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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Facebook did not “scrape stuff for free”. People willingly gave FB their information.

People gave Facebook my stuff for free.

RMS explains this much more eloquently than I do. He doesn't have a Facebook account, but he's all over Facebook, without any control, desire, or influence.

Many people set up Facebook accounts to have some control over this. Without an account, I can have nasty things about me on Facebook. To have controls over that, I need to agree to a contract with Facebook which gives away other stuff.

When I joined Facebook a few years ago (so many years after Facebook was launched), I was quite stunned to see the friend suggestions quite neatly sorted from people I knew a lot to people I barely knew.

Their shadow profile on me was very solid, it seems.

I've seen his explanation, but I don't follow the concept of data ownership being expressed. I can be in my friends' conversations, my company's management discussions, even the newspaper without consenting to it - why is Facebook different?

Because it’s for-profit?

The newspaper is also for profit and while commerical speech may have more restrictions (truth in advertising) they aren't barred from those areas. Not a fan of Facebook but the objection appears to be pure novelty bias because it hasn't been as normalized as the old ways.

How was Facemash (Hot or Not) developed (pics of Harvard girls never used the site)? How did they get website traffic data from their like button without visitors using Facebook? Also, how is my grandma part of their database because all her grandchildren have her in their phone contacts?

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