FC/OT: Delete Facebook?

[anon_xdc8rmuek44eq]

Without getting into more recent specific privacy-related incidents, is this a realistic option for you? I stopped using regularly some time ago and really only keep it to share photos of kids with some friends and family. The novelty of seeing everything everyone does all the time, or connecting with friends you no longer have anything in common with, has long worn off and anymore I just don't care. If not for family and a few friends, I would completely delete my profile. I already removed it from my mobile devices and only access it from my desktop. I hate that they own Instagram, which is the one social media platform I find worthwhile. Anyone else with Facebook/social media fatigue?

I get that the recent movement is tied to politics and stuff, and not getting into that, but I noticed the founder of WhatsApp (whose company was bought by FB for $19bn!) just shared this....

 

[Obliviax]

I was active on Facebook for a very short time. My wife got involved being a public defender about a decade ago. In the last, say, six years, she has noticed prosecutors selectively using facebook posts to incriminate people. For example, just like on this board, if a high school band director posted a photo of an 18 year old girl doing a selfie, and was being sued/prosecuted for hitting on a 16 year old band member, that facebook post would be very damaging. Any comments are taken out of context and leveraged.

I've heard of facebook posts, giving an infant and or toddlers a bath, used against men in divorce proceedings.

Employers now, review Facebook and other social media as a matter of vetting candidates. Again, out of context posts and/or posts made as facetious can be used against you (Facetious posts, as we know, are often misinterpreted because you cannot use voice inflection to denote the facetious nature of your comment).

In any case, I am off facebook and have been for five years. I don't miss it. If someone wants to share a photo, a group text is just fine.

 

[Madsol]

I enjoy it. Don't post a lot but enjoy seeing updates on family and friends that I otherwise wouldn't see. And I was just invited to join a closed group of people from the town I was born and raised in and I have absolutely loved seeing a bunch of old pictures from my childhood. I probably access Facebook 4 or 5 times a day.

 

[ClarkstonMark]

I am literally shocked at what I see some professional colleagues saying on FB.
I made a decision early on to not have any FB friends that are customers or work in my company, not that I say anything controversial, but that has worked out well.
I also cull my friend list at least once a year to keep it well below 100.
It would be very easy to give up FB, even though it is so great as a tool for the G-parents to keep up with the G-kids (as well as to brag about and show off my hot gf )

 

[Columbus_Lion]

Had an account for a long time, but never posted. I was never comfortable with the concept. Finally deleted the account yesterday (saved the email from Facebook).

 

[JWB389]

Question for those who have done it. Does deleting your account remove all of your photos, comments, etc? I don't think it does. Obviously where others are tagged it would not. Just curious how much info is removed if you delete the account. Probably very little.

 

[Lionguy32]

I am on Facebook but rarely post. Most of the stuff people post is crap, but once in a while I find some good information and see some cool pictures.

 

[PSUArnie]

Without getting into more recent specific privacy-related incidents, is this a realistic option for you? I stopped using regularly some time ago and really only keep it to share photos of kids with some friends and family. The novelty of seeing everything everyone does all the time, or connecting with friends you no longer have anything in common with, has long worn off and anymore I just don't care. If not for family and a few friends, I would completely delete my profile. I already removed it from my mobile devices and only access it from my desktop. I hate that they own Instagram, which is the one social media platform I find worthwhile. Anyone else with Facebook/social media fatigue?

I get that the recent movement is tied to politics and stuff, and not getting into that, but I noticed the founder of WhatsApp (whose company was bought by FB for $19bn!) just shared this....

View embedded media

Was a really cool concept when it first came out but has become pretty damn useless - between political posts and people posting about their favorite potato salad recipe I really see no use for it. Plus reading about all the crap Facebook was pulling behind the scenes, I for one, just hope it goes away.

 

[fastlax16]

I use it fairly regularly for some groups tied to a couple hobbies of mine. The groups serve a similar function to message boards such as this one. Use it much less frequently with regards to interacting with my actual social network.

