The end of privacy?

[ocean59]

I have known my best friend for over 35 years and we phone each other regularly. He has recently been wrestling with a lot of the same issues that eventually resulted in my arrival here, and I referred him to Laura's articles on SOTT.

Those can be a great resource. Did you give your friend the sott.net website address in your referral?

We talked again yesterday and he mentioned that he had found the articles and the one he read interested him greatly. However, he told me, before finding the articles he blundered onto Laura's Facebook page and, thinking that was the required path to the articles, signed up.

Are you saying that your friend did not previously have a Facebook account, but thought he had to have one before being able to read Laura's articles on sott.net? How did that come to be?

Incredible to him were the number of people who, apparently, wanted to be his "friend" (however that works. I don't know how Facebook works and neither did he).

I'm confused - if neither of you know what Facebook is, how did he get the idea it was the only way to view Laura's works? The vast majority of those articles (and books) are not located on Facebook at all, nor sott.net - most appear at cassiopaea.org so far as I know.

Also, the way Facebook works, is that it will ask for permission to access your cell phone directory and e-mail contacts to search for possible 'friends' you may know. And also your location, schooling, or any other info you provide it really (including your name). It will then go out of it's way to suggest you to other people, who may then in turn send you a 'friend request.' There is a wealth of information on the internet, and also here in this forum, about how it works, and best practices. IMO, it is best to think of Facebook as a 'permanent record' that can never really be erased.

Even more incredible was the fact that he hadn't been in any sort of contact with many of them for a good number of years and had not been particularly friendly with most of them when they had, for various reasons, interacted.

Facebook doesn't distinguish between whether or not you 'want' to know somebody - they leave that judgment up to the individual user. They are however, incessant about recommending absolutely everybody you might know, and many you probably don't.

"How is it," he asked me, "that all these people I didn't know all that well are suddenly there, wanting to be friends?"
I had no answer as the only Facebook doings I've had was to sign up to watch some video quite a while ago. I quickly regretted registering and unsubscribed from their email list.

It is probably important to realize that Facebook isn't just an e-mail list. It is much more.

However, I periodically I get another email saying that someone or other that I don't know inexplicably wants to be my "friend", and I again unsubscribe.

Then you didn't really 'unsubscribe.' If you had cancelled your account, you would no longer be receiving e-mails.

I recount this not as any criticism of Laura or her Facebook page, Facebook or social media in general.

OK...but then why did you link the two together (Laura and Facebook corp.)? They really aren't related at all, very different entities, with very different goals.

Social media is a tool and, as such, can be well or poorly used.

How can you really know the reality of this, if you've only participated in such a thing for one day and then quitting? Apologies if I've misunderstood, but it sounds like you were just saying you had no idea of what it was all about.

By registering on such a site, I voluntarily relinquished a fairly large degree of privacy for no good reason,

You did? By watching a couple of videos and then cancelling your account? I don't get it - what is now public that you wished were private?

as I have nothing to teach or sell and nothing to learn from a perfect stranger allegedly wanting to befriend me.

Facebook is generally used to keep in contact with people you already know, not with total strangers, though some people do interact with strangers for the purposes of activism and education (and other nefarious purposes as well, for the flipside).

Also, and this is really an aside, how do you know that all strangers have 'nothing to teach or learn' from you? Although, that is more of a rhetorical question - I don't accept friend requests from strangers on FB generally. But I do carefully consider them just in case.

What is clear to me from the small amount of MSM I watch and the few people with whom I speak is that there are a lot of people not concerned with privacy who spend a great deal of time discussing inanities with people they barely know.

I read an article this morning that claimed 12% of the world's population is now on Facebook. There is no way to sum up the attitudes of these over 700 million people in such black and white thinking, imo. We're talking about more than twice the population of the U.S. here...across hundreds of countries...and languages...and cultures...

Also, fwiw, the MSM is truly not a reliable source of information, generally speaking.

So anyway, who are all these friendly strangers? I don't want to know. They are not getting their hooks into the small amount of privacy I still possess.

I am curious - when you go to perform a search on the internet, which website do you use? ;)

 

[engagedinattempting]

Hi Jason (ocean59);

Addressing your last sentence first: I use Google.

The conversation with my friend was a very recent event at the time I posted and was an honest account and yes, I gave him sott.net. Exactly how his Facebook misadventures occurred I can't say; those doings were on his end and we haven't spoken of them again. I may have successfully unsubscibed myself as I haven't had a notification lately, but I've wrongly thought that before.

