
Get your loved ones off Facebook - Siimteller
http://saintsal.com/facebook/
======
rjett
All privacy concerns aside, Facebook has had declining utility to me (and my
loved ones) over the last few years, which has translated into less and less
use by everyone in my network. My news feed from three to five years ago was
much more diverse in terms of content and number of people posting. Today,
every other post is an ad, and in between are the posts of the remaining power
users in my network. I'm not sure if anyone else has had this experience, but
I would label the power users as the least common denominators in my network.
Thus, my news feed has come to resemble a trashy tabloid magazine more so than
a collection of the goings-ons of my network of friends. In my mind's eye, the
Facebook ecosystem is like a corrupt, dangerous, almost comic book-like city:
A lot of good people may still live there but they only occasionally peak out
of the blinds from the protection of their homes and they rarely participate
in the community. The streets are filled with trash, and the people running
freely on the streets are lunatics and crooked cops. But maybe that's just my
wild, childish imagination. I'm a much heavier user of instagram these days,
which is probably just like a movie set with sunny skies built within this
corrupt ecosystem of Facebook.

~~~
jasonbarone
Wow, Facebook has been the exact opposite for me. When Google Reader started
becoming too much work to manage, and its closure was on the radar, I moved to
Facebook and decided to follow all the brands, companies, and people I'm
interested in hearing from, much like what I did in Reader with RSS feeds.
After that, I "Unfollowed" everyone I didn't want to hear from me. My news
feed turned into exactly what I wanted it to– a resource where I can see
everything important at glance. I separated things out into lists, and I made
better, more targeted ways to find stories.

It's constantly gotten better with things like "Followers vs Friends",
Facebook pushing comments from your friends to the top, Facebook collecting
"Shares" towards the top of your feed, lists, displaying links in a more
attractive way, etc.

And tastemakers and power users are using it more than ever.

I don't know of any other way to stay connected to the things that matter
other than Facebook. Twitter is just a noisy stream of links and quips that
you can't keep up with. Linkedin is just awful.

Reddit, HN and things like Techmeme are pretty much the only other places
where the curation around topics are really good.

~~~
MrBra
Yes, and you're ok to sell yourself for that? Man, really??

Bands? subscribe to YouTube channels or twitter or mailing lists or what else
, your friends? Call them. IT? Come here or use Reddit. This is just over
simplification of it, I have ten times more interests than that, and it's not
at all hard to manage them without Facebook. You could use some browsers
specifically designed with integration of content as their primary feature, I
don't remember the names but at some point I've tried a couple and was really
impressed.

But again, most importantly, are you really ok with selling yourself for ANY
hypothetical advantage FB platform could offer. I never would...

~~~
drewgross
I never understand how people can seriously suggest calling your friends as a
replacement for Facebook. How many friends do you have? Must not be very many.
I have a small number of close friends, that I talk to at least weekly via
some method. But then I have probably around 100 other friends that I talk to
not that often, but still want to be friends with, and another 500 people that
I like to know what they are up to, but thats about it. For example, I went
traveling recently, and one of those 500 happened to post before I left about
a trip they made to the same place. I asked them about it, and found out about
some cool things to do in that place. That is extremely valuable to me , and
if you have a way to replace that type of interaction outside of Facebook, I'd
love to hear it.

~~~
madawan
Calling is absolutely a better substitute for maintaining contact with friends
than Facebook. Actual real-life facetime is even better. A lot more
information can be conveyed in a real conversation.

I can understand that Facebook might be a good way to keep in touch with
acquaintances, but if you use it to keep in touch with friends that's what
they'll soon become: mere acquaintances. Exchanging a few typed words every
now and than isn't enough.

Also: nice ad hominem on the "not very many", please try to keep it civil on
hackernews.

------
harel
Facebook has been invaluable to me for keeping in touch with friends and
family from my entire life time. I've rekindled contact with lost friends,
kept in touch with family living abroad, made new friends. Its a tool and like
any tool there are instructions and warning labels. What more, this tool is
free, and to be fair, costs millions of dollars a month to run. And we mustn't
forget Facebook is also a business, and yes, we are not the customers - we are
the product used to keep the machine running and make some people a healthy
profit in the process. That is the nature of business. Remember that, accept
that and use it right, and Facebook is great. You don't like - get off it but
don't expect everybody to follow suit. There has been (are still are) many
attempts to move the party else where. They all failed or will fail since the
point of the 'party' is having everybody attend and attend all at once.

~~~
ekr
I seriously doubt that 'millions of dollars a month to run' price-tag. There
are alternative, even superior open source software solutions.

The only cost are the servers, but certainly, even with facebook's traffic, a
well built stack could run on not more than a dozen. So I'd imagine facebook
could be run on a few thousands of dollars a month, certainly the costs
shouldn't be that much higher than wikipedia's.

The only thing that's valuable in facebook, and hard to replace, is the user-
base, which was won through heavy marketing, and having a more attractive
product at a critical stage (more attractive =/= technically superior).

~~~
DangerousPie
According to this [1] Facebook has multiple data centers with around 60,000
servers as of 2010, probably a lot more now. If you know how to do the same
thing with a dozen servers, I am sure they'd love to hire you!

[1] [http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-facebook-data-
center-...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-facebook-data-center-faq-
page-2/)

~~~
jarcane
In fairness, while I think the previous comment is a bit clueless myself, I'm
inclined to ask how many of those servers would be necessary if FB wasn't
logging so very much data on everyone.

If FB's job was once again just to show me my fucking posts, instead of
building the most complete profile of a human being in the history of mankind
so that it can sell me out to governments and corporations, it seems to me the
data load would be a lot lighter.

~~~
DangerousPie
I don't have a source for this right now, but I remember reading that the vast
majority of disk space used by Facebook is taken up by users' photos. They are
probably saving hundreds of uploaded photos per person (on average) and while
they do compress them quite a bit this still has to take up a lot of storage
space.