 

[ThePennsyOracle]

"Never post, look at, or share anything online that you're not OK with the entire world knowing." Great advice given from a professor.

 

[BoulderFish]

I enjoy it. Don't post a lot but enjoy seeing updates on family and friends that I otherwise wouldn't see. And I was just invited to join a closed group of people from the town I was born and raised in and I have absolutely loved seeing a bunch of old pictures from my childhood. I probably access Facebook 4 or 5 times a day.

This is kinda where I'm at. I seem to post less and less as time goes on, but I still enjoy reading about and seeing what others are up to. But I also agree with the OP that it's not what it used to be.

I think part of the problem (from my perspective) started when FB went to an algorithm to generate your 'feed' rather than just showing all your friend's posts in chrono order -- if you don't manually switch your feed over, you miss a lot.

 

[anon_xdc8rmuek44eq]

"Never post, look at, or share anything online that you're not OK with the entire world knowing." Great advice given from a professor.

According to SAI sources, the following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb ****s.

 

[Uh Clem]

I have a large extended family scattered over the country. I use Facebook to stay in touch and to share photos. Once people show me photos of cats or dogs in shelters who need a savior or who are doing cute things, I block all future posts from them. Everything else, I ignore. I have three friends...I don't need or want any more.

 

[AWS1022]

I don’t have a Facebook page nor do I want one. By the way, get off my lawn!

 

[LionJim]

"Never post, look at, or share anything online that you're not OK with the entire world knowing." Great advice given from a professor.

That's always in the back of my mind when I post here. I think that anyone with a computer and half a brain could figure out who I am in fifteen minutes, so that probably has something to do with it.

 

[mgkpsu]

Question for those who have done it. Does deleting your account remove all of your photos, comments, etc? I don't think it does. Obviously where others are tagged it would not. Just curious how much info is removed if you delete the account. Probably very little.

Facebook "owns the rights" to anything you ever posted, whether it's a comment, picture, poem, whatever. When you delete your account, it is no longer accessible to your friends, but it sits on Facebook's servers should you ever choose to reactivate it. And, as I predicted 10 years ago, Zuckerberg will eventually sell his giant trove of data to the government, if not a private bidder.

 

[anon_xdc8rmuek44eq]

I have a large extended family scattered over the country. I use Facebook to stay in touch and to share photos. Once people show me photos of cats or dogs in shelters who need a savior or who are doing cute things, I block all future posts from them. Everything else, I ignore. I have three friends...I don't need or want any more.

You are the Ron Swanson of BWI.

 

[Obliviax]

According to SAI sources, the following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb ****s.

I know of several companies that are combining social media (facebook, twitter, linkedin, instagram primarily) to build profiles on their users. The association algorithms are incredible. For example, if you are a PSU fan (follow a bunch of PSU stuff) you get an indicator that you are probably older and white. If you combine PSU with the fact that you listen to the Beatles on IHeartRadio, you are 99% considered older and white. On the other hand, if you follow Cardi B and Daym Drops on Youtube you are probably young and AA. So what? The PSU/Beatles fan gets fed adds for Depends and Drug Commercials where as the Cardi B fan gets fed ticket outlets and clothing/makeup adds. The algorithms are simply mathematical and have no prejudices other than "when someone does A, they are likely to do B" but times 100 in complexity (if they do 1~100 they are likely to do 1000~ 1100).

Know, add in things like how hard you press on the mobile phone screen, how long it takes you to sign in, do you use fingerprint ID, where you make your card purchases (using GPS), if you use Waze or Google Maps, do you use an Android or iOS device............

The profiling accuracy is simply amazing....and going to get scarier. These are what people talk about when they talk about BOTs. I was in Vegas a few months ago, as I walked out of an eatery, I got a text message asking how I liked the place and would I rate it. They used a BOT along with GPS (I gave the hotel my mobile number to get 500 points). It is amazing.

 

[ForesterGump]

If you aren't paying for content, then you are the content.

