Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Holding Back Personal Data
itwbennett writes "Facebook has reduced the amount of personal data it releases to users as required by European Union law. Due to the volume of requests since Europe v. Facebook began its campaign, Facebook is no longer sending CDs to people. Facebook said in a statement that the CD mailout 'contains a level of detail that is less useful for the average user — it is a much rawer collection of data.' Instead, users are now directed to a page where they can download their personal 'archive,' which according to Facebook is a copy of 'all of the personal information you've shared on Facebook.' But rather than the 57 categories of data early data requesters received, the new tool downloads just 22 categories."
The fact that Facebook sends CD's to people never even knew. Is this a euro thing only?
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
What did people THINK was going to happen when they signed up for Facebook and effectively dropped trou to the universe?
And expecting the grubby little data miners to play fair with people who they're making money off of?
Pfft! Yeah. What world are YOU from?
There's one solution to the problem of Facebook belching your data to whoever pays them their pound of flesh.
DON'T FUCKING SIGN UP FOR FACEBOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I was a Faceplant junkie but I've been clean now for almost a year. I still twitch a bit when I see farmyard animals, but I'm okay.
how many data points do they have that make up 57 categories of data, and how many are excluded?
So, it comes to this.
With a few exceptions, this is all data that you GAVE to Facebook willingly. This isn't like a credit reporting agency having information on you they got from other sources. You gave them everything they have and now you are upset they have it or won't tell you exactly what you gave them? Seems a bit silly to tell a secret to someone that you don't trust...
What did people THINK was going to happen when they signed up for Facebook and effectively dropped trou to the universe?
And expecting the grubby little data miners to play fair with people who they're making money off of?
Pfft! Yeah. What world are YOU from?
There's one solution to the problem of Facebook belching your data to whoever pays them their pound of flesh.
DON'T FUCKING SIGN UP FOR FACEBOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE!
With most people, that kind of obvious realization breaks down the moment having some control over their own life involves denying oneself a convenience that is dangled in front of them like bait. The form of the convenience could be the service itself that Facebook offers. It could be (for most anyway) failure to bear the always rewarding but sometimes heavy burden of being a real individual, such as having to explain to friends that you have good reason not to use the site even if they would prefer to contact you with it. Of course a real friend would understand and respect that and not demand (by acting hurt, annoyed, etc) that you conform to their example for something so optional, but judging from the way most people talk about bandwagon appeals and peer pressure it seems most people think this kind of manipulation is normal and legitimate.
It's the same reason most boycotts don't get off the ground. The moment people would have to make do without a luxury or prepare something themselves instead of having it pre-packaged or some other test of their commitment to principle, they cave. It doesn't matter what the company has done to make itself unworthy of continued patronage. It's most unfortunate but the masses of people are pushovers who won't take a stand for much of anything unless they feel (correctly or not) that their back is against a wall.
I suppose most of you reading this think it's a good thing that government intervenes to regulate Facebook. If this were food safety or building construction or some other thing that is a matter of life-and-death, where great damage could be done before any reason for a user/customer to suspect a problem has manifested, then I would agree with you. As it stands now with Facebook, I say that the moment you interfere with this process and shelter this kind of spinelessness is the moment you prevent the character growth of those who are badly in need of a lesson. I know it looks like a nice thing to do but that's short-term thinking; in the long run it makes the problem worse.
Those who have a clue, care about privacy, and make their own decisions avoided Facebook from the beginning. The rest are making their beds and should not be prevented from laying in them.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Or, you know, just give them inconsequential minutiae.
Any communication I have on there is pretty much worthless anyway, because I don't put anything important or private on facebook.
It is possible to use it without posting pictures of that time you were passed out, naked and drunk, in the fountain in the town square...
Do you have similar position against the spineless cowards who chose to work for demeaning bosses instead of starve to death? Do you take a similar position against unions? This is absurd: people are allowed to organize. Through the government. Please do not oppose good actions the government takes--just limit it to the bad.
there's several solutions, the best of both worlds being sign up but DON'T OVERSHARE.
don't "like" stuff, make no reference to products or specific activities in your status updates, etc. just post with the knowledge that anything you say can and will be sold to the highest bidder.
as happens on every site that requires login. even posting as AC will still log your IP and correlate it with whatever the cookie can grab hold of.
