Steve Wozniak on why he is leaving Facebook [video] | Hacker News Reader

Steve Wozniak on why he is leaving Facebook [video]

usatoday.com

129 pointsrandomerr105 comments

The problem is that users see Facebook in a different way than Facebook sees itself. Users see a fun website where they can post pictures of their dog. Facebook sees ways to get companies to pay for access to those users. That disconnect is at the heart of all the issues around Facebook.

Looks like it is time for my 2-monthly repost of The Seven Realities of Social Networking.

https://sheep.horse/2013/10/the_seven_realities_of_social_ne...

Those are good points, but the post does come across as a little apologetic. Serving the paying customers should not absolve you from responsibility for the data collecting.

Reductio ad absurdum: a hitman's job is not to be concerned with the well-being of their targets, but to serve the paying client. This doesn't make killing people for money not evil, because the business model is inherently unethical.

Facebook is not non-evil for collecting user data to target their customers' ads. I think the entire foundation for their business is unethical.

I agree with the points of the article, save for #7, but I think it's unfortunate Facebook doesn't have to take more responsibility for the data collecting they have pioneered and continue to do.

Agree. I'm living in Europe and there are people who value their privacy and talk about it loudly. I don't expect that global companies hinder their growth without regulation forcing it. That's the reason we fight for our right for privacy and use the only language they understand: financial penalties.

Murder is illegal here. Now we do the same with privacy. We're in power, not them. It's not the job of the hitman to be ethical (although it would be nice). It's the job of our society to fight for our values.

I think the issue is that Facebook, unlike a hitman, is providing a service to the user, the user just isn't paying for that service.

The service is essentially public, like education, health, and roads. We would benefit if it could be managed and paid for publicly.

The only issue is that Facebook's scope is transnational, so you can't solve this locally or nationally. The same argument probably applies to similar platforms that facilitate "public discourse."

Perhaps something under the UN umbrella will eventually emerge to fill this vacant space—not unlike how nation-states nationalised railways in the nineteenth century?

>The service is essentially public, like education, health, and roads.

Could not disagree more. I am not a Facebook user. While I have benefited much from education, health, and roads, and would stand to lose a lot were they not present even if I chose not to use those services. As a non-Facebook user, my life has not been negatively impacted by not using it, nor has it been positively impacted by other's using it.

The value of this service is so low that I would absolutely be opposed to the state getting involved in providing Facebook alternatives, and would really not want my taxes going towards it. Let those who value it pay for it (whether financially or through their data).

Not to challenge your distaste, but insofar as more among us use it to talk about and organise around public issues, it is a de facto public space and has a public utility.

Just to give a micro example, last month parents at my kids' primary school used a Facebook group to challenge (albeit unsuccessfully) top-down changes in the school's governance. I'm talking about that kind of thing, not holiday photos.

Interesting example. Railways in my country are State-managed and I don't find them a good service at all. Are yours?

Your state is possibly mismanaged!

Fun fact: the current Secretary-General of the UN is an ex-PM of my country.

Care to reassess your proposal? :)

> I think the entire foundation for their business is unethical.

Then much of modern business is unethical. What facebook is doing isn't very different from what newspapers do, what tv networks do and what much of tech does.

What do you think ABC, NBC, CBS, etc does? What do you think nytimes, washingtonpost, npr, etc does? What do you think google/youtube does? Even NPR sells "ads" to their corporate sponsors for "donations".

> for the data collecting they have pioneered and continue to do.

You are giving facebook far too much credit. They didn't pioneer anything. They are just the best at it. The business model that facebook excels in certainly predates its existence ( google did it before facebook ) and on a broader scale, predates facebook by decades.

The point should be that facebook should be forced to simply state what they are doing and collecting to each new user and the user should decide whether they want to use facebook's services or not.

Yes, I do think tracking users in the way that is commonplace nowadays is absolutely an ethical issue and I deem it wrong despite its wide spread.

I can buy a newspaper (at least one that still exists in printed form) and read it without being tracked by an invasive marketing machine. Advertisement is not the problem, it's the user tracking. I'd rather Facebook, and yes — Google, ABC, NBC, CBS, WaPo, NPR and so many others go bankrupt than continue on business model that is based on violating the readers' privacy.

