while it is always good to stay vigilant and use common sense, i find the general old man fears of new things like facebook to be a little paranoid. it's a tool. you can use it for good or bad, and whether you get anything out of it depends on how good you are at using it. generally, more connectivity and exposure to others is better. (and people on this site could definitely use more diversity.) our technology and livelihoods have been driven by the need for connectivity since the invention of the telephone. there were privacy concerns and naysayers saying these same things about the internet in general 20 years ago, and yet here we are all using it and the world hasn't ended. this isn't any different.

yes social media corporations are harvesting your data. yes you must be careful about what you post. but jesus, this is common sense. just be careful and don't post anything stupid. social media companies want your info so they can advertise to you. nothing more. a life insurance company can't raise someone's rates based on the cat pictures they post, and if they do, the free market will offer some protection against unreasonable price gouging. no one is sitting in a dark room jerking off to your bathroom selfies. the only entities looking at your data are algorithms. are you scared that someday someone else could use this information to hurt you? that's always possible, but unlikely. the shear amount of data that is collected offers us anonymity, and while you could be personally and more directly targeted if someone had a reason to do so, you are all active on the internet anyway, posting in threads here, giving out personal information. i can get your addresses and look up your houses on google streetmap, which i usually do before sending anyone my arcade stuff to get worked on. so it doesn't really matter if you use facebook or not. your data is either going to be buried so deeply along with everyone else's that it isn't going to be useful to anyone, or people will be able to target you and get whatever information they want whether you post on facebook or not. the only way to truly make yourself completely safe is to cut the cord and go off the grid. but honestly, i think this issue has more to do with old people be stubborn and averse to whatever they are unfamiliar with.
 
I think Facebook (also LetGo and OfferUp) were great until the majority figured about them..I scored some pretty good deals a couple years ago.. Now its pretty much overpriced shit and modded Arcade 1Ups.


I can't stand how the buying and selling scene is now. When Craigslist was the one and only (remember how it killed Classified2000.com? lol) you could find anything all over the country because it was all listed in one place on CL. Yeah it took an extra tool to search the whole country but it was easy.
Now things are split on FB market or offerup/letgo. The FB market is nearly impossible to search in a wide area unless you manually go zip code by zip code. Its doesn't seem like the results are always by most recent. And unless the item was posted publicly on the Market you have to be a member of whatever for sale group it was posted in or you'll never be able to find it.


The interface of letgo is horrid. Offerup seems like its getting more and more ad based with the shipping option.
 
yes social media corporations are harvesting your data. yes you must be careful about what you post. but jesus, this is common sense. just be careful and don't post anything stupid. social media companies want your info so they can advertise to you. nothing more.


This is fundamentally untrue, if you inform yourself about what's actually being done today, and even more, what's being worked on today, for the future. People are using information for far more than selling you stuff. (And they're using things that you wouldn't even consider information, like comments you leave on things, and the things you click 'like' on.) Every statement, every action you make online says something about you.


the only entities looking at your data are algorithms. are you scared that someday someone else could use this information to hurt you? that's always possible, but unlikely. the shear amount of data that is collected offers us anonymity


Also not true. Just watch the vids I've posted in this thread, and understand the amount of computing power being put toward gathering and correlating the information about you that you put online. The amount of work involved would be impossible for a human, but it's easily within the abilities of the computing power owned by major companies like Facebook and Google. (Especially when you're doing most of the work for them, by posting your content within a single walled garden like Facebook, and letting Chrome save your entire browsing history, bookmarks, etc.) You're already helping them consolidate the info.

And again, it isn't about people getting your street address, and not posting your own social security number. Watch the last video, from work done by a privacy researcher, posted *by google*. It's about analyzing every click, every facebook like. Analyzing your everyday behavior on sites like Facebook. And being able to extract very specific things about you, with very high degrees of accuracy, by combining and cross-referencing multiple sets of information together.

It's about determining your socioeconomic status, your sexual orientation by the shape of your jawline, correlated with many other aspects of your online behavior. And these are just trivial examples (unless you live in a country where being not straight can get you killed, as the researcher points out.) But they are all just the tip of a much larger iceberg.