Of course they do also collect a lot of behavioral data, but I imagine all the
data Facebook has collected on me probably uses up less storage than my
profile pictures alone...

~~~
bigbugbag
Also I remember reading that they keep 7 copies of everything at all time a
few years back in an article about how deleting your account didn't actually
delete your data, which became obvious after data from accounts deleted
several years before had reappeared after the introduction of a new feature.

------
mark_l_watson
I would like to see more people using simple email and blogs instead of social
media. One way to make this work is having a clear flag for friends and family
that an email is just for fun, and they should not feel like they have to read
it if the title does not interest them.

I let people I work with, family and friends know that if I send out a
broadcast email with everyone on a BC blind copy, then they really should not
feel obligated to read the email. This allows me to send out general interest
emails to a dozen or more people and feel like I am not wasting people's time.
I don't use email lists, rather, I spend a minute deciding who might be
interested.

This is cumbersome but it gets around problems of Facebook choosing which of
your posts they will show your friends.

~~~
md2be
Like the thinking here, but how to handle spam?

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't want to say spam is a solved problem, but at least with gmail, I
haven't seen anything spam-like hit my inbox in at least a month.

~~~
pyre
I'm seriously looking at Fastmail rather than Gmail. Once they get CardDAV /
CalDAV support out of development, I would consider them a serious contender.

~~~
robn_fastmail
FYI, our CalDAV support has been in full production for almost a year now.

~~~
pyre
I was referring more to them as a pair. I know that CalDAV has been out for a
while (didn't know it was production, thought it might still be beta), but I
know that CardDAV has been taking longer due to integration with your pre-
existing contacts system. :)

------
csandreasen
The entire appeal behind Facebook is the _huge_ user base. Everyone I know is
on Facebook, and so is everyone they know. If you're going to get people to
switch, you'll need both some killer feature that sets it apart from Facebook
and some means to mitigate the loss of that user base - perhaps some
compatibility layer where information that wouldn't reach your friends that
switched with you to Platform X gets posted to your linked Facebook account.

I'm ultimately envisioning a future where people could host their own
Facebooks or set up an account with a family member or small business,
seemlessly transfer their data between servers whenever someone wants to
switch providers, built-in SSL for everything, PGP with automatic key sharing
between friends, encrypted file storage, etc. - everything that tech community
advocates for in an easy-to-host-yourself distro.

So much good could come out of having a standardized platform for social
media; you just have to be able to overcome Facebook's inertia.

~~~
imaginenore
> _I 'm ultimately envisioning a future where people could host their own
> Facebooks or set up an account with a family member or small business,
> seemlessly transfer their data between servers whenever someone wants to
> switch providers_

I think you've just described Diaspora.

~~~
derwildemomo
To be fair, the concept behind diaspora. I was closely following the
development at the time diaspore was "hot" and, honestly, the setup was too
complicated for people who are used to setting up wordpress or something.

I still think the concept is amazing, but unfortunately, they kind of failed
to deliver.

~~~
NotOscarWilde
My roommate likes to say the following, which I strongly agree with:

"Several years ago, when Diaspora hit the big news channels, we hackers should
have picked up the slack, joined en masse, building a decent early adopter
user base while helping with the code.

What we did instead was bickering about technical aspects of the
implementation, pointing at the crudeness, and pretending that 'getting off
all social media is the best'. And then we all joined Facebook."

~~~
Roritharr
This is disturbingly true and points to larger problem in tech.

------
hobs
I have tried almost all of these arguments and simply put, the benefit that
facebook gives most people is a much higher value than their perceived cost of
privacy (or so they think).

Until the house is burning down across the street, it is often difficult to
sell fire insurance, and they dont see the massive data mart that fb is.

~~~
hyc_symas
That's pretty much it. Since so many of my friends are on it, the benefit to
being on it is high. (And after a transcontinental and trans-oceanic move,
it's much easier than staying in contact in person.)

But I _do_ limit my Likes - I don't Like any ads or commercial entities, with
1 exception - I endorse musicians. Since I am a musician and many of my
friends are as well, I Like their music pages.

I don't Like Books/Movies/Games, whatever else. My profile info is relatively
sparse and I ignore FB's attempts to make me fill it out further - everything
on my profile is already publicly accessible info.

Ultimately I'm useless for marketing data anyway. I've participated in
voluntary consumer surveys a few times, and none of the questions were about
activities or products I've ever used. I'm so far removed from
mainstream/popular culture that there are no advertisers marketing anything of
interest to me.

~~~
escherize
It doesn't actually matter if you limit your likes. From the article:

    
    
        Like shadow profiles of people, Facebook can "infer a like" based on
        other information it has about you, like what you read all over the
        internet or what you do in apps where you log in with Facebook.

~~~
hyc_symas
Yeah, I don't use FB login for anything else. I don't click FB Like buttons on
other web sites. FB can't tell what you're reading on other web sites without
your explicit action.

~~~
dandelion_lover
I wish it was true. [http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/21386-Facebook-
Like-Bu...](http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/21386-Facebook-Like-Button--
Privacy-Violation--Security-Risk.html)

------
namuol
For once I want to read an article from someone who's a true insider in the
alleged "market" selling and re-selling user data.

(Edit: I'm not suggesting such a market doesn't exist -- I'd just like to know
what's actually going on. I'd like to know what's "de facto" practice in the
industry.)

~~~
sixQuarks
articles like this and the news in general try to make it seem like there are
boogeymen that have access to when we shit and piss, and can target
advertisements accordingly. The truth is, we are far away from this reality.
Most advertisers suck at targeting, plus they're lazy. It takes a lot of work
to target effectively, and just because you have a lot of info on someone
doesn't mean you know their intentions.

It's not until we welcome advertising (because it's so aligned with our
interests, and it alerts us to things we actually want to buy and do), will we
get to the point of the fearmongers.

Do I think this article has a valid point? Of course. Do I think marketers
have this wizard of Oz-like power to target us using data? Not yet, but they
will in the next 15 years.

~~~
falcolas
> Not yet, but they will in the next 15 years.

It's worth remembering that they will have access to your current data in 15
years; being proactive in the protection of your data now will pay off when
marketers catch up with the state of the art.

Also, remember that marketers are not the only consumers of this information.
Aside from the government, our "anonymous" profiles are being passed to
academic institutions as well, and the results of Facebook's experiments on us
are being posted in academic journals.

Additionally, there are the insurance agencies as mentioned in the article -
you can bet that they're a lot less than 15 years from using this data against
you.

~~~
yuhong
I wonder if they are really going to use 15 years old data though. But I agree
that insurance covering doctor visits is probably more of a problem.

------
owenversteeg
Although I agree with the point of the article, I abhor the way the author
makes his points.

