Sharing _exact_ locations by default without realizing it is creepy/intimidating. The content of the message/the incident itself is just an anecdote that explains how the GP noticed this idiotic behavior of FB's chat.
Commenting on the anecdote derails the thread as far as I'm concerned. The subject is 'FB shares detailed location data and you might not know it', not 'one time, in band camp, I lied to a friend about my ETA'.
Ignoring that, there's no way to judge his communication with a friend. The only two people that can decide whether a lie like that is acceptable are the people involved. The friend might be offended and agree with you. Or laugh about it and ask for a beer in return, being totally fine with it. Expecting it? Who knows. And still irrelevant.
We can blame HN for being unable to hide subthreads, but for now the first 2 pages on my 25" monitor discuss if lies are acceptable or not and in what circumstances..
"Ah but the social ostracization!", seemingly the main reason why otherwise intelligent, informed people do stay on Facebook, just doesn't hold up anymore, as too many cool, socially active 20-somethings I know or are acquainted with have moved off of Facebook, mostly in last 1-2 years. Even if you're stuck in a gossipy friend group that would "severely judge you" for leaving Facebook, which is more likely in your own head than in reality, then that's probably a sign you need to find more down to earth friends.
I understand the nature of the data Facebook collects about me, and I understand what they would like to do with that data. They want to know who I am, what makes me tick, and use that knowledge to show me advertising I'm more likely to click on. They also want to draw me into their walled garden by promising me shiny things if I stay. It doesn't really work, because I see the same middle of the road content and advertising shown to my friends and family.
I also share my location on Messenger, although the friends and family I chat to might or might not be interested in where I am. I don't chat to strangers, or even "strangers". And if I'm somewhere people don't need to know about, I don't share my location. These are things we teach children about using the Net, or should be. Adults should be able to figure this out themselves.
And I explain the difference between myself and my devices to people; when Facebook tells them I'm at home, that's where my phone or tablet or desktop PC is connecting from. I might be there, I might be away, I might not even be awake.
The technology lies, and sometimes so do I.
As an intelligent individual, you must recognize that this isn't really true. You were able to communicate with your family and friends before Facebook existed. You can still communicate with them now, over other media like email, telephone, etc. You (and many others) are simply choosing to use a hostile platform to stay in touch because it is 'easier' or 'more popular' than the alternatives.
I don't have a Facebook account and have to admit that I never truly understood the benefit, the appeal. It seemed full of ads, games, random pictures and without structure - i.e. you might read about people ranting about the current soccer game (I hate that), but miss an important update from a close friend.
Plus, as soon as email isn't a suitable format to exchange information, I have the impression that the communication is either too broad (shout to the public) or trivial (one liners about nonsense). I don't get it.
I DO get the network effect though. So while I agree with you that the 'why' might be hard to grasp, I don't like the stab at people's intellect. It doesn't matter if an individual is intelligent or not - not using a service that all your peers decided on using is hard.
Your last line about being severely judged by friends especially doesn't sit well with me.
For one, people might not judge you - they just might communicate less with you, forget you at times (because you're the one person that needs a mail or a text message or whatever).
And then there's the ridiculous 'find different friends' part. Seriously…
What do you do when you want to organize a party/group trip to a concert/etc. and invite several people?
* Email and reply-all? This means you annoy people who can't make it (they keep seeing all the replies), and people who are added to the list have to be re-added several times as people reply-all to old messages and leave them out.
* Create a mailman list for this specific event and require people to unsubscribe/resubscribe? That's a lot of overhead, and the UI is awful.
* Set up a website/blog for this one event? Even more overhead.
And none of the above approaches have decent calendaring integration - you can attach a .ics to an email but it's still a very manual process.
And that's a bad thing? If your friends get this much information out of messages you're sending them, how much does Facebook have? An individual employee at Facebook? An individual who compromises Facebook's servers? An advertiser who works with Facebook?
Agreeing with Stallman is a good way to start taking back control of what information is available out there about you - assuming that matters to you.
Edit: Judging from the downvotes, asking this question is quite unpopular. Whilst I understand this opinion is unpopular I remain unconvinced it is less intelligent.
It's easy to forget - but the information they collect can be used by the group that collects it, and by other parties (Gov't TLAs, hackers, insurance companies, banks, business associates, contractors, partner companies). This can happen now, or at some point in the future.
The data can be combined with other data, such as the National Insurance Database (which is illegal to publicly discuss), to draw conclusions about yourself - possibly based on untrue assumptions.
Master Data programs/systems/initiatives are consolidating, de-duping, and integrating data from disparate systems. It doesn't matter that you put down a fake address 100 times, you just have to put in a real address one time - these systems can collate all the data, validate each one against the USPS database, and toss the fakes.
Why not? Keeping up with friends and family is extremely efficient, due to FB's algorithms giving me the most relevant content. There are many great products that the FB platform has to offer and it is the reason I don't need the more trendy social networks, a la Instagram/Snapchat.
Facebook Messenger is a fantastic product and it is the main communication platform that I use on a daily basis (you can easily send photos and files). Facebook Groups makes communicating within a group a lot nicer, since you can selectively choose notifications (where you can't on a normal mailing list).
