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Meta being Meta

Otto Von Herunterhängen

Otto Von Herunterhängen

Administrator
Staff member
I don't think I've been shy about saying this, but in case you don't know my stand, I don't use any Meta product (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, Muse, their fucking glasses) because I do not trust that company at all with personal information - it has a long and for it "rich" history of abusing it. The latest:

Apple changes full-disk access permissions to curb abuse from AI agents

I wouldn't trust "Muse" any further than I can throw it, as usual Meta touts it being "free".

It there is one company that should be fined out of existence, Meta would be it.
 
Not a fan on Meta either, but I do have a Quest 2 and 3. I figure they already have my data (just like everyone else) and the pros of having it outweighed the cons at the time I purchsed.
My sister lives on FB and is constantly trying to get me to use it, even though I bring up the issues with Meta and personal data.
There are also other reasons I hate Meta, mostly political and social, not tech related
 
Hot take I guess (as usual) but Google is infinitely more dangerous than Meta can ever be.

Meta does something shitty and everyone loses their minds.

Google does much worse, and everyone cheerfully installs their app (or it's installed automatically without asking and with full access). It's honestly astounding how much shit Meta gets while Google owning YT, Android, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Chrome and absolutely all your personal data is seen as "convenience". Of all the insanity that exists in the world right now, this is my #2 proof we live in the clown universe, just behind being reliant on fossil fuels.

I've not seen Meta force captchas onto the internet that you have to have their account with ID verified to get through, like Google is now doing. I can avoid Meta pretty easily or absolutely minimise the use. I can't avoid my dentist's Gmail email if I need to talk to them, I can't force everyone to stop uploading all photos where I might show up to Google's servers, half the web sites don't work at all without all the Google scripts, and it's pretty tough to avoid YouTube. Meta is peanuts compared to Google's monopolistic-Orwellian energy.

Funnily enough, Meta and Google are both releasing competitive local models. So you can use them as local agents without internet access. Can't do that with Claude, and OpenAI released their last OSS model like 2 years ago. So there's kinda ironic.
 
TailsWin said:
Hot take I guess (as usual) but Google is infinitely more dangerous than Meta can ever be.

Meta does something shitty and everyone loses their minds.

Google does much worse, and everyone cheerfully installs their app (or it's installed automatically without asking and with full access). It's honestly astounding how much shit Meta gets while Google owning YT, Android, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Chrome and absolutely all your personal data is seen as "convenience". Of all the insanity that exists in the world right now, this is my #2 proof we live in the clown universe, just behind being reliant on fossil fuels.

I've not seen Meta force captchas onto the internet that you have to have their account with ID verified to get through, like Google is now doing. I can avoid Meta pretty easily or absolutely minimise the use. I can't avoid my dentist's Gmail email if I need to talk to them, I can't force everyone to stop uploading all photos where I might show up to Google's servers, half the web sites don't work at all without all the Google scripts, and it's pretty tough to avoid YouTube. Meta is peanuts compared to Google's monopolistic-Orwellian energy.

Funnily enough, Meta and Google are both releasing competitive local models. So you can use them as local agents without internet access. Can't do that with Claude, and OpenAI released their last OSS model like 2 years ago. So there's kinda ironic.
Click to expand...
The difference to me is that Meta has been caught repeatedly misusing the data while Google, while the ability is certainly there, hasn't. If Google is using the data in the extremely corrupt ways Meta has nobody has caught them at it yet, at least to my knowledge.

Apple has that ability too, and nobody has caught Apple selling the data to the highest bidder either. Again, Meta has. Repeatedly.
 
I guess it depends on what "being caught" means and what you consider "misusing data".

From where I'm standing, pushing Chrome to be a monopolistic web engine watching everything you do, forcing Google account onto everyone, "backing up" your photos without ever asking, controlling what you get to see on YT and all the other surveillance and monopolistic practices is absolutely misusing both your data and their position. Have they been "caught"? Look around you. It's so prevalent you don't even see it anymore. They have the power to change how people talk and think, and they do. Have you never noticed any of your favorite YTber complaining that certain topics get demonetised or gated behind age verification, so they drop that topic completely? Can you imagine how different the world would be today if Google didn't have this much power? It's not even sneaky or silent, basically everyone is aware of it to some degree, just ignoring or rationalising it.

Meta is a bumbling amateur compared to that, and they also serve as useful idiots since they siphon up all the hate, while the rest of the Big Tech can do whatever the fuck they want and we even praise them for the "conveniences". Google is the kind of a company we used to see only in sci-fi dystopias and it was funny how unrealistic it looked.
 