Being the best at data collection is pioneering in my book, because it means they are doing it more effectively or at bigger scale than people before them. I am not trying to imply that it's ok for non-Facebook entities to do that, either. Google's data harvesting is absolutely as much of a problem. I referred to Facebook specifically because the parent's linked post did.

> Then much of modern business is unethical.

Well... yeah.

I think they meant that the business model of a hitman specifically, because of, y'know, the killing.

So, the reductio would be demonstrating that the "who pays isn't the same as who 'receives' the thing" isn't a sufficient defense in every case.

In comparing Facebook to newspapers and others scale matters. When you have an addicting service at the scale of Facebook that also has the ability to sway elections or public opinion at the scale they do then it becomes a problem. Requiring disclosure from Facebook is not enough. They need to be heavily regulated.

When I read a newspaper or tune into a radio station they are in no way harvesting my personal information.

What if you visit their websites?

>Reductio ad absurdum: a hitman's job is not to be concerned with the well-being of their targets, but to serve the paying client. This doesn't make killing people for money not evil, because the business model is inherently unethical.

There should be a Latin phrase for absurd analogies. The obvious difference between your scenario and the Facebook one is that the victim is an unwilling participant.

>Facebook is not non-evil for collecting user data to target their customers' ads. I think the entire foundation for their business is unethical.

On this you will find a reasonable split between those who agree and those who don't. It is not obvious that it is unethical.

Personally, I have no problem with them using the data to serve targeted ads. If I were to broaden it out, I do have ethical concerns about merely collecting that much data on a person and saving it. But my concerns are for use cases much worse than advertising.

>The obvious difference between your scenario and the Facebook one is that the victim is an unwilling participant.

There are numerous obvious differences involved that make comparison between user tracking and hired murder absurd. The reductio merely pointed out that the defence, that the victims are not the customer, does not excuse what is being done. This is laughably obvious in the case of hired killers and comparable in the case of user tracking. Any other similarities were not implied.

Also, I largely question the ability of a large part of the user base to give informed consent on the case. The extent and implications of the user tracking done by Facebook (and other parties) are byzantine and difficult to grasp for me, a nerd with interest in privacy issues. I do not expect the general public to have a deeper understanding. Even then, Facebook has been known to track people without user accounts. That doesn't count as willing participants as far as I'm concerned.

>On this you will find a reasonable split between those who agree and those who don't. It is not obvious that it is unethical.

I will and it is not. I hold an opinion shared by many, but I am under no delusion that it's uncontroversial.

>And besides, they take nothing that you don't give them.

I think this has been disproven in several instances.

Yeah, that article is very apologetic for Facebook... but the problem is that they do take what you don't give them.

Heck, they'll build an advertising profile on you even if you don't have a Facebook account, and they'll add to your profile even if you're logged out.

There's also all sorts of problems with the data their mobile apps pull out of your phone.

I wrote a batch script that writes to your hosts file a bunch of tracking URLs which are designed to take data from non users in order to enrich the 'social graph' of people who are either logged out or don't have FB accounts. Please ignore all the flask stuff for now; I plan to turn it into a SaaS app that writes to your host files and continually pushes new tracking URLs as I discover them: https://github.com/jtbarker/nofbtracking (btw the irony of me sharing this on a social site for programming is not lost on me).

How is this different from the infamous http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm ?

More geared toward people who don't know how to write to hosts files.

I find it disingenous if you claim "continually pushes new tracking URLs as I discover them" and not give the upstream credit.

This is fair, then my system will give credit. V1 of this list is here: https://qz.com/1234502/how-to-block-facebook-all-the-urls-yo...

That is a long list!

Good summary of the realities. Also the drawing is 10/10.

This sums up my opinion about Facebook and how to properly use it without having to resort to Nietzsche or Freud. Neat link, thanks.

but always kafka..

and Orwell.

If facebook were human, we'd rightly deem it a sociopath for its manipulative behaviour, callus disregard for impact and effect, grandiosity, and cold scheming behavior.

That's the same way all free online services work. If anything, Facebook is mostly limited to its data silo. The larger scope of aggregation that general data brokers engage in is a much bigger, unsung problem.

