[officeplant]

As someone that refuses to use Linked In or Facebook it is wild to me that someone would not only use them, but willingly link a dating app to them.

It makes me wonder how many more things I'll never get to participate in because I've deleted/avoid social media.

[nonrandomstring]

There's a book I found very influential, called "Missing Out" by Adam Phillips. Not something I'd recommend for the casual reader as it's psychologically heavy imho.

But it's the best antidote to FOMO, and so it's central theme "In praise of the unlived life" is worth a mention; There's a lot of shit you'll be glad you missed out on, but felt cheated at the time...

That bullet that whizzed past your head... you missed out on.

That plane you missed... that crashed... you missed out on.

That medication they wouldn't give you ... that turned out to have lethal side effect...

These are silly examples compared to the sumptuous theme Phillips develops about how so much of our whole of lives is a set of misplaced expectations and values that are given to us by others but rarely check out in the long term. It's a very affirming to get beyond confirmation/survivor bias and retrospective rose-tinted goggles.

Being "excluded" from a group of people who are the sort who would give their details to BigTech social networks may turn out to be a blessing in ways you can't see yet.

[edit: moved, sorry I replied to wrong comment]

[Levitz]

More and more people are okay with losing with privacy though, and the more who take that position, the more you lose by not taking it.

[nonrandomstring]

> More and more people are okay with losing with privacy though, and the more who take that position, the more you lose by not taking it.

I'm trying to simply that with an ear for contradiction;

If P; the more group A lose -> if NOT P; the more group NOT A lose. For P -> L = some loss of privacy

(Okay it's late and I'm clutching at it a little, but something doesn't ring true)

It seems like a formulation of "network effect" on the surface. But if P => L it can't be the same L on the right hand side, no? For the group who are the exclusion of A, their L has to be a gain. Or they are not playing the game well/optimally,

[ImPostingOnHN]

it would help for you to define your variables (A, P, L) and notation (=, ->, "lose")

Or, if you could, would you mind rewriting it in english, please?

[nonrandomstring]

Fair enough, you asked, and my attempts to think out loud in logic isn't helping I admit. So the nub is that clearly, to me, when Levitz uses the word "lose" above, s/he cannot be talking about the same "lose" in both parts of the assertion.

[TheBozzCL]

Sadly, data collection has been completely normalized.

I've been thinking about buying a new car, but I'm very aware of how much tracking/telematics they include nowadays... so I decided to search "$manufacturer disable telematics". Every single thread I found was full of people saying variants of "Why do you even want to do that lol" and "Looks like somebody is doing something illegal".

Every time I see stuff like that, I'm tempted to jump in and share a plethora of examples about how tech companies misuse your data, don't protect it properly, sell it to all sorts of dubious actors, and, most importantly, use it for advertising - which I consider to be nothing more than gaslighting to get you to buy stuff and absolutely despicable.

I have to stop myself because I know I wouldn't get through to them, and I would probably sound crazy.

[hellojesus]

I go through this routine with my wife all the time. She either tells me, "I don't care." or ends up pointing out that all the data tracking landed her a sweet sale/coupon/etc. so she's actually happy that she's being tracked.

[nonrandomstring]

> and I would probably sound crazy.

Seriously, there's nothing wrong with sounding crazy. I mean look at the world. What do you have to lose?

[throw8383833jj]

i get the having control of your data part (at least for address, name, social sec #, phone number and email - those are really important). but i could care less if an algorithm knows i like elvis presely or what my taste in food is, etc.

but i don't understand how personalized ads are harmful. if you don't like the product, just don't buy it? what am i missing?

personally, i only buy products that I really want or really need, so if an ad pops up that convinces me to buy, then it's done me a huge favor. but this almost never ever happens. usually, the ads are terribly targetted and don't show any clue of understanding who I am as a person. to me, it seems the problem is they're not targetted enough, rather than too targetted.

[gls2ro]

personalized ads are harmful because they can target your deep (sometimes even unknown by you) fears or desires sometimes in the most vulnerable moment.

So the choice to act is not as free as you describe.

You seem to think only about cases where personalized ads are used for products but the most harm is when people use this to influence groups. the same way they personalize an ad for a product that seems to be the perfect fit in your current situation the same mechanism/algorithm can personalize a message in a way that will influence you just a bit. and then tomorrow another small bit and so you find yourself (a general self not you) hating groups of people you never encountered so far.

Intelligence or IQ or whatever rational high points you have will not protect you from this over a long period of exposure.

[muffinman26]

Taste in food, the supplements you take, and things like whether you like Elvis Presely, can absolutely be used to out you in ways that you may not want.

The famous example I remember from growing up was a teen girl whose parents found out she was pregnant from a personalized (mailed) Target ad: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ... . There seem to be some skepticism in later articles that this is actually how her parents found out, but only because she told them first. They could have found out from the ad.

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/big.2017.0074 is a more detailed study of how Facebook likes can out people. It looks like the "cloaking" solution that the authors propose actually makes the model more accurate. From the article "false-positive inferences are significantly easier to cloak than true-positive inferences".

If you're the only one who knows what ads you see, that might still be okay, but if a platform can make these kinds of inferences to show you ads, they can use the same data in other ways. At the very least, they might leak this information to other users by recommending people you may know, etc. You might also reveal what kind of personal ads you get if you ever browse the web someplace where other people can glance at your screen.

[throw8383833jj]

but judging how awful the targetting is, I don't think anyone watching your screen as you browse should be able to make any kind of conclusions of you. if anything, the ads we receive are a reflection of human beings at large or at least what advertisers think of them.

you wouldn't believe how irrelevant to me, the ads i get are.

[lapphi]

Yes but that data never gets deleted really. So going forward you’ll have like profiles that are decades old and still available for analysis. For instance if you have depression they could show you ads for Prozac. Then if you get married and have kids, they know that your children are probably more prone to depression. Oh, and you live in a rural area and occasionally hunt. So your kid is now on some list. Or the other way, your kids phone gets sent ads from prager u. These are far fetched examples but 30 years from it’s absolutely within the realm of possibility. We only keep adding to the mountain with devices like the Apple Watch.

[digging]

You and I, and probably a few others here on HN, are slowly being sifted into a parallel "unsocial" world, I fear. It's genuinely disgusting to see the kind of personal data we're expected to pass out by the truckload for every little digital trinket and feature, let alone entire facets of society such as dating apps.

[_jal]

I'm in the same boat. My internet excludes a bunch of ASs used by surveillance shops.

This is what we're asking for. I am refusing to divulge information about me I don't want to share. Other people are building whatever on top of that data. I can hardly complain about lack of inclusion when I am the one refusing to feed their robots.

If you want people at Cheers to know your name, you... have to tell them your name. I'm fine being anonymous. It sounds like maybe you're more conflicted.

[rdiddly]

Ha ha - Cheers. I always found that lyric to be flat wrong. The place where "everybody knows your name" is the same place where you spend most of your time, and is almost certainly the place where "all your worries" are coming from in the first place, a.k.a. your life. (Which, if you're an alcoholic, could be a bar, sure why not.)

It "sure would help a lot" to go to such a place? Because you're constantly being bothered by total strangers at rates far in excess of the average? Because the first people police interview as murder suspects is everybody who doesn't know the victim? No my friend.

Of course now you can give out your name to total strangers many miles away, with a degree of efficiency undreamt-of in the 80s, yet not even have any fun times spent drinking with those people, so...

[digging]

> It sounds like maybe you're more conflicted.

Only in the sense that I'm mad that it's hard to get any good new technology that isn't a privacy nightmare.

I see Cool App #354 and think it looks fun to use, but I am only allowed to use it if I give up my privacy. Since I don't want to do that, Cool App #354, which doesn't need any (or at least all) of that data to do the functions I like, is something I can only watch friends use.

[hn72774]

I'm now feeling like social only exists in real life, not online. We were sold an illusion of connectedness when we were in fact the product being sold. Good marketing. We were told what we wanted to hear.

[digging]

In-person social interaction still kicks ass, yes. I use "unsocial" sarcastically.

[nvm0n2]

It's a dating site. The whole idea is that you upload all kinds of personal details so they can match you with a life partner. What exactly does a privacy-focused dating site look like?

[nonrandomstring]

A very good question.

OKCupid is actually a site some people reported as being the "better kind" of dating site, because they're geared toward successful LTR rather than hookup. The dating space is actually full of different interaction and match models that sometimes people don't seem to understand.

Some of the issues around risk, identity and power asymmetry are covered here [0]

[0] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=20

[digging]

This question confuses me and I'm not sure we have the same understanding of digital privacy at all.

I'm not talking about the information they ask me to provide. That's a drop in the bucket and is also under my control to disclose or not. I'm talking about all the other shit apps hoover up without permission.

[Someone]

You should also wonder how many things you’re being participated in.

Even if you’ve never had an account on social media, chances are Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. know your name, email address, age, social graph, etc. because other people have shared their address book with them. Other users also might have tagged photos with your name, after which those sites concluded “that must be the same officeplant that’s in their address book”.

I expect LinkedIn to suggest people to connect because you’re their mutual friend, for example.

[officeplant]

Its one of the reasons I contemplated keeping a facebook account to remain in control of a few things. I had turned on the option to let me verify all tags and it was great to be able to deny tags, but I always assumed facebook still knew it was me and could associate the same untagged face across photos that still had my name listed (just not tagged due to denying).

[semiquaver]

The sad part is that willingness doesn’t really enter into it. And refusal to use FB or linkedin doesn’t really provide much protection. Data brokers can create a rich profile of anyone who participates in the modern economy. Payroll firms, credit card processors, etc etc are all selling data to the highest bidder. I’m convinced that opting out of this system is not really possible without opting out of society in general.

[IgorPartola]

So FB has one solid product that I wish they wouldn’t fuck up so much: Marketplace. Everything else about it sucks but MP is legitimately useful and the ability to see a person’s social profile along with their listings is very nice. It is the only reason I still have an FB profile.

[officeplant]

Facebook Marketplace sucking the life out of Craigslist hits me hard every time I have something to sell and I really don't want to bother with ebay + shipping.

[rebolek]

I don't use Facebook. I've got account there but I haven't bothered to delete as it seem s to be too much hassle than simply ignoring it.

I use LinkedIn. I haven't used it in years, now I'm back because that's where the headhunters are and where I can probably find a job. After I'll find new job, I'll switch to zombie mode again and won't use it until I need it again.

So yeah, the reason I use LinkedIn is to not miss a job offer. I don't have a reason to use FB thought.