I "linked" Laura and Facebook together because my friend's search for one (Laura's articles) led to the other (Facebook). The word used to describe this was "blunder."

If you'll allow me, I'll cheerfully concede the rest of your points. I was speaking in too authoritative a manner on a subject about which I am, admittedly, ignorant. I am less ignorant, however, after a brief perusal of the first 3 of 45 pages of articles found when I searched Facebook on SOTT.

Here's an excerpt from a pretty good one about some privacy issues:
June 1, 2010 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/209720-Quit-Facebook-Day-flops

[...]The latest controversy kicked off in December with a privacy roll-back that meant users' profiles become public by default, whatever the previous settings. Plans announced by Facebook in March to share data with "pre-approved" third-party websites threw extra heat onto a simmering row, mainly since it coincided with negative reports by EU privacy officials and campaigns by privacy activists against the earlier changes.

Last week Facebook got rid of the 50 privacy settings and 150 options built into its system last year without really answering the fundamental question of why it wanted users to share material they posted online with the internet at large. The social networking site's seemingly compulsive tinkering with privacy settings also went unexplained[...].


[...]In other Facebook news, last weekend became the third successive week to witness a run of hacker attacks. Following earlier attacks themed around "Distracting Beach Babes" and "Sexiest Video Ever" the latest attack falsely promised the "Most Hilarious Video ever". Users who fell for the latest ruse were redirected to a fake login page in an attempt to trick them into handing over their login credentials, AVG reports.

Attempts were also made to target US users and con them into downloading scareware disguised as a video codec needed to view a non-existent clip, Websense adds.

The following URLs clearly state the subject of each issue addressed:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/245146-Pedophile-Rings-Trending-on-Facebook

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/235830-Facebook-Brutal-Dishonesty

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/230689-Facebook-is-greatest-spy-vehicle-ever-created

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/236329-Psychopath-Boasts-on-Facebook-I-ll-be-the-new-Foxy-Knoxy-But-why-was-he-allowed-on-the-site-

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/241338-Facebook-Photos-Still-Viewable-After-Users-Delete-Them-Website-Finds

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/243371-Facebook-Leads-To-Narcissism-Shallow-Relationships-New-Study-Claims

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/208867-To-Kids-Facebook-is-More-Important-than-Family

I chose the most overtly negative to emphasize the point I was trying to make originally: you can turn yourself into prey on Facebook if you don't know what you're doing and if you fail to behave there in an extremely circumspect manner.

Thank you Jason (ocean59) for your just criticisms of my post and for leading me to examine the issue more closely. I know we agree that "learning is fun!" Here, at least, we won't have any of these:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/222113-An-Honest-Facebook-Political-Discussion

 

[ocean59]

Addressing your last sentence first: I use Google.

Google is really well known for invasive privacy concerns - tracking everything you type, as you type it, and logging which websites you visit. Even without an account, they can tell when everything is coming from the same home internet address, I think. You may wish to consider some of the alternatives (ixquick, startpage, scroogle) if maintaining privacy is important to you. Fwiw.

I may have successfully unsubscibed myself as I haven't had a notification lately, but I've wrongly thought that before.

Here is a quick way to check: Try to login to Facebook with the e-mail address and password you chose for FB. If you can do this - your account still exists. Here are the official instruction on how to permanently delete your account (look for the link towards the bottom that says 'submit your request.') https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=224562897555674

I chose the most overtly negative to emphasize the point I was trying to make originally: you can turn yourself into prey on Facebook if you don't know what you're doing and if you fail to behave there in an extremely circumspect manner.

I agree with you there - and FB certainly does have a seemingly never-ending host of problems with privacy and keeping a clean environment. It is important to educate people about that.

Thank you Jason (ocean59) for your just criticisms of my post and for leading me to examine the issue more closely. I know we agree that "learning is fun!" Here, at least, we won't have any of these:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/222113-An-Honest-Facebook-Political-Discussion

, that's why I love this forum - learning is fun, and when I don't understand something it is nice to be able to ask questions until I do, in a safe and open environment.

 

[engagedinattempting]

A group of people with whom I used to be closely associated used the term "boy, howdy!" as a means of agreeing with a truly stated thing, an affirmation.

, that's why I love this forum - learning is fun, and when I don't understand something it is nice to be able to ask questions until I do, in a safe and open environment.

Boy, howdy! Thank you for the information on Google alternatives and unsubscribing Facebook.