Facebook owns you

Since The Cellar has a facebook page, this is something we should think about,...or not? This article says that Facebook claims the right to use whatever you put into your Facebook page, even after you terminated your page. Y'all read and let know what ya think.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,494064,00.html

I don't think that's really any different to any other site on the net where you post personal info. Even here on the cellar banned posters still have their content available for others to see, and you can't go back and delete the content if you want to.

On the other hand, you can delete everything off facebook and stop using it. Once it's deleted you're recinding your permission for them to use your content, so surely you'd have a case against them if you ever felt the need, not that I can imagine why it'd be an issue for most people.

They changed the policy on the basis of this story.

Yups. It says Facebook archived everything and they have the right to use it.

Aliantha;537794 wrote:

On the other hand, you can delete everything off facebook and stop using it. Once it's deleted you're recinding your permission for them to use your content,

Absolutely NOT true and the reason I removed all that I could and deleted my account. Well that and all the shit that got on my computer from their "games" and other crap.

Facebook will have sex with you while you are sleeping and then try to tell you that you just dreamed it.

You say that like it's a bad thing. :haha:

You can click "Delete", but that is no guarantee that the information you wanted to delete is actually gone. I discovered years old information that they kept of an old account of mine after I had "deleted" it. Everything you type on that website is recorded and will stay on their servers for who knows how long, a few years at the least as was my case.

I like Facebook and the ability to connect with people other than talking face to face or on the phone, as I am a person who doesn't enjoying talking on the phone. But stuff like this makes me seriously consider deleting my account. I convinced myself to settle for no personal info other than my email being made available on my profile. At least I can click the spam button for unwanted contact in that department. No such luck in the physical address or cell phone # department.

What's the problem though (aside from the viruses)... what are you putting on there that you suddenly decide you want eradicated?

Doesn't matter, Its the principle.

The problem for me is the deceitfulness of the whole shebang. Facebook's roots are in the pure desire to maintain contact with people you know despite distance from one another. Share a few laughs, talk, etc. Along the way, Facebook realized they wanted to cash in on this wildly increasingly popular free service. Unfortunately, the best way for a gigantic database of personal information to make money from its users is to exploit said information in whatever legal means possible. Facebook has failed miserably at this and as evidenced by this current discontent among its users, is no closer to figuring out how to make real $ from it all without stepping on the toes of the users it relies on. Passive click-through ads on the side of your profile will only make Facebook so much $, in the end they still do not have a real plan to make $ off the users and their information. I don't know about you, but I do not want my street address, cell phone number, or anything copyrighted on Facebook because in essence they are a database of information seeking to exploit that information at the expense of the users' privacy and control of said information. Facebook started as a benign service with which to connect with friends and has grown into a misguided profit seeking monster with little regard for the users on which it has been built up.

Ok, so cell phone number and home address, that makes sense. I wouldn't put that stuff up in the first place though. I don't even think I have my email address visible.

Facebook applications raise privacy fears

Facebook users who sign up for We’re Related are given little idea how much of their personal information will be siphoned by the application, or – in the soothingly benign language of social networking – with whom this information will be “shared”.

New users are asked to give a blanket approval to let the application “pull your profile information, photos, your friends’ info and other content that it requires to work”. The application then appears to give itself the power to release this information to anyone else on Facebook – even if users have set stricter privacy settings to limit access to their personal data.

City requires Facebook passwords from job applicants

If you’re planning to apply for a job with the city of Bozeman, prepare to clean up your Facebook page.


As part of routine background checks, the city asks job applicants to provide their usernames and passwords for their social-networking sites. And it has been doing it for years, city officials said.

“Please list any and all, current personal or business Web sites, Web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” states a city waiver form applicants are asked to sign. Three lines are provided for applicants to list log-in information for each site.

City officials maintain the policy is necessary to ensure employees’ integrity and protect the public’s trust, but the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana says they may be crossing the line.

“I would guess that they’re on some shaky legal ground with this and we would certainly welcome (the opportunity) to look at something specific from somebody who’s impacted,” Executive Director Scott Crichton said Thursday.

Wow - WTH???

I think in a case like this I would simply say n/a. Wait for them to fire for cause and THEN bring the suit, as ACLU MT is trying to bring.

