Are you on Facebook? Then you kiss your privassy goodbye while you’re supporting democrats.
Back in March, Barack and Michelle Obama appeared on Facebook ostensibly for the purpose of decrying bullying.
In early March, Barack and Michelle Obama appeared in an exclusive Facebook video from the White House. The topic was bullying prevention, and it was by far the highest profile in the series of online conversations the social-media behemoth has produced with various members of Congress and federal and state officials in recent months. “You can participate in the conversation online,” the President said, “right here on Facebook.”
The article also says that Facebook is beginning to “throw its weight around”:
That endorsement is one of the most provocative examples of how Facebook is changing the way the social-media industry is throwing its weight around in Washington. This week, the company’s 10 Washington staffers moved into a gleaming 8,500-sq.-ft. (790 sq m) office near the White House, equipped with a studio for upcoming Facebook Live episodes with lawmakers.
In April Facebook streamed an Obama Townhall meeting and was joined by Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg apparently is so enamored of Obama that he eschewed his hoodie for a shirt and tie.
Now Facebook is forming a political action committee to further “throw its weight around.”
Facebook is forming a political action committee, strengthening ties of the social networking giant with Washington politicians as the company also faces growing questions about how it handles users’ privacy.
Facebook’s PAC “will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected,” spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a e-mailed statement.
We’ll get back to that privacy thing.
Republicans have also used Facebook for events but it seems pretty clear where this is all going.
Facebook has a history of tracking the movement of its users:
Facebook has acknowledged a problem with its site that reveals your name and the names of your Facebook friends to some advertisers, and potentially tracks the websites you visit online.
The Wall Street Journal tore apart the code in Facebook to determine what identifying user information was being forwarded to third-party applications such as Farmville, Mafia Wars and some of the quizzes you take. These are all add-on apps on which a user has to click to access Facebook, not features such as photos or videos.
The Journal found that in 25 instances the third-party app companies were taking in users’ Facebook identification numbers. The number then tied into a user’s profile and could identify the person by name, no matter how secure his or her privacy settings were.
The companies tracking you could then build a clear profile of your habits. If they used other Internet tracking technology to keep a record of the websites you visit and then married that to your name, this would be a clear violation of Facebook’s policies, which has consumer groups up in arms.
The tracking is worse than you thought.
Yesterday I wrote that Twitter should be scared of Facebook. Today it’s worse. I, as a mere user of Facebook, am seriously scared of them. #
Every time they make a change, people get angry. I’ve never myself been angry because I have always assumed everything I post to Facebook is public. That the act of putting something there, a link, picture, mini-essay, is itself a public act. #
This time, however, they’re doing something that I think is really scary, and virus-like. The kind of behavior deserves a bad name, like phishing, or spam, or cyber-stalking. #
Facebook Is Tracking Your Every Move On The Web; Here’s How To Stop It
For quite some time now, Facebook’s user tracking hasn’t been limited to your time on the site: any third-party web site or service that’s connected to Facebook or that uses a Like button is sending over your information, without your explicit permission. However, Winer noticed something mostly overlooked in last week’s Facebook changes: Facebook’s new Open Graph-enabled social web apps all send information to Facebook and can post to your profile or share with your friends whether you want them to or not.
Essentially, by using these apps, just reading an article, listening to a song, or watching a video, you’re sending information to Facebook which can then be automatically shared with your friends or added to your profile, and Facebook doesn’t ask for your permission to do it. Winer’s solution is to simply log out of Facebook when you’re not using it, and avoid clicking Like buttons and tying other services on the web to your Facebook account if you can help it, and he urges Facebook to make its cookies expire, which they currently do not.
And Zuckerberg? Gosh, he’s sorry.
Facebook has admitted that it has been watching the web pages its members visit – even when they have logged out.
In its latest privacy blunder, the social networking site was forced to confirm that it has been constantly tracking its 750million users, even when they are using other sites.
The social networking giant says the huge privacy breach was simply a mistake – that software automatically downloaded to users’ computers when they logged in to Facebook ‘inadvertently’ sent information to the company, whether or not they were logged in at the time.
Most would assume that Facebook stops monitoring them after they leave its site, but technology bloggers discovered this was not the case.
In fact, data has been regularly sent back to the social network’s servers – data that could be worth billions when creating ‘targeted’ advertising based on the sites users visit.
So where is this going? I think it’s now very obvious.
Mata pointed us in the right direction back in June.
In what is an astonishing development, Mark Zuckerberg’s social media sensation, Facebook, has been slowly and quietly clamping down on the use of the site for political purposes. Kellen Giuda, an architect who started the NY Tea Party, has a column today in The Daily Caller to expose the Facebook hypocrisy, and to announce an alternative social medium to replace the FB void after a series of policy and site changes that are designed to limit the scope of use of Facebook related to political purposes.
Facebook is clamping down on the political activity it does not support. And it doesn’t like the Tea party, and probably not Republicans either.
Obama can track you with Predator drones.
Obama Motors can track you with On-Star, even after you stop subscribing (yeah, I know they said they would stop, but I don’t believe it).
Obama wants you to spy on your neighbors and report them.
