
Facebook is People: Why I Quit Mark Zuckerberg’s Online Collective Data Farm - astrec
http://observer.com/2012/05/23/facebook-is-people-why-i-quit-mark-zuckerbergs-online-collective-data-farm/?show=all
======
vbtemp
I'm wondering: Who else doesn't use facebook?

I have an account, sure, back from '05 when I started college. I log in so
infrequently that I often get emails from facebook along the lines of "you
haven't logged in in 3 months. We think you should come back because...".

I never got into that whole thing about walls and public conversations and
public comments. I'm far too self-conscious (and I judge far too harshly). The
whole thing just drives me nuts. Some of my best friends and I are not even
facebook friends.

~~~
samstave
I have never had an account. Never will.

~~~
LoneWolf
Same happens with me. I never liked facebook and still don't like.

------
markbao
That makes me wonder: is the nature of Facebook _inherently_ distrusted, since
they have so much data, and those who use it spend so much of their lives on
it, or is the distrust based more on their privacy record?

What if Facebook had a clean privacy record but still collected all of that
data from us, in the name of providing the service (of messages, friends,
social—your life on the internet, essentially)? Would they still be
suspicious?

~~~
yuvadam
The answer is a definitive _yes_.

Facebook, on all accounts, is a business. A business is exists in order to
make money, full stop. In today's world, user privacy, and ethical values do
not exist in the economic formulas. Sure, it makes for great PR. But at the
end of the quarter, those "values" would be crushed in an instance to maximize
profit.

Make no mistake, your interests and Facebook's are completely orthogonal.

Facebook is not about "making the world more connected". I pity whoever
believes that is true.

~~~
dredmorbius
NB: there _are_ for-profit companies who have a corporate charter to create a
net social benefit. They're called benefit corporations:
<http://www.bcorporation.net/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation>

Non-profits also frequently serve this role.

There's a bit of confounding of this given the rise in popularity of what's
called "Cause Marketing". Socially beneficial activities undertaken by
(generally) traditional for-profits. Often seen as a marketing benefit. Not
bad of itself, but it's helpful to remind companies that token measures don't
absolve other actions.

It's fair to say that many traditional for-profits don't. Inclusive of social
networking for-profits.

------
jrockway
What I get from this article is that the author doesn't like his friends.
Facebook isn't forcing anyone to show too much cleavage during Spring Break.
The solution is to get friends who share the same ideals as you.

(Another problem is that you want to grant access to your profile to someone,
but you don't necessarily want to see their spam posts. If only there was some
way to put people in "circles" or something...)

~~~
sdqali
1\. I have felt that there is an implicit social pressure on you to accept
friend request from some people. Example:- A colleague who are not really
friends with you and don't share the same ideals as you sends you a Friend
request. What would one do?

2\. I think they introduced the 'Subscribe' feature to address the need for
asymmetric sharing.

~~~
theorique
_A colleague who are not really friends with you and don't share the same
ideals as you sends you a Friend request. What would one do?_

Accept the friend request, hide all their updates from showing on your news
feed, and put them on limited profile view is one possible option.

~~~
slurgfest
Yes, and after you become this much of an expert on where to find all these
settings, remember to keep checking your settings because Facebook has a
history of opting you into things you already refused behind your back.

~~~
theorique
I trust the internet hive mind to announce changes in Facebook privacy
settings with all the subtlety of a fire engine. ;)

------
abruzzi
Today not having a Facebook account is kind of like not having TV was (and in
some cases, still is) in the past. We state it proudly and often because there
are few enough of us that we feel the need to justify ourselves. (I'm firmly
in both camps.) The fact is this article doesn't really seem to add anything
new, and trots out the same arguments as dozens of other articles I've seen in
the last few months.

That's not to say it's wrong, just kind of redundant.

~~~
frossie
While you are right that the arguments are pre-existing, I think emotionally
there is a discrete change with the IPO. It is one thing to feel like you are
surrendering your privacy in order to stay in touch with your friends; it is
not entirely another thing to surrender your privacy for the geeks providing
the platform to make money to support and extend the platform.

Surrendering your privacy so that an institutional shareholder can make money
is, emotionally, a different proposition and this is what the OP demonstrates.
It's not that people didn't willingly surrender privacy before the Internet;
but then, like now, it was done in a two-way transaction. The classic example
is building intimacy with, say, your spouse, by telling them something that
nobody else knows.

It is entirely possible that with Facebook a public company, some people (who
were previously content) will re-evaluate whether they like the other side of
the transaction.

~~~
abruzzi
This is a good point, and a new nuance on familiar arguments. It's still the
same argument, but now with fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders.

------
ttt_
>> _And even though Mr. Zuckerberg has a controlling interest in Facebook, it
now has to be accountable to stockholders. The tension between user privacy
and monetizing data in service of stock price is a real one—and seems unlikely
to fall on the side of users._

That's the thing that botters me the most in this whole thing. If things were
already very bleak on the privacy side, that concern has just been blown to
smitherings with FB going public. The data mining aggressiveness will only
gain momentum as the company is pressured into delivering results to
stockholders.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
I quit for two reasons,

1) I didn't want Facebook mining my data, and

2) It was dull and a waste of time. It doesn't help my procrastination, and
the only things I used it for were the occasional IM, and... _investigating_
people I was interested in getting to know

~~~
mnicole
I quit for these very same reasons a few months ago and I truly don't miss the
platform. In keeping you 'connected', it devalues the weight of your
relationships and dumbs you down.

No matter how many smart people they hire, the UX of the site is continually
worsened with each update, the ads they serve are neither smart or relevant
and watching brands ruin their reputations through deleting comments they
don't agree with instead of confronting the issues just makes it a terrible
place to do anything other than stalk people.