Yeh me too, but to even ask for your passwords?? What the heck is that about?
I'm not trusting a "potential" employer with that. Thats just insane - What were/are they thinking?

I'm currently loving Facebook. Or more accurately, the people on Facebook.

I missed my 20 year college reunion a couple weeks ago, and many people who went are posting their pictures to the class club group on Facebook. There are 160+ pictures there so far. It's so cool to be seeing pictures of old classmates, even when they aren't on Facebook themselves.

I wish I had been there, but it's nice to at least have all these pictures of the event.

Facebook itself sucks, and I hate it. The user interface is extremely counter-intuitive, and all the apps make it smell like an evil corporation. But the people on Facebook are awesome.

I wish Google would buy Facebook and do it right.

glatt;575997 wrote:

I wish Google would buy Facebook and do it right.

I'm in!

I keep getting emails from facebook, saying this or that person that I know has invited me to sign up and view their facebook page. Delete. :eyebrow:

I don't ... not any longer. I occasionally want to get on for one reason or another, but I don't miss all the baggage at all.

I never signed up and never went on, these are other people signing up and giving my email address to invite.

You don't hear much about it, because it's been legally resolved and was a couple years ago, but Facebook was started by a guy in college who stole the idea from his buddy. It got its start as an evil company.

The buddy claims he stole the idea.

Probably the idea was bounced around between a whole bunch of people.

Most likely, lots of different people were independently having the same idea at around that time. It often happens.

Know something, though? The bright idea is so tiny a part of eventual success that it is nearly irrelevant. It is the huge slog of steady hard work that makes the idea viable, then succesful, that counts.

I've been getting into the games.

I started playing six games, but I've narrowed it down.

Mob Wars
Mafia Wars
Texas Holdem

and my newest favorite BattleStations

BTW, if you want to join my crew (and have me join yours)
http://apps.facebook.com/battlestations/new.php?invite=Richard+King+Petty

The company decided to publicize the policy because of a backlash caused by a new version of the site's homepage that was rolled out on Oct. 23, which includes automatically generated "suggestions" of people to "reconnect" with. Within days of the launch, Twitter users and bloggers from across the Web complained that some of these suggestions were for friends who had died. "Would that I could," complained a user on Twitter before ending her tweet with the hash tag #MassiveFacebookFail.

"We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized," Kelly said in the post. To discourage pranksters, Facebook does require proof before sending a profile down the digital river Styx. Family or friends must fill out a form, providing a link to an obituary or other information confirming a user's death, before the profile is officially memorialized. Once that is completed, the user will cease showing up in Facebook's suggestions, and information like status updates won't show up in Facebook's news feed, the stream of real-time user updates that is the site's centerpiece. If relatives prefer not to have the profile stand as an online memorial, Facebook says it will remove the account altogether. (Read: "How to Manage Your Online Life When You're Dead.")

Better publicizing memorialized profiles is an attempt by Facebook to answer lingering privacy concerns. Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart investigated the company in July and issued a report that asked Facebook to explain certain areas of its privacy policy, including policies regarding the profiles of deceased users. In response, the company promised to issue a new privacy policy that better articulates how user information is treated postmortem and offered the commissioner an outline of its memorializing policy, nearly three months before the blog post explained it to users. Spokeswoman Anne-Marie Hayden says the privacy commissioner was "quite pleased" with Facebook's response to the office's concerns and says the commissioner will review the detailed version of the site's new policy, expected in late October. (See what happens when parents join Facebook.)

Facebook's attempt to clearly state its policy is prudent, as other social-networking sites have struggled with the question of users' deaths. MySpace in particular has had a difficult time with digital rubbernecking - during the site's heyday, a handful of well-trafficked blogs specialized in matching MySpace profiles directly to obituaries and posting the pairings online for all to see. By sealing profiles to family and friends and removing profiles from search results, Facebook assuages users' fears that they'll be fodder for online voyeurs in the event of their untimely demise - hopefully putting the issue to rest.

I dunno what to say here except that my personal experience with them was not good. I guess this is all they can do.

before sending a profile down the digital river Styx

They really shouldn't do that to a metaphor. Or two metaphors. :headshake

Tulip;537790 wrote:

Since The Cellar has a facebook page, this is something we should think about,...or not? This article says that Facebook claims the right to use whatever you put into your Facebook page, even after you terminated your page. Y'all read and let know what ya think.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,494064,00.html

Thanks for sharing this very informative link.

