Is 2019 the year you should finally quit Facebook?
...If you’re still on Facebook after everything has happened this year, you need to ask yourself why. Is the value you get from the platform really worth giving up all your data for? More broadly, are you comfortable being part of the reason that Facebook is becoming so dangerously powerful? Are you comfortable being on a platform that has, among other things, helped incite genocide in Myanmar?...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/21/quit-facebook-privacy-scandal-private-messages
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/21/quit-facebook-privacy-scandal-private-messages
...If you’re still on Facebook after everything has happened this year, you need to ask yourself why. Is the value you get from the platform really worth giving up all your data for? More broadly, are you comfortable being part of the reason that Facebook is becoming so dangerously powerful? Are you comfortable being on a platform that has, among other things, helped incite genocide in Myanmar?...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/21/quit-facebook-privacy-scandal-private-messages
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/21/quit-facebook-privacy-scandal-private-messages
2012 was a good year to dump FB.
ReplyDeleteI still call it The Facebook
ReplyDeleteThere's the anti-Facebook backlash.
ReplyDeleteThere's the history, to its founding, of Facebook's abuse of privacy and surveillance.
And there's the larger questions:
Why has the online and social media sector tended this way? There have been ethical services (or at least some claiming) defence of participants' data and privacy preferences. They've generally not fared well.
(Counterpoint: most social media attempts have failed. I'd argue that there has been at best one viable leader in any one period since 1979 and Usenet. So most privacy-violating socmed platforms have also failed.)
How do we avoid repeating these mistakes? By migrating to privacy-violating platforms, or allowing our platforms to become privacy-violating, or by failing to make respectful platforms viable?
Quitting Facebook is a necessary, but insufficient, action.
Does social media, or media generally, just tend this way?
Every year since 2004 has been the year to leave FB ;-).
ReplyDeleteP2P social networking us the only solution, for example, https://www.scuttlebutt.nz
ReplyDeletePeople have to own the data or data encryption keys to protect themselves from the predatory behavior of big companies.scuttlebutt.nz - Introduction · GitBook
If everything you post on facebook is public and you expect it to be public. So if you don't expect any privacy. And you do some minimal control so you block idiots. And you only sip from the firehose. Then is there a problem with facebook?
ReplyDeleteAsking for a friend.
Alois Bělaška I'm a very strong supporter of that approach. (And say that despite my general policy of not advocating solutions and platforms.) And Git-based SSG solutions in particular.
ReplyDelete... but ... decentralised approaches also have their failure modes.
One is the moderation and policy problem: https://nolanlawson.com/2018/08/
The Darcy Project is one approach to this (I'm involved): its central premise is that moderation is core to the concept of any social network, and that that role needs to be specifically compensated.
But there are others.
I've been looking at the protocols problem. Protocols are really just an agreement on how to go about doing things (a like I copped from a discussion of of of the virtualisation tools -- Kubernetes or the like). But if the process of forging new agreements gets stuck, then the protocols stagnate. Or if the consensus project is coopted, then the protocol is hijacked. I'd argue that SMTP, Usenet/NNTP, and IRC are protocols which have stagnated. HTTP/HTML/CS are in the process of being hijacked, largely for advertising and captive-silo development. The Web is badly in need of being disrupted back to open principles.
Not even one of the AGAFM monopolies can maintain its own independent Web browser development effort any more. We're reduced to Chrome (Blink), Firefox (Gecko), and Safari (Webkit). Microsoft have pulled back from the Edge....
There's also a host of issues that self-publishing / self-hosting provides, from technical to bandwidth to cost to copyright to harassment to protection racket, and more. There's a highly undeveloped "Risks & Considerations" page at #PlexodusWiki that really needs details filled in on that. One of the neglected tasks I (or better: someone else) could take on.
The really weird bit of all of the Google excitement is how much it's dovetailing into work I've had ongoing for the past six+ years into "What are the Big Problems", and a general framework for exploring those: Progress, Models, Institutions, Technology, Limits, and Values. Media had already become a huge part of that exploration (very much against my expectations), and I'm seeing what's going on here, and in multiple aspects, as very much part of that: Google's concerns, Google's decisionmaking, Google's actions (including the Pronounced Radio Silence), the whole social media landscape itself (I've a huge article collection on that topic alone), "fake news" (propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, distraction, and more), and a whole mess of other stuff.
Which I could and probably should write a few books on, but not right now.
Julian Bond The issue is NOT just about what you post, or what you post publicly. Your premises are false.
ReplyDeleteFacebook track, and provide direct access to information that is not public, including private messages between accounts.
Facebook track incidental information accessed through activity and apps, including implicit relationships, activity on the site, contacts stored off of Facebook entirely generally on mobile devices, other aspects of device state which may include non-Facebook messages, non-Facebook emails, non-Facebook browser activity, non-Facebook phone calls, and fine-resolution (down to feet or inches) location data, at time resolution of minutes to seconds.
