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Comment by naner | Hacker News Reader

Google, while not perfect, has been more consumer friendly in handing privacy issues than Facebook has. They allow adblocking in Chrome, they allow you to export your data from their properties, they allow you to delete your account, etc. Also Google's walled garden is more permeable than Facebook's.

So while data collection is creepy and monopolies are harmful, I trust Google more than I trust Facebook.

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It will be interesting to see whether Google googleizes social networking (changing the entire genre to be more privacy respectful) or whether social networking facebookizes Google (changing Google to be less privacy respectful, just like Facebook).

Note that I don't believe Google is actually very much better than Facebook in privacy terms. Google keeps everything you do, forever; while Facebook tends to share everything you do, right now. Google does less immediate privacy damage but perhaps more in the long term? What happens when Google gets hacked and it's not just your username and password released, it's everything you've ever searched for and every website you ever visited that had a Doubleclick ad on it? Privacy tsunami, that's what.

If you're that worried, you can delete your web history and permanently opt-out of Google Analytics using Google's supplied opt-out extensions for Chrome and Firefox.

They allow you to do things like that (not to mention data liberation efforts), which is the point the parent was making.

The point everyone keeps missing about facebook is that they were trying something new in the social space. They did commit mistakes and have accepted it. They also allow you now to download all your data. I believe that if facebook merges friend lists and groups, they have will have a strong product against google.

Facebook allows you to export your data, and to delete your account.

Export your data: https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=18844

Delete your account: https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=185698814812082

Thanks. I don't understand how people constantly forget this. What was once true is not necessarily true today.

I don't understand how these things keep coming up. You can delete your account on Facebook. This is fact. You can export your data from Facebook. That is fact. What was once true is not necessarily true today.

Google operates with 30x more engineers than Facebook does. Their bandwidth is exceedingly larger, and this is why features secondary to the user-experience, like data-portability, have historically been lower prioritized at Facebook.

After being frustrated for a long time by such issues, I think people are reluctant to immediately forgive and forget. After all, these issues are part of a larger pattern:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

The Instant Personalization issue was the straw that finally broke the back for me. Without my permission, my Facebook info was suddenly being used to personalize non-Facebook websites[1], and in order to fully opt-out of that you had to visit each application and block it[2].

[1] http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Facebook-Privacy-Concerns-...

[2] http://librarianbyday.net/2010/04/22/protect-your-privacy-op...

I don't know what Facebook did (if anything) to address these issues, and frankly, I don't care. I was tired of having to keep track of the parade of new privacy concerns about Facebook. It seemed every few weeks they added a new feature that required me to once again adjust my settings to opt-out of it. Once they even reset some of the security settings I had previously made, making them more permissive.

So, it is not surprising to me at all how these things "keep coming up".

From what I've seen of the Facebook data export, which was a little while ago now it's pretty much just a token effort to get people off their backs. If they really cared about this aspect, and they don't because max lock in is their goal, they would either provide proper formats that other services can plug into like csv, json or xml or provide an api which users could authorize 3rd parties to access their data to export.

Also can you truly delete your Facebook account? As I understand the process if you log back in it is restored meaning that they don't remove the data?

I agree. I think overall Google behaves more like a grown-up than Facebook does.

I agree. In addition, who else could feasibly compete with Facebook? At least now there's an alternative perspective on how a social network could function. I find that refreshing.

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