Slashdot Mirror
Is It Time To Stop Using Social Media? (counterpunch.org)
Slashdot reader Nicola Hahn writes: Bulk data collection isn't the work of a couple of bad apples. Corporate social media is largely predicated on stockpiling and mining user information. As Zuckerberg explained to lawmakers, it's their business model...
While Zuckerberg has offered public apologias, spurring genuine regulation will probably be left to the public. Having said that, confronting an economic sector which makes up one of the country's largest political lobbying blocks might not be a tenable path in the short term.
The best immediate option for netizens may be to opt out of social media entirely.
The original submission links to this call-to-action from Counterpunch: Take personal responsibility for your own social life. Go back to engaging flesh and blood people without tech companies serving as an intermediary. Eschew the narcissistic impulse to broadcast the excruciating minutiae of your life to the world. Refuse to accept the mandate that you must participate in social media in order to participate in society. Reclaim your autonomy.
While Zuckerberg has offered public apologias, spurring genuine regulation will probably be left to the public. Having said that, confronting an economic sector which makes up one of the country's largest political lobbying blocks might not be a tenable path in the short term.
The best immediate option for netizens may be to opt out of social media entirely.
The original submission links to this call-to-action from Counterpunch: Take personal responsibility for your own social life. Go back to engaging flesh and blood people without tech companies serving as an intermediary. Eschew the narcissistic impulse to broadcast the excruciating minutiae of your life to the world. Refuse to accept the mandate that you must participate in social media in order to participate in society. Reclaim your autonomy.
We should not have more than 10% of the population on any given social media platform.
I haven't used facebook for almost a decade. I saw it was a bad actor from the beginning.
But Google is just as bad but not as obvious as is any other social media.
You are the product.
But part of their power depends on having most people on their platform. If they can't get more than a fraction of people on their platform, then they cannot build comprehensive profiles.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
One does not have to stop using social media, but one can use own owned platforms like Matrix (http://matrix.org).
Also one can stop sharing everything about your life.
For example I have Twitter which I mostly use only to read posts as new. I seldom post something myself.
Of course, it is never too late to realize your mistake in believing it was ever OK to give a soulless corporation access to your personal information, and thus also allow HR to look at all your party pics where you got drunk, and other things you really dont want your professional career life to know about-- but really, what ever made you guys think it was even a good idea to start with?
I remember when the very idea of using your real name online was a point and shame offense.
We need to get back to that kind of thing,
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The best immediate option for netizens may be to opt out of social media entirely.
Posting that on /. Are you going to hit up Facebook and Twitter too, or should one of us do it?
[ RT to take back control. #OptOut ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The future of social networking is in a distributed system designed for (and owned by) the users, not a centralized one with the users as a product. With storage and CPU as commodities and available in the cloud, there is no reason for entities like Facebook to exist.
It's called a contact list. Anyone who is important in my life, is on it. And the most important of the important, I have memorized.
Is it time to stop posting dick pics to social media? /s
Social media can be valuable for people. It is not however an excuse to allow the harvesting of your personal data.
https://www.vanityfair.com/new...
I tried to post this nearly 6 months ago, but y'all weren't having any. Then.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Slashdot is social media.
Yes! Use a chat-app that uses end-to-end encryption instead. You can share the same information, but with more privacy. For information you really want the share with the rest of the world, use something like a blog.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
...but instead it formed itself into a Slashdot post! Well, aren't you clever?
The Oxford dictionary says: "Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking." -- Well, even comments here on Slashdot count as "content" and therefore Slashdot also fits the definition presented here. Basically, any online-system that allows people to write a comment or comments counts; should we recklessly abandon every such system, or should the author formulate his arguments better? I vote for the latter, especially considering his argument is basically the extremely vague "reclaim your autonomy."
No need to throw the baby with the water, you can use a distributed social media system that respect your privacy and is not a milkcow for some rich dude. ...
there is even a whole W3C standard dedicated to it : ActivityPub
it's used by a number of libre software that federate together, letting you post messages, photos, videos, etc
look for Mastodon, PeerTube, Hubzilla, Pleroma, and a bunch of other apps that will mature or appears soon.
But it’s definitely time people started using it more wisely.
And I’d argue it may very well be time to stop using the truly evil entities like Facebook... of course having left it around 2014, I realize that’s easy for me to say but harder for existing users to do.
#DeleteChrome
As far as I'm aware, anything I put on social media is public information. I am surprised other people trusted facebook as much as they did.
Be aware of this and use it in that context. I personally don't mind that the world knows I saw The Disaster Artist last night. There are things that I do care about. I''not share those on social media.
Penismightier!
Take personal responsibility for your own social life.
Social media doesn't take away any personal responsibility any more than the telephone or a newspaper advertisement did. Your social life still needs to be built on information whether you see an advert for an event on TV or on a poster glued to the side of a building, or get invited to a party through an SMS.
