Facebook’s Surveillance Machine

Re:Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by bambax on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @10:26AM (#16628809)

You're right. What upset me though was the conclusion that it's "impossible" to leave Facebook. Everything is possible, including walking instead of driving, not eating meat, etc. Some things are more inconvenient than others, but if convenience trumps everything and you can't accept to make any sacrifice whatsoever then maybe you deserve to be taken advantage of.

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Re:Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by munificent on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @12:44PM (#16630227)

I wish there was a name for this fallacy because it comes up so often. When you have a systemic problem, you do not have a viable solution if your solution requires the conscientious choices of every affected individual.

If that worked, we would have already solved car accidents (obey all the traffic laws!), suicide (don't kill yourself!), obesity (don't eat too much unhealthy food), debt (don't spend more than you make), and basically every other social ill.

Effective solutions are ones that can be enacted by humans while fully taking human fallibility into account. It's poor engineering to design a system that requires every part to function perfectly with zero tolerances.

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Re:Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by Slansitartop on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @03:28PM (#16631752)

> I wish there was a name for this fallacy because it comes up so often. When you have a systemic problem, you do not have a viable solution if your solution requires the conscientious choices of every affected individual.

I think that's true of the general problem of data privacy, but I don't think it's exactly true of the particular "Facebook" instance of that problem.

Social networks have withered and died before, and there's no reason to think that Facebook can't be nudged in that direction, one user at a time, until the snowball starts. This seems like a pretty opportune time to get that ball rolling.

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Re:Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by bambax on Wednesday March 21, 2018 @06:01AM (#16636710)

I don't mean to say that we shouldn't regulate Facebook, as a society; sure we should, and let's try to do it. But that will take years, if not decades.

But as individuals, there is something we can do today: not use it. Why dismiss this very simple solution?

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Re:Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by munificent on Thursday March 22, 2018 @06:28PM (#16653297)

I'm definitely not arguing that we shouldn't take individual steps that helps. But the parent comment says:

> if convenience trumps everything and you can't accept to make any sacrifice whatsoever then maybe you deserve to be taken advantage of.

Which basically sounds to me like, "If every fallible human on Earth can't individually decide to solve this problem, they don't deserve any solution."

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Re:Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by smt88 on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @01:09PM (#16630466)

There probably is a term for it, and tragedy of the commons is pretty close to being appropriate

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Re:Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by TAForObvReasons on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @12:19PM (#16629939)

I think there are two senses in which it is "impossible" to leave Facebook:

1) Even if you actively decide to deactivate or delete your account, nothing guarantees that Facebook won't retain the data. Nothing guarantees that they don't continue to build a profile of you by scanning photos your friends share. It's a Hotel California of personal data.

2) Even if you personally decide to leave, the rest of society may be using it for passing essential information that forces you to re-engate with facebook. Until you can convince your cohort to stop using FB to organize or converse, you might still be forced to use the service.

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Re:Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by mr_spothawk on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @01:05PM (#16630434)

instead of deleting my account, i wrote an email which i bcc’d to my “real” friends: i’m deleting our facebook friendship, i love you and expect we can stay in touch just fine without. then i deleted all my fb connections, and left a public account with no friends and a publi message about how to find me. if i want to spam a post to my people, i use the bcc email.

i still have an account for logins. i could technically make messages happen.

i don’t have to eject all my pictures, or delude myself about the efficacy of “deleting” my fb account, but i can be sure nobody is going to benefit from selling my social graph to my “friends” or frienemies

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