Facebook Makes A Huge Data Grab By Aggressively Promoting Photo Sync | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Makes A Huge Data Grab By Aggressively Promoting Photo Sync

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37 pointsiProject29 comments

Facebook is not going anywhere. These are all smart business moves to make it an almost necessary part of our lives. "Facebook is like chairs" seems to quite literally describe the end goal of their campaign. I would argue they are doing a very good job, perhaps on par with De Beers and Coca Cola in their time.

People flee gimmicks for new gimmicks in a hearbeat. Facebook will evaporate one day, like all the fads before them.

Sure there is inertia to social patterns. But to overcome it, you don't have to convince 1B people in a row; you have to create impetus enough to overcome one person, times 1B in parallel.

What makes you think facebook is a fad?

All the other similar fads before them.

Facebook has already remained vital and growing longer than the Friendster/MySpace precedents, and the Geocities/Angelfire precedents.

They're looking more like email or the web itself. Or the telephone.

Or did you have other 'similar fad' examples in mind?

Now that you mention it, email! Its going the way of the 1st-class stamp.

I think this line of reasoning depends on whether there are actual previous examples of 'gimmicks' the size of facebook evaporating in this manner. Without any research on the matter, I'm inclined to say Facebook is simply too large and to entrenched at this point to be a fad. It's qualitatively different from fads in the same arena that came before it.

But it's an honest question. If there are previous examples of facebook-like fads suddenly disappearing, the line of thinking is sound and possible.

I suppose email was a fad?

Fb has replaced all my personal communications

Oh please, this is such a basic feature, Facebook should be embarassed it took them this long. My Android phone came with this built in with Google+, and it also prompts me to sync with Dropbox if I choose. No "tapping" either, it does it automatically after a photo/video is taken.

As much as I dislike Facebook, and don't use their services myself, in the end I think this will be a good thing for the average Facebook user.

I'd say 80%+ of people out there fail to have a backup of digital photos and eventually lose them all either through hardware failure, physically losing a device, or some other sort of negligence (on top of not keeping proper backups).

I see this being ultimately beneficial to lots of people, as well as a good move for facebook to continue to try and keep people locked onto their platform.

This will provide even more fuel for Facebook's face recognition technology, which I believe will one day be Facebook's most valuable product, eventually marketed in sometimes disturbing (and secret) ways. As a fellow nonuser of Facebook, it bothers me a bit that I don't even have to participate for them to develop an accurate facial recognition profile of me; my friends, family and colleagues will gladly do it for them.

Over time this is going to secure a healthy stream of "jailbait" nudes to 4Chan and the likes of it. I can see some ruined high school careers come off this.

This is probably just to compete with Google+, which does the same thing, and which Google has advertised on YouTube about (man loses phone with pictures of baby daughter, oh look, they're safe on Google+!).

It's an effective ad, but I've wondered if it wasn't misleading by implying it was basically a backup service: Google+'s auto upload feature doesn't save the full resolution of the photos. Somewhere out there is a disappointed father or mother who thought Google was backing up their photos, only to find out at the wrong time that Google only saved a reduced size copy (better than nothing, but still...).

I'm not sure many users will notice, to be honest.

It'll be really interesting to see the politicians that come from those who are teens now.

They'll have been connected most of their lives, and have quite the online presence. And hopefully have a better grasp of technology.

On-topic: is anyone actually surprised by this?

Why should we ? Google+ does it, Apple does it, Dropbox does it. I've disabled this feature on all of them, but this is hardly new. It's obvious now that social networks have moved past micro-blogging & articles. Pictures are the new focal point of sharing. They're all angling to make their apps more sticky by lowering the friction of photo sharing.

As long as they provide commonsensical & easy to understand privacy controls & a way to download all your data, I'm fine with it. I can even accept the argument that it's a nice convenience to have, phones get stolen, devices are starved for local storage, sensors are getting bigger & so is the data they generate.

The problem is, & it's a HUGE one, is an account is a password away from being hijacked. People better educate themselves about security (two step auth) & be careful what they upload.

I pity the damned fools who agree to it thinking "oh that's an awesome idea" and then a month later take a naked photo of themselves.

Photo Sync only syncs your photos, you have to selectively publish them. Even if someone did take a nude photo, no one else would see it unless they shared it explicitly.

https://www.facebook.com/help/photosync

Good to know, but it's still a private photo that is no longer under their control.

Even if someone did take a nude photo, no one else would see it unless they shared it explicitly.

Or until Facebook once again changes how things work.

Anything and everything you give to Facebook is a candidate for public exposure.

>>I pity the damned fools

Please use more updated expressions. That is so 80's and 90's.

It's a perfectly mundane expression, unless you think of everything in terms of memes.

Not after Mr. T made it passe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FPGJrzzq_I

You do sound like a fool if you say those words.

Words like passé, or even ostentatiously using the accent on the "e" when writing passé, are all cultural signals describing who we are, what we read and write, how old we are, and what we find amusing.

Culturally archaic expressions are all part of that, and they have their place whether being used "ironically" or not. I disagree that this person sounds like a fool for using the expression. They may sound older, much as I must sound when I use words like "hip" and "funky."

In any event, "sounding like a fool" should be reserved for saying things that are foolish on the facts or content of the statement. I think there's plenty of room for civilized disagreement with that person's statement without worrying about whether they're signalling that they're part of your cultural tribe or not.

I originally was going to write "I feel sorry for", but then realized I didn't actually feel sorry for them. I felt pity was a more appropriate emotion, and tossed damned in there to avoid the meme.

Jesus, part of why I left facebook was because I got sick of the photo dumps where someone would upload 50-100 unedited pictures of their kid's birthday party. Who could possibly want to look at all of those pictures? I can't imagine that this change is going to make anyone enjoy using Facebook more.

Besides making security/authentication even more critical, this challenges photo ownership. In Facebook terms of service, the photographer retains rights on their pictures, but transfer to Facebook certain rights to use the work. Want that?

I'm pretty sure the rights you give Facebook are basically the right for Facebook to display your photo to people you share it with. That's pretty much what any photo service would require you to consent to.

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