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Comment by xorgar831 | Hacker News Reader

Or if we all get together and decide a company shouldn't behave in a certain way, that's another option. We call that government regulation when we everyone gets together to do that. You can think of it as voting with your money, just without the money part.

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Governments have never consisted of "everyone getting together." That's a myth that smacks of socialism. The best way to get the products and services you want (and wipe out the ones you don't) is to vote with your pocketbook.

With Facebook and other "free" services, you are the product -- not the customer. Stopping this is very simple; just don't agree to be the product anymore.

No one needs a social network. There isn't one compelling reason for anyone to join one unless you are a shareholder. You don't need the government to protect you from social networks or fix their ills. You need to delete your account and take personal responsibility for your complicity.

> With Facebook and other "free" services, you are the product

No, you are a supplier of a key input to the product.

No, sir. You are the product to be bought and sold on the free market and that's how they treat you. FB's software is free and therefore not the product. Your personal information is what's commercially valuable and therefore is the product. Google operates on the same model and you can quit that, too, if you'd like. If you don't, that's on you.

Don't ask government to save you from this when you can delete your FB account by yourself and get out of the game.

There isn't one personal or commercial benefit to FB or other social networks which has not already been solved by other technologies.

> You are the product [...]

> Your personal information [...] is the product.

I am not my personal information.

> you can delete your FB account by yourself and get out of the game.

Not really. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29453/facebook-shadow-...

So you still have an FB account because "it doesn't make any difference?" Is that you're argument?

I wasn't making any argument here about what anyone should or shouldn't do. I was simply pointing out that it's not the case that deleting your FB account gets you "out of the game" when it comes to being tracked. That's not the same thing as "it doesn't make any difference".

FWIW, I have a FB account, never initiate friend requests, log in rarely, post ~never. I make no claim that this is the "best" strategy by any particular metric.

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