For years it has been painfully clear that facebook has been a net negative for society.
Bring back the days of being able to trust your device and services you use without have to skim through TOS and hope they didn't throw a Facebook auth sdk in somewhere.
Agreed. If you make money from invading my privacy I hope you go bankrupt when your ability to spy is stripped from you.
On the one hand, yes.
On the other hand, I don't think it's a healthy situation if companies need to own the entire hardware platform to be safe from another company's whims.
Maybe we (as humans) shouldn't have tried to over-optimize everything and squeeze every bit of whatever we wanted out from something.
Edit: Have people not seen Austin Powers? Do I need to add the /s?
Then, after a random time, it gets back to 0 and gets a small or a big bump depending on support, converting my comment to a small battleground which is kinda amusing. :D
In a perfect world we'd have regulation (such as the GDPR, but with actual enforcement) that would prevent such nefarious activities.
We're not in a perfect world, so a company who owns the hardware and whose incentives happen to align with their customers' privacy steps in.
They don't really align so well, see IDFA. Yes, you can opt-out, but there's no reason Apple couldn't change that in the future if shareholders want that.
What about users? What do I need to own to be safe from the whims of a company like Facebook?
Also, you don't have to audit apps yourself if there's an entire community of volunteers doing it for you, and perhaps even writing alternative FOSS apps.
The web browser sandbox was created to solve lots of problems with security of executables, it didn't solve all of them but it did make content by third parties more secure.
Granted the web probably tracks you as much as mobile, but it will need permission to use your camera/mic/etc and you can more easily see what is being tracked, at least the scripts and states.
All Apple is doing it creating a similar security sandbox to the web and they should.
It's either privacy or not being parented. Perhaps you don't care but many people think it's pretty ridiculous.
Didn’t OpenSSL with Heartbleed show that the “many eyes” argument for FOSS doesn’t hold water?
It’s much improved since then though. Huge portions audited and rewritten.
Thats fine if you trust Apple to do that. All you'd have to do is continue to only use the Apple app store.
The issue is when you want to take away my right to install different app stores.
Librem and Purism sound interesting, but without apple and ios there would be literally no hope in getting away from the toxic business model the ad-tech giants are shoving down our throats.
That's the risk you take working on someone else's platform. If you don't like it, start your own or conform to the new, privacy-enhancing features.
Apple is making a choice, and I support it and will gladly move back to buying apple products if it means they are willing to fight facebook and google over user privacy.
Did that time ever really exist?
Nowadays, most software out there comes with some kind of spyware (Facebook SDK, extremely granular analytics sometimes going as far as screen recording, etc) and nobody seems to care.
What the web has become since the rise of weaponized ad-tech is a tragedy.
Facebook has done a lot to connect people that we don’t read about in news articles.
There are indeed plenty of other ways to connect people without intrusions into privacy, and hopefully Facebook will be forced into those corners (chat apps broken up, content-based advertising instead, offering a subscription, etc.)
People seem to think that the whole thing is rotten and we need to get rid of it, and it’s a great first instinct – but frankly Facebook is here to stay. We need to figure out how we can make that more sustainable.
I think net-negative still stands. I deleted FB years ago.
I have a very hard time socializing that that half of my family any more because they bring up politics constantly and their beliefs on race, healthcare, etc. are frankly embarrassing to be associated with. And I say this as somebody who is overall very moderate and willing to engage with both left and right-leaning beliefs.
Facebook made half of my family unbearable to deal with. I don't think that's a unique situation by any means. So I'd say that they're an awful awful cancer on society that needs to die.
No users under 21. ID needed for registration. Warning labels on every page. Refusing service to people clearly under the influence. Heavy fines, jail-time, and possible destruction of service if found to be in willful noncompliance.
(Just as a start.)
This shouldn't be news to you if you frequent tech forums.
I also think, but am not sure, that if you sell alcohol to an intoxicated person you might get in troubles.
I know for sure it's unlawful in Italy.
If Facebook somehow disappeared overnight, would Fox, OANN and the like throw up their hands and stop? Or would your family just find them on YouTube or Twitter some other platform instead? Or does your family already watch those news sources on TV? Facebook's news feed is certainly a part of the problem here, but it is not the underlying cause for polarization. I haven't studied in depth where the distrust in our institutions is coming from, but as long as there are people seeking to capitalize on it, they _will_ capitalize on it.
The reason I am bringing this up and getting a bunch of downvotes is not because I like Facebook. It is because I want to make sure we focus on the right solutions to solve the actual problem at hand. So, if the problem is radicalization specifically, algorithmic news feeds (plural) are an important piece to focus on. But it's not the entire story: the rest of the news media and other platforms also have things to fix.
