Facebook is People: Why I Quit Mark Zuckerberg’s Online Collective Data Farm

http://observer.com/2012/05/23/facebook-is-people-why-i-quit-mark-zuckerbergs-online-collective-data-farm/?show=all

by astrec • 14 years ago

62 53 14 years ago

markbao• 14 years ago

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?

ryandvm2• 14 years ago

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.

hackinthebochs• 14 years ago

>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.

ge0rg• 14 years ago

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.

yuvadam• 14 years ago

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.

dredmorbius• 14 years ago

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.

slurgfest2• 14 years ago

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.

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

I quit for two reasons,

1) I didn't want Facebook mining my data, and

2) It was dull and a waste of time. It doesn't help my procrastination, and the only things I used it for were the occasional IM, and... investigating people I was interested in getting to know

mnicole3• 14 years ago

I quit for these very same reasons a few months ago and I truly don't miss the platform. In keeping you 'connected', it devalues the weight of your relationships and dumbs you down.

No matter how many smart people they hire, the UX of the site is continually worsened with each update, the ads they serve are neither smart or relevant and watching brands ruin their reputations through deleting comments they don't agree with instead of confronting the issues just makes it a terrible place to do anything other than stalk people.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

it devalues the weight of your relationships and dumbs you down

In what way?

jluan• 14 years ago

She makes an interesting point of an almost Nozickian demoktesis precursor going on here in the Marxist irony...

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

Nozickian demoktesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia#Dem...

ttt_• 14 years ago

>> And even though Mr. Zuckerberg has a controlling interest in Facebook, it now has to be accountable to stockholders. The tension between user privacy and monetizing data in service of stock price is a real one—and seems unlikely to fall on the side of users.

That's the thing that botters me the most in this whole thing. If things were already very bleak on the privacy side, that concern has just been blown to smitherings with FB going public. The data mining aggressiveness will only gain momentum as the company is pressured into delivering results to stockholders.

seanwoods• 14 years ago

This article offers very little insight. It's just a collection of facts that most everyone knows, rounded out with a liberal dose of narcissistic filler. I really wish these articles didn't make it to the front page.

kzahel• 14 years ago

Facebook will be completely unnecessary in a span. There will be a decentralized solution that accomplishes the "people more connected" goal.

vbtemp3• 14 years ago

I'm wondering: Who else doesn't use facebook?

I have an account, sure, back from '05 when I started college. I log in so infrequently that I often get emails from facebook along the lines of "you haven't logged in in 3 months. We think you should come back because...".

I never got into that whole thing about walls and public conversations and public comments. I'm far too self-conscious (and I judge far too harshly). The whole thing just drives me nuts. Some of my best friends and I are not even facebook friends.

samstave• 14 years ago

I have never had an account. Never will.

16s• 14 years ago

Me neither.

LoneWolf• 14 years ago

Same happens with me. I never liked facebook and still don't like.

ams6110• 14 years ago

No Facebook. No Twitter. No Google+. No Tumblr. None of it.

evandena• 14 years ago

I'm in your boat. I have an account, but it's more of a blank place holder. I have zero customization to it, and maybe once a year log into it (only to promptly log out).

Back when I was in college, 2003-2007, I remember going to lecture halls and sitting in the back. Every student had a laptop out, and all they were doing was posting garbage on other peoples walls. I was so disgusted with the popularity contest that was facebook, I vowed never to take part in it.

I guess I keep it around for the fringe use cases where maybe an old friend will move to my current city, and learn that I live here. Then again, I could close the account and never miss it.

vbtemp3• 14 years ago

> Back when I was in college, 2003-2007, I remember going to lecture halls and sitting in the back. Every student had a laptop out, and all they were doing was posting garbage on other peoples walls. I was so disgusted with the popularity contest that was facebook, I vowed never to take part in it.

I could not possibly agree more with you.

sdqali3• 14 years ago

I used to have an account. But then I realized that what was going on around me was pretty much a mixture of voyeurism and narcissism. People posting stuff about "My new pair of jeans", "my new belt", "my abs", "my biceps" or sitting there and groking people's personal details. I deleted my account. Later at a point, I rejoined because there was someone I wanted to keep in touch and Facebook was the only option due to a number of reasons. But I had already become a Facebook sceptic, and again deleted it for good about one year ago.

vbtemp3• 14 years ago

It's good to have as a repository of people you've met over the years and may need to contact again, but for nothing more.

sneak• 14 years ago

I deleted mine some years ago. I still feel the sting of not connecting with a lot of acquaintances (I emigrated to another continent from where I grew up) but don't want my data aggregated and stored forever where the feds can access it at will. (Remember, the USA PATRIOT Act lets them fetch it all without a judge or warrant - and they do, 50k+ times a year.)

sdqali3• 14 years ago

I have, over the course of last year felt the difficulty of not being on Facebook. This usually happens when somebody sets up an event that I would like to attend, but the invitation and accompanying information about the event is posted only to Facebook. Another scenario is when somebody shares something published Facebook on Twitter or even on HN and you need a Facebook account to view it.

S_A_P• 14 years ago

With the glaring exception of LinkedIn(jobs only), I am social media free. No Facebook, no twitter, nada. I wish I could say that I had it figured out better than everyone else and give a compelling reason to not use facebook. All I can really say, is that I used to have both a facebook and twitter account that were pretty active, and I am much happier without them. YMMV, though, so do what works for you.

codelust• 14 years ago

I don't. Kind of.

Had an account which I disabled end 2010 and deleted end 2011. I'm addicted to mindlessly clicking away on the internet and, unfortunately, I wound up doing that with FB too. I do have another account which is required to admin a company page, but it has no friends in it, near-zero discoverability and I rarely login there.

