Another hit piece by NYTimes against Facebook. Personally, sharing good news across Facebook/Instagram and receiving acknowledgements has been a very satisfying experience for me.
More than that, as a consumer of Facebook, I also really appreciate when my friends post their achievements/milestones as it lets me stay up to date with what is going on in their lives.
Facebook allows you to scale the sharing of your happiness. And it allows you to keep updates on what is going on with the lives of others. You can still share the special joy in person with your close friends and family while using Facebook - it doesn't have to be an either/or condition.
The Times new "Privacy Project" is nothing more than a thin veil for their agenda against Facebook. Read their article on "How The Times Thinks About Privacy"[0] and notice they don't actually take responsibility for the abundance of information they collect on their readers every single day and try and normalize it by saying "Everyone else does it, too!" They conveniently decline to disclose any information on how they use reader data, but make no mistake they're selling it off just like the very companies they're repeatedly targeting with their reporting.
Their mission for the "Privacy Project" sounds great:
"Over the coming months, The Privacy Project will feature reporters investigating how digital privacy is being compromised, Op-Ed editors bringing in outside voices to help foster debate and contextualize trade-offs, and Opinion writers calling for solutions."
I get that HN doesn't like FB, but there is no "debate", and I wish the users of this site would be more critical of NYT pushing their agenda under the guise of "protecting privacy."
On the other hand, not being tracked by the NYT is easy - just don't visit their website. As far as I know, unlike some other company (hint hint) they don't go around asking their users/subscribers to hand over their contacts list.
And even worse, Facebook asks your friends about your personal details. Things like "What high school did John attend." If for some crazy reason you haven't put every single detail about yourself on your profile.
Facebook has a vendetta against the world's privacy, so I really don't mind if someone else has a vendetta against them.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, if you will.
Now I just wish their next article will "reveal" that Instagram and WhatsApp are both owned by FB too. I feel like a lot of people are unaware of that fact - even those that are openly anti-FB but are happily running WA & IG.
>Personally, sharing good news across Facebook/Instagram and receiving acknowledgements has been a very satisfying experience for me.
This is precisely the problem. They’re using that little dopamine hit to lure you into accepting the other awful things that make up 90% of what they do. Facebook is a drug dealer, and the most powerful one to ever exist at that. They sell dependence as empowerment. Dehumanization as connection. Social media is a cancer on the human soul.
At this point they just realize writing anything that roughly matches "Facebook is bad" is free clicks. It's a rare time when the NYT might have an enemy in common with so many people.
I don't doubt that their anti-FB articles are probably fairly popular, but I still haven't seen the evidence that the general public's opinion of FB has changed significantly. The overwhelming narrative presented on HN and by the media is that FB is dying, in turmoil, and people are leaving it in droves, but I haven't observed any of that behavior and their continued growth in numerous markets completely contradicts that story.
I agree with this perspective. Personally, I've had to get off of Facebook. However, it is like any other technology. It can be used for good or for ill. Everything has its growing pains, and Facebooks' have been relatively benign compared to some other technologies we've invented.
Just curious, when did you join Facebook/social media?
For myself and many other young people, social media began as online chatting through programs like AIM, MSN, YAHOO, or even in games like RuneScape, where we could meet new people or more commonly, talk and show off to our friends from school. Myspace felt like an absolute leap in online expression for us, and the idea of "Top Friends" had a real impact on our daily life at school. Facebook was a better application and provided a more sophisticated platform for communicating, however lacked the customizability of your profile. No longer were you operating a personal profile, rather with Facebook, you simply give them your data and they stick it in their template.
When you are in your late twenties/thirties, having your parents join Facebook is actually great. It allows someone like me, who doesn't actively keep in touch with them, to share my happenings with them as well as stay up to date with theirs. There is nothing I share that I won't want them to view.
Agreed that when you are in your teens/early twenties, this is more of an issue which is why Snap etc. are more popular. But once users move to mid twenties/thirties, they go back to Facebook given the type of sharing it enables.
My parents actually made me create a facebook account when I was 14.