Facebook draws criticism for privacy changes

Privacy groups are assailing Facebook after the world’s largest social networking website made changes to its privacy settings this week.

The changes allow users to apply more specific privacy settings to the content they post on the site. But many of the default settings mean that, unless users follow a prompt to go in and change their settings, they end up sharing most of their information with everyone on the internet.

“Under the banner of simplification, Facebook has pushed users to downgrade their privacy,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a US advocacy group.

Link

So if you post a picture on facebook then myspace, then try and sell the picture, who do you think would win the ensuring law suit?

classicman;616754 wrote:

The changes allow users to apply more specific privacy settings to the content they post on the site. But many of the default settings mean that, unless users follow a prompt to go in and change their settings, they end up sharing most of their information with everyone on the internet.

“Under the banner of simplification, Facebook has pushed users to downgrade their privacy,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a US advocacy group. Link

I will have to make a point to do this. I did get a prompt when I signed on the other day.

Merc, do it ASAP. I'm not on facebook but am checking it out, and stuff I have read suggests that the default positions are for minimum privacy and maximum sharing. Also the settings are in several different menus and stuff.

Vanessa ... you berry wewcome. Fox news ... "very informative" bwahahahaaa.

I am just not sure I can find all the different menus to do it, I am not really FB savy. If anyone has any advice on where to do all the changes I would appreciate it.

tricksy Facebook tried to get everyone to open all their content to public. You need to go in and delete all that default settings.

Since Facebook has my real name on there, I deliberately keep my page very simple, family oriented, and open only to those who know my real name. Any potential employer would find nothing objectionable on there.

And NO, I'm not giving them all my fucking passwords to all my sites. No way, no how.

I don't do Facebook or MySpace or any of that other nonsense.

I've spent all these years avoiding being found on the internet, why should I change now?

I'm kinda with you wolf. However, I do use these sites but work hard to keep anything personally identifiable off of them.

EPIC joins the fight.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/185033/facebook_privacy_complaint_ignites_war_of_words.html

A little more info about the issue.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/184123/facebook_simplifies_privacy_options.html

Interview with a Facebook insider. Interesting look at how it works and how it's changing. Also the people that work there.

wow - I bet that sort of thing goes on a lot more than we sheep realize.

[SIZE=3]http://suicidemachine.org/[/SIZE]


Need to disappear from Facebook or Twitter? Now you can scrub yourself from the Internet with Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, a nifty service that purges your online presence from these all-consuming social networks. Since its Dec. 19 launch, Suicide Machine has assisted more than 1,000 virtual deaths, severing more than 80,500 friendships on Facebook and removing some 276,000 tweets from Twitter.


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1954631,00.html#ixzz0dSDqavqi



[/COLOR][/LEFT]

Many of the most popular applications, or "apps," on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook's rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users' activities secure.

From here

Its getting even worse ... Damn glad I don't play any of them.

classicman;688918 wrote:

Damn glad I don't play any of them.

Yeah, but if any of your friends play them, then your FB info is compromised already.

I think at this point, if anyone thinks there is anything private about what they put on FB, they have a serious lack of understanding about how FB works, regardless of their settings.

Well .... Shit then. I'm just gonna post my SS#. bank account info, PIN#'s address, phone and mothers maiden name along with all my passwords.
That way I won't worry that its being stolen. :greenface

I feel better about being pre-millennial now. Now I just need to edit my gazillion cellar posts...

I still don't have a FaceBook/Twitter account. I am unable to see anything useful in this system. I hate giving away any personnal information on the web.

I only maintain a Viadeo account for professional purpose.

And usually, if asked for an email, I provide one that is hosted by google/hotmail/whatever.

GunMaster357;689006 wrote:

I am unable to see anything useful in this system.

Facebook is an easy way to stay in touch with friends. I hate the corporation known as Facebook, but I like the substantive updates I get from friends, and I like to be able to easily update them as well.

glatt;689020 wrote:

Facebook is an easy way to stay in touch with friends.

Well, I don't have that many friends. And we all have e-mails and mobile phones.

GunMaster357;689006 wrote:

I only maintain a Viadeo account for professional purpose.