> They use the vast amount of data they have on you, from your likes, things
> you read, things you type but don't post, to make highly accurate models
> about who you are -- even if you make it a point of keeping these things
> secret. It's a technique called linear regression which has been used in
> marketing for decades.

Oh man, not linear regression! They're really breaking out the high-powered
statistical tools aren't they!

> Peter Thiel. He wrote a book attacking multi-culturalism at Stanford

Thiel has since retracted those remarks IIRC.

> From the Terms Of Service (not the Privacy Policy -- see what they did
> there?):

The following content clearly belongs in a TOS IMHO so implying something
nefarious is just ridiculous.

> There's no need to talk hypothetically about government surveillance here.
> One of the first Facebook investors called Greylock has board connections to
> a CIA investment firm called In-Q-Tel. According to their website, it
> "identifies cutting-edge technologies to help the Central Intelligence
> Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community to further their missions".

Oh man! A company that invested in Facebook about a decade ago has a board
member that is a board member of a company that has connections to the CIA!
I'm pretty sure that you can say that about literally any large technology
company that exists.

Now, I agree that Facebook is funneling data to the NSA and they are building
models of your life, but the way that this author makes his points is frankly
disgusting. Not to mention the rate of about two typos per paragraph that make
the article even harder to read.

~~~
yuhong
_I agree that Facebook is funneling data to the NSA_

I don't agree with that either.

------
amelius
Facebook should be prohibited from looking into the data that I send to
friends. Rationale: telephone companies are not allowed to listen in on my
conversations, so why should facebook be allowed to do essentially the same?
IMHO, facebook and other social networks (with say >100k users) should be
regulated much like telecom companies, and I am surprised that they aren't
yet.

Also note that telecom companies are required to interoperate with other
telecom companies.

~~~
galfarragem
That could be easily done adapting FB business model, letting you choose
between:

 _Free membership_ : No fee. FB uses your data to run targeted ads.

 _PRO membership_ : Monthly fee. Your data is only yours.

~~~
shawn-furyan
It's interesting how charging money changes the perception of different
practices. Like with your hypothetical PRO membership, when taking into
account the data that FB collects on people without their input, by studying
their network relations, sounds to me like a massive extortion scheme: 'If you
give us a monthly fee, we won't disseminate this potentially
embarrassing/damaging information about you that we got without your knowledge
or consent'. But instead of doing that, they're just disseminating the
information, and not even bothering to give you the option to pay to keep it
private, since they know that others will pay more for it than the average
user will.

The free option is certainly more damaging in some situations, yet the paid
option is the one that feels criminal.

------
eertami
Facebook has too much value because of Groups and Events. Both are incredibly
useful and when _everybody_ else is using it to organise things it can be hard
to stay in the loop without.

That said, it is possible to use Facebook and insulate yourself. I use a fake
name, a fake email and never added my phone number. My use is limited to
Groups, Events and Messages - I don't doubt that they are still mining data
for my account, but my account doesn't link to me.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
What do you mean by "doesn't link to me"? Is your online identity not "you"?

~~~
fixermark
Not if you've stuffed it full of information that is in no way representative
of yourself, is the notion the parent poster is describing.

This is actually an old tactic for maintaining privacy while participating on
the internet: avatar, persona, handle, multiple names for it. It's the origin
of the notion that "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The social
networks hypothetically ban this in their terms of service, but because
Facebook has become the market-dominant entity now and can trust the average
user to not intentionally falsify all their data, they no longer actively
police this aspect of their ToS.

Facebook "Like" buttons on the web will still track your activity and link it
to your profile, but you can take measures to ameliorate that (clear cookies,
block the "Like" button origin URLs, and---for the most paranoid among us---
use Tor so that not even the IP addresses are easily correlated to your
activity).

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
"Not if you've stuffed it full of information that is in no way representative
of yourself, is the notion the parent poster is describing."

Well, but what would that actually look like? And who would actually do such a
thing?

What I am trying to point out that "it doesn't have the name from my passport
attached to it" does in no way mean that it's not "representative of
yourself". The name in my passport has some special significance, but in many
ways it's also just as much a pseudonym as "zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC" is. If someone
knew everything about you, except for the name in your passport, you could
hardly argue that they didn't know you, could you? If someone writes a comment
on here using a pseudonym, do you really think that the content of that
comment is "in no way representative of [themselves]"? Does it matter for
facebook that they don't know the name from your passport when they can see a
large part of your interaction with the world? Does it make any difference in
how they can influence you? What's the effect once you add in your social
contacts? How is your social interaction hidden by the fact that you use a
pseudonym to tell facebook who you know in real life and what you talk to them
about? Even if all of them were using pseudonyms?

Edit: To maybe make it even clearer: Stuffing an account full of information
that is in no way representative of yourself would mean that you use the
account only to communicate with randomly selected people (otherwise it's info
about who you are interested in talking to), newly selected randomly for each
new contribution (otherwise it's info about who of the people selected
randomly previously you found interesting), writing about randomly selected
topics, probably mostly stuff that you are not interested in (but not
necessarily, of course, otherwise the lack of certain topics would represent
your interests), writing from a randomly selected standpoint (even on topics
that you are actually interested in, otherwise it's representing your
standpoint), but of course never using your expertise for anything you write
(neither for defending your actual standpoint nor the opposite side, as the
depth of your knowledge would be representative of yourself).