A lot of people fundamentally don't realise that a large part of social media doesn't offset meeting people in fleshy person, and actually provides even more opportunities to do just that.
I remember when people freaked out when /. started having user IDs and logins.
Before dedicated social networks we used mailing lists, Usenet and forums. They were great because you could meet interesting, like-minded people, and they didn't harvest your personal data.
These days it's harder to avoid social networks. They offer a lot of features that people want, like easy photo sharing and real-time chat built in. Sure, you can replicate it all, but try getting random non-techies to install an IRC client, or spell Diaspora.
Modern life has become reliant on those services. People are too busy, they aren't going to post everything to five different networks and your personal email address.
The only solution is an open protocol. Make Facebook a protocol, let people choose the platform and client that suits them the best.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is the problem. People think they need it now. The abuses possible are inherent in all present implementations. A federal injunction should be issued. If they want to save face. Perhaps they read slashdot? The sharing of all (or part) personal information online is a national security risk. period. fucking period.
But I beg to digress (facebook needs to die. shutdown.) We need to focus on the solution. Open source (free as in beer) software and hardware to the rescue.
Let's get to this, gentlemen. IRC or whatever. but connect and solve this problem. We need transparency. We need the people to be able to set up their own networks. Think mesh community nodes with a DMZ to talk to the other networks. We can do this better. I know we can.
For f**ks sake, *Facebook* sold access to your messenger private MESSAGES to a company that markets that data worldwide. Using some hidden psuedo opted in by default consent.
It isn't some sort of endemic that spans every social media company. It's just Facebook that's constantly pushing the boundaries of what it can get away with.
"A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the app, which was designed by Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan to collect data on Americans on behalf of Cambridge Analytica’s British counterpart SCL, requested access to user inboxes through the read_mailbox permission."
So your private messages were sold to Putin. It wasn't by accident, they weren't hacked, Cambridge Analytics requested access to the messages in your mailbox and Facebook sold them that access via an implemented API. And CA were not at all secret about their intentions, they toured the world offering up your Facebook data for sale.
Here's Aleksandr Kogan of Cambridge Analytics touting the data grab and the ability to use it to influence foreign elections to Putin's St Petersberg group:
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/20/technology/aleksandr-kogan-video-facebook-cambridge-analytica/index.html
Ditch Facebook, delete your account, never ever log in again. If you use a site and it has a Facebook button on it, its a tracking system, ask them to remove it.
But everyone around me seems to and for many their lives revolve around it.
;)
As to the question, my initial take is yea! But maybe things are not that simple for others in their world.
Just my 2 cents
free julian
Go back to engaging flesh and blood contacts? Do you know your audience Slashdot? Who the hell has time or proximity to see real people?
So the time has come to pull back our social circles to the stone age? What about involving "big tech companies" like the phone company? Big government, like The POST OFFICE? It's all a matter of trust, and if necessary regulation. What this guy is advocating is Neo-Luddism.
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
Get back to? Some of us grey beards never stopped.
If you search my full name (which is unique due to mix of nationalities) you will only find my LinkedIn profile, ie my carefully curated professional profile and CV.
Everything else I do online is either anonymous or under a pseudonym I keep for that specific purpose. People only know me by the handles I choose, and only people I've met get to know my real name.
I saw this bulk data processing coming right from day one on the internet. Many of the specifics have surprised me though, I thought it would be government abuse mostly.
The only thing I have used FaceBook for in quite a long while is to log into Slashdot.
LMFAO
Take the airplane a after 10 hours of nonstop flight, finally ready to meet and engage people and flash and boold. Maybe wouldn't be a bad ideea an upgrade from turbojet to ramjet
Those of us who cared for their privacy and are horrified at facebook or other social media practice, ALREADY limited their use strictly. Those of us who "vomit" their private live on social media, did not care to begin with and will probably not move. The only real solution is to lobby for stronger privacy rule and data protection, which we get in Europe. Good luck with that in the US.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
While there is a place for electronic communication: emails, 'phone calls, on-line group messaging, what is far more satisfying is meeting people in the flesh to: chat, eat together, dance, go for walks, ... that is how true friendships are nurtured and grow. When you are with people you more easily learn their true nature. We are a social species -- this need has been exploited by social media, with the unfilled promise that using it will make us more socially successful: whereas the result is often the opposite.
We need to upgrade/replace email and Usenet.
I've said this time and time again: Facebook only exists because we're still using protocols and services from the steam age of computing. Usenet is super-dead and email is some awkward crutch.
Replace it with something from this day and age and Facebook will disappear all by itself because people will stop using it because it won't be the best solution around anymore.
It's that easy.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
So far evolution has not eliminated gross stupidity, so the prospect for future reductions in stupid do not look good.
Why is Snark Required?
I remember when Bruce Perens freaked out that others made accounts spelled similar to his name, and they changed the page so UIDs became vgisible, so it beme a 'thing' to have a low UID.
Thanks, Bruce.