I knew it, you're a pornographer. :haha:

glatt;689020 wrote:

Facebook is an easy way to stay in touch with friends. I hate the corporation known as Facebook, but I like the substantive updates I get from friends, and I like to be able to easily update them as well.

Yeah, otherwise you would have to actually interact with friends, instead of leaving notes.

It seems suicide machine is too busy. Luckily, I have not been a facebook fiend for long so I manually deleted all my comments and everyone's comments to me and all my photos, etc. THEN I deleted my account. I guess if you deleted your account w/o deleting your content, your shit is still up there.

Let me know if you can see any of my shit up there. I'm curious.

I do feel a lot better, I'm not totally sold on the need for the internet.

footfootfoot;689086 wrote:

Let me know if you can see any of my shit up there. I'm curious.

I'm pretty sure I saw it up there in the last day or two. Maybe on the cellar group page? Just your name and mug shot.

But when I look for you there, you don't show up for me.

When did you take it down?

glatt;689099 wrote:

I'm pretty sure I saw it up there in the last day or two. Maybe on the cellar group page? Just your name and mug shot.

But when I look for you there, you don't show up for me.

When did you take it down?

About an hour ago

Facebook just let me know that it's my dead cousin's birthday. So I went to his wall. Lots of nice messages there. Most people are saying "Happy Birthday, RIP," and share fond memories, but some don't seem to realize he died. It was a month ago.

Kinda weird.

Ouch. Sorry to hear that. RIP cous.

I plan to leave a folder in my files "in case of death" which has instructions to close out all my net stuff. How else would you do it if your heirs or family don't know?

Although I vigorously backpedal whenever I see something that wants to share my FB info, I am kinda liking the various commercial and organization pages. Lots of discounts, news and stuff.

That, and family photo sharing, are pretty good reasons imo to stick around. Carefully.

there exists such a program, a failsafe for such things

If you don't log in personally, it will delete history, bookmarks and such potentially embarrassing things. Use with caution however. If you go on vacation and forget it, you will come home to a sterilized computer.

I personally don't care for facebook at all, sooo

recently, on several sites, when I hit "back", nothing happens. I look at the site list, and Facebook has snuck in between the two sites on the forward/back list, even on computers on which I have never looked at facebook. I've seen this happen with other list-sneakers as well; before Facebook, it was often Google. It must be some stat-gathering redirect thing.

It's annoying.

I finally broke down and got a Facebook account. I put fake data in every field and used a spamcatcher email address, where I made a rule about anything coming from facebook is spam. Same with Domino's and a few other sites.

I do not game there, I only use it to browse my friend's accounts. I never accept friend requests, so don't ask. That leads to the dark side!

So I am relatively safe from Facebook bad things. My antivirus is up to date and the same goes for my malware killer(s). Added to the fact that I rarely go there and I ought to be okay.

if anyone on the Cellar is active on FB and interested in being my FB friend, please pm me. I try to keep my flist small, but I'd like a few more friends/real people that are not connected to my work, and more of a variety of people (which we certainly have here).

no sweat if you're not interested!

Now they want your passwords?!?! I think not.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/02/should-employers-be-allowed-to-ask-for-your-facebook-login/71480/#

A mega-step down the F@cebook road... and maybe a shark-jump
(bold is mine)


Facebook's "profound" changes previewed
*
"This is your life"-style timeline will detail everything about you and yours
*
By Hendrik Pape, Reader review September 24, 2011 1:02 PM

For the past few weeks we’ve been hearing about these changes Facebook had been rolling out;
Some people had them, others didn’t.
But on Wednesday that all changed as Facebook finally shared a major overhaul
of its news feed to all of its subscribers.
The majority of users reacted quickly and strongly against the overhaul
which saw a real-time ticker appear at the top right of the profile.
This ticker contains all of the likes and comments, de-cluttering the news feed.
<snip>

Your timeline profile starts with a cover photo that identifies you.
Much like before you can chose your photo out of your existing photos or you can upload a new one.
Next in line is your profile photo along with the information that used to be under your info tab,
with the addition of a map to show your check-ins to give people an idea of places you’ve visited,
putting a new emphasis on Facebook places.