~~~
jrockway
_it devalues the weight of your relationships and dumbs you down_

In what way?

~~~
mnicole
You attach yourself to acquaintances, close and distant friends, and family
members. You end up lumping together people who you do truly value with the
noise of people who don't truly matter to you. Does that mean the latter
aren't important enough to warrant the friend request or their status updates?
Of course not, but now you have this mush of information where no one stands
out. You can go through the tedious process of creating groups, but you have
to continue to maintain it throughout the life of your account. G+'s circles
are truly no better, despite their efforts to try to sell it as such.

The dumbing-down part is in relation to the rampant spread of
misinformation/fear-mongering at the click of a button (KONY, et al) and the
he-said she-said drama that goes on and is exaggerated by outside commenters
who wouldn't have otherwise been a part of the dirty laundry.

~~~
jrockway
I think the problem is: you used to think writing was only for the educated
and articulate, but now everyone can write and the results ain't pretty.

(Reducing the effort involved in writing and publishing means that more
trivial things are written about and widely distributed. You used to think
that your friends weren't morons because they never said anything. But now
that they can discuss any issue at any time, they don't come out looking so
good.)

~~~
mnicole
That may be the case for some people, but for others of us (and like a
commenter above said), it brings out the worst of us. I found myself getting
involved in petty arguments with people or just make an off-the-cuff statement
because only that person knows the relationship we maintain between us, and
suddenly another one of their friends/family chime in, completely missing the
gist of the response.

You forget that there's this huge network of people, people that could be your
next employer or co-worker, future partner, that are attached to these
otherwise meaningless comments you wrote just to be clever. I said to Jimbob
was going to resurface down the road or that I'd end up in a screenshot posted
on some site by anyone else that could have seen that conversation, even if it
wasn't insulting to me personally.

Ultimately, I wasn't comfortable with my every day conversations being
available to hundreds if not thousands of people that don't know me or my
tone.

------
seanwoods
This article offers very little insight. It's just a collection of facts that
most everyone knows, rounded out with a liberal dose of narcissistic filler. I
really wish these articles didn't make it to the front page.

------
voyou
"It’s then either a post-modern joke or a Marxist irony (or both at once) that
we are able to buy shares of us. But either way, I don’t want you buying
shares of me."

I've seen arguments like this made a few times, and I find them fascinating in
the way they treat "data about me" and "me" as synonymous. It's like that old
story about people who believed taking a photograph would steal your soul.

------
kzahel
Facebook will be completely unnecessary in a span. There will be a
decentralized solution that accomplishes the "people more connected" goal.

------
scribblemacher
Of my approximately 150 friends on Facebook, it seems like it's only the same
10-15 wankers actually posting things and liking stuff. I suspect that the
majority of Facebook users are like me---logging in once and awhile to see if
they got a message, not posting anything, then going on with their lives.

------
jluan
She makes an interesting point of an almost Nozickian demoktesis precursor
going on here in the Marxist irony...

~~~
SkyMarshal
Nozickian demoktesis:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia#Dem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia#Demoktesis)

------
adestefan
I'm not sure that the author's reflection of the difference between Google and
Facebook holds up. Google Search will get you other places while slurping up
all your data, but every other Google property is more akin to Facebook.

------
sharkweek
Here's a great simple rule -- Don't post anything particularly personal, keep
your interests and likes to a bare minimum, delete any "friend" that you would
intentionally avoid if you saw in a grocery store.

------
GoodIntentions
some beautifully pointed satire from "The IT Crowd"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rNgCnY1lPg>

pretty much sums up my feelings...

------
qq66
Not using Facebook is the new not having a television. It doesn't gain you
anything, nor does it cost you anything, and somehow everyone who does it
thinks that someone else out there cares.

------
redwood
Jeez, dancing grateful dead bears and prop 19---I must have fit in the _exact_
same marketing box as the author

------
a3d6g2f7
Right on, Elise.

What users demand is what programmers will deliver.

This is why it is so important for users to become educated about computers
and networking. You cannot ask for what you do not know exists.

There are other ways to achieve "social networking" besides using only
Zuckerberg's website and submitting to his warped ideas about human
civilisation.

Collect the email addresses and contact info of all your Facebook friends now.
You will need them in time when you will have your own "social network". A
return to decentralisation is coming. It is inevitable. Everything goes in
cycles. What's going to get us ethere is that centralisation has been abused
to an unacceptable extent, by a sociopathic kid who is still maturing.
Unfortunately he's maturing a little too slowly. I'm not sure users will have
the patience to wait. They want an alternative.

FB's only value is your personal data.

They will likely end up having to give it back to you.

The web is going to get better. This is exciting.

