I've recently signed up for Facebook to use Wit.ai, and have gone through account settings to lock down the account as much as possible. It took me about an hour to set everything to private in this new account, and I'm still not sure what would happen if I start posting on their platform.
The settings page is not the only place that needs to be checked if you mind your privacy, there will be a myriad of configuration options and barely discoverable controls that appear in different places on your profile, and remain hidden until you submit further content.
Needless to say after that they declined to reinstate my account - without any recourse or right of reply - due to community policy violations. Given that my only contribution was managing ads - and my wife’s account remains unsuspended despite managing the same ads - I’m left drawing conclusions from my own anecdata that they very much don’t like having overly privacy focused accounts.
Though mine was probably locked solely because of the way I've metodically checked out every configuration option, and used Firefox with fingerprint protection enabled.
This whole ordeal made me realize that Facebook is sitting on personal data from possibly millions of profiles that are banned. I've read several reports about people logging in years after the account got suspended, and their personal data is still downloadable, but they are not offered further control of the data, such as deletion, which is illegal in the EU.
FB’s website claims the feature is “only available in some countries and on some devices,” but it’s BS, it’s actually an easy opt-in for employees.
It shows that FB understands the need for privacy, but only if you’ll help them spy on others.
But the important part is that I do it willingly. I'm glad they were forced to ask -- not everyone is ok with that kind of tracking, and that's the whole point. I'm totally with Apple on this one. Give people choice.
I made my choice, and everyone else should get to make theirs too.
The purpose of ads is to inform people of things they wouldn't otherwise know about. In that regard, I appreciate good ads that tell me about things I would want to know about and didn't already.
For example, some of the ads I get are for live shows (back in the before times). These are live shows that I enjoy going to, but would never have known about, because I don't know where to look for them. Having it pushed at me helps me.
I think this is great. By putting tracking in the control of the user, the user can decide if they want shitty, generic ads or targeted relevant ads. What’s missing now is a built in ad blocker for iOS.
As it is the closest I get is ads for something I looked at 20 days ago and decided not to buy.
Recently, I registered a new account, and after a grace period without ads, I was surprised by just how drenched it has become in advertising. I used it to follow professional athletes. First of, many of the organic posts are themselves sponsored advertising, then the athletes share brand posts from their sponsors, and then between every story you get an actual ad.
Of course, with more personal connections the trade of might be different, but for my use case described above Instagram seemed unsustainable.
Which part?
Another interpretation is, professional athletes don't really enrich your life at all. You have as big a problem with celebrity as you do with a piece of software.
My experience seems to be that I see a whole bunch of fresh updates from friends, and then ads. If I'm looking when there are few updates, it's mostly ads. If I see mostly ads I know that I should put the phone down and come back in a few hours. :)
I'm on the iOS beta so that might have something to do with it.
Interestingly, that's precisely the reason I hate targeted ads. They just make me buy more things I didn't otherwise need.
I see your main point though, it's nice to give the choice.
We don't need to live inside of a panopticon in order to figure what shows are playing in town, what new items are down at the shops. Tell me what city you live in; I can help you find stuff around town at no cost and I don't even have to spy on you.
Is there something wrong with that?
I've screenshottet it and it might very well become my second actual gdpr complaint.
My first was a few days ago when "HP smart" demanded with no workaround that I hand over my email address to print on my own old printer.
Facebook didn't make a compelling argument, only that they felt obligated to attempt to use all available remedies to retain their advertisers and show their shareholders that they tried. It is a ridiculous use of public resources, but the FTC didn't give any indication that is was a valid complaint. Facebook didn't make an argument, only an observation that the feature would hurt their revenue. Kind of like "by the way it would be nice if you found some impropriety in how they rolled this out, we aren't aware of one, but would be adversely affected whether its all above board or not, okay thats all we got moving on".
Exactly. So when Apple gives users choice, and users are fine with it, this won't impact Facebook at all.
Facebook on the other hand manages to get my attention with products that matches my interests and budget (software products, photography products etc. I even ended up buying a safety razor that I am very happy with and wouldn't have though about without seeing that ad.)
The irony is that Google should know quite a bit more about me than Facebook does but have been too busy showing me annoying or even insulting ads during the same time.
The title is a bit click-baitey.