I think the big takeaway here is not that Woz is saying this, but that USA Today is carrying a story about leaving Facebook. I'd almost guarantee that USA Today's readership has never been presented with the concepts regarding user data that we, here, are all very familiar with.

I thought this was commonly known?

He's attempting to speak to a wider audience, remind those that know but haven't heard it in a while and attempting to trigger new realizations of the absurdity of promises to protect privacy by organizations who's primary revenue source is the exploitation of privacy.

It's commonly parroted on HN.

I realize this, but I still have a hard time not using Google services. I know they are analyzing my data for ads, but it in incredibly convenient for me to be on the exact same platform, from email with gmail and file storage with google drive and browser with chrome and android on my phone, they just seem to get me with one thing at a time in the name of standardization. What steps can be made to prevent this?

I much prefer the ads that are personalized to me then the random ads I get on mass media.

One caveat! Can I please not be bombed by ads for days for items I purchased?!?!?! I bought a camera and I have seen the batteries and camera in my ads for almost a month now.

The excuse for these kind of ads is that it's just machines making correlations, but I've always thought it's mostly easy to solve: they should only show you ads for things you bought when it's the kind of product that other people have bought more than one of. So, that would check out for things like consumables, but not for big appliances, for instance.

No need for manual checking of which products pass the test, it would still be automated.

I see you bought an oven, would you like to buy another oven?

Replace gmail with an email server you control.

Replace file storage with a hard disk you control.

Replace chrome with chromium (or, better, firefox).

Replace android with an android fork that uses f-droid instead of the Play store.

And you're done, no more Google usage.

I currently use my Google account only for signing in to YouTube, so that it keeps track of my subscriptions and let me write comments. I use Firefox's "multi-account containers" so that only the "YouTube" container knows my Google account. Google Analytics for non-YouTube sites doesn't get to trivially associate me with my Google account, because I look at all other sites in different containers.

If someone created an alternative YouTube interface that allowed you to keep track of subscriptions without telling Google who you are, I'd probably use that rather than logging in to YouTube. Bonus points if it also gives you a disposable Google account with which to write comments.

Each YouTube channel also has an RSS feed you can subscribe to. That way you don't tell Google who you are.

  1. Go to any YouTube channel you wish to subscribe to (such as youtube.com/user/YouTube).
  2. View source.
  3. Search for rssUrl or channel_id.

There should be a link to an ordinary RSS feed you can use with any reader. Hope this is useful for you.

Thanks for this! I am pretty fed up with the subscriptions dashboard in YouTube since they introduced posts.

Brilliant! Thank you.

Why not use YouTube's RSS feeds and use any bog standard reader?

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC3x6qC4...

As for the comments that's likely a bigger issue to tackle, especially with how liberal Google is with captchas these days.

Nice... I just plugged the channel page into feedly and they got me the feed... I had never thought of doing that. Since I really don't care about commenting on YouTube, I'm now "free" of the bonds of logging in to view youtube.

Just curious, what reader do you use?

> Replace gmail with an email server you control.

do you do this personally? i've tried and found the barrier for entry is through the roof. if you don't configure everything just right you end up on gmail's spam blacklists and nobody gets your emails. and good luck getting off the blacklist once you're there.

i would love advice from anybody for self-hosting a reliable email server that the major carriers won't treat as a second-class citizen.

Yes, I do this personally.

The barrier to entry is certainly higher than setting up a web server, but it's not too hard.

Advice for improving deliverability would be to add SPF and DMARC records for your domain (don't worry about DKIM).

Other than that, if I end up in someone's spam filter, I tell them to fix their spam filter. If your spam filter is classifying legitimate emails as spam, it's a bad spam filter. Doesn't happen often though.

See I would do this but I don't personally trust myself this much. Do you have the server on AWS or another cloud hosting website?

Have you tried Zoho mail? It's not the same as rolling your own, but it's decentralized from Google's servers. Not just that but you can register domain specific addresses (like Google Apps) for free. It's my standard for new domains.

They can still collect all the info you provide them directly, but it's a bit different than cross-referencing your gmail account with your phone's location history and your google search history, paired with your Google calendar travel plans and emails about shopping list updates for your Amazon account.