Before that I never actually used the internet for socializing, it was more a tool for fetching compilers and programming tutorials and occasionally doing research for school projects. For me at least the web was something you visited with a goal in mind, retrieved the information you wanted after a short search, and left. Perhaps that's typical of preteens.
Okay, the anti-Facebook sentiment (particularly by the New York Times) has gotten ridiculous. "They're stealing your joy"? Seriously? I understand they're not perfect and that they sell data. Because I understand this, I have chosen not to give them my data by not using their service. I get everyone has a bias, but the NYT isn't even trying to conceal it at this point.
For what it's worth, my family has connected with members we didn't know existed who lived in foreign countries. My family immigrated from many different places, but people were left behind and it's great to meet and know them. Facebook isn't "evil", it just did what was best for Facebook (though arguably not in the long term due to the backlash).
I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook sued for defamation, and they might actually have a good case against the New York Times. NYT has broken relevant information about Facebook, and that shouldn't count, but this is beyond the pale. To be clear, I don't know that they would or should win, but they would at least have a good case and that it might be worth hearing in court.
Though with all that said, I had to make a burner a few months ago for an organization that was using a Facebook group for announcements. They repeatedly banned my account for "suspicious activity", even though all I did was occasionally read what was posted. They wanted a photo ID to provide I was really me, which of course I couldn't provide as I wasn't the name with which I signed up. I tried three different accounts, and they did this to every one after two to three days. Why should I have to sign up as my real name? Does Facebook really think a bad actor would hesitate to fake an ID? I may not like what the NYT is doing, but boy is Facebook making itself hard to defend.
> I have chosen not to give them my data by not using their service
But they still get your data by stalking you in every app that embeds their SDK and by conning your less privacy-savvy friends into sharing their contacts list (with you in it) with them.
I can keep going for a long time - I don't think there's actually any limit as to how far this cancerous company will go as far as violating the world's privacy. If it's technically possible, Facebook will do it, regardless of laws, morals, etc.
I agree that they will keep finding loopholes, but I'm afraid the idea of privacy has been blown wide open. Someone else will fill the gap if Facebook is stopped. This is precisely why I am so nervous about facial recognition and all biometrics: once the field exists, it does not matter how much it is regulated. Government does not have the ability to stop it. Some one will circumvent it.
When/if Facebook is stopped it will be because of these issues like privacy violations and the damage they're doing to society by promoting crap content or getting people addicted to scrolling endlessly for such crap.
Whoever replaces it will have to not repeat those mistakes in order to survive.
Facebook is enhancing my family’s joy. My family is spread across the world. Because of Facebook, I know what my sister in law is up to, and have things to talk about with her when I see her. I know what my nieces do over the summer at the cabin, and have a connection to them.
These hit pieces are ridiculous. If you don’t like Facebook, don’t use it.
I don't use it. It doesn't prevent them from using me anyway though. They're happy asking my friends for their contacts list (so they can get my phone number) and setting cookies through their "Like" buttons embedded everywhere without ever asking for my permission.
The only way to stop that company is to kill it, and these "ridiculous" pieces might very well be the only solution (technical people have been sounding the alarm for ages and nothing happened, so maybe something will happen when a mainstream publication decides to attack them).
So you blame fb, instead of your friends, for your friends handing over your phone number to an advertising company? It might make sense to stop giving your phone number out to your friends.
At some point, lets say you have 100 friends, and ONE gives out your number. That's it, its out there. Your phone number is either de facto public information, or you cant really give it out to anybody, except maybe banks for verification.
Facebook doesn't limit itself to phone numbers. They're just a convenient data point to pin everything else they've gathered to your name.
And the thing people take offense in isn't the phone number directory... It's everything else that they not only know about, but also sell to unrelated third parties.
When a crazy sociopath manipulates my friends in order to achieve what he wants I’d blame the sociopath and not my friends. If you’re not tech-savvy and don’t know anything about Facebook it’s reasonable to think they will actually keep those contacts private and only use them for what they said they would (aka recommend you people that are in your contacts but you haven’t yet added on FB).
Also I don’t have a problem with one friend accidentally giving away my number to one bad guy. I have a problem with a toxic company using that phone number to build a graph of my relationships and my friends’.
