Facebook Change Ensures Tracking by Preventing URL Stripping

and avoid social media like the corrosive pestilence that it is.

But tell us how you really feel.

I appreciate the many informative articles I’ve read on Tidbits for decades now but was disappointed by this comment at the end of this one.

For me, personally, Social Media has allowed me to connect and re-connect with people personally and deeply from all over the world in a manner I never would have had the opportunity to do so if these platforms didn’t exist.

Despite any platform’s need for change including legitimate concerns about privacy and data, writing off an entire genre of how literally billions of people in the world connect with each other is not the kind of commentary I’m looking for on Tidbits.

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I mostly keep FB in a ‘deactivated’ state, re-logging in every now and then to check on some language learning communities I’m in that don’t seem able to communicate any other way, sadly.

It’s a moderate pain to reactivate and deactivate, but after doing it routinely for so long, I’ve got it pretty streamlined; and it turns out to be a really nice amount of discouragement re checking FB too often. (Pro-tip: When deactivating and they ask for reason, always click “Other” and then just type in some random letters…that way you don’t get suggestions for improving your experience.)

OTOH, maybe the deactivated state doesn’t help much in terms of privacy protection. I dunno…

Sorry, but that’s precisely how I feel, and the problems with social media go far, far beyond issues with privacy and data use to cut at the very underpinnings of civil society and democracy. Sure, there are positive aspects to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but there are positive aspects to toxic waste dumps too.

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I’m with you…deleted my personal FB account long ago. Bride and I have a travel blog and there is an almost info free profile for the blog but I log in and out of FB when necessary and essentially never check it. I do have a twitter account but follow very few people and rarely post anything myself. I stay logged out of google and YouTube even though the latter makes it impossible to subscribe to channels but I just live with that inconvenience. Don’t use google for search at all since they track you as well even if logged out…I use startpage.com instead as they privatize requests and then send that to google before returning results.

You really cannot stay private and use the internet anyway…all one can do is minimize as much as possible your exposure and never, ever, click on an advertising link in a browser and use ad/tracking blockers…they limit your ability to see some sites of course but that’s another side effect.

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The world is flat.

Tobacco smoking is good for your health.

The planets in our solar system revolve around the earth.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy is alive and well and was never assassinated.

Apollo 11 never landed on the moon and American Astronauts never walked on on the moon.

Throughout history, false information has continually spread like wildfire. And here’s just a few very recent and compelling examples of why social media, and Facebook in particular, continue to spread disinformation, hatred, and can deliver calls to action that are detrimental to society:

Whistle-Blower to Accuse Facebook of Contributing to Jan. 6 Riot;

Amid The Capitol Riot Facebook Faced Its Own Insurrection:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/neo-nazis-facebook-theyre-making-money-80225218

And my many and sincere thanks to Adam and the gang, as well at to all TidBITS Talkers, for all the good advice, information and comradeship that’s always available here.

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At a personal level, I see a conflict of interest between my intention of using social media vs. interests of those social media companies.

Like most people, I want to use social media to keep in contact with family and friends around the world and connect with people with similar interests. However, providing such online services to me cost money, and there is no free lunch - someone has to pay for it.

I think it would be laughable to suppose that Facebook or any other social media operators care deeply about enabling me to connect with family and friends. (Perhaps that can be true when a service is new - after all how many business are started with bad intentions?) As the business expands providing such connection increasingly becomes cost of doing business; what drives social media companies are primarily our attention, our clicks and the resulting profit to other businesses - those who pay social media companies in exchange for our attention.

I resent such ‘indirect’ business models and conflict of interest. I understand that providing such services cost money, and am willing and able to pay for it in exchange for a plain vanilla service, without detriment to my data, attention and well being. However, with few exceptions this is not possible in the largest social media platforms.

I suppose this is one of many reasons I purchase Apple products. They are not inexpensive, but at least there are reasons to believe that Apple is amply compensated and there is less incentive for them to do anything funny with my data and attention. The alignment of interest is not perfect (planned obsolescence?), but at least it is there.

I make it a point to subscribe to and financially support businesses/creators whose contents I value, such as The Economist and TidBITS. With enough support we can even unlock the commons so the content becomes public good and one does not have to pay to enjoy it. I like such simple and transparent business models much better.

(May I also take this opportunity to thank @ace and friends for publishing TidBITS. Please don’t become another social media company!)

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You have every right to feel that way and live your life accordingly. Every invention and aspect of human interaction has been coopted by bad players in one way or another. We could eliminate transportation altogether to make all kinds of improvements to the planet. I bet if we go back to cave paintings we’d find some exaggeration in presentation or interpretation that led to unintentional consequences. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater (or use silly metaphors.)

This just isn’t the kind of commentary I was looking for when reading or visiting what I regard to be a useful, even-handed publication for Apple-related news and experience. When I saw your response in email I actually didn’t even remember what the original article was about which may be a teachable moment in the effect your end-of-article comment had on the usefulness of the article itself.

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With the good skeptical analysis and in-depth advice of many tech websites, of which tidbits.com was one, at the very dawn of “social media” being thrust upon us, I made the decision to not participate. I’ve never been a member of any social media or “sharing” site. No Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.

