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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.

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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.

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