Most of your contacts are using gmail as well. So your emails are eventually landed on gmail servers.

I just needed to test if I can send emails to gmail accounts form my selfhosted mailserver without them getting put into the spam folder.

I'm using that email for ~6 months now, I haven't yet send an email to gmail... I checked. And I use email quite a lot actually.

That's a good point but at least Google won't be able to disable your gmail account and lock you out of all the accounts and media you had tied to it.

> Replace android with an android fork that uses f-droid instead of the Play store.

The store itself isn't the only functionality; many apps rely on many services provided by Google's proprietary Google Apps (Gapps) and most users will need to work around that too; there are FOSS replacements such as the microG project (I don't know its current state).

For android there is NewPipe: https://newpipe.schabi.org

Completely free, uses none of the google internal APIs and manages your subscriptions, watch and search history locally.

I would also add security as one benefit. Not sure how others feel, but I think Gmail is one of the most secure ways for me to handle my email (US government agencies are not on my threat list).

I think Google takes security very seriously and their scale allows them to do and know things smaller vendors would not know.

While rolling your own email server is fairly easy thing to do, you can easily open attack vectors you don't think about. Like social engineering attacks against your hosting or DNS provider which would allow attacker to get control of your server or traffic. These kind of tricks can be pulled of by people who just get annoyed on you on Internet or who want to take your nice Twitter handle.

Prevent what? Making convenient things?

Having all of my data in Google Servers.

Step one: Put it somewhere else.

Is this the catalyst for change away from those companies, or just another passing bout of enlightenment that will be forgotten by the masses by the midterm elections?

When Trump got elected, I was hopeful that it would result in the many people who were asleep at the wheel on surveillance-related issues (among other matters that self-described democrats were willing to ignore as long as "their guy" was in office) during the Obama presidency finally waking up.

Hopefully it sticks, but I'm giving it maybe a 25% chance of doing so, ironically due to the ADD-like attention span social media has cultivated across society.

My dad and probably your “normal” relatives probably don’t care what Woz thinks. I stopped using Facebook, but nobody else I know actually cares. I’m in anecdote-land, I know, but honestly, the general public is addicted to Facebook. This isn’t a MySpace analog — MySpace was a playground of the fickle young. Once Aunt Edna is on Facebook, it’s going to be hard to dethrone. Aunt Edna was never on MySpace, so it was much easier for that platform to crash.

It’s also sad and hilarious to me that people have said they’ll stop using Facebook, instead they’ll use WhatsApp or Instagram. Same horse, different fleas.

As an addendum, I find it strange that people are “deactivating” their accounts. What does that even mean? Facebook still has your data and you are still being tracked. Unless millions actually delete their account (and Facebook actually DOES delete it,) nothing will change.

Unless I can query the Facebook database, how do I know anything is actually deleted? I find it hard to believe that anyone can actually get a confirmed deletion from any social service. We are trusting that delete actually means deleted.

As you point out, there is no difference between "deactivating" and "deleting" your account, because Facebook doesn't delete anything. Either one is just a statement that you will no longer use Facebook. Anything that hurts their MAU numbers is an effective protest. Just look at their stock price in the last month.

Under GDPR, Facebook will be facing some serious trouble if they try to continue the not-really-deletion deletion thing, so at least there's some hope for those who reside in Europe on this front.

That said, even for those who are in countries like the US, deactivation and ceasing "engagement" with Facebook is still at least one step better than continuing to actively feed them data.

This is the reason I haven't deleted my FB yet, I'm going to send so many letters this June! And then I'm going to be joyously forgotten for real! And then I'm going to send more letters to see how forgotten I truly am!

GDPR = Get Damn Priers Rekt

Was Edward Snowden the catalyst for change away from tolerating government dragnets?

No, not enough to insist on “liberty [from dragnets] or death”, but it sure made a lot of people more aware about the spying powers of major govnerments on the devices people use every day. The toothpaste of paranoia cannot go back inside the tube of ignorance.

This is that same moment for the private sector. Sadly, as another poster mentioned, people will scathe Facebook and go to Instagram or WhatsApp instead, changing nothing.

