From experience I find that most US facebook users I know are unaware of how computers work or don't care if their information is taken. Basically the normal Facebook user is an idiot that knows how to get to facebook. It's time we have in internet test to see if people are smart enough to be allowed online like the old idea of people should have to take a test to see if they are smart enough to reproduce because there would be a hell of a lot less children in this world if an IQ test passing grade was manditory for parenthood and it in exchange would raise the worlds IQ average since only people that possess a minimum of the intelligence genes would be having babies though we'd let them all have sex but babies would be off limits.
Three quarters of US Facebook users unaware their online behavior gets tracked
Most Facebook users have no idea that the ad biz compiles data profiles of their online activities and interests, according to research conducted by the non-profit Pew Research Center. That's not altogether surprising given that Facebook appeals to people disinclined to concern themselves with the minutiae of digital …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 17th January 2019 03:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
'It's time we have in internet test to see if people are smart enough to be allowed online like the old idea of people should have to take a test to see if they are smart enough to reproduce because there would be a hell of a lot less children in this world if an IQ test passing grade was manditory for parenthood and it in exchange would raise the worlds IQ average since only people that possess a minimum of the intelligence genes would be having babies though we'd let them all have sex but babies would be off limits.'
That's a very long sentence.
Should we have a test to see if people can use punctuation properly before being allowed to post on internet forums?
Should we introduce an arbitrary rule banning people who can't spell mandatory from some activity or other while we're at it?
Perhaps another test for people who can't differentiate between a plural and a possessive, see 'raise the worlds IQ average'.
I'm sure there's some punctuation problems in my post, it's just the nature of things when you're having a dig at someone.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 04:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
"like the old idea of people should have to take a test to see if they are smart enough to reproduce"
Any idea that compares itself as being like that is bad by default. Kids (all of us really) reflect their environment so we should focus on making the environment better (better education, better job opportunities, more open society, better healthcare, etc) not by putting people in further categories and groups. We already have enough of that.
IMO I don't think you can be born errrm, dumb, it's just that as we grow we learn to prioritise the skills and knowledge that are important to our continued survival and fulfillment of our needs. Next time you meet someone one who you think is dumb take some time to talk to them about what their interests and life experiences are (don't measure them by yours). Its amazing what you can learn.
Anyway we all get addicted to something - other people, drugs, pain, pleasure, being a git.
Facebook has just learned (really quite effectively) how to make their platform addictive exploiting behavioral psychology traits that have been known about for decades. Who cares how it works, just give me the dopamine! I get that.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 06:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
FB is a boil on the bum of mankind!
How stupid do you have to be to not know this? Oh, right! Facebook user stupid!
Of course FB collects anything they can, slices and dices any data they can. They have to make money through advertising and selling the data, the more private it is the more it's worth to others. The problem is that most people simply see something "free", not realsing the real cost being paid.
FB has it's uses if you know how to exploit it, I do exploit it to make money from sales of my art and I've made some good contacts through it but it's still "dancing with the devil" when you use it, and you most certainly feel dirty and in need of a shower afterwards!
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Thursday 17th January 2019 14:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No kidding
I would disagree that the Brit share of morons is greater than elsewhere, I have an impression that, in the "right" circumstances, those of moronic disposition just wake up and crawl out into the open, becoming more conspicuous, thus passing for "majority of", while they're usually miniscule, or at best small, but highly visible (hurrah for media coverage!) fringe number. Nevertheless, for the rest of the (moronic) humanity, it's the impressions that count. So yes, to be more specific, i.e. re. brexit, the Brits are considered idiots in at least a couple of European countries. Arguably though, one might say that the French hi-viz protest participants are as stupid as the Brits, i.e. want to have a cake, AND want to eat it AND don't want to pay for it AND blame others for stealing it, etc.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 12:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No kidding
Agreed.
I have long held the belief that 75% or more of the people I have met are mouth breathers, no matter what level of "Education" they can claim (and can prove).
