Are you really certain you want to give your life/secrets to Facebook for free?

So Facebook makes educated guesses about users based on human interaction that they’ve observed? What exactly is the danger here?

It is an easy way to keep in touch with people you don’t want to talk to often.

I only use it to post fairly innocuous things about what my dog is doing or my predilection in the summertime for long walks and hot fudge sundaes. Anything that is deeply personal does not get told there.

There’s no danger there, @Darth_Algar, as long as you don’t mind targeted marketing and Facebook knowing that you’re having an affair with your wife’s sister. Then there’s the little thing known as ‘The NSA Scandal.’

Ah, not having a FB account allows me to not keep in touch with people I don’t want talk to often, @filmfann.

I think that’s wise, personally, @janbb.

Luckily I don’t post anything about my affair with my wife’s sister to Facebook.

I don’t care. There’s noting interesting enough in my life that I feel is worth posting about.

I don’t put my birth date, phone number, home town, current location, employer or identify my family members on FB – the “about me” section is essentially blank, and they keep prompting me to complete my profile, but I won’t. And by the way, Kat Hearkat is not my real name. My fiancé and I are very happy, but we don’t feel the need to brag about it on FB, nor would we post if we were to have a tiff. I keep Location and Tracking options shut off on my devices so my movements in 3D or on the web are being minimally tracked for commercial purposes.

I deleted my FB account when it gouged into my personal data and then blabbed that I’m really Jimmy Hoffa. ;-o

Yes, @Darth_Algar, but FB is able to predict your pending affair as the heat builds.

Poor @keobooks. First the flame boards, now Facebook. This growing up can be hell. Well, but for the heaven of having your little girl in place of. Come to think of it, damn, what a bargain!

Good for you, @hearkat. I think the greatest danger is to the young, growing up in the age of the internet and not knowing some of the information abuses of the past. Possibly having their entire lives tracked by FB or it’s successor..

Is that merely humorous of seriomorous, @Brian1946?

Meh.. I know I should get riled up about it. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

I gave up FB years ago, my brother lets me use his account just to keep in touch with some distance relatives, and I use that about ever 2 or 3 months.

Oh, that reminds me, @SQUEEKY2. I do have a business FB account in case there’s something I want to access on Facebook. I think I accessed it 2–3 times last year.

It’s not different from using Google. Are you certain you want to give your secrets to Google?

I dumped my FB acct. in 2011 after about 18 months or so.
Partly because I was bored with it and partly because I was dumping a couple of real life friends who were on FB and wanted to make a clean break.
Not missin’ a thing. lol

@ibstubro ”Yes, @Darth_Algar, but FB is able to predict your pending affair as the heat builds.”

Yes, if I post stuff about it or alluding to it on FB. This is nothing more than observing human behavior really. FB isn’t able to “predict” what it has no data for.

NO, I’m not certain, @glacial. But I’m so scatter-shot that Google doesn’t get much of a marketable picture.

I agree, @Coloma. Not missin’ a thing.

They are analyzing the data so as to be predictors, @Darth_Algar: “Based on data obtained over years, Facebook says it’s easy to spot two people who are about to enter a relationship. Up until 12 days before the start of their relationship, couples share an average of 1.67 posts per day, according to the site.”

Well, Amazon is shipping products that you might want, to warehouses near your house, before you actually order them.

I do not use facebook at all, and I can only implore everyone to stop carelessly doing their part in establishing the 1984 dystopia.

Thank you @ibstubro for (most likely unintentionally) reinforcing my point.

And thank you @Darth_Algar, for (most likely unintentionally) missing my point.

The point is that it cannot analyze or “predict” on data that isn’t given to it.

Well, @Darth_Algar, my premise was that if you started an illicit affair using Facebook, they would know it, if only by the statistics.

However, I’m not a Facebook user, can’t speak to the finer points of what can be carried on there at a high level of secrecy, so I’ll just cede the point.

I don’t share any secrets that someone can use to ruin me. Unless there’s a way to ruin me with a picture of my Grandmother. I use facebook to communicate with family and friends and of course do some shuckin’ and jivin’.

I find FB to be creepy. I have no wish to share the details of my life with complete strangers. My online socializing is pretty much confined to Fluther.

@LostInParadise – Most people only interact with folks they already know on FB; you are more likely to interact with strangers here on Fluther. Of course, here we have some degree of anonymity, but I know many on FB who do not use their real names – someone in one of the groups I’m in has the “last” name: Whydoesitmatter, and a friend of a friend uses a backward spelling of a common name (whether that correctly-spelled version is their real name or not, I have no idea). As with most of these sites, you don’t have to share anything that you don’t want to share.

My husband uses it to manage his band, and I use it to keep in touch with friends who are as introverted and phone-averse as I am, as well as far-flung friends who it would cost gobs and gobs of money in international fees to talk/text with over the phone.

If NSA wants to bore themselves to tears with the details of my latest craft project or the stats of my newest D&D character, they’re more than welcome.

I gave Facebook a solid shot for one year. Gathered up about 100 “friends” and, in an effort to do something productive with it, decided to post a photo-a-day.

It started out okay. I got some nice comments on my photos and I caught up with some folks I hadn’t seen in forever. Even “met” a couple Jellies.

Then, after a while, I realized a few things:
• Very few were posting anything I found interesting. So little effort, so much banality.

• What some folks posted reminded my why we hadn’t been in touch all those years. Ooh, that’s right… you’re an idiot/biggot/windbag!

• Folks I really cared about numbered in the single digits and I saw them in real life anyway, so what was the point?

• I preferred the interaction on Fluther.

So, I deleted my account and do not miss it in the least.

I never give my personal information to any websites (apart from websites I really trust, and so far the only one is Fluther). All Facebook users who know about that information are people I interact with in real life, like my classmates or my friends, so they already know who I am without me having to say out loud.

My Facebook account looks “ugly”: I don’t choose a nice avatar, I never decorate my wall, I rarely post status or photos… Yeah, I don’t use Facebook often. I just drop by sometimes to see notifications from my class and comment on my friends’ status. There’s that one regular Facebook user who keep on sending me annoying message when I’m online and if I don’t reply she gets really annoyed, but since I find Fluther I never want to stay in Facebook for long, so I turned off chat mode to surf Facebook quietly.