Specifying that your name is foobar and that you live in Peking and then
talking about events in Paris to a semi-constant group of people many of whom
are also constantly talking about events in Paris at the time when people in
Paris are awake ... is not "Stuffing an account full of information that is in
no way representative of yourself". If any human with half a brain can infer
something from the whole picture of all the data you and your contacts supply,
then that info is there, whether you specified it explicitly or not, and the
only way to avoid that is by not letting your interests and your knowledge
influence what you do, which is something nobody would ever do.

~~~
eertami
>do you really think that the content of that comment

Easy fix for me, I don't comment on things on Facebook, nor do I ever feel the
need to and I never visit the news feed. My usage is pretty much either:

\- Receive email about event, RSVP.

\- Receive email about group message, respond with Yes/No/Okay.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Your point being? That which events you are interested in and which answers
you give is "in no way representative of yourself"?

------
kimdouglasmason
I have found that simply using Firefox with third party cookies turned off,
along with the PrivacyBadger plugin and no flash installation provides a
pretty good experience, while making you generally untrackable unless ip
tracking, cache tracking, browser fingerprinting, or nefarious permacookies
are used...

... and if those techniques are used by a big player, and it gets out (which
it most definitely will), they'll have a consent decree (or worse) slapped on
them so fast their head will spin. Look at what has already happened to Google
when they were found to be circumventing Safari's third-party cookie blocking.

The main things that don't work under such a setup are: 1\. Social buttons:
meh, don't care. 2\. Commenting systems such as disqus: again, meh.

The advantages are: 1\. Most sites simply don't have ads under such a setup.
2\. The sites that do show ads show non-targeted ads; generally related to the
site content. Which is fine.

It strikes me that allowing cookies to be set or retrieved by third party
domains was a terrible idea, and the current situation is a direct
consequence.

------
RockyMcNuts
The mobile privacy model is broken. I should be able to install Facebook
without giving permissions they don't need. Every 2-bit app doesn't need to
access my contacts and all my messaging history.

Until then, will not install Facebook app, and will limit apps to companies I
trust or apps I can't live without.

Facebook is a silly place too, but that's whole 'nother story.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I very much agree with you.

I am not sure how much it helps maintain privacy, but I advise non-tech
friends to choose one web browser (either Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.) to
use for just Facebook, Google, and Twitter use. Choose another web browser
with a privacy plugin for use for all other use of the web.

I think apps having permission to access private data on our devices is such
bullshit, and allowing them to post messages in our names, etc. transcends
bullshit.

Prefer web standards over apps.

------
hamoid
Can you really get out of it?

I closed my account years ago. Use NoScript, Disconnect, uBlock. But my
profile is probably still there. It's been mentioned that they keep profiles
of people who don't have an account.

I can imagine they could attach this comment and my online activity in other
platforms to that profile. Even tell my friends about them.

That would make a good episode of Black Mirror. Titled "The Privacy Freaks",
it would show people in a social network observing the lives and making fun of
the absurd things privacy concerned people do to stay "out".

~~~
lazyjones
This didn't exist a couple of years ago, but now there's a - supposedly
permanent - way to delete your account:
[https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account](https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account)

I assume that they will still keep some data around in order to spot possible
new accounts with fake names (by people who deleted their real name accounts),
like phone numbers and e-mail addresses. But it's a start...

~~~
V-2
As far as I recall, Facebook battled companies that offered "social suicide"
(automated deletion of private data from the service). Eg.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0_Suicide_Machine#Controv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0_Suicide_Machine#Controversy)

------
100timesthis
this article is not very accurate, it' like the author just found out about
the data he is giving up:

-all your private financial transactions.

no, my private financial transactions are private, how can Facebook access
them?

-...the right to privacy, and the right to have a say in how information about us is used. We've giving up those rights forever by using Facebook.

No, you are giving up a small part of your privacy using Facebook. You give up
privacy basically using any online service, and a lot of offline as well
(loyalty cards, phone number, ...). And it's not forever.

-In reality, lots of your posts are never seen by anyone!

I think the article refers to the "Top Stories" features, but you can change
it to "Most recent". The problem is not facebook, but the amount of material
available. They are not hiding posts, it's just that they are too many for the
average user

------
exodust
> "I've been pretty dismissive towards people who hesitate with privacy
> concerns."

It's this dismissiveness that hasn't helped innovation in social media
privacy, but sent it backwards. Thanks for that.

> "Get your loved ones off Facebook".

And this hair-on-fire turnaround doesn't help either. Our "loved ones" have
their own brains. They would tell me to bugger off if I tried to spoil their
fun.

I don't think I believe that FB keeps shadow profiles. What would be the
commercial usage of such data? I doubt they are sharing shadow profile data
with ad partners. What would such data look like and how could anyone possibly
verify it?

I never signed up to FB, it's not my thing, too much like a club, not open
enough, terrible or non-existent open data approach. I prefer gardens without
walls. FB puts barbed wire fencing up by not allowing such basic things as RSS
or feeds from FB to a website. Even the person who admins the FB page can't
get to its data. Instead you have to install their like button on your site,
and get an ugly widget thing to stream the data in within this God-awful blue
and white box thing that really looks ugly on a website, and is bloated and
crap.

But I see other people enjoying FB, especially the group pages which is where
the best action is I'm told. (my 20-something flatmate tells me as she looks
at FB right now on the couch).

If you leave FB for whatever reason (or never sign up in first place) then
just do it. You don't need to blog about why you left. Just leave.

~~~
amirmc
Just because _you_ can't see a reason, doesn't suddenly make it any less true.
Just search for 'Facebook shadow profile' and find the stories for yourself.

------
bikamonki
Too f*ing late. They already 'know' you. What makes you think they will delete
your profile and 'forget' you? By closing your account or stop using it they
may lose track of you for a little while but you are who you are and FB, NSA,
etc already know it. In fact, I think the smartest way out would be to start
posting, liking, commenting, installing apps that deceive your true self, let
them build a different profile, fool them.

~~~
bigbugbag
It's never too late, and this is coming from someone who stayed away from the
whole thing because it was obviously headed this way. How did I know? because
it's not the first time this happens, it's actually a known business model,
only difference is that they tried to pull a google by exploiting it
themselves instead of selling to a larger established third party. And by the
time facebook decline will be closer to the bottom, they will probably either
sell the whole thing to recoup some cash, or massively sell the data in bulk,
it's the usual way.

------
ciupicri
Off-topic, does anyone have any idea why the text looks so horrible on Firefox
running on Linux? I'm using firefox-35.0.1-3.fc20.x86_64. I've also tried
midori-0.5.9-2.fc20.x86_64 and it's the same. Only google-chrome-
stable-40.0.2214.94-1.x86_64 renders it in a readable way.

P.S. Screenshot: [http://imgur.com/m4rLSHQ](http://imgur.com/m4rLSHQ)

~~~
forkerenok
Not an expert at all in any sorts of font issues, but I remember having
something similar with unfortunate settings of font `Hinting` and
`Antialiasing`.

