“There are many different kinds of people, and some [of] the benefits of Facebook are worth the loss of privacy,” Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak says. “But to many like myself, my recommendation is – to most people – you should figure out a way to get off Facebook.”
(Woz deleted his Facebook account in March 2018.)
“So I worry because you’re having conversations that you think are private,” he said. “You’re saying words that really shouldn’t be listened to, because you don’t expect it. But there’s almost no way to stop it.”
MacDailyNews Take: A place for fiends?
At one time, you could view computers and phones — and cloud services — more or less as inanimate objects — just tools. For many years now, they have become far more like extensions of ourselves. They contain our thoughts, our communications . . .. they contain our impulses. They are our interests, our obsessions. Our oddities. Our curiosities and our desires. They are our lives. So much about who we are can be gleaned from things like search histories, photographs and instant messages that far more than the mere edges of our humanity are contained therein. Thoughts meant to be had and forgotten like most humans have had for millennia — ones you had months ago — are frozen as if trapped in digital amber. The world of social media is the playground of narcissists at best! At worst, the average person who blindly trusts that Facebook is a tool rather than a sieve is who is most harmed by this business model. Woz is right, and people need to wake up and realize it’s not really about tradeoffs. It’s very much the difference between owning one’s soul and selling it, bit by byte, to the highest bidder.
Well-said!
Fu*kFace — should be the real name, or maybe a nickname for its founder. I’ve never joined, never viewed, and avoided at all costs both this hot mess as well as anything Goooogle. Thank goodness.
Foolbook seems more appropriate
Ok. Your information is being sold to advertisers. It is also being given to the government (which is far more reprehensible to me.)
Your DMV photo is being handed over by states to the Federal Government for Facial ID for instance. Facial ID databases are being swapped by countries. Why does this not upset people more than advertisers?
There is a service that I love where your mail from the post office is photographed and sent to you in email each day. Until I thought about it. Sure enough, that data is being stored. California knows if you buy something they don’t allow you to buy through the mail. No one is upset about this tough. They no longer have to go through your trash, they just get on a website and search for all your snail mail. So they don’t need to subpoena anyone to find out if you’re a member of the NRA or the American Communist Party. It is being photographed whether you like it or not. You can just ask for a copy.
Companies like mylife .com sell ANYONE, REAL private information about you for $30 a month. Credit scores, your address, bankruptcies, phone numbers, email addresses and so on. Then they start badgering you about whether or not you want to pay to have it stopped, and NO ONE does anything about this.
Google, we don’t have to even speak about. They’re just plain evil now yet I seldom find a computer that isn’t all Googled-The-Fuck up now.
But when it comes to Facebook… why so much hate? What did I miss? What has Facebook done that is so much worse than all the others?
No doubt, Facebook needs a serious ethics enema, but what makes them special?
Add to that a company like Ancestry.com that now has a growing database of individuals DNA samples. We should be concerned…and very.
Ancestry and others. Didn’t even think of that one.
We know that police access this database. What happens when an insurance company (Caremark, Aetna, etc.) buy this company out? You bet your last dollar they will use the data to attenuate their risks.
Problem is leaving Facebook also means leaving many treasured friendships (old friends, family, people you worked with in the past & associates) you would have precious little way otherwise to stay in contact. And simply picking up the phone is not the most efficient way to do it.
The social aspects have their place, the idea that Facebook is hoarding our information is not. So why doesn’t Apple come up with a way to do it without the downsides?
If a friendship is reliant on Facebook, it isn’t much of a friendship. It’s a good question to ask yourself: if I weren’t connected to this person on Facebook, would I be connected to them? If the answer is, ‘No.’, you don’t need ’em.
Isn’t leaving FB akin to curing the disease by killing the patient?! I use FB to stay connected with family, friends and former coworkers. I don’t put anything on FB that I don’t want stolen or publicized. Just use it wisely.