The status line now adds a few extra options.
First up is a work button, this lets you add a job, a graduation, military service or other life event
Next in line are matters of the heart, represented by a heart, of course.
Here you add engagements, marriages, children, pets, and the loss of a loved one or other life events.
The list goes on with Home life and even has the option to add broken bones, surgeries, new languages and so on.

In short if it’s something that you’ve done, or experienced you will have the opportunity to share it on Facebook.
<snip>

Timeline wasn’t the only thing that Facebook unveiled at the F8,
if anything it was simply the dressing for Open Graph.
Open Graph will change everything about Facebook and how we share our information.
“Today we’re making it possible to create a whole new class of apps and change industries at the same time,” Zuckerberg stated.
Open Graph will allow developers to create apps that allow users what they are doing.
There are three parts to Open Grap:
- First apps will no longer ask for permission to post to Facebook.
Rather a permissions screen will appear explaining exactly what information will be shared,
once permission has been granted the user will not be prompted again.
- Next, updates through Open Graph will automatically appear in the ticker but only important events appear in the newsfeed.
- Finally users will have the ability to share experiences,
such as listening to music, through the new Facebook Open Graph and the ticker.

Open Graph apps will be split into four categories: Communication, Games, Media and Lifestyle.

The bottom line is that by the time Facebook’s evolution is complete
it will be much more than a social network.
It will be a portal that will profoundly change the way we work and play online.

My hope is that Wikileaks will publish an expose of what is happening to all this personal information and real-time snooping.
I expect to close my FB account if I can't keep everything limited to my "closest friends"

With 'real-time' apps, Facebook is always watching
September 23, 2011|By John D. Sutter, CNN



Survery Shows People Upset Over Facebook Changes
By IBTimes Staff Reporter | September 24, 2011 3:52 PM EDT

In a survey of over 1,000 people conducted by Sodahead, a social-voting based site,
around 86 percent of the Facebook audience said they strongly disliked the changes that*the site*recently underwent.
<snip>

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the F8 technology conference Thursday
that the changes will help build "a completely new class of social apps"
allowing users to share every facet of their lives on the site, according to CNET.
<snip>
"[B]All those activities people perform with these apps
--listening to a Bjork tune, reading about same-sex marriage laws,
cooking Arroz con Pollo, running four miles, donating to Amnesty International--[/B
will be stored permanently and made accessible (if the user allows it)
on a greatly enhanced profile page that will essentially become a remote-control autobiography,"
wrote Wired's Steven Levy on the new updates.

I'm still hating it. I want the f*cking rolling thing to go away. Thats what my newsfeed is for. What purpose does it serve? NONE. Its distracting annoying and takes up space.
Additionally, the default set for every friend is "Most updates" How the hell does it know whether I want to see/read a certain update? The only way to change this (that I've found) is to change it manually for every friend. Well I've got several hundred friends. That friggin ridiculous to expect me to change every one of them. F*ckin F*ckers.
Oh, the other option is "Only important" ... How do they determine what is important.
With the onset of Google+ this was the WORST THING they could have done.

I just came across this interview with the CEO of Spotify
talking about their use of and connection with F@acebook.
It's not too long, and the reporter does a good job of asking questions,
so it's pretty informative.

(For me, it's all the more reason to close my FB account !)

Spotify's Parks Sees Benefits From Facebook Partnership

Yeh, those on FB are the commodity being sold. What you let them sell used to be more in YOUR control. They have taken virtually all of it away.

Alt Text: Facebook, Google Battle for Hearts and Minds of Jerks
By Lore Sjöberg September 23, 2011

Facebook has been revamping with the speed and intensity of a traditional revamping master,
in its constant battle to beat out Google for “total number of users pissed off by free services.”

It's not hard to irritate people on a social media site, of course.
The two easiest ways to do it are:
1. Change something.
2. Don’t change anything.
<snip>

“Make no mistake,” said the head of Facebook’s Department of Fictional Public Relations.
“We are here to stay.
We won’t rest until every person on earth with an internet connection
is posting to Facebook about how much Facebook sucks.”

Google’s Head of Apocryphal Statements countered, saying,
“Google has one thing Facebook doesn’t:
our mantra, ‘Don’t be evil.’
That philosophy guarantees that people will go completely puppy-slappingly berserk
whenever we do anything even slightly dubious.
It’s that resentment that will carry us into the 22nd century.”