My current settings are: Medium and Grayscale respectively. (on Gnome Shell)

~~~
ciupicri
Indeed, it looks more readable with anti-aliasing disabled:
[http://imgur.com/Zze1yAm](http://imgur.com/Zze1yAm)

------
subpixel
I tried quitting FB 2 years ago when I realized I was no longer using it
productively, but just sort of using it habitually, FOMO-style.

I caved in and deactivated my account when I realized there were some things I
enjoyed about the experience - e.g. maintaining passive relationships with
2nd-tier acquaintances , especially from years past.

I just quit again 3 weeks ago, and this time feel absolutely no loss or desire
to return. Baby pic? That's what holiday cards are for. Announcement? If it's
important at all, it won't be shared exclusively on FB (if there was a brief
time that wasn't true, it's long past in my age group of over 30s).

One big takeaway is that FB is a very poor substitute for keeping in touch
with family. I wonder what's up with my sister. Hey I'll FaceTime her.

And those 2nd-tier relationships with people who might aortof be interesting
to keep track of? The last time I got a kick out of reconnecting with one of
them was probably 5 years ago, so I feel sort of been there done that.

------
aaronbrager
This article is rambling, unfocused, inaccurate, and has many distracting
grammatical errors. Why is it upvoted?

~~~
Udik
I was about to complain about the constant, ubiquitous and severely annoying
(for me) confusion between "it's" and "its". I'm finding it more and more,
everyday and everywhere, in articles and posts. People, what's so difficult
about it? "It's" === "it is". Therefore, "it's own" === "it is own"; "it's
merit" === "it is merit". You can work out the rest.

~~~
sp332
The collar of the cat => The cat's collar. The collar of it => its collar.
Possessives usually are formed with 's.

~~~
getsat
His, hers, its, yours, theirs

------
jonpress
I think transparency is good. The secretive (and superficial) society we have
now favors cheaters and liars.

If there was a way to publicly expose everyone for who they really were, maybe
society would start to value those individuals who have real integrity (as
opposed to greedy, manipulative, two-faced individuals). Absolute social
transparency would allow power to be placed in the hands of people who are
actually worthy of trust.

That said, I'm skeptical about Facebook's intentions. It looks like they just
want to take people's personal information and use it for their own benefit.
Their primary goal is not to make society more transparent for everyone - They
just want to keep this information for themselves and keep everyone else in
the dark - That way they get leverage over everyone else.

~~~
krapp
It is very generous of you, as a white, presumably Christian* heterosexual
male living in a Five-Eyes member nation, to assert on behalf of society that
no one could possibly have a legitimate reason to keep their personal details
and correspondence away from you, or your government.

If no one has anything to hide, no one has anything to fear, right?

*I haven't seen any mention of your religion on the public profiles I've discovered yet. Indeed, almost everything i've seen relates to your programming work. How are we as a community to decide if you're worthy of trust if you don't disclose more personal information about your political views, family, finances, religion? What are you trying to hide? Why are you trying to deceive us?

~~~
yuhong
That being said, while I am against real name policies, I do want to make
anonymity unnecessary most of the time however.

------
ciupicri
> Facebook's blocks posts based on political content it doesn't like. They
> blocked posts about Fergusson and other political protests.

Did Facebook literally do that or is it really about users deleting/blocking
posts on some Facebook groups or on they walls?

~~~
smackfu
I think it was mainly about th trending topics section. People were
complaining it wasn't showing up there, but I'm pretty sure that is
algorithmically driven based on your interests. So if you don't post about
politics and news much on Facebook, or Like politics or news posts, it's not
considered your interest.

------
magictrick
I would definitely get me and my loved ones off Facebook, I am just looking
for an alternative on a few features that keep me on the platform. If that
alternative was more open and secure, it would definitely make me switch. Me
and most of my friends are using it as some sort of chat to organise events
and have "private" discussions grouped by topics. The main feed really doesn't
appeal to me as it is mostly noise and it's too hard to keep it clean and
organized. That feed just ends up distracting me every time I want to see
updates on an event or a group discussion.

~~~
acjohnson55
I'm really interested in hosting my own Telescope
[[http://www.telesc.pe](http://www.telesc.pe)] for this reason.

~~~
owly
Wow, this looks pretty simple and free hosting on meteor is probably enough
for a small group of friends. I'm thinking one for friends and one for family.
Is it easy to share images on telescope? Or do they need to be hosted
elsewhere? Thanks for sharing!

------
danbruc
The solution is really simple - have an (optional) monthly fee of $10 and the
need to monetize (your) user data is gone. But how many people would take that
deal? I somewhat doubt it would be a significant portion.

~~~
bunderbunder
I suspect your data's worth more than that to them.

~~~
danbruc
Revenue in Q4 2014 was $3.58 billion, monthly active users was 1.393 billion
which then yields a revenue of $0.86 per active user and month. With $10 per
user and month they would earn a lot more and at the same time with a lot less
effort.

~~~
qrendel
I doubt that - most users would probably not pay $10 per month to remain on
facebook. The more people who left then the more incentive there would be for
more people to leave, since part of the barrier to exit is that many of a
user's friends and contacts are using facebook and don't have a presence on
alternative social networks.

~~~
yuhong
How about requiring it for some optional features?

------
DavideNL
Quite ironic, but the only reason i haven't deleted my FB account yet is
because i participate in
[https://www.fbclaim.com/ui/page/faqs](https://www.fbclaim.com/ui/page/faqs)

Anyways in my opinion FB doesn't have a lot of value because the stuff you
read on it isn't REAL. Everyone only posting their best pictures, best
experiences, none of the normal or bad stuff that happens. Thus, not realistic
= fake = no value.

And the worst part of the privacy abuse is of course people not even being
aware of it...

~~~
Stubb
So when I take a bad picture (happens regularly enough), I shouldn't delete it
but instead post it to Facebook?

~~~
Zancarius
I suspect the OP doesn't mean bad as in poor quality but bad as in the more
negative experiences in life. Most people rarely post anything but mostly
positive experiences on Facebook. You occasionally see the more gritty reality
of life bleed through around the edges, but in my experience, that's more of
the exception than a rule.

There was an article on HN some months back someone wrote that shared similar
experiences and how Facebook feeds in general could lead to mild depression
when someone sees their friends constantly doing fun or exciting things, going
on vacation, etc., while they compare such activities against their own
otherwise boring or monotonous life.

~~~
DavideNL
Exactly.

