Leaving Facebook Part 2 - Privacy and Data Mining
The other day I wrote the first part of the "Leaving Facebook Series" where I talked about the chilling potential that Facebook has over defining an entire generation beliefs and assumptions.
Now today, I want to tackle the evidences that we have that the leadership of Facebook is corrupted and that it does everything in it's power to mine as much information as possible without regards to users privacy. We'll also look at what it does with State entity to control public opinion.
Facebook Isn't a Social Media Company, It's a Data Mining Company
There is no such thing as "free" in the marketplace...everything has a cost. When we watch television, channels don't make money with making entertaining shows, they make money by selling our attention to advertisers.
Same thing for Facebook. Facebook sells us a service on Facebook.com that allow you to do wonderful things "for free"...but really, their business is to gather as much data as possible on us to be sold to the highest bidder (companies, secret services, etc.) That means everything from geolocation, to who you called and when, to buying habits, credit scores, psychological profile, etc.
What did Zuck think of this practice of giving away our information for free to him and his company?
The following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Brutal...
Proof
If you download all of your data from Facebook, you would see that it as your entire call history, with who, when and for how long. It's as if there is no limit to what kind of data likes to gather from us.
Facebook - A Tool To Control Public Opinion...by Force if Necessary
After the massive increase of migrants coming from everywhere after the German Chancelor Angela Merkel created an open-door policies, people were not happy on social media. The crime rate rose quickly with the influx of young, unmarried, unaccompanied males who aren't necessarily fleeing war zones. (most, in fact, were not from war torn countries)
According to official counts, a disproportionate number of these migrants are young, unmarried, unaccompanied males. In fact, the sex ratios among migrants are so one-sided—we’re talking worse than those in China, in some cases—that they could radically change the gender balance in European countries in certain age cohorts. - Politico
After Ms. Merkel asked Mr. Zuckerberg about offensive posts on the refugee crisis, the Facebook CEO said “we need to do some work” on the issue.
“Are you working on this?” Ms. Merkel asked in English,
“Yeah,” Mr. Zuckerberg reportedly responded, before the transmission was disrupted.
And here we have it:
The tricky thing about hate speech is who defines it? What if telling the truth becomes subject to hate speech laws? What if "hate speech laws" becomes no different than was theocratic state calls "blasphemy laws"?
I'm Leaving Facebook...
...and I will cover in my next post how I am going about doing so. It is not easy to pull the plug...there are so many services and data Facebook provide in one place for me that it is hard to pull the plug.
I'm probably not alone in that situation and this is why I'm going to cover the process of weaning off, scraping my personal data and delete my Facebook account for good.
You nailed it.
Facebook is nothing but a data mining company. People were upset that they were selling data....yet that is to be expected. They are very open about the revenues they make from this.
What was not open was the depth of their surveillance. People are now really upset. The question is will they really do anything about it? I highly doubt it. A few will leave but most will continue to be on there on a daily basis.
Evil is a word that is applicable here. These people want total control. The governments of the world should nail FB and Zuckerberg to the wall. Sadly, they will not.
We need to keep promoting STEEM as an alternative. Yes there are flaws on this blockchain but we are progressing in the proper direction. With greater development, people are going to have more options. We need interfaces from different countries, perhaps some that are not required by law to keep data (the KYC laws).
Either way, FB should be dead to a lot of people. Personally, I hope they never recover from this.
I'm a computer engineering student. And some of the issues I talk about are about this. The future is completely data mining. There is no other explanation for this. I think Facebook is now the largest data mining site in the world we live in. Briefly, data mining; Data collection in an implicit manner is performed by monitoring the movement of the visitor over the site. The aim is again to determine the relevance of the visitor to the items. We can say.
Large companies from all sectors are trying to acquire or buy the statistics of the data. After that they produce products accordingly. This money is paid too much money. Because it's really more important than you think.
It is really disrespectful and unfair for Facebook to mining over us data.
