Facebook is bad and you should delete your account

Yes I am!

And they cooperate by spying on each other’s citizens!

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Sorry Truthseeker but I am 99.5% sure that is incorrect. There are numerous data mining companies using FB and other social media to track persons, groups, fads, movements. The data is not left on FB, can be deleted from there (but remains anywhere is may have been copied to). Already, social media is used in background checks for jobs.

Anything you can reactivated and retrieve later is also never actually deleted from FB or other social media. “Reactivation” optuons always mean server backups. Your access is merely redirected until you change your mind.

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That’s really insightful. It’s pretty much true. But we Westerners usually do it for profit, not as a past time. I would also add that it’s also an interesting side effect of drinking a lot of coffee (that is to say, creating monsters without stopping to think if it’s a good idea).

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Agree.
I think monster creep in when the money and profit take charge of the project.
You can see this happen to big charities even temples.

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There’s two great opportunities to profit: creating some kind of “poison”, then some kind of “remedy” to said poison.

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Here’s what I’m doing, to do my part (as passively as I feel is reasonably possible) to attempt to get out of all this surveillance (and of course, there is no such thing as perfection here). FWIW: Just an example, for those of you who feel utterly powerless to do anything differently (and please skip the rest of this post if you are not a geek):

  • I’m fortunate enough to have one geeky lay supporter, who rents a cloud server (running Debian Linux), and is hosting my email for me (in addition to his own custom domain). I have a custom domain (which was a birthday present about 5 years ago). So my email address does not end in gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc. I have IMAP, SMTP, and webmail, all SSL-encrypted. Note: This custom domain name is the one thing I actually asked for in this list (and wasn’t specifically offered), when I was offered a birthday present. Note: I also have a free protonmail email address, which I’ll scrupulously give out to services, when necessary, that ask for one. This protects my primary email address from spam.
  • This same saintly geek profited majorly from Bitcoin, and subsequently offered to buy me a nice laptop from System76 (small enough to fit in my yam). It comes from the factory already having the Intel ME disabled (as best as can be done). It also comes with Linux right from the factory (and it will have Nextcloud integration out of the box).
  • A second friend has a NAS appliance (with a good home internet connection) where he’ll let me install Nextcloud. This is where I’ll likely get cloud services from (once Nextcloud 13 comes out, which will have Cryptomator), such as storing Addressbook Contacts, Calendar, Bookmarks, Files, etc. (rather than using Google, or Apple iCloud). My minimally-used Android phone will stay in sync with the laptop this way (the Nextcloud apps are available in the F-Droid app). I really wish I could live without Android (or any smartphone for that matter), but there are times (especially when arranging plane tickets in a time crunch), where WhatsApp is regrettably indispensable.
  • Yet a third Buddhist geek friend has offered to try set me up a small VPN appliance out of a Raspberry Pi 3 (after he makes himself one). Don’t click that link unless you are a geek! Intense geek warning! This relatively-inexpensive roughly credit-card-sized appliance (and about an inch tall) will help minimize the surveillance and provide better security when using any particular internet connection.
  • So what about Facebook? I’ve purposely never had a Facebook account. This site is already pretty much all the Facebook I’ll ever need (during intermittent times when I’m actually on the internet).

For those Buddhist geeks out there who might be considering hosting their own cloud on the cheap, there are many tutorials about doing this.

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There are also good podcasts about reclaiming privacy (if you are the tinfoil-hat-wearing type of geek). :sweat_smile:

Note: I’ve been catching up on some of these things while I am very temporarily staying in a “transit house” for the Sangha in Singapore, which has a good internet connection.

For those who feel this is majorly off-topic to Buddhism, sorry to disturb you, please just ignore this post. I posted it with the intention of pointing out that things are not all bad, if you are fortunate enough to have some geek friends to help you out.

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Every technology has a counter technology.
We are like dogs chasing the tail.

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The Buddha gave an analogy of the human realm like a tree in a desert. The shadow moves as the day passes, and you unfortunately have to keep moving your spot in order to stay in the shade. So the shadow has unfortunately moved, and I’m explaining what I’m doing to stay in the shade. I also know well wether I’m doing that moving in an ignorant or wise way. I wouldn’t be using any of the above technologies if I didn’t have the willing, voluntary support of those very good friends of mine.