Facebook create shadow profiles of non-users acquired through Facebook users or other means including data broker AFAIR.
Facebook track activity across a large portion of the Web through FB interaction widgets -- "share to Facebook" and similar badges.
And Facebook have repeatedly been caught doing, misrepresenting, and then apologising for doing all these things. And then doing them again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
You don't misrepresent, mislead, and apologise if there wasn't a problem in the first place.
The principle goal of surveillance is to reduce the costs of reconstructing past history and of predicting or influencing future actions. The canard that "all that happens in public is already public" is a lie, in that what occurs in public that is not systematically observed is not the same as having an entity trail you everywhere you go and record in minute detail what you've done, interacted with, seen, responded to, or related to. The difference is principally economic in that it relates to the costs of reaccessing the information later. If you've been wandering around town and I don't have some electronic surveillance mechanism on you, I'm reliant on other aspects of information -- transport ticket stubs, witness interviews, store receipts, etc. -- at building a narrative of what you have done, and where, and when.
Those records can be impressively complete -- that was the essence of investigative journalism or old-school police and detective work, prior to the 1990s or so (though bolstered by increased organisational and transactional recordkeeping through much of the 20th century).
Warran and Brandeis wrote the first modern treatment of a Right to Privacy in the 1890s. It is a startlingly modern treatment. The differences with the present are not of character, but of scale. And that scale has changed tremendously. My view is that privacy is not so much a new concept, as one which emerges in response to increasingly intrusive epistemic systems. It's the capacity to go through records which prompts the response of a right "to be secure in their ... papers", as the framers of the U.S. Constitution put it.
The misreading that "papers" refers only to paper-based media is ludicrous on its face. The intent is "recordings of personally-relevant activities". And the law, in the US and elsewhere, has some massive catching-up to do with the past 230 years.
But to answer your question: Yes, there is a massive problem with Facebook.
And merely not using the service does not rid you of those problems. It certainly hasn't rid me of them.
Edward Morbius 100% agree and wow, that is the most impressive answer I've seen so far.
ReplyDeleteAlois Bělaška :-)
ReplyDeleteWhy is social media toxic? Because people are?
ReplyDeleteplus.google.com - 2018-12-21
For me the real problem is people don't care despite knowing that FB is terrible.
ReplyDeleteDiana Studer That's a bit like blaming chronic outbreaks of epidemics on people being basically germ-flinging disease bags.
ReplyDeleteWhilst it's true, it's not a view that gives rise to an effective set of countermeasures, and also fails to account for the fact that it was the rise of cities, urban concentrations, and trade routes which gave rise to the conditions of infectious epidemics.
Human nature has not changed markedly from 2004 to present. Facebook is the new element. And social behaviours absolutely have changed.
You cannot explain variables with constants. The problem is Facebook, not humans.
Facebook, and media systems generally, need hygiene and health systems. The correspondence to public health systems is not accidental, these are the same things. Not that information is disease, but disease is information which spreads through a system with debilitating effects on that system's function.
The information may be biological -- the genetic expression of viruses and bacteria. But it may also be other forms of signal which induce a population response: prions (literally mis-bent proteins), heavy metal poisoning, bioactive chemicals, endocrine disruptors, materials (asbestos, particulates) with health effects. Even ideas can be epidemics -- racism, genocide, cults, and other belief systems.
The common elements are some medium of infection, a vector and transmission route, often an incubation reservoir, and a susceptible population.
Diana Studer Also: Every significant change of communications capabilities or technologies among humans has resulted in complete disruption of the social order it emerged in. Going back to speech itself, but including writing, maths, moveable type, mass literacy, telecommunications, broadcast, and lately cable TV, Internet, mobile internet, and social media.
ReplyDeleteMedia -- intermediate agency -- is the sensing, control, and feedback mechanism for societies. Change media and you change society. Often highly disruptively.
See especially Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy and Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.
I post links to articles like this all the time on Facebook. Zero engagement every time.
ReplyDeleteZero.
Glad I don't use facebook.
ReplyDeleteNo, the year was 200X
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius and language. I live in country where people who speak our other 9 official languages were forced to learn in Afrikaans.
ReplyDeleteDiana Studer re. Fluency, primary/secondary languages, the connotations of meaning that are implied (and lost) through culture, literature, religion, mythology, and more, are all combined here. Fascinating topic for discussion.
ReplyDeleteA bit wide afield for this post though ;-)
Edward Morbius Very good point about most social-media platforms failing. Anyone remember "hi5"? I was on it for years - via an invite-bot from a customer - but never used it: even after I connected with personal friends on it, I couldn't figure out what it was for!
ReplyDeleteFacebookconnect or graphfacebook is virtually ubiquitous on commercial sites except competitors' products.
ReplyDelete