[HN Gopher] The cost of the "new way to message on instagram" (2...
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       The cost of the "new way to message on instagram" (2020)
        
       Author : gmays
       Score  : 102 points
       Date   : 2021-07-07 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
        
       | JustVestedSeeYa wrote:
       | Here's a choice ... don't use it.
        
       | ducttapecrown wrote:
       | I really like the new Instagram and Facebook messengers because
       | of how rich they are: you can send text, audio, pictures and
       | video, and links get nice previews. You can control how long your
       | messages stay around, and you can react to messages with the full
       | emoji set.
        
       | croes wrote:
       | >Facebook made promises to keep the two services operating
       | separately, and Facebook broke those promises just two years
       | later, with similarly unclear notice to users
       | 
       | When will we learn? These are businesses. A promise is worthless,
       | the only thing that matters are contracts.
        
         | wnevets wrote:
         | > the only thing that matters are contracts.
         | 
         | even those don't matter. The only thing that actually matters
         | are the consequences.
        
           | judge2020 wrote:
           | I think these sister comments are missing the point that
           | contracts in general lead to consequences - that's what OP
           | means by 'the only thing that matters are contracts', as in
           | you can't trust their promise unless they actually sign a
           | contract that says they won't do <x>. This has nothing to do
           | with the EULA.
        
             | wnevets wrote:
             | Once again even that doesn't mean anything. Companies will
             | absolutely weight the benefit of breaking a contract
             | against not breaking it. If the company decides it is worth
             | it, they will.
        
           | croes wrote:
           | If they break a contract you can sue, that leads to
           | consequences.
        
             | wnevets wrote:
             | which are usually less than amount of profit generated.
        
             | danuker wrote:
             | Except the contract says "we may need to update these Terms
             | from time to time to accurately reflect our services and
             | practices.".
             | 
             | Do you have the same liberty to change the terms? No. You
             | are free to stop using the service.
        
             | hansel_der wrote:
             | not all consequences are equal thou
        
             | colpabar wrote:
             | When every EULA in existence contains a "despite everything
             | we just said, we can actually just do whatever we want if
             | we decide we want to" clause, why would you expect a
             | contract to be binding in any meaningful way? Companies
             | this big simply won't enter contracts that could
             | potentially cause real damage if broken.
             | 
             | And good look suing a company with billions of dollars.
             | Even with a strong case and good lawyers, they will drag
             | out the process and all the court costs will make it
             | impossible to finish, unless you also have billions of
             | dollars.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | danuker wrote:
           | And the consequences are quite asymmetric.
           | 
           | If you rub a Big Tech company the wrong way, they will
           | disable your account and dramatically alter your online life.
           | 
           | But if they pull the floor from under your feet, you have no
           | practical recourse, maybe a complaint on Hacker News.
        
             | spicybright wrote:
             | You can complain to a developer in the company you follow
             | on twitter. It's a perfect system! /s
        
             | ampdepolymerase wrote:
             | And if your politics do not agree with Hacker News, then
             | expect pontification about how the first amendment only
             | applies to governments and not large corporations with
             | massive network effects.
        
               | eigen wrote:
               | the first amendment to the US Constitution says:
               | 
               | > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
               | of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
               | abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
               | right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
               | petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
               | 
               | can you explain how this should apply to "large
               | corporations with massive network effects." would the
               | other sections of the first amendment apply to private
               | corps such that they couldn't deny medical coverage based
               | on the corporation's religious views?
        
               | netr0ute wrote:
               | If corporations effectively become governments, then the
               | amendment should apply.
        
               | junipertea wrote:
               | If corporations become governments, they can make their
               | own laws?
        
               | netr0ute wrote:
               | They already do, just hidden under the guise of lobbying
               | and marketing.
        
               | clucas wrote:
               | What are the criteria for determining if a corporation is
               | "effectively a government"?
        
               | netr0ute wrote:
               | Maybe if their revenue exceeds those of many governments.
        
