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

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's time to boycott all those silos you call "platforms" and go back to open protocols. Everybody should physically own their data (including encrypted cloud storage, as long as the key never leaves the client) and connect with each other over a secure open protocol.

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

[Rob Y.]

But Google is just as bad but not as obvious as is any other social media. You are the product.

I don't know what you mean by 'not as obvious', but no Google is not just as bad. And it just confuses the issue to insist that they are. The problem with Facebook isn't that they have your info - it's the way they use it. Including sharing it with 3rd parties, sharing stuff they told you only your friends could ever see, and allowing 3rd parties to target you directly based on the info they got from Facebook.

Google has your info and uses it to run their business. Which is plenty intrusive, but still consists of showing you advertisements that they think you'll click on. That's a devil's bargain that you might not like, but it's not what Facebook does - which is to use your info any damn way they can think of as well as selling it to others. It's possible to use Google's search service in incognito mode and not give them any personal info - and they can still make money off of you in that mode. Of course, once you sign on to Gmail, you're in the matrix. But at least it's possible. Facebook doesn't have the luxury of a business model that can exist without your info - but that doesn't mean they couldn't run a successful business without compromising it. They just choose not to.

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:Not stop - using own owned platforms

[nospam007]

"Twitter dos not know who I am for one"

It doesn't care what your name is. It knows that you're a right wing conspiracy theorist, a bit racism sprinkled over and so it knows which ads to serve you to influence your behavior in the voting booth.

Wrong question; You shouldn't have used it at all.

[wierd_w]

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,

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.

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.

Re:Off to a good start.

[drinkypoo]

Posting that on /. Are you going to hit up Facebook and Twitter too, or should one of us do it?

Isn't Slashdot social media? You've got friends and foes, journal entries, notifications...