Reading my Facebook feed is like watching a theatrical performance, the stuff
people post is not what really happens (it's often glorified), i assume
because they want to present themselves to the world as if they are having a
perfect life or something.. but meanwhile i know for a fact that they are
sitting at home being depressed.

~~~
Zancarius
> Reading my Facebook feed is like watching a theatrical performance

Great way to put it! The façade presented on Facebook often contributes to a
feeling of inadequacy among more impressionable people precisely because of
this.

I found an article that's roughly along the lines of the one I had in mind
(saw it here on HN about a year ago--but I've since lost it). Either way, this
one is a pretty good review of some of the psychological factors you were
alluding to in your previous post (and addressed in this one):

[http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-facebook-makes-
us...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-facebook-makes-us-unhappy)

While I doubt Stubb will see this comment, I think it's important to keep in
mind that your original point was most assuredly not wrong.

Edit: Ah! I think I found it (turns out they both cite separate studies that
come to very similar conclusions):

[http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/24/why-facebook-makes-
you...](http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/24/why-facebook-makes-you-feel-bad-
about-yourself/)

------
karmacondon
This is hyperbolic. Facebook isn't evil, selling ads isn't evil and they have
no intention or incentive to violate anyone's privacy.

They don't sell secrets about your life, they allow advertisers to target ads
based on demographics, location and categories of interest. This does not mean
they say "Hey advertisers, Jane Smith likes to do drugs with her friends and
take embarrassing pictures. Sell her stuff!". It's more "Show my ad to women
between the ages of 18-24 in Portland, OR who have an interest in rock music".
It's just boring, not evil and not an invasion of anyone's privacy. Mailing
lists have been segmenting audiences for decades, often with much more
personal information, and no one is freaking out about it.

The facebook model of advertising is stupid anyway. They have the potential to
use unimaginable amounts of information to infer who is most like to buy what
from whom. Instead of using it to the fullest extent, they let advertisers
select their own targeting criteria based on tiny sample sizes and gut
intuitions about who their ideal customers are. You have nothing to fear from
this, it's just advertising, same as it's always been.

If you don't like using facebook, just don't use it. The sky won't fall, the
dead won't rise and the sun will come up tomorrow. They aren't doing any more
harm than any other corporation, and the use of their product isn't any more
requisite than any other product.

~~~
wpietri
> [...] selling ads isn't evil and they have no intention or incentive to
> violate anyone's privacy

Depends on your perspective. Take eating meat. A butcher doesn't think that
selling meat is evil, but I'd bet that cows would.

I've done work in advertising, but it's now on the list of things I won't work
on. The basic purpose of almost all advertising is to manipulate people into
buying stuff. I've come to see that manipulation as immoral. I think it's also
an enormous waste: so many bright, creative people putting their lives into
something that produces no net systemic benefit. Advertising is an arms race
between companies, and we could re-purpose circa $1 trillion annually if we
declared an armistice.

~~~
crimsoneer
Your definition of net systemic advertising is rather different to mine. There
are multiple products I wouldn't know about, and wouldn't have bought, without
advertising. Yes, those adverts can be misleading, but they also give me the
information I need to make purchasing choices.

~~~
wpietri
You mean net systemic value? You've only described a gross local value, and
you haven't fully examined your contrafactual.

For net systemic value to be better than a world without advertising, you
would have to count not just your personal positives and nothing else but
individual positives and negatives both in the actual world and in the
contrafactual.

For example, a lot of people have died from cancer caused by tobacco
advertising, and things like the car accidents and liver failures that result
from alcohol advertising. That's the actual negative side. You've assumed that
in the contrafactual you just never would have heard about those products. But
people hear about products all the time without advertising, so that's
unproven. Perhaps in a world without ads we'd have more things like Consumer
Reports and The Wirecutter, yielding better-informed decisions.

You also ignore the not-as-good products you're using because you never heard
about the better ones with smaller advertising budgets. Think of all the folks
using inappropriate Microsoft and Oracle products just because their bosses
saw an ad. Similarly, you ignore how you've missed out on the products that
don't exist because their companies were crushed via large advertising
budgets. E.g., all the good beer that wasn't drunk because Budweiser out-
advertised the small breweries.

And you also ignore the opportunity cost of advertising. I know a lot of
smart, creative people who devote their lives to trying to shift market share
from one essentially equivalent product to another. And for the most part,
their work is canceled out by people from other advertising agencies. What if
that money was spent on R&D, or just given back to the customers? What if
those people were doing something that made the world better?

For net systemic value to be positive, the social benefits (product discovery
is the only one you mention) would have to be greater than the costs. I don't
think advertising actually helps, in net, with product discovery, but if it
did I don't believe the value created even covers the $1 trillion or so in
direct costs, let alone things like MS SQL Server and lung cancer.

Even if the benefits did cover all that (which I deny strongly) then I don't
think it justifies the opportunity costs as compared with a world where people
found their products through Consumer Reports and we spent the spare $1
trillion on something useful.

------
blueskin_
The latest one is hardly worse than the others. Sure, it's bad if you use
instagram, but I have zero interest in sharing photos of my lunch with crappy
filters on it, and IIRC that's the key change this time. Meanwhile, google add
more and more anti-privacy provisions to their terms all the time and don't
get anywhere near this amount of coverage.

I'm definitely critical of facebook and their privacy record, but most of the
linked post is about their app, which I never use and of people I'm close to,
I don't know anyone who does exactly due to those excessive permission
requests. The tracking with like buttons is worse, but easy enough to mitigate
with any number of addons. Facebook may be dodgy, but they are no worse than
google, apple or microsoft in that respect.

There isn't anything as good as facebook for communicating with friends, and
for that reason, trying to stop people using it will never work, no matter the
privacy implications. Treat facebook as something dangerous, be careful what
you share, and contain it appropriately with addons, etc., but it's
unfortunately necessary. What are the alternatives? Google plus is a ghost
town and run by the one company worse than facebook on privacy, and disaspora
is a joke. I do wish there was a good alternative, but there won't be, as
facebook is as much a platform as a site these days.

~~~
marknow
G+ is actually *not a "ghost town"; it doesn't presume that you have friend-
like connections, and allows you to follow/circle and correspond easily with
anyone. I tend to think of it as a more powerful Twitter, and have used it to
stay in touch with what's going on in my profession. Very helpful to follow
and participate in discussions with people from all over the world.

~~~
blueskin_
I find that messed up, that anyone can add me without me having to accept.
Guess it makes sense in google's ideal panopticon world where privacy is a
swearword though. It's just not something I would ever be a part of.

Oh, and it is a ghost town. When it launched, 3 people I know made profiles.
None still have them.

------
marknow
Well, privacy or no... I have found just the sheer "overhead" of _dealing_
with FB to be exhausting. I mean, really.