       | desine wrote:
       | I was a fan of social media at it's birth. Like many, I saw an
       | ability to stay in touch with old acquaintances with less effort
       | and intrusion. We didn't have to interrupt each other with a
       | phone call, or worry about replying to a text in a reasonable
       | amount of time. People would post updates, interact with the
       | updates, and thus in a sense interact with each other's
       | personalities manifested in these posts/comments/likes. It was
       | convenient, and I feel, beneficial.
       | 
       | Then came "the algorithms", capitalist refinement of the
       | experience to increase user attention and interaction. Or more
       | accurately, addiction. This is where I had to quit, a couple
       | years ago. The updated algorithms (instead of linear time
       | representation of posts) did cause me to care too much. There was
       | too frequently new content to see, from things I didn't even care
       | about. Cool videos from GoPro, RedBull, etc. Weeks old updates
       | from forgotten friends sprinkled in to make it personal. Much of
       | the time I used to spend in my head, in a good way, such as in
       | line at a grocery store, or waiting for a project to compile, I
       | was now refreshing feeds. My mind operated more in the realm of
       | social media than in it's own existence.
       | 
       | Now we get to the consolidation. All of your social media, even
       | your "private" chats on WhatsApp, tied to one profile. One
       | centralized database of your life, quickly queryable, cleaned,
       | sorted, and available to advertisers and governments alike. One
       | part of me actually likes this change from Facebook. At least
       | they're being honest about their data being merged. But it's
       | another optimization designed to generate revenue, do not believe
       | otherwise. It's one more step towards the apex of profitability.
       | I don't know what the results of this step will be, but I'll
       | probably be bitter about it, and make another rambling comment in
       | a couple of years.
        
         | annadane wrote:
         | This is a perfectly legitimate comment, but I would go one step
         | further: throw Mark Zuckerberg in jail. While it may seem to be
         | an industry wide practice I believe that he is above and beyond
         | the most predatory and cynical of the practitioners of these
         | things. Remember how Facebook lied to advertisers about video
         | metrics for 2 years? Other companies will look at fb's success
         | and say 'hey, I have to do that too'. Not realizing the only
         | way they're successful is because they have a wanton disregard
         | for any decency whatsoever
        
       | minikites wrote:
       | It's abundantly clear that markets aren't self-regulating. We
       | need government regulation to counteract harmful actions of
       | businesses.
        
         | zo1 wrote:
         | If you peel back the layers and sequence of causation, I think
         | you'll always find that there is some government intervention
         | that has a hand in these "market" failures. Unfortunately, I
         | don't think capitalism can function properly in an environment
         | that has government fiddling, which is what we're seeing. And I
         | say that as a full free-market advocate.
         | 
         | Either way, government is too blame. Both for _not_ regulating
         | these bad things away, and also for having some hand in causing
         | them N-levels back (you just can 't see or prove this one
         | easily). It's a nice sweet spot for governments and their
         | officials and advocates, because they can always absolve
         | themselves by blaming the free-market in one way or another.
         | They do too much or do the wrong regulation, causing something
         | "bad" in the market, and boom they blame "the market".
         | Likewise, they put some half-assed regulations that don't do
         | much and yet again they blame "not enough regulation". The
         | entire thing is ridiculously circular and self-reinforcing.
         | Almost as if it's been designed for argumentative deadlock.
        
         | sodality2 wrote:
         | Not self regulating in a way that benefits the average user,
         | sure. It is absolutely self regulating in a way that benefits
         | corporations.
        
           | strogonoff wrote:
           | Imagine a parallel universe where social network's interests
           | and the interests of its users were actually aligned--all
           | because paid social was seen as the norm from get go. Fully
           | featured APIs? Multi-platform third-party messaging clients?
           | Ethical privacy policies? Once the end user is able to vote
           | with their money, so many possibilities suddenly open.
           | 
           | The status quo is much more preferable to social networks and
           | their shareholders, of course. Charging advertisers arbitrary
           | amounts based on eyeball count no one can actually verify,
           | while not having to worry about losing paying customers due
           | to ignoring requests of locked-in users, is a nice position
           | to be in.
           | 
           | To the point about market regulation, IMO there may be a
           | place for a limited, surgically precise yet not targeting any
           | specific companies intervention (for example, "you are
           | obligated to provide an API covering the entirety of your GUI
           | features if you serve more than N users") that would, a few
           | causal links down the line, break such shockingly
           | dysfunctional customer-provider relationships, normalize paid
           | social and let the market do its thing.
        
