Facebook Change Ensures Tracking by Preventing URL Stripping

Article Comments
41

I am also on groups - probably more groups than I have friends on FB. But as one who started on usenet and migrated to email groups, I find FB to be the WORST venue for any type of organized data. The search feature is completely unreliable and last I knew you couldn’t even search documents that admins put up to easily answer peoples questions. So groups are basically a lot of pictures and people asking the same questions over and over because it’s hard to find the info that’s already out there. The way they thread replies makes it difficult to find them and they more recently have defaulted to - even on personal pages - “most relevant comments” which is whatever FB deems relevant to the conversation, not what the reader may deem relevant.

I’m going to toss out my favorite FB insult: they continue to hire programmers that Microsoft rejected :speak_no_evil:

Diane

2 Likes
42

I agree that FB search is useless. However, if the admins put in the effort to categorise information and link to it as Topics or other means, groups can be very usable. FAQs also help if members are forced to read it before commenting. (This needs to be started at the inception of the group. It is very hard to retrofit to an existing active group.)

Sadly most ignore all the helpful stuff at the top of the group and jump in with dumb questions.

43

Early on, when FB had only been around a few years, someone tried to share some pictures to me on FB, but I couldn’t access them without joining. I immediately realized that everything on FB is behind a wall and FB is effectively building their own internet. Since that’s contrary to the whole point of the internet, I refused to join and I’m glad I did.

Now I see so much stuff that’s FB-only – from easy logins to information – and it strikes me horribly unfair and should be illegal. For instance, when I watch Major League Soccer games the teams will have “contests” where people get a chance to win a prize (by voting for top player or best goal or whatever), but since you have to be an FB member, I can’t do it – therefore I’m discriminated against. There’s no other way to enter but via FB, which is ridiculous. (There are rules for traditional games and contests with prizes, so that it’s fair for all, but apparently those laws don’t apply to online stuff.)

I really hate it when companies just assume everyone is on FB. A local food truck posts their location/schedule on FB. So dumb! Why not just put it on a website anyone can access? I often miss news from my own relatives (births, deaths, marriages) because they just assume everyone “saw it on facebook.”

I have no issue with paywalls – companies are free to lock content behind them – but the size and scope of FB is bifurcating the internet and setting an incredibly dangerous precedent. There are some people for whom the entire internet is facebook. They don’t even know there’s more beyond its borders. That’s scary!

5 Likes
44

It does annoy me also when sites give the option of logging in with FB or Google or even Apple. It is none of their business what I login to, so I always choose to create my own account.

And I recall an incident about ten years ago. I was talking to a fellow who ran a club. One of the members did not have an e-mail address and wanted to receive all club info by FB Messenger. Just not going to happen as more people have e-mail than are members of FB.

45

A vendor who uses FB as his primary operating base is a vendor I won’t use–that’s a fully disqualifying factor. His choice to use FB. My choice to go somewhere else.

I had been on FB just a month or two when I started getting more and more “friend” or “like” requests (or whatever else the algorithms threw at me to more fully ensnare me in the FB net) but when they reached the 2nd and 3rd degree, when I had only the most vague of ideas who the person even was, I took the time and trouble to figure out how to disconnect and to paraphrase the immortal words of the Humongous to Mad Max, I “just walked away.”

2 Likes
46

Agreed on the companies! I’ve missed out on concert tickets for a favorite artist. I was on their email list but didn’t realize that a couple of years later they’d stopped updating the website except for concert dates. No ticket sales info anymore and no mailing list, only FB. Thankfully they’ve gone back. But I see it with a lot of smaller local businesses. My first instinct is to go to a website for info, not social media.

I have actually found I will get a quicker response in some cases to a FB message to a company vs a web chat or email.

I have a few friends and companies favorited so I get their updates as they post it. Except I don’t, so what’s the point. FB controls what we see and who has time to select everything individually? The more groups and company likes you have, the more cluttered your feed is and the harder it is to see relevant-to-you info.

What I dislike the most is hitting a page that requires a login, but hey they’ll let you use your FB login. No thanks.

