FOR FACEBOOK ENTHUSIASTS

Those who shun Facebook are sometimes ridiculed for doing so.  For those who are interested in the truth about this "free" service, there's an article in today's financial news that you may want to read:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-not-free-investor-124910095.html

...and that's why I never joined...my suspicious mind.

Some of us like to live dangerously and we are still around.. Facebook is like everything else , it has its pluses and minuses..If you deal with young people and do not do facebook you are left out.. t is fine for some and not for others.

Yeah.
Sorry, Gringal, but I really don't give a poop.
Risk vs Reward. For ME, the reward is far better than the risk. Sorry.

The reason I kind of sort of like Facebook, is because I keep in touch with my younger relatives who live north of the border. (something I probably would not do where I to not use Facebook)

My relatives and I write emails.  Works just fine.  If you don't mind an end to any privacy......by all means let FB have you for profit.

Big Brother will soon be watching every thought you have... :

When the FBI was looking for the woman who had embazzled funds they were reading her e-mail so do not think your e-mails are so safe if someone ants to acccess them..

The invading privacy statements that you agree to when you use nearly any of these internet services allow them to collect information that I think the police can only legally collect with a warrant. And the sophisticated algorithms that Google and the others use are said to allow them to know more about you than you do yourself. Google secretly started collecting the data and using the algorithms in order to make money and governments have been asleep at the wheel in allowing it. Russia takes advantage of the information to mess with USA elections and Mr. Zuckerberg says he is sorry for their mistakes and they will try to do better. You have to take evasive action to prevent Facebook from tracking not only your information while on the Facebook site but also from tracking your unrelated web travels on other sites, even if you are not a Facebook user. I am disgusted by this. Are we doomed to having every action we take monitored minute by minute as in modern China?

Granted, there are many other ways our privacy has disappeared. One other disgusting aspect of FB and its brethren and sistern is the fact that employers get access, and a youthful written indescretion can cost a person a job.

In general, anything you put in writing is subject to scrutiny...so think before you write,eh?

Facebook is bad. So is Google, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, YouTube and many others. Use Verizon? They too harvest everything you say and do on your phone, even your location. Do you have a weekly session with your friends? They know all about them. Have an Amazon Echo or Alexa, a Google Home, an Apple HomePod? They capture everything you say, 24 hrs a day. Have a smart TV? Same thing, even with the unit turned off. Do you use Cortana, or Apple Siri? They all harvest your requests, too. Sound scary? It should. But what's really scary is what's to come. The list is long and the technologies quite complex so I'll let you do your own research. Suffice it to say that they're doing much more than just pushing advertisements at you and will be doing much more in the near future. Goodbye to any semblance of democracy. Want an apple? They'll tell you that you that what you really want is a chocolate bar instead, and you'll likely agree.

For anyone with the stomach for a fairly lengthy (700 pages) and, at times dry and somewhat academic study of the current and coming state of electronic surveillance by means of so-called social media, take a look at...
This book here. It's disturbing and very much recommended.

I think I lost my internet privacy virginity around 1993 to either AOL or Netzero. . .

That's the spirit. Do nothing. With every passing day I get a better perspective on why a cartoon criminal, a bloated Snidely Whiplash, now occupies the White House.

Jreboll wrote:Just Like being seen naked in a hospital.

Hah! Yeah. Everything's a trade-off.

...and in summary:

https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2020/02/02

ltollefs wrote:That's the spirit. Do nothing. With every passing day I get a better perspective on why a cartoon criminal, a bloated Snidely Whiplash, now occupies the White House.

What are you doing?

Lady Otter Latté wrote:What are you doing?

I'm spreading the word. Revere did no more and he's hailed a hero. I think I detect a double standard here. But seriously, what do I do? I don't use the worst of social media, and I don't own any of the surveilling desktop toys and I don't own, nor need really, a smart phone. The technology is too entrenched in our collective psyche. There's no effective push-back that I can see to apply except to simply not use the technology as a personal choice, convenient though it can be. The occupy movement comes to mind. Until congress in the US and it's counterparts elsewhere grow a pair, social media will continue to claim that your (all of your) internet is activity free for the taking. Their considerable accumulation of data is, however, theirs and theirs alone to use as they see fit. Here are Google's founding, and to them inviolable, declarations...

• We claim human experience as raw material free for the taking. On the basis of this claim, we can ignore considerations of individuals’ rights, interests, awareness, or comprehension.

• On the basis of our claim, we assert the right to take an individual’s experience for translation into behavioral data.

• Our right to take, based on our claim of free raw material, confers the right to own the behavioral data derived from human experience.

• Our rights to take and to own confer the right to know what the data disclose.

• Our rights to take, to own, and to know confer the right to decide how we use our knowledge.

• Our rights to take, to own, to know, and to decide confer our rights to the conditions that preserve our rights to take, to own, to know, and to decide.

"...and to decide." If that doesn't spell doom, what does?

  "Did you see the movie?"
  "Yes, I did."
  "Did you like it?"
  "I don't know they haven't told me yet."

You are quite the smart one, aren’t you? None of us are doing anything like you are. We are just knuckle draggers, dead inside. We read nothing, know nothing, Never think about any of this stuff or anything at all. We need people like you to tell us all this. SMH

LOL! I think they'd have a hard time deciding anything about me. Interpret maybe but then that would only be their opinion... and their opinion really doesn't mean boodiddleysquat given the incredible number of permutations possible.

Lemme see now... the only thing that is a slam dunk for them with regards to me is that I don't read the sports section in any of the six newspapers that I read on line every day.

Lady Otter Latté wrote:You are quite the smart one, aren’t you? None of us are doing anything like you are. We are just knuckle draggers, dead inside. We read nothing, know nothing, Never think about any of this stuff or anything at all. We need people like you to tell us all this. SMH

I think someone failed to detect the humor intended of the opening lines of my post. And besides, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that your question was genuine and not just a snark. I stand corrected.

Well the part about the movie was pretty funny. Come to think about it when you watch a comedy on TV and then you here clapping, that should be a cue that they are telling you "its funny".

Artificial intelligence has a very long way to go. It will never replace human intelligence because even human intelligence can be fooled.

I absolutely laugh out loud at some of the ads and information being directed at me...
1) still being shown bathroom fixtures on Home Depot... even though the renovation is done
2) still being sent suggestions from Amazon for things that I've already bought from them (one time purchases)
3) being asked to comment on a product by Mercado Libre and then being told that the comment was very short and would I like to add more to it... as if PRODUCTO EXCELLENTE didn't say it all.

This all kind of reminds of the very old joke about companion selling:
A man goes into the store to buy tampons for his wife and the clerk asks him if he'd also like to buy a lawnmower. The customer is greatly confused until the clerk says "well, if you're not going to get any action this weekend, you may as well cut the lawn".

Except the man lived in a high rise condo.

To funny as well

An interview with Shoshana Zuboff...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and-a-the-age-of-surveillance-capital.html

She's has a Ph.D. in social psychology, from Harvard no less. She's been studying social media for over a decade. To whom should one listen? A tenured professor with decades of relevant experience, or a maelstrom of harpies? Wirra, wirra, wirra.