The Luddites are back!
You can not really opt out. If you go to any kind of event there will be people taking photos and uploading them. It is usually all those that are being bored, that feel like they become the center of the event by exposing "friends" forever on the internet. I consider it harassment and assault.
If you carry a so-called smart phone, then you are already giving the Trump state everything it needs to assess and control you. You don’t have to consciously use it.
I couldn't agree with the author more, however, it won't happen, short of having a political or religious dictatorship. What the author is suggesting has to start with pre-adolescents, and they will not join the author's band wagon in a free society. What the author is suggesting can only happen in places like North Korea or China, where the state controls every aspect of life from the time children are born.
It is business on the Internet.
Work in progress but spread it around. Https://theprivacyshop.nz
The question we hear many times a day. Yet we expect that almost all websites will not charge us. Even though they have costs: depreciation, electricity, staff, buildings - that someone has to pay for.
So would the public be willing to hand over a credit card to use a website? Experience shows that almost nobody does, when compared with the billions of accesses per day that come from subscribers to "free" sites. And what happens to "privacy" then? We would just trade fears of all the lies we tell when we subscribe to a website being replaced with the far more serious fears of having our card details stolen, bought and sold.
Personally, I don't give a damn about who knows when my date of birth was, what I last bought from Amazon or whether I "liked" a particular posting or not. It seems to me that the only people who do worry, do so about how other people might be losing their privacy - not about their own. If it bothers you, then stop. If it doesn't then ignore all the media frenzy. Though since almost all the online sites that are carrying scare stories about mass data collection are doing exactly the same thing they criticise FB and social media in general, of doing.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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Well, that time has probably passed long ago, but we're still here, precisely because of that narcissistic impulse to broadcast our worthless opinion to a crowd of hopefully like-minded people.
it got better when they made a law that the stickers needed to be inflammable.
rewriting history since 2109
+1 for this.
About twelve years ago in the UK, people objected to the idea of identity cards at the same time as registering for Facebook in droves. I expected the likes of NSA and GCHQ to milk them, but wealthier and more powerful forces prevailed, and now we have Brexit and Trump, with Putin no doubt pulling the strings.
No shit, Sherlock.
But just as alcoholics donâ(TM)t go cold turkey, the masses wonâ(TM)t stop their facebooking. Remember the first rule, acknowledge your addiction.
It was probably just the shit trying to get away from you.
It was never time to begin using "social media" to begin with. It was bleeding obvious from the start to everyone with two braincells that it wouldn't end well.
The question is, have the people from this generation learned their lesson about powerful entities who only cares about their own interests gathering unlimited amounts of information about them? It would be interesting to see how many would have freely given up the same information if the recipient would have been called "GESTAPO", "STASI" or "stalkerslist.com" . The difference is effectively none.
make your facebook page a fake news site about yourself. put so much fake stuff about yourself on your facebook page that they can't figure out anything about you. fake jobs, fake people, fake vacations, fake relatives. everything.
Maybe this should be my last post. No more computers.
Computers make you sedentary and addicted to information, entertainment and instant stimulation of all kinds like tabloid news, porn etc.
Computers should only be used by machines in factories.
Humans should not interact with it. Too unhealthy.
This is the hindsight now being gained by mankind.
And I did this long before all of this media storm. I am 5 months free of Facebook. Furthermore, the apology that the Zuck offered was, at best, hollow. And the denial of the shadow profiles just about undid all of that apology. I am sure I still have one somewhere on it.
No.
We just need smarter users.
That's hilarious. I've been waiting for smarter users for the last 30 years. Hasn't happened yet.
Let me give you an idea of just how smart the masses are; no matter how bad social media data mining or privacy invasion turns out to be, users won't ever stop using it. It will always exist.
facebook was evil from the start. Zuck had this platform that folks willingly shared everything about themselves and he and his VCs figured out that they can pimp the data and make money. It's the INDIVIDUAL who set the tone of the company - the CEO / founder.
The same goes for every other social media site including LinkedIN.
No, I do not need one that constantly remind me of how my kindergarten schoolmate is doing or my X-X-X-gf's cousin twice removed has cancer, or not
All I need is a place to get the going ons of tech
Slashdot used to have a lot of very knowledgeable people giving out very wise advises and the debate used to be filled with facts. That was why Slashdot used to fulfill the role of a *SOCIAL MEDIA* for nerds
Ever since the demise of Slashdot, there isn't any other place which can fulfill that role, and no, none of the current 'social media' could either
When was the time to start using them?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Despite teh constant negative vgisible bemes, covfefe.
Snake handlers eventually get bit. Lion tamers get eaten, and outrage farmers get turned against.
It's the natural order of things.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I 'm as anti-social as they come. Let me ask you again:
You talkin to me? There's no one else here; you tawkin to me?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
what is far more satisfying is meeting people in the flesh to:
1) have sex with them
2) murder them
3) be murdered by them
4) all the above.
