Why in 2017, joining Facebook is a bad thing


Reddit, uploaded by GameAlex2005

Holly Jahangiri shared this link with me on Twitter yesterday: Facebook is asking people to upload photos of themselves to prove they’re human.
   Good luck with that, because most of the bot accounts do have profile photographs, so this won’t solve a thing.
   Of the many bots and fakes that Holly and I have reported recently, Facebook took down one of hers. They took down none of mine. Basically: Facebook isn’t too bothered by bots, or is too stupid to recognize them even when people alert them.
   Even though Facebook says, ‘Please upload a photo of yourself which clearly shows your face. It can be an older photo, and it doesn’t have to just be you on your own—so long as you’re in it. When you send us a photo, we’ll check it and then permanently delete it from our servers,’ don’t they claim that they don’t ever delete anything?
   As Design Taxi points out, this isn’t the first time Facebook has asked for our photographs as a means of identification: last month, they reported that Facebook wanted people to send nudes of themselves: ‘The system it is trying would prevent specific photos [e.g. revenge porn] ever being uploaded to Facebook, Instagram or Messenger—but you do have to privately share them with Facebook first.’
   My response below (links added) sums up Facebook as it stands in 2017, not including these developments. I honestly can’t see why anyone would join now. If you are joining, there’s a pretty good chance you are a running bots anyway, there to join other bots, or you work for a click farm.

That is sick. Forced downloads through a malware scanner that doesn’t show up in your installed programs’ list, collection of preferences even after users have opted out, kicking out people using aliases for self-protection, allowing access to fan pages even though one is not an admin, allowing bots to overrun the system and (currently) ignoring 100 per cent of reports, lying about the number of users it can reach in any demographic and then claiming their numbers have no relation to the real-world population, and essentially covering up the fact its databases are regularly faulty (the photo method is probably part of this), I can see just how appealing Facebook is in 2017!

   As mentioned, if not for certain businesses, I’d be gone from the site—and I’m not even that bothered by all the photos I’d lose. I haven’t uploaded many for two years, and all the rest I have archived away. I have twice as many connections on Twitter; on Linkedin, around two-thirds what I have on Facebook; and about a third on Instagram. I have a small group of friends on Blogcozy. It’s not as though I’ll suddenly find myself away from social networking.


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4 thoughts on “Why in 2017, joining Facebook is a bad thing

  1. Hi Jack, I haven’t received a request from FB to upload a photo, but would not under any circumstances. Something isn’t right about this request. I have contacts on FB who post pictures of themselves constantly. Don’t understand the need for that. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in case we don’t correspond this month.

  2. Hi Karen, nice to hear from you. The fact they even requested nudes with the pretext of “in case someone uploads some” is also very disturbing. I have heard of one case where a friend was asked to upload government-issued ID—she opted not to, and left instead, and I don’t blame her. Another uploaded a scan of her passport and was told that that was insufficient—if that’s insufficient, then I don’t know what would be sufficient! I wish you a blessed Christmas and all the best for 2018, too.

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