Please do not oppose good actions the government takes--just limit it to the bad.
Ticket Status: Deferred
If/When the government gets to a point where it can take good actions, instead of (maliciously OR incompetently) horrible ones, we will revisit your request.
As it stands now with Facebook, I say that the moment you interfere with this process and shelter this kind of spinelessness is the moment you prevent the character growth of those who are badly in need of a lesson. I know it looks like a nice thing to do but that's short-term thinking; in the long run it makes the problem worse.
You mean... like... until it becomes a felony to break the FB's TOS and create a pseudonymous account?
Those who have a clue, care about privacy, and make their own decisions avoided Facebook from the beginning. The rest are making their beds and should not be prevented from laying in them.
Hmmm... I can see other ends if this goes unchecked... like until it will be a felony not to have a FB account? By peer-pressure initially and eventually by the law of the land (that land of the home and free of the brave)?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
does slashdot offer a SELECT COMMENTS FROM ARCHIVE WHERE UID=xxx type service?
i've been posting here for awhile, and i am a narcissist
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So, ALL current government actions are bad? Or is it a single flaw in your mindset that this would be the case?
But perhaps I misinterpreted your post and you were making a joke on the Tea-party level of thinking but spoiled it by using too eloquent words.
Bert
But those are the pictures my friends want to see!
So, ALL current government actions are bad?
No, just the ones OUR government have elected to take, in recent memory. Admittedly, there might be an anomaly hidden in the noise, but I'm pretty sure that if it's not a blatant power/money grab, then we can count on it to be a total clusterfuck (often turning into a power/money grab, a la the healthcare bill).
Irrelevant.
Here in the EU, you're the owner of your data. You have the right to request from any company that has personally identifiable data on you for any reason, to request it to be corrected, or to request it to be deleted.
There are also limits on how the information can be used.
Compliance with this isn't optional. There are big sanctions for not complying with the requirements, which go as high half a million Euro for the "very grave" category in some countries. And since at least where I am, the agency is self-financed, they're quite keen on collecting those.
Don't like it? Don't do business in the EU.
For people of a certain age, virtually all of their friends use Facebook as a primary means of communication. In other words, not using Facebook means social isolation. That's not a particularly worthwhile tradeoff, nor is it even a guarantee of privacy. You don't need an account on Facebook for people to post things about you. I have friends who post tons of photos of their young children and the funny things their children say.
In other words, let's say that you don't have a FB account, yet somehow still manage to find out about a party. Is it still possible for FB to learn of your attendance at said party and your amusing (yet seemingly private) actions at said party? Yes, because anybody at the party can post a photo of you at the party to FB and put your name on it.
dom
Not having a Facebook account interferes with interstate commerce by preventing advertisers from accessing data about your personal life. It is now mandated that all US citizens have a Facebook account and post regularly on it.
The above might be assumed to be an absurdity, but the logic behind it is an argument the DoJ is currently arguing before the Supreme Court. Congress already has had the authority to prevent personal use and consumption upheld. They can fine farmers for producing any crop for personal use. The first controlling case regarding that interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause was not even drug-related; it was about growing wheat for personal consumption (Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)). Soon, they'll be able to fine people for failure to purchase a product. With current case law, there will be no limit to that power, even if the use of it is currently voluntarily limited to the single issue at hand. It will be expanded.
In other news, Facebook replaces an unnecissarily obtuse CD mailout service with a download service that sounds pretty useful. Has anyone here even bothered to mail out for your CD? Now you can download it, export it, do whatever you want with it.
All at the expense of some tracking information that can't really tell you anything about your own browsing habits than you already know, it's not like they're compelled to give their analysis of that data, simply what pages you refreshed when. If they correlate that to find you tend to search for ponography featuring chubby women after visiting your cousin's profile, that's their information, not yours.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
i just "liked" this page/article for my facebook profile.
peace out slashdooters.
If you don't want to adhere to EU privacy laws, don't do business in the EU. What is so difficult in that?
What if all you ever get up to is passing out, naked and drunk, in the fountain in the town square... ?
I did that on an account which spans May 2009 to Nov 2011 and it only weighed 319KB. It's all HTML based. No JPG. Ok, now on to permanently deleting my account...
We cannot tell anything without seeing sample data. The 22 categories might be fine and compliant with the law. It seems to me that a lot of the data in the 57 categories was over and above personal data as defined in the data protection act. What's the point of giving encrypted passwords for example!
