Re:I tried leaving Facebook – I couldn’t
by NetOpWibby on Sunday April 29, 2018 @08:00PM
(#16954673)
The first part of your argument is true but it's missing a key reason why FB's data collection is so troubling — they run on advertisements and use all the user data collected to sell more of those ads.
A new social network doesn't have to be advertising-focused or based.
I think what really disturbed people was not the ads, which are pretty obvious, but rather the idea that Facebook shared user data with a company that influenced the outcome of an election.
They can try to claim that, but any business that stores people's photos, personal profiles, posts, messages, etc. would have everything it needed to become just as bad for privacy as Facebook if they wanted to. They would need to convince people that they would not do bad things with the data. But even if we trusted them, they could change their minds at any time, or hackers could steal the data.
The only way to prevent such data from being stolen is to never collect it -- but a social network without that kind of data would not be very social.