We talked about it in the other thread, but I think its important/relevant enough to spin off into its own. For the unaware, Facebook had been selling user data to Cambridge Analytica that was used in the 2016 election. Now there is a small, but growing call for Zuckerberg to resign. I would be shocked if he did, because he has a firm grip over the company as far as ownership and voting power, but its pretty clear the company has grown beyond his control or ability as an effective CEO. Reddit seems to have a similar issue where the CEO commits misstep after misstep. Yesterday they started banning gun-related subreddits for no other reason than a knee-jerk reaction. I am considering deactivating my FB account, not because of this as i just assumed it was happening already, but because its just not offering me any value any more. I use Instagram, but post rarely. I have never used Snapchat and I havent tweeted since mid-2014. Focus: What will the future of Facebook be? Should Zuckerberg step down? Should the execs go before the Senate committee? Alt Focus: Whats your stance on FB and social media in general?
Alt Focus: I have never had a Facebook account. My friends that I want to connect with, I call or text or email. I have no interest in what most of my high school classmates are doing. However, I have accesses pubic facebook pages that don't require log ins, to get updates on friends with illnesses or something like that. It is quite effected for those sorts of mass notifications. I do use Twitter, but I never tweet. I just follow certain things and Twitter moments to stay current on certain things, 140 characters at a time. It's useful in not having to listen, watch or read something long to get nuggets. Then, I can explore further if something catches my attention. Hopefully, Facebook won't go anywhere, so we keep getting gems like "Fuck It, Lick It, Smell It." https://www.caller.com/story/news/2...r-audio-viewers-react-social-media/441083002/
Good fucking riddance. I haven’t felt the need to glance at Facebook for over half a decade. Less of these brain-sucking social media platforms the better.
I think this Twitter thread covers it well: https://twitter.com/saradannerdukic/status/976125179049988097?s=19 As for me, I'm not leaving Facebook. I never fed them all that much data to begin with, and there's simply too many distant friends and family that I just wouldn't stay in contact with otherwise. I'm not a friendly phonecall kinda guy so FB saves me the trouble. Now if a better mousetrap came along and all these contacts jumped ship I'd be gone in a second. What I *might* do is delete my account and start a new, fresh one in its place. One with even less data for them to farm, and no algorithm baggage. But we'll see.
Way back in the day I got a glimpse into what Facebook was becoming when I worked with EA and we started to do some FB integration into a major (billion dollar franchise) game. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it made my skin crawl. The data that we were putting in, and that we could get out, was insane. Needless to say I've created an account, but hardly ever look at it. It seems like every 3-4 years I'll get suckered into logging back in and I'll see a pileup of "happy birthday" wishes for the previous 3 years. So yeah, I've never really invested into FB, and still won't. Like Rush, if there are people I want to talk to that are my friends or family, I'll text, call, email them. They do the same with me. If we want to keep up with each other, we'll text a quick pic which will trigger a phone call. I know too many people that treat "friends" on Facebook as a contest... (s)he who dies having the most, wins, kind of thing. Personally, I probably have 5 really good friends, and (as callous as it sounds) don't really give a shit about the rest enough to keep up with what they're doing on a daily or even weekly basis... I've got too many other things to do to worry about that. But what can I say... I'm just an old cyber-bully who's out of touch with le now generation.
I deleted Facebook a year ago and the lengths they go to get you to log back in (which automatically cancels your deactivation request) is insane. I’ve never missed it. I have Instagram but rarely post, and that’s the extent of my social media.
Now is the time for yet another "Facebook killer" to make their move. But of course the only way to make money in this racket is thru ads and data, and for now at least everybody's savvy to the game.
I feel like Facebook has become a necessary evil. I have deactivated mine a few times over the last decade but I have never made it more than a month. Like GcDiaz, I do have quite a few friends who I do want to stay in contact with but wouldn't otherwise, though that applies more to people who I have met through extracurricular activities that we participate in than my close friends. You can argue "you shouldn't need Facebook to stay in touch with someone," but I really think that it is a good tool to use to communicate with people. Back when I first got on it in 2005, when it was still for college kids, I added pretty much everyone who I had ever talked to in high school as a friend. But I have since deleted or been deleted by anyone who I don't have any interest in talking to. I also use Facebook to log into Spotify and follow musicians and the few other celebrities who I like, but there are other alternatives for those. I am not so worried about the privacy thing. In the last 8 years or so I have known better than to have any expectation of privacy on Facebook. I don't use any other social media. Twitter never appealed to me, and when Google+ came along I heard people rave about it and say that it would make Facebook obsolete...so much for that. There was a brief period in 2005 and 2006 when I preferred MySpace and used it more than Facebook, but even when MySpace had more users I think that only maybe half of my Facebook friends had a MySpace page. I don't know what would replace Facebook at this point.
