hexagon789
Veteran Member
Exactly my view, it's just a shame the company behind it can't be sensible.
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Facebook - Your Opinions.
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Exactly my view, it's just a shame the company behind it can't be sensible.
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shredder1
Established Member
It also does a lot of good and has changed people lives, it has positive sides too.
shredder1
Established Member
Yes totally agree, hopfully that will now change
hexagon789
Veteran Member
Indeed, it does have a positive side like you say.
hexagon789
Veteran Member
Hopefully it will, maybe some legislation needs "tweaking" on that regard.
Absolutely, I do think there is too much negativity towards facebook generally.
StoneRoad
Member
Not on facebook, and unlikely to join.
Almost got out the "told you so" card when the most recent data mining story broke ...
Almost got out the "told you so" card when the most recent data mining story broke ...
NSEFAN
Established Member
Fizzy drinks, sweets and smoking have no purpose other than to make us feel good, but have various undesirable side effects which ultimately cost the NHS money, so government has an incentive to regulate their consumption. Facebook on the other hand is just a program in a machine. There's very little to stop others from creating either work arounds or just modified versions which do the same job (see government requirement to Internet companies for blocking of the pirate bay). The government would be better off going after the company for its bad practices, as the end-user functionality of the site itself isn't illegal, so whilst blocking it would hurt Facebook it would also greatly annoy the users.
shredder1
Established Member
Yes indeed George, my positive story is that my long lost daughter of 34 years from my first marriage contacted me through facebook two years ago and I now have in my life, my daughter, 6 grandchildren and one great grandson who I had no idea even existed, amazingly they have all accepted me and call me grandad, a real life changer thanks to facebook.
That's a nice story, facebook has certainly enabled me to keep in regular contact with family and friends who live far away.
No. Next thread.
telstarbox
Established Member
I thought Google+ had some interesting features but was probably more complicated/involved than most people needed, so it wouldn't ever get the critical mass for people to switch from FB.
hexagon789
Veteran Member
Quite. Though they should pay their dues.
WelshBluebird
Established Member
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Why would the government block Facebook when they have essentially been in bed with the company that has been involved in the data leaks for ages? The government (any government, not just the current one) LOVE the ability to manipulate the public and recent events have shown Facebook is great for that.
shredder1
Established Member
Thanks very much George, yes it certainly has a lot positives.
shredder1
Established Member
Ah ha.
But does social media contribute to bad mental health... and cost the NHS money?
Many people spend hours and hours on social media, Facebook in particular. Twitter is great for bullying people but I don't think harms as much as Facebook can.
And thus, if you're not prepared to do anything about it, you have to accept the terms being imposed, or rather the operating practices of the company.
Zuckerberg has been summond to answer questions in Parliament. I doubt he will. Does that mean if I am summond in front of a panel of MPs, I can ignore it with no consequences?
Sort of makes a joke of them, that their "power" is just a load of words, nothing more. Hence the little respect MPs have is diminished.
Don't get me wrong, Facebook is great when used how you want to use it.
It's the worry of anything you upload becomes the property of Facebook... even if you claim it's yours. Although this has never been tested I guess. But there's other dubious terms and conditions that most, if they knew about it, would not feel good about it.
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hexagon789
Veteran Member
Oh I doubt he'll show up myself
NSEFAN
Established Member
Poor mental health does indeed cost the NHS money, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Poor mental health can happen for many reasons, for example poor employment and a lack of purpose. A lack of physical exercise or being constantly exposed to negativity, with the negative effect on mental health that results, is just as possible by watching TV all day, but there's no government system to force us to switch off and go outside for a while.Whistle said:
In terms of bullying, there have always been petty people. Social media is just another medium through which nasty people can hurt others, the only extra thing that can make it more powerful is anonymity, meaning there's less social pressure to not be a complete pratt towards someone else.
Probably repeating myself here but if you don't like what your "friends" are saying why are you friends with them on Facebook or anywhere else. As for mining data it is purely a money making excercise. I'm not at all influenced by the targeted adverts I recieve and am indeed sometimes astounded at the page suggestions I recieve. The algorithm they use clearly doesn't work. At the end of the day you get out what you put in and if you add every random person that sends you a friend request you may end up with some bizarre stuff on your wall.If you add your boss as a friend, pull a sicky and then share photos of yourself in Xante don't be surprised if you get sacked. You wouldn't phone your boss and tell them, why use alternative media. None of this kind of thing is because Facebook is sh*t, it's because people are daft. There are security settings on there. Use them.
AlterEgo
Veteran Member
How do you know?
I use Facebook quite a lot, possibly more than I should. I have contemplated taking a leave from time to time, but find it very useful for keeping in touch with folk and use IM a lot. Don't tend to post too much (and then it is usually images) but am a member of quite a few rail groups, especially for photos - they are usually a more appreciative audience than quite a lot of my friends (fellow enthusiasts excepted)
Not sure how to answer that or to prove it. I am a creature of habit. I am also in to stuff that is obscure enough that it doesn't flag up on the data scooping software they use. I have bummed my way around Europe and large swathes of the world. I know what clothes I like. I am really in to planning my travel myself and I stick with the ways I do it unless a trusted mate has a better idea. My next mobile phone is going to be a Galaxy S7 Edge because a mate is giving it to me. All I can say is I am 43 years old, I am confident I am not being influenced by the stuff they try and sell to me. I don't care if they use my photos or my comments about people I come across. Apart from my phone contract and paying for wi fi I get a pretty good service for free. They are actually talking about it on Question Time.