If FB went away tomorrow, I wouldn’t miss it at all.

Diane

47

I don’t love Facebook, but I think it’s silly to avoid a small company just because they don’t have the time or money or expertise (or feel that they do) to create and update a web site, but find it easy to create a Facebook (or Google) presence and keep it updated. I went to a phenomenal restaurant just before COVID-19 that had a years-old web site but kept their Facebook page updated, and I was able to find out about a near-term reservation opportunity through Facebook and book a reservation. We’re hoping to go back later this year after a trip we’re taking next month, and when we’re not living with 80 year old people, as we are this summer; we still avoid indoor restaurants, still haven’t had COVID-19, and definitely don’t want to risk being responsible for giving our older relatives COVID-19. But we literally would never have learned about this great restaurant if it wasn’t for seeing their site in Google Maps one day and then learning more about it on Facebook.

Facebook can be toxic if you let it be, but I keep up using the chronological feed. In the iOS app, there is a tab on the bottom “Feeds” that shows your friends, groups, pages, etc., in reverse chronological order, so you can scroll until you recognize the last items you’ve already seen, and there are no “recommended” items (though of course there are ads.) It’s a bit different in the iPad app (or I think online in Safari, but I never look at FB that way). Tap the menu bottom-right, tap “Most Recent”, and it shows your content in reverse chronological order.

I hardly ever post anything, I don’t let FB know my location, if I do share a photo I strip location info from it. But I do enjoy seeing what my friends and family are up to. I rarely comment or like anything.

There are ways to use FB and avoid the toxicity. And there are good, small businesses that use the service well. You do you, but it seems weird to me to punish them just because you don’t like Facebook.

As for twitter, I don’t use their app at all, but do use the third party app Twitterific, which has powerful muting/muffling filtering, plus I’m careful about who I follow. It can be super-useful and I find it easier to pick the articles I want to read in sites that post a lot of articles. I guess I used to use RSS for this, but I find twitter more useful for this these days.

Perhaps I’m just able to not get emotionally involved (e.g. angry) when people post things on social media sites like these that they troll for response. Trolling on the internet has been around far longer than Facebook and twitter, that’s for sure.

4 Likes
48

I didn’t understand that post to indicate punishment at all.

The biz makes a biz decision to only communicate with potential customers through FB. That poster made a biz decision not to do biz with FB and hence they won’t learn about said restaurant or shop or whatever. It’s not punishment, it’s just cause and effect.

No hard feelings I’m sure, but if a biz makes a conscious biz decision, they’ll have to live with the consequences of that decision.

I’m happy that works out for you. Personally, I’m more concerned about the opposite. I don’t use FB and never have, yet I still cannot avoid their toxicity (Jan 6 coup attempt).

I don’t see how it’s fair that I (or anybody else) suffer at the hands of a conglomerate we have never chosen to do biz with. Where is our freedom and liberty in all of this?

3 Likes
49

What Simon said. I won’t refuse to do business with someone who is only on FB but yes I will miss out on updates if that’s the only place they put their info. In my case I missed 2 concerts in a row because I’d signed up for their email lists in good faith and didn’t realize they’d abandoned them for FB.

When I travel and am looking for a place to eat on the fly, I will pick up my phone and believe it or not, look in Maps for nearby places. Those often have reviews (Yelp? TripAdvisor?) that I can read but most importantly, they will tell me how far away they are from my exact location. If I see a place I like I can either call or get directions immediately on the phone. I don’t need FB knowing where I eat. Same goes for gas and lodging. I rarely make reservations in advance.

A big issue I’ve seen with FB and business is that the location is not always on the main page. I have found it in the past by hitting “Suggest edits”. It should be up front and center on every single page especially places like food and lodging.

I deleted FB from my phone 4 years ago for a number of reasons so it will be the last place I look when I have my phone in my hand.

Having to hit “most recent” in your feed is annoying because you have to do it every single time and it’s another thing that is getting increasingly buried.

