130 replies to this topic

[sigtau]

Do a search for "Google Analytics." About 70% of webpages I visit use it. It's a simple stats tracking app to see what kind of audience your website is getting. That's probably what your extensions are blocking.

[Radien]

I'll admit, I am a bit paranoid, but I'd like to think rightly so. I don't have my sources saved, and I don't feel like digging through a year's worth of history to find them, but I can offer this over-the-top-dramatic video, at least: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=oNofb-OlZyQ Yeah, the guy who made it's probably a bit out there, but it's gotta count for something, right? (Not saying I agree with everything he says, just throwing it out there.)

I basically have one thing to say to that entire video, and all I have to do is quote a common line seen on Wikipedia: Citation Needed. Whoever made that video makes claim after claim about Google, but doesn't once reference where they get their data, which is a necessary step toward proving that it is true. If you don't do that, you're merely peddling a conspiracy theory to people who already wanted their irrational fears to be confirmed.

Y'know, there's something to be said about the stark difference between fact and opinion. There IS a way to establish fact. You can't just go around believing what you want to believe about what's going on in the world and saying there's no way to prove it one way or the other. If you cite your sources, explain your logic thoroughly, and document everything, facts will accumulate.

In addition, there's this: https://secure.wikim.../Google#Privacy Allow me to quote a few highlights from it.
"Schmidt reaffirmed this 2010 in an interview with the Wall Street Journal: "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.""
"On December 2009, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared after privacy concerns: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google – do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.""

Companies often want to do things that the government tells them they can't do -- or their customers tell them, by voting with their feet/wallets/browsers/etc. Everything you just said about Eric Schmidt is not only stuff that Mark Zuckerberg seems to believe, but Zuckerberg is actively implementing those ideas into Facebook. It's a constant battle between Facebook and its users, where FB continually tries to push us to share pretty much everything we've put on their site. When they go from pushing to forcing, that's what I'd call a violation of trust.

The idea is simple: you are given a privacy policy when you sign up. You agree to it. Yes, they can change it, within reason, if they give plenty of time and notice for users to have feedback about it. But Facebook isn't being reasonable with their changes, and they aren't giving users time or notice.

In addition, I've got a Firefox add-on called "Ghostery", and have it configured to show me all the trackers and whatnot it's blocking. Nearly every webpage I'm going to has Google stuff blocked. No exaggeration.

I use NoScript. And yes, as sigtau pointed out, most pages have Google Analytics. This is Google's service for tracking where traffic comes from. Have you ever seen a site traffic report? A program designed to keep track of site traffic can show graphs which tell the site owner how many unique hits they get from various places around the world, and where exactly you navigated on the site. The mere presence of Google Analytics on so many websites should not be disconcerting. The next step would be to have someone look at the actual javascript code being used and find out whether it does anything shady. Considering the fact that anti-virus software has now expanded to anti-spyware, the fact that Google Analytics doesn't trip the "data miner" detection means it's pretty harmless.

Another tool site owners can use will tell them what search terms each user used to find the site. For instance, if I typed in "Zelda quest editor" into Google, found a link to PureZC, and clicked on it, then WildBill would be able to get information which mentions how many people found PZC by using that search query. These are primarily faceless statistics. The site owner mostly wants to know what demographics their site is appealing to. Since they don't see their users face-to-face, like you would in a brick-and-mortar business, these statistics are some of the only information they have to go by.

So yeah, maybe I am a bit paranoid. But I think I've got enough evidence backing my paranoia.

To use the exact meaning of the word: paranoia is, by definition, irrational. If you have good reason to be worried, and you DO worry, then technically, that doesn't count as being "paranoid."

I know it's just semantics, but I wanted to be clear: if someone calls you "paranoid," they are calling you "irrational" (provided they have a solid vocabulary, of course). If you suspect specific people or companies, you can say so on an individual basis. If you suspect many people without reasonable cause, though, that's when it becomes "paranoia."

[Shane]

I'm not saying anything until November the 5th. Actions will get me satisfied more then just words. In this case, I'm cheering them on 'til the very end if they do so.

[Zemious]

Oh lord. What a joke.

[Sheik]

I'm not saying anything until November the 5th. Actions will get me satisfied more then just words. In this case, I'm cheering them on 'til the very end if they do so.

That's all cool and dandy. But why? I mean, you have a reason to do so, right?

[Shane]

One word. Sisters. Always bi*ch about one thing and then another. When they are face-to-face they seem calm probably knowing that if they do fight over something silly they going to be pulling each others hair out. And from what I heard a teenaged girl killed herself due to cyber-bullying over Facebook. It needs to go, in my opinion.

I mean I cool with it staying on through. But I do however want it to go for good.

Edited by Midnight_King, 25 August 2011 - 05:51 AM.

[Moonbread]

Well, that's rather ridiculous. Does that means public schools need to be shut down because bullying happens there? Does that mean real life needs to be shut down because sisters complain? For some of us, facebook is actually incredibly useful and is how we stay in touch with certain people. I have a friend who's stationed over in Japan, and I have no other way to contact him except for facebook, and he was my best friend through high school, and I went 2 years without any contact with him. You want to take that away from me, really?

Just because some people have problems with it doesn't mean it should be taken away from those of us who have a reason to use it. Facebook is not the problem. It's people you're complaining about.

[Shane]

Again just for the sake of it I'm saying this again, I'm cool with it staying on. I don't want anyone losing contact to a special friend because, of course, that would be awful. This is why I didn't want to say my reason in the first place.