Sometimes I wonder, are some people really so utterly stupid as to believe that a few overblown anomalies that get plastered all over the news for their high sell value are actually norm, and the myriad of normal actions taken by government that have no news value because they do exactly or close to exactly what they are supposed to do are anomalies.
Then we have a poster like one above, and my belief in humanity dies a little more.
I'm in the UK and as far as I know Facebook has never offered to mail out cds of personal information here, but they've had a download available for at least a year now.
http://compsoc.man.ac.uk/~shep/
In other words, not using Facebook means social isolation
Oh shit, you mean standing up for your ideals might involve some mild inconvenience? Well fuck that!
That's not a particularly worthwhile tradeoff
But if three or four of you do it then your other friends will not be able to rely on Facebook for communication within the group. So they'll start using other mechanisms, and eventually Facebook just fades into the background as 'that thing I can use for communicating with a few of my friends' and their usage starts to drop too and Facebook becomes a passing fad, rather than a dominant communication mechanism. Or you can just say 'well everyone else is doing it' (which, after all, was such a good excuse every other time it was used) and sign up.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Oh look kids, another delusional soul who still think Facebook only spies on registered users!
Do you see those Facebook buttons everywhere? I don't know how's the situation right now, but just a few months ago they were creating these little cookies with IDs even if you didn't have an account (like I don't). Which means they could log each and every site you went to and create a single profile from it.
So please shut the fuck up the next time, yes?
Dilbert RSS feed
To make sure that they are in fact encrypted, or at least know that Facebook understand how to encrypt, in which case they most likely do encrypt since they have no shortage of servers to be able to run one of the biggest websites on the web.
There's no such thing as "worthless information" when it comes to true information. Even posting about your breakfast meal can be valuable and somehow used against you. Some people post random stuff on Facebook first thing in the morning - a silly status update or something. Well there may be no 'private' information there, but it tells me what time you wake up every single day.
It gets worse. Facebook knows what time you log in and from which device. They can track you without any trouble. They know when you are home or at work. This "work is so boring, can't wait to go home" update you posted tells them which IP address belongs to your workplace. Any employee at Facebook could access this information and use it against you. Piss off the wrong person (i.e. somebody with access to that info) and they will dig dirt on you and possibly stalk you.
Do you plan to go far in your career? Maybe start your own business, become important one day? Maybe you'll end up competing with an employee from Facebook or Zuckerberg himself. Are you sure they will never be tempted to go public about these status updates and other postings you made that show you had serious problems in your marriage? Do you trust they could never try to portray you badly - perhaps as emotionally unstable, lazy, depressed or angry - should they end up in competition or conflict with you?
The only worthless information is false information. If you want to disrupt Facebook, post fake stuff. Do random Google searches too (you think Google doesn't store your search habits and your IP address?). Then they can't tell apart the truth from the lies.
And if you fear they might dig dirt against you, then post your own fake dirt and make sure other people know you post fake dirt. When the real dirt comes out, you can deny it and nobody will believe Facebook (or any other company).
Or you can just say 'well everyone else is doing it' (which, after all, was such a good excuse every other time it was used) and sign up.
"Why are you dropping Facebook?"
"Well, everyone else is doing it..."
I don't
So does slashdot!
I browse through a tunnel to home. Besides which, my employer lists my name in their public directory and has a class A. (I'm sure you've deduced who they are, I obviously do not speak for them in anything I say here, standard disclaimer)
Now that doesn't really come under pointless minutiae now does it?
It's already pretty good, thanks, I'm sure it'll continue to progress slowly.
I may start my own business, perhaps. But I have better things to do with my life than "become important" however you see that.
Besides which - http://xkcd.com/137/
I honestly don't care. I *am* frequently lazy, angry, depressed and unstable. Those things would be true.
"Sometimes I wonder, are some people really so utterly stupid as to believe that a few overblown anomalies that get plastered all over the news for their high sell value are actually norm, and the myriad of normal actions taken by government that have no news value because they do exactly or close to exactly what they are supposed to do are anomalies."
Many people have a vested interest in believing everything the government does is bad. It helps prop up their anti-tax anti-regulations beliefs and helps them justify privatisation of everything and removal of all social benefits.