I used to joke about a radio station called "Breathe FM" (there is one now!!), all day long this mythical station would broadcast "Breathe in.........Breathe out".
And when it went off air for AN HOUR, due to a power cut, millions suffocated.
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Friday 18th January 2019 02:21 GMT VikiAi
Re: No kidding
If recent studies about genes required for the development of high-order brain function are anything to go by, then 75% is about right!
Interestingly, the genes (or more correctly their absence) are so evenly spread through the human population that they appear to pre-date any regional diversification meaning for most of the past 100,000 years, having 3/4 of the population - while not necessarily 'stupid' by any reasonable definition - rather easily lead around by proponents of questionable ideas was a general advantage for the survival of the species!
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Thursday 17th January 2019 08:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Most computer users are pretty casual...
I wish more people really cared and paid attention to cybersecurity and privacy and data retention, but the fact is that most people want to get on their computer, share pictures/opinions via social media, send some emails and check out the sports scores. I can't really blame them for that.
The truth is that all that utopian stuff from the late 90s and early "oughties" about how the internet would set us free has turned into something much darker. The cost of computing and storage is so low now and both commercial, governmental and social media mob surveillance is so pervasive now that the internet has turned pretty dystopian, veering between political correctness, political extremism, a corporatist data-mining operation and a government tool for tracking populations.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 09:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Most computer users are pretty casual...
The problem with FB addicts is that they get most of their news from FB's news feed and it probably doesn't contain a lot of news about security/privacy concerns around FB, hence this story
(not a FB user, but they are obviously tracking me and building a profile through web bugs, etc, embedded in just about any site with a FB button)
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Thursday 17th January 2019 08:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
sheeple
they're so easy to condemn and I'll be the first one to do that, particularly re. facebook users. But we're all "sheeple" in a growing number of fields, as it seems the world is getting more complicated by the day. Well, maybe not complicated, but increasingly fragmented, demanding myriads of microdecisions, constantly. Something's got to give, and if making, or failing to make a decision has no _instant_ consequences, that's what happens, the path of the least resistance, by default. And yes, FB evil master have been using (arguably abusing) this trait for their own benefit, he study is interesting to confirm this, but then... so what? In 10 years time we'll have had 100% population surveillance in public, and increasingly, in private, and we will have accepted it, because it doesn't hurt instantly, at least not those 99% subjected to it. Likewise, being micro-chipped, etc. We have already accepted being fingerprinted without being accused of commiting any crime, going through a "naked" scanner at the airport, being tracked on our drive and commute. Resistance is futile, cause there is no resistance (which is great for those in power, by the way).
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Thursday 17th January 2019 14:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: sheeple
Presumably, when they invite to grope your jewels at the airport, you tell them to (...) leave you alone? Likewise, when you fly out of Heathrow, you sneak underneath the scanner booth? And I bet you cover your car plates when driving, and only pay by cash when travelling by public (and private) transport?
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Thursday 17th January 2019 08:20 GMT Neil Barnes
"the average Facebook user would require more than $1,000 to deactivate their account for one year."
Which, given that the average user is worth only a few dollars a year to Facebook[0] is surely a good deal for someone. I'm just not quite sure I can work out for whom.
[0] Turnover 2018: $52B (https://www.statista.com/statistics/422035/facebooks-quarterly-global-revenue/)
Number of users 2018: 2.3B (https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/)
Average turnover per user = $23. Which curiously, doesn't seem to have changed since I looked at it a few years back.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 16:12 GMT Bill Gray
Re: "average Facebook user would require more than $1,000 to deactivate their account for one year"
I wondered about this. It suggests Facebook would be (much) more profitable if it charged its users rather than selling their information.
Of course, what they would actually do is to charge users _and_ sell their information. (They have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders, after all.)
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Thursday 17th January 2019 09:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Here is how the average person uses Facebook
- start a web browser, Google is the start page
- enter facebook.com in the search box
- click the first link that comes up
If you tell them they could just enter facebook.com in the URL box, the best you can hope for is a look of withering pity that you are such a massive nerd that you know or even care what that is.