While the two companies have the same goal, their approaches are very different.
<snip>

Meanwhile, former media darling Twitter is suffering
from widespread lack of discontent among its users,
and the company is left grasping for fresh new ways to irritate consumers.
While service outages and confusing changes kept users enraged and engaged for a while,
Twitter’s recent dust-up with developers barely raised the blogosphere’s blood pressure,
and the microblogging service was forced to discontinue the policy in the face of white-hot indifference.

:)

Recently, FB asked me if I wanted to friend 239 people. Turns out, they are all friends of one of my friends' friends.

And that's only one of the thousands and thousands of things I just don't get about FB.

All in all, &#402;ukkit.

And if Zuckerberg really did steal it, &#402;uck him too.

Know what? &#402;uck him anyway. Rich bastidge.

I haven't been on facebook in a while. I'm afraid to go, now.

But I love this commercial! "This is living." That girl cracks me up.

[YOUTUBE]TUGmcb3mhLM[/YOUTUBE]

Just logged into my FB account...

There are 30+ screens (I quit scrolling there) of people saying
we have a "1 Mutual Friend" and they want to be my Friend.

I think Classic sent all his Friends over to my account.

This is the most important bit of info I just received today! Everyone should be aware!

WARNING, PLEASE READ -Tomorrow, Facebook will change its privacy settings to allow Mark Zuckerberg to come into your house while you sleep and eat your brains with a grapefruit spoon. To stop this from happening go to Account> Home Invasion Settings> Cannibalism> Brains, and uncheck the &#8220;Tasty&#8221; box. Please copy and repost!

Hurry before we have a Zombie invasion! Hurry Dammit!

I think Classic sent all his Friends over to my account.

damn busted again. :)

peeps, it's a free thing.......

mon-etarily speaking

monster;758714 wrote:

peeps, it's a free thing.......

......so just walk away if you don't like it.

Young Zuckerberg musing over breakfast:

[YOUTUBE]X7J12_877Kk[/YOUTUBE]

Puts me in mind of something I heard a while back. Something along the lines of "If you aren't paying you aren't the customer. You are the product."

It was much more poetic where I first read it.

Yeh, that's been all over FB when people complain about the changes.

As an aside, I recently found Tom from Myspace on FB. Kinda funny.
Here is his page

I don't think being a "product" rather than a "customer" makes it less legitimate to be concerned about what happens to you. If anything, it should make it more important. The transaction between a business and its customer is supposed to be mutually beneficial, whereas the transaction between a business and its product is almost by definition one-sided. But exploitation is exploitation. Just because they were never doing anything other than profiting from you doesn't mean you should be less concerned about it.

I completely quit FB last Thursday as they rolled out all of those new features to make my life more complete. I quit for a variety of reasons

1. Found myself just wasting time reading about all of the mundane things my friends were doing.
2 Realized that over 1/2 of my FB friends were complete morons from high school or college that I never liked back then and most had completely opposing views on politics and religion and way to vocal in those areas.
3. Have never had any use for Farmville or any other games which most of the moron friend base uses.
4. Have little interest in college football which many of my friend felt compelled to post about all day on Saturday and Sunday.
5. I had blocked more then half of the FB friends on my list since they kept sending me posts and shit like "hearts" or Jesus quotes that I didn't want.
6. Noticed that FB was screening the FB friends I had not blocked and was mainly posting the stream from only certain friends, they were in essence screening or managing my feed with no guidance from me.

Now, here is what really got me to quit. I read some tech blogs and have a few friends (real ones) out in California who are software programers and engineers, etc. Here is what I learned:

Facebook announced major changes designed to "steamline" the social networking experience but also create a whole new way for advertisers to market to consumers, i.e Facebook members. One of the ways they are going to accomplish this is through so called frictionless apps that allow websites to write apps whereby all activity on their pages can be shared automatically to a user's Facebook profile. The aim is to make sharing more convenient, so that Facebook members can more easily browse what their friends are interested in and start conversations about common interests and activities.

