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.

Comments

It's time to user smaller specific social media

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

Re:It's time to user smaller specific social media

[angel'o'sphere]

Would not work.

If I organize an Aikido seminar with a famous teacher I expect about 100 - 120 guests.

For that I have my FB account and simply post into my timeline the event details or organize an "FB Event" , where people can click "join", "maybe", "no".

To reach all my audience I would need to do that on every majour platform. And hence: I would be on all majour platforms. Sooner or later people would migrate to the more prominent one(s).

E.g. classmates from school gather on platform A
Ex military on platform B
Family on Platform C, except for your spoces parents who refuse ;D

And so it goes on. In the end everyone is on several platforms. I'm on several platforms anyway, because I don't use FB for business, but linkedin and XING.

It is the same with messaging Apps ... I use 4 regularly and have probably 4 more installed (and that does not include FB messenger ... I only use it if I need to sent a reply, but that I usually do via the web site)

Re:It's time to user smaller specific social media

[stdarg]

To reach all my audience I would need to do that on every majour platform.

It is the same with messaging Apps

That's because these platforms are deliberately non-interoperable in an attempt to build their own market share. If the idealists in this thread got their way and people just said no, then we'd end up with a system more like email. My gmail account can email any other email account, no problem. Why can't messengers/calendars do the same? No technical reason.

Not stop - using own owned platforms

[therealspacebug]

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.

Re:Wrong question; You shouldn't have used it at a

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Just ditch Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's time for a new non-commercial service.

[Qbertino]

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.

User data collection powers the free internet

[petes_PoV]

"How would you like to pay?"

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.