Comment by blah32497 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blah32497 | Hacker News Reader

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I didn't have a facebook account for a very long time, and now I do and I realized I had no idea what I was talking about.

Yes, old acquaintances posting about minutia of there lives is of no value and can be down right irritating.

But the single most important function facebook provides is it turns acquaintances into friends. You can add people on Facebook that you've only meet once or twice before. You don't need to awkwardly ask for someone number or email or on the spot make future plans to meet up. You just look them up and you're instantly connected to them. You may learn they have a hobby in common with you or that they have an event that you're welcome to come to, and through the connection provided by Facebook you can strengthen your relations with people you find interesting.

For my real friends that I keep in touch with regularly facebook is more or less irrelevant - in fact most aren't even on my facebook. It's a nice platform to upload your photos to I guess, but honestly emailing a dropbox link is kinda nicer tbh.

I'm similar to you. I had an account for a long time, then "deleted it" a couple of months ago.

My entire problem with Facebook has been based around invasions to my privacy. As the years went on, I realised that more and more of my privacy was being eroded. I realised that Facebook really didn't care. I realised that I was helping them to build one big database that was searchable and rampant for abuse by a rogue government agency.

My quitting of Facebook meant nothing really. They already had all of my data, and primarily, my contacts and a profile picture. The "deletion" of my account just meant they switched my account status from "active" to "deactivated" to "deleted".

I'm not naieve enough to believe that they really deleted all that info. I proved several times to the contrary previously through minor Facebook bugs.

At the end of the day, Facebook is company that over time more and more people won't trust. The demographics are already changing and ageing.

The key thing I have taken away from deleting my account t is much like yourself. I realised that I don't actually miss it. The people I was friends with on Facebook weren't my day to day friends. To be perfectly honest I don't have many.

Everyone on Facebook that I knew were exes. Ex work colleagues, ex girlfriends, ex friends. If they want to keep in touch then they can find other ways to contact me.

Maybe we can meet up and have a face-to-face, away from the prying eyes and ears of the snooping governments that we all live under in 2013.

One final thing. I will discourage my kids from having Facebook accounts. I hope I can teach them about their privacy, such that they don't want one in the first place.

A bit off-topic, but Facebook has always very intentionally been on the cutting edge of eroding privacy and frankly it doesn't really matter what you do. In 10 years people will care even less about privacy than they do now.

Due to Facebook people now-a-days are sharing significantly more than they would ever have been comfortable with even 10 years ago. That trend is only going to continue.

"one big database that was searchable and rampant for abuse by a rogue government agency"

I think this doomsday mentality is going to eventually disappear, and the socio-economical cost of NOT being on social media is going to grow. No advanced society (past a certain GDP) has slipped back into tyranny and all the people that think Obama is going to go fascist and read about how you love tranny porn are not grounded in reality.

Even if tomorrow the government had complete access to everyone's Facebook, life wouldn't change and the world would keep turning b/c ultimately the government doesn't have that much power. Even if Obama hated you personally the best he can do it get your balls fondled at the airport and maybe audit you (though if you pay your taxes, you shouldn't be concerned with that). And yeah, it's important to fight against tyranny and to for instance demand the dissolving of the TSA, but in reality the gov't doesn't care about you and as long as you aren't breaking any laws (and most people aren't) it's not really a big deal.

> No advanced society (past a certain GDP) has slipped back into tyranny

What are you talking about? There are advanced societies today that are in the middle of tyranny (Russia and China come to mind) and there are very well known examples of societies slipping into it (Germany and Japan come to mind).

National moods can change surprisingly quickly. Look at gay rights for a recent example in the US--public opinion has done a 180 in a generation. Privacy rights have an interesting partisan dynamic as well, unlike many other issues it does not split down party lines. It could definitely go the way you're saying, but I wouldn't consider it a done deal.

None of those societies are modern by current standard and none had truly stable functioning democracies(russia and china? you can't be serious).

I don't have a direct link to a study, but I'll quote this article

http://thediplomat.com/2013/02/13/5-ways-china-could-become-...

