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Comment by lunchables | Hacker News Reader

Anyone still using Facebook at this point is insane or has some direct financial motivation to continue using it. I don't know what else people need to see to stop using it.

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As much as the more concerned of us cringe when we hear it, "Why should I care, I have nothing to hide?" is going to be the predominant answer to that question from the majority of facebook users. And morals and ethics aside, they have a point - very few facebook users have experienced a direct, tangible, personal harm as a result of facebook's surveillance of them.

The objections are always on the basis of what should be done, what could happen, and the (decreasingly) abstract harm it brings to society as a whole.

Grandma just wants to see pictures of the grandkids and hasn't had a police visit or her passport cancelled because of something she's said online yet, and she probably thinks those concerns are nebulous enough to not worry about, or scoffs at them as crazy conspiracy theory.

Maybe the right thing to do is try to convince her it's worth worrying that her grandkids might live in a dystopian surveillance society where a careless word can cost you your social status and career?

As near as I can tell, I think most people:

1) are not particularly well-informed about issues around Facebook 2) aren't willing to go through the effort to be well-informed

So the real problem we need to face as a society - Facebook is only one instance of it - is how to get more people to take an interest in the important issues around them? How do we make people into competent citizens?

Traditionally when we have a situation where the masses don’t have the means, equipment or knowledge to make sure for themselves, the law & regulation steps in. This is why you can buy food at a supermarket and be reasonably certain that it’s not toxic without needing biology & chemistry degrees and an expensive lab to analyse the food.

A better alternative to groups and planning for the non technical user?

I don't use Facebook as much, but I see the appeal.

I've found Meetup.com beneficial. It isn't free for group creators but I'm OK with that since it is a lot simpler than creating a Facebook account, pouring through all the privacy and security settings, turning off as many notifications as possible, etc.

55% of the Americans use FB every single day of their lives.

Nearly 50% of the country voted for Donald Trump, too. I don't know what you think that suggests.

I use it to keep in touch with distant family and friends, and for the messenger, and find your assertion hilarious. Even if the twelve Firefox extensions blocking and sandboxing the hell out of it will somehow fail, so what? A toaster ad will keep following me around for weeks on end, and won't be seen because of ad blocking? Or maybe the very valuable insight that I subscribe and sometimes like my city hall and my local cafe's Facebook page will be used to target me with fascist advertising and bring down our democracy? Give me a break. It's a perfectly acceptable compromise for the marginal convenience of having a bunch of contracts in one place.

Or they simply don't care about Facebook building a profile of them to show them ads because they are happy with the value they get from Facebook.

I think you overestimate how engaged and educated the average american is on what facebook does, and I say this as an american. I don't think most people made a conscious evaluation of the pros and cons of Facebook and the trade off between privacy and value. The vast majority don't know or care. I think the large number of people you see leaving Facebook are people who are more informed.

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