OT: Re: Facebook and other walled gardens

Mon Mar 22 18:52:20 UTC 2021

On 3/22/21 11:41 AM, William Herrin wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 10:23 AM Andy Ringsmuth <andy at andyring.com> wrote:
>> No. Use a communication method that is available globally, not proprietary and doesn’t require me to sell my soul to the devil simply to participate.
> Hi Andy,
>
> I refused to get a Facebook account until I was paid to. Now that I
> have one, I wonder why I bothered. I isolate it in its own browser
> profile so it can't snoop the rest of my web activity and I gave it an
> alias email address that only they have. I mostly  control what
> information I give them. I like having an effortless way to keep up
> with my extended friends and family. In spite of that, I was surprised
> how good a job Facebook did targeting ads to my interests -- the
> knight hoodies were just too cool.

Air-gapping the browsers is certainly best, but Firefox has been really 
clamping down on super-cookies and the like. It will be interesting to 
see what the overall effect is.

My husband and friends have been having good laughs lately about some of 
the weird targeted ads they get. They are definitely not perfect. I use 
Facebook Purity and don't see their ads at all.

Mike