Groups Launch 'How To Stop Facebook' Effort

A coalition of nonprofits on Wednesday debuted HowToStopFacebook.org, a fresh push to encourage greater government regulation of the social networking giant aimed at forcing the company to change its business model. From a report: The campaign hopes to take the outrage expressed by legislators over the revelations of whistleblower Frances Haugen and translate it into action. The campaign is pushing for two goals: A Congressional investigation with subpoena power into harms caused by Facebook; and a strong federal data privacy law that makes it illegal for companies like Facebook and YouTube to collect the vast amounts of data they use to personalize recommendations. The more than 30 groups involved include Accountable Tech, Article 19, Center for Digital Democracy, Fairplay, Global Voices, Media Justice, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Presente, Public Knowledge, United We Dream, Ranking Digital Rights, SumOfUs, Win Without War, and the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center.

How do you stop facebook?

[thrasher thetic]

Stop using it.

Re:How do you stop facebook?

[Merk42]

I, personally, haven't used it in years, but it's still tracking behavior.
People who never even made an account still get Shadow Profiles made of them

So unless you mean "everyone/enough people stop using it to the point where it's not profitable and shuts down" fine.
It's more than just the individual's action to stop Facebook from tracking them.

Re:

[brunes69]

Shadow profiles are a Baba Yaga argument.

They are created by someone else tagging a photo with your name, but they contain no actual information about you or anyone else. They are also wildly inaccurate because they are unverifiable.

I am also curious how you propose to solve for this problem, unless you want to pass a law that says "no one can ever talk about Merk42 in any digital realm without their permission". Good luck with that.

Re:How do you stop facebook?

[ChatHuant]

Shadow profiles [...] contain no actual information about you or anyone else.

Well, to begin with, they do have enough information to link you to other people or profiles - at least the tagger, and maybe other people in the same photo, and other people known/tagged by the account that posted the tag. With your name and those links, they may find you in other people's photos/accounts and connect you to them as well.

Besides the tag, the photo may contain interesting metadata, maybe a title, a date/time, GPS coordinates, or else the location could be recognized by some algorithm, kind of like Google's "similar images" thing. Now, if they have your name and location they can look you up in all those sweet public databases, like the DMV or property titles registries, school/university records, credit card transactions data, phone operator logs, and so on. All, if not most of what I described can be done automatically. With a bit more effort they should be able to link you to accounts you may have on other sites, whenever you give your real info to some site. At this point you have become a valuable asset they can sell to advertisers - all without you having a Facebook account at all.

Re: How do you stop facebook?

[brunes69]

All you're doing is spouting off irrelevant half truths, without actually explaining how you want this to be solved for.

Re:

[ChatHuant]

Well, my intention wasn't to suggest solutions; I only wanted to correct your uninformed statement. Therefore, in the context of your post, I think my post is relevant.

This said, what exactly are the "half-truth" you mention? Or are you just trying - rather clumsily - for a flame war?

Re:

[brunes69]

If you don't have anything of value to provide to the conversation (RE an actual workable solution to the problem) then... so? What's your point? Complaining is easy. Pointing out problems is easy. Solving problems is hard.

Complaints without solutions aren't even worth the electrons they are consuming.

Come back when you have an actual, realistic, workable idea of how the situation you are complaining about could be improved in the real world.

Re:

[ChatHuant]

I notice that YOU didn't suggest any such solution, yet didn't hesitate to enter the conversation - so let me quote the man: You hypocrite! First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

 

Re:

[brunes69]

I am not the one saying it is a realistic problem to be solved, so why would I need to? I already said that it is not a real issue and complaining about it is pointless.

A third party going online and posting a picture and linking you to it, is not something that you can control while also preserving the right of people to discuss what they please. As much as you may like to believe you own your own image, **you do not** have any such ownership.

Re:

[shanen]

It's the you-shaped holes you leave behind even if you trusted Facebook to delete the data you provided. Anything anyone else ever said about you remains fair game. At least according to Facebook's ToS and lawyers.

Just an FP-branch reaction, but I have slim hopes for this approach and slimmer hopes for a Slashdot discussion on the topic. I have recently commented why "delete Facebook" is unlikely to work. Facebook is actually glad to let the "irritants" remove themselves. Adversarial regulation becomes a ca

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You've just solved the problem of drugs, congratulations!

Re:

[thrasher thetic]

Those should also be legal. I'm not your dad and its your business how you choose to poison yourself, mentally or otherwise.

Re: How do you stop facebook?

[Lowell Boggs]

There is a simple solution : tax all the posts, both sender and receiver and require that the individual users pay the tax. Anyone who sends a post should have to pay a tax based on the number of the recipients. Anyone who receives should pay as well. This will limit the random idiots from saying click baiting things.

More or less censorship?

[Erioll]

So they want MORE "curating" of your feed via what the government says you should see (as opposed to Facebook ownership)? Or they want LESS "curating" of your feed so you can see anything your friends/subscriptions want you to see?

Re:More or less censorship?