I completely agree with you, my friend, what is happening now on the Facebook reminds me of the service for state corporations and governments. Freedom of speech and self-expression by and large for the Facebook has long been gone and everything is built for the sake of the interests of officials and businessmen. To be honest, I left the Facebook for a long time, because I realized that the principles of a free and independent social network, the Facebook lost forever, and your today's message is yet another confirmation. Thank you @cryptoctopus
Thanks for this post. i never saw things in the light you have projected them before now @crptoctopus . One question that keeps coming to my mind is this; if you run facebook ad, facebook know the right people to get to check out either either your physical or digital product.
facebook is able to get these information because of our activity not only on the social media platform but also on our phone.
The recent news of facial recognition was projected to help curb crime and all but on a second thought now, i realize its to increase their database, we would never know the result of this until years from now.
Facebook have over a billion active users monthly, there is no other social media platform that pulls same crowd as at today, leaving facebook would have been the best thing if there is a rival platform that pulls same crowd or close in figure .
facebook also acquired instagram and watsapp, so i guess if we all leave facebook, watsapp and instagram are there for them to get data on each and every user of these platforms.
Man, deleting Facebook wouldn't be that bad.. Annoying, but doable. Biggest drawback is Messenger. That app is so good for talking to people! I'm in so many little group chat things on there and it's really been invaluable. Facebook anymore isn't a big deal... Just that beautiful Messenger app.
I want to leave as well. I'm not using Facebook as of now, but I haven't deactivated it.
The problem is there are a lot of people close to me that I'm able to connect with on facebook, that is the only reason
same thing here. But I hope to find a good solution to leave without losing the benefits of having all my contacts and events in one place.
If you find one, do tell.
thanks nice post follow you blog and vote..
It's simple, delete everything, everything. just use it for contact and suggest to your friends other preferred methods and as they migrate then you can deactivate. It's sad that facebook has such control over people.
Now I am going to ask a seemingly intelligent question or so to speak...
Does leaving Facebook delet all the data they have about you? Does it get to crash zuckz server? Does it take away all the information about you already sold out to the public?
I think the deed has been done and since we can't turn back the hands of Time, let's just deal with it.
There is a specific process you have to go through to be absolutely sure everything is deleted. I will cover that in the future post.
I am so waiting to see that
I also personally not liking Facebook anymore but its become one of populer social media.we connect easily so its for anyone to leave it and i think most of people are not able to understand what u wrote in this post.
So do i
This is a huge eye opener.. What do those companies do with all the datas? It's really scary. Please do share how you will leave.. I'm interested.
"hate speech laws" are in direct contradiction of free speech, a country cannot claim to be a protector of free speech while screaming "hate speech" to every ugly truth people say.
How are you going to keep contact with your friends and family if you are not using FB anymore? I have too much family in there, and it will be hard to let go of that tool just like that...
And I have seen some people in twitter explaining all the information FB and Google are able to save about their users, its really alarming, yet I don't see too many people worried about it.
Its like the majority of the population is ok with this.
Great and valuable information.
I completely agree with you.
Facebook’s current app permissions leave billions of its users vulnerable without knowing it. If you play games, read news or take quizzes on Facebook, chances are you are doing those activities through third-party apps and not through Facebook itself. The default permissions that Facebook gives to those third parties currently include data from your education and work, current city and posts on your timeline.
We’re asking Facebook to change its policies to ensure third parties can’t access the information of the friends of people who use an app.
And lots more things which have to change.
But after joining the steemit I completely understand the differences between the social media.
Thanks @cryptoctopus for sharing this post.
Upvoted + resteemed your post.
I won't lie its not going to be easy pulling the 🔌 plug from facebook. I have so many good memories in the form of pictures, videos that it is going to take a significant amount of storage space to transfer it to most painful part would be saying goodbye to relationships I have built over the years when I eventually leave facebook.