this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
290 points (96.8% liked)

Technology

59377 readers
5196 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The worst part is that I haven't had an account on any of their products in well over a decade, and yet I'm sure that they'll be able to use tons of my up-to-date info in their training.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

How are they getting that up-to-date info?

[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)
  • Virtually every app on your phone has facebook/instagram trackers that gets access to whatever data that app has access to
  • Their ad network (that runs broadly across the internet) is not only known to fingerprint everyone that sees an ad. They've pioneered new was of keeping track of you even if your browser fingerprint changes.
  • Facebook (and one assumes Threads/Instagram) create ghost profiles of everyone mentioned or photographed in any posts on their platform if they can't link that mined data to an actual account. So if your friends use the platform, then you do too, whether you know it or not.
  • Cambridge Analytica is probably not the only company doing that stuff, they're just the ones that got caught.

That's not an exhaustive list, mind you.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social -3 points 9 months ago

A quick Googling of "phones without Facebook" gives lots of options.

Facebook (and one assumes Threads/Instagram) create ghost profiles of everyone mentioned or photographed in any posts on their platform if they can’t link that mined data to an actual account. So if your friends use the platform, then you do too, whether you know it or not.

This would be Facebook using your friends' data. It happens to be about you, but it's not yours.

I'm not saying people shouldn't care about privacy or take actions to protect it, but I think it's possible to go overboard in believing that nobody is allowed to know anything about you without your permission. There's a lot of public information that's available to anyone simply by being in public.

If you don't want your friends telling people about you, that's on you to tell your friends that. If your friends refuse to keep your existence secret then you'll have to decide whether that's more important to you than having friends.

[–] HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My phone can't uninstall Facebook.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago

Then he does have an account on their products.

[–] CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Probably. Guaranteed you have a shadow account in the very least.