[rogerdickey]

Why are so many HN users against Facebook, and quick to reassure others that they only signed up out of necessity? FB & Instagram present a perfectly acceptable entertainment vs privacy trade off. Sure, it’s also a waste of time, but so is everything else you don’t like.

[mulmen]

Because the network effect reduces choice and competition. I don’t get to vote with my wallet with Facebook. I can participate in society or not have Facebook.

My mom was recently told by a state elected representative that she would have to contact them through Facebook to provide feedback on legislation. This is not a “valid tradeoff” nor does it have to do with “entertainment”.

[wizzwizz4]

Facebook knows where you live, where you shop, who you meet, what you say, what you buy, where you go – perhaps when you wake and sleep –… and in exchange, you get some chat rooms, a MySpace page, advertised at, and to be a non-consensual subject in psychological experiments. (Libel notice: they might not do the last one much any more.)

[ephbit]

> ... be a non-consensual subject in psychological experiments.

This makes me think of this one fascinating/frightening prospect I sense in respect to the vast collections of data of human behaviour which the big tech corporations have: The data that Google and Facebook posess are so rich that they'd allow very insightful analyses of human behaviour. I recon there are so many small questions about why people do what they do, how their whole personalities are wired, how they influence each other through internet/analog interactions, how societies develop dynamically through which mechanisms.

Many of these questions are being studied by scientists at universities but they usually don't have the same huge/rich data sets that the internet giants have.

So Facebook & Co have a huge advantage in understanding all these things about humans over public research. But whenever they actually do some analysis and get answers, the result is by default internal knowledge that remains unknown to the public. Also, most of their analyses will be driven by commercial interest, rather than seeking anwers to philosophical questions that don't promise financial returns.

There are many questions about our world that could have been answered since years, using all this data ... but they haven't been and might never be.

Letting some big company have the power of understanding how people tick better than any other agent in the world. A thrilling prospect.

[rogerdickey]

Most of this happens if you 1) sign up for FB 2) install their app. If you don't do both of these things they can't track you, right?

[macintux]

Even you don't sign up for FB, they keep a shadow profile on you from activity from people searching for you.

Even if you don't sign up for FB, they get your contact information from your friends. (That might just be WhatsApp, but at least one of the two gives people the "opportunity" to upload their contact list to find matches.)

Sure, FB knows a lot less about me than they could, but keeping off their radar entirely is effectively impossible.

[SturgeonsLaw]

Just loading a page that has the embedded Facebook Like button generates data points on you regarding your browsing and purchase history. I'm not sure if they can/do read the contents of a checkout form, but it would be simple to infer coarse location and strong identity from that.

[wizzwizz4]

You don't need to read the contents of a checkout form when the company just gives you the data. (Companies upload their customer lists, so Facebook can compute “conversions”. But, of course, Facebook doesn't let companies download the data Facebook has, and compare on their end… that would be a violation of privacy!)

[dredmorbius]

False.

See Facebook "shadow profiles", data collected on persons either through third-party activity (though the profiled individual is on Facebook), OR on persons not using Facebook at all.

https://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-a...

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/facebook-shadow-profiles-pr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile

[sneak]

Unfortunately this is not true.

[scbrg]

> FB & Instagram present a perfectly acceptable entertainment vs privacy trade off.

I'm glad you're here to establish this objective fact for those of us who didn't know ;-)

[rantwasp]

perfectly acceptable /s

[totetsu]

Because this morning I tried to post a link to a Social science podcast from sage publishing and it was blocked because it violated community standards.. The topic, Unobtrusive resistance of people without formal power.. (and meanwhile on the FB watch video tab that no one asked for, "he thought she put the whole think up there XD. for entertainment only."(lady standing over coke bottle))

[ShamelessC]

I deleted my Facebook after Cambridge Analytica. How is this "perfectly acceptable" in your mind? Are you not aware of the severity of this leak?

[rogerdickey]

CA was a 3rd party developer that misused data users authorized them to use and it happened 10 years ago when FB was still essentially a startup. They’ve come a very long way.

[ShamelessC]

Indeed - they've increased the scale of their atrocities against their own users quite a bit since then.

[Hydraulix989]

This is a valid contrarian take.