Facebook is eating the world

WhatsApp is one of the most widely available app, including Windows Phone 7/8/10 and for now Symbian S60, Blackberry, and Nokia feature phones.

> Never mind that it is illegal to export personal data of this nature to foreign servers under control of a corporation that has no contractual obligation to properly handle such data, not to mention that is quite undesirable. Fortunately the regulatory body in the Netherlands has condoned this practice, but it illustrates the dismal state of affairs.

This is a sad state of affairs, but the blame is 100% on the doctors.

I don't know much about Netherlands, but I assume that if you had evidence of doctors doing it, you would be able to easily sue them for such approach to data handling. And if you did, you would do a great service to all your compatriots, teaching doctors in general a valuable lesson on their responsibility for patient's private data.

They are elected, it's just an implicit election. They only have this power because people give it to them, using willingly a product that:

    - you can live without;
    - has competition;
    - has drawbacks most users comlpains about.

But still, people use those product. They chose to do so. You can advicate it's a poor chose, an uneducated one, one that most users did even without giving the slightest though about it.

But that's democrary. You get what the people want, even when people choose something that will hurt us in the long run.

Whenever I get invited to things I always ask how it was arranged and it's always either Facebook or Whatsapp.

So even if you're not directly using Facebook it may well still be influencing your life.

(I'm not on it or Whatsapp either.)

There's a standard gaming technique in "push your luck" games you can apply to FB use.

So obviously the problem is the ratio of reward to risk might be too low. The risk is that you can always get more money or property or friends, but your life is very finite and hours that are thrown away can never be recovered. Also the reward is extremely high in the short term (the addicts dopamine hit) and extremely low (zero) in the long term.

Given those gaming conditions the typical "push your luck" game mechanic is try it for multiple short but increasing periods of time, evaluate the numerator and denominator at the end of each run, then decide to either stop or keep going. Your standard OODA loop, although the time pressure is unusually low for a OODA loop.

For what little it matters, I pushed my luck about six months on FB. Short term gain was high, got lots of "like" clicks and meaningless positive comments, but long term gain was exactly zero. The cost was extremely high, it was like a part time job for awhile, like being addicted to at least two TV shows or at least one sport. I figured at six months in it wasn't going to get any better either WRT reward or WRT timesink, so I stopped. I still have a perfectly good account. I logged in just a week ago and apparently quite a few people wished me a happy birthday, so that's kinda awkward.

I'll probably try again in the future, see if anything has changed. Casual examination would imply that over the last five or so years, on FB the extremes have grown and the middle has vanished, people I've friended either post once per season, or dozens of times per day, and there's no one in between who only posts once per day or once per week.

Facebook is already dead with young people. My kids burned out on it in about a year, and its dead to them now. If the school district banned it, it must be good, just like how my generation selected music and clothes, so they love yik and snapchat.