Basically what I am saying is, that ship has sailed, Facebook and Google have dumbed the population down sufficiently that they will never leave of their own free will.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 10:06 GMT alain williams
It is not so much that facebook knows stuff ...
about people (most will say 'so what, why should I care ?') but what happens to that knowledge; this is a bit more nebulous and not so easy to understand.
One lady (single, mid 20s, well paid job) I met a year ago liked it that when she went somewhere the web site knew the sort of things that she liked to buy. It made on-line shopping better for her. She could not care less about privacy or that prices displayed might be 'tailored' for her.
But this is exactly what others (including me) do not like.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 10:31 GMT Tony Paulazzo
Maybe stop equating user surveillance with selling ads as people are not worried about advertising, they may not like it, feel they're immune to it or even like being pointed at things they're interested in. Maybe we need to start equating it to secret police, dawn disappearances, the search for model citizens.
Maybe then, people would start caring.
The most insidious is the Chinese get good citizen points for online activities program they're rolling out nationwide - especially as now they're beginning to be every-bodies trading partner.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 10:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Another suggestion for a survey.....
.....would be to ask 1000 people who use the internet OR have a cell phone two questions:
1. How many organisations do you think are tracking your internet OR cell phone usage?
The question should be a multiple choice question: NONE, ONE, TWO, ANOTHER NUMBER HIGHER THAN TWO
2. If you answered ONE or more, please name the organisations you were thinking about.
Surely it should be obvious that your cell phone provider (if you have one) and your internet provider (if you have one) must be tracking you. Then there's FB, the NSA, GCHQ and who knows how many other bad actors out there.
So for most people in the proposed survey, surely the answer should be at least THREE and maybe FOUR or FIVE. My guess after this article is that the majority of survey respondents would say NONE (or "What are you talking about").
Go figure.
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Thursday 17th January 2019 13:09 GMT Tromos
I would love to see the assertion that the average FB user would want $1000 to give up their account for a year tested. Let FB announce that they would drop all snooping, tracking, data collection, etc. but instead make their money by charging a $20 per month subscription. This comes to less than a quarter of the annual amount that the survey states FB users value it at, so the drop in users should be fairly minimal (and the subscription income more than make up for the loss of advertising revenue). I suspect the reality would be that users leave in droves and FB would become immediately untenable.
It's far too easy to give extreme answers to hypothetical questions posed in a survey. Initially, I would have said that I'd want $1000 to consider opening a Facebook account but, realistically, $50 dollars would probably do it (I don't have to use it after all).
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Thursday 17th January 2019 14:34 GMT Daniel Hall
Most what?
Title: Most US users...
First line of article: Most Facebook users
The UK is not the US.
The rest of the world is not the US.
I complained before about this website and the lack of transparency up front of whether an article is written by a US or UK person.
I'll say it again.
Hire BRITISH writers.
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Friday 18th January 2019 09:33 GMT tdarais
MeWe Is Much Better Than Facebook - Make the Switch!
I'm surprised that more people haven't discovered MeWe, they have a great logo, a great user interface, a great user "bill of rights," and a great "freemium use" model--the platform is free for users, but they do include two or three pay features that they rely on for sustainability and growth (rather than rely on advertising or "selling user data").
I recently read that MeWe is gaining 30,000 users per day. It won't surprise me if that growth increases to 50,000 users per day or 100,000 users per day (or more) the way things are going with Facebook.
"Facebook is an advertising company masquerading as a social network - the latter exists just to give a platform to the former, which is what makes the money." See: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/facebook-data-breach-delete-account
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Friday 18th January 2019 17:50 GMT Smartypantz
Yours and mine
Your data is your data! You have an obligation to be hygienic about your own data! Most people are 100% frivolous about their data,. They will sell that shit for the tiniest amount of convenience!! YES you will ! You HAVE, and you DO!! People NEED to be aware of the consequences of this sale! if they are not, they, no WE, will be ruled.... Harshly!!..