       | olah_1 wrote:
       | I wonder if a solution is a "login with facebook/instagram"
       | option on messengers like Matrix / Element.
       | 
       | So it could be as frictionless as possible to get people on it
       | and then everyone has a matrix ID as well.
        
         | kevincox wrote:
         | It would be nice to set up these Silos in Matrix identity
         | servers so that you can find your friends. This currently works
         | with email and phone but adding facebook, instagram, snapshat,
         | twitter... would be a nice step forward.
        
         | sneak wrote:
         | No, because you can't disable Facebook Messenger if you have a
         | Facebook account, and people will still message you there.
         | 
         | The Facebook accounts must be deleted as part of any solution.
        
           | swiley wrote:
           | Alternatively set your status to "email me" and just never go
           | to facebook again.
           | 
           | That worked for me but that was 5 years ago.
        
           | ASalazarMX wrote:
           | I guess it's google accounts then. No one uses their
           | messengers because they keep changing names.
        
       | annadane wrote:
       | Yet another lie from Mark Zuckerberg. "No, we won't merge
       | <company we just bought>. Promise." He's not trustworthy at all,
       | he's such a slimeball
        
       | tqi wrote:
       | Reading the article, it's unclear to me what the cost actually
       | is?
        
         | catcher wrote:
         | It seems like Facebook is trying to prevent anti-trust
         | regulatory action by making it harder to split up / distinguish
         | its core products. Although I'm unsure of how effective that
         | would be.
        
           | mrkramer wrote:
           | Zuck already merged Facebook's and Instagram's database so
           | good luck splitting them.
           | 
           | I hope free market economy prevails or in another words
           | lawsuits fail. They should've learnt their lesson with
           | Microsoft(antitrust is waste of taxpayers' money).
        
             | cycomanic wrote:
             | Standard oil? Antitrust is only a waste of taxpayers' money
             | if there's no real willingness to go after the offenders.
        
               | mrkramer wrote:
               | What happened to Microsoft? Microsoft still controls
               | 70-90% market share of computer operating system
               | industry. Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple achieved
               | dominant market position through legal and fair market
               | competition.
        
               | throwaway3699 wrote:
               | People stopped caring about Windows being dominant years
               | ago. Mac and Linux became competitive for those who
               | wanted it, mobile ate the world, and Windows only
               | dominates in Office and gaming, neither of which are
               | apparently worth fighting over.
        
               | mrkramer wrote:
               | >Windows only dominates in Office and gaming, neither of
               | which are apparently worth fighting over.
               | 
               | Everyone and everything is worth fighting over.
        
               | throwaway3699 wrote:
               | Agree personally, I just mean the general population
               | doesn't care anymore.
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | I think that's less an indictment of anti-trust lawsuits
               | being effective and more of an indictment of either a
               | lack of knowledge or willful ignorance around how
               | connected the economy was becoming via computers.
               | 
               | Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook are all companies
               | that are beyond a reasonable scale - there are far too
               | many eggs in those baskets for long term economic health.
               | Those companies are making GD, Raytheon and Lockheed look
               | like kids playing in a sandbox.
        
               | mrkramer wrote:
               | >Those companies are making GD, Raytheon and Lockheed
               | look like kids playing in a sandbox.
               | 
               | Maybe because >Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook are
               | extremely useful consumer technology companies. I don't
               | know about you but I won't be buying fighter aircraft
               | anytime soon.
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | Boeing gets about 28.6 Billion from the US government
               | each year[1] given the US population of around 400
               | million you're giving them (if we spread the cost evenly)
               | about seventy five dollars every year. Once upon a time
               | this was a large sum of money - now-a-days it's probably
               | less than most folks spend on spotify and definitely less
               | folks spend on coffee in a non-pandemic year.
               | 
               | 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/01
               | /02/ho...
        
