Did You Really Agree to That? The Evolution of Facebook’s Privacy Policy
techscience.org
techscience.org
The first[1] is a user's search history, which allows a user to see what terms they entered into the search box, going back apparently to nearly the beginning of the website (I think I saw records back to 2005).
The second[2] is a list of advertising topics or preferences. These, I believe, are generated automatically from pages you have "Liked" in the past. For instance, I found a listing for an obscure city in Japan that had the same name as a radio station I had subscribed to.
In both cases I guess it's some form of "benevolence" for them to freely admit they had this data and to allow you to edit it. At the same time, the second page in particular struck me as disturbing because there are at least 3 different settings which already ask that my interests and preferences not be used for advertising purposes. I had specifically set those options against targeting. Yet, here they are, gathering that information anyways.
There's this general page for ad settings: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&view
None of them offers you an opt-out on ads based on interests.
The largest supermarket chain (AH) here implemented a new loyalty program with personalized promotions last year, for which they needed changes in their privacy policy. They had to delete all their customer data and start completely new - re-registration of customers, giving out new passes and everything.
Back in 2005, while the rest of us were building an idealistic Internet full of democratic freedoms and such, Zuckerberg's breakthrough was realising that when the unwashed masses finally quit TV and get online, you need to be ready to feed them a high frequency mix of narcism, LOLs, peer-pressure and distraction and you'd have them hooked.
Once hooked, you can do _anything_ you want with their privacy. Anything. Sure minorities may complain about point 8.7 in the T&C but the majority just want that "Agree to Terms" dialog to get out of their face so they can get back to their habit.
"Dumb fucks" -Zuckerberg
( http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims... )
About 3 million computers get sold every year in China,
but people don't pay for the software. Someday they
will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we
want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted,
and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect
sometime in the next decade.
Many organizations and groups use Facebook pages to share information with the general public. Some only have Facebook pages.
Well I don't have Facebook, because it was habit forming and otherwise excruciating. Quitting has been one of the best things that has happened to me. But I still visit band pages and organization pages from time to time in order to get basic information about events, etc.
So I find this coercive tactic of forcing me to sign up for Facebook in order to access content meant for me to see to be divisive, insidious and overall obnoxious.
I agree that quitting was a good choice. It left me liberated, made me feel better, and I didnt like that I "had" to check it multiple times an hour.
I recommend Balkan's more recent version of that talk, "You Are The Product". In particular, he has a much more in-depth analysis of the business model and startup culture ("digital imperialism").
(the talks by DJB and Appelbaum on that page are also very good)
edit:
look at all the downvotes. Does it make the cognitive dissonance go away?
down votes for me, signals I should re-read the post again :)
There are some folks on here who don't like hearing this kind of stuff but can't (or can't be bothered to) articulate why.
Is the idea that your comment is off topic?
This isn't a comment about privacy itself—which I am totally "on board" with—and the documents obviously have some importance or use, but to read just so much into the minutiae of them, collecting them centrally or even refuse to trial a service because they simply copy-pasted from another service that had some awkward wording seems a little bizarre to me.
This, however, might be just might be my British mindset (ie. no written consititution!) versus a US one..