If you’re going to have an online presence I think you need to go all-in these days. It’s not just the web, or fb or twitter or whatever. I only have FB and I am not on it all the time so I miss a lot. There’s too much junk to scroll through. It’s more like something I may do when I am bored and don’t want to think too much. It IS an easy way to post pictures, I’ll give it that much. But even that is not easy these days as they censor too much.

I enjoy forums way more because they are organized. For instance, I read Mac Rumors often. But I have no interest in certain topics so I can skip right over those sections and only enter the ones where I may find the info I need. FB doesn’t make that part easy at all. There are a number of forums I’ve used that also have a FB presence and I haven’t bothered even looking at them because it’s just chaos.

IMO
Diane

1 Like
50

I agree 100%. My background is In publishing and advertising, and I’m very well versed in tracking and targeting. Facebook, My Space, Twitter, etc. always gave me the willies and I never considered signing away my soul. Here’s another recent example of why:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/15/tech/facebook-internet-tracking-settlement/index.html

Although I have been hearing for years from friends and family who still badger me about Facebook, I stick to my guns and keep telling them to please just send me an email. And remember when the annoying Facebook Like button was just about everywhere off of Facebook? It’s still alive and well, but I am glad many businesses and individuals stopped using it.

51

There tends to be moral panic about any new technology that significantly changes society and I think this is what we’re seeing here, mostly. It’s notable, for example, that a lot of the planning and communicating and amplification around the January 6 coup attempt was done by email, but no one’s talking about how it has to be regulated and moderated, because it’s already well established.

52

The issue of a business or group using Facebook as their only technology for providing an online presence troubles me. On the one hand, I recognize that groups want to go where people are, and social media appears to be that place. (Often it’s not, because Facebook’s algorithm determines when something is deemed worth to show. And of course, the audience is then limited to people who will use Facebook, which, as this thread indicates, is far from everyone.)

On the other hand, everyone has to make choices that they believe support the world they want to live in. Many people and companies have stopped doing business of any sort with Russian companies in the wake of that country’s invasion and subsequent killing of many thousands of Ukrainians. And that could be the case even when individual Russian companies may be unrelated to the invasion or actively against it.

I won’t categorically refuse to interact with a business whose only or main Internet presence is via Facebook, although it will negatively color my opinion of them and I’ll seek out and prefer alternatives if possible. And I won’t ever communicate using a Facebook-owned channel—if that’s the only option, I’ll do without. But that’s just me.

2 Likes
53

That’s absolutely true, but that raises the point that email is an open standard that’s not under the control of any one entity, as Facebook is. And Facebook does control what can be said on its platform.

3 Likes
54

I was pretty sure that I was hitting the general thread reply, but my remark was mostly responding to this quote.

55

Yep. I said it and meant it. There are plenty of other avenues for very small operators who can’t afford a web site, such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, etsy, etc. etc. etc. I won’t use FB because I feel it is inherently evil, to be honest.

YMMV. That’s what having choices is all about.

1 Like
56

There’s interesting US demographics about the impact of social media usage from the very reputable Pew foundation: About two-thirds of Americans (64%) say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the country today:

1 Like
57

Wow, the Pew Research Center has done a ton on social media.

But interestingly, they’ve been focusing on Twitter for the last year. Nothing directly about Facebook in a year.

2 Likes
58

I was also reminded of another book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man:

2 Likes
59

Not far from my home is a very popular ice cream parlor that has been in business and owned by the same family for generations. They make all their ice cream and toppings from scratch, and the stuff really is that good. The displays and furniture hasn’t been updated since the 1930s, and the parlor has been featured in films and TV shows for decades. But it’s still a very, very small local family business, the owners don’t advertise or franchise; they only have a Facebook page. I’m not going to penalize a friendly, family owned business that has the best ice cream ever for not having their own website. The parlor doesn’t even have wifi.

My husband and I were both there yesterday. Here’s an article about Eddie’s:

1 Like
60

A very significant % of the Pew Charitable Trust’s time and $$$$$$$ is devoted to journalism:

They’ve been very focused on digital journalism since the founding of the Interwebs:

And IMHO, they are very focused on democracy as well as privacy: