Facebook Wanted Me to Upload a Photo of My Self and They Said I Cannot Use Facebook
Is information technology possible to be a passive user of Facebook? I want to read announcements relating to friends and colleagues, and maybe post comments, without building a contour with photos, a timeline and then on. I have managed perfectly well without joining, merely occasionally miss useful information that is not available elsewhere. Eira
What'south known as "lurking" – being a member without actively participating – is very common. To quote Jakob Nielsen, "In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users business relationship for virtually all the activity." This is known every bit the 1% rule, and it's obviously a gross generalisation.
Facebook'south participation levels appear to be much higher than that. We don't know the number of lapsed or (literally) dead accounts, but in September 2018, Facebook reported 2.27 billion monthly active users (up nine.6% over the previous year) and almost 1.5 billion daily active users (up nine.iii%), despite losing about 1 million users in Europe.
While there'southward no obligation to participate, there are much trickier questions about privacy and tracking.
What distinguishes Facebook from Twitter, Reddit, Metafilter so on is that information technology is based on existent identities, which are fundamentally public. While you tin choose how much information you lot mail on Facebook, and how widely you lot share it, your friends may already have given Facebook your email address as part of the "observe friends" procedure. Some of them may as well have posted images of you, mentioned you in comments, or linked to things yous posted on other services. As a result, when y'all sign upward, Facebook may already know who most of your friends are.
This data may be about you, but information technology isn't yours: information technology belongs to the people who shared it.
Either way, any organisation that knows your real name can probably find out a lot about you. This was already obvious in 1999 when Sun's Scott McNealy said: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
Minimal Facebooking
To sign up for a Facebook business relationship, you need a proper noun and a working electronic mail accost or mobile phone number. Yous can use whatsoever proper name y'all are known by. Nevertheless, if y'all come across a problem, y'all may take to provide an acceptable class of ID to verify information technology later.
You lot will also be asked for your date of nativity – considering you accept to be at least 13 years old to join – and your pick of gender. Both may be used for ad purposes. Afterward that, everything is optional.
Facebook will want you to consummate your new profile past uploading a mug shot and a cover photo, entering the names of schools or colleges y'all attended, where you live then on. You are non obliged to do whatever of this. Your profile photo could be a drawing grapheme. Even so, there could be from dozens to thousands of people who accept the same proper name as you. The more than details yous enter, the easier information technology volition be for friends to find you.
Next, to brand the system work for you, you accept to "friend" people yous know. Facebook encourages yous to upload your contacts volume (see higher up). It'south much amend to track people down one by one, though information technology is more work.
And that's it. When your friends post things on Facebook, they will appear in the news feed. Y'all will too have a timeline under your proper name, which used to exist your wall. You can't get out of having these, but again, you lot don't have to mail service anything to them.
Privacy settings
When you do postal service something, you can control who sees information technology past using each post'southward settings menu (3 dots), but it'southward improve to choose settings for your whole account. To do this, click the downwards-pointer on the far right of the bluish heading bar, select Settings from the menu, and and then Privacy. The principal entry is "Who tin can see your future posts?" You probably won't want to use Public, which means anyone on or off Facebook. Instead, limit visibility to friends, peradventure, or customise it. You tin exclude by proper noun anyone you don't want to run into something.
You can also limit the range of people who can look you up using the email address and/or telephone number yous gave Facebook, though that can make it harder for friends to find you.
Where it asks "Do y'all want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your contour?", answer no.
You should as well visit the ad preferences page and click on "Ad settings". This lets y'all turn off adverts based on "data from partners" (external websites, non Facebook), and adverts on external websites based on your activities on Facebook. This removes the advantages of tracking y'all. Otherwise, Facebook could utilise the data that you visit, for example, car websites to bear witness you car ads.
Yous tin likewise change "Ads that include your social actions" to "No one". This stops Facebook from using your actions (signing upwards for events, using apps, making recommendations so on) to promote them to your friends.
Finally, Facebook publicises birthdays. The setting is on your About page under "Contact and basic info". Note that yous tin can set different privacy levels for your date of birth and your twelvemonth of birth. You could set both to "Only me" or simply go along the year – and therefore your age – individual.
This clarification barely scratches the surface of the many ways you tin can manage your data. Facebook provides detailed control over your privacy, and how it tin can target you lot with the adverts that pay for its free service. The trouble is that it would take many hours to find, understand and customise all the settings available. Understandably, about people just don't care enough to make the effort when the only visible benefit may be seeing less appropriate advertisements.
Facebook disconnect
Facebook Connect or "Log in with Facebook" is an identity system that, conveniently, lets you log into other websites, play games and then on with your Facebook ID. While this saves creating a lot of unlike login names and passwords, information technology also lets Facebook know what you are doing away from Facebook.
This isn't a new idea, and Facebook'south tracking network is much smaller than Google'due south, simply it's what drives the utilize of things like Ghostery, Privacy Badger, Disconnect.Me and Redmorph.
You tin can opt out of using the whole platform. This stops Facebook Connect from working, and disables all the apps and games that have been used by 3rd parties to harvest user data.
To do this, go to the Settings folio and select "Apps and websites". Ringlet down to the Apps, Websites and Games section, click Edit and then select "Turn off". I got some dire warnings when I did this a few years agone, simply as you're a new user, it shouldn't affect anything.
Yous can likewise limit Facebook tracking by running Facebook in a container in the Firefox browser.
It's non just Facebook
Facebook explained in a blog mail what sort of data it collects and how it does it. Obviously, it mentioned that other internet companies are doing exactly the aforementioned things.
In fact, the main difference between Facebook and LinkedIn and some rivals is that most (but not all) of the personal information on Facebook and LinkedIn has been willingly contributed by users for their ain purposes, rather than gathered past spying. Facebook has become the universal kicking boy partly because of its carelessness, and because its massive scale ways its blunders can touch far more people, or even whole nations.
Ultimately, however, the problem is not Facebook but "surveillance capitalism": the business model whereby users trade personal information for services instead of paying for them.
As security good Bruce Schneier wrote last year in a blog post on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: "for every article about Facebook'due south creepy stalker behaviour, thousands of other companies are animate a collective sigh of relief that it's Facebook and not them in the spotlight. Because while Facebook is i of the biggest players in this space, in that location are thousands of other companies that spy on and manipulate us for turn a profit".
For those of united states of america with distant friends and family unit, Facebook is merely too valuable to give up, and its replacement(due south) might well be worse. It's the whole system that needs fixing.
Have you got a question? Email it to Enquire.Jack@theguardian.com
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/mar/07/is-there-a-way-to-use-facebook-without-giving-up-my-privacy
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