Bet you a dollar Obama is tracking you on Facebook too.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Thanks Doc, if any of you haven’t read 1984, it’s time to read. If Obama would have inherited a stronger more resilient economy, he would be headed there full speed ahead with no brakes. Our misfortune is the one thing that has saved the country from grasping Socialism and allowing Obama to play his Socialist Totalitarianism down our throats. There are many Zuckers out there who want to be Elites in the new oligarchy that Obama wants to impose. Many of them have the millions to guarantee their participation as Elites and in the control of your lives.
I loathe facebook, but do use it to keep in touch with old friends, etc… However, I don’t use any of the stupid apps or play farmville or whatever other insipid games there are on it. I don’t even click when I get those messages saying someone answered a question about me, I mean who the hell cares? If they know me, and are my friends, then I know what they think. If I don’t know them that well, then I don’t really care what they think.
In real life, I love cookies. Online I hate them.
The latest morally depraved pimple-faced genius of the new age.
Does anyone imagine that this has not been part of his ‘business model’ for some time now?
Also:
Microsoft – stranglehold on operating systems, with buggy software full of security risks. Absorption of competing products by hook or by crook. MSNBC.
Google – creepily spying on everything and everybody. And they never forget. Suppression of Google blogs that could be construed as ‘political opposition’ to the Democrats.
And they all go to the Democratic Party to seek rent and kiss ass. A symbiotic relationship amongst fellow mutants.
Big Wally is in Love-Bug Land over this outfit big time. I’m out of the loop studying financials but with baseball over I got some time to do the snoop so i’ll be studying this bunches cash flows statements and relative docs soon. You see, I do use FB but to the best of my knowledge never sent them a dime. FB is a advertizing marketing mass media modeled operation yet the only time i have clicked an advertizer was by accident so just how the Zuck Club justifyies its revenues needs inspection. Groupon is another big bratsky internet play trying to float an “overpriced” IPO but has yet to offer credible certified numbers to investors. They solicit my ISP with offers of half priced restaurants and places for a manicure but they, like FB, have never established a buyer-seller relationship. If O’BasketCase is the buyer and the Zuck Head the seller “SO WHAT?” it is a whirlgig two car funeral driving to the same grave site.
Notice how the left is always ahead of the game? The right-wing only has Talk-radio, imporatnt mind you, but dying (like the rest of our movement).
Yet the left has Wiki, Google (more important than anything else), Facebook (much bigger than talk-radio) and I’m sure I’m leaving out other things.
You see, the right is so independent that they are their worst enemy. The left, collectivist, knows how to organize and come together.
Pitty we on the right, the true right, don’t understand that.
If you don’t want Facebook to know you, don’t join. It is a private company, not a publicly required interface. By conservative principles it might do whatever it wishes — and you are free to join or not join. This is NOT government run amok; it’s a private company, as easily put out of business like Woolworth was. So don’t join; don’t involved. What, do you all want the government to come in and regulate Facebook? -make it “fair” – -egad, thats what your arguing against everywhere else.
Perhaps you want to pass a law to prohibit this or that? And then what? Where are your principles? What a private company does is none of your business — only what the government does. Get a grip. Don’t like facebook, then don’t go there!
cheers.
Really? Eesh, like Facebook didn’t have enough idiots who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.
@Jim Hlavac: I’m sorry, I guess I missed the memo where we on the right want the government to step in and “regulate” facebook.
Perhaps you would care to provide a link to show that someone on Flopping Aces called for government intervention.
@anticsrocks: Sir, the very premise of the article is that somehow Facebook is censoring this or that, or somehow preventing free speech — and the logical inference, in our perilous political times, is that the government come in to make it “fair” — and that sir, is the point I was trying to make: they have the right to do what they want — the article should have called for a boycott by saying “facebook is liberal” — instead it implies that “fairness” is the order of the day — I disagree — don’t like facebook? call for avoiding it, not complain how it is “unfair.”
@Jim Hlavac: I beg to differ. I went back and reread the OP and I did not get the idea anywhere that there was some groundswell calling for the government to step in. You obviously don’t understand Conservatives very well.
Pointing out what facebook is doing and calling for Uncle Sam to regulate it are two vastly differing themes.
@Jim Hlavac:
Where did I say any of that? I point out what they’ve become and what they are doing in case others might not know.
I think there’s an opportunity out there for an alternative.
I quit using FB about a week after I had signed up- luckily I had not posted a photo or any personal stuff there. I took a good, long look at the site and decided that it was for people with no life (sorry if that offends people- that is just my opinion). I don’t necessarily believe in conspiracies, but FB is a bit too “1984” for me- throw in a little “Clockwork Orange”, what with the anarchy in the streets, and I am glad to cling onto my guns and Bible.
@Jim Hlavac: @#6- I believe that the point is where, in this “private enterprise”, it interfaces with the government to supply a stream of names to the govt. I think you might agree that this is potentially a bad thing.
The issues are:
1. Misrepresentation of the degree of privacy offered by this service, perhaps fraudulently so.
2. The apparent involvement of the government in data mining without the permission of the customers. We want no government involvement in that respect.
I really enjoyed this blog. That is always nice when you find something that is not only informative but entertaining. Excellent