Remove Yourself From Facebook

[lxskllr]

Facebook paranoia is getting out of hand.

2 year plan to get off Facebook?

As said earlier, treat it like a public space and don't post nudes or stories about that time you took loads of drugs and woke up naked in the lama enclosure at the zoo.

"Facebook" isn't the biggest problem. Getting off facebook isn't about facebook. It's about controlling your identity, and controlling your life. Facebook gathers data, and puts into a neat database for anyone with money or a tin star to take. It's not about mom seeing your tit shots from Friday night. It's about insurance companies probing your life to see if they'll give you coverage. It's about potential employers running a psychological profile on your /friends/ to see if you get a job. It's about the government snooping on your "terrorist" affiliations. A "terrorist" is what they say it is, and it can change in a single announcement by the government. Think you aren't a terrorist? Think again...

Edit:

Which brings us I will admit to back to this question of anonymity, or rather, personal autonomy. One of the really problematic elements in teaching young people, at least the young people I teach, about privacy, is that we use the word privacy to mean several quite distinct things. Privacy means secrecy, sometimes. That is to say, the content of a message is obscured to all but it's maker and intended recipient. Privacy means anonymity, sometimes, that means messages are not obscured, but the points generating and receiving those messages are obscured. And there is a third aspect of privacy which in my classroom I call autonomy. It is the opportunity to live a life in which the decisions that you make are unaffected by others' access to secret or anonymous communication.

There is a reason that cities have always been engines of economic growth. It isn't because bankers live there. Bankers live there because cities are engines of economic growth. The reason cities have been engines of economic growth since Sumer, is that young people move to them, to make new ways of being. Taking advantage of the fact that the city is where you escape the surveillance of the village, and the social control of the farm. "How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris?" was a fair question in 1919 and it had a lot do with the way the 20th century worked in the United States. The city is the historical system for the production of anonymity and the ability to experiment autonomously in ways of living. We are closing it.

The network, as it stands now, is an extraordinary platform for enhanced social control. Very rapidly, and with no apparent remorse, the two largest governments on earth, that of the United States of America and the People's Republic of China have adopted essentially identical points of view. A robust social graph connecting government to everybody and the exhaustive data mining of society is both governments fundamental policy with respect to their different forms of what they both refer to, or think of, as stability maintenance. It is true of course that they have different theories of how to maintain stability for whom and why, but the technology of stability maintenance is becoming essentially identical.

We need, we, who understand what is happening, need, to be very vocal about that. But it isn't just our civil liberties that are at stake, I shouldn't need to say that, that should be enough, but of course it isn't. We need to make clear that the other part of what that costs us is the very vitality and vibrancy of invention culture and discourse, that wide open robust and uninhibited public debate that the Supreme Court so loved in New York Times against Sullivan. And that freedom to tinker, to invent, to be different, to be non-conformist for which people have always moved to the cities that gave them anonymity, and a chance to experiment with who they are, and why they can do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2VHf5vpBy8

 

[bononos]

Deleting everything at once lets them know you want out, and that the data they already had on you was good. Modifying every post with garbage may trigger a flag in the computer, and they'll know they're being gamed.

Facebook is a blackbox, so there has to be some hypothesizing about how it's setup, and best practices for getting out. Is the above absolutely true, and the best way to do things? That's unknown, but it's a reasonable course of action using what's known about facebook, their history, and things that could easily be done using computers.

Wouldn't that be a very bad thing for FB to do though? It has to break some sort of privacy agreement somewhere.
I agree that its better to be safe though since FB did try some sneaky stuff in the past.

 

[bononos]

"Facebook" isn't the biggest problem. Getting off facebook isn't about facebook. It's about controlling your identity, and controlling your life. Facebook gathers data, and puts into a neat database for anyone with money or a tin star to take. It's not about mom seeing your tit shots from Friday night. It's about insurance companies probing your life to see if they'll give you coverage. It's about potential employers running a psychological profile on your /friends/ to see if you get a job. It's about the government snooping on your "terrorist" affiliations. A "terrorist" is what they say it is, and it can change in a single announcement by the government. Think you aren't a terrorist? Think again...

Agreed.
Right now, private companies store all kinds of info that would affect the credit rating score as well as your personal medical info (for health insurance companies to pay for looking up your health status). I can imagine all sorts of private details on FB that would be too dicey to be open for future employers and HMOs to get their hands on.
Imagine you are perfectly healthy and keep your facebook 'clean' but have a sibling with some sort of syndrome/disorder and puts it out in his/her FB page, that could render you uninsurable.

