA get's to do what they did, and hence they trampled on everyone's privacy outright violating all courtesy. They then make it a security issue.
As it stands, citizens are entitled to no secrets. Hence it's the wild west and we're left encrypting ourselves and standing in direct conflict with the government that would do far better helping us than being rude and insecure. Insecure is what they are. They have no trust or confidence in the people.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches
This, to me a layman citizen of our country, means we are emphatically and explicitly granted the right to privacy against our government. Then again, we live in a time where a secret court can grant an order that tramples on our constitution. Apparently our government believes on it is allowed privacy.
You ever hear about this secret court orders and ask yourself, "Are we both reading the same constitution??"
It's odd because apparently citizens get to have no secrets. Laws protect government secrets, but as far as I know the law is just as confused about privacy and secrecy as we are when it comes to its people.
He said you can have privacy without secrets. But suppose there exists a room with a door where you don't know what someone is doing behind it. The activity behind the door is the secret. The door is still representing privacy (not secrecy). That was the point of the analogy.
A secret is an attribution to the contents of a description which are withheld for security reasons. Or at least, that's what it should be. And that's what it appears to be with the military.
Privacy is a right to withhold information based on a fair desire to not have that information be known.
Invasion of privacy is someone pulling the curtains when you're showering or opening the door when you're in the bathroom.
That should not be confused with invasion of secrecy.
Either way, the main point is that these two terms are confusing, and even the law confuses them. And yes, people would consider something they don't know a secret also, and your use of the word is intuitively correct. But a clearer distinction could and should exist, and we should all work towards that clearer distinction. I believe the words are already more than adequate, since we already see the correct (most practical and fitting) distinctions used where they are most needed in practice (military).
I'm not sure that's true. You might think you know what I'm doing in the bathroom. I don't think privacy and secrecy are truly separate things.
Well, even for the times that I know EXACTLY what are you doing (e.g. because I saw you gulp down 10 big Macs and a box of laxatives before rushing to the bathroom) you still want privacy.
> Secrets do not hinder transparency.
Sure, they do. Secrets on matters that aren't the subject of concern don't hinder transparency on the subject of concern, but that's not because secrets don't hurt transparency but because the specific secrets at issue are outside of the area where you are looking for transparency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qid6_J38BDI
- Delete account
- 1st week, open facebook tab close facebook tab.
- 2nd week, visit facebook once a day by accident don't login
- 3rd week, visit facebook once a week, don't login
- 4th week, stop visiting altogether
It's been about 6 months now without an account and my wife and I are really happy about no longer have it. Try it!
- 2nd year, wonder if I should get back on to 'stay in touch.'
- 3rd-5th year, never think about it
- 6th year, wonder if I should get on Facebook so my family can see pictures of my kids. But, my wife does Instagram.
- 8th year, smug comment on HN to show how long I've been off Facebook :).
I had a realization: those who really want to see photos of my kids will simply ask me for them so i never posted their photos (pull not push)...so far, about four people have asked which made me very happy that someone is really interested in seeing them and also that my kids didn't become a source of nuisance for many others.
As a result I share fewer photos, but the ones I do share are precious and well-received.
In between, I keep my privacy shields up and relegate all the FB notifications to the trash. There is only so much social interaction I can handle at a time anyway.
1. Did not delete my account, an attempt to guard against someone impersonating me there.
2. Deleted all content I had stored there. Obviously I don't believe FB actually deleted it, but I figured their soft delete is as good as it will get.
3. Asked all FB friends to kindly ignore my account, not to tag me or post pictures of me, and that if they saw activity from my account they can be assured it was not from me.
It did not bother me at all not being on Facebook, and still does not. There seem to be no drawbacks whatsoever. When I read about people feeling that their lives would be ruined and that they have no social life without FB, I kind of just shake my head.
Use the settings / notification tab to disable certain notification type. E.g.:
* Some one tagged you
* comments on a discussion you liked, commented...
* who viewed your page
* who shared a link....
Eventually, Facebook ignores some of these settings in a desperate attempt to bring you back.
So create email filters to delete Facebook notifications based on certain keywords.
Also use an extension to block those fun / addicting autoplaying videos.
- Quit smoking.
- 1st week, light up a cigarette in a stressful situation, enjoy it...
- 2nd week, light up a cigarette and immediateley regret it...
- 3rd week, wonder why you still have this package of ciggis at home (and the inner schweinehund responding: they are for emergency situations, EMERGENCY IS NOW!!!)
