Oh well, looks like I am the odd one out, again...I am on FB, but under
what for convenience I will call my "stage name", which my friends know
and understand but my music students or the idly curious will never find;
On 08/10/2012 21:54, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
In my case, the *reason* is that IMHO FB is a big swindle,
and not stimulating anything positive, au contraire.
I was not aware this was a requirement of a website. I doubt very much
my own website stimulates anything much at all - hmm, donations via
paypal remain conspicuous by their absence...so this must be the reason,
then. Clearly the internet should be a commerce-free zone, like what it
used to be, I guess. Earning money is so last century.
Who pays for FB ? The advertisers. Who pays the advertisers ?
The consumers who buy the product or services advertised.
Hmm, not me - I don't buy anything. The adverts I see are all
irrelevant, and sometimes amusingly random. And, really, not very
intrusive. It's hard to believe they would find any paying customers at
all. I think it amounts to rather less than the ultimate conspiracy theory.
So in the end we, the consumers, are paying ourselves for
being profiled, analysed and swindled by targeted commercial
'information'.
The only thing I am paying for is my ISP; I use FB as a free resource. I
rather suspect, au contraire, I am being swindled by my supplier of
electricity and gas. With one or two exceptions, all my FB "Friends" are
actually friends in real life. I don't spend hours on it (except when I
forget to log off). I have had the odd useful chat with someone to
arrange to meet up or whatever. I sometimes use it a bit like twitter
(which I have yet to sign up to) without the 140 char limit, when it
amuses me to do so. The most the profilers will get from me is random
pictures of cute animals, flowers, or views of Stourhead (ho,
dangerously valuable personal info there!), and the odd shared link of
"topical interest". Strangely, I see no adverts at all for either
flowers or cute animals.
But, I did close my LinkedIn account, as I really could not see the
point of it, for me. YMMV etc.
Richard Dobson
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