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Comment by jfoster | Hacker News Reader

I view my decision to use Facebook as a transaction. Sure, I lose some "privacy", but I also get a lot of value in return.

I use quotes around "privacy" because I'm not sure I understand it the same way that Facebook critics do. When I'm using a changeroom, I expect privacy. When I take on a pseudonym and don't identify myself by name, I expect privacy. When I'm knowingly uploading photos that I am happy for the world to see, I don't have much of an expectation of privacy, and without an expectation of privacy I'm not sure I have any privacy to lose. That said, I don't think about this too much, so would love to hear well-reasoned arguments against my point of view on that.

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I think a main point is about indirect effects of privacy loss that are hard to see and reason about directly.

Example #1: You visit a website completely unrelated to facebook. The site has a "like" button on the page enabling them to access Facebook's data about you (depending on cookies etc). You observe advertisements or content tailored based on your personal information or things you like. Maybe you are offered different prices for the same product depending on your age, gender, location, etc.

Example #2: A potential employer accesses, perhaps indirectly, information about you that would be illegal to ask you directly (marital status, etc).

Example #3: One of your facebook "friends" signs up for some arbitrary service enabling that service to access your contact and personal information and connect it with e.g. the photos you mentioned. Arbitrary things happen, e.g. your photos are used to advertise some product you find distasteful, your contact and personal information is sold to telemarketers or spammers, and so on.

1) This is more of how Facebook makes money with ads and providing "personalized experience" just as Google does. Fundamentally not a flaw in Facebook, but a debatable practice. And do you have source Facebook would share my age and my gender to third-party even if I list them to be private? The only thing that might be possible is Facebook internally does the calculation. Giving away to third-party vs FB doing the computation aren't exactly the same.

2) If you join an online community, you have to pay a price. You might tagged your friend or your friend tagged you and the setting is not strict enough, then how is that Facebook's fault?

3) Again, that's the price a social network has to pay.

Back in the days people take film-based pictures and there is no way to massively store and distribute to the world. Now the digital age has changed the way we distribute information about one another.

Doesn't matter if Facebook is 100% free software and decentralized. One person leaks everything leaks. There is no real 100% anonymity. You have to make contact with another human being.

There is not only the privacy inside Facebook but also outside facebook. People are generally aware of what they give inside Facebook but I'm not sure most people expect Facebook to store their entire web history with dodgy techniques.

True. Through the "Like" buttons on pages and such, I presume? Do we know for sure that they are keeping that full log?

Yes exactly, the like "button" is in reality an IFrame. And there is also Facebook Comments and Facebook Connect. There is no proof that they are keeping the full log as far as I know but since their advertising business is eager to get more information about their users, there is a strong incentive to do it. In any case, they are probably logging every request to Facebook so they could use that in the future if they wanted to.

I agree. I don't understand what the issue is. I know that anything I add to Facebook will be used to sell advertising to me(I use AdBlock).

The best feature of Facebook is groups. It's the easiest way to keep up to date with my gym group, motorcycle group etc.

What was wrong with mailing lists?

> It's the easiest way to keep up to date with my gym group, motorcycle group etc.

Of course it is the easiest if they use a Facebook group in the first place. They could use a mailing list (or Google group) and you could keep track of it with any mail service (even your own) of choice.

Mailing list? What year is it? Barely anyone outside of the tech world still uses emails regularly.

> What year is it? Is this supposed to be an argument?

> Barely anyone outside of the tech world still uses emails regularly. It's not true according to my experience.

2015. You're dead wrong. People, young and old, regularly use email for communication and subscribing to publications. Most people will use email regularly just by sheer virtue of it being the predominant identifier used for registering to just about any website.

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