Fuck the Zuck!
I am really tired of crap like this:
"Take personal responsibility for your own social life. Go back to engaging flesh and blood people without tech companies serving as an intermediary. Eschew the narcissistic impulse to broadcast the excruciating minutiae of your life to the world. Refuse to accept the mandate that you must participate in social media in order to participate in society. Reclaim your autonomy."
How about YOU stop assuming others use social networks for the crap you probably used it for?
No..stop complaing & Let's start building one that's better.
Let's build a social media platform that has a charter to: ..BTW the way I wanted to title this post as "Bitches stop complaining and let's build something!", but I didn't want to be dismissed as frivolous.
* To peoples interest first
* Never sell out to corporate interests with a profit motive
* Distributed so no one jurisdiction can control it.
* Based on open standards so never again we will have to be reliant on one entity.
* Put systems in place to stop one group from having undue influence on others.
-A. Non
All you need exists. Just not as polished as FB. I guess that 90% of people will go for polish, though. People are largely dumb.
Zuck has diarrhea.
It cannot be that there exist people in America who would be patriots. We all know each and every American is a slave of the one percent who control the media, finance and the arms industry.
So it must be the Russians who infected the 99% of virgins with this evil idea that the nation comes before the banksters and corporations !
We already had it, long before FB. It was called USENET, bulletin board servers, IRC and so on.
YOU can run these services even cheaper than in the past, because all you need is an RPI server which will consume 3 Watts of power.
As a bonus, you will get a Secure File Store by means of SSH/SCP/WINSCP. No need to share your ideas with a megalomaniac like Suckerborg, Brin, Gates etc.
We could not live before the existence of FB, Google, Twitter etc.
We barely breathed while using USENET, IRC, personal homepages etc.
Yes, we rejected ID Cards. Sadly the most stupid of us have joined at least one if not more social media things.
Not all of us here in the UK are stupid but even so, we voted for BREXIT. I blame Social Media for dumbing down the world as a whole.
IT is the "Lowest Common Denominator" sort of thing.
Never had an account on any of the main Social Media (FB, Twitter etc) and never will. I purged my LinkedIn account the day MS took them over. The same with Skype and I've never been near GMail or Yahoo.
do I have something to hide?
Yes, my private life. Nothing illegal but it is private.
Yours
Smug Git!
Just stay on stormfront, fucktard.
Why would they put stickers on that would catch fire? Inflammable and flammable mean the same thing. Maybe you meant nonflammable?
If you search my full name (which is unique due to mix of nationalities) you will only find my LinkedIn profile, ie my carefully curated professional profile and CV.
I do it the other way: my full name happens to match that of a well-known politician (Democrat), making any search on it lost among millions of irrelevant political references.
Anyone else find it ironic that the article that says to leave Facebook says "Join the debate on Facebook" at the bottom? https://www.counterpunch.org/2...
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Usenet was my favourite thing about the internet. I still use it but feel sad that hardly anyone else does.
500 million people all joining another social network sounds nice but won't happen. Regulation is required. Just like Verizon can't sell access to all your text and calls, neither should anyone else. "But Facebook is a private company!!" I hear. And Verizon isn't? There has to be a way to monetize Facebook without invading everyone's privacy.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
If you are lucky, in that order.
I could live without social media if I could keep in touch with family and friends and also find a place to talk about stuff with anyone who's interested.
If you can make IRC really user friendly so that the less technically inclined can use it and reincarnate usenet, it would be a very small start. In 20 years, we might have something.
Says who? I've never used those services in the first place.
The question is, why are you posting everything? Stop broadcasting your life online!
Go back to regular forums, there's still millions of them all over the place, targeting specific topics. If I visit a DIY arcade cabinets forum, the worst thing that can happen is that I see ads related to arcade hardware, which I might be interested in because I visit that kind of website.
#DeleteFacebook
...but commenting on /. is social media.
Yeah the whole "costs get passed on to you" idea falls apart when it's a free service. What are they going to do? Collect more data? They're going to do that either way. Only way to stop it is leave.
It's pretty much impossible NOT to reveal your social connections using social media, but it's the combination of insight into the nodes in that graph with the network that gives people with that data power over you.
So any kind of game, app or quiz where you reveal things about yourself or personal preferences is a bad thing. Forwarding and commenting on political news is probably a bad thing -- not in itself, but combined with the analytical power a social connection graph provides; it's one thing to exercise your free speech, it's another to contribute to a the greatest political surveillance network in history.
You might want to think twice about face tagging and geotagging your photographs too -- going by the Categorical Imperative. If enough people do that they've got a covert body tracking network.
People use social media because they serve a useful purpose, but they aren't aware of the unintended consequences; exploiting unintended consequences is those companies' entire business model.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Social media shouldn't be used to replace contact with the people you're close to, but it is useful for keeping in touch with people you aren't close to.
