Elon has removed the SpaceX Facebook page: kudos to him!

[ecarfan]

See Elon Musk deletes own, SpaceX and Tesla Facebook pages after #deletefacebook

Good for him. FB is a mess; the company has no regard for their users data or that their platform is used to spread malicious propaganda. All FB wants to do is make money off advertising no matter what its source or what its goals are, and FB does that by relentless analyzing everything their users post, and has even run experiments to manipulate their users emotional states (and much later acknowledged that they did that).

Zuckerberg routinely denies there are problems and then when faced with an avalanche of criticism lamely says things like “we have to do better” but nothing really changes.

 

[Electroman]

Wondering if he will later regret this knee jerk reaction

 

[bonnie]

Wondering if he will later regret this knee jerk reaction

No, he'll probably just launch his own social media platform.

 

[ecarfan]

Wondering if he will later regret this knee jerk reaction

I don’t see why he would. Tesla and SpaceX can survive and prosper without FB.

FB uses sophisticated algorithms to feed its members individually targeted content it labels “News” that conforms with the biases and prejudices those same members have expressed on FB. That is reprehensible. No responsible news organization does that. And newspapers and TV news and other more traditional news operations cannot do that because their audience doesn’t provide them that kind of individual personal information.

I do not think FB can change. It’s business model is predicated on using members personal information to lure them to spend more and more time on FB and it will do whatever it can to ensure that happens because then those members can be shown more ads and the advertisers pay FB more money.

The only solution I see is for people to delete their FB accounts. Which is what I did today.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

No, he'll probably just launch his own social media platform.

Literally.

It'll be called StarlinkedIn.

Badum-tsshh.

 

[AudubonB]

The magpies among you may have noted I've written something very much like the following also on another platform; please excuse that.

The sole exposure I have to FB is via a closed-group site of my undergrad classmates; I've contributed probably three remarks and a half-dozen quips in five years. Does my inclusion in such a closed group place me and whatever 'data' I may have so divulged at risk? Does anyone know definitively yay/nay?

 

[Nikxice]

It'll be called StarlinkedIn.

Or perhaps Elon will purchase and remake "Myspace".... as in, Space is Mine! Who could argue with the guy that owns the fastest car in the solar system?

 

[Grendal]

The magpies among you may have noted I've written something very much like the following also on another platform; please excuse that.

The sole exposure I have to FB is via a closed-group site of my undergrad classmates; I've contributed probably three remarks and a half-dozen quips in five years. Does my inclusion in such a closed group place me and whatever 'data' I may have so divulged at risk? Does anyone know definitively yay/nay?

I would expect not. The point is that FB is promoting and allowing propaganda. It is similar to directed advertising but more insidious since it is promoting what it thinks you are already inclined to believe. Visiting the site very rarely and making very few posts, it is unlikely that it has any good picture of who and what you are. Just ignore the "promoted advertising links" and stick to communicating with your friends and you should be fine.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Does my inclusion in such a closed group place me and whatever 'data' I may have so divulged at risk?

Who knows, but IMHO "quite probably"

According to the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower the C.A. APP "This is your digital life" was downloaded by 270K Facebook users (each person got a small some of money, or something like that, for taking part). In the small print of the T&C's the person gave permission for access to their FB private information and also the information of their Friends. That enabled Cambridge Analytica to harvest the data from 50M people.

I believe that "friends-access", which was available to APP developers, was stopped in 2014; it was enabling 3rd parties to have access to all FB's data... of course FB itself still has access to the data-association.

Here''s the boss (now suspended) of Cambridge Analytica talking (2016 Concordia Annual Summit, New York) about Big Data and how it can be used to influence an election

8:00 "We have close to 4,000-5,000 data points on every adult in the USA"

 

[artsci]

I don’t see why he would. Tesla and SpaceX can survive and prosper without FB

The only solution I see is for people to delete their FB accounts. Which is what I did today.

Ditto for me -- last week. I hated FB anyway.