I can't think of any concrete red-line that Facebook could cross. I've never been a techno-utopian, and the Snowden leaks were the catalyst that drove me to learn programming.
I recall being in my early teens, when I went to create my (first) Facebook account. I mentioned it to my dad. He explicitly told me that whatever I did on Facebook would go to their servers, that whatever reached their servers was theirs, and that they would do whatever they wanted with that data regardless of whether you agreed to it or not. The whole reason I gave up and made an account was because my friends had already given the app their contact list, and the service already had my phone number.
From day one I've treated online services like amoral, dangerous animals, and so far nothing these organizations have done has especially shocked me, though I have been impressed or surprised on occasion. My mantra is generally 'if I or the NSA could imagine it, private industry will attempt it'.
I still get a lot of value out of my Facebook account. Facebook pages are a gateway to niche interest groups, social trends, and the political fringes that would otherwise be inaccessible to outsiders. Seeing the ads Facebook puts in my feed helps me to calibrate my mental model of how I'm being observed, who's sharing data with who, and how online services perceive me (I typically use ad-block, and only occasionally close it to check my ads).
If I want to contact someone I've only met in passing, keep up with family and political bubbles, or do a bit of background investigation, Facebook's there for me.
Accessing the service requires a bit of a faustian bargain. But by the time I joined, the country had already made it on my behalf, so I opted to reap the benefits of that bargain rather than just being social collateral.
Facebook could scare me off the way Google Search did - by sanitizing its content feed to the degree Google's sanitized its search. But I'd still use Messenger, and any other useful service they come up with.
But otherwise it'd have to become obsolete in the same way as MySpace.
For general queries, I use Searx.me. Occasionally I'll use Google if Searx is down, or I need technical information that I need search operators for.
For current events, I use Searx, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo, and Baidu (if I'm really digging). I don't trust any one provider on politically sensitive topics, and the the order/kinds of the results can occasionally carry as much signal as the the content of them.
I'm not conspiracy mongering, though. I merely think of search algorithms as extensions of the contexts in-which they're designed, and are more likely to represent the interests of their creators than my search for knowledge.
Hardly. I use multiple search engines specifically because I lack trust.
While I'm more than likely to take the papers of record at their words, I've known more than enough police officers, journalists, and armchair philosophers to know that consciously or not, individual biases can color the processing and presentation of information.
Details that may seem obvious or superfluous through one lens may not be to another.
Only by extracting perspectives and datapoints from each source I access, can I confidently say that I have a reasonable understanding of the progression of any given event, as well as the metanarratives surrounding it.
Depending on the topic at hand, omission from one search engine can be as damning as the inclusion of propaganda in another.
The obsession with reputability is why I abandoned Google. In narrowing the array of sources the search engine surfaced in the hopes of protecting the average user from misinformation, it narrowed access to fringe sources of knowledge, which although unreliable can be a goldmine of supplemental information.
Say what you will of Baidu and Yandex, if you know a bit about their nation's leadership and international policies, you can guess their biases and can guess how they'll adjust what you see. That's useful. American companies can be much less predictable.
Just so. Also, though the western spooks can probably see some of the encrypted traffic through to those companies, if you send it to google or bing, they can see all of it.
And yes, you should be afraid of western spooks if you live in a western country. I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago.
Yep. I've never put any kind of personal information on FB aside from a profile picture and a name. My profile has otherwise been blank for the past 10 years. I've never liked any pages or products or left any meaningful comments that reveal anything of importance. Today, I block all of their ads and scripts (I haven't seen an ad on Facebook for the past 10 years). I've never shared my contact book as annoying as they make the popup in Instagram. Facebook has gained nothing from me directly. Others might argue they've gained more information than I could know from the people I choose to associate with, but I can't really control that.
Today, I use Facebook because it's useful for connecting with people I just met, long lost friends, and because Messenger is the most convenient messaging app out there. Instagram is a great app that I enjoy using and will continue to use (also anecdotal, but I've never seen an ad in Instagram either. I guess I must not follow enough people?)
Realistically, the only way I stop using FB's services is if they start charging for them. That's my personal red line, just because I'm too lazy to pay and I figure most of my friends will be, too, so they'll just move on to the next big thing.
I recall being in my early teens, when I went to create my (first) Facebook account. I mentioned it to my dad. He explicitly told me that whatever I did on Facebook would go to their servers, that whatever reached their servers was theirs, and that they would do whatever they wanted with that data regardless of whether you agreed to it or not. The whole reason I gave up and made an account was because my friends had already given the app their contact list, and the service already had my phone number.
From day one I've treated online services like amoral, dangerous animals, and so far nothing these organizations have done has especially shocked me, though I have been impressed or surprised on occasion. My mantra is generally 'if I or the NSA could imagine it, private industry will attempt it'.
I still get a lot of value out of my Facebook account. Facebook pages are a gateway to niche interest groups, social trends, and the political fringes that would otherwise be inaccessible to outsiders. Seeing the ads Facebook puts in my feed helps me to calibrate my mental model of how I'm being observed, who's sharing data with who, and how online services perceive me (I typically use ad-block, and only occasionally close it to check my ads).
If I want to contact someone I've only met in passing, keep up with family and political bubbles, or do a bit of background investigation, Facebook's there for me.
Accessing the service requires a bit of a faustian bargain. But by the time I joined, the country had already made it on my behalf, so I opted to reap the benefits of that bargain rather than just being social collateral.
Facebook could scare me off the way Google Search did - by sanitizing its content feed to the degree Google's sanitized its search. But I'd still use Messenger, and any other useful service they come up with.
But otherwise it'd have to become obsolete in the same way as MySpace.