Blocking Facebook Connect/Graph

Browsing the web and you hit a site that displays your friends list, or suggests you 'like' this page because xyz of your friends also do.

Never paid that much attention until my g/f today mentioned my friends appear on sites she looks at. Of course they do! WTF did I never consider this.

Not that we have that type of secret relationship but when I started digging into Facebook connect, or now graph as it seems to be the more I hated it.

I'm way late to this party but to block this:

1. Install AdBlock - https://getadblock.com/ & pay this guy money, its a great product!
2. Create some filters to block access to the connect URLs

http://dev.mathiasbaert.be/misc/facebook-connect-opt-out.html

and/or add these to the filter list:

facebook.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
facebook.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
fbcdn.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net

Thats it.

Facebook privacy debate, face recognition.

I use Facebook, and I of course have obligatory 'friends' who actually aren't really friends at all. Some I have an interest in (see below) and some I just said yes to in the furor of Facebooks release and growth. Most are people I know, or did know, some I work with, some family, and then there are some real friends.

But nearly all the regular Facebook contributors I come across use it for two things:

1. How am I doing versus x ?
2. A replacement of sending junk email links to everyone in your address book*

* Notice how your inbox is no longer full of emails from 'friends', or in my case my mother, telling you to look at this link, watch out for this virus when you make a coffee and stir the spoon the wrong way which will allow access to all your bank accounts, credit cards and library membership. All stopped. Facebook, thank you !

I guess #1 is really social media feeding the basic human instinct of survival. Look at me I did this, I own this, I went here. Therefor I must be more intelligent than you as I have a better job, earn more money, and so I will survive, and you will not.

Maybe I'm being cynical and people just want to 'share'. Which is fine, but if your going to share or use social media to keep a score then please don't think that ticking that little box makes your data private.

What do you think the motivation is behind these companies ? Its to make money. How ? By having the most data and doing shit with it. Everything you do will be tracked. Pictures, links, status updates, wall posts. ALL will all be analyzed to the nth degree and used in a way to make money.

Face recognition is the latest headline news to hit the Daily Mail spin machine. How long do you think Facebook have been doing this privately ? .. Google already do it with Picasa. You chose to put your pictures on the web. A public place, with two billion users (correct at date of writing, 2 billion and 1, 2 billion and 5, I can't keep up !). And then you want privacy and protection ? - good luck, welcome to the future.