[Sheik]

One word. Sisters. Always bi*ch about one thing and then another. When they are face-to-face they seem calm probably knowing that if they do fight over something silly they going to be pulling each others hair out. And from what I heard a teenaged girl killed herself due to cyber-bullying over Facebook. It needs to go, in my opinion.

I mean I cool with it staying on through. But I do however want it to go for good.

She could have like deleted her account on Facebook if it was such an issue for her.

[Eddard McHorn Van-Schnuder]

Again just for the sake of it I'm saying this again, I'm cool with it staying on. I don't want anyone losing contact to a special friend because, of course, that would be awful. This is why I didn't want to say my reason in the first place.

Now you're just contradicting yourself. It's like you said one thing without thinking it through, then suddenly when people point out the flaws in your argument you throw another post out there saying you are completely cool with 'it staying on', which directly contradicts what you said in the first place.

Then you say "This is why I didn't want to say my reason in the first place.", but that contradicts what you just said in the very same post.

1. It needs to go.
2. It doesn't really need to go.
3. And that's why I didn't want to say why it needs to go.

You sir, have officially boggled my mind

Anyway, as I said before, I don't think it 'needs to go', as in completely, but I do think its management needs to think over what they are doing, and what they are doing wrong, then fix that. If this 'attack' can help them get to that point then I'm all for it, though I doubt it will. They'll probably shrug it off and keep up their business as usual.

[Lemon]

It's kinda obvious they don't really have any real moral reasons for taking down Facebook. They just want the attention. What better way to get everyone's attention than taking the website everyone's plugged into all the time.

Considering a few of these 16 year old hackers (they aren't anon people, stop referring to them as such. It's a small group inside the sad messy blob that is 4chan) recently got arrested for their CIA work, this seems like a really terrible idea.

[Hunter P Brown]

Like with Amazon, this will fail. The worst this group can do is announce what they're gonna do, and knowing Facebook's resources, they will step up bandwidth limits, and these dimwit qqers won't even put a dent in it. In fact, it might make Facebook's stock go up due to the extra 20,000 guest visits they will get from DDoS attacks. Maybe Facebook is taking Anony's MO for this reason. Nah I don't know that last part for sure, but the first part is a certainty.

[Eurysilas]

Considering a few of these 16 year old hackers (they aren't anon people, stop referring to them as such. It's a small group inside the sad messy blob that is 4chan) recently got arrested for their CIA work, this seems like a really terrible idea.

Aren't YOU a regular at Something Awful, an (by all accounts I've heard) equally trollish establishment? In fact, didn't I once here you proudly proclaim SA as "the center of the internet" (a grandiose notion in any case)? Don't get me wrong, I actually find trolls hilarious, and wish them the best of luck in this endeavour particularly, but it sorta seems like you're looking down your nose at them.

[Fabbrizio]

The more I think about this, the more I realize it's probably just them talking out their asses. If there's one thing you never, EVER do, it's announce that you're going to do something like this well enough prior to actually doing it that they can take even further preventative measures. Unless they're just being cocky, but NO ONE can live up to THAT level of cockiness. If they do actually try this, they'll fall flat on their faces.

[Lemon]

Aren't YOU a regular at Something Awful, an (by all accounts I've heard) equally trollish establishment? In fact, didn't I once here you proudly proclaim SA as "the center of the internet" (a grandiose notion in any case)? Don't get me wrong, I actually find trolls hilarious, and wish them the best of luck in this endeavour particularly, but it sorta seems like you're looking down your nose at them.

I have a friend who accuses me of this all the time. They're really two different, nearly opposite entities. They are both large communities that have forums for nearly any interest a person could possibly have. One, however, welcomes everyone and has no filter, while the other is kinda like a gated community (10$ to sign up ). I consider them both circling the center of the internet. Floating around the nexus of million user bases.

In my opinion, SA is better though. The fact that people are accountable for what they post makes it so there's a lot more quality in most threads. This, of course, I only say lightly due to the fact that even with rules and such many threads get de-railed and suffer from many thread cancers that we've all seen time and again here.

4chan has a lot of nifty stuff on it, but it's a bit to chaotic for my tastes. For every good thread of funny pictures I find there, there's like, twenty to thirty gore, jailbait, post ending in... etc threads. This is pretty much the case regardless of subarea I go into too. Then again, 4chan does do some really funny s*** every once in awhile. Immediately coming to mind is /b/ after Osama was declared dead. Laughed my ass off for like, five minutes straight.

4chan is kinda like the anti-community in my eyes. It's a bunch of people who will never meet, will never interact outside brief image+sentence posts, and will never be held accountable for said interactions. foreveralone.jpeg comes to mind. I don't really consider Lulzsec part of anonymous, simply because they really aren't. They've removed themselves from the pool of blank faces and are officially a group. I guess calling them a sad little blob is unfair, though I still feel accurate.

The subforums of SA are great and through various purchases and information I've gathered from other users, I've definitely already received the initial 10$ back in full ($400 lens for $200? F*** yeah). It's so frick'n large that every subforum is like it's own little community, and it's really nice to know that whatever you feel like doing, there's a bunch of people right there willing to help/inform. Plenty of sad little blobs on here too though.


TL,DR; 4chan is more like stumbleupon and SA is more like a college. Both have stupid stuff. Both have great stuff.

(getting back into essay writing mode for school if one can't tell)