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Comment by nickthemagicman | Hacker News Reader

There's actually a clever hack to get around facebooks information gathering. Deleting Facebook.

No, not even close. Facebook doesn't need you to have an account to gather information on you. It's an ad network tracking what you browse everywhere on the web via cookies. It also know who you are via your accounts with other sites and agreement to share. So if your email address is connected to your friends contacts it know you connections before you even have an account.

They also get data from apps compiled with the FB libs. No account needed.

That's why I use NetGuard (Android app) as a personal firewall on mobile and block facebook on home router etc.

what are FB libraries?

I dont have the FaceBook app on my fresh Android phone. There's still the com.facebook.katakana service running, which I explicitly blocked via NetGuard. But they are still the tracking pixels and cookies remaining, via all the webpages with their Like button integration, and Google/Mozilla conspired to block browser extensions to disable those.

Facebook won’t make coin without a delivery method for the ads. Stop using their products and they will suffer greatly.

Ok sure, but thats secondary info.

All that they can get for sure is that you know someone.

That's way more limited compared to all of your thoughts likes dislikes beliefs location family members pets, etc that people share when logged in.

My point is that we complain about Facebook stealing our data but then log in to Facebook and freely give it to them.

Instead of waiting for the govt or some big regulatory entity to slap Facebook we can do it ourselves and just delete Facebook.

Why do you think people don't just do that?

Because FB provides them with (what they perceive to be) value.

I deleted FB, Insta and Twitter, and lost nothing. My life got better.

SAME. Those sites provided me with negative value.

FB explicitly asks connections about other connections. This means other people might be giving your info to FB even if you don't.

Facebook knows that you met someone or know someone?

That's all they know for sure.

it's something but not much.

"Did Jane smith go to <some school/university>?"

"Did Jane attend <event>?"

"Do you work with Jane an FooCorp?"

etc etc etc

They know much more. What you liked or disliked, which ads you clicked on, which ads you closed immediately, which you waited till they finished. When you added people as friends. Which network were you in at the time. What browser/system/device were you using. How fast was your internet. How much battery you had. How often are you using their site, how it changes through the day and through the year, have you changed your timezone.

Each of these is insignificant and noisy, but when aggregated it allows 99.9% predictions on stuff like "who are you voting for", "how much do you earn", "are you expecting a child", "are you buying a house/car/trip/anything significant soon", "how's your health", "are you sleeping well", "where do you live", "are you on a trip", etc.

People get ads about health issues before they realize they have these issues, because the Algorithm knows better.

When you have enough noisy uncertain data it doesn't matter that it's uncertain and noisy.

I think that may be a bit sensational.

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