For a while even I raged against Facebook and people on Facebook, but the fact was that the problem was with me that I could not use it without bringing out some of my worst qualities.

to3m• 14 years ago

I don't. I joined in June 2007, used it a lot for about 2 months, then mostly stopped, then stopped properly (I haven't logged in since October or November 2007).

It was amusing enough, but the amount of time I was wasting on it was out of all proportion to the actual value I was getting from it. I also didn't like the idea that I could be found by people that I didn't particularly want to resume contact with.

zecho• 14 years ago

I had an account in college when it was college-only and it was awesome. Then they let my mother-in-law and Rob Scoble and my boss join and it wasn't fun anymore so I deleted my account.

It's wonderful not having the account, though. I recently ran into someone in charge of my High School's reunion this year and they couldn't find my address. I told them to look me up on Facebook later and that was the end of that conversation. Also, I don't get random "friend" requests from ex-girlfriends anymore.

It really didn't have anything to do with feeding the Zuckerborg. It just got incredibly tame very quickly, becoming less of a reflection of my friends and classmates and more of a reflection of my friends and classmates when our mothers and bosses are around.

abruzzi2• 14 years ago

Today not having a Facebook account is kind of like not having TV was (and in some cases, still is) in the past. We state it proudly and often because there are few enough of us that we feel the need to justify ourselves. (I'm firmly in both camps.) The fact is this article doesn't really seem to add anything new, and trots out the same arguments as dozens of other articles I've seen in the last few months.

That's not to say it's wrong, just kind of redundant.

frossie• 14 years ago

While you are right that the arguments are pre-existing, I think emotionally there is a discrete change with the IPO. It is one thing to feel like you are surrendering your privacy in order to stay in touch with your friends; it is not entirely another thing to surrender your privacy for the geeks providing the platform to make money to support and extend the platform.

Surrendering your privacy so that an institutional shareholder can make money is, emotionally, a different proposition and this is what the OP demonstrates. It's not that people didn't willingly surrender privacy before the Internet; but then, like now, it was done in a two-way transaction. The classic example is building intimacy with, say, your spouse, by telling them something that nobody else knows.

It is entirely possible that with Facebook a public company, some people (who were previously content) will re-evaluate whether they like the other side of the transaction.

abruzzi2• 14 years ago

This is a good point, and a new nuance on familiar arguments. It's still the same argument, but now with fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders.

Estragon• 14 years ago

Someone should redo the Onion "Area man doesn't own a TV" article to target people like us.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

What I get from this article is that the author doesn't like his friends. Facebook isn't forcing anyone to show too much cleavage during Spring Break. The solution is to get friends who share the same ideals as you.

(Another problem is that you want to grant access to your profile to someone, but you don't necessarily want to see their spam posts. If only there was some way to put people in "circles" or something...)

sdqali3• 14 years ago

1. I have felt that there is an implicit social pressure on you to accept friend request from some people. Example:- A colleague who are not really friends with you and don't share the same ideals as you sends you a Friend request. What would one do?

2. I think they introduced the 'Subscribe' feature to address the need for asymmetric sharing.

theorique2• 14 years ago

A colleague who are not really friends with you and don't share the same ideals as you sends you a Friend request. What would one do?

Accept the friend request, hide all their updates from showing on your news feed, and put them on limited profile view is one possible option.

tlrobinson• 14 years ago

Setting them to only view your limited profile is one option.

astrofinch• 14 years ago

Her friends.

GoodIntentions• 14 years ago

some beautifully pointed satire from "The IT Crowd"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rNgCnY1lPg

pretty much sums up my feelings...

adestefan• 14 years ago

I'm not sure that the author's reflection of the difference between Google and Facebook holds up. Google Search will get you other places while slurping up all your data, but every other Google property is more akin to Facebook.

scribblemacher• 14 years ago

Of my approximately 150 friends on Facebook, it seems like it's only the same 10-15 wankers actually posting things and liking stuff. I suspect that the majority of Facebook users are like me---logging in once and awhile to see if they got a message, not posting anything, then going on with their lives.

a3d6g2f7• 14 years ago

Right on, Elise.

What users demand is what programmers will deliver.

This is why it is so important for users to become educated about computers and networking. You cannot ask for what you do not know exists.

There are other ways to achieve "social networking" besides using only Zuckerberg's website and submitting to his warped ideas about human civilisation.

Collect the email addresses and contact info of all your Facebook friends now. You will need them in time when you will have your own "social network". A return to decentralisation is coming. It is inevitable. Everything goes in cycles. What's going to get us ethere is that centralisation has been abused to an unacceptable extent, by a sociopathic kid who is still maturing. Unfortunately he's maturing a little too slowly. I'm not sure users will have the patience to wait. They want an alternative.

FB's only value is your personal data.

They will likely end up having to give it back to you.

The web is going to get better. This is exciting.

sharkweek• 14 years ago

Here's a great simple rule -- Don't post anything particularly personal, keep your interests and likes to a bare minimum, delete any "friend" that you would intentionally avoid if you saw in a grocery store.

redwood• 14 years ago

Jeez, dancing grateful dead bears and prop 19---I must have fit in the exact same marketing box as the author

voyou• 14 years ago

"It’s then either a post-modern joke or a Marxist irony (or both at once) that we are able to buy shares of us. But either way, I don’t want you buying shares of me."

I've seen arguments like this made a few times, and I find them fascinating in the way they treat "data about me" and "me" as synonymous. It's like that old story about people who believed taking a photograph would steal your soul.

qq66• 14 years ago

Not using Facebook is the new not having a television. It doesn't gain you anything, nor does it cost you anything, and somehow everyone who does it thinks that someone else out there cares.

Facebook is People: Why I Quit Mark Zuckerberg’s Online Collective Data Farm

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