To be fair, I was enticed by an advert for a nice cardigan from the US.
$7 and free shipping, so not bad. I'd have expected to pay at least £15-£20 here in the UK.
However, I still prefer to get random adverts than ones I *might* be interested in.
It takes less time for my brain to process that I'm not interested in tennis equipment than it would a railway book for example. Yes, we're talking less than a second, but it's still easier to understand something that you're completely not interested in than something that is related to something you like.
$7 and free shipping, so not bad. I'd have expected to pay at least £15-£20 here in the UK.
However, I still prefer to get random adverts than ones I *might* be interested in.
It takes less time for my brain to process that I'm not interested in tennis equipment than it would a railway book for example. Yes, we're talking less than a second, but it's still easier to understand something that you're completely not interested in than something that is related to something you like.
Personally I don't see the need of facebook at all, we had many other better options before then and we could have again. We used to use windows live messenger at school and whilst you could only use it for instant messaging do we really need any more functionality than that. You could still search for people but you could not see anything until they had approved you and that is a much better option.
As for finding lost friends/relatives there should be a separate secure medium or that via an intermediary to reduce any chance of misuse/problems.
Remember Facebook are selling you stuff they are selling YOU, google is the same, Microsoft do seem to be better in these regards and their email is light years away from gmail in terms of advertising and "reading" your emails, they defiantly do not use the contents of your emails to sell you stuff via more emails like gmail.
As for finding lost friends/relatives there should be a separate secure medium or that via an intermediary to reduce any chance of misuse/problems.
Remember Facebook are selling you stuff they are selling YOU, google is the same, Microsoft do seem to be better in these regards and their email is light years away from gmail in terms of advertising and "reading" your emails, they defiantly do not use the contents of your emails to sell you stuff via more emails like gmail.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Facebook, for all its faults, does make it a lot easier to stay in touch with people you've known. It works particularly well in that regard if it's something like some course you attend, where you are in constant contact with other students on the course for a couple of months before all going your separate ways. Since Facebook came along, I've noticed I keep in touch with a much higher proportion of people I meet in that way. (MySpace which came out at about the same time as Facebook, served much the same purpose before the owners of MySpace managed to pull off some spectacular strategy blunders that all but destroyed MySpace as a general social networking place, and thereby left Facebook in a monopoly position).
Perhaps a rare defence of Facebook (and Google) but I really don't see any problems with that kind of targeted advertising. In the end, you're getting the ability to send messages and interact with friends, up to and including things like posting videos, completely free of charge, and all the hardware and software to make that possible doesn't come cheap and has to be paid for somehow. The adverts on FB and Google are a lot less intrusive than - for example - the adverts on ITV or commercial tv channels. And if they scan the messages that you have them store on their servers to extract keywords so they can figure out what kinds of adverts you're likely to be interested in - so what? Doing that isn't exactly exposing any private information (Provided obviously that they don't pass any of that information onto 3rd parties). If they scanned your messages so they could advertise to the World that you just slept with Jennifer last night even though you were still going out with Daisy - then that would obviously be a completely different matter (and would be a serious invasion of privacy and unacceptable) but targeting advertising based on the information FB holds about what you've post or read seems pretty innocuous to me.
Don't get me wrong, there are in my view, many, many, things wrong and somewhat unethical about Facebook's practices. Algorithms that seal people in political bubbles, insufficient action on hate speech and fake news, psychological techniques to keep people hooked on social media to a much greater extent than is healthy - those are all things that are of very serious concern (to say nothing of Facebook's utterly crap and buggy user interface). But I don't think targeted advertising is by itself an issue.
It is intensly annoying. I don't use Facebook (although I did open an account with a ficticious identity because someone told me you can't, but I don't go there), but I get "targeted" ads with ebay and others. If I even look at something like a camera on ebay (because I want to sell one myself and am looking for the going rate) I get bombarded with emails for further ads of the very same camera, even while I'm selling mine. Then it tells me what other people who looked at that camera also bought : eg ice cream makers, ladies' socks, violins - why would I care? If they improved the "targeting" (as the admen promise us if we would only reveal even more of our lives to them, as they plead) it would be creepy as well as doubly annoying.
Actually it is quite cheap. For example you can buy 5Gb of hosting and unlimited bandwidth, unlimited mailboxes and email addresses (real email, not web-mail) for £2-£3 per month, advert free; I do.
Facebook is run by a megalomaniac who seems to enjoy the power to look into every-one's affairs. The whole ethic is for people to expose everything to the world
Here's an example - what about targeting alcohol adverts to alcoholics? Or similarly targeted gambling adverts?
While Facebook don't necessarily allow that sort of targeting, it's not hard to imagine similar, but slightly more subtle, things that will get past.
Might having constant reminders of their problems, through targeted advertising, possibly be harmful to some people's mental health?
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
I never have had the slightest inclination to subscribe to Facebook, Twitter and the like for the same reason why I will never have anything to do with any form of "internet banking", which is no guarantees can be made that the global criminal fraternity cannot access your personal information.
That is true of *any* data stored online. Do you propose that the world go back to papyrus?
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