And yet, I’m still personally and deeply connected with family and friends using a wondrous invention called “email”. And texting. And yes, telephone calls.

In this way, I’m able to share with all those people who are truly important to me without also sharing with the wide world. Or becoming brainwashed, depressed, suicidal, infuriated or delusional.

I’ve never regretted my decision.

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I’m conflicted – on one hand, I find Facebook an easy and convenient way to stay in touch with a broad range of people around the world, and get peeks into their lives on a regular basis. It’s like being part of a big conversation that hums along all the time and can be quite lovely.

On the other hand, I’m aware of the toxic sides of it, and the general sense that if the product is free, then you’re not the customer.

Still, I’m planning on remaining on Facebook for the moment.

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Exact same thing here. Never been on any of these social media networks. Never felt I wasn’t connected to the people dear to me. Definitely no regrets here. In fact, the more I read the more I realize just how much of a bullet I dodged.

Of course truthfully, I have to realize I can only isolate myself so much. I can prevent my personal information from being whored out by these companies, but I cannot escape the fact that thanks to their direct support (and then their complacency) my country recently almost suffered a coup by a completely unhinged mob of lunatics that were—I have zero doubt here—to large extent enabled by “social media”. Throughout history, there have always been idiots. But only recently, have these people been given a bullhorn to address every other person on the planet along with a reward if they do so in the most abrasive manner possible. And it shows.

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In this way, I’m able to share with all those people who are truly important to me without also sharing with the wide world. Or becoming brainwashed, depressed, suicidal, infuriated or delusional.

I would also like to report that as an avid social media user I have managed to not become brainwashed, depressed, suicidal, infuriated or delusional either. (At least that’s what they want me to think…)

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It was about Facebook’s latest move to block technologies that attempt to give people control over how much they’re tracked online. And with an encouragement to read the thoughtful Atlantic article discussing even more of the deleterious effects social media is having on society.

My opinion about Facebook and social media isn’t the focus of TidBITS, which is why it was limited to a few words at the end of an ExtraBIT pointing at another article. I seldom write full articles on the topic because the necessary research makes me both angry and depressed.

Regardless, TidBITS publishes what I find interesting or worth sharing, even when that goes beyond our traditional Apple-related topics. Always has, always will.

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Good for you, Adam. And now you know the effect it’s had on a single reader.

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That Atlantic grossly underestimates the level of stupid throughout American history.

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I’m not sure if the problems with social media are generally inherent to the medium but rather to the current implementations of it. The algorithms promote content designed to keep people engaged but have the side effect of creating a distorted view of the world.

When Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked about Kyrie “the world is flat” Irving, he noted that Irving said he was led to that belief by watching a flat-earth video on YouTube, which then led to the site promoting more of the same. I recall a similar story of a woman who looked into some topic (I can’t remember which) and the next thing she knew, FaceBook was pushing all sorts of anti-vax content at her.

So the algorithms are definitely a problem, but I think FaceBook gets a lot of deserved criticism because the company seems to make a lot of questionable decisions, like the one mentioned in the TidBITS article.

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Facebook evolved from FaceSmash, a website Harvard college student Mark Zuckerberg developed so guys could rate the hotness and availability of female students on campus and in nearby colleges in Boston.

FaceSmash was developed after a girl Zuckerberg was dating that was not a Harvard student dumped him unceremoniously, and he wasn’t successful in attracting women. He was quite vicious in rating her. I highly recommend watching Aron Sorkin’s documentary film “The Social Network” for more details about this as well as others who were highly instrumental in working with Zuckerberg to found and develop the service and got screwed royally and financially by him. The book the movie was based on is excellent as well.

Zuckerberg even managed to alienate his most influential guru, Steve Jobs, because of privacy and security issues. This happened shortly after Steve had been vocally praising Facebook to the skies:

And Tim Cook has not been a fan of Facebook either:

“Apple CEO Tim Cook has doubled down on his call for regulation that would limit Facebook and others companies’ ability to use customer data:”

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Zuckerberg didn’t create that kind of content – there were printed versions of it long before the Internet. I know of at least one version at Cornell in the 1980s, which it turns out dates back to the 1950s.

I’m never sure how much social media creates problems versus amplifying existing ones.

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It was the first digital and first interactive/social media version, and it was super easy to use. The girl who dumped Zuckerberg was humiliated and became a laughing stock among schools, and many, many other women suffered because content was not regulated. But Zuckerberg did meet on FaceSmash the very accomplished woman he married.

It also expanded rapidly to include different colleges and universities. The rest is history, and it did create and amplify problems. January 6 is one very recent example.

I tend to agree that there’s very little that’s new under the sun, but amplification is a very big deal. One of the easy changes that social media companies could make that would address many of the concerns would be to eliminate the Like and Share options, both of which encourage amplification over communication. But I seriously doubt any will ever do this because amplification encourages engagement, which results in more overall usage and higher ad impressions.

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Yes, the exponential amplification of harmful/false narratives is definitely one of the major unsolved problems inherent in the incarnations of social media extant to date, especially when it becomes well siloed.

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