Initiate Planning Sequence: Sopping Up The Mess

In which I begin planning my departure from FB and more...

JMN

5 minute read

Initiate planning sequence for cleaning up my privacy mess.

Step one, leaving Facebook. Since the beginning of personalized ads we’ve been told that ads configured to our habits are better than just random ones. I thought that made sense for a long time. Wouldn’t I rather see ads relevant to my interests?

Nope.

I don’t want marketing companies tracking my interests. I don’t want my browsing habits and metadata collected for the creation of curated ads or worse. I already pay to be connected to the internet. If the cost of using services such as Facebook and Google is giving them my digital fingerprint in high definition then I don’t need to use those services.

Unfortunately, I’ve already drank the ‘convenient free services’ Kool-Aid provided by FB and others. I gave up personal and identifying info without blinking an eye; scrolling past TOS windows to click the ‘I agree’ box and using social auth options out of laziness. I recently migrated to a new phone and had to go through the permissions authorization for a few apps that I had to reinstall manually… Did I tap my way through the permissions? Yes. I’ll work on cleaning up that mess too. Later.

But Facebook.

Features I like from FB:

  • [ ] Aggregating my demographic and browsing patterns for marketing use

  • [x] “Free” repository for photos

  • [x] Tracking friends, artists, companies, and news organizations

  • [x] Central location for sharing photos and links

Cool. So in order to make this as painless as possible for lowest energy Jacob I’ll work to find suitable replacements that provide the service that I like and exclude the features that I don’t like. That should be the hard part. Luckily, people have been making this departure long before I ever considered it. There are a bunch of resources for properly leaving FB and replacing services that you did appreciate. The AntiFacebook subreddit has a pretty concise guide for leaving Facebook and offers replacements/alternatives for some of the services you may have grown accustomed to.

I also want to note that I’m not feeling ‘anti’ FB. They offer a service that costs something to their users. They’re not the first company to deliver a product meticulously designed to keep their clientele returning. I just don’t think the product is worth the price anymore. A simple consumer choice.

There is some ‘ickiness’, some tingling of the spine, when we consider the behavioral economics behind the way products we buy are designed. In this article, the author examines the use of ‘nudges’ and the line between manipulation and behavior encouragement. Here’s what I think is the articles core question:

Are the nudges used to benefit both parties involved in the interaction or do they create benefits for one side and costs for the other?

Anyhow, that’s a question I like to think about when considering any service/product. FB has opened some of its privacy options for tweaking by users but its not enough to keep me around. Here is a short article that criticizes the balance that FB has struck between their ad business and maintaining user trust. Their revenue is almost entirely from ads so you know this is balance they’re constantly examining. I see FB as: a smooth turnpike, with all your friends there, full of amenities for users. Also, the turnpike is also a dynamic billboard that is constantly calculating the status and anticipated behaviors of its users! It is a nice highway though and at the tollgate they didn’t charge you anything!

Money baby, money! Hey, why do they offer free coffee and soda at casinos? Wait, why do I feel like I’m winning? Wait, why does Taco Bell’s paste remind me of meat and how do these fast food burgers taste like they were made on a open fire?

Finally, here is a speech an amazing rant about the centralization of the web, privacy, and freedom from Eben Moglen that was given in 2010(!). Moglen imagines FB pitching its product to users as follows:

“I will give you free web hosting and some PHP doodads and you get spying for free all the time”.

Pass. I think I can get a better deal somewhere else. Here is some other relevant media I’ve consumed this month:

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