For me, social media is mainly useful for keeping tabs on musicians, authors and actors that I like. I like being able to find about their upcoming projects and appearances without spending hours of my time checking individual websites or hoping a news site will mention them. Even better, I can interact with
Right now, there isn't anything that comes close to replacing social media for that.
Exactly this. Use a pseudonym with associated email address for each website, isolate all your interests from each other.
Here, I am known as DontBeAMoran, an idiot that posts mostly stupid garbage and sometimes funny replies or comments. On another website I am known as DontBeARocketScientist since I work at NASA and on another website I am called DontBeACarpenter since I love woodworking.
So to recap, make sure you never give corporations and governments the ability to associate your persona on one website to another. Use different pseudonyms for each, be careful to avoid similar pseudonyms and never divulge information about your other pseudonyms on the other websites.
#DeleteFacebook
> Is It Time To Stop Using Social Media?
When was it ever time to *start*?
It's an anti-user business model by design.
End of discussion.
I actually managed to convince most of my friends to move to WhatsApp as an alternative to Facebook. WA at least does end-to-end encryption and isn't a social network, so while not perfect it's a lot better.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I prefer noninflammable because it confuses people who don't know that flammable and inflammable are the same thing, but do know that one should not use a double negative. They know it can't possibly mean not-not-flammable, but they can't reconcile that knowledge.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The outrage appeared first strange to me. I always assumed that signing up for a free service means that all the data provide are essentially public and can be sold. It is the prize to pay for a free service. I also still assume that a free service can at any time change its rules and policies or disappear or even assume that some censorship might occurs. The network is not mine and I don't pay for it. Where free services cross a line is when they collect data of users which are not on the network or data which users have chosen not to place onto the network. If some personal data get onto a network because some app just pulled all private contact info of some friend or somer elative, then this is not ok. It is here, that regulations need to be put in place. Also, if I decide to say "yes, it is time to leave a network", I should have the possibility to delete an account without trace if needed. Also that needs to be regulated. The social networks do not do that on their own.
Everything else I do online is either anonymous or under a pseudonym I keep for that specific purpose. People only know me by the handles I choose, and only people I've met get to know my real name.
Don't underestimate the ability to link tracking cookies, like if you order something from an e-tailer under your real name because they need your shipping address and post to /. under your alias at the same time the IP address will be the same. Even pseudonyms are dangerous if they can be linked to other pseudonyms that aren't anonymous because most of us are too lazy to fully compartmentalize. For example my best friend has a fairly unique online nick that is also publicly linked to his real world identity. If you can link my nick to his nick like say on a gaming clan or something, you can identify him. If you identify him, you can find me in his friends list and real world events we've been to. It's all a question of access, smartness of algorithms and effort that are all out of my hands.
Truth is most people can't manage to maintain completely separate identities, even when they're trying quite hard. We've had those stories on /. on prostitutes start seeing Facebook friend requests from customers, attorneys with clients, unfaithful with mistresses where they have made more than a casual effort to keep it a secret. And it's only going to get worse as more and more things get "smart" in various ways. On a random note, my dad needs hearing aids and last now he was on a check-up the doctor told him she could see from the statistics how many hours a day he's used them on average. I had no idea it did that, it's not exactly a huge infringement of privacy but it got me thinking how privacy is dying through a thousand needle pricks.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I doubt people like Zuckerberg will ever admit it. But I am sure the plan was from the start for Facebook to create a social site for free to gather data on its users and offer it as a means to make money with that data. Obviously so many people fail at seeing the privacy threat and the stigma associated with not being on Facebook if your friends are. People are so naive to think that their privacy is not being sold for gain when they pay nothing to use the site. Who exactly do they think pays all those people working at Facebook?
Well plaid, sur.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Stop using social networks, those that have two-way communication that can identify you.
Media is just content and is available in all sorts of forms.
For example: things like terrestrial TV and Radio broadcast media one-way, they can't find out who you are without using another way to feed back information (such as a network).
Don't confuse 'social media' with social networks.
Very sly there.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
If more people realized this, it would be so much easier to get them on board with distributed social media networks.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Same here. I haven't used ANY social media. Life has continued just fine. Nobody *needs* social media. It can be useful for some targeted purposes, as you point out, but it isn't life or death. The decision is on us, though, and we are very first world people for the most part. Hopefully it'll go the way of AOL, and I don't particularly think it needs to be replaced by anything, as its usefulness is seriously debatable.
Schools should teach how to find opposing views. It is a learnable skill.
Well, as soon as they come up with a way for me to keep in touch with all my family and friends over long distances, share photos, videos, messages, that isn't Social Media, I will be on board. :/
Yeah! Gonna Like and tweet this, bro!
Do you use any of the following: credit card, free email, free file storage, mobile phone, home internet, loyalty card, mobile payment service like square, on-line shopping, streaming service... Even if we could all be convinced to ditch social media, there's plenty more data being captured and stockpiled for when technology and regulations support its exploitation.