- 4th week, throw away the "emergency"-package, lighters and ashtrays, just to be sure...
No shit, I never used facebook, but it seems like it has a similiar addiction-potency as nicotine (wich is quite high).
Humans are social animals, even those of us that /usually/ prefer to be private.
I would get my family off of Facebook because they cannot stop using it even though it makes them feel bad after being on it. That's reason enough for me.
Obviously a heroin addiction would not be what you want in life, I am thinking that constant checking in to Facebook is in a similar league of must avoid.
Check out Lyra instead (www.hellolyra.com), it's a conversation service that requests language and attention. We are also a nonprofit and solicit no investment.
People stayed on.
I needed an account again after nearly 8 years, just for one (very) important group I needed to take part in temporarily. Not only did Facebook somehow know who I used to know (and had absolutely no interest in speaking to) but every time someone visited my page it would tell me. That wasn't a feature that was there a long time ago.
Doesn't it bother anybody there, when they visit someone's page the fact you did that shows up for them? Isn't that exceedingly creepy? I think it is. Terribly creepy. It also one day knew I met someone the day before on the street, as their face showed up as a recommendation.
That is way too much info.
I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN? Maybe it has to do with the software engineers tending to be less social and introverted, therefore a social service appears to have less worth? Just speculating.
As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach.
If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github.
The issue is what they do with our data and whether you'd be comfortable letting them use your data this way. It's also due to their shady practices like not disclosing changes to privacy policy. This is especially worse with non-technical people like my mom using their platform. Who knows what kind of bs they're peddling onto her wall.
I think it's awesome that people are finding ways to get off Facebook. It's like getting out of a heroine addiction or something:)
>The issue is what they do with our data and whether you'd be comfortable letting them use your data this way
I believe that I have addressed these issues by still utilizing the service.
They're well known to the HN community. They're not new. They just don't matter to me. Nor to most of the rest of the market, because billions still use it.
facebook has its uses (i've had acquaintances reach out for help in the past), so i keep the account, but i have better ways of connecting to the people i love. weak connections are meh imo
i use instragram because i like their mobile photo editing tools, but i'm sure i can find a suitable alternative. i'd prefer to publish them somewhere where i can easily (and obviously) include the cc-by-sa license info.
honestly, i get very little out of these products. there's no way i can care intimately about 500 people. the people i do care about are the ones that i keep in touch with on snapchat or via sms/im. discussions are often overly emotional and barely stimulating. reddit was better for a while, but i spend most of my online time on gnu/social these days.
i would be super happy if facebook, google, and github burnt to the ground. there are better, decentralized and non-corporate options out there that provide adequate service and are actually aligned with my interests.
Facebook isn't necessary for any of those experiences. In fact, you state how you wouldn't be able to see your friend's kids grow up, or comfort your friends when they lose someone they love. But was Facebook really the only way for you to do that? It seems to me like you're attributing to Facebook quite a few characteristics that aren't really there. Ditching Facebook and actually meeting with people or staying in touch with the occasional phone call is a hell of a lot more personal. As for all of your memories, fortunately you still have those in your brain. They don't need to be in an advertising archive to be more real.
What I care about is Facebook creating a shadow profile on me, even when I explicitly go out of my way to block them.
If it would only affect those people that are on Facebook, I wouldn't give it a second thought. But it doesn't. It also affects those that want nothing to do with it, in part through the people that are using it, and that is the major reason for all the Facebook hate.
Hey! What are the odds you and some other user commenting here both have such similar experiences?! You should connect with them on Facebook! Maybe Github?
Back then there was no option to remove it - the only option was to convert it to a page with the mention that all your friends will become page likes. Then you will lose all your content posted (statuses, pictures, messages, etc). It was written red on white as a warning prevention. They said it was not possible to revert back.
Id did that, and the next day I felt so good afterwards. No guilt or fear of missing stuff. There were other means to stay in contact with people.
Forward two years later I wanted facebook back because I moved to another country.
I searched if there is an option to recover an old profile, and it was (even before they explicitly said there is none, and all your data is lost). I got back all that I've posted, only friends I needed to add back manually.
Now I use news feed eradicator and I don't see anything. Also, I don't have that urge to scroll feeds anymore. Basically, I wanted only messenger, but back then there was no such option.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kill-fb-feed/
I like Facebook, it serves a lot of good roles in my life (including my job) so I can't just quit and/or block Facebook. But I was spending pointless hours a day reading my news feed, disgusted with my own lack of productivity.
This extension kills the home page feed, but nothing else.