             | croes wrote:
             | That thing in your pocket you use to browse the web and
             | make phone calls is a computer too, so Windows isn't the
             | dominating operating system. And IE isn't the number one
             | browser anymore, so this worked out.
        
               | mrkramer wrote:
               | I was alluding to PC operating system industry but
               | whatever. Yea it worked out really well Microsoft is only
               | worth $2 trillion.
               | 
               | And try to work from home or remote work on your
               | smartphone and not on your PC or laptop and tell me how
               | productive you are. Or try to get any serious task done
               | on smartphone except taking photos, browsing the web and
               | writing notes.
        
         | DerpyBaby123 wrote:
         | Let me summarize through quotes:
         | 
         | >This is not an update, but a new messaging system from which
         | you can't switch back.
         | 
         | > These are simply features presented to artificially devalue
         | one of the systems, distract from the real changes, and
         | manipulate users into changing to a different system.
         | 
         | > this change will eventually link to your real name.
        
           | tqi wrote:
           | Hm well the first two aren't really costs, are they?
           | 
           | The third is a conjecture, and as I understand it this is
           | only being offered to people who already have linked their
           | Facebook and Instagram accounts?
        
             | reaperducer wrote:
             | I'm not sure the third part is conjecture. The EFF has an
             | entire article about it:
             | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/changes-facebooks-
             | real...
        
               | tqi wrote:
               | Ah sorry, I was being unclear.
               | 
               | Facebook definitely has a "real name" policy, but it
               | isn't clear to me why a unified messaging experience
               | means that your real name will now be shown to other
               | users. That seems like a product decision, rather than an
               | inevitability.
               | 
               | As an aside, I don't like this feature and have not opted
               | into it because I actually dislike interoperability. If
               | there was a hypothetical way to get Twitter DM / IG
               | Direct / Messenger / iMessages all in one unified inbox,
               | I would never use it because I actually prefer to keep
               | things in context. My persona and networks on the various
               | platforms are different on purpose, and I like to keep it
               | that way.
        
               | spicybright wrote:
               | Ditto with this. If my reddit account and SMS messages
               | every intermixed, I would be a very very unhappy camper
               | lol
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | DerpyBaby123 wrote:
             | Yes, the first is a literal cost, you lose something you
             | used to be able to use.
             | 
             | The second is the cost of a degraded system of instagram
             | messaging
        
             | croes wrote:
             | It costs you your choice.
        
       | swiley wrote:
       | The best thing you can do, not just for yourself but for those
       | around you: Say no to smartphone apps.
        
         | munk-a wrote:
         | I said no to a smartphone entirely and it's been working out
         | pretty well for me except that dumbphones are becoming such a
         | specialty device that the quality has been dropping while
         | prices have been steadily increasing.
        
           | swiley wrote:
           | Saying no to smartphones is certainly impressive but IMO you
           | don't have to go that far, just say no to apps and web
           | services that act like apps.
        
       | Ashanmaril wrote:
       | This article doesn't even mention how horrible the implementation
       | is, too. It didn't merge your conversations with a person into a
       | single thread across Facebook Messenger and Instagram. Instead it
       | created 4 permutations of threads with a person.
       | 
       | * Your Messenger + Friend's Messenger
       | 
       | * Your Instagram + Friend's Instagram
       | 
       | * Your Messenger + Friend's Instagram
       | 
       | * Your Instagram + Friend's Messenger
       | 
       | Each of these conversations will result in a new, separate
       | thread, even if your Facebook and Instagram accounts are linked.
       | It's such a mess.
        
       | AnonHP wrote:
       | Mods: This one needs 2020 in the title since the linked post is
       | from November 2020.
       | 
       | I'm not sure what actions anyone reading this can take now. They
       | may have already succumbed to the relentless prompts and accepted
       | the new messenger.
        
