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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

I'm with you. Seems like FUD here with this post, there are a few decent ideas about privacy but its a social network and used for connecting to people. Maybe they can relax the real name policy some more but I have plenty of friends that don't use their actual real/legal name and never had a problem.

There are effective privacy controls in place now and things like being served ads is such a silly issue to complain about... it's a business that needs to make money, how else is that supposed to happen?

What is the overall point at the end of this? Basically we should all just be anonymous forever? Facebook is just a decade old, society/culture is still catching up and we really don't need all this doom/gloom every time. And yea, I didn't know who this guy was until this post.

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I have plenty of friends that don't use their actual real/legal name and never had a problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

things like being served ads is such a silly issue to complain about... it's a business that needs to make money, how else is that supposed to happen?

Hum, charge people?

What is the overall point at the end of this?

"Don't use Facebook." I thought that was clear.

Fine, the real name policy is a fuzzy issue and not really fit for discussion here.

Charging people doesn't work since most people want the convenience and ability to communicate with friends but don't want to pay for it. Not a viable model for Facebook. I'm sure you don't just browse the web and offer to pay every site you visit do you?

"Don't use Facebook" is not the point, this is all about fear of privacy in general and just targeted at Facebook but much of it is FUD.

> "... it's a business that needs to make money, how else is that supposed to happen?"

This attitude is what's wrong. Exxon also needs to make money so maybe we should cut them some slack around oil spills. So does Foxconn, so let's not badger them about employment practices. Etc.

To your point about how they are supposed to make money. I dunno, innovate on business models, maybe? Advertising has been a driving force for mass-consumer web services and it would be healthy to have alternatives.

We have regulations in place, outside of that telling businesses to just "be nice" is naive. It's not like these corporations are filled with evil people, all of this tracking is to deliver better products and increase bottomline. In this case, Facebook sells advertising and the effectiveness of that advertising increases with tracking.

It's always easy to just say "innovate" as if the entire industry is just sitting around for some enlightenment... there are other ways to make money but this is the model that works best for them. Advertising is a fine business model, I've yet to really see an actual objection to this.

If a business model is not viable without mass surveillance and unprecedented amount of privacy invasion, maybe one should try to come up with better alternatives. Luckily Facebook is already being unbundled and I'm sure with changing technology the need for a centralized hub for social interaction over the internet will fade away. One way could be via the development of new protocols, like an improvement of Email, that could be implemented by many different servers and clients. Another the advent of IPv6 and the fact that it makes p2p protocols more viable.

99.9% of people dont care about all that. They want an easy way to connect with friends/family and even strangers. They dont want to pay for it though so they're willing to be served ads. The model works just fine.

And I keep hearing this all the time, if there are better alternatives than what are they? Facebook has thousands of employees, most just like you and me. They are not an army of evil people planning destruction, they're just optimizing their platform to better serve ads for both their advertisers AND the users. That's it. Where is this "privacy invasion"? What are they taking from you without your consent?

> "What are they taking from you without your consent?"

Most people don't understand the privacy settings nor do they comprehend the ToS (because the reading-skill level required is too high). So what does 'consent' actually mean in this context?

I feel you're being completely disingenuous in your comments here, so I guess you'd probably just blame the user for not educating themselves.

Consent = posting something publicly means it's public. It's the same as if you spoke aloud in a room, the people around you can hear it. Facebook is just a bigger room, but comes with privacy controls if you're interested. Nobody is stealing your thoughts and filling out your profile, it's all done willingly.

I don't use facebook and I block their social media buttons. I have less control over friends of mine posting pictures of me on facebook or the fact that facebook is able to read SMS send to peoples phones that have their App installed.

I'm fully aware that people don't care about privacy and abusive corporate practices, which is why it falls on the shoulders of the few that do care to come up with compelling alternatives, that respect users privacy. As you mention those alternatives would probably not be profitable (because you can't rely on ads). If they came in the form of new protocols (just like Email or SMS) and free software to implement those protocols it wouldn't matter as much.

> it's a business that needs to make money, how else is that supposed to happen?

That's their problem, not ours. We're not the ones in charge of deciding how exactly they're supposed to make money. If they can't, so be it.

Advertising is one of the most scalable models and it's what works for them.

Who is "we"? Why not (as this article complains) just stop using it then? That's your problem isn't it?

> Maybe they can relax the real name policy some more but I have plenty of friends that don't use their actual real/legal name and never had a problem.

The problems come when the policy is weaponized by people looking to harm people who have a good reason to use a certain name.

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