 

[lxskllr]

Wouldn't that be a very bad thing for FB to do though? It has to break some sort of privacy agreement somewhere.

It would be very bad, but they've based their whole enterprise on bad behavior. Dunno about their current privacy policy. Privacy policies aren't much fun to read, and I'm especially not inclined since I have no intention of ever getting on facebook, but this shows the (lack of)privacy policy creep over the years...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/

 

[bononos]

It would be very bad, but they've based their whole enterprise on bad behavior. Dunno about their current privacy policy. Privacy policies aren't much fun to read, and I'm especially not inclined since I have no intention of ever getting on facebook, but this shows the (lack of)privacy policy creep over the years...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/

Hah you too? I thought I was the only flat earther without a FB account if a watcher a/c doesn't count.

 

[Doppel]

Before I deactivated mine I deleted everything, all friend relationships, all images. I also replaced whatever little personal info it had with bogus stuff (except my name). Then dropped it. Who knows what they still have, but trusting facebook with anything is a fool's errand.

 

[rh71]

don't put any sensitive information out there... maybe???? Oh and friend only real friends.

 

[Fritzo]

I always knew Facebook would implode on itself. Too popular, too easy. Something horrible was bound to happen and cause it to collapse.

Yeah, that'll happen real soon

It has over a billion users, and the majority of them don't care at all about privacy (which is why 3/4 of all pictures posted are of the user in their bathroom mirror making duck lips).

 

[shortylickens]

Yeah, that'll happen real soon

It has over a billion users, and the majority of them don't care at all about privacy (which is why 3/4 of all pictures posted are of the user in their bathroom mirror making duck lips).

Thats good, go ahead and put words in my mouth. Its the only way you can have a conversation.
Are you a woman by any chance?

 

[yllus]

I like Facebook. I can schedule parties and share/look at pictures on it with ease. It's helped me talk to some old friends from high school.

Heaven forbid a free service that does these things do keyword checks against my posts and try to market to me with ads that promptly don't appear due to an ad-blocking browser plug-in. Who cares? Maybe one day they'll even market me something I'd actually buy. What the hell are you people posting on Facebook that you're so worried about being in other people's hands?

 

[anyusername]

This seems borderline paranoid

 

[Q]

This.

You've got to be kidding me.

 

[gothamhunter]

Oh noes Facebook knows I made a Wall-E costume for Halloween! Whatever will I do :'(

 

[Fritzo]

Thats good, go ahead and put words in my mouth. Its the only way you can have a conversation.
Are you a woman by any chance?

Huh?

 

[Fritzo]

This seems borderline paranoid

Actually a few steps over the border.

 

[ultimatebob]

don't put any sensitive information out there... maybe???? Oh and friend only real friends.

Yeah... my rule with Facebook is that I do not post anything there that I wouldn't want to see broadcast on the news. I don't trust their "privacy" settings at all, considering their business model revolves around selling targeted advertising.

 

[TXHokie]

After they jack around with privacy settings too many times, I nuked my account two yrs ago. I'm now a variant of Darth Vader on FB just to have a presence and coupons. Apparently there are a few Darth Vaders on FB already and lots of people working for the "Galactic Empire" on there. I did have some good entertainment on there a while back when my cousin's crazy ex-girlfriend broke into his FB account and had a field day with it.

 

[purbeast0]

Spammers sure are getting smart in trying to hide what they are selling these days.

lol i have signatures turned off but i can see his fake signature attempt.

 

[polarmystery]

I deactivated (not deleted) Facebook back in July/August last year and never looked back. Haven't logged on since. I don't miss it.

 

[Kev]

where's the part about building a tin foil hat?

 

[Red Squirrel]

With everybody slowly getting off facebook, I think it may be time to make a new social network. One that does not track people. That would be the selling point.

Personally I just treat it as public and knowing my family, friends, and people I work with are all on there, I just don't post anything I would not want them to see.

 

[Jeffg010]

OMG I just got my new high score on bejeweled blitz and it posted it on Facebook, the horror I tell you. My data base on me is full of Facebook games I'm doomed.

 

[MiniDoom]

just assume everything you post is public data, problem solved because I don't give a shit what they do with it.

 

[Homerboy]

LOL people's irrational hatred/fear of Facebook is a full blown epidemic now.
I'm on FB quite a lot and I don't fear anything I've posted.... ever.

 

[alkemyst]

Sadly I doubt anyone is datalogging a bunch of achievement posts from CoD.