       | avalys wrote:
       | If you don't like it, you don't have to use Instagram and you
       | don't have to use Facebook. These are completely non-essential
       | services in every way.
        
         | standardUser wrote:
         | WhatsApp is the dominant/default form of communication in a lot
         | of countries. It's as essential as telephone and postal
         | service.
        
         | doytch wrote:
         | You're getting downvoted rather than replied to which is a
         | bummer, because I understand your POV but have recently changed
         | my stance on this.
         | 
         | I used to be the standard kind of user of FB and Instagram who
         | had friends and occasionally posted, etc. Then I realized it
         | makes me feel like crap being on there and hated their business
         | practices so stopped using it.
         | 
         | Lately though, I've had a few experiences that made me rethink
         | how optional it really is. I recently sold a car and FB
         | Marketplace has /so many more people/ along with a higher
         | degree of trust than Craigslist. I got a bunch of offers from
         | FB and none from Craigslist despite the same listing.
         | 
         | But even more significant is how businesses interact with the
         | platforms. Because a bunch of people use FB/Insta, a lot of
         | local businesses post new things or updates or specials there.
         | Lately, new businesses are not even bothering with a website
         | and just setting up an Insta. If I'm looking up what a store's
         | hours were this past holiday weekend in the USA, then I know
         | it's most likely going to be best to look it up on their Insta
         | page. And just go ahead and see what the experience is to do
         | that when you're not logged in!
         | 
         | Sure it'd be GREAT if those businesses didn't do that, but the
         | alternatives aren't great and I'm not going to pressure them
         | into reforming social media when they're just trying to make
         | money off of selling an ice cream cone; they've got it hard
         | enough!
        
           | scatters wrote:
           | What's stopping you taking a purely transactional approach to
           | using those sites? You can post on FB Marketplace or stay
           | logged into Instagram without ever needing to scroll the
           | feed, give out likes, or engage in pointless arguments. It's
           | not like you get reputation points for engaging in all the
           | toxic behaviors.
        
             | doytch wrote:
             | Nothing is, so that's exactly the approach I take with
             | them! I recommend it! My response is to absolutist
             | positions like "delete your account" and "well it's not a
             | /necessity/ so they should be able to do whatever they
             | want."
        
           | spicybright wrote:
           | Facebook marketplace is such a gold mine, it's so annoying.
           | 
           | I had 3 pieces of lightly used Ikea furniture I wanted to get
           | rid of. 2 weeks of craigslist with no bites. 2 _hours_ of
           | facebook market place and I offloaded them easy.
           | 
           | Completely anecdotal here, from within a small city. But
           | people trust FB market place much more than CL for what
           | that's worth.
        
           | milkytron wrote:
           | It is hard for those businesses, but I think we need to
           | realize why they post their info on Instagram. It's because
           | that's where their customers are. If more people are on
           | there, they will cater to them on that platform (for the
           | business). If people were to start using other services, the
           | businesses would cater to them that way. If you'd rather
           | businesses not post their info on whatever app, then don't
           | use that app. That's the reason they do it.
           | 
           | I've been without Facebook or Instagram for over 6 years,
           | it's totally optional. I sell stuff on Nextdoor and the
           | dozens of other buy/sell/trade apps. I connect with my family
           | via text/calls/video or other apps. People don't want to be
           | the first to get off of a platform and convince others, and
           | then we get into this situation where we think it isn't
           | optional.
        
         | alpha_squared wrote:
         | > These are completely non-essential services in every way.
         | 
         | This perspective is completely neglecting that a significant
         | portion of the developing world communicates almost exclusively
         | via Facebook/WhatsApp. For communicating with people in those
         | parts of the world, these services become essential in every
         | way that matters.
        
           | mdoms wrote:
           | Not just the developing world. FB Messenger is practically
           | the de facto standard in NZ and Australia too.
        
           | bmarquez wrote:
           | There are countries where mobile phone operators will give
           | you free Facebook Messenger/Instagram (sometimes WhatsApp),
           | but not Telegram or Signal...making the use of a Facebook
           | product practically mandatory if you want to connect with
           | certain people.
           | 
           | Saw numerous banners when I visited the Philippines, here's
           | an example: https://smart.com.ph/About/newsroom/full-
           | news/2019/11/08/sma...
        
