
The recurring Facebook privacy hoax - SimplyUseless
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30716493
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mutagen
The resurgence of the hoax shows that some of our FB friends are gullible and
don't understand TOS, copyrights, etc. This is obvious and we probably knew
who would fall for it because we used to send Snopes links to them.

I think it also shows a deeper unease with the pervasive and fast moving
technology and surveillance in their lives. Rather than learning what rights
they have, what protection the law does and does give them and what they might
be able to do about it, they're happy to imitate what they see others doing in
a cargo cultish sort of way.

I posted a snarky rewrite [1] of the hoax to my FB feed and got predictable
responses. First was a predictable 'its a hoax' from someone that stopped
reading at the first sentence. A few lulz and one person who wanted to persist
in the disbelief "What if the hoax is a hoax?".

[1] [http://pastebin.com/m3nkq98N](http://pastebin.com/m3nkq98N)

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gnu8
This is how it should be done, ideally. Facebook and similar services behave
unilaterally, changing their agreements at will while keeping them dense and
obscure, and intentionally make it impossible to communicate with them.
Therefore, it's reasonable and valid to simply type into whatever text input
Facebook provides "I hereby alter our agreement in the following way" and this
should be considered valid.

~~~
jeremysmyth
...and it's reasonable and valid for them (or in fact either party) to have a
blanket "We don't accept your modifications and therefore terminate our
agreement."

Your move.

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MattHeard
Couldn't Facebook detect these posts from their keywords and insert a box
above or below the post reminding the reader of Facebook's actual copyright
terms? Such as:

"We wanted to take a moment to remind you: when you post things like photos to
Facebook, we do not own them. Click here to read our full terms and conditions
for more information."

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UrMomReadsHN
The thing is - almost everyone lacks any sort of critical thinking skills. You
see this everyday with all types of stuff that's why these things spread...
Perhaps humans are just bad at critical thinking and skepticism or it is
cultural. I'm leaning towards the former.

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seanp2k2
"People think Facebook and Google are sucking up all their personal details so
even people who don’t have anything to hide get quite worried. "

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/you-may-have-
not...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/you-may-have-nothing-hide-
you-still-have-something-fear)

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pavedwalden
I understand why this keeps recurring, but the part I can't get my head around
is how it started. Who was the first person who posted all that fake legalese?
As hoaxes go, it doesn't seem funny enough to have been done for the lulz, so
somebody actually wrote all that thinking it would work.

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joshschreuder
I wrote a post on this, mainly to give to my friends and explain why posting
the status doesn't work.

[http://joshschreuder.me/owning-what-you-do-
online/](http://joshschreuder.me/owning-what-you-do-online/)

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IvyMike
Including this link on HN and a few friends on facebook linking to the same
article, I've seen five people talking about this hoax. And zero people
actually spreading the hoax.

Is this a hoax hoax?

~~~
jonlucc
I saw it posted today. Another friend commented, "you know this isn't real,
right?". He responded "Meh. It doesn't hurt anything".

~~~
bradleysmith
I am reminded of Slavoj Zizek's story about Niels Bohr having a horseshoe
above his door:

"surprised at seeing a horseshoe above the door of Bohr's country house, the
fellow scientist visiting him exclaimed that he did not share the
superstitious belief regarding horseshoes keeping evil spirits out of the
house, to which Bohr snapped back: "I don't believe in it either. I have it
there because I was told that it works even when one doesn't believe in it at
all." This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or
justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we
participate in them, we display our belief in them."[0]

[0]-[http://brooklynbooktalk.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-ideology-
st...](http://brooklynbooktalk.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-ideology-stupid.html)