Why is everybody acting so surprised? The relentless collection and analysis, or pillage, of personal data has been obvious from day one. I never had a facebook account because I don't have to have one to participate in the world (Unlike young people) , But, gmail is just as bad, and I do have a google account because I need email to participate.
"Use our system -or- have no life" seems like a bogus choice.
Slashdot sure has gone downhill since the corporate overlords came on board. Where are Cowboy Neal and Cmdr Taco when we need them?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
and then stop using other scrapable sites/accounts like google, youtube, etc; then magically delete your information from hospitals, government, creditors, etc. still, who knows how much of your data is already taken and still out there?
what i don't understand is that all you are to these companies is a less than accurate entry in a database among millions, with an algorithm to sell ads. i don't know about you, but i don't think my brain has even registered an ad since the age of 12. my brain automatically shuts them out. if i even notice the product, i'm going to be less likely to purchase it out of irritation. if i need something, i research, then buy the best option. interesting visuals or a bad joke do not enter into it.
i'm not saying i approve of unauthorized data collection or that it should be tolerated, but is there anything actually nefarious happening? (if your opinions are shaped by unsolicited news articles, you are willfully stupid). but isn't it a bit late and insufficient to just delete facebook? i can't begin to imagine how many companies already have data on me. it sucks, but even if you've never touched a computer, you're information is on the internet and is potentially accessible.
What if that's not possible? Facebook is showing what AI can do. There will almost always be a large number of gullible people in a democracy that can be swayed by the right message. AI can find what that message needs to be to ensure a win. We may have just seen one of the first large scale usages of AI for evil reasons.
You knew it, and yet you went along with it. I instead, closed my FB account 5-6 years ago at the first sight Merkel & Co. are proactively scanning ALL individual accounts in search of active thought crimes. I don't regret such act up to this day, and never will.
I stopped posting on Usenet when spammers began harvesting email addresses from posts, and I was too principled to fake my email address.
The problem isn't social media. The problem is people, or rather a subset of the population. Any time you do anything non-anonymously in public, there are people out there who will try to twist and abuse it for their own benefit. Whether it be social media, or Usenet posts, or for sale ads in the newspaper (phone number added to robocall lists, creepy callers), or posting for sale ads on a public bulletin board at the supermarket (same problem with your phone number), or doing anything in public (people spreading gossip about who you were out with, what you were wearing, what you were doing). Social media allows you to leverage databases, networks, and automation to abuse it on a scale never seen before, but at its very root it's the same problem people have been grappling with for millenia.
Too much of basic human interaction is so reliant on this stuff that I don't think you can outright ban it. If you tried, you'd basically make it impossible for strangers to meet, and we'd die off when our birth rate dropped to zero. You have to identify the most egregious abuses and prohibit it. Unfortunately, those engaged in those abuses have the benefit of their part mostly happening in private so it can be hard to figure out exactly who is behind it (e.g. copying Usenet post email addresses to sell to spammers, or making crank calls to phone numbers on for sale ads, or spreading juicy gossip).
In a word.
I never adopted Facebook or any "social media" platform. Year after year, there would be plenty of articles normalizing, evangelizing the use of these things, making you feel excluded or left out if you ddin't join up. Plenty of them even tried to suggest there's something wrong with you, or perhaps psychotic about you. I ignored it all, took it in good stride. Now, I don't even enjoy saying i'm not on it, because it has turned into another form of signally for moral superiority, and rife with I-told-you-so. It seems like the tide is turning, and people are now advocating another direction, which pleases me a lot.
Nothing new is being said, and while I find solace in hearing more people are abandoning these things. I hope people try to reclaim what they've given up: security and privacy. Stop volunteering information about yourself online. Stop making it easy for people to sell you. Stop buying things that effective allow companies into your house and listen: I'm looking at you every single device with a microphone.
This isn't paranoia, it's how businesses operate. They depend on gathering info about you so they can measure customer use in some way to validate how advertisers spend their dollars. People can hate all these companies they want for making things more accessible and easy to do online, but what you should really hate is advertising. The internet does not require it at all to operate. If you don't believe me, try going to every single modern pan-handler on the following websites:
twitch, patreon, kickstarter, gofundme, need I go on?
The model can change, and perhaps donating your funds to support things you like is the way to go if feel so strongly attached to the advertising side of things for sustaining financing your business. This will turn into yet another derivative of nologo or some other anti-corporation type argument, but at the core, advertising is what runs the internet: not the access of information.
Yes
Wow! Modesty on the web.
Thank you.
I've been using social media since FB and Twitter came out.
I have yet to get any significant return from it, personally.
If I owned a business I would have accounts for brand engagement.
I gave up all social media completely last year. I've noticed an improved QoL as I spend my time completely doing things I like, not talking about things. Social media is a waste of time and energy.
And no, I'm not a grumpy old man. I'm a newly-enlightened young man who disengaged from the burning tire fire of "new media". Fuck all that bullshit.