What would providing your own number do? When facebook asks for permission to see your contacts, it says its so it can look through for contacts you have that youre not friends with. Its literal explicit purpose is for building out the social graph. And it tells you that.
People just dont realize that they would store a phone number they dont have a profile for yet.
The data they are collecting about me & my friends is a growing liability. It's a goldmine of highly personal data that can be used for malicious purposes when it finally leaks.
They are putting me at risk in order to grow their cancerous business, but when shit hits the fan I will be the one dealing with the consequences, not them (they will just issue their fake apology as usual and carry on).
But you haven't given a concrete example of you being actually affected by this so I will assume it's more an on principle argument rather than you actually pointing to any wrongdoing.
Your ISP tracks you, Ycombinator tracks you, every site out there that have cookies track you. Everyone can potentially missuse that data they don't have to be Facebook for that.
Would you feel comfortable with someone following you around 24/7 and taking pictures of you? Technically this would be legal - you have no right to privacy on public property.
My ISP should not be tracking me (I’m sure some of them are scummy enough to do so anyway). Ycombinator does not track me outside of their own website. Everyone does not have stupid “like” buttons scattered across the entire web for the sole purpose of tracking people outside of their own website.
You dont need a like button to track someone. Of course your isp tracks you to see if you download copyrighted content. Your outrage is pretty selective all based on a non concrete potential threat which exist with everything from google to your phone to ycombinator to google analytics. Give me a concrete missuse, not just specualtions based on selctively who you like or dont.
My ISP does not actually track me to detect copyright infringement. Companies appointed by the right holders detect infringement by posing as other fellow pirates and waiting for your torrent client to share parts of the copyrighted content with them. They don’t track you per-se, they just use the torrent protocol how it’s supposed to be used which inherently discloses your IP address.
> which exist with everything from google to your phone to ycombinator to google analytics
I keep my Google usage to a minimum and Google Analytics is blocked by an ad-blocker on all my devices. Just because I’m talking about Facebook here doesn’t mean Google is good. All non-opt-in tracking needs to die. If tracking is so good and harmless then surely making it opt-in wouldn’t make a difference as everyone would opt-in anyway, right?
> ycombinator
YC’s business model is not cancerous and does not involve tracking people, so even if they have the possibility to do so (although their tracking would be nowhere near what FB does) I trust them not to do it just because they don’t need to.
> Give me a concrete missuse, not just specualtions based on selctively who you like or dont.
Also, do we have to wait for misuse to happen before taking steps to prevent it? We know it’s possible and such a goldmine of data can be very damaging if misused, so why wait for it to actually be misused? Let’s take action now and make sure it can’t be misused in the future.
Again you keep giving examples of potential misuse you don't provide any concrete examples.
That's like asking me to support a fight against cars because they can be used to run over people potentially.
I have no problem with you not using FB and trying to stay as anonymous as possible, but if you want to use the internet and it's many services I just not sure why I should support you when you want to take action against services I like to use.
The same thing can happen with the data being collected by the various advertising trackers. It's even worse because unlike text messages, you don't even know what kind of data the trackers are silently collecting.
> but if you want to use the internet and it's many services I just not sure why I should support you when you want to take action against services I like to use.
I don't have a problem with you using those services. All I want is for those services to respect people's privacy and make tracking opt-in, so people like you can continue to use them, while people like me no longer have to worry about being stalked.
So use an ad blocker. It's about thirty seconds to set up, and very user-friendly. Even with the default lists, they do a great job.
The reason I take issue is the word you used above: "attack". I think its use is telling. The New York Times has broken newsworthy information that was against Facebook, which I think is their job and a good thing to do. Newspapers, however, aren't really supposed to "attack" things. This is part of the reason there is such distrust in the media; many news publications are indeed attacking various things and not even trying to hide it.
So following your logic the solution to knife crime would be to tell everyone to wear armor instead of putting the criminals in jail?
> Newspapers, however, aren't really supposed to "attack" things
I would consider it an attack if they were publishing lies. But I don't see any lies here - Facebook has dug their own grave and is now rightfully getting what they deserve.
