More proof that Facebook is a menace

[jesse_the_k]

I already know that FB is designed to shackle me to my phone/computer and in fact I can't remember spending less than an hour on the rare occasions I visit. I just finished a long read and a short one. Between them I have a more profound understanding of just why FB is a terrible place to hang out and not in the slightest trustworthy.

The short read is from a programmer who investigates the technical expertise FB wields:

What should you think about when using Facebook? by Vicky Boykis vboykis
https://veekaybee.github.io/2017/02/01/facebook-is-collecting-this/

Since she's a proper tech person, she provides her own

TL;DR Facebook collects data about you in hundreds of ways, across numerous channels. It’s very hard to opt out, but by reading about what they collect, you can understand the risks of the platform and choose to be more restrictive with your Facebook usage.

​Some horrifying highlights:

begin quote
In addition to the data and metadata, Facebook also tracks intent. One of the ways it does this has already been explored: unposted statuses. Another is heatmap tracking of engagement during videos. [...snip...]
​It collects “roughly 29,000 demographic indicators and about 98 percent of them are based on users’ activity on Facebook.”
[...snip...]
Roughly 600 data points, meanwhile, reportedly come from independent data brokers such as Experian, Acxiom and others. Users reportedly don’t get access to this demographic data obtained from third parties.
quote ends

​The long read is from the London Review of Books yet not paywalled:

You Are the Product: It Zucks! By John Lanchester
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product

The context is a review of three books that have very long subtitles after their colons -- Wu's The Attention Merchants; García Martínez' Chaos Monkeys; and Taplin's Move Fast and Break Things. Since this is a literary magazine the author provides no handy TL;DR. My attempt is:

FB's customers are advertisers, and FB succeeds when it can provide highly targeted groups for the advertisers to eeach. FB is capable and desirous of manipulating the users' emotions and actions to ensure optimal ad delivery. FB cross-tabulates its own copious data with credit bureau data to provide a frighteningly detailed profile of each user. FB's leaders are philosophically indifferent to any appeal to morals.

From the article itself --

begin quote
What this means is that even more than it is in the advertising business, Facebook is in the surveillance business. Facebook, in fact, is the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind. It knows far, far more about you than the most intrusive government has ever known about its citizens. It’s amazing that people haven’t really understood this about the company. I’ve spent time thinking about Facebook, and the thing I keep coming back to is that its users don’t realise what it is the company does. What Facebook does is watch you, and then use what it knows about you and your behaviour to sell ads. I’m not sure there has ever been a more complete disconnect between what a company says it does – ‘connect’, ‘build communities’ – and the commercial reality. Note that the company’s knowledge about its users isn’t used merely to target ads but to shape the flow of news to them. Since there is so much content posted on the site, the algorithms used to filter and direct that content are the thing that determines what you see: people think their news feed is largely to do with their friends and interests, and it sort of is, with the crucial proviso that it is their friends and interests as mediated by the commercial interests of Facebook. Your eyes are directed towards the place where they are most valuable for Facebook.
quote ends

Comments

[ironymaiden]

thank you for sharing these. that keeping unposted content thing makes me sick.

[jesse_the_k]

It stunned me. Also the intertwining of credit-card data so they can better group us into each economic clades

My summation

[ng_moonmoth]

In other words, Facebook is the modern-day Stasi -- except that rather than applying violent forms of coercion to get people to inform on their neighbors, they have harnessed social forces to coerce people into informing on themselves. Much cleaner that way (blerrgh!).

"Nice work if you can get it,
And you can get if you try."

Would that the popular opinion of Facebook and their activities reach similar levels.

Re: My summation

[jesse_the_k]

Just this! We've outsourced Big Brother to the private sector.

[capri0mni]

...Yeah. That's why I won't touch Facebook with the proverbial barge pole.

If I discover a link goes to a Facebook page, 8 times out of ten, I'll click away.

[vass]

Did you read the part of that article where it said that Facebook is profiling you even if you have never had an account with them, via people searching for your name/email addresses/etc? In the 2013 leak there were "shadow accounts" for people who had not signed up.

[capri0mni]

I thought I had, but it must not have registered (I was pretty tired).

... I'll have to reread. :-/

[chanter1944]

... Oh, gag me with a spoon! I am incredibly grateful, all over again, that I don't touch facebook.

[jesse_the_k]

Amen.

[monanotlisa]

I always surprises me that people don't know this -- not the details, I mean; some of this is new. But Facebook's ruthless, deep, dark tracking of everything you are and do.

[jesse_the_k]

I like to think I'm a tech-aware person, but there were many horrifying new issues I learned just now.

[cosmolinguist]

I need Facebook for school and volunteering, but this just makes me want to delete everything I've written and never read it. :)

[jesse_the_k]

The shorter article has some "safer FB" guidelines. I joined in the first place because some disability studies events used it as their only communication channel. The frustrating thing is even if I delete my account, they still use the info I've provided.

[mdlbear]

Useful -- thanks.

A few months ago I went from spending a lot of time on FB to only logging in when I'm following a link from an email notification (e.g. from a family member or group) that looks interesting enough to be worth the trouble and the risk.

One suggestion that actually seems do-able

[jesse_the_k]

was to use one browser solely for Facebook. I chose Vivaldi -- Chrome-based so familiar, although it's got plenty of quirks.

Re: One suggestion that actually seems do-able

[mdlbear]

Tempting. Problem is, about the only way I use FB is by clicking a link in email. Hmm. Alternate email address could do that. Preferably one that's only used for FB. Of course they'd still have the old one...

[luzula]

Blech. I'm glad I've never had an account, and I'm never getting one either.