[cayenne8]

So they want MORE "curating" of your feed via what the government says you should see (as opposed to Facebook ownership)? Or they want LESS "curating" of your feed so you can see anything your friends/subscriptions want you to see?

I think it should be relatively simple.

If they curate for you, they feed info to you based on info they gather and process, or whatever method, they treat them as a publisher and they will have to really tighten up, etc. and be responsible for what they feed/publish you.

Or...have FB and other social media truly act only as an information pipe, where they don't touch the info flow (with exception of truly illegal content) and let info, whatever it is flow as long as it is legal.

I'd opt for the latter, but either way this seems to be a fairly simple path to pursue....

So, of course that won't work.

Re:

[timeOday]

Or...have FB and other social media truly act only as an information pipe, where they don't touch the info flow (with exception of truly illegal content) and let info, whatever it is flow as long as it is legal.

This doesn't work for platforms that provide one-to-many / "broadcast" information, because the fringe ends up driving out the mainstream. All the right-leaning attempts to create a 'freedom of speech' platform have been swamped by porn and hate groups, which is not illegal but also not commercia

Re:

[ezdiy]

Because the fringe ends up driving out the mainstream.

And that's bad? Remember when the whole internet was like that?

Re:

[cayenne8]

This doesn't work for platforms that provide one-to-many / "broadcast" information, because the fringe ends up driving out the mainstream. All the right-leaning attempts to create a 'freedom of speech' platform have been swamped by porn and hate groups, which is not illegal but also not commercially viable at the scale of facebook that caters to the mainstream.

You know, I had NO problem navigating USENET back in the day for content I wanted and easily avoiding the stuff I didn't want to see.

Why would it b

Re: More or less censorship?

[dragonworks2050]

Filtering is different from deciding what I should pay attention to. Iâ(TM)m fine if they want to hide the trolls and psychopaths but Iâ(TM)d also like it to be illegal to use ML as a psychological weapon to increase engagement.

Re:

[ezdiy]

That's just barring certain instrument, but not the underlying principle. Crowd-rousing is hardly new and various kings tried and failed to regulate it throughout history.

There are far better ways to do that, typically by making outrage/drama less profitable, instead of banning opinion bias as such.

Re:

[DesScorp]

So they want MORE "curating" of your feed via what the government says you should see (as opposed to Facebook ownership)? Or they want LESS "curating" of your feed so you can see anything your friends/subscriptions want you to see?

Let's cut to the chase: they want the government to make Facebook ban Badthink, and only allow Goodthink. And guess who gets to define that.... people like them.

They want nothing less than the elimination of politics and speech that they oppose, simply put.

Re:

[alexgieg]

So they want MORE "curating" of your feed via what the government says you should see (as opposed to Facebook ownership)? Or they want LESS "curating" of your feed so you can see anything your friends/subscriptions want you to see?

Both approaches have the the same end result: less artificial confrontation. Right now Facebook actively promotes confrontational content to drive "engagement", that is, eyeballs on ads, and when called upon on it they turn the know a few notches down, then up again when people stop caring. Hence, whatever of those two choices were to be adopted, it'd result in similar reductions of confrontational content viewing.

I personally prefer the curating less. As in, turn back the algorithmic BS and go back to a st

Re:

[ctilsie242]

If I had to have people curating my feed, I'd rather have the government than a private party, because the private party could be paid by anyone, and at least the government is held in check by someone, somewhere.

The best of all would be none of the above, and going back to a USENET style of decentralized newsgroups where people can discuss stuff without depending on one single centralized entity.

Evil vs Evil

[jebrick]

My favorite part is the tag line. Help us shutdown Facebook's surveillance Machine!!

Because Goggle has your best interests at heart.

"Groups" not "Google"

[nocoiner]

Because Goggle has your best interests at heart.

I misread that at first too, but it says "Groups Launch..." not "Google Launch..."

Re:

[nocoiner]

How the fuck do you misread "Groups" as "Google?" They both start with "G" and have an "o" in or near the middle.

Speed reading, with mild dyslexia.

Also I can admit to the mistake without being an asswipe like you.

why is this a facebook problem?

[snowshovelboy]

Facebook wasn't the one who curated the content that dragged us into the Iraq war to secure WMDs that weren't even there.

That's just one example. People with money and power have been "curating our feeds" for their own benefit for thousands of years. This isn't unique to facebook. Fix facebook, and we'll still have reddit, instagram, tiktok, WSJ, NYT, FoxNews, MSNBC.. the list is a mile long, and the problem isn't "algorithms".

Re:why is this a facebook problem?

[evanh]

Because the algorithms auto-curate with explicit programmed bias towards conflict. Free-market principles dictate that whatever generates the most income is right. The off-loaded costs, of course, aren't counted in such a model.

Conflict has been stated by Facebook as what makes the max views and clicks and thereby ad revenue.

You're right of course, it's not Facebook alone. But Facebook is very much the epicentre. So much so that the resulting laws will probably be forever known by his name.

I suspect Zuck is intentionally demonstrating, while raining money for him, that special new laws are needed. From the first day, when he openly called all his customers "dumb fucks", he knew then this had to be taken to extreme.

