That makes me wonder: is the nature of Facebook inherently distrusted, since they have so much data, and those who use it spend so much of their lives on it, or is the distrust based more on their privacy record?
What if Facebook had a clean privacy record but still collected all of that data from us, in the name of providing the service (of messages, friends, social—your life on the internet, essentially)? Would they still be suspicious?
Facebook, on all accounts, is a business. A business is exists in order to make money, full stop. In today's world, user privacy, and ethical values do not exist in the economic formulas. Sure, it makes for great PR. But at the end of the quarter, those "values" would be crushed in an instance to maximize profit.
Make no mistake, your interests and Facebook's are completely orthogonal.
Facebook is not about "making the world more connected". I pity whoever believes that is true.
There's a bit of confounding of this given the rise in popularity of what's called "Cause Marketing". Socially beneficial activities undertaken by (generally) traditional for-profits. Often seen as a marketing benefit. Not bad of itself, but it's helpful to remind companies that token measures don't absolve other actions.
It's fair to say that many traditional for-profits don't. Inclusive of social networking for-profits.
The problem with Facebook is not that it is a company. It IS with their privacy record. The problem IS corporate misbehavior, not the existence of capitalism.
It's creepy because of the business model. You don't pay them to use it, so they have to make money selling information about you. As long as Facebook is free, there's no way around this.
The problem of course is that nobody is willing to pay for something like Facebook. It turns out that our privacy isn't worth squat.
>so they have to make money selling information about you.
What does this mean? Who have they sold information to? There is a big difference between selling ones information and using said information to better target ads. I was under the impression they do the latter, which seems perfectly legitimate to me.
I don't believe I'm stretching things to call it "selling information about you". Facebook takes money from advertisers and delivers you to them via highly targeted advertising. That is, by purchasing something through a Facebook ad, that seller now knows that you're an 81 year old female in Sarasota Springs in a "complicated" relationship that likes mountain biking.
I'm not saying that this transaction is unethical, I just think it's creepy.
Every large database is of interest to certain groups, be it law enforcement, secret services or criminals (or any combination thereof).
Therefore, even with the cleanest privacy record, FB still can be forced to give away your information. This can only be prevented by using decentralized systems, which pose a smaller target to the above groups, or by quitting FB and forbidding all your friends to ever mention you there.
Comments
That makes me wonder: is the nature of Facebook inherently distrusted, since they have so much data, and those who use it spend so much of their lives on it, or is the distrust based more on their privacy record?
What if Facebook had a clean privacy record but still collected all of that data from us, in the name of providing the service (of messages, friends, social—your life on the internet, essentially)? Would they still be suspicious?
The answer is a definitive yes.
Facebook, on all accounts, is a business. A business is exists in order to make money, full stop. In today's world, user privacy, and ethical values do not exist in the economic formulas. Sure, it makes for great PR. But at the end of the quarter, those "values" would be crushed in an instance to maximize profit.
Make no mistake, your interests and Facebook's are completely orthogonal.
Facebook is not about "making the world more connected". I pity whoever believes that is true.
NB: there are for-profit companies who have a corporate charter to create a net social benefit. They're called benefit corporations: http://www.bcorporation.net/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
Non-profits also frequently serve this role.
There's a bit of confounding of this given the rise in popularity of what's called "Cause Marketing". Socially beneficial activities undertaken by (generally) traditional for-profits. Often seen as a marketing benefit. Not bad of itself, but it's helpful to remind companies that token measures don't absolve other actions.
It's fair to say that many traditional for-profits don't. Inclusive of social networking for-profits.
The problem with Facebook is not that it is a company. It IS with their privacy record. The problem IS corporate misbehavior, not the existence of capitalism.
It's creepy because of the business model. You don't pay them to use it, so they have to make money selling information about you. As long as Facebook is free, there's no way around this.
The problem of course is that nobody is willing to pay for something like Facebook. It turns out that our privacy isn't worth squat.
>so they have to make money selling information about you.
What does this mean? Who have they sold information to? There is a big difference between selling ones information and using said information to better target ads. I was under the impression they do the latter, which seems perfectly legitimate to me.
I don't believe I'm stretching things to call it "selling information about you". Facebook takes money from advertisers and delivers you to them via highly targeted advertising. That is, by purchasing something through a Facebook ad, that seller now knows that you're an 81 year old female in Sarasota Springs in a "complicated" relationship that likes mountain biking.
I'm not saying that this transaction is unethical, I just think it's creepy.
Every large database is of interest to certain groups, be it law enforcement, secret services or criminals (or any combination thereof).
Therefore, even with the cleanest privacy record, FB still can be forced to give away your information. This can only be prevented by using decentralized systems, which pose a smaller target to the above groups, or by quitting FB and forbidding all your friends to ever mention you there.