Also let the record state that I avoided having a smartphone for as absolutely long as I could manage (and I gave it a sincere chance to not suck horrifically, hoping, naiively, that I wouldn’t need anything more). So I don’t feel guilty, even if idealists such as yourself insinuate whatever you will, from the comfort of your lay life, not understanding what it’s actually like to be an ordained monastic in this modern world.

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Could you give me the reference?

Sorry, can’t remember where, but I do further recall that the ghost realm was described as the same tree, but it had virtually no leaves and provided virtually no shade. So no matter where a ghost sits under it, they get sunburnt badly. (Hey, what an accurate simile for describing all the commonly-used and addictively-optimised Cloud services out there, including Facebook, which abuse your privacy in pretty much every conceivable way, at every turn.)

You’d probably find this analogy in Hellmuth Hecker’s Similes of the Buddha. I think that’s where I read it.

I think you may be mischaracterizing social media. :). It is functioning as designed: it is addictive, designed for optimal frustration and craving cultivation, so that people will spend their only valuable resourcs (time and mental energies) in social media.

It is incidental that social media also mines personal and collective informatuon which can be useful in marketing, building social disparities, and the developing legal “personhood” of corporate organizations (which do not suffer or have empathy).

It is designed to cultivate craving, and limited social relationships. I think it hazardous. Like heroin. :slight_smile: Or tobacco.

Lol Yet I am on Facebook, on a limited basis.

I noticed today that I am now getting served advertising (adchoices) which relate to the people I am with and their search history.
I am spending the weekend at the beach with my family and was googling ‘average ocean temperatures’ and the page I visited served me an advert for car rentals in New Zealand. Not something I have any need for but my dad, at his home 60km away has been booking a NZ holiday including car rental. Neither of us have been on FB this weekend and I’m logged out of google and yet this was an obvious attempt to get me to influence my Dad’s spending.
Guess I should delete my google account too! Then run off to the forest with a supply of coffee and a minipress.

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Yes I’ve noticed that too recently. I see ads for films and other items that seem to be related to purchases my wife has recently made. She is not on Facebook, so I assume it’s based on credit card data.

I agree social media can addictive, but I don’t think what is most addictive is all the extraneous news and commercialized content. What people are addicted to is other people.

I am not working right now so I spend a lot of time alone at home. It’s boring and lonely sometimes, but all I have to do is open up social media sites to find a few hundred of the people I have known in my life, and join a conversation.

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Is privacy dead.
If you do not know who you are you can find out from the big brother for say $100.00?
I suggest you read Sutta for one hour instead of watching the following video.
Because we are too late already.

Maybe, but it also seems like you are putting in a lot of energy just to avoid being watched and tracked by other people, and to protect the core of your self from external intrusion.

Why does it really matter so much who is watching? All they can see are external aspects of the same selfless skandhas you see from the “inside” when meditating.

I recently watched the film Blade Runner 2049. The main character is an artificially bred “replicant” human, enslaved into the police force to hunt down and dispatch an earlier line of replicants. His girlfriend is a a creation of artificial intelligence. She is real, and has an emotional and intellectual life of her own, but has no corporal existence and her ephemeral visible form is projected into their apartment by the console in which she exists.

There is a poignant scene in which the girlfriend hires a prostitute so that she can somehow (not really explained) merge her physical form with the prostitute while the prostitute has sex with the boyfriend. Afterward, the girlfriend sends the prostitute away, and the latter says, “I’ve been inside you. There’s not much there.”

That’s how I feel about all of the external surveillance of my person these days. It’s OK, because not that much there anyway! :slight_smile: it doesn’t make me less free, because only my attachments and acquisitions bind me.

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I like to play with facebook’s algorithms. As a gay guy, I generally get targeted ads for various things marked with pride flags or rainbow designs of various natures, designer underwear, hookup apps, ads for parties, and I flag them all as “offensive”. My private joy, now public.

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I try to be very mindful about the content i put on fb, and that means if anybody “up there” is watching tiny me, then they will only find Buddhas teachings in different forms and aspects on my piece of land.

Thanks for being so nosy, have a nice day! :slight_smile:

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Yes I like to mark random things as offensive too just to screw with them. :slight_smile:

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