I Don't Want to Sign Up for Facebook - How Can I Just Read It?
Is information technology possible to be a passive user of Facebook? I want to read announcements relating to friends and colleagues, and perhaps post comments, without building a profile with photos, a timeline and then on. I accept managed perfectly well without joining, but occasionally miss useful information that is non bachelor elsewhere. Eira
What'southward known as "lurking" – being a fellow member without actively participating – is very common. To quote Jakob Nielsen, "In nearly online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for about all the action." This is known as the i% rule, and it's manifestly a gross generalisation.
Facebook's participation levels announced to exist much higher than that. Nosotros don't know the number of lapsed or (literally) dead accounts, but in September 2018, Facebook reported 2.27 billion monthly active users (up 9.6% over the previous year) and almost 1.5 billion daily agile users (upwardly 9.3%), despite losing most 1 million users in Europe.
While there's no obligation to participate, in that location are much trickier questions about privacy and tracking.
What distinguishes Facebook from Twitter, Reddit, Metafilter and then on is that information technology is based on existent identities, which are fundamentally public. While you can cull how much information you post on Facebook, and how widely yous share information technology, your friends may already have given Facebook your email address as part of the "find friends" process. Some of them may also have posted images of you, mentioned you lot in comments, or linked to things y'all posted on other services. As a outcome, when you sign up, Facebook may already know who nigh of your friends are.
This data may exist about you, but it isn't yours: it belongs to the people who shared it.
Either mode, any organisation that knows your real name can probably find out a lot well-nigh you. This was already obvious in 1999 when Sun's Scott McNealy said: "You accept naught privacy anyhow. Get over it."
Minimal Facebooking
To sign upwardly for a Facebook account, you need a proper name and a working email address or mobile phone number. Yous tin employ any name you are known past. However, if you lot run into a trouble, you may have to provide an acceptable form of ID to verify it afterward.
You will also be asked for your date of birth – considering y'all have to exist at to the lowest degree 13 years former to join – and your selection of gender. Both may be used for advertising purposes. After that, everything is optional.
Facebook volition desire you to complete your new profile by uploading a mug shot and a comprehend photo, entering the names of schools or colleges you attended, where you live and and then on. You are not obliged to practise any of this. Your profile photo could exist a drawing character. However, there could be from dozens to thousands of people who have the aforementioned proper noun as y'all. The more details you enter, the easier it will be for friends to find you.
Side by side, to brand the arrangement work for you, y'all accept to "friend" people you lot know. Facebook encourages you lot to upload your contacts volume (meet higher up). It's much better to track people downward ane by 1, though it is more work.
And that's it. When your friends post things on Facebook, they will announced in the news feed. You will also accept a timeline under your name, which used to exist your wall. You lot can't go out of having these, simply again, you don't have to post annihilation to them.
Privacy settings
When you do post something, you can control who sees it past using each post's settings menu (three dots), but it's better to choose settings for your whole account. To practice this, click the down-arrow on the far right of the blue heading bar, select Settings from the menu, and then Privacy. The main entry is "Who tin meet your hereafter posts?" You probably won't want to employ Public, which means anyone on or off Facebook. Instead, limit visibility to friends, perhaps, or customise information technology. You tin exclude by name anyone you don't want to come across something.
You can also limit the range of people who tin can look you upward using the email address and/or phone number yous gave Facebook, though that tin can make information technology harder for friends to detect you.
Where it asks "Practise you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?", answer no.
You lot should also visit the advertising preferences page and click on "Ad settings". This lets y'all plough off adverts based on "data from partners" (external websites, not Facebook), and adverts on external websites based on your activities on Facebook. This removes the advantages of tracking y'all. Otherwise, Facebook could employ the information that you visit, for example, motorcar websites to prove you car ads.
You can too change "Ads that include your social actions" to "No one". This stops Facebook from using your actions (signing up for events, using apps, making recommendations and then on) to promote them to your friends.
Finally, Facebook publicises birthdays. The setting is on your About page under "Contact and basic info". Note that yous tin can fix different privacy levels for your engagement of birth and your year of nativity. You could fix both to "Only me" or just keep the year – and therefore your historic period – individual.
This description barely scratches the surface of the many ways you tin manage your data. Facebook provides detailed control over your privacy, and how it can target you with the adverts that pay for its free service. The problem is that information technology would take many hours to observe, sympathise and customise all the settings available. Understandably, most people only don't care plenty to make the effort when the just visible do good may be seeing less appropriate advertisements.
Facebook disconnect
Facebook Connect or "Log in with Facebook" is an identity system that, conveniently, lets yous log into other websites, play games and so on with your Facebook ID. While this saves creating a lot of different login names and passwords, it also lets Facebook know what you lot are doing away from Facebook.
This isn't a new idea, and Facebook's tracking network is much smaller than Google's, just it'due south what drives the use of things like Ghostery, Privacy Annoy, Disconnect.Me and Redmorph.
You tin opt out of using the whole platform. This stops Facebook Connect from working, and disables all the apps and games that have been used by 3rd parties to harvest user data.
To practise this, go to the Settings page and select "Apps and websites". Curlicue down to the Apps, Websites and Games section, click Edit and so select "Turn off". I got some dire warnings when I did this a few years ago, but as you're a new user, it shouldn't impact anything.
Yous can also limit Facebook tracking by running Facebook in a container in the Firefox browser.
It's not just Facebook
Facebook explained in a blog post what sort of data it collects and how it does information technology. Obviously, it mentioned that other internet companies are doing exactly the aforementioned things.
In fact, the main deviation between Facebook and LinkedIn and some rivals is that nigh (but non all) of the personal information on Facebook and LinkedIn has been willingly contributed by users for their own purposes, rather than gathered by spying. Facebook has become the universal boot boy partly because of its carelessness, and because its massive scale means its blunders can affect far more people, or fifty-fifty whole nations.
Ultimately, notwithstanding, the problem is not Facebook merely "surveillance commercialism": the business model whereby users trade personal information for services instead of paying for them.
Equally security expert Bruce Schneier wrote last year in a blog post on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: "for every commodity about Facebook's creepy stalker behaviour, thousands of other companies are breathing a collective sigh of relief that it'southward Facebook and not them in the spotlight. Because while Facebook is 1 of the biggest players in this infinite, there are thousands of other companies that spy on and manipulate u.s. for profit".
For those of united states of america with distant friends and family, Facebook is just also valuable to give upwardly, and its replacement(s) might well be worse. It'due south the whole system that needs fixing.
Have you got a question? E-mail information technology to Ask.Jack@theguardian.com
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/mar/07/is-there-a-way-to-use-facebook-without-giving-up-my-privacy
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