If the problem is a concentration of monopoly power, or blatant abuses of privacy, then those bring different problems that warrant different solutions. People like to combine all of these concerns into a single bucket and say "Facebook is bad" but when we do that we lose sight of the other trouble makers: the news networks, the other tech monopolies, and credit card companies who actually sell user data.
Despite all of this, I still think a global network of people connected with real identity has a lot of benefits for society. Maybe a better way of phrasing it: if you haven't deleted your Facebook account yet, then why not?
Perhaps the most dangerous "feature" of Facebook is how effectively it radicalizes its users.
This coupled with Facebook's strong push into the developing world is extremely dangerous.
Just look at what happened in Myanmar for a clear example of how even Facebook was stunned by the monster it created.
Just so happened that common interest was genocide.
When you build a radicalization engine, you are responsible for the radicals it creates.
This is just hyperbolic and probably not true.
Why do we, ostensibly smart people, so susceptible to such dramatic thinking?
Zillions of people use FB every day to read about stuff, connect, organize things.
Some of it is a little heated, some of it misinformation, it's a problem.
But these bandwagon statements are just too much.
This is literally a bandwagon bias argument.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you aren't living in the US and haven't logged into facebook during the recent election year.
I use FB when required for family events, and for niche advertising.
The vast majority of my family and peers use it, for a variety of reasons, almost none of which is toxic or insidious.
Facebook is a reflection of the the internet itself: you have your ice cream blogs, videos about cats, your CNNs, Foxs and the occasional Newsmax turds, very angry social justice types, weddings, funerals, sales, new toys, new interiors, babies, graduations etc. etc. That's life.
I was wary of Facebook right form the start, with Millenials foolishly handing over every little bit of their personal lives thinking 'this was the future' ... but also wary of Facebook now, largely for the same reasons, though the evolution was always a little bit obvious if you think about it.
People were way too upbeat about it then and way to downbeat about it now. Realize what a narrative and try to get off of it.
Facebook was always gossip, prone to bits of otherwise tawdry trash, but otherwise normal for any given era.
There is nothing normal about Facebook and the impact it has had on society.
You can try to paint it as just the salt of the earth sharing baby pics and conspiracy theories if you want, but that is pretty naive, especially for this forum.
Facebook has spent billions building an engagement engine that has radicalized millions of people all over the world.
Talk to burmese refugees about what Facebook means to them and then tell me about my "bubble".
Zillions of people used to smoke and still do. And even though I assume people were coughing their lungs out for everyone to see because of it since time immemorial, till the 70s people were ridiculed for suggesting that smoking is dangerous rather than cool.
Organizing the family Christmas event is not.
Comparing FB to smoking is beyond pale - these bits of HN zealotry are a serious detriment to sober thinking, it's anti-intellectual and tiring frankly.
General social media use however actually is scientifically associated with quite a lot of negative effects. From increased self-harm in teenage girls (and to a lesser but significant degree boys), to anxiety disorders, bullying, and well we don't need a phd to see the negative effects of having genocides arranged on the website.
I don't really see what's anti-intellectual about just looking at the evidence of how these industries manipulate human behaviour, spread misinformation, and cause psychological harm.
I think what's deeply anti-intellectual is talking down the degree to which these digital services have changed and intruded into our lives because "it's just an app on your phone bro" which has been the prevailing attitude, that is only slowly changing.
I actually suspect that just like smoking, or drinking, we're going to look at how we interacted with online media in the early 21st century with a lot of dismay in the not so far future.
My primary account got auto-shadow banned because I got so many downvotes that my karma went a lot below zero.
With the risk of this account going the same way, I want to add that even the ad part of Facebook is a net positive to everyone involved.
Targeting allows small businesses to advertise their niche products or services... and helps the user be aware of the product or services. Before Facebook, the same thing existed but in a different form. You as a small business owner would have to buy placement in niche TV shows or radio programs or a local niche magazine... but for some small businesses, it could be a no go because they'd have to consider a much bigger than required marketing budget. Targeting solves this problem, for small businesses and for users who get suggested the things they're likely to buy and use. In fact, it's not just good for users being targeted, it's even better for those who are not being targeted because they don't have to be bombarded with products they'd never be interested in.
The reason Apple is deciding the default for the users when it comes to Facebook learning about the user is to deliberately hurt small businesses and give their users fake sense of "privacy"... and to not let other platforms flourish.
Apple needs to be legally challanged for monopolistic practices i.e. disallowing users to choose what software they get to run on devices they purchase. Users should be able to download and install Microsoft App Store, Samsung App Store, Epic Games Store... and install any software they want. Why is Apple allowed to restrict what software users can run? Apple is big and too much of a monopoly. Its hardware and software divisions need to be separated and other companies should be allowed to license and sell their hardware with whatever software they want. Users should be able to choose what software comes with their devices.