I still have access to messages, profiles, events, invites, etc. I can still find everything I search for if I seek it out, only difference is it's not drip-fed into my eyeballs with an endless scroll.
My productivity (and happiness) immediately took a step up.
They also see Facebook as the way to stay in touch with their own friends and family, and that's probably the biggest draw to staying on. Until that changes, I don't see them leaving.
Or Luddites, or perverts, or criminals, etcetera…
I recently disabled third party cookies in Chrome and it's had no negative effect. Can someone tell me if this will block the Facebook code that's embedded in nearly every web page from reading my Facebook cookie and identifying me?
0: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery/mlomiejdf...
0:https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
Because Facebook's profits come from advertising and that understanding our browser habits is a requirement for their core business, it is not too far-fetched to believe that they track non-users as well.
1: https://panopticlick.eff.org/
[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disconnect/jeoacaf...
1. Privacy Badger (from EFF)
2. Clean Links (removes all the redirect links from several sites, including FB)
3. Self-Destructing Cookies (destroys cookies when tabs of a particular site are all closed; default time to delete after tab closure is 10 seconds, which I reduce on my installations)
4. uBlock Origin (blocks ads and trackers)
5. BetterPrivacy (deletes "super-cookies" from things like Flash)
I don't use Ghostery because its business model depends on advertisers. Same goes for Adblock and its cousins too.
Even with all of the above, FB may still be able to track because there are many ways apart from cookies to do it. There could be browser fingerprinting [1] using various other indicators.
[1]: https://panopticlick.eff.org/
Outside of that I actually never want to log into facebook or use any of its other functionality. How do I accomplish that?
For me the reasons to stay in Facebook are
1) I can contact pretty much anyone via the Messenger - only a handful of the people I usually talk to use (for example) Signal.
2) I get event invitations. For that the Events app is perfect.
- Facebooks creates false endorsements for products from you to your friends without revealing this to you.
- Facebook filters out your posts based on whether or not people will use Facebook more if they don’t see it.
I don't mind/can put up with the rest, but those two things really bug me.
But my concern is that there are some people I would lose the ability to contact if I delete my fb. Maybe I should ask those people for their email, etc., then proceed.
Not sure anything guarantees they'll stop doing this after you delete your account.. They knew your name before you created it, and they'll know it after you close it.
While there are no guarantees, it still helps a little, since your endorsements are less likely to appear as genuine to those who know you're not on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368?helpref=hc_glo...
There used to be a two week period where it worked as you described, not sure if it's still in place.
If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github.
I am not using it because I believe “I have nothing to hide”.
I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get.
But I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me. I get more value out of facebook than the countless other services that spy on me.
For example, just a few weeks ago I got a fake hand written letter from a car dealership telling me exactly how many miles I have on my car and how I should trade it in.
My ultimate conclusion about privacy is that you should take steps to protect with you want to remain private. Because even if facebook disappears tomorrow, something else will take its place, including things created by our own government.
It's sad to think that, but it keeps me from naively thinking that what I share online is somehow private... because it's not, and never will be.
That includes places like HN and Reddit. The government has programs to monitor all our profiles on these sites. I am aware of that, and I live my life accordingly.
This is not a contradiction. Someone with privacy has the right to decide what they do and don't want to share publicly. Like you, I am concerned by how Facebook is used, and some of its societal implications, but this sort of extremist attitude helps nothing.
> Unfortunately for the average user (and even very advanced users) leaving Facebook altogether is the only option to maintaining secrecy of any kind. FB updates ToS far too often and nobody bothers to stay up to date with it.
This isn't true at all. While Facebook is somewhat sketchy about changing their privacy rules, if you don't want certain information made publicly available, you can just not put that information into Facebook (and yes, that includes Messenger). Any non-technical person can understand this.
What you call an "extremist attitude" I call "info security common sense". Companies like Facebook are well known to lull their users into a false sense of being in a "safe, governed social utopia" all while profiting from vast amounts of data both explicitly provided by users and implicitly provided through data analysis. Anyone even remotely close to fields like infosec, cyber security, or data engineering know that Facebook is quickly becoming a giant spider web for its users. While I agree with you that an extremist attitude is not helpful, it's come to a point where I just know too much about the background of companies like Facebook to simply ignore these issues.
Exactly. Everytime I see a person using Facebook (so basically every day) I think: Gosh, again a guy or girl not getting paid and yet eager to work. What a world do we live in?
> I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy.
