I probably have things to hide, but: I ignore ads. I don't click on political news. I pretty much ignore everything except my friends' vacation photos. Please tell me in concrete terms a specific downside to staying on Facebook. What's the non-tinfoil hat scenario that I am naively ignoring? Wake up and my bank account is drained, or what?
You don't have to click it. For example I have zero interest in celebrities or reality TV, I've never clicked a link or read an article about them. Yet even I know who Kanye Kardashian is, and that he's married to (or is? * ) a woman with an enormous backside. it's pervasive, it becomes part of the background and what you consider "normal". I absolutely guarantee that despite never having clicked a link about Trump, just having that link there and seeing the headline, will have influenced you, same as it would anyone.
Did you see that through facebook ... ? Friend feeds ? Liked pages ?
I've hidden pretty much everyone, only keeping a few music or art pages, only go on facebook maybe once a week anyways.
I use messenger a lot though. I hate typing on phones so not many texts, and whatsapp web interface is not that great (and it's not as widely used by my friends, and it's owned by facebook anyways so what's the difference ?).
Actually a fun detail is that I entered facebook under the wrong gender : I'm labelled as a male though I'm female. When I looked at my targeted center of interests I had the most average things ever ie sports and such (which I don't follow -at all-). Like, really, you have nothing better on me ?
So I don't care about my data (I don't think I put a lot out there anyways) or whatever and I've yet to be convinced how it matters at all in the grand scheme of the universe.
> most average things ever ie sports and such (which I don't follow -at all-). Like, really, you have nothing better on me ?
To me, that is part of the problem.
For years Facebook, and Google, have been telling the world they understand us better than we know ourselves, and all the fine-grained ways they can categorise and predict us. They actually seem to believe it. Then when they allow us to look at what they have inferred it is usually comically wrong for pretty much everyone.
Then they go on to sell to us, categorise and bubble us as though it were fact, and sell access to this marvellous factual data or sell their marvellous data mining capability to riffle through vast amounts of NHS data, or predict crime, or...
We're building a global infrastructure with a foundation of that 98% bullshit. That was mostly harmless when it was just about product ads. When it moves on to health, justice and politics and it's shown they're able to move the needle I think it does matter. Perhaps not much to anyone personally, but to society as a whole.
Then what's the problem if it's not actually that good for people who leave few, contradictory elements (maybe I would've been easier profiled if I was labelled female for an example). They try to sell me stuff which I won't be interested in, seems fine to me.
As for the last part, could you be more precise ? What exactly could happen that would be bad to you ?
I maybe wrong, but unless he changed his name he is Kanye West and his wife is Kim Kardashian. And I know this not form facebook but probably from reddit memes. And again, unless I missed the fact he changed his name, it does prove the point that you really don't know who he is since you mixed up his name ;)
But Facebook harvests whatever cookies and trackers it can out of your browser, even for activity outside of and unrelated to Facebook itself. You will be productized in every possible way. (For one example, haven't you seen Amazon ads in your feed for items you may gave looked at/for strictly external to your Facebook tab?)
There's a collective impact on society for which everyone participating has some amount shared responsibility. It's up to the individual to decide if that impact is a positive or a negative one.