I post a lot less than I used to mainly gardening updates in the summer. Still enjoy the layout and access it gives keeping up with friends. I think it still outperforms all the other social media platforms as far as variety of functions. Like most I scaled back using it as it became a time suck and/or stressor. My biggest beef with Facebook is when they do big updates to their algorithm and search function which somehow they’ve continually made worse. As far as my personal information I’ve always kept it to a minimum on Facebook. Being identified here on this board or the old RMMB/TMMB (when I was young and insanely dumb) would be much worse as far as jobs or career than anything I’ve posted on Facebook. In general I don’t even mind their big data business model. I’d rather be bombarded with ads relevant to stuff I need and have been searching out than Geico beatboxing in a big box store blanket tv/radio ads. Now the CA thing is different as they accessed data beyond what they had contracted from Facebook. They certainly claimed they used slimy tactics which should be investigated. Not sure how much liability lays in Facebook to police the actions of how 3rd parties use their data (when it doesn’t involve a data breach). I’m not even sure people are in an uproar over CAs supposed tactics as much as they just hate the fact that Trump, the personification of evil in so many minds, used big data.
I use facebook to share pictures of my family doing fun things and to discuss sports with my friends. I also use it to keep track of upcoming events I may be interested in. I pretty much block and or defirend anyone sharing political stuff (whether that be pro or anti-trump, pro or anti-gun etc). I've weened myself off from using it to prove my life is better than someone elses. I do use it to keep up with friends that I don't have time to talk to regularly. I'm ok with that. I must be in the minority here. I knew Facebook made money by selling info about me. This should not be a shock to anyone.
I think everybody knew that, but don't truly understand what that means. People generally don't understand how shit like this works, or what the capabilities of such data collection and targeting can accomplish. They might just think "Oh, they can send me better ads about stuff that I'm interested in", so if you belong to a hunting FB group, then you'd get hunting-related ads. I think when it's becoming more clear that it's being used to manipulate people beyond, "buy this stuff", it's almost like an invasion of space. People tend to like to think that they think for themselves, and aren't being manipulated. I do a fair bit of machine learning work. Right this moment I'm building a data lake to do analysis on cryptocurrency "stuff". Things like "fraud detection" and "money laundering detection and prevention" stuff is pretty typical, and what you'd tend to think it's being used for. Beyond that, we're looking into what triggers people into buying cryptocurrency and how we can artificially trigger that impulse. This is a rather interesting read: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0061353248/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 When it comes to big data and group decision making, ignorance really is bliss.
Im currently readying my company for GDPR compliance in May. I used to think it was overly burdensome, not Im thinking it might not be so terrible.
Blase reactions tend to come from the uninformed. People tend to make snap judgments or form opinions based on their initial gut feeling, which is based on their level of understanding. When big data manipulation possibilities were first raised in the political thread, the overwhelming response was "oh please, a few FB posts aren't going to change my mind on anything... this is a non-issue." This default position was made without any understanding of the data being collected, who was being targeted using it, what they were being targeted with, how it was done, when it was done, over what period of time, what the end goal was, the data or psychological sciences behind it, etc. Just some default "I would never fall prey to that" mentality... that was based on nothing. I find that to be a pretty interesting, if not wholly predictable, response.
This! There is a data war currently going on. I've started diving into AI and machine learning and the one thing I've found super surprising is that the big guys (Google, Microsoft, etc) are handing over their machine learning code for nothing with a caveat that in order to use it you need to give all the collected data sets to them. The people I've been talking to have said make sure you keep control of that data at all costs. It's baffling to me that people are so wary about giving the government their information, but will let FB know their address, email, phone number, eating habits, travel habits, the list goes on. Hell, even my iphone lets me know how long the drive is to work every morning when I get in the car.
I did some stuff that was similar to that a long time ago... basically, it was a pharmaceutical outcomes study where I was provided with raw BC Medical data for patients, that included their drugs, doses, frequencies, outcomes, etc... for 20 years, and I analyzed it all looking for correlations and bad drug interactions at various dosages, durations, etc. The personally identifying data was encrypted and tagged so that I couldn't (in my lifetime with my resources) decrypt it, but they (authorized people) could go back and determine who it actually was that was involved. That being said, I'm not sure how the hell they'd even hope to be able to process that data if it was encrypted in its entirety. Sounds more like the target of a "Holy Grail Grant"... where politicians have a problem so you offer to try and solve it in the ideal manner ("process the data while it's encrypted and HIPAA compliant"), but you just need the funding. I'd be interested to see any findings that came out of that, if you happen to have a link...
You can let a third party or vendor look at unencrypted PHI, they just have to sign the right kinds of agreements.
In my case, the job I was doing didn't meet the necessary requirements for having the full featured dataset. Even if it had, the process to "sign the right kinds of agreements" would have involved months of bureaucratic red tape and oversight that the project didn't warrant. A lot of good could be had if the barrier to access was lowered by keeping the PHI encrypted but complete.
Ahh. It was probably something like keeping it encrypted at rest in the cloud, but providing decryption keys to those that needed them. Basic public/private key signing wrapped up to handle HIPAA processes.
Love is just a chemical reaction, life is meaningless, just kill yourself. Man you been bumming me out lately with this. I need to start drinking during the week again.