I have some interesting anecdotes to share about a somewhat opposite situation. I, uh, I just got a Facebook account. I have actively refused it for a long time, and even now I am very picky about it -- my friends list has a bunch of people I don't even know, my location frequently changes and I access it only through Tor because I hate Facebook's privacy policy (or lack of thereof). That being said, I was the last in my group of friends to do it. Most of them opened their FB account years ago. I opened it because one of my friends left the country, but he doesn't use an IM program, nor checks his e-mail too often, and this was pretty much the only way to stay in touch.
I noticed a bunch of weird things about FB-trained users:
* A few days ago, I threw a party and invited two good friends that I haven't seen in a while. Both of them were a bit pissed on me, because I'd moved to Ireland without so much as dropping by to tell them I'm leaving, but were happy to see me and had struggled to make it to the party, because they knew I'd probably be going back soon. Now, I've never even been to Ireland, let alone move there, so I was understandably dumbfounded, until I realized that the last location I'd listed on Facebook was a city in Ireland. The thought that someone would take the location I list on the Internet seriously didn't even cross my mind. Hell, when I started using the Internet, around a quarter of the other users claimed they were from Middle Earth, and I claimed I was from Coruscant!
* Facebook events. I nearly missed a friend's anniversary because he just opened a Facebook event, instead of inviting everyone over. You know, by telephone. Needless to say, I probably skipped over it in my inbox or whatever they call it.
* "Like" and "Epic". I consistently denied using the former without leaving a comment, because I think it's lazy, but the latter is, unfortunately, starting to enter my vocabulary. At first, whenever someone was saying that this or that had been epic, I was literally asking them what exactly they meant. I'm seriously alarmed by this, as our entire vocabulary is being invaded by "lazy" words that can mean pretty much anything you want them to mean. "Epic" is the new "nice". Is it sunny outside? Whoa, what a nice, warm day. Is it raining? Whoa, how nice and cozy. Is there a fucking blizzard outside? This is going to be such a nice Christmas day! Now, my jalapeno sauce was about as epic as the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk.
Needless to say, my integration in this new Interwebs-powered social network has not been without glitches...
The thought that someone would take the location I list on the Internet seriously didn't even cross my mind
Firstly, Facebook is supposed to provide information about you. There's little point to providing information that is patently false. Why even waste the keystrokes? If you don't want a piece of information known, just omit it. Thus, people generally expect the information you provided is true.
Secondly, I think we were all a lot more fanciful when we were kids.
> Firstly, Facebook is supposed to provide information about you.
I thought it was supposed to help me stay in touch with people and stuff, like they claim on their homepage. I'm adding false information related to my location to confuse their nosey advertising probe.
I thought it was supposed to help me stay in touch with people and stuff
I'm not really a FB fan or anything, but the idea is you stay in touch in part by providing that information about your life. Getting snippets of friend's ongoing lives helps sustain (or maybe just slow the decay of) rapport, even in their physical absence. If it was just a platform that allowed you to message your friends, it would be no different from an email list.
>> "my friends list has a bunch of people I don't even know"
WHY? This is consistently one of the biggest complaints about Facebook. I can understand people who've had Facebook since it's early days having this problem but if you just opened your account why did you add people you don't know?
Because Facebook gets really confused about it. Their "list of people you may know" is quite off, they can't recommend any bar or club in my hometown because I never even listed it as my location. Even the "meet singles in your areas" ads are off. This way, I can stay in touch with my friends and not be a marketing tool for Facebook.
Edit: just to make sure I get my message across the way I want to: I do this because I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, but more importantly because:
a) I hate targeted advertising. If I make a purchase decision, I want to make sure I make it based on actual information, not clever advertising. Avoiding clever advertising is a good way for me not to bump into it.
b) I really think this is wrong. I am a programmer myself, and I think platforms like Facebook are definitely not the way technology should be used. Of course, not all of my friends share the same principles, and I don't want that to be an obstacle; I found this to be a reasonable middle ground.
It'll likely throw off the marketers, at least for a while, but I hope you are aware that if anyone at a 3 letter agency, or even anyone at facebook, cared about you - that it will take them exactly 3 seconds to drop the noise.
> It'll likely throw off the marketers, at least for a while
Nah, you just get adverts you care even less about than those which have a chance of being some measurable fraction of relevant.
Most of the adverts I see seem to be based on what my contacts have "like"d, or otherwise interacted with, more than what I have done (though this could be in part due to me providing fb with a lot less info to work on than some of my contacts do) so providing fake information about yourself will make little difference there unless your contacts all do the same.
Empirically, it seems to work so far. My likes are quite eclectic, too, but that's by my design -- my homepage gets feeds related to Machete Kills and Oscar Wilde because I actually like both. Most of the ads are obviously wrong (hair conditioning products and club wear; I'm bald and hate clubs).
I honestly don't care about targeted advertising. Irrelevant advertising works fine for me.
Of course. I'm not running from any 3-letter agency, just from overly-aggressive marketers. If I ever did anything a 3-letter agency would be interested in, it definitely wouldn't be on the Internet.
I was confused at first too, but I think the idea is to throw off who Facebook, or anyone looking through Facebook's data, thinks you are. Quoting:
I hate Facebook's privacy policy (or lack of thereof)
If you only add real friends, there's too much signal and not enough noise to cover it up. This is in line with using tor and using fake locations that change frequently.
Yup, you nailed it. I also don't "check Facebook" too often for that to be annoying, and my list of friends isn't all that huge. It's less than 50 people, including the people I don't know.
I only stay in touch with people I want to stay in touch with. There are no ex-colleagues-from-that-job-i-left-four-years-ago-whom-i-met-at-that-concert-an-year-ago-but-can't-quite-remember-their-name. Close friends with whom I really do have links to share and things to chat about.
I noticed a bunch of weird things about FB-trained users:
* A few days ago, I threw a party and invited two good friends that I haven't seen in a while. Both of them were a bit pissed on me, because I'd moved to Ireland without so much as dropping by to tell them I'm leaving, but were happy to see me and had struggled to make it to the party, because they knew I'd probably be going back soon. Now, I've never even been to Ireland, let alone move there, so I was understandably dumbfounded, until I realized that the last location I'd listed on Facebook was a city in Ireland. The thought that someone would take the location I list on the Internet seriously didn't even cross my mind. Hell, when I started using the Internet, around a quarter of the other users claimed they were from Middle Earth, and I claimed I was from Coruscant!
* Facebook events. I nearly missed a friend's anniversary because he just opened a Facebook event, instead of inviting everyone over. You know, by telephone. Needless to say, I probably skipped over it in my inbox or whatever they call it.
* "Like" and "Epic". I consistently denied using the former without leaving a comment, because I think it's lazy, but the latter is, unfortunately, starting to enter my vocabulary. At first, whenever someone was saying that this or that had been epic, I was literally asking them what exactly they meant. I'm seriously alarmed by this, as our entire vocabulary is being invaded by "lazy" words that can mean pretty much anything you want them to mean. "Epic" is the new "nice". Is it sunny outside? Whoa, what a nice, warm day. Is it raining? Whoa, how nice and cozy. Is there a fucking blizzard outside? This is going to be such a nice Christmas day! Now, my jalapeno sauce was about as epic as the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk.
Needless to say, my integration in this new Interwebs-powered social network has not been without glitches...