         | silicon2401 wrote:
         | At a certain point, arguments like this become out of date. You
         | don't need cars, electricity, phones, email, citizenship, or
         | even a name to survive. The only essential things are being
         | able to forage/hunt, find running water. But as a civilized
         | society we strive to raise the bar. At this point social media
         | is an essential service, people just haven't caught up to it
         | yet.
        
           | qq4 wrote:
           | Social media is far from an essential service. Name one
           | aspect of it that you deem essential which cannot be taken
           | care of elsewhere. I've managed along just fine without
           | Facebook and the like, along with many other people.
           | Essential does not mean convenient.
        
           | RotaryTelephone wrote:
           | Essential to whom? For example, I used to be a consumerist
           | pig, but when I trimmed the fat by deleting YouTube, Reddit,
           | FB Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram off my phone, I suddenly
           | felt like I could breathe again. Now I spend my time during
           | the day doing the things I love (hobbies).
           | 
           | P.S. I've kept HN because, you know... the last bastion of
           | reasonable discourse.
        
           | ComputerGuru wrote:
           | Only tangentially related, but is social media a net positive
           | for society? An argument could be made for any of those
           | things you named alongside it which have now become modern
           | essentials, but does social media belong in that list?
           | Instead of democratizing access to social media maybe the
           | answer is to cut off the tentacles these firms use to
           | maintain their grip over our society?
        
             | spicybright wrote:
             | My personal opinion is it's a net negative. But it's also a
             | hydra of an idea that people are hooked on.
             | 
             | Cut the tentacles and they'll grow back with little issue.
        
         | croes wrote:
         | It's a little bit more complicated. Some companies only provide
         | support through Facebook, WhatsApp etc. Even some governments
         | use them as their main information channel. In the pandemic the
         | only way to watch the live press conferences was on Facebook.
         | Only ours later they were available on YouTube.
        
         | annadane wrote:
         | Jesus christ. Is this seriously the argument for everything
         | now? You realize how useless saying that is?
        
         | forgotmypw17 wrote:
         | Only in the sense that staying in touch with people is non-
         | essential...
        
         | tristanc wrote:
         | I feel like this comes up again and again. For some people
         | Instagram or Facebook are sometimes the only way to communicate
         | with new peers without introducing too much friction. In
         | France, for example, most of my friends will exclusively use
         | Instagram when connecting with new people.
        
           | milkytron wrote:
           | Are there no other options? Do your friends use them
           | exclusively because they are sticky? Is there actually a
           | feature that makes them unable to use other apps?
           | 
           | I find a lot of times, people just don't want to change,
           | regardless of whether they should. I was the first to delete
           | my Facebook in my group of friends, and now they all have,
           | and my family has mostly jumped ship as well.
           | 
           | I'm sure your friends can use something else, they just
           | choose not to.
        
             | wsinks wrote:
             | Right, they choose not to invest more time and thought into
             | something else. That's why the pattern of the social media
             | bait and switch is frustrating.
             | 
             | The company made a promise. People bought that promise.
             | 
             | Company changes the promise and puts a bow on it and
             | dresses it up. Company only notes the promise in the fine
             | print. But because it already has the power and because
             | people don't want to be on alert 100% of the time (because
             | that can actually kill you), the deception works.
             | 
             | So you bring up a fallacy. The actual option here is "pay
             | attention to every company you use to communicate all the
             | time" or don't pay attention and accidentally agree to
             | something not well advertised.
             | 
             | Interesting fact, Facebook has an F rating on the BBB's
             | website.
             | 
             | Of course, the very first complaint on there is an
             | interesting one that completely misconstrues the first
             | amendment right, but again, that's just interesting.
             | 
             | (https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/menlo-park/profile/social-media-
             | ma...)
        
             | croes wrote:
             | Some companies and governments only communicate through
             | social media.
        