I do not want to be rude, but unfortunately those options are mutual exclusive.
It demonstrates that it is a bad idea to trust important information into the hands of a third party.
If Facebook offers you a way to make a backup of your account then you should seriously consider to use it to have an alternative copy of your important memories.
It's interesting to find someone on here who maintains all of their files/email/photos/etc locally in a redundantly backed-up manner at home on their own personal server. How did you do that? Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person?
If you don't then it would horrify and frighten me to reflect upon the fact that so much of my personal data was tied up into one private company. See what I did there?
Again, just to reiterate it's about the feed, and the loss of that connection to the people in my feed. I mean what would you do if apple/google wrote an update to their os that wiped all of your contacts for good? It's not going to happen, just like your example of loosing access to my memories because Facebook decides to destroy it's own brand.
You can get a pretty good system set up with rsync, ZFS, RAID, etc. distributed between multiple machines and multiple sites, and have good security at a low price at the cost of a high knowledge bar.
Alternatively, you can have a pretty simple cloud backup system through Backblaze, Carbonite, Crashplan, etc., which should provide good security to people with relatively basic technical knowledge, but at a non-negligible cost (compared to free).
Finally, you've got the current cloud "ecosystem" players like Apple, Google, FB, etc., who can offer good technical security (ignoring the "we have locked your account" arguments) to absolutely all skill levels, with zero perceived cost.
That being said, I think the kinds of people who (A) actually even think about the privacy of online services, and (B) care enough to do something about it, probably have sufficient technical skill to choose other options. They can decide how important that privacy is to them, in terms of investing time, money, or both to solve these problems.
That's what I was trying to show. It's hard to not rely on some sort of third party service in life. I think a lot of people here just don't like Facebook.
I should probably create a Flex server at home to do this for my friends and family who aren't technical, but again if I host that on Amazon then I'm again relying on someone else.
Meanwhile, if FB boots you off, you lose everything, and must hope they at least allow you to create a new profile.
...You don't do that? If you don't have local "gold master" copies of your files, then you don't own your files. And if you don't copy them onto multiple devices, then you have a single point of failure.
> I mean what would you do if apple/google wrote an update to their os that wiped all of your contacts for good?
I'd be very impressed that they could also reach my copies of that data that aren't stored on Apple/Google services...
You missed a very important point I'm trying to make with my question.
Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person?
Many people on HN forget that there are many non-technical people in the world and that they don't have a data server with raid drives in their house running OwnCloud/Flex for all of their backup needs. Hence why they use the cloud and that shouldn't be appalling.
I mean this analogy can be taken to some extreme places if you start looking at the fact that you trust a bank, the stock exchange, a government, etc. You could minimize how much you trust each of them because your personal happiness is based on them. And PLEASE don't tell me if your bank was all of a sudden taken to a negative balance you wouldn't be sad, mad, angry, etc.
The point is, many people don't like Facebook, Microsoft, etc. and they press that opinion on others in a manner I don't always appreciate. It's a company that offers a service I like. If it goes away I'll be sad, but life will go on.
Right...but they've probably got a laptop and a USB flash drive. That's all you need to keep your own copy around. I don't maintain an always-on server, OwnCloud, etc...but I certainly have multiple copies of everything, such that if Google, Facebook, and other services disappeared, I wouldn't lose any very-important data. Doing it with less automation takes a little more manual work, but that's the way I'm doing it right now myself, and I don't think it's unreasonable.
Even taking the option of cloud-only storage, set your phone to strip EXIF and upload to multiple unrelated accounts, preferably not connected to a social network.
> And PLEASE don't tell me if your bank was all of a sudden taken to a negative balance you wouldn't be sad, mad, angry, etc.
Why would I tell you that? Money isn't a copyable asset, and I keep mine spread among multiple federally-insured banks that operate under different business models. It's the same idea: Don't put all your eggs in one basket, no matter how attractive that basket is.
> The point is, many people don't like Facebook, Microsoft, etc. and they press that opinion on others in a manner I don't always appreciate.
There are a lot of things that people do that I think are stupid...but they don't need to know that. I don't express most of my opinions (including these) without some form of invitation to do so. Facebook's currently a somewhat-necessary evil. It's a company that offers a service that I used to like, until around 2008. I thought it was at its height of charm when it was still a college-only service, and has become steadily less likable since that changed. It would be inconvenient if it disappeared, but I think it would ultimately be a good thing.
The problem is no more "technical" than that.
> If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone).
What did I take out of context?