My analogy was that it shouldn't be up to me to defend myself from someone else's nefarious actions. I should not have to install ad blockers to avoid getting stalked by Facebook.
> So use an ad blocker. It's about thirty seconds to set up, and very user-friendly. Even with the default lists, they do a great job.
Have you ever tried to set up ad/tracker blocking for a non-tech person? If it actually protects their privacy, then it's also a huge pain in the ass that randomly breaks things and requires constant attention. DNS- or IP-level blocking works best, but requires constant maintenance. Then there are the various caches. What breaks when you block "*.googleapis.com"? Then there's the question of which user-hostile JavaScript APIs you try to block. WebGL? WebUSB? And from whom? It's endless war.
That's what I do. I find it much better to not knowing everything about my family and friends all the time. So I talk over phone and we talk for hours. After ending the call I feel happy. I never feel like that using social media. When we meet physically, there are so much to talk about and share.
I met my spouse on Facebook, and we use it for her business, so really it's the catalyst for all of my joy. I also live really far away from my family, and it's an indispensable tool for me and the newer generations that are moving farther and farther away from home to connect with their loved ones. I've also found out about concerts, gatherings, sporting events, that I never would have gone to in all likelihood had I not been on Facebook.
Is 'Like' incl. 'Upvotes' etc. the most impactful feature on the web i.e in terms of influencing human behaviour?
Since 'Like' and its likes(pun intended) releases dopamine & the incentive keeps one addicted; it became the foundation of these social networks.
Unlike actual real relationships, positive feedback from these social networks gives instant gratification without strings attached(at-least seems like that), making them more preferable. It has become the social currency.
Incentives are necessary for retaining users, but hypothetically if all social networks decide to do away with 'Like' system for the sake of mental health, what can be the alternative?
Upvotes or likes per-se aren't a bad idea, they can be used to reward what the community defines as good behaviour and filter out bad content (clickbait, etc). It seems to work pretty well on HN or Reddit for example.
The problem arises when there is no longer a clear definition of what should warrant a like, so the number looses its utility as a quality metric, and from there everything breaks loose especially if the automated curation uses the likes counter as a signal.
> Incentives are necessary for retaining users
Facebook didn't have likes in the beginning and it didn't prevent them from growing. Maybe the incentive should be quality, relevant content and meaningful conversations with your friends?
>Facebook didn't have likes in the beginning and it didn't prevent them from growing.
Yes I agree, they have been growing steadily after introducing 'Like', guess we'll never know how much impact 'Like' would have made if Facebook didn't introduce them and if other social networks social networks had them.
Facebook isn't stealing anything. This is an excuse for one's own weaknesses, just like most things in life. It is perfectly possible to share things with family and friends without using Facebook. If Facebook is sucking out the joy from your life, stop using Facebook.
There are millions of people on the planet who find FB useful though. I personally don't, so I don't use it. If you hate Facebook so much, stop using it. Similarly, if you don't like drugs, don't take them. I should still have the right to shoot fentanyl up my eyeballs if that is a choice I as an individual want to make.
If Facebook is sucking out the joy from your life, stop using Facebook.
But that's exactly what the article is saying. Have an honest look at whether facebook is bringing you joy (so trendy) and if it isn't, get rid of it.
There are millions of people on the planet who find FB useful though. I personally don't, so I don't use it. If you hate Facebook so much, stop using it. Similarly, if you don't like drugs, don't take them. I should still have the right to shoot fentanyl up my eyeballs if that is a choice I as an individual want to make.
Did the article say facebook should be banned like fentanyl? I don't get the analogy here.
This gets said so much. Don't people get tired of hearing "even if I don't actively use fb it still has a cost against my liberty"? They know who you are without you giving them permission.
More than that, as a consumer of Facebook, I also really appreciate when my friends post their achievements/milestones as it lets me stay up to date with what is going on in their lives.
Facebook allows you to scale the sharing of your happiness. And it allows you to keep updates on what is going on with the lives of others. You can still share the special joy in person with your close friends and family while using Facebook - it doesn't have to be an either/or condition.