 

[psuro]

I never signed up for Facebook. I only did Twitter for about six months. Never all that interested in social media.

This board gives me all the angst and joy that I can handle.

 

[ILLINOISLION]

What’s “Facebook”?

 

[PSUSignore]

I am literally shocked at what I see some professional colleagues saying on FB.
I made a decision early on to not have any FB friends that are customers or work in my company, not that I say anything controversial, but that has worked out well.
I also cull my friend list at least once a year to keep it well below 100.
It would be very easy to give up FB, even though it is so great as a tool for the G-parents to keep up with the G-kids (as well as to brag about and show off my hot gf )

I have custom settings on my page for different types of friends. For example, co-workers have very limited access while regular friends have looser settings. It's one way to manage it. I also have a 2 beer rule... I won't be your Facebook friend until we've gotten a beer on 2 separate occasions. I do not accept friend requests from people I don't know or barely know, and if they are someone I still don't know well after a couple of beers I have an "acquaintances" privacy setting for those people. It's tedious, but it helps to keep things under control.

I think part of the problem (from my perspective) started when FB went to an algorithm to generate your 'feed' rather than just showing all your friend's posts in chrono order -- if you don't manually switch your feed over, you miss a lot.

Bingo. This was one of the single worst changes that Facebook made. I don't want a curated feed full of ads and crap that Facebook thinks I want. I want posts from the people and companies I like and follow, and I want them in chronological order based on when it was first posted, not when it was last commented on. It's ridiculous. For example, I live in Austin and my feed is full of 2 day old news stories to be on the lookout for the Austin bomber while the relevant news is that he's now been found and is dead.

I was in Vegas a few months ago, as I walked out of an eatery, I got a text message asking how I liked the place and would I rate it. They used a BOT along with GPS (I gave the hotel my mobile number to get 500 points). It is amazing.

Many people voluntarily allow their phones to track and report their every move. For example, Google maps has a setting where it will record everywhere your phone goes, and can create a map of this history for you. I turned this off, if felt invasive. Before doing so I'd get similar alerts. I'd leave a restaurant and minutes later would get a text asking me to review it. Or I'd arrive somewhere and I'd get a text asking me to confirm their business hours so their web data could be accurate.

BTW, tracking phone locations is one of the ways the Austin police were able to identify their bombing suspect. Apparently they had been in touch with phone and mobile providers to get lists of phones in the proximity of bombed areas in a certain time frame. If you do that at multiple locations, eventually you're only left with a few results that were present at each one, so they already had him in mind as a person of interest. Then the suspect put himself on camera dropping things off at Fed Ex and that confirmed it, and allowed them to ID his vehicle. So the technology can also be used for good.

 

[Obliviax]

I have custom settings on my page for different types of friends. For example, co-workers have very limited access while regular friends have looser settings. It's one way to manage it. I also have a 2 beer rule... I won't be your Facebook friend until we've gotten a beer on 2 separate occasions. I do not accept friend requests from people I don't know or barely know, and if they are someone I still don't know well after a couple of beers I have an "acquaintances" privacy setting for those people. It's tedious, but it helps to keep things under control.


Bingo. This was one of the single worst changes that Facebook made. I don't want a curated feed full of ads and crap that Facebook thinks I want. I want posts from the people and companies I like and follow, and I want them in chronological order based on when it was first posted, not when it was last commented on. It's ridiculous. For example, I live in Austin and my feed is full of 2 day old news stories to be on the lookout for the Austin bomber while the relevant news is that he's now been found and is dead.


Many people voluntarily allow their phones to track and report their every move. For example, Google maps has a setting where it will record everywhere your phone goes, and can create a map of this history for you. I turned this off, if felt invasive. Before doing so I'd get similar alerts. I'd leave a restaurant and minutes later would get a text asking me to review it. Or I'd arrive somewhere and I'd get a text asking me to confirm their business hours so their web data could be accurate.

BTW, tracking phone locations is one of the ways the Austin police were able to identify their bombing suspect. Apparently they had been in touch with phone and mobile providers to get lists of phones in the proximity of bombed areas in a certain time frame. If you do that at multiple locations, eventually you're only left with a few results that were present at each one, so they already had him in mind as a person of interest. Then the suspect put himself on camera dropping things off at Fed Ex and that confirmed it, and allowed them to ID his vehicle. So the technology can also be used for good.

totally agree...but if you use your mobile # or email address to sign up for this or other sites, systems will create a profile. so, for example, you use your email address as "BWIUser@gmail.com". you then use that same email address for twitter and instragram, the systems combine you under that email address. Then, you file your taxes using that same email? guess what, they know who you are, were you live, how much you make....etc.

This is what the two political parties did. They aren't going to convince the hard right or left...so they ID those that are most likely to be swayed. And, nobody cared about NY, CA or AL because those states were going blue or red no matter what. So they targeted Ohio, FL and the swing states. In fact, they targeted the swing voters in the swing states. Better yet, they used tools to get an influential family member that was hard left/right to post things that might sway the swing voter to agree with them. They now have tools to track, say, purchasing habits based on a family or coworker's purchasing habits. So if I see you bought Uggs at Zappos and then two coworkers and your sister did, too, within two weeks, you are a group leader! As such, you will get more targeted stuff as a leader as opposed to a follower. And on and on it goes.

 

[LafayetteBear]

I don’t have a Facebook page nor do I want one. By the way, get off my lawn!

I can beat that. I have never logged onto any of the following sites:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Linked-In
4. Instagram (if there even IS a site)
5. Red Tube

OK, maybe one of those sites....

 

[Cletus11]

my wife has facebook, i have zero social media profile, not on anything. when i look at facebook using her account, i am amazed at what people will say on it. facebook is fine, you just have to keep up with. constantly blocking new ads that pop up. delete people who you put on a long time ago for reason that no longer are relevant. don't post stupid things. the issue is 90% of the public is pretty stupid and easily swayed by advertising and actual click on those crazy ads that constantly come up.

as for big data, it is crazy now. I go online and look at buying X (X can be anything). The next website i go on (it could be this one or yahoo or anything) and all the ads that are on the side and top are what i just looked at.

the part that i don't like is that algorithms now that essentially just constantly feed you the same stuff all the time. and there is no way to get out of it. for instance, i hate reality TV, Kardisians, etc...so on yahoo, they have the ability to right click and say no more articles like this. so for a week, i did that to every article like that i saw. except the opposite happened and in clicking on the article, it just kept sending more until the point where literally 85% of all the articles on yahoo were on reality TV. so now i essentially don't use yahoo anymore as it is worthless.

 

[michnittlion]

I know of several companies that are combining social media (facebook, twitter, linkedin, instagram primarily) to build profiles on their users. The association algorithms are incredible. For example, if you are a PSU fan (follow a bunch of PSU stuff) you get an indicator that you are probably older and white. If you combine PSU with the fact that you listen to the Beatles on IHeartRadio, you are 99% considered older and white. On the other hand, if you follow Cardi B and Daym Drops on Youtube you are probably young and AA. So what? The PSU/Beatles fan gets fed adds for Depends and Drug Commercials where as the Cardi B fan gets fed ticket outlets and clothing/makeup adds. The algorithms are simply mathematical and have no prejudices other than "when someone does A, they are likely to do B" but times 100 in complexity (if they do 1~100 they are likely to do 1000~ 1100).

Know, add in things like how hard you press on the mobile phone screen, how long it takes you to sign in, do you use fingerprint ID, where you make your card purchases (using GPS), if you use Waze or Google Maps, do you use an Android or iOS device............

The profiling accuracy is simply amazing....and going to get scarier. These are what people talk about when they talk about BOTs. I was in Vegas a few months ago, as I walked out of an eatery, I got a text message asking how I liked the place and would I rate it. They used a BOT along with GPS (I gave the hotel my mobile number to get 500 points). It is amazing.

Good post. It's SO MUCH about targeted advertising.

Feed a bunch of classification models (and the "machine learning" which one hears about and is all the rage in the data analytics field these days - that is mostly classification models) with all these various inputs - and you get output that is remarkably correct.

I was talking with my brother once, he has a Kroger loyalty card and he talked about he "gamed the system" by putting down that he was a "100-year-old woman with $2MM in annual income" on his application for the card. Ha ha, if only. After he's used his card for a couple years - they KNOW to a remarkable degree what demographic (age, income, family) he actually falls into.

 

[palmettolion]

I've never had Facebook and I get harassed by various friends and family members as to why I don't have it. This alone confirms I've made the right choice.

 

[Uh Clem]

You are the Ron Swanson of BWI.

I told the head pro at the club I belong to when I played my first round at the course. He thought I was kidding when I said it, and after I joined he told everyone what I said. Now I have made a couple more friends, dammit.

 

[Obliviax]

Good post. It's SO MUCH about targeted advertising.

Feed a bunch of classification models (and the "machine learning" which one hears about and is all the rage in the data analytics field these days - that is mostly classification models) with all these various inputs - and you get output that is remarkably correct.

I was talking with my brother once, he has a Kroger loyalty card and he talked about he "gamed the system" by putting down that he was a "100-year-old woman with $2MM in annual income" on his application for the card. Ha ha, if only. After he's used his card for a couple years - they KNOW to a remarkable degree what demographic (age, income, family) he actually falls into.

yeah...google "guess your age tests". You find a ton of sites that will pinpoint your age in ten questions or less. Then consider what you might post on facebook: a TV show reference, music reference, church, movie, vacations, airlines, cars.....wouldn't take more than a few seconds to know age, sex, socio/economics and political leanings from that.

 

[ivan brunetti]

"Never post, look at, or share anything online that you're not OK with the entire world knowing." Great advice given from a professor.

My take away from that advice is to not care that the world knows about the questionable jokes my friends & I make and the porn I watch.

 

[PSUinMICH]

If you're the type of person that can't control what you post; then maybe Facebook is not for you. If, on the other hand, you are in control or have finally reached the point where you just don't really care what others think, then Facebook is great.

 

[ThePennsyOracle]

My take away from that advice is to not care that the world knows about the questionable jokes my friends & I make and the porn I watch.

That's fine. When an employer says "thanks but no thanks" because they found out about your off-color jokes or YouPorn account, don't complain.

 

[Dixi]

Many years ago (>12), our corporate IT manager told me about a security conference he attended where he was in a room with several hundred IT people. The presenter asked the audience to raise their hands if they hadn't created a Facebook account. About 50% of the audience hadn't. His response was: "well you have one now". I suspect he didn't actually create those accounts, but the message was very clear. I haven't used any social media since then, and likely never will.

 

[ivan brunetti]

That's fine. When an employer says "thanks but no thanks" because they found out about your off-color jokes or YouPorn account, don't complain.

My boss "friended" me on FB maybe ten years ago. He knows all about my RL weirdness. And you can always filter who gets to see what.

And who has a YouPorn "account"? Why would anyone need an account for free internet ladies?

 

[michnittlion]

No one in my immediate family has ever had a Facebook account.

This board is my only social media "vice".

The odds that the NSA/government has scraped message boards (even a "harmless" one like BWI where the primary subject of conversation is college football) and catalogued every post that has occurred over time?

I'd put those odds at fairly high.

 

[nittanyfan333]

About 4 years ago, I was sitting in the booth being interrogated in SERE school, and they started showing me pictures of my wife (fiancé at the time), family, and other seemingly "private" things. They got them from facebook. facebook changes their policies so often and update their interface, and sometimes those updates revert the security settings back to the "factory" setting. It's a very humbling situation when someone with even a little bit of training can take open source information, analyze it JUST A LITTLE, and sit you down and show you your entire life. it's depressing to know how much of your information is out on the internet. One of my instructors at another course I went to gave us the name of the president of the company, and 15 minutes to find what we could. By the end, a class of 10 of us were able to come up with his entire family, where they all lived, the prices of their homes, where they all go to school, accurate assessments of what they did for a living.... etc. I'll admit that my concern comes from what I do for a living, but I'd rather be paranoid and safe, than a social media drama queen and put myself or my family in jeopardy.

If you're wanting to delete your social media, it was suggested to me by SERE instructors to sanitize your pages (remove pictures, posts... everything) then let it sit for about 6 months so that the places that back up these social media sites can back up your SANITIZED account. after 6 months or so, you should be safe to permanently delete your account.

 

[nittanyfan333]

I know of several companies that are combining social media (facebook, twitter, linkedin, instagram primarily) to build profiles on their users. The association algorithms are incredible. For example, if you are a PSU fan (follow a bunch of PSU stuff) you get an indicator that you are probably older and white. If you combine PSU with the fact that you listen to the Beatles on IHeartRadio, you are 99% considered older and white. On the other hand, if you follow Cardi B and Daym Drops on Youtube you are probably young and AA. So what? The PSU/Beatles fan gets fed adds for Depends and Drug Commercials where as the Cardi B fan gets fed ticket outlets and clothing/makeup adds. The algorithms are simply mathematical and have no prejudices other than "when someone does A, they are likely to do B" but times 100 in complexity (if they do 1~100 they are likely to do 1000~ 1100).

Know, add in things like how hard you press on the mobile phone screen, how long it takes you to sign in, do you use fingerprint ID, where you make your card purchases (using GPS), if you use Waze or Google Maps, do you use an Android or iOS device............

The profiling accuracy is simply amazing....and going to get scarier. These are what people talk about when they talk about BOTs. I was in Vegas a few months ago, as I walked out of an eatery, I got a text message asking how I liked the place and would I rate it. They used a BOT along with GPS (I gave the hotel my mobile number to get 500 points). It is amazing.

Cellphone advertising and geo-fencing is crazy right now. Using waze, driving past a certain gas station, get an add on WAZE about buy 1 get 1 free sodas at that gas station. and companies pay so much money for that capability...

 

[PSUSignore]

Good post. It's SO MUCH about targeted advertising.

Exactly. And that's because all of these social media companies have zero revenue stream without selling ads and personal contact information. Facebook has billions of users, most of which likely haven't given Facebook a cent, yet Facebook's market cap is hundreds of billions. Their customer's personal data is the most important thing to their business model.

That's fine. When an employer says "thanks but no thanks" because they found out about your off-color jokes or YouPorn account, don't complain.

Anyone that has public profiles deserves what they get. Employers are welcome to look at my Facebook page. They aren't going to find much, except maybe the fact that I have an account. 100% of my content is restricted unless I'm friends with you in some capacity, and it's that way on every social media site I belong to. The idiots getting busted are posting pics from their last kegger on an account available for anyone in the world to see. If someone is that dumb, they likely aren't worth hiring anyway.

 

[Obliviax]

Cellphone advertising and geo-fencing is crazy right now. Using waze, driving past a certain gas station, get an add on WAZE about buy 1 get 1 free sodas at that gas station. and companies pay so much money for that capability...

yeah..imagine when they know you drive by that restaurant every day and anticipate it. Tesla is building a dynamically reconfiguring suspension based on the road you are on. Sharp curve ahead? No problem, car slows down, suspension stiffens, and accelerates through the curve.

 

[Nitwit]

The use of data from social media by businesses or political candidates is nothing new. Political consulting firms have ways of tracking your cookies to see what articles you read and what websites you open. Businesses use this data to know who to market to and how. Penn State has a Soda curriculum - Social Data Analytics to train students to work in this field. The bottom line is that anytime you go online you leave a footprint and that data is available to those who know how to mine it.