>"Was Edward Snowden the catalyst for change away from tolerating government dragnets?"

Wait when were government dragnets ever tolerated? We are talking about things that undertaken in absolute secrecy. Was there legislative change taken in response? No or certainly nominally.

Was there a change in the publics attitudes? Yes, absolutely. See:

https://www.recode.net/2015/3/16/11560290/snowden-leaks-have...

Change isn't always instant and immediate.

Most likely the second, because when the media jump on their next topic the average user will switch back to apathy.

I am not sure we have to wait that long, the masses may have never actually cared. We live in a world where many just shrug and accept what happens because they believe its the only possible outcomes.

on sites like HN and even reddit are but a bubble

I think its too early to tell. I do think however that change will happen when or if people decide FB is not a company they want to work for. That despite a CEO who wears t shirts, the free gourmet meals and fro yo its just "megacorp" with questionable practices.

Hopefully the former, but given how most "normal" people tend to respond to these things, most likely the latter.

I wonder if they'll be a sequel to The Social Network now.

'The Circle' doesn't do a bad job of filling that niche.

So Apple products are the high road here? Products that lock me in and force me to shell out money every few years to upgrade, force my friends/family to use the same platform (iphoto), creates gardens with massive walls (doesn't let Siri talk to apps, has a totalitarian regime of an app store), and more, or use the completely free Facebook where "I am the product"? Most people don't care and even I am not convinced being the product is necessarily a bad thing.

Every few years? Don't Apple products have unusually long lifespans and support durations?

How easy is it to change a battery in your phone? Upgrade the memory? What about them slowing down the phone when the battery degrades, and only just recently to be called out for that?

Oh c'mon. The alternative to them slowing it down is an unexpected reboot. Is that what you want? Crashes?

I want them to be transparent about such issues and then let me buy a new battery at the apple store when it gets to that point. They don't want to make this happen, they want me to buy a new phone.

Still using my 2008 MacBook Pro, it gets security updates but won’t run latest OSX.

The most troubling defense from FB I've heard is that product companies that charge for products and don't have ad supported models are inducing "Stockholm Syndrome" in those who defend that approach vs the free ad supported model. To me it seems that that analogy is stronger for those who don't pay for free products, as they are arguably more locked in than those who can 'vote with their wallets' and stop buying.

* Proceeds to check in via Foursquare

Swarm

he undeleted it yesterday, about 18 hours ago, for a while

Welcome to Restaurant Facebook. If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

tl;dr - I explain in detail why you should use Facebook for your advantage instead of complaining about their lack of decency.
Anybody who denies Facebook doesn't recognize its true value for ones personal brand. It's not about your data - you shouldn't do anything remotely personal on this platform, ever. It's all about personal marketing. And for this purpose, it is the perfect tool. You can decide how people perceive you and gain social power and influence other people. If you refuse to take this chance because they sell your data, you're wasting a big opportunity. It's known for years that they don't care about privacy, and neither should you when you use those platforms. Use encrypted and decentralized communication channels if you want to communicate without being spied on.
But Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat can be used to build powerful social influence. And this can be used to gain further power - I'm not a fan of Nietzsches "Will to power" bullshit, but I'm interested in power regardless to build my personal empire (maybe based on deep insecurity and narcissim, whatever rests under the consciousness).
For all those Facebook haters: Your distaste for this platform stems from the fact that they don't value privacy and that people in general don't really care. But don't miss this opportunity just for the matter of doing "the right thing". If you're an existential nihilist like me, you recognize that all those opinions don't really matter (including yours) and are often used to find value in oneself like many vegetarians, no-facebookers, minimalists, etc. use it (I'm a vegetarian - it can be used to feel good about oneself if you prefer to give your narcisstic side those impulses. I try to avoid doing it for those reasons to overcome myself). Sigmund Freud called this the "Narcissim of small differences", don't get fooled by your unconscious side - even if you think that it's rational to avoid Facebook. Think in terms of power and how you gonna get it. I know, this certainly sounds like a sociopath, but you can do good things with this power. "Humans of New York" is a Facebook page that shows us how we can use this power for good.
Don't hate the game. It's man-made and without any purpose like our whole existence. Learn to play it if you want to master life in this society. Otherwise you just support your ego - exactly like the people who are on Facebook. You're not smarter than them. Nobody here is including me.
I just hope that people learn to value the opportunity and do a rational risk-assessment instead of using emotions of rejection because a company is selling user information. I don't support that Facebook does that, but we can still use their platform to our advantage while hiding our true personality (and therefore enforce our privacy).
edit: Maybe most people who are on Facebook see it like this - although I have the notion that most people don't reflect on this level about their Facebook and social media usage.