You are still talking general big tech issues rather than particular misuses. Frankly, yeah, I think big tech either needs a lot of oversight or to be broken up into smaller competitive pieces. I'm in the Stupendium's corner on that one.

And Apple, Microsoft and Google all fall into that category. AI of course is making things even worse in that regard, it used to be time consuming to aggregate data from those databases. No more.

But Meta's whole business depends on aggregating user data, it has no other purpose. And while it's really difficult to get around the other three, there really isn't any reason to use Meta's products for the most part. So I don't. It's really that simple.
 
But like, that's exactly the point... You can avoid Meta pretty easily, while those others are firmly planted in everyday life. That's exactly what makes those others more dangerous than Meta can ever be.

And it's not like Google has never been caught in the same way, this literally passed randomly through my feed just a few hours ago https://openclassactions.com/lawsuits/google-gemini-gmail-privacy-class-action.php

So yea it depends on what you call "misuse of data". The only difference with Meta is that they made some cartoon villain mistakes, like sending in-company emails about doing experiments and whatnot, and that makes people perk up. But how is that different from YT serving you your personal feed? I don't use a YT login, but when I see some friends' feeds, I see how manipulative it is, serving just stuff that gets them enraged, um sorry, engaged.

Seems to me the main difference is that the likes of Meta and X have the single visible bad guy in Zuck and Elon, while with Google or MS it's a disembodied something we just call "The Algorithm". But it's the exact same thing.

This is interesting actually. If something doesn't have a specific face to pin the blame on, we treat it as omnipresent and inevitable, like God, instead of something human-made. Another good example is "The Economy". Sometimes a country leader fucks up and we blame everything on them, but if it's not as clear-cut, we just go with "The Economy" did this or that, and shrug.

Also, like I said, Meta is the useful idiot. They get caught serving abusive shit to depressed kids on Insta, and that gives the politicians even more ammo to introduce laws to "protect the kids". And guess who then profits from that?
 
This is Meta's RAP sheet

Lawsuits involving Meta Platforms

Again, why would I even consider using them?

I do not, nor have I ever used, a gmail account, or any other "Free" mailer. Which again is my main point, if the service is "Free" with a commercial entity, they are using your information to finance it. They aren't charitable entities. The ones that are and offer free services (Mozilla comes to mind) hound you for donations.
 
I don't know why you're making me sound like I'm recommending to use Meta or something... :unsure:

Man, the "if it's free, you're the product" motto is 20 years out of date. At this point it doesn't matter if you use a particular product or if it's free. It makes very little difference whether you use Gmail, if everyone else you send emails to, uses it. My point isn't advocating for some or against a particular service, it's that we're living in the Big Brother era of all-seeing, all-powerful cyber corporations. And out of those, Meta is the tiny, stupid, weak one. They're the last one to be worried about. You don't have a Meta phone, a Meta operating system, you don't have a Meta speaker in your house, a Meta door camera, Meta doesn't own news agencies or provide infrastructure for like 80% of web sites. It's all those others that have spread out so much they've become ubiquitous.

Btw not sure of the exact number, but the majority of Mozilla's finances comes from Google. The theory goes that they keep Mozilla alive in order to stave off antitrust. Although I don't know why they still bother, anti-trust is essentially non-existent at this point. I guess EU is still pretending to care so it's probably still cheaper to fund Mozilla rather than Eu's fines. So the song and dance about competition keeps going until they get tired of it.

Anyway, you know what I'm talking about. You could just say I'm right 😁
 
An astute person might point out I never said you were wrong.

The situation is similar to this one:

Meta is doing 85 miles an hour in a 35 mile an hour zone and gets pulled over.

"Why did you pull me over? Apple and Microsoft and Google were going even faster!" Meta exclaims

"Because you're the one I caught" the cop replies.

In a way China has it right; when they catch a company breaking a law they line up the CEO against a wall and shoot him. At least if he hasn't bribed the proper government officials.

Everywhere else they just fine the companies and it becomes a cost of doing business, which we all end up paying for.

All I said at the beginning of this thread is I will not use Meta products. It was not excusing anybody else's behavior, it was not saying they weren't worse it was only saying.

>>I DO NOT USE META PRODUCTS<<

Now if you can come up with any way to reign in those other clowns, I'm all for it..

I haven't quite gotten to the point I've taken the time to put Linux on one of my production computers to see how difficult it is to get rid of Microsoft, I'm getting close.
 
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