story
Graph search and its creepy implications were then nothing I needed to find personally objectionable anymore.
I no longer have to complain about the other sleazy, move-the-goalposts, amoral aspects of Facebook Instagram.
This latest one, I have to say, should not be surprising to anybody.
DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT if you don't like it. You will still have friends, I promise :-)
Before you file for account deletion, you might want to do two things:
1) use http://www.picknzip.com/ to download the pictures of you from other people (I have a couple that I liked that I can use for other profile pics, etc.). (The other photos in my facebook albums that I uploaded myself, I already have elsewhere.)
2) associate your facebook account with a yahoo email address. You can download all the contact information of your facebook friends that way (I don't know if this still works, but it did last year)
This is, AFAIK, the only way to export your facebook friends' data
3) go to your full friends list, scroll down until the infinite scrolling loads the whole list. copy and paste this in an email to yourself.
These three steps should ensure that you don't "lose" any data about your friends on facebook, and will allow you to email them later.
Yes, you still will have friends, but you will lose friends, connections with businesses, and other abilities. I swore off facebook for one year after having been on it since...I don't know...maybe 2004 or 2005ish?
The modern Facebook account has everything from a person's college girlfriend, to the pictures of their first born. Yes it has some mundane things like what you ate for lunch, it also has messages from you and your friends debating over the Affordable Health Care Act. For a lot of people, it isn't just flipping a switch. You will not speak as often to that person that now lives on a different coast even though you both have each other's email.
Then there are the things that impact you even though you're still friends with people. For example, invites to events like Halloween parties are often sent by things like Facebook, so even though you see those people once or twice a week, you still become the asshole that has to be filled in while everyone else is already up to speed already.
Then you have local businesses and chains that only have their hours and specials on Facebook (or at least their Facebook account is the only one they actively maintain) Old Chicago in my area is an example. They have a national website, but the specials that change every Tuesday night are only posted to their Facebook page.
Nothing convinced me to invest in Facebook more than quitting Facebook.
If anybody knows a way to get that, let me know.
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/imacros-for-f...
Yet here you are...
Additionally, apart from writing in PHP, there must be tons of technical fun and deep problems to solve that makes FB fairly unique.
And also, I'm not really sure how unethical it'd be to work for them, even if you felt they were wrong. Unless you're bringing some rare 4-sigma value to FB, it's likely they'd just get someone else. Might as well be you, where you have a chance to influence things.
Now, this is not an attempt to defend Facebook's actions here or in their other recent efforts. I am merely providing another point of evidence to support MichaelGG's point that Facebook is not flat-out evil, and provide a reason someone might want to work for them despite their recent behavior.
Must be nice to have it wrapped up all tidy like.
I try to do this when I buy an RIAA-published album or watch a Hollywood film. I make sure I donate an equivalent amount to civil-liberties orgs (EFF, ALA, and others) during that year.
"Carbon credits," basically.
I'm sure your frinds rather be working for some project that would make the world better (hey Linux, I'm at you!:) But, still, they have to pay bills.
That's life. Don't like it? Change it.
It reminds me of a friend of mine whose wife works for the TSA at the airport. Honestly, I have zero respect for her, but hey, at least she can pay her mortgage right?
While Facebook isn't on the same level as working for the TSA, it is definitely a company that appears to be run by people of questionable moral character, and I would absolutely not want to be associated with them.
Mike Krieger (Instagram co-founder) here. Just wanted to offer some clarification since there's some speculation about the reason & scope for the verification mentioned in the article.
When we receive evidence of a violation of our site policies, we respond. This isn't a recent change, but the way we've run our community from the beginning. In some specific cases, for verification purposes, we request that people upload a government issued ID in response. This is the case for a very small percentage of accounts, and doesn't affect most Instagram users. The ID is used only for account verification, and not retained permanently.
Hope that helps clarify things a bit.
Verification of what?
Do you ask to cover the license number/address as well, the way Facebook.com does? If yes, doesn't it make it trivially easy to send a fake picture of a license your way?
Mike, how can you be a "software engineer" and make a statement like that?
Yes, it helps. Now I'm even more convinced how corrupt your company is.
Until now-ish (or the near future), FB had no way of verifying that, or forcing me to!
Also, do you block their widgets on other sites/pages?