After all, if everything the government does is bad, it is pointless giving them any money at all, and any money spent by the government is a waste.
That's not a practical solution.
If you log in to Facebook every morning, even if you don't post anything they'll know when you wake up. If you log in when you arrive at work, they know your work schedule. Etc.
The best option is to post fake information. Drown the real among the fake and the real loses value. And let people know about the fake info you post, that way, should Facebook ever go public with dirt on you, your relatives will know not to believe the dirt and you will even have people who can testify that you are known to post fake dirt about yourself therefore none of it is true.
Sometimes I wonder, are some people really so utterly stupid as to believe that a few overblown anomalies that get plastered all over the news for their high sell value are actually norm, and the myriad of normal actions taken by government that have no news value because they do exactly or close to exactly what they are supposed to do are anomalies.
Apparently so. Right wing movements with pre-digested news are popular here in the US, precisely because you don't have to think much when you follow populists like Ron "Dr. No" Paul.
Blame politicians who are always corrupt, unlike the businessmen who only have your best interest at heart.
I'm curious if the categories available for download will be considered enough in the long run to satisfy the EU laws. If they know there are more categories and that they're not providing it all, is that considered holding back to much by those laws?
Need any dad jokes?
I suppose most of you reading this think it's a good thing that government intervenes to regulate Facebook. If this were food safety or building construction or some other thing that is a matter of life-and-death, ...
Except that the European law applies to all companies handling any kind of personal information. If it weren't for the law, you would have even less control of the personal information stored about you.
And while you don't list privacy among the list of most important things to you, some people would. Quality of life is pretty important too.
Or get better friends...
If your friends do not respect you enough to respect your privacy, then they are not your friends. They are people using you for their own entertainment and you need to wake up and stand up for yourself.
If you know your friends are going to be disrespectful and post stupid pictures of you on Facebook and this bothers you, don't do the stupid things you don't want appearing on Facebook in front of them. How is it different from your friends running around telling everyone that you are an idiot? They could take that photo and publish it in a newspaper without the help of Facebook. Because they can reach more people faster? Because it is archived forever? The high school yearbook is also forever. People's memories are also forever. The idea that you would want to turn back time and remove all evidence of an activity just because it is now inconvenient is ludicrous. It happened. You did it. Now you have to live with it. You may regret it, but you cannot turn back time. You cannot undo the past. Take responsibility for your actions and conduct your way in a manner that your mother would be proud of. All the time. And when you screw up, accept responsibility and deal with the consequences like an adult.
In other words, let's say that you don't have a FB account, yet somehow still manage to find out about a party. Is it still possible for FB to learn of your attendance at said party and your amusing (yet seemingly private) actions at said party? Yes, because anybody at the party can post a photo of you at the party to FB and put your name on it.
This is correct, and I don't understand (ok, well I sorta do) why more people don't consider this a problem. At a time when employers, law enforcement, intelligence agencies and ex-girlfriends are combing Facebook, etc. looking for wrongdoing, I value my privacy more than ever. I don't have a problem with my picture happening to show up on someone's website. What I don't like is all the linking, tagging, archiving and connecting. I don't feel a need to help someone build a profile of me and my life for their own purposes.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Yeah. As someone who grew up in Massachusetts, and mostly remained there until i was in my late 20's, that's where my friends and family are. Nowadays, I live in Florida and find that Facebook is a great way to stay in contact with everyone up there. So, despite my earlier postings of waning privacy, tossing my privacy aside in order to stay in touch with family and friends is something I've thought through and decided is appropriate to do.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Someone will find a way to turn "download 'all of the personal information you've shared on Facebook'" into download all the personal information *someone else* shared on Facebook.
There's no way they can keep this from screwing up even worse. Oh, and the nastiness the FB worm posted as you.... included in the download.
On second thought, hey, we can now see the kind of data that the law enforcement portal already serves up on-line. I bet it's the same tool, just filtered a bit. Shouldn't be a huge stretch to turn all the features back on.
Your entire post is nothing but self-rightouesness. I particularly enjoy how a friend who acts hurt or annoyed that you don't use Facebook is because they're not a real friend and can't respect your making decisions for yourself, yet people who choose to use Facebook must be because they don't have a clue, care about privacy or make their own decisions. Somehow "not use Facebook" is a decision and "use Facebook" is peer pressure conformity by weak-willed clueless people. Okay then.