And it's worth considering: "Facebook [being] suddenly gone" doesn't have to mean the service shuts down. It could just mean your account's been suspended for what some algorithm, opaque even inside the company and utterly occult from without, calculates is sufficiently probable cause. At best, it's going to take a while to resolve the problem via Facebook's famously helpful and proactive customer service. At worst, your account is gone forever. Maybe you can make a new one and start all over!
From your perspective, there's no distinction to be drawn between "Facebook is gone" and "Facebook is gone from me". Except that, in the former case, you're probably much better off, because in the latter case everyone else is still there - and it feels as much to them like the only way to keep in touch as it feels to you right now, and keeping in touch with anyone who isn't there feels like just enough of an imposition that, over time, they stop bothering.
(And if this seems like something that could never happen - that people would never just forget there are ways other than Facebook to stay tied into one another's lives - well, it can. Ask me how I know.)
As for the rest of your comment - I don't know to whose claims you're responding, but I'm pretty sure they're not ones I've ever actually made...
I may not have articulated how I feel very well in that post. I should edit it to miss out on the things in other peoples lives I got to see and things I got to share with them because of Facebook. So you didn't take it completely out of context but you only commented on 1/2 of my post ignoring the fact that a lot of the value I get is from the feed aspect.
>From your perspective, there's no distinction to be drawn between "Facebook is gone" and "Facebook is gone from me"
Not true, If I lost account access to Facebook, I'd create a new account and build my network again. Not a huge deal.
>Except that, in the former case, you're probably much better off, because in the latter case everyone else is still there - and it feels as much to them like the only way to keep in touch as it feels to you right now, and keeping in touch with anyone who isn't there feels like just enough of an imposition that, over time, they stop bothering.
This is something I have experienced because I only recently started using facebook again. I use it to reach some friends but not all of them. I know that. What you are describing ticks me off too but it's the same with people who don't have phones/email/etc. Except in this case it's not a generic protocol but a specific service. That's probably more the issue with facebook/twitter than anything else. They created a closed ecosystem that people rely on not a protocol that can be implemented by anyone.
>As for the rest of your comment - I don't know to whose claims you're responding, but I'm pretty sure they're not ones I've ever actually made...
I was using a fake example to make a point. We all rely on services that are hosted by private parties and the fact that you're horrified by my choice seems a little extreme. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, if you felt that way then my bad.
If Facebook permits you to do so. They don't have to let you, and it is within their power to stop you. Whether they choose at this time to exercise such power seems to me less important than that they can, and that it's only up to you whether you participate in Facebook's privileged access to your friends, family, loved ones, and confidants, insofar as Facebook suffers it to be.
> Except in this case it's not a generic protocol but a specific service. That's probably more the issue with facebook/twitter than anything else. They created a closed ecosystem that people rely on not a protocol that can be implemented by anyone.
Yes, that's the point I'm making. They - and here I mean mainly Facebook, which is the only one of those two actually thriving - created a closed ecosystem which is entirely mediated at the whim of its creator, whose motives and methods are almost entirely obscure. And it has over a billion people using it - for many of whom it's the primary medium of social interaction.
That one relatively small and relatively secretive private corporation should have such astonishing insight into, and power over, the social interactions of such a significant fraction of the human species as a whole, is a new thing in history. To be sure, we live in an era of such novelties. But I think it's reasonable to question the worth of this one, as compared with the extent of damage it might be able to do.
That's why - while I'm not horrified by your choice - it would horrify me to realize, in retrospect, that I had inadvertently made such a choice in my own life. To the extent it is a choice, of course - when, as my own experience demonstrates, while one may indeed demur, to do so often incurs a peculiar new sort of social nonexistence by way of punishment.
None of this is simple, just as nothing else is, and I don't mean to suggest that only your choice, and not mine, bears a potential cost. It's only that, while I know in very real terms what my choice cost, the cost of yours has been a very abstract thing to me - as I said before, I've never actually used Facebook. I suppose the way you described it just brought it home to me in a way nothing had before.
I hadn't previously seen your comment [1] describing your experience of not being on Facebook. There is much you recount with which I'm also familiar! But I hadn't thought it through to the extent you have, and your point about unplanned interactions, which had previously not occurred to me, is extremely well taken. I'll certainly be including that in my future commentary on the subject, here and elsewhere, and thanks again!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14393991
> Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person?
1) Use IMAP with copy-to-local-drive for email; Thunderbird or Apple Mail or a variety of other applications will do this reasonably for a non-technical person.