Trolling through so many mundane and inane posts to get to the few relevant
items of interest has become a huge time-sink, for me.

Yesterday, I posted a simple, non-accusatory statement that said that I was
stepping back from FB for a while, maybe forever, and that we could still stay
in touch via email and text. So far, the response has been nothing but
positive.

------
lern_too_spel
"And if you haven't heard - it was revealed by wikileaks that all your
Facebook data is delivered directly to the NSA." {{Citation needed}}

I avoid Facebook as much as possible, but there's a whole lot of nutty
nonsense in this article. The reason I avoid Facebook is that it grew from a
culture of bros instead of a culture of professionals or academics, and I
won't entrust my data to bros. It's the same reason I don't use Uber.

~~~
SaintSal
[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-22916329](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-22916329)

[http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/02/03/facebook-
linkedin-g...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/02/03/facebook-linkedin-
google-microsoft-reveal-data-showing-range-accounts-requested-nsa/)

I think I had a few more in the sources section at the bottom of the post too.

~~~
SaintSal
Good point on it sounding nutty though. I just added a reference to this
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-
giants-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-
data)

~~~
lern_too_spel
1\. None of those are Wikileaks.

2\. Facebook delivered 19k accounts' data to the US government out of more
than 1 billion, and nowhere does it say it delivered all of their data. That
is not "all of your Facebook data" unless they received a court order for all
of your data, which is very unlikely unless you're running ISIS.

3\. For PRISM, certain data for those specific users is delivered directly to
the FBI, not the NSA. The NSA gets it from the FBI.

~~~
SaintSal
Thanks - I'll update the post.

------
davidgerard
Facebook is an awful experience, even with AdBlock. The only reason people are
on Facebook is because everyone else is. It's like the worst bar in the town,
but it's the only one you can reliably see anyone at. It's _desperately_ in
need of disruption. Google+ could have done it, but their data greed with the
Real Names policy fucked them.

------
Zigurd
I would heed that advice if I used Facebook purely to over-share pointless
random personal information.

Unfortunately, Facebook is where people I want to communicate with can, and
generally do see what I post, and engage with it at higher rates than on
Google+.

Back when Google+ was new and very Google-oriented, I was able to build a
community of a large number of followers for my personal account and a page
for one of my books. But the Google+ user base is now larger, more diffuse,
and less engaged. That's not very useful.

Lately, LinkedIn has been a good alternative. LinkedIn has improved their
update stream. I read it, and I post to it. But LinkedIn does despicable
things with your calendar information.

I'm pretty sure the people at Facebook have figured this out: Either you need
it, and will put up with the privacy issues, or it's an entertainment medium
for you and you don't care.

I've deleted Facebook and LinkedIn apps from my mobile devices, but I still
use them via their Web UIs.

------
huuu
I read about the fuzz but to me its unclear what changed in the policy. I dont
haven a Facebook account because the current policy isn't very different from
the bad one years ago when I had an account and therefore deleted it.

So does someone know what exactly changed and why my dear ones should suddenly
stop using Facebook?

------
jgalt212
Quick question: is Facebook tracking what you articles read online on third
party sites even when you are not logged in to Facebook? This can be done via
cookies, browser fingerprinting, and other methods so long as the third party
site (e.g. Buzzfeed) is firing a FB tracking pixel?

~~~
sp332
They used to track you via cookies even when you were logged out.
[http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-to-stop-facebook-
fr...](http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-to-stop-facebook-from-
tracking-you-2012-9?op=1) This lead to investigation by the FTC and a $15
billion class-action lawsuit.

~~~
jgalt212
Thanks for this. However, unless FB were directly sharing this sort of data
outside of FB, this consent decree would seem to be very hard to
enforce/police.

------
DanielBMarkham
I've never been a fan of Facebook, although as an early adopter I've been on
it for a long while. In fact, I've always said (and still say) that Facebook
is the closest thing the modern world has to a devil, because it uses your
friends against you to encourage you to do things you would not normally do.
It's really, really bad.

But I'm still on. Why? Well, because, like I said, all my friends are on
there. It's a faustian choice: give up hearing from and relating to all of
those people I have put so much emotional capital in all these years? Or stay
and hold my nose?

I do not feel that the hype against Facebook is overblown. In fact, looking at
it over a period of decades, it's probably understated.

~~~
rtpg
could you give an example of things it encourages me to do?

------
im3w1l
It's ironic how that page uses google analytics, enabling Google to track your
visit.

~~~
russgray
And has a 'please share this post' section at the bottom, including - you
guessed it - Facebook.

------
wyck
The is fear bait and not a well rounded analysis, it belongs on FOX news and
is completely sophomoric.

For example: (Peter Thiel) - believes in a theory called "memetic desire"
which uses people's social groups to manipuate their wants and intentions. -
Copy pasted will spelling error^

A theory is not something you believe in, Memetic Desire ( Google René Girard)
is a very interesting psychological idea, I find it interesting , will the
author paint me as having evil intentions as well..

~~~
SaintSal
wyck - I quickly wrote this for my immediate family and posted as-is. I'm
actually a big fan of Thiel and see the positive sides of the theory as well.
To someone not from our tech startup world though, I wanted to be clear about
the politics of the people behind the service, and the possible implications.
Facebook is a business, and it likely has a political agenda behind it.

I'm sure you're a nice person. I also honestly think that Facebook, the NSA,
Al Jazeera and even Cheezburger are full of nice people who want to make the
world a better place. (Maybe not FOX news though. :) ) That doesn't
necessarily condone what their organisations do.

~~~
wyck
I constantly see negative bias towards social media, sure some of it is
warranted, and most of it related to privacy, but what abut the positives?

The hard reality that revenue needs to be generated is a very real struggle.
This was evolving pre-facebook, it just so happens that they are able to take
advantage of what was already going on.

The answer is not to abandon social media, but to force awareness and possibly
regulation, but again it's not easy when commerce is involved. I think that
this will come in the future, right now the ground is still unstable, but it's
important to look at the big picture and take the goods with the bad.

------
owly
Can anyone name 3 alternatives and the strategy to get people to quit FB and
sign up for something new?

~~~
codingdave
Alternatives to what? What need does Facebook actually fulfill in your life?

I quit Facebook a few years back. I didn't replace it with something new. I
simply quit. I don't share my life online. I just live it.