The point of not avoiding FB for petty vanity - essentially, don't cut off the nose to spite the face(book) - is valid. But the analysis falls short, because by adding content to FB, you're still strengthening its network effect. How many people will keep using FB (at least partially) to follow your profile? Arguably, you're complicit in that.

To add to that: What's the culmination of all this?
Everyone ends up with a non-personal brand avatar that interacts with other brand avatars while life outside is entirely separate?
I understand that people "pose" online, as well as sartorially and socially offline, but this would be an entirely different ball game. What's even the point of participating after you've removed the last remaining percentage of real interaction from social media?

What's the culmination of all this?
Oh, that we've know for fifty years. It's the acceleration of the Spectacle:
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."

That's both well put and awfully prescient.

> What's the culmination of all this? > What's even the point [...]
I can assure you that the answer to your question leads to something that you don't want to endure.
I receive my dopamine from browsing on HN. Is this better? If I would be an AI that is able to simulate real interaction and you wouldn't know it, it wouldn't change anything. reminds me of https://xkcd.com/810/

> I receive my dopamine from browsing on HN. Is this better?
Two things spring to mind. You're right in that we're not interacting socially, but on the other hand you have an anonymous throwaway account, so I know you're not trying to sell me your brand. So while we're not building a social repertoire, we are (hopefully) having a constructive dialogue focused on topics, not on brand personas.
HN isn't a social network for me, or if it is, it's removed from identities. I don't come here for specific people, I come here for a collective (anonymous as far as I'm concerned as I very rarely open someones profile) group of people with links and insights I for the most part find interesting.
That makes this different from a social network where the expressed purpose is connecting individuals with old and sometimes new acquaintances, which then is entirely subverted in GPs premise.

Sigh, "Personal marketing". Reminds me of this insight: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/all-f...
As for HONY: http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/sentimentality-critique-hum...

I don't say that I support or like anything like this, but you can have disadvantages if you don't build your personal brand. - And after all, the meaninglessness of all of this fits well with my way of thinking about this world.
Those social media platforms are creating alternate realities that can become the meaning of life for some. Still better to live in this fake society than being complete nihilistic. I can't even express what I want out of life because I'm too deep in it, I don't want others to feel that void. Better numb than seeing the nothingness.
For HONY: Sociopathic guy supports people in poor situations only for personal gain. This is what I envision - this style of living is perfectly suited for human beings. Being nice because of pure egocentrism. I've thought long about a stable paradigm that enables humans to do good things and help other people - this is exactly the conclusion I've come to.
I don't judge if this is good or bad, there's no judging and no "Sigh" on my side. It just is.

Well, using Facebook as a narcissistic supply is much better than abusing real relationships for it. I suppose that is a benefit to the society at least.

I'm not sure if this is a society I want to live in. But yeah, sure, give them a platform. But I guess they won't stop destroying people in the real world just because they have influence on social media platforms. Most humans don't work that way, sadly.

I appreciate the sentiment. But its not a dichotomy. You can do both. Work for change, and adapt to what is.
Now, just giving up on Facebook if it could help you is a self-defeating action. Idealism is good, but better when used for positive action. Instead of spiteful making-a-point self-hurt.

Are you on adderall?

No, just procrastinating on a higher level. Should definitely continue to work now, but thought about those topics lately.
I hope your comment isn't meant to be offensive, can't read you sentiment. I'm not a big fan of those drugs.

No, I wasn't trying to be anyways. It just seemed from your comment that you were very amped up, and jumping around a bit.

Good for him, but why should I care what he does?

Ask yourself that question. If you find the answer is you shouldn't care, then don't click the link.

How has this not been obvious from the start?
I can't be the only one that knew this from the start. Nothing is free.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com