"Statistical analysis shows that authoritarian regimes become progressively more unstable (and democratic transitions more likely) once income rises above $1,000 (PPP) per capita. When per capita income goes above $4,000 (PPP), the likelihood of democratic transitions increases more dramatically. Few authoritarian regimes, unless they rule in oil-producing countries, can survive once per capita income hits more than $6,000 (PPP)."

There are plenty of advanced countries where privacy isn't considered a god given right, and they aren't turning authoritarian. I once tried to explain to a group of japanese businessmen the america idea that guns are meant to counteract the potential tyranny of the government. They looked at me like I was insane.

In my limited experience in France (so I may be wrong here), people didn't seem to really have a concept of police not being allowed on private property.

A quick google search says that in the UK they don't need warrants, not to mention guns are almost completely illegal. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2010033008545...

We in America live in a complete lala-land when it comes to the government going evil - and more broadly the fascination with apocalypse (but that's a larger issue)

I can't tell if you're joking to make a point. Japan and Germany aren't "modern" societies?

And now you're just shifting the goalposts. You never mentioned anything about democracy in the grandparent post. I would also note that Germany is democratic.

I guess I don't understand your argument;

I said: "No advanced society (past a certain GDP) has slipped back into tyranny"

I bring up Japan and Germany. I assumed you were not talking about modern Japan and Germany, and you were referring to WW2 Japan and Germany. Japan was a monarchy that turned into some kind of fascist monarchic bureaucracy and Germany was a failed state that turned fascist. Neither represent a modern society turning tyrannical. And yes, when I say modern I mean democratic and with a degree of respect to civil liberties (which is basically true for all wealthy countries in the world, save some oil states). There is no use comparing the US to China - that's apples to oranges.

Because unless they're democratic, they're no true Scotsman right?

I guess my problem is that whenever examples are provided which contradict the model as you proposed it you decide to "clarify" the definitions so as to exclude those examples. Maybe that's the argument you originally intended to make, but it's not actually what you said.

Actually you just aren't reading carefully.

"No advanced society (past a certain GDP) has slipped back into tyranny"

The only reason I need to clarify things is because when I say "advanced society past a certain GDP" you think China and early 20th century dictatorships are great example. Then you pretend that in the original post you were talking about modern Japan and Germany, which given the context made no sense

The only clarification I made that sorta moved the goal posts is excluding oil rich countries from my argument, which frankly is a corner case.

Warrants are required in the UK, though there are special exceptions such as when a serious or dangerous incident, agreed its open ended but the onus is on the Police officer to prove it and entering without one is unheard of in my experience, the source below provides more detail, and is a reliable source:

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/law_e/law_legal_system...

It is always a failure to interpolate the future linear from now on. History was never linear. It is more like waves between extremes. Therefore my estimate would be a new Biedermeier period.

You obviously did not study history. Look up Germanys history (Nazis, Stasi) if you want a picture of what a gov't can do with you or your children.

I do study history, I just don't see the cyclicality of it. I think it's an illusion that people want to see. The late 19th century was a period of extreme nationalism. There wasn't a similar period 100 years before, and there isn't one 100 years later. I think it's very dismissive of the progress we've made intellectually over the past century to think fascism/communism/tyranny is going to come back. I think it's completely unsustainable in our current (and future) society so there is no fundamental reason to militantly guard privacy against some illusory future evil that won't come about.

I guarentee that you discouraging your kids from having Facebook accounts (or whatever their equivalent is) will only do harm. Privacy in the modern era means being selective about the disclosure of content. It doesn't mean completely pulling away from social networks which are increasingly vital to social interaction.

Plus pretty sure you don't understand modern day kids otherwise you would know that private tools e.g. Snapchat are more often the real invasion of privacy.

> Plus pretty sure you don't understand modern day kids otherwise you would know that private tools e.g. Snapchat are more often the real invasion of privacy.

How is Snapchat more an invasion of privacy than Facebook? Facebook has played fast and loose with user data at every opportunity while Snapchat is based around user data being ephemeral. Maybe I have missed the news stories of kids committing suicide because of private Snapchats, but the two companies have literally opposite goals in terms of data retention.

>I guarentee that you discouraging your kids from having Facebook accounts (or whatever their equivalent is) will only do harm.

Because FB is some kind of inevitable force?

I, for one, also respect parents that don't let their kids watch television crap.

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