The thing no one seems to be mentioning is that they do this by inserting cookies into your browser and it's history. That isn't unusual at all but normally cookies are designed to only communicate with the creator, in this case Facebook when you are logged in and not communicate any information when you physically log out of the program. Well these cookies are different and they keep reporting to Facebook even if you log out completely from Facebook! What websites are you visiting and do the websites or products have a Facebook "like" link on them. The idea is that they can then use that information in marketing services or products or sell the information to others. And there is only one way for a person to stop these cookies from working in the background, you have to go into your browser settings and delete them after each visit to your Facebook account and log out, or they will just go on reporting and recording information. Not only information like retail websites and music sites you visit. They record everything like what news articles you read or general research. For instance if you go research a type of cancer because a friend was diagnosed and you are curious about it, it gets reported. May be alarmist but an insurance company would love to buy up information like that. They can also track what news you read or what political websites you might visit.

There are also serious implications if you are using Facebook from a public terminal as millions of world wide users do. If you log in on a public terminal and then hit 'log out', you are still leaving behind fingerprints of having been logged in. These fingerprints remain (in the form of cookies) until somebody explicitly deletes all the Facebook cookies for that browser. Associating an account ID with a real name is easy - as the same ID is used to identify your profile.

Facebook knows every account that has accessed Facebook from every browser and is using that information to suggest friends, services or other apps. As an example if a family had 4 members who share a computer and all 4 are FB members but none of them are FB friends they will all slowly start getting suggestions to "friend" the other family members because the software algorithm identifies all 4 as using the same computer even when logged out of their accounts.

So, after I deleted my FB account I went into my cookies folder and deleted every cookie related to FB and also a whole slew of other ones from various sites as general cleanup.

Now, that being said in regards to FB, I do have a Google+ account and am dabbling over there with the whole circle thing and am generally much more pleased. Does Google+ track every minute detail? From what my friends in Silicon Valley are saying not as much as FB and they track in a different way, more through the Google search engine and other Google products.

I also found that many professional photographers are at Google+ and it is growing rapidly, on a time line compared to FB G+ is growing in registered users much faster then FB did so it will be interesting to see where G+ goes.

6. Noticed that FB was screening the FB friends I had not blocked and was mainly posting the stream from only certain friends, they were in essence screening or managing my feed with no guidance from me.

This is true. There's a setting somewhere that defaults to show you only the friends with whom you have recently interacted. You have to go in and set it to "all".

I imagine this was set up so that one's feed wouldn't be filled with items from people one doesn't really care about.

Now the feed will be filled with items you don't care about from people you do care about, which is weird.

My worry is that developers are now focusing on FB as a platform, so increasingly, there will be things you can't even do without it.

When Spotify came to the US I immediately fell in love with it as a way of playing music and finding new music. Well last week Spotify announced that you can't use it if you don't have a Facebook account. Of course this is the result of back room deals and accumulating power against the media companies. But who wasn't consulted: the users, who don't want it and who don't necessarily get anything out of it.

You don't have to actually post to FB with your Spotify, but the default behavior is that it posts every song you listen to to your feed. I do not want to annoy my friends with that kind of detail. I try to post no more than one item every day or two.

The benefit for FB is that there are "play" buttons in FB which let people play the music that you've shared. Well I ran my college radio station back in the day, and my radio show was called "Songs you like but have never heard before", specializing in finding little-heard awesome music. But I don't want to share all my songs!! So who does this appeal to, beyond FB trying to be everything for everybody?

I wonder if the entire appeal is to the under-40s who approach this all differently. All I can think is, Myspace became popular partly for its easy music integration, and fell out of favor *permanently* when it became annoying. Now FB has done its music integration, and became a little more annoying, on the same day.

I'd rather be on Google+, but only about 5% of my friends are over there, and they don't post anything because everyone is still on Facebook. It's where the activity is. Although to be honest, the activity has really died down over the last year or so. I think even though people are spending more time on FB, they are using it to communicate less and less.

Undertoad;759085 wrote:

Well I ran my college radio station back in the day,

Funny, I had my first radio job at WRAS in Atlanta, owned by Georgia State University, they played what was referred to as "progressive" back in the mid 70's. I started with the 2am-6am shift which was where every beginning disk jockey started. It's no wonder my grades were bad as I fell asleep in most of my classes.

Back to FB, I read one commentary that reminded readers that Internet conglomerates often end up failing or downsizing when they try to be everything to everybody and don't succeed and cited AOL and Microsoft as examples. The reality is that with every new incarnation there is something else around the corner from someone else.