2) Store your files and photos on your hard drive, or a hard drive plugged into your wireless router which can then expose it as a network drive (e.g. Apple's Airport Extreme can do this, as can other wireless router).
3) Use Crashplan for backups. This is fairly easy to set up, even if you're non-technical, if you back up to their server.
This does rely on Crashplan, but they're the backup, not the only copy of the data.
> I mean what would you do if apple/google wrote an update to their os that wiped all of your contacts for good?
Restore from the contacts backup I store on my hard drive every so often (and which hence gets backed up via Crashplan). This part is fairly rocket-science for non-technical people, unfortunately.
> just like your example of loosing access to my memories because Facebook decides to destroy it's own brand.
The real question is what happens if/when Facebook goes out of business...
WTF? How would they be "gone"? Facebook does not control your memories. So what else would you be losing if Facebook suddenly disappeared? Photos or videos? You don't say exactly, but I suspect this is the case. If so, then that's your own stupid fault for not keeping personal copies of that stuff. If you don't value that data enough to keep your own personal copies of it, then you don't deserve to have it IMO. Portable hard drives are not expensive these days, and store literally terabytes of data (I just bought a 4TB USB drive a couple months ago for just over $100). USB thumb drives are less than $10 for smaller sizes which will still probably hold everything that's on your phone now. There is absolutely no excuse for not having copies of data that's most precious to you.
But memories cover many other aspects as well. Such as the descriptions that you write on your Facebook photos. The conversation threads that ensue. The face tags that you add and other people add to your photos. The set of photos that you selected for upload (rather than the outtakes). The way you name, organize, and describe albums.
Storage may be cheap these days, but ensuring that you have copies of your data in multiple places - such as hand-typed text - can be very time-consuming.
Why?
>Do you mind if I word for word quote your above to see if I get downvoted too? I want to repost with just the last two paragraphs to see what happens. I'm curious how this post would have been received without the intro.
I think facebook has unique features, in particular a true global scale, but for the emotional side, is there anhthing inherent to facebook that makes connection deeper ?
To be honest, I still feel that the 'real identity' concept is a big hurdle to participate freely, and stops me from posting some of the more personal stuff that I was posting before under nickname based anonimity (even if my contact are all offline relations). A lot of people don't seem to get along with the idea of having multiple profiles targeted to different circles, and switching profiles is actually a PITA in facebook when using it mainly on mobile.
I switched to instagram for a while, but it is yet another niche that doesn't really overlap with what other social services where filing.
And not in my main web browser. For obvious privacy reasons.
Despite that, no need.
Developers on HN regularly proclaim wonders of Chromebook/Google Docs without any corresponding rhetoric about privacy.
Would it not be a witch hunt against Google if people here complained about Google Docs? Would it not be a witch hunt against facebook if people here also complained about Google Docs?
I'm putting "witch hunt" on my list of stop words. I don't see the phrase being used in utterances that move a discussion forwards.
It doesn't sound like you actually understand the service Facebook provides, which makes your claim that it's all about to come crashing down very suspect.
[1]: https://www.digi.me/
My best partial solution thus far has involved programmatically expanding the entirety of the mobile activity log and using Chrome's 'Save Page As.' I've written Python code to then replace all links to images in the HTML with locally stored copies that I obtain using FB's Graph API.
I'm not familiar with what digi.me offers specifically. Moving data from one closed ecosystem to another doesn't seem especially desirable. I would gladly participate in an open source effort to automate FB data export--scraping, alas, isn't my forté.
The way digi.me and other similar solutions work is by getting the user to authorize the app and use that authorization with the Facebook APIs to retrieve content. It'd be faster than page scraping, and likely less intrusive (guessing here) on Facebooks Terms of Use.
My suspicion is that services like digi.me similarly won't have access to anything beyond the timeline. Have you used digi.me?
But Facebook has Ne10 users. I suspect this kind of blowing in the wind has the perverse effect of (edit normalizing this by) raising awareness of a problem that people are going to continue not changing (but knowingly). It's a kind of cognitive dissonance that seems (IMHO) to be one of America's main manufactures these days.
We're a nonprofit and don't accept investment.
How are you guys going to make money? I understand it's a non-profit but you're gonna still need money for servers and man-hours.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395789
Has anyone checked what data is given to these third party apps that connect to Facebook?
Tangentially, I'm reminded of an Austrian that asked for all of the data Facebook had on him. Facebook then sent him a 1,200 page PDF containing the messages of every person he talked to, all of his IP addresses as well as messages that he had deleted.