Have you ever entertained the possibility that people know, at least in simple terms, about the privacy implications of Facebook and simply don't see them as a big deal? Privacy is vastly important as a concept, but the idea that one must lock themselves in a basement to prevent anybody anywhere from knowing anything about them that they don't explicitly tell or else are somehow uninterested in privacy is simply false. I care about privacy, particularly as it pertains to being from government intrusion. I don't particularly care if Facebook knows the information I tell it (or I wouldn't tell it) or that I like baseball, Slashdot and stumble into sites with Like buttons in search results from time to time. And this from somebody who has posted maybe 75 things on Facebook in something around six years (yes, I first registered when it required a .edu email).
If we were talking about some sort of law where a person's lack of concerns about a specific situation involving privacy affected others, I could probably get behind you in calling it clueless. But we're not. It's a personal decision, no matter how you choose to frame it, and choosing to use Facebook is no more or less right than not. It's simply a choice.
That info is just a very small subset of what Facebook were providing in their CDs that people were requesting.
It could also be the categories have merged in to fewer more general ones.
IMO, it's not even the "information gathering" that's necessarily the real problem here. As soon as I started using Facebook and realized they were giving me unlimited access to the service for free, plus coding mobile applications to make it even more convenient to use (which were, again, free), I knew there were "catches" involved. Obviously, Facebook is no charity, and they're not making enough money on the little banner ads to pay for the whole infrastructure and bandwidth it uses.
So sure, they're "data mining" and selling the user info they collect up. You'd be rather foolish to believe otherwise. Before the days of Facebook, if you wanted a site that made it easy to hunt down old friends and connections and "catch up" with them again, you had to pay for a membership on something like Classmates.com.
I think it's arguable that more disclosure is needed, to warn new users of these practices. (I like "truth in advertising" and "truth in labeling" related laws, because I do think the consumer has a right to be well informed when he/she is conducting a transaction.) But again, this might be more of a gray area since Facebook is providing the website free of charge.
The part I have the biggest problem with is inability to truly delete the data you entered or uploaded yourself, should you wish to terminate your account. If you're no longer actively USING Facebook, then you're no longer receiving any of the benefits they're essentially exchanging in return for your contributed information.
The concerns over the data you can't control because someone else contributed it, by way of tagging you in their photos or mentioning you in their comments, etc.? I don't think you have much of a case for doing anything about that. That's second-hand info anyway, not first-hand, so should be considered of lesser value to start with. Humans are social creatures by nature. Unless you want to resist your own nature and live like a hermit with absolutely no friends or contacts, you're going to leave behind that "second-hand trail" of info others opt to provide about you. Even with no social networking site, the same thing has gone on throughout history in the real world. Why do you think when the govt. conducts background checks for a security clearance, they send agents out to talk to people they believe you knew or communicated with regularly? They ask them questions and chat with them to pick up some second-hand info about you. You can't force all your friends to shut up about you.
I don't see how posting to your facebook is any different than using google. You're being tracked. If you use the internet, you're contributing to the problem you're whining about.
For that matter, was that drunk guy with no shorts on even you? Or did someone just label it with your name? (Could be either by accident or on purpose.)
And the cute thing is, if you don't have a Facebook account, you won't even know about it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I like how you and sibling post assume I'm a teabagger.
The truth is, in the past ten years, it really does seem to be the norm, and it's more lack of any faith in humanity (I'm just clearly further along than you are). I guess it's because I had the audacity to mention the healthcare bill that your little internal DFAs short-circuited right to 'Right wing.'
I would have been all for it, if it had actually done what they originally said it was going to do, re. the public option. By removing that, it's just a blowjob for the insurance companies now.
So yeah, I'm right wing because I object to the government's head being further "up big-business' ass"[0] than SuperKendall's is up Apple's. Brilliant.
Don't feel bad. If I'd had any faith in humanity left, you would have diminished mine, too.
[0]Denny Crane.
Oh look kids, another delusional soul who still think Facebook only spies on registered users!
Do you see those Facebook buttons everywhere? I don't know how's the situation right now, but just a few months ago they were creating these little cookies with IDs even if you didn't have an account (like I don't). Which means they could log each and every site you went to and create a single profile from it.
So please shut the fuck up the next time, yes?