~~~
owly
Guess you filter through a lot of email or don't engage online with friends
and family. Also, people actively use FB for events and groups. Do you not
follow any local events?

~~~
codingdave
True. I don't engage much online with friends or family. Or even via email. We
mostly call and text, or we actually are together face to face. Likewise with
local events - people talk about them in real life and we attend when we want
to.

------
benjvi
I feel like this article, like every other article about facebook, is based on
a misunderstanding of what it is and how it should be used. It seems to me
that everything on facebook should be to some extent a facade, an idealised
version of whats actually going on. Its a really nice way to keep in some sort
of contact with people that you've fallen out of touch with or people who you
were never that close with to start (but they post interesting things). This
is where the primary value of facebook is (for me at least).

The point is, information on facebook is pseudo-public, not private and
hopefully not too personal. Use it like this, and it don't think theres any
problem. There are plenty of other options for more private or personal
communications so its not like they have any monopoly power in this area. So,
regardless of the dubiousness of Mark Zuckerberg's vision for open
communications, i think the problems written about in this article reduce to a
lot of hyperbole.

~~~
scholia
Since the whole purpose of Facebook is to enable people to share things with
their friends, you'd have to be phenomenally stupid to use it to store things
you want to keep private.

------
reporter
Does anyone know if deactivation helps with any of these privacy concerns? I
have had my account deactivated for 4 years. I keep it open just in case I
need to get ahold of someone if I can't get through through phone and email
(which has happened!).

------
cosarara97
So, if you don't use the android app and don't use it's private messaging
system for actually private stuff, you are just as "safe" as a non-user (since
they can track you over websites with like buttons just as fine).

~~~
sp332
Also don't upload photos, don't put demographically-targetable keywords in any
posts, don't let anyone tag you in photos, don't use Facebook to RSVP to
events, and basically don't use the site at all, then yes.

------
jongraehl
"there are cases of vegetarians endorsing mcdonalds" \- more likely, that
account _did_ click 'like'. however, paid publicizing of past likes that way
is slimy and users didn't give any meaningful consent to it.

------
yazac
Get off Facebook, Gmail, Youtube etc. Even though there's not much I disagree
with the author if you were to follow this I'd end up with very little to do
online plus make my life extremely complicated & difficult.

------
mantalk
Linear regression! The horror!

------
nathan_long
Facebook's total war on privacy prompted me to delete my profile years ago. I
call my friends on the phone, and there are no ads.

The best Facebook privacy settings go in /etc/hosts, pointing facebook.com to
localhost.

------
djokkataja
I like how there's a facebook share button at the bottom of the page, even
though he wraps up by imploring the reader to not use facebook to share this
article.

------
avodonosov
I am off Facebook for more than year now and very happy.

------
vacri
The low contrast on this site made it hard to read. If you want folks to read
an article that long, don't put barriers in the way.

------
q-base
If still staying on facebook, and being quite assertive with content shared,
then what else can be done to limit one's online footprint. The article
mentions ghostery and some EFF browser extension - that I unfortunately is
unable to download at the moment, from the link in the article.

But without limiting your own freedom to much and being to much of a hassle
what are some good minimum precautions?

------
naskwo
This is one of the reasons why, back in 2005, I set up www.famipix.com

------
jekabsk
Sounds like we should get more relevant ads soon. Is that bad?

~~~
kome
yes. who cares about ads?

------
jacquesm
Nice to see someone turn around in such an articulate way.

------
jsilence
I wish someone wrote a slick React based web interface for red#matrix
([http://redmatrix.me/](http://redmatrix.me/)).

~~~
jsilence
downvotes? Really?

Using the one really good thing Facebook gave the world, namely react.js
et.al., to improve the interface of an interesting social network alternative
does not ring a bell?

------
auganov
Lost me at the "I have nothing to hide" section. The first few paragraphs are
trying to convince you that you actually do have stuff to hide.

~~~
girvo
I don't understand? That was his point, I thought.

~~~
auganov
Hmmmm, maybe. I assumed the "right to privacy" part was the actual point. Or
the next paragraph saying that you might not want to hide stuff now but maybe
in the future. Such a spray and pray approach.

~~~
ZenoArrow
The purpose of the article is pointed at in the title.

------
madsravn
So OK - much of these things sounds crazy. But it's a free service and if you
don't really care if Facebook tracks you or your web-surfs, I don't really see
how it matters.

All these "Get off Facebook, they are doing a lot of things you don't
like"-posts are getting crazy. It's like a mechanic running around screaming
at people they are using the wrong oil in their cars or a lawyer running
around acting crazy about people not suing everybody.

Some people are just that: They don't care.

~~~
raverbashing
It's a "boy who cried wolf" attitude with too much "fake" emotional appeal.

It's not so much "get out of fb" it's how you use it.

"but but but it's your privacy!!111" yeah, exactly, that's why I limit the
information I share with FB, no location checkins, no "picture every other
minute", no "fill your missing data" BS, etc

~~~
jawr
I filled "missing data" with fake, conflicting information

~~~
hamoid
You're filling out a few fields with fake data, but filling thousands of
"fields" daily, for real. Those come from your behaviour: what sites you
visit, when, with what frequency, what do you click, what do you install, who
are your contacts, when do you sleep, when do you move, how often you send
messages... I can not even imagine how long the list must be from all the
things you can extract from someone's internet + mobile behaviour.

Edit: and that's what I find most troubling: that someone can know much more
about me than myself. Things that you can only realize from looking at the
data over time, things that are invisible when experienced on real time.

~~~
fixermark
The part you find troubling is likely the most exciting part---once harnessed
and turned to an individual's utility. "Something that knows more about me
than myself" was the dream of the 'personal digital assistant' craze in the
'90s, but the technology wasn't there yet. It's here now, but it leverages
network advantages and scalability to work its magic.

I imagine the synthesis of these forces in the future is technologies that
aggregate, but that the indivudal can buy into. Do you _want_ help deciding
what to wear based on the weather or time of day, beyond what your assistant
can do for you? Then there's a collective data channel you can opt-in to
joining, and you'll trade some of your personal private information for access
to a digital "collective unconscious" of aggregate data. I liken it to the
23andme approach of collecting genetic profiles.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
There is a difference between "knowing more about you" and "helping you find
out something new about you". The entity that knows more about everyone than
they themselves do concentrates power. A tool that you use to find out
something new about yourself, only for yourself, does not.