Not unlike the pushing of the, "I need this", six-hour blackout button when a particularly revealing whistleblower speak up. Again, seeing how far he can wind up the stakes.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

My information

[RitchCraft]

The accompanying video states exactly what needs to happen. My information is mine to control. Until it is made illegal for companies to harvest your information nothing will change. If an individual chooses to share their data then that individual gets a cut of the profits made from the data. That could come in the form of free access to a web site such as Facebook or a monthly royalty payment. Some people may like the residual income from allowing 30+ companies to use their data. I wouldn't, but it needs

Re:

[brunes69]

This is already the exact model that exists, right now.

Re: My information

[rpnx]

yup. didn't read the terms of service? too bad.

Well this will end well

[peterww]

The petition says it wants to pass a law to prevent any company from collecting data on its users and making money off of it.

This isn't just about Facebook. This is about every company in the world that works off of selling ads. Because the best way to sell ads is to sell them to the people who you think will actually buy the products. So, this is a proposal basically to kill the advertising industry.

The US ad industry's revenue is 140 Billion, and 283 Billion is spent on ads every year. So right off the ba

Re:

[Gruntbeetle]

> What we're basically talking about is ending the funding model that 90% of the shit on the internet
> that you use on a daily basis runs off of. Basically, ending the web as we know it.

Promise?

This means that I no longer need browser helpers like No Script (blocks malware in advertisements), Adblock Plus (keeps the sliders/pop-up/pop-unders to an acceptable level), Auto Cookie Delete (makes it harder for advertisers to track me) when I want to surf the web.

Maybe I'm getting old, but I do r

GDPR Exists. CCPA Exists. Facebook still exists.

[brunes69]

There are no stronger privacy regulations in the world than GDPR, and anything the US creates is likely to pale in comparison when it comes to scope and enforcement.

Yet, Facebook still exists in Europe, and GDPR has not significantly affected their business. Why? Because people freely consent.

The simple truth is that the majority of people accept the bargain of giving away some personal data to target ads, vs. paying what would be $30 / month for a social network.

Guess what? I am one of those people. I accept the bargain. Not only do I think it is fair, I actually think it is amazing value.

You may not agree with that. You may not like it. But you don't get to dictate the terms for everyone on earth.

Re:

[JoelWrapper]

Way to think of yourself: gee, this must be worth like $30/mo, and I'm getting it for _free_ - that's an amazing value! That's not the cost. The actual cost is the platform spreading misinformation at an exponential rate, actively (or passively) promoting white supremacy, and all the other crap that nets them 10000x what you think your information is worth. Watching society crumble is the cost. I do not agree that the cost will ever, _ever_ be worth me posting new pictures of my cat and getting some Lik

Re:

[brunes69]

Er... my PII is not "promoting white supremacy".

White supremacy and misinformation existed before Facebook. It will exist after Facebook (ref: Parler).

See the other commentators point about world governments being the main culprit when it comes to spreading misinformation.

Blaming Facebook and other FAANG companies for all of the ills of the world is very tiresome.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Blaming Facebook and other FAANG companies for all of the ills of the world is very tiresome.

But essentially denying any problems exist is facile: grossly exaggerating an opposing view is a tactic to shut it down and a strong indication you do not agree at all.

Re:

[brunes69]

Pointing out problems is easy.

Providing solutions is hard.

1984

[ozzymodus12]

Ah, yes. More people demanding censorship and cancel culture against anyone that they don't like. It's never enough and we need more censorship censorship censorship. Everyone is an extremist and a victim at the same time. The internet was a wonderful thing until social media gave organizations a way to start building lists of dangerous bad thinking people. Now, everyone wants to push back against dangerous extremist words which is virtually anything and everything. Facebook isn't really promoting anythin

Facebook? What a strange game

[memory_register]

The only winning move is not to play

Tell me where...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

...to donate, sign, join, &/or participate. This is a great idea that's long overdue.

Facebook business model causes problems

[MarkWegman]

Facebook makes more money when people keep coming back to them and hence read more of their ads. The most active people are those that can't find the information they are looking for anywhere else. One type of information you can't read in the mainstream media is absurd lies (e.g. vaccines cause you to be magnetic). Facebook would be stupid (which they are not) if they didn't have algorithms that push material to users that has been proven from past experience to make people like them more active later o

A simple solution

[Bu11etmagnet]

$ cat /ets/hosts
0.0.0.0 facebook.com
0.0.0.0 fbcdn.net

And they need oversight on FB's "monitoring"

[whitroth]

Since their algorithms are complete and utter crap. More and more people are tossed into FB jail for, let's see, naught words, quotes from, say, ancient SNL (that would be me), and on and on. They're apparently using keywords chosen by the religious wrong... just as Prodigy Europe did in the mid-eighties (they banned "breast").

Advantage of Facebook app in business

[meglucio]

FB can help companies build on Facebook to expand their internet presence. It has helped a lot to cut down the physical boundaries, it has its many benefits for personal or for the business purposes https://meglucio16.wixsite.com... [wixsite.com]