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comment by ffatty
ffatty  ·  1879 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

Does anyone else communicate with EVERYBODY on Facebook Messenger?

My parents, my coworkers, my girlfriend, even my drug dealer - I don't really have anyone's phone number. And I don't think I'm unique in that way.

I don't have the Facebook app on my phone, for around 2 years now I haven't posted or viewed my feed.

I do concede I'm still addicted to other aspects of my phone, it's just Facebook that I always found especially distasteful.

However I consider Messenger as an unavoidable necessity for my generation.





veen  ·  1876 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Replace "Messenger" with "Whatsapp", and you have about half the globe with the same problem. Literally all my communication since like 2015 has gone through WhatsApp for me and everyone I know, replacing texts swiftly. And since Facebook bought WhatsApp, it's effectively also Messenger. Potato potato - effectively, there's no escape from Facebooks grasp. Even if you don't have an account, Facebook profiles you.

ffatty  ·  1876 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What does everyone think of rumors that messenger targets advertisements based on private conversations?

Facebook denies it but there's a lot of anecdotes (my own included) and experiments on YouTube that say otherwise

veen  ·  1876 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think it very often looks that way because lookalike audiences have gotten really good. The real issue is that many, many websites have some analytics connection to Facebook, so ads have a lot of data to target you with.