
Facebook Offers Privacy Checkup to All 1.28 Billion Users - taylorbuley
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/technology/facebook-offers-privacy-checkup-to-all-1-28-billion-users.html
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Havoc
So where is the "do not share with advertisers option"? All these fine grained
controls over which friends to share what with is really not what I need...

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jnorthrop
It is always important to keep in mind that Facebook (et al) does not sell
your personal information, the sell access to a generalized profile. Now, that
may still make some people uncomfortable, but it is not in Facebook's best
interest to identify individual users to advertisers and not only would that
be illegal (in violation of their policies) but it is not a sustainable
business model. They want you and these advertisers to keep coming back.

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chimeracoder
> It is always important to keep in mind that Facebook (et al) does not sell
> your personal information, the sell access to a generalized profile.

I don't know if they reversed this policy, but last I heard, if I "liked" Coke
on Facebook, they would use my name and photograph when advertising Coke to my
friends.

That's not directly selling data to advertisers, but for me, it's just as
objectionable. "Liking" a page and endorsing usage of my name for advertising
that page to my friends or publicly are two very different things.

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amirmc
As most things on FB, there's been a slow march about what certain actions
mean. In the case of 'likes' it's something on the order of:

"I think this is cool" -> "\+ please subscribe me to your updates" -> "\+
please tell everyone I know, repeatedly, that I unreservedly endorse this
product/company/whatever - while not paying me anything."

You can probably detect my cynicism in the above.

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josephlord
You missed the part where you stop getting most of the updates from the liked
company unless they pay Facebook.

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donutello
Which is a natural function of an increase in the number of pages you like and
the number of friends you have, an in crease in the number of pieces of
content they produce and your non-increasing attention span. You will see less
of content from any one source as a function of time. The source can work
around this by producing more interesting content that the algorithm decides
you're more likely to want to see or by paying to have their content shown to
you.

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josephlord
If you got them all you would be aware of what you had liked but was sending
you too much uninteresting stuff and you would unlike them or you could
organise them to either 'get everything' or 'highlights only'.

FB's non-optional control and filtering of the feed is to benefit them and
give them a monetization option, it isn't a service to you.

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ZenPro
I could not actually say this better. +1

EdgeRank is an extortion for businesses.

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MadManE
It strikes me as odd that this is considered a legitimate offer by some
(most?) people. The whole existence of FaceBook is dependent on collecting
data from people - why would they offer to check privacy unless it was an
attempt to collect more data?

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merrua
Did anyone else laugh when they read this headline?

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whoismua
My guess is that most people will just close the window and FB can claim to
care about privacy (...as much as McD's cares about your cholesterol)

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lucb1e
> Do you know who can see what you are posting on Facebook, including your
> photos, birthday and personal cellphone number?

> Chances are that you don’t.

Wrong guess. Chances are that I perfectly know that I have set everything to
public so that I force myself to think about what I post.

Because if I don't friend someone _now_ , it does not mean that I might not
friend them in the future just because they're family of my sister's future
husband or whatever. Or the famous "friends of friends" share option that
basically includes everyone on my continent.

