OFFICIAL: Zuck's BIG in-your-face Facebook Messenger SHOVE finally pays off Facebook's Messenger – which readers may recall was ingloriously shoved down the throats of the free content ad network's users – has been crowned the second most popular app, slinking past Google's YouTube. That's according to the latest comScore numbers, which ranked the top 15 smartphone apps based on Stateside market share …
With more and more people using their phones and tablets for internet access (No I don't have a source) Windows 10 and its tracking is nothing compared to using Facebook and its Messenger program and what pictures you look at (Facebook own Instagram right?) or allowing Google to know what you search for, what videos you watch, what apps you buy and where you go oh and having access to your emails. We are all well and truly tracked, tagged and bagged and we don't even realise it.
Windows 10 is changing the rules in a long-established usage space, Facebook and mobile phones aren't.
From the first days of digital mobile phones, it's been a given that the carrier, if not the phone manufacturer, give themselves unrestricted access to whatever you put on it, and my usage habits have developed accordingly.
That is, I never put anything on a phone that I wouldn't put on a phone company's front counter. I never look at porn on a phone, or keep a life journal, or record all the unspeakable things I'd like to do to people whose political views don't align with my own, or any other kind of thing we normally keep to ourselves. I use a phone to communicate with people, find answers to questions I don't mind asking in public, and wake me up in the morning, nothing more.
But my desktop computer usage habits developed in the old Sinclair and Commodore days. My computer is my private playground, where I can freely express my innermost thoughts, feelings and desires, pursue my art, explore my ideas, enjoy my fantasies and create my worlds. It is mine, and mine alone. It is the one place in the world I can let my guard down, the one place in which I can be truly free, the one place I can relax and don't have to worry about being monitored and controlled and manipulated. It is not for anyone else to see into my computer, or to interfere with how I live my life in it.
With Windows 10, Microsoft are trying to intrude into my world, to pry into a part of my life I don't want shared with others, most especially not some nosey corporation trying to discover my weaknesses and vulnerabilities in order to exploit them for profit. What I do on my computer is none of Microsoft's fucking business, or anyone else's. Nobody gets inside my mask. That's why I'm so adamantly against bullshit like cloud storage, SaaS and all the phone-home crap that has been trying to sneak into my computers of late. It's got to the point where I now have a separate machine for internet access and all my internet browsing is done via anonymising VPN and a horde of anti-tracking, ad-blocking, cookie-futzing, profile-fuzzing browser addons.
That's why the only machine I'll have Windows 10 on is a working machine designed purely for the purpose of making sure my apps and websites work in it, and to keep me updated with what others are using so I can fix their shit when it goes wrong. For my private machines I'm using Windows 7 with all the telemetry and phone-home updates removed and blocked, with one running Linux Mint + Wine as a testbed until I get all the programs I'm used to using working on it, and until I'm comfortably familiar with it. Since Microsoft aren't getting the fucking message, I'll be going elsewhere.
My phone may belong to the world, but my computer belongs to me and me alone, and always will.
While they don't care as such, they will run automated process on it, and then make decisions about you based on the output.
Oh and thieves do care about these things as it makes guessing answers to security questions sooo much easier, or impersonating you when doing some social engineering. "Hello Mr. Bank, I can't login but I am who I say I am as I can tell you I was eating at the blah blah restaurant on Thursday night and I used my card to pay for it"*
So you may not want to be so whimsical about such things.
*Yes I know a bank shouldn't give out access based on that, but the reg would have far fewer stories if it wasn't the case.
"Paranoid, much?"
No, I just know enough about psychology and the marketing industry to know that the more a company knows about you, the more effectively it can manipulate you into wanting to buy its products. Advertising is not just about letting you know that a product exists and where to buy it. Advertising is about finding ways to bypass peoples' conscious decision-making processes to make them want to buy the product. This is the backbone of the marketing industry. I know, because I've worked in it. I got out because the lack of integrity and ethics in that industry made me sick to my stomach.
Anyone who thinks they're too smart to be manipulated in this manner is deluding themselves. These people spend their lives studying how the human mind works, how to analyse people's expressions, voice tone, idioms, body language, interests, hopes and desires, and how to exploit that information to get said people to do what you want them to. And the more personal information that can be gathered on you, the more effective those analytics and manipulations are going to be. Unless you keep a constant, relentless and indefatigable guard upon your behaviour and decisions, you will be taken advantage of. Ever end up buying something and later on wondering why you bought it? Congratulations, you just got manipulated.
I know that nobody is interested in my personal dreams and hopes in and of themselves. I'm not so full of myself that I think the world gives a rat's arse about who I am or what I do. But analytics software does. It digests all the information about me and every other person on the planet, and then spits out a recommended action designed to elicit the desired response. Right now, it's in its infancy. And these marketroids are going to continue refining and developing this software to find the best way to manipulate millions of people into buying their products. And the more personal data they can gather to play with, the easier that job becomes.
That's not paranoia. That's just plain life experience and logic, coupled with the knowledge gained from a few years in marketing.
Now that's just from a marketing perspective. It's not even going into politics and the risk of having your life ruined by those who don't agree with you. Ask any atheist living in Bible-belt America what the price of being discovered as an atheist is. Ask any Muslim in an Islamic theocracy what the price of employing critical thinking in the direction of their faith is. Ask anyone who has dared to publicly express a politically incorrect view what it's like to have a Facebook army of SJW crusaders descend on your employer and your home and ruin your career and your life.
As long as we are all sitting in judgement of each other (and I'm just as guilty - remember my comment in my previous post about people whose political views don't align with mine?) there is a real risk that any invasion of privacy on my computer could reveal things about me that would offend some people - and some of them may well be motivated enough to make my life a misery because of it. Again, that's not paranoia; there are some real bastards out there. I've had to deal with some of them.
So it's not unreasonable that I don't want anyone probing into my private data, whether I think they're interested or not. There are just too many manipulators and sociopaths and busybodies and do-gooders out there. And I don't trust Microsoft, or anyone else, to respect that privacy.
Because for them, profit and power will always supersede all other considerations.
Well, that's the thing isn't it?
The article should be " 'mercans sure love FB messenger! " and not " FB messenger is more popular than youtube "...
Need some stats on world wide use, don't we?
I, for one, rather spend hours looking at cat videos than 'talking' to people whom are labeled as 'friends' online.
"If FB on my phone tells me that there's a message, I'll use one of my tablets to retrieve it.
Don't like being forced.."
That'll teach 'em eh!!
I read FB messages on whatever piece of equipment is nearest to hand when they come in - why wouldn't I?? As I'm using Messenger in the first place, I don't see the harm.
The quality of what you see on FB is a function of the people you befriend. All those complaining it is full of facile narcissistic dross should consider that :) My wall is generally full of interesting conversation, sarcastic banter, and updates on what my (real-life) friends are up to. But I don't have as FB friends people I wouldn't talk to IRL.
I have not looked at the but I am sure there are clauses likely to mean that your life data sharing should be relatively exclusuve and that win 10 is "reverse engineering" the messenger app to do its own data hoovering inclding your usage of the messenger app itself...
Cynical - possibly
And, holy Zuck, that strategy appears to have paid off.
How? Is there any evidence that a separate app has led to more revenue for Facebook? I doubt it - everyone I know just has it installed so they can retain the ability to send Facebook messages on their phone on the rare occasions they need to. They would have sent exactly the same number of messages if they'd just been using the old app.
so they can retain the ability to send Facebook messages on their phone
I investigated this. It turns out there's this thing called the "World Wide Web", and Facebook has a "website" on it, which can be used to send Facebook messages from any browser-enabled mobile, without having to go anywhere near either the main FB app or the FB Messenger app.
If my phone runs low on storage space then all of a sudden, facebook messenger built-in to the facebook app starts working again.
If I get storage space back, then I am instead greeted with a screen forcing me to install facebook messenger again.
This magic amount is about 500MB on my Moto G 2G.
However at 200MB only 50MB of which can be moved-to-SD, I'm uninstalling facebook.
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