There is nobody left here but a bunch of randos anyway.
Now is the time for nerds to promote and create open standard alternatives to monolithic exploitative corps like Facebook which only offer specific but popular desires of billions.
Twit feeds:
Clueless method to post anything for your followers. Facebook posts included EMAIL is not broadcast and blogs are too hard. We need something like a personal RSS feed that is easy to create. It's really a simple specialized blog system with no features. Define the protocols, APIs let others implement. like http, email etc.
People Finder: a way to find people you know and link to what they are publishing. like DNS but for humans. Facebook did this aggressively-- many approaches can be used by many places but we need a standard uniting the task. like DNS... and free... details such as harassing people by email or requiring signup to view things emailed to you by others.. can be left out for others.
Example: I've thought that some sort of RFC for EMAIL which creates an alternative mbox to INBOX ... a FRIEND directory with a limited MIME format email that goes into it would be a good idea. This would leverage existing tech, integrate easily with email since friend requests are similar but also would allow specialty use without even touching email use cases. Filtering can be specialized on the FRIEND box as well. NO, we don't just use email we optimize the use case to a special separate use of email technology that doesn't require any of the complexities of email. This is why I suggest another mbox to keep it away from INBOX. Apple does this very well with their notes and todo lists running on top of IMAP without users even realizing it is actually a kind of email client.
Public Identity service:
Email is unique and maybe those should be your ID... but we and the governments of the world really could use a unique public identifier standard; an open one as well as an authoritative one with some solid backing. No proof of identity or authentication but merely an ID. I've thought over this problem before as well. I'm thinking a base 52 encoded number comprising a serial number, a year, and a 1 character checksum (depends upon the numeric base.) This should be somewhat easy to memorize and share (due to encoding, which is where I spent most my thought... picking encoding character rules to avoid human errors. Such as not using O because it looks like 0. As well as an escape for indicating other formats like social security numbers (part of the checksum bit indicates alternative format) )
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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Is It Time To Stop Using Social Media? YES.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Never did, never will. Get off my lawn.
no.
People are too busy, they aren't going to post everything to five different networks and your personal email address
People know how to get a hold of me if they want/need to do so. If they can't be arsed to reach out to me personally then I give zero fucks about them or what they are doing.
Social networks are a breeding ground for lazy narcissists. The rest of us are doing just fine with limited exposure or no exposure at all.
"I'm a narcissist that isn't getting rewarded on social media by people telling me how great I am, so now I'm telling people that I stopped using it. Aren't I unique, quirky, and a total edge Lord?
I'm so young and counter culture it hurts"
Yeah, great, you play in the sand box kid
Act as though everything you post is public not private and you'll be fine. Dance like nobody is watching, post online like it will be read in court someday.
YES!
The Internet has become the new public commons and as such no corporation or gov agency should act as gatekeepers dictating who can and cannot speak on an Internet forum, especially if they solicited enrollment from the general public with promises of being fair.
I never signed up for Twitter and dropped Facebook months after I signed on when my list of friends got hacked and even worse, an unknown friend of a friend of a friend ... sent a snapshot of herself in bra and panties and asking to be "friends". She appeared to be a minor. Even then, FB told me that if I clicked any button on any site that was related to FB for the next six weeks it would immediately reactivate my account.
I signed up for Gmail soon after it started and was supportive of their "First, Do No Evil" slogan. As they morphed into a company that made evil its primary plan I decided to drop gmail and my G+ account. First, I visited passwords.google.com and was stunned to learn that they had my login names and passwords for every web account I created in the previous ten years, and some I had forgotten about. They even had my wifi admin login name and password. After dumping my info I went to every website and either canceled it or changed my name and password.
The command netstat shows that while running a naked browser on any particular website at least two dozen or more 3rd party or tracker websites are connected to my computer and leaching info and watching everything I do online, even if I leave that website. Running with NoScript active causes many website to not display properly or at all. Many websites want you to allow cookies so they can spy and also hijack the HTML code arriving at your browser from other sites by planting ads that the website didn't code in and wasn't asked to include.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
"I'm a narcissist that isn't getting rewarded on social media by people telling me how great I am, so now I'm telling people that I stopped using it. Aren't I unique, quirky, and a total edge Lord?
I'm so young and counter culture it hurts"
Yeah, great, you play in the sand box kid
Your comment reflects the total hostility that is exhibited on all sides of any topic on most forums these days.
Not knowing a single fact about the poster you fling poo like a caged monkey, while insinuating the worst motives about your target anonymously. YOU are what is wrong with trying to hold intelligent discussions on most comment forums today.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
This.
I'm still waiting for the time to START using social media. Sure, I've experimented with a few systems long ago like friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) but I still don't know of any platform with a security model that lends itself to use with real, personal data. I'll continue for now without social media but tackling this is on my to-do list. Right now, just working with others to develop an adequate form of digital money is taking my time.