Not that I disagree with the "Big Brother" concerns that this "Ihre Papiere, bitte." activity raises.
P.S. Aside from government(s), of what value is a proven identity to commercial interests? Being able to prove that you/they are targeting exactly who they want.
Hmm... Amongst other things, I understand that process servers are already attemtping to use FB as a accepted means of delivery. And I've read that debt collectors are using accounts having profile pictures of bikini clad young women, in order to successfully "friend" those they wish to hound.
All sorts of value to "proven" identities...
Push for real identities is beneficial to both - government and social networks. First get more control over their citizens, second more ad revenue.
I tried to explain what I was using the account for to their account reps, but they wouldn't unlock it unless I sent them the ID scans. I can't believe that there is not a bigger uproar about a non-governmental, for-profit asking for government issued ID, in electronic format no less, that relies on the unwitting user to hide pertinent data prior to scanning it.
Fucking ridiculous if you ask me. Instagram should be equally ashamed of themselves.
With business customers, even if we ask for ID to confirm larger contracts, they'll send everything. Full IDs, credit card scans, etc. Technical customers regularly just email root passwords to financially-valuable systems when they have the slightest problem.
Also, try this: run an ad on Craigslist offering $500 a day for whatever. Ask for personal info and photos. You'll be deluged with people ready to hand every detail over without second thought.
Most Facebook users have already given their name, birthday and profile photo. For most users they wouldn't be giving anything else than those pieces of information on a ID card.
Now, that doesn't get into the secondary requests as the article states, but it certainly isn't "entrusting a copy of their ID to a third party."
Agree. Scanning a drivers license over the internet seems ...
At some point you have to start attributing actions to malice.
People, get off Facebook. I'm in college and haven't touched it in 11 months. I'm doing just fine. Nobody needs it.
Reference: http://torrentfreak.com/court-throws-out-109-of-110-alleged-...
Follow the money. Always.
I will say that social networks like Facebook have introduced some interesting dynamics and engagement that could have not existed otherwise such as Caine's Arcade.
I think we're all waiting for the social network we all want and pay the $10-$12/year for privacy, transparency and complete ownership over our data.
I'm currently working on distributed systems/networks which could form the basis of a 'social graph' but there are questions about how to make it profitable (hence self-sustaining). Getting people onto a network is only part of the problem.
The main issue is that the cost barrier stops people from signing up just to try it out, in in that sense that app.net really ought to have a 'free' tier. Even if it was particularly restive, it would let their users get a feel for it before paying.
I trust FB to spell correctly and use the right apostrophe. Very interesting set of responses here though.
It really is a dream as far as intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA and their less public counterparts) go. It used to be ridiculously hard to find the info about how to reach a person, or which buttons to push. Now, almost everyone offers it freely about themselves, and the few who don't get ratted on by their friends.
Validating identity might be a by product. But it's not anything that's hard to do anyway.
It can never be a valid ID, because they are never involved in the certification and registration process of your "official" existence.
Don't worry, they'll get there.
On the other, at least it's still a reset option. That might sound silly at first, but I lost access to an old MS Live account that I had foolishly left on auto-login on my Xbox for years and eventually lost access to the old Hotmail account (yeah, I made this account a long time ago) it was tied to. No amount of offering to show that I was the credit card holder for the hundreds of dollars in games or anything would convince them it was my account.
For the people to whom their Instagram account is really important, this might be a nice option (even if it is rather invasive).
> They see it as an underage Facebook.
I meant the underage kids, not Facebook itself. I wouldn't say Instagram solicits kids, just that there are lot of them on there.
I am tempted to join instagram just so i can upload a picture of ian lavender - "Don't tel Him Pike"
For FB's, they have to excuse from making an open source client side pre-upload number-removing tool.
Same for anyone who uses it.
The most difficult elements would probably be faking the font, and post-processing it to ensure the text looked real (pixel-perfect accuracy and color for text would be a dead giveaway of computer generation).
I'm not a lawyer, nor a law enforcement officer, nor a prosecutor, nor a judge.
While agree that something to allow you to use a website shouldn't be a serious criminal offence it's easy to imagine that it could be painted as such: unauthorised access to website services after a clear warning; fake id instruments; etc etc etc.
http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...
