[apkallum]

It's sad and upsetting, but when will people learn that Facebook, Google et al do not care at all about individual users? Their model simply does not factor in the worries of a single user.

(Worse is how they want to propagate the idea that software should be free and of highest quality, thus preventing any communal attempts at creating different models.)

I advice everyone who has an account to at least download their data to keep a copy of it: https://www.facebook.com/help/1701730696756992

[lightgreen]

> when will people learn that Facebook, Google et al do not care at all about individual users?

When will people learn, not just Facebook, Google et al, but no large company cares about individual users? Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Ford, Unilever, Visa, Walmart do not care about individual users.

Not because all of them are bad, but simply because they physically cannot deal with every complaint. Even worse, when they become better at handling complaints, people start complaining more. So they focus on some more important complaints, and some users get thrown overboard. This is sad, but this is inevitable.

That said, it would be great to have a paid technical support. You have lost an access to Google account (hacked, lost password, not logged in for two years, whatever), pay $100-1000 (if it's really valuable to you), and a special qualified person will do a proper background check (e. g. call your employer) to verify that you is really someone who you claim to be.

[x3n0ph3n3]

It's a little difference with Facebook and Google, because unlike the other companies you mentioned, users are not the customers of Facebook and Google -- advertisers are. There is very little incentive to make their users happy when their users are not paying for the service.

[skinkestek]

> It's a little difference with Facebook and Google, because unlike the other companies you mentioned, users are not the customers of Facebook and Google -- advertisers are.

This is so tiring.

Also, I've been paying Google real money for half a decade or so, so I am definitely their customer.

That said I'm well aware that that doesn't seem to mean anything in Google land and I might be thrown out for anything tomorrow with no explanation and no way to get my account back except complaining in social media.

[samatman]

It's still true on an institutional level, though.

Paying customers at Google are pin money, AdSense is bread and butter.

If there's a conflict, AdSense wins, period. There's a firmly entrenched culture where user accounts are a cost center, to be managed "at scale", that carries over to paying accounts. That attitude shouldn't carry over, of course; nonetheless, it does, as you recognize in your last paragraph.

[lightgreen]

> There is very little incentive to make their users happy when their users are not paying for the service

This is plainly obviously wrong.

When users are not happy, they leave the service, and advertizers stop paying.

Even more, companies are much more afraid to lose users than to lose advertizers. Companies can live years without advertizers (by borrowing money for example or by burning reserves), but if a company lost it's users, the company is finished.

[Sebb767]

Yes, in some way. But sole complaints are simply not hurting FB. How many of the people complaining would've used Instagram otherwise or even go as far as closing their account? I doubt the can even zoom in their Dashboard far enough to see the impact.

The real problem here is that for a single account, you're far more dependent on Instagram than Instagram is on you.

[lightgreen]

> you're far more dependent on Instagram than Instagram is on you

Same way, if you have a Ford car, you depend on Ford much more than Ford on you.

> But sole complaints are simply not hurting FB.

Same as complaints on bad Ford service don't really hurt Ford.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with the fact that users of Facebook are not paying Facebook.

> There is very little incentive to make their users happy when their users are not paying for the service

This quote [typo] is very incorrect. I'm not going to argue that Facebook/Google support is good or bad, I'm just pointing out this statement is false.

[Sebb767]

> Same way, if you have a Ford car, you depend on Ford much more than Ford on you.

But the latter is contractually obligated to help you to some extend due to warranty etc.. Also, Ford has far less lock-in than Instagram.

> > There is very little incentive to make their users happy when their users are not paying for the service > > This quite is very incorrect.

I'm not disagreeing with you here; I'm disagreeing with your point that users are (far) more important than advertisers. Single-user complaints or unhappiness tends to be ignored, I doubt the same is true for advertisers. The recent Reddit changes, for example, show this very clearly (to be fair: I don't have an FB-example as I don't follow it in any way).

[ummonk]

That actually isn’t true now that Oculus is requiring Facebook login.

[menage]

Something like that does exist for Google account access problems - you can pay a few dollars (which also ties you to a presumably-authenticated credit card, and so helps authenticate you to Google) for an expedited response.

[lightgreen]

Never heard of it. Can you share some link please?

[jankiehodgpodge]

It's a part of Google one, no idea how good it is though.

[antihero]

When will people learn that capitalism literally doesn't give a shit about people.

[lightgreen]

Capitalism is an economic and political system.

An economic and political system technically literally cannot care about people, same way as temperature, gravity, philosophy or history cannot care about people.

[nkozyra]

This is an extremely reductive. Temperature or gravity are not composed of people, who have the ability to make change within the system they comprise.

[lightgreen]

Let me rephrase.

Too high or too low temperature environment can hurt people. People with a soldeing iron can hurt people. People putting other people in the fridge can hurt people. Just temperature is not something which can do anything to anyone.

Capitalist companies, people living in capitalism, governments under capitalism, taxes and so on may be good or bad for people.

But saying "capitalism does not give a shit about people" is just literally nonsense. Of course it doesn't because an economic and political system is not an actor.

I could infer from the original comment that all actors under capitalism "do not give a shit", but that's obviously untrue. For example, wikipedia lives under capitalism and benefits from the capitalist system, and obiously it is good for people.

I could assume that the actor mean very narrow group of actors when they said "capitalism", but I won't because I will likely be wrong about understanding what the author really wanted to say (rich people? all people? large corporations? any corporations? including non-profits? and so on). It would be better if the author added some clarity to their comments. Would be better if the author said what exactly they wanted to say without throwing literally meaningless socialist slogans.

[tsimionescu]

Well, socialism (in its original form, not USSR-style "socialism") for example is an economic system that, by its definition, cares about people and their wellness. Capitalism, in contrast, is an economic system that, by its definition, doesn't care about people or their wellness. Just like democracy is a political system that cares about the people, whereas monarchy is a political system that doesn't.

If you want to be pedantic, you can say that the proper phrasing would be something like "socialism is an economic system whose defined goals are people's wellness", "capitalism is an economic system whose defined goals have nothing to do with people's wellness (they are profit for the owners of capital, and perhaps innovation)". But "caring for" is obvious shorthand for this.

You can, of course, say that individual actors living under any of these systems may or may not care about the people, and that's true. But the system itself may be designed with or without the people in mind, and different systems fall on different sides of this idea - for better or for worse.

[nkozyra]

I'm sorry but this still treats capitalism as some ridgid, immutable force. This is demonstrably untrue. We, today, have capitalism shaped by the will of the people. The degree to which we allow it to be shaped is the actual point of contention, not the malleability itself.

I also find it unfortunate that you'd choose to represent such potential flexibility in the system as "meaningless socialist slogans." That makes it feel like you're not engaging in good faith with the central argument.

[Nextgrid]

I’ve read somewhere that Facebook even embeds tracking pixels in the HTML of the data export, so keep this in mind if you ever actually look at the exported data.

[apkallum]

Would you be kind enough to post more information about this?

[Nextgrid]

Google produces irrelevant results no matter what I try (searching anything about Facebook tracking pixels brings up tons of marketing-related SEO spam) so I suggest someone with a Facebook account just tries it and reports back. Until then, better safe than sorry, assume the worst (which at this point should be the norm when dealing with the company we're talking about) and proceed accordingly.

[acruns]

They don't for standard picture but they do embbed their own metadata

https://iptc.org/news/what-does-facebook-do-with-your-photo-...

https://www.carlseibert.com/facebooks-hidden-metadata-codes/

You may be thinking of PhotoDNA which is used for different purposes

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna

[tomaszs]

I have heard images are also marked

[Nextgrid]

Images on public Facebook are indeed marked (a unique ID is embedded in every picture's EXIF data) so I wouldn't be surprised if the exported ones were too (not necessarily for malicious reason even, if the images are being marked at upload time, Facebook may not even have the original unmarked image anymore).