I read one commentary that reminded readers that Internet conglomerates often end up failing or downsizing when they try to be everything to everybody and don't succeed and cited AOL and Microsoft as examples.

Eh? I wish I could fail as hard as Microsoft did.

I just came from Facebook. It wants me to friend 1,691 people. It took almost fifteen minutes to list them.

I know 4 of these people. Very vaguely.

:headshake

Here's one from the small world department. Facebook suggests a person I don't know who is mutual friends with my cousin's husband and Undertoad.

I haven't logged into Bacefook since I started reading about all this. I'm sure i'm missing some good stuff but this sounds like a nightmare and, well, fuckit.

Truly "unfacebook" yourself here:
http://suicidemachine.org/

footfootfoot;763824 wrote:

Truly "unfacebook" yourself here:
http://suicidemachine.org/

Yes... or at least understand the F@ceBook defaults and options, including

The new FB tracks each website you visit
If you are on mobile, it tracks your physical location
Such data is distributed to advertisers
Such data is distributed to your Friends and/or Everyone.

Maybe you don't care... Maybe you do.

glatt;763806 wrote:

Here's one from the small world department. Facebook suggests a person I don't know who is mutual friends with my cousin's husband and Undertoad.

And while it affects me not at all, I'm desperately curious. PM me G.

Paranoid rants aside, since joining facebook, I've got laid with two women* in ways that would not have happened without FB.

*Not at the same time!

But Z, you missed 3 others who were outside your door while you were messing about with FB.

[runs out to check]

ZenGum;757890 wrote:

Yeah someone at the FB headquarters got bored and pushed the big "Screw with things" button. Again.

Anyone else seen the "new" layout?
WTF is that, other than most confusing? Gah - this looks more like myspace every time they change stuff.

ZenGum;764095 wrote:

Paranoid rants aside, since joining facebook, I've got laid with two women* in ways that would not have happened without FB.

*Not at the same time!

Undertoad;763856 wrote:

And while it affects me not at all, I'm desperately curious. PM me ZG.

(slightly misquoted for effect)

what he said ZenGum!

what ways is what I'm wondering about, not the identities of the women. I mean, I know that FB fucks with you, with all of us really.

Dad's on FB ...
>

>

>

Chris gonna buss a cap in pappy's ass.

:lol: at FB parenting.

V it just that the contacts were either developed or maintained via FB that led to the eventual actions. The actions themselves were .. actually, come to think of it, they were a bit out-of-the-ordinary too. :D all I'm sayin'.

[YOUTUBE]fZDvcbfifbU[/YOUTUBE]

I always thought "XAgent Owns You"?

ZZZ a TTT

There has to be money driving this. How do FB page owners make money by getting people to comment on this stuff?

[ATTACH]48552[/ATTACH]

Glatt, pages that have lots of likes, comments or responses to their posts can be sold. The subject or theme of the page is then changed to a commercial product which automatically has a "following". That's how I understand it, anyway ...


Sent by thought transference

glatt;904738 wrote:

There has to be money driving this. How do FB page owners make money by getting people to comment on this stuff?

[ATTACH]48552[/ATTACH]

I saw that last week. Best answer : Ohio!

I still don't understand it. If I comment on that city post, and the page is later sold and the name changed, do the new owners have my contact info and spam me through messaging?

I think the bigger goal is that they have a legitimate-looking page with a fan base. How would you like to run, say, the Wheaties facebook page with a half-dozen "fans?" It's embarrassing from a PR perspective, better not to have a page at all than to have a page with a paltry number of fans. Plus, people are herd animals, so if they look at a page that has 100,000 likes, they are not only more likely to think the product is good, they are more likely to click "like" themselves as well.

Have you tried Wheaties?

Do the people who comment with a city name that doesn't contain the letter A also go on to "like" the page after they make their comment?

footfootfoot;904913 wrote:

Have you tried Wheaties?

Sure, about as equally-tasteless as corn flakes.

Audio girl I am disappoint,[YOUTUBE]GLy5tANvXhY[/YOUTUBE]

Vaguely reminiscent of Russian Orthodox choirs, but without the sopranos. Not a bad attempt, but lacking. It needs a four-part choir with pipes.

Clodfobble;904938 wrote:

Sure, about as equally-tasteless as corn flakes.

Gotta eat 'em with real whole milk. :p: