what, no facebook discussion?

[wesw]

1984?

Newbook?

maybe mark Cuban or the Apple folks...., or someone should start a newbook app and steal ol zuck s thunder?

[Crackpot]

Someone thanking the liberty course in post writing?

[Scooter]

Sarah SucksToBeMe Sadsack hasn't put out the White House talking points about it yet, so wes doesn't have an opinion until they tell him what it is.

[Lord Jim]

Wes, you're going to have to be a little more specific...

Do you want to have a discussion about how the Russians used Facebook to interfere in the US election to help Donald Trump's campaign, or do you want to have a discussion about how an organization that misrepresented itself to Facebook as gathering information for academic research, (Cambridge Analytics) used the personal info of millions of Facebook users to help Donald Trump's campaign?

[wesw]

I d formed my views on facebook before politics got involved, jim.

too much information.

doesn t the invasive and usury nature of what the tech giants have become even stir the faintest feelings of avoidance in anyone else?

too much power in the hands of a guy like zuckerberg, or any one person, I think.

I suppose the Russians , or anyone else, could use such a valuable and vulnerable fount of info for malign purposes.

putting ads up is one thing, and people can take them for what they are worth, selling info about you, and all your friends is another thing all together.

I am a luddite, to an extent, so maybe I just don t understand.

I grok that it is a fell thing, this facebook....

but a Newbook could be done differently and serve the same purpose I think, and I think it could be profitable, not facebook profitable, but profitable.

just a thought or two....

[Big RR]

wes--while I share your concern about the vast cache of information collected, and the willingness of people to provide it to private companies, I am not concerned about Zuckerberg, or any other person for that matter, having some sort of unilateral control over it. Like most huge companies, one person, even the CEO, cannot exert that much influence; the companies are much, much bigger than any individual.

that being said, if the companies cannot or will not police themselves, and people routinely ignore the data they freely provide, only some sort of governmental regulation will provide any relief.

[wesw]

yeah, these guys have succeeded to the point where they have become utilities, I think.

regulation seems wise.

wise regulation may be hard to achieve.

[Big RR]

It always is--especially when a lot of money is involved.

[Long Run]

It is an interesting deal, where so many people readily give up private information (the maxim: if you don't know what the product being sold is, you are the product). So people really have little excuse for the main part of their concern -- if you don't want Facebook to use your data, don't give it to them. Even with the recent revelations, I still see people posting the most personal of information. The gray issues are when other people can give up your data, like the Obama 2012 campaign that encouraged users to turn over their friend's data; or when Facebook allows its own privacy statement to be broken or misused, arguably that is where Cambridge falls, along with possibly retail sellers. It seems obvious that there needs to be privacy regulations that mirror HIPAA for medical, and the financial privacy rules.

[dales]

I avoid all social media sites (except for this one).

Pay cash.

And leave as small of an electronic footprint as possible.

[Burning Petard]

This topic has been discussed at length for generations in many forums. I believe Life magazine even published Orwell's novel 1984 in its entirety in 1949. Only those with their heads in the metaphorical sand or jammed up their personal waste chute (like most Washington congress critters) are ignorant of the synergies of data mining and data aggregation and algorithms and the potential for social control they bring.

Snailgate.

[RayThom]

Speaking of Facebook...

Has anyone here been notified that their data was shared with and/or sold to Cambridge Analytica? Notices went out today but I have yet to receive one.

When I created my FB page maybe seven or eight years ago I had heard numerous rumors the platform was being data mined by Russian hackers. With this in mind the address I put in my profile was, and still is, "Vladivostok Russia." Despite many requests to update it I refuse to change it.

I may have unwittingly thwarted the abusive data miners.

[wesw]

I m with dales.....

yes BP....

the question is how we react to the situation.

I read 1984 when I was 11, I think, around 1977-78.

it was impactful.

should we rage against The Machine?

should we meekly accept the direction of our "betters"?

idk

[wesw]

watching zuck s testimony now.

he is amazingly forthcoming in his bullshitting of us.

he understands his power and promises to use it only for good.

good enough for me.

I m so relieved that we are in such good hands.

we are the luckiest people on earth.

(off with his head!!!!)

(crap, now I m flagged for hate speech.....)

[Scooter]

[Big RR]

but then, maybe it's not so funny.

And from the clips I saw, he comes across as an insincere asshole--he has a great future in politics.

[wesw]

he almost seems to want to do the right thing, but just can t bear risking the losing of the fame and the fortune..., and the power...

[RayThom]

Separated at birth? You be the judge.

[Big RR]

I think you found the secret there.

[Long Run]

A NY Time tech writer downloaded his Facebook data and was bemoaning earlier this week how much information was there. I did the same and it was all the information I would have expected FB would have based on my activity, other than the list of advertisers that had me on their list as I almost never click on ads (that is, there were plenty of advertisers that had me in their data base even though I'd never clicked on their ads or visited their sites, or often enough ever heard of the companies). The article has a link for getting the data:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/tech ... yikes.html