Facebook events is great for inviting people to parties, social gatherings, study groups, etc. and you can invite by group.
I value my social life, and I value being able to actually communicate with my friends.
I have made a conscious and rational decision that my social life is more valuable to me than my privacy.
You don't share everything to everybody or you end up being the sucker that gets the news late or not at all because he can never shut the fuck up.
Even if you are careful about others privacy, you can be a victim of the carelessness of others. As an example, we have friends on FB we can no longer read any news due to them friending people careless about their privacy wishes. Everything now is coded messages like "Worked better than expected. Next step tomorrow at 10", so you must have had a conversation with them outside of FB in order to know what the fuck is going on - which is the reason why we had FB in the first place.
What makes one person's personal privacy/communication breakover point better than another?
I could say that "intelligent individuals" don't project their personal views on favorable demographics, but then I would be doing the same.
No faster way to get people to agree with you than to insult their friends ;)
I use Facebook, and I consider myself very privacy conscious. How do I reconcile that? I decide what I want to share (very little) and only log in occasionally, for the odd update. It's a pragmatic view and a reasonable one. I don't feel the need to cut myself off from a convenient social resource on principle alone. I have to make decisions on what personal details I share about myself all day, every day (such as commenting here, for example)–Facebook is just another example of that.
I agree that lack of user knowledge (and, therefore, consent) with location information on messages is worrying though, and should be addressed.
Facebook groups and messages however are just so incredibly convenient and ubiquitous that you won't be able to convince entirely separate groups of people to leave and use a service you mandate - unless you are friends with solely technical people.
Could I be a member of the groups and organizations I am without being in the Facebook groups? Sure - but it would inconvenience everyone, if there's a discussion in a group, and someone tags me to get my opinion on something, I can fire back a reply. They don't have to call or email me separately.
And then people tag you in their photos. So Facebook may not strictly know your name, but any agency (of course, never in America!) who backdoors or coerces Facebook could learn everything about you.
These 20-somethings - they're also moving off of Google properties? Or is it just facebook data you're concerned about?
I don't agree with statements such as 'hard to grasp why any intelligent individual [uses it]'. If that's your opinion then great but not everyone should have the same opinion.
If one's news feed is full of gossipy rubbish and stuff they aren't interested in, then one either need to learn how to customise one's feed (easy) or get better friends. Facebook make it pretty damn easy to do the former.
Facebook is a content sharing platform and one's friends are making the content. If the content is rubbish, that says more about the people involved than it says about Facebook.
In the first case, if Alice isn't on facebook, they might make plans on facebook and someone will say "cool, I'll let Alice know". In the second case, they might make plans on facebook and nobody will think to do that. Her closer friends might - but her closer friends might not even be going, and that doesn't mean she doesn't want to go.
There is an element of inertia and of being held hostage though. Why go through the hassle of everyone changing networks of Facebook still works? And no-one can leave on their own...
So there's one reason.
Precision is not the same as accuracy. Although the reported values may have 5 decimal places of precision, I find my location is often a bit off.
In practice, accuracy will be in the 5-10m range.
It doesn't make it any less creepy though... which then begs the question of how the number of people wanting to send their location would change with how "approximate" of a location (i.e. rounding to some radius) they're sending. Nearest 100m? 500m? 10km? 100km? State? Country? Continent? ... Planet? I would probably be fine with the last one, but no more than that for anyone I don't know well.
It's either a well written FB app, or a no-permissions jail around Facebook's own hybrid-app/mobile-site. GPS no longer turns on, and messaging works for me.
Not to hijack a thread, but: this is is why Apple's iOS is such a compelling case. They make it so easy to control access to the location/microphone/etc. in one tab: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services
I don't know what Google is thinking, but given the current snooping climate you think they'd err on the side of the customer... but they don't.
Of course, this wouldn't give facebook a detailed map of their user's movements.
Honestly, and maybe I'm in the minority, showing that information readily to my friends is MORE of a red flag than if Facebook solely had that data. Because let's be honest... they already have that data from my usage on the FB app (albeit at a lower frequency).
A lot of these things are questions I routinely get/ask in things like messenger. People with location on usually help us to coordinate things and the like.
This solution probably isn't particularly novel, but it's probably better than carte blanche location access, in the opinion of most people.
You're acting like most people care about permissions. 99% of users just click through everything.
The actual accuracy of the measurement is given by the dilution of position (DOP), which does not appear to be in the data shown in the blog post.
This would undermine their ability to pin-point their location to within a meter, as the DOP could be very high; especially in areas with lots of tall buildings or other problematic environments.
From the comparisons, it looks like the author's GPS is getting a very low DOP (i.e. a good, clean signal from a constellation of >= 5 GPS satellites).
Either way -- still glad I don't use FaceBook, and an interesting find!
"I've been a big Facebook supporter - one of the first users in my social group who championed what a great way it was to stay in touch, way back in 2006. I got my mum and brothers on it, and around 20 other people. I've even taught Facebook marketing in one of the UK's biggest tech education projects, Digital Business Academy. I'm a techie and a marketer -- so I can see the implications -- and until now, they hadn't worried me. I've been pretty dismissive towards people who hesitate with privacy concerns. [...] With this latest privacy change on January 30th, I'm scared."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Initial_fun...