What's with the belligerent tone?
... then someone else will decide for you how that turns out. The minority who remain expect to get out of it what they are willing to invest into it and are not disappointed. In the face of an active adversary (a loaded word but appropriate since I did not invite them to attempt to track me), the mentality which desires to remain totally passive and then complain about the result is little more than a spoiled brat.
The Facebook buttons and their cookies are easily blocked. Anyone who cares about this can take the ten minutes necessary to understand how this tracking is done and configure their system(s) to refuse such content. The default choice, the result of doing nothing, is that you get spied on. That makes them a bunch of dicks to be sure, but it's not a big surprise. When in this life have you ever chosen to learn nothing and to do nothing and then received a result you found to be ideal?
If you want to be in the backseat and take a passive role in your experience because you think that's someone else's responsibility
In summary, they may or may not log each and every site *you* go to. That's your choice and you do have options. It is better to exercise those than to complain that the default choice sucks (which it does, so do something about it). As for me: no, they won't, and my refusal requires neither their goodwill nor their cooperation. Call it what you will; I call it having a spine.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
What's with the belligerent tone?
Parent's post irked me on a bad day.
The Facebook buttons and their cookies are easily blocked. Anyone who cares about this can take the ten minutes necessary to understand how this tracking is done and configure their system(s) to refuse such content. The default choice, the result of doing nothing, is that you get spied on. That makes them a bunch of dicks to be sure, but it's not a big surprise. When in this life have you ever chosen to learn nothing and to do nothing and then received a result you found to be ideal?
Yes, and Wilson just had to go to that spot in his house.
And as we can see with parent's post, lots of people don't even realize that tracking, particularly when logged out, is even possible - that thought may simply never crossed their mind.
Would people be better off if they blocked it? Sure. But just because one can block it doesn't mean one should have to. That's why we have laws that define what is and isn't appropriate.
If you want to be in the backseat and take a passive role in your experience because you think that's someone else's responsibility ... then someone else will decide for you how that turns out. The minority who remain expect to get out of it what they are willing to invest into it and are not disappointed. In the face of an active adversary (a loaded word but appropriate since I did not invite them to attempt to track me), the mentality which desires to remain totally passive and then complain about the result is little more than a spoiled brat.
To be active to act on X, there has to be conscious that X even exists. As I said, plenty of people aren't. They aren't passive, just oblivious.
In summary, they may or may not log each and every site *you* go to. That's your choice and you do have options. It is better to exercise those than to complain that the default choice sucks (which it does, so do something about it). As for me: no, they won't, and my refusal requires neither their goodwill nor their cooperation.
To repeat: I can only make a choice if I know there is one to be made. Personally, I do. Most people don't.
Dilbert RSS feed
Ops, it's Winston, not Wilson. Damn my weak memory.
Dilbert RSS feed
To be active to act on X, there has to be conscious that X even exists. As I said, plenty of people aren't. They aren't passive, just oblivious.
I think you have two choices here. Either embrace a permanent state of victimhood and accept that as the highest knowable reality available... or understand that being oblivious comes from using a thing without ever learning more and more about it over time, without ever investigating how it works and what the pitfalls are, without seeking to understand its ramifications.
I know many people do that and I consider it something of a miracle that they don't suffer quite a bit more than they do. Still, I view that as a choice. I know about these things not because I waited around for some stranger to come along and educate me, but because I have looked into them. I made that choice. Not making a choice is also a choice.
These exploitative business practices won't end until most people begin to see it that way. You could call it a burden but I say that no form of freedom is (libre) free and this kind of freedom is no exception.
I am grateful to you for not immediately resenting the suggestion that people educate themselves. That makes these things much easier to discuss without them childishly devolving into a blame-game. Most of the time I sugget a victim can stop being a victim I am accused of blaming the victim, as though it's a soap opera in which blame is the only consideration, as though there's anything wrong with learning from a situation and not falling prey to it again because the effort required to do so is "unfair" in some way. Seriously, it's nice to have this kind of discourse.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Frankly, while I do agree that people can and should educate themselves, I find that discussion pointless, unless you have suggestions on how to change that culture - personally, I don't.
I think the important discussion is: taking as a premise that people don't and won't educate themselves, should there be legal mechanisms to prevent companies like Facebook from tracking people?
Dilbert RSS feed