The scourge of Facebook

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STEVE G
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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caller wrote: Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:08 pm
oakdale160 wrote: Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:50 am What is the best alternative to FB?
I really wouldn't get too hung up about it. Most of us are of no interest to anyone......
But almost everyone is a potential voter to be influenced, companies have been using feedback from social media to tailor directed political messages. They advertise on their websites these kind of services, offering experience of military psychological warfare to use social media in elections.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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Whatsapp co-founder urges people to delete their Facebook account
Brian Acton, one of the co-founders of WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook for $1.6 billion in 2014, has urged people delete their accounts from the social network.

“It’s time”, Acton wrote in a tweet on Tuesday, which included the hashtag #DeleteFacebook. Acton’s remark comes in the wake of increasing public outrage from users around the world over the misuse of private data of as many as 50 million Facebook users by British firm Cambridge Analytica.

The news which broke over the weekend has now grown into a full blown crisis with lawmakers in the US, UK and Europe demanding answers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. On Tuesday, the BBC reported that Zuckerberg, who at the time of writing was yet to officially comment on the scandal, has not even addressed Facebook staff since the news broke, with employees at its headquarters in California being spoken to by one of the company’s senior lawyers on Monday.

Investigations in the UK and US are now underway into Cambridge Analytica, which has claimed it helped Donald Trump win the White House. Cambridge Analytica accessed the private data of 50 million Facebook users without their permission.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... s/30341444
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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STEVE G wrote: Thu Mar 22, 2018 7:56 am
caller wrote: Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:08 pm
oakdale160 wrote: Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:50 am What is the best alternative to FB?
I really wouldn't get too hung up about it. Most of us are of no interest to anyone......
But almost everyone is a potential voter to be influenced, companies have been using feedback from social media to tailor directed political messages. They advertise on their websites these kind of services, offering experience of military psychological warfare to use social media in elections.
Nothing new in any of this, just the technology makes it easier.

But does it work?
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STEVE G
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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What is new is the use of Artificial Intelligence programs to analyse feedback from social media and produce political messages aimed directly to attract votes, you couldn't do that in the past.
As to whether it works, clearly the people who are paying millions for these kind of services think that they're worth the money.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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The Brave New World is upon us.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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This is a good article IMO:

Facebook faces a reputational meltdown
LAST year the idea took hold that Mark Zuckerberg might run for president in 2020 and seek to lead the world’s most powerful country. Today, Facebook’s founder is fighting to show that he is capable of leading the world’s eighth-biggest listed company or that any of its 2.1bn users should trust it.

News that Cambridge Analytica (CA), a firm linked to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, got data on 50m Facebook users in dubious, possibly illegal, ways has lit a firestorm (see article). Mr Zuckerberg took five days to reply and, when he did, he conceded that Facebook had let its users down in the past but seemed not to have grasped that its business faces a wider crisis of confidence. After months of talk about propaganda and fake news, politicians in Europe and, increasingly, America see Facebook as out of control and in denial. Congress wants him to testify. Expect a roasting.

Since the news, spooked investors have wiped 9% off Facebook’s shares. Consumers are belatedly waking up to the dangers of handing over data to tech giants that are run like black boxes. Already, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, a majority of Americans say they distrust social-media firms. Mr Zuckerberg and his industry need to change, fast.

More: https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... l-meltdown

And it could be blockchain to the rescue ...

Blockchain Technology can Create a Social Media Platform that Facebook Can Never be
Facebook has become so much more than a social media company over the years. Not all of their decisions are appreciated by the general public, though. It also seems the platform faces major concerns regarding privacy and censorship. Blockchain technology may very well be the undoing of platforms like these for many different reasons.

https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/03/22/bloc ... can-never/
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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It's to be noted that after a week of detailed exposés about the influence of companies like Cambridge Analytica using Facebook in recent elections, no one has actually sued the Observer Group yet, despite threats to do so.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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Looks like Farcebook is finally having to answer for it's misdeeds from long/recent past...high time IMO.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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At last FB is being exposed for what it was intended to be, a marketing and money making tool and nothing else.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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Zuckerberg ... Looks like the US will have his feet to the fire, and about time, and looks like Bezos next.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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I've put this in here because both companies shamelessly profit out of our personal data.

Google's File On You Is 10 Times Bigger Than Facebook's - Here's How To View It

With all the attention paid to Facebook in recent weeks over ‘data breaches’ and privacy violations, even though what happened with Cambridge Analytica is part of their standard business model, it’s easy to forget that there are four other Big Tech corporations collecting just as much - if not more - of our personal info.

Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are all central players in “surveillance capitalism” and prey on our data. New reports actually suggest that Google may actually harvest ten times as much as Facebook.

Curious about just how much of his data Google had, web developer Dylan Curran says he downloaded his Google data file, which is offered by the company in a hub called “My Account.”

This hub was created in 2015, along with a tool called “My Activity.” The report issued is similar to the one Facebook delivers to its users upon request. Whether or not these reports are comprehensive is still up in the air, but Curran says his was 5.5 GB, which is almost ten times larger than the one Facebook offered him. The amount and type of data in his file, Mr. Curran says, suggests Google is not only constantly tracking our online movements but may also be monitoring our physical locations.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04- ... ow-view-it
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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It's comforting to know that Big Brother and his siblings are looking our for us. Along that same line I have just received a questionnaire from my U.S. bank that demands, with a threat of closing access to my acct., all financial information, about 25 questions, having to do with my entire work history, investments, inheritance, Scholarships, loans, trust funds and much more. Between the public and private sector there is no privacy left. We are being monitored everywhere and at all times. I'm glad I'm not 21 and just beginning to make my way in this world.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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Facebook: If something is free, ‘you’ are the product

THE Cambridge Analytica scandal and its resultant “revelations” have left a bad taste in the mouths of most Facebook users across the world.

On top of regulators in the US, Singapore, China and other geographies launching investigations into the social media giant’s privacy and data policies, the #DeleteFacebook movement has also been gaining steam globally.

Facebook has announced it would notify 87 million of its subscribers if Cambridge Analytica grabbed their data. According to The Guardian, the platform said affected users will receive a detailed message on their news feeds about this today.

The majority of those whose information was shared with the data analytics firm – about 70 million – are in the US. More than a million people in each of the UK, Philippines and Indonesia, as well as 310,000 Australian Facebook users, may have also had their personal information harvested.

Although Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm at the center of the scandal, insists they only had data on 30 million users, Facebook has come up with its estimated 87 million using a simple logic. It calculated the maximum number of friends that users could have had while the personality quiz app built by Cambridge Analytica was collecting data.

But that isn’t the real problem here. And Facebook’s plan – notifying users whose data were shared and teaching others how to “secure their account and data” – is like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. It won’t turn back the clock.


https://asiancorrespondent.com/2018/04/ ... Te2kKw1.97
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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"If something is free, "you" are the product." Headline of the year.
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Re: The scourge of Facebook

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handdrummer wrote: Mon Apr 16, 2018 2:07 pm "If something is free, "you" are the product." Headline of the year.
I agree, not headline news at all. Pithy quote, but as I've said before on this thread, this is not even news despite all the shouting. I don't see anything wrong at all with the Facebook model. It ain't original or even new. :D

Mishandling (i.e. loss) of data is something else, but again Facebook are hardly the only large company (bank, government, whatever) to have data stolen. It's the 21st Century, we need to get used to all of this if we are online in any way:

This explains the whole storm in a teacup very well IMO, and also disagrees with the statement (users being treated as "the product" or treated poorly) :
http://powazek.com/posts/3229

also referenced at:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121 ... duct.shtml
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