And this isn't tinfoil-hat old-man paranoia. It's very real and all happening, and the companies in many cases are even flat-out telling you about it. Most people just don't want to read, listen, or believe it.
 
ok look. andy. you're a smart guy. and i'm going to be honest with you and say i'm not going to watch any of your videos. because i'm at work. but tell me something specific that this data could be used for. realistically. if someone knows my sexual orientation, or my jawline, or what i've clicked on, and it's mixed in with 3 billion other people's data, what could they use that information for and how could it hurt me?

i'm not saying that i don't think someone could hurt me, i'm just asking what specifically you are worried about.
 
I'll be honest with you though, you'd be hard-pressed to find a millennial in a Facebook arcade community (other than me I guess, but I don't really use it). I don't really think this is a generational thing at all. I think it affects everyone.

Hi.

We're here, just not nearly as confused or paranoid ;)

Also, when i was young, I am pretty sure i was dubbed "Gen X" or "Gen Y". Not sure when my birth year (84) got lobbed into millennial status but, i'm pretty bummed about it.
 
ok look. andy. you're a smart guy. and i'm going to be honest with you and say i'm not going to watch any of your videos. because i'm at work. but tell me something specific that this data could be used for. realistically. if someone knows my sexual orientation, or my jawline, or what i've clicked on, and it's mixed in with 3 billion other people's data, what could they use that information for and how could it hurt me?

i'm not saying that i don't think someone could hurt me, i'm just asking what specifically you are worried about.

It isn't mixed in with 3 billion other people's data. Data collection and sorting are way more sophisticated than you think. Read up on it a little bit. You are not speaking from an informed position.
 
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ok look. andy. you're a smart guy. and i'm going to be honest with you and say i'm not going to watch any of your videos. because i'm at work. but tell me something specific that this data could be used for. realistically. if someone knows my sexual orientation, or my jawline, or what i've clicked on, and it's mixed in with 3 billion other people's data, what could they use that information for and how could it hurt me?

i'm not saying that i don't think someone could hurt me, i'm just asking what specifically you are worried about.


It isn't 'mixed in with three billion other peoples data'. If you're on FB, and posting every aspect of your life under your account (which is tied to you as a person), then it's very easily trackable to you. And when you cross-reference one piece of info about someone with lots of other pieces, all of those dots combined can paint a much clearer picture of a person.

Do you know how easy it is to store information about three billion people? Most single hard drives today can do that easily. (Let alone computing farms of tens of thousands of drives/computers.) Storage is basically free today.

As for what people can do with that data, watch what I've posted, and do your own research beyond that to get a sense of what's being done, and what's possible/coming. People and companies use information to advance their interests. And it's worth keeping in mind that their interests may not always be the same as yours.
 
while it is always good to stay vigilant and use common sense, i find the general old man fears of new things like facebook to be a little paranoid. it's a tool. you can use it for good or bad, and whether you get anything out of it depends on how good you are at using it. generally, more connectivity and exposure to others is better. (and people on this site could definitely use more diversity.) our technology and livelihoods have been driven by the need for connectivity since the invention of the telephone. there were privacy concerns and naysayers saying these same things about the internet in general 20 years ago, and yet here we are all using it and the world hasn't ended. this isn't any different.

yes social media corporations are harvesting your data. yes you must be careful about what you post. but jesus, this is common sense. just be careful and don't post anything stupid. social media companies want your info so they can advertise to you. nothing more. a life insurance company can't raise someone's rates based on the cat pictures they post, and if they do, the free market will offer some protection against unreasonable price gouging. no one is sitting in a dark room jerking off to your bathroom selfies. the only entities looking at your data are algorithms. are you scared that someday someone else could use this information to hurt you? that's always possible, but unlikely. the shear amount of data that is collected offers us anonymity, and while you could be personally and more directly targeted if someone had a reason to do so, you are all active on the internet anyway, posting in threads here, giving out personal information. i can get your addresses and look up your houses on google streetmap, which i usually do before sending anyone my arcade stuff to get worked on. so it doesn't really matter if you use facebook or not. your data is either going to be buried so deeply along with everyone else's that it isn't going to be useful to anyone, or people will be able to target you and get whatever information they want whether you post on facebook or not. the only way to truly make yourself completely safe is to cut the cord and go off the grid. but honestly, i think this issue has more to do with old people be stubborn and averse to whatever they are unfamiliar with.

