One of the big annoyances in life is being notified or bugged about something I don't need to be notified about. This keeps getting worse with modern tech all the time which has slowly led me to stop using anything I don't have full control over.
There is probably an explanation for this that doesn't boil down to "FB watched our GPS and noticed our phones sat next to each other at the same location for several hours," but it still felt sufficiently creepy to make me uninterested in sticking around to figure it out.
That's exactly what happened[1].
> "Location information by itself doesn’t indicate that two people might be friends," said the Facebook spokesperson. "That’s why location is only one of the factors we use to suggest people you may know.”
1. https://splinternews.com/facebook-is-using-your-phones-locat...
I think Facebook's tactics were a landgrab before the global populace starts to build an antibody to pervasive advertising/spam/surveillance.
Clearly this needs to be bolstered by legislation/regulation.
Why not just disable notifications, or just uninstall the app without deleting your account? Facebook can still be of use to you without you being of use to it.
I've long used Facebook only for messaging and managing events because it's an effective and ubiquitous platform for both of these things.
Many apps provide useful notifications but some genius somewhere realized they can get more eyeballs if they abuse the notification system. So you have to take the bad with the good or throw them both out.
What’s worse is some apps provide “fine grain control” which is supposed to allow you to decide what types of notifications you get. Some other genius had the idea to be very loose with what belongs in what category.
And yet another genius had the idea to spam email if phone notifications are disabled.
And they’ll let you disable that too... but yet another genius had the idea to “accidentally” forget all these settings.
So... I don’t know. Disable them, sure. It’s the advice that keeps on giving, I guess.
Possibly because some combination of his device/platform/Facebook didn't honor his request after a while. At one time it wasn't unheard of for an app to self-update and reset notifications and other settings.
or just uninstall the app without deleting your account
Revenge, probably. And/or to punish FB microscopically, but in the only way we can.
I've long used Facebook only for messaging and managing events because it's an effective and ubiquitous platform for both of these things.
Good for you. Not everyone lives the same life that you do.