The IRC channel, where I used to hang out, got too crowded. And my whole day was about responding to people.
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and I'm not going to take it anymore......
[($)]
Some of the proposals/ideas being put forward here already exist ... It's called XMPP.
But they (google, facebook, microsoft, apple, et al.) don't want you to talk to other people outside their walled gardens. Which is why they killed off XMPP.
And people inside these walled gardens didn't even notice, that people they used to be able to talk to, just suddenly disappeared.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Decentralization and addressing
The XMPP network uses a clientâ"server architecture; clients do not talk directly to one another. The model is decentralized - anyone can run a server. By design, there is no central authoritative server as there is with services such as AOL Instant Messenger or Windows Live Messenger. Some confusion often arises on this point as there is a public XMPP server being run at jabber.org, to which a large number of users subscribe. However, anyone may run their own XMPP server on their own domain.
And I am on the Outside looking at you people inside these walled gardens with Schadenfreude.
Only idiots use social media. Go learn some computer skills and run your own web site, noob.
Agree. And once users have to visibly pay, they'll leave in droves ...
We need social media that doesn't rely on ads or selling your data as part of it's business model. We also need social media to make it policy to not share your data. That's needs to be central to its product offering and part of its main value proposition. When the business model doesn't rely on third parties paying the bills (like advertisers or research companies) then there's always a mismatch between what the user wants and what the advertisers want. But with paid social networks with no ads the incentive is to just provide a service that people want. That's what RealPeople.io does (https://realpeople.io). No ads, no bots, users pay. Not sharing your data with anyone unless required by law. No AI filtering, no bulk data selling.
What if somebody else thinks it is a good idea to post the photo of me drunk online?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not knowing a single fact about the poster you fling poo like a caged monkey, while insinuating the worst motives about your target anonymously. YOU are what is wrong with trying to hold intelligent discussions on most comment forums today.
So, as a reader (and a different anonymous coward to the one you were commenting on):
Do I have your email? No.
Do I have your home address? No.
Do I have your phone number? No.
Do I have your full name? No.
Do I have a photo of you? No.
Would I recognize you if I saw or heard you? No.
The only thing we have is a way of grouping your posts under the title "Jerry ( 6400 )"
You are nearly as anonymous as the anonymous coward you were posting about (although I'm sure with some effort more details about you could be gleaned - but life is too short for that tbh).
I hope the irony of this isn't lost on you :)
I will go update my wall to let all users know this...
*oh wait*
WTF are people doing wasting all their fucking time on fucking social media shit. I cut FB off years ago. Absolute waste of time. Tired of seeing people post their political views, post every time they do something, selfies....So sickening.
What a waste of your ability to push a change on your firends. WhatsApp is a Facebook company. All the metadata is still mined by Facebook (friends lists, communications timing, all the data WhatsApp gathers from your phone, etc.) And there are unconfirmed reports that WhatsApp, while encrypting your information, somehow mines the data and uses it to serve personalized ads. Maybe in app, before it was encrypted? Maybe tokenized?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Citation very much needed.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
In Soviet Russia, social media follow you!
In a recent post by Lisa Nielsen, she makes her case as to why she will not be one of the many people leaving Facebook despite recent headlines. âoePrivacy is a myth in today's world,â she writes. âoeAnyone who engages in the world today knows that privacy has been redefined.â She lists six reasons why she believes Facebook is worth keeping as an Innovative Educator. First: connections. âoeFacebook provides the best way in human history for people to stay connected,â she writes. Second, Facebook serves as a âoe21st century phone and address book.â Facebook also provides accessibility to experts and officials as well as a unique opportunity to build relationships. âoeRelationships are one of the most important parts of life,â writes Nielsen, âoeand there has never been a better relationship-building tool than Facebook.â Read Lisaâ(TM)s full post here and share your best practices on Facebook for yourself, your students, and their families.
http://go.newbaymedia.com/e/262762/g-facebook-you-shouldnt-either/5xdt7/765634616
Eww you fuck in the ass?
I #DeletedFacebook before Zuckerberg was even born.
Raw water is still cool, though, right?
And you won't solve the social media problem by opting out.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
We need: Opt-IN options, NOT opt-out, and remove tracking and info FULLY and WHEN REQUESTED.
Our privacy is paramount.
It'll keep things like Russian election hacking from have any significant effects.
I see freakin' social media links EVERYWHERE!
Who knows what (tentacles) those companies have injected into places.
For example: cookies.
I go online shopping for an item. Let's call it a power adapter for my cellphone.
I find what I need at a reasonable price, and order it. It arrives and works fine.
For the next MONTH, I am targeted ads for cellphone adapters!
Do ya think there something is missing here?!
This happens with every online purchase I make, even with cookies and tracking turned OFF!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Why is it the social media that's the problem? How about just the social aspect? I'm boycotting people.
well plaid
I take it that's a Scottish thing?