Just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

-Vlad Taltos.
 
your data's not in a big pile somewhere. chances are you are already a UUID with every detail you've volunteered online (or not online) and every personal detail about you that someone you know (or entities you don't know) has volunteered (knowingly or otherwise) about you online. and there's really no real way of knowing who has that data or how much of it, whether it be corporations, foreign gov'ts, rogue groups, the Illuminati, The Drednocks, the Lollipop Guild, etc etc. this is especially frightening for those living under heavily-repressive gov'ts, strict corporate-backed oversight, etc, as dissidents can be singled out and face real-world consequences

rest assured though that it will never be used with your best interests in mind :)

even internet anonymity may be a thing of the past shortly ...

Capture.jpg


https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/24/researchers-spotlight-the-lie-of-anonymous-data/

but on that encouraging note, good luck with the game hunting!
 
ugh. i've been a software engineer for 20 years. my degree is in computer science. i understand how sorting works and that companies characterize the data they receive. and i'm not going to watch your videos. but i'll ask again, what do you think they are going to use this data for? tell me specifically what you are afraid of?

"advance company interests?"

what does this mean? to make money? to advertise? that was the first thing i stated before you insisted there's more to it. what more to it is there? world domination? discrimination? political gerrymandering? i'm asking you to tell me specifically what you think facebook is doing with it's data so we can have a grounded conversation about those fears, instead of an ambiguous argument based on irrationalism. and if everything you know about this subject comes from a youtube video instead of critical thinking, then i wouldn't consider yourselves educated.
 
read up on Cambridge Analytica, if you'd like a real-world example

(and no, i'm not anything even resembling an expert on the topic, but you don't have to be an expert to realize the arguably-Orwellian scope of what's going on here)

ugh. i've been a software engineer for 20 years. my degree is in computer science. i understand how sorting works and that companies characterize the data they receive. and i'm not going to watch your videos. but i'll ask again, what do you think they are going to use this data for? tell me specifically what you are afraid of?

"advance company interests?"

what does this mean? to make money? to advertise? that was the first thing i stated before you insisted there's more to it. what more to it is there? world domination? discrimination? political gerrymandering? i'm asking you to tell me specifically what you think facebook is doing with it's data so we can have a grounded conversation about those fears, instead of an ambiguous argument based on irrationalism. and if everything you know about this subject comes from a youtube video instead of critical thinking, then i wouldn't consider yourselves educated.
 
Hi.

We're here, just not nearly as confused or paranoid ;)

Also, when i was young, I am pretty sure i was dubbed "Gen X" or "Gen Y". Not sure when my birth year (84) got lobbed into millennial status but, i'm pretty bummed about it.

People in general I find are confused about what a "millenial" is. It's generally agreed upon that millenials were born between ~1981 and 1996. Gen Y and millenial are the same thing. A lot of people say millenial when they actually mean Gen Z, which is people born 1997 or later. There are some varying year ranges that you may find, but that's a pretty commonly agreed upon range.

Millenials, for the most part, are just regular adults working day jobs and paying bills, but people from Gen X and before have been conditioned to think of "millenials" as those lazy kids and so, to them, all kids are millenials.

For the record, I'm from the tail end of Gen X. Old enough to remember before the internet was in every home (or pocket), young enough to have not been typing on a typewriter in high school.
 
People in general I find are confused about what a "millenial" is. It's generally agreed upon that millenials were born between ~1981 and 1996. Gen Y and millenial are the same thing. A lot of people say millenial when they actually mean Gen Z, which is people born 1997 or later. There are some varying year ranges that you may find, but that's a pretty commonly agreed upon range.

Millenials, for the most part, are just regular adults working day jobs and paying bills, but people from Gen X and before have been conditioned to think of "millenials" as those lazy kids and so, to them, all kids are millenials.

For the record, I'm from the tail end of Gen X. Old enough to remember before the internet was in every home (or pocket), young enough to have not been typing on a typewriter in high school.

This is one of the best posts I've ever read, just for the record.

However, I DID use a typewriter to learn in school... but maybe we were just poor? lol
 
This is one of the best posts I've ever read, just for the record.

However, I DID use a typewriter to learn in school... but maybe we were just poor? lol

I used a typewriter in elementary and a little in junior high, but by high school were were mostly working on computers.

I did also have computers in my home at a very young age though. My dad taught me to use his Amiga 500 and 1000 as a child.
 
Do derail this thread even further, when I was in school early on we had typewriters and Apple 2's. They were rad. Outdated at the time, but what more do you need?
 
wish i could remember the type of typewriter i was using in highschool, but I just know how much I loved using it. Started me down my computer career
 
I will admit that I also enjoyed typewriter class in junior highschool. :)

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
 
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