             | spicybright wrote:
             | Of course they can use something else. The very vast
             | majority just want to talk to each other, not spend energy
             | moving as many people as they can to their preferred
             | platform to do the same thing.
        
       | theo-born wrote:
       | The terms and conditions should state:
       | 
       | I will provide you with all of my personal data for you to sell
       | it. Check here _
       | 
       | I will be spammed with ads for useless shit that I don't need.
       | Check here _
       | 
       | I will not sue you for performing any unethical or illicit
       | practices Check here _
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | > I will provide you with all of my personal data for you to
         | sell it
         | 
         | Reminder that Facebook and Google don't actually sell this
         | information, you can't pay them for access to their ad
         | database. You have to really loosen your definition of 'sell'
         | if you want to include 'using data to target ads'.
        
           | toast0 wrote:
           | It's not directly selling the data, but when you target an
           | ad, and a user takes an action on the ad (sometimes that's a
           | click, sometimes it's just loading a beacon in the ad,
           | sometimes the user may need to transact after a click), the
           | advertise can correlate the targetting with the user.
           | 
           | That's not exactly selling the data, but it's close.
        
         | strulovich wrote:
         | > I will be spammed with ads for useless shit that I don't
         | need. Check here _
         | 
         | Isn't this the exact opposite though? Your data being used for
         | targeting will minimize bad ads that you see.
         | 
         | (Facebook employee, never worked on ads or anything similar
         | though)
        
           | dfxm12 wrote:
           | Not really. Whether the ads are targeted or not, you almost
           | certainly don't need the shit they're selling & from that
           | point of view, ads are, by default, bad.
        
           | armchairhacker wrote:
           | This is something which comes up a lot: people simultaneously
           | complaining about invasive ad-tracking and all the ads they
           | see suck.
           | 
           | But it's the truth. e.g. I visit the website of some weird
           | brand of coffee. Suddenly, I get spammed with ads about
           | artisan coffee, even though I could care less. Both intrusive
           | (you took data from somewhere way outside of your domain to
           | guess something about me) and annoying (you guessed wrong).
           | 
           | Moreover, this tends to happen very often for gambling, porn,
           | weight loss, pregnancy, etc. all things which are very
           | private, because they also happen to be stuff people spend a
           | lot of money on. So I want to avoid those sites, not just
           | because the government or insurance could use it against me,
           | but because my ads will get even more annoying.
        
             | neolog wrote:
             | *couldn't care less
        
               | machello13 wrote:
               | you knew what he meant so what difference does it make?
        
             | neutronicus wrote:
             | I was getting engagement rings ads for _years_ after I made
             | the purchase
        
           | buu700 wrote:
           | I don't use Facebook very often, but anecdotally I've gotten
           | a decent number of solid ads for things I've ended up buying
           | (mainly keto-friendly foods/snacks).
           | 
           | I don't think I've ever bought something through a Google or
           | reddit ad, or if I have it was a long time ago and/or with
           | less frequency, and I use both of those much more actively
           | than Facebook. reddit ads will sometimes capture my
           | attention/engagement, though, whereas Google ads tend to be
           | more like noise that I tune out.
        
           | Nicksil wrote:
           | >Isn't this the exact opposite though? Your data being used
           | for targeting will minimize bad ads that you see.
           | 
           | Perhaps if it did what it says on the tin, but it usually
           | doesn't, so no.
           | 
           | >(Facebook employee, never worked on ads or anything similar
           | though)
           | 
           | Facebook is ads.
        
             | judge2020 wrote:
             | > Facebook is ads.
             | 
             | OP gets paid via ads, but does not work on the actual ad
             | team and thus wouldn't know any actual inner workings of
             | the targeting systems.
        
             | suprfsat wrote:
             | It is possible for Facebook to simultaneously vacuum up
             | large amounts of personal data and still serve trash
             | advertisements.
        
               | neolog wrote:
               | Not only possible, it's actually required by Facebook's
               | business model. The set of things that people actually
               | need to buy isn't large enough to support Facebook's
               | scale.
        
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