"Facebook Messenger defaults to sending a location with all messages."
May 27, 2015 10:32 AM   Subscribe

...the first thing I noticed when I started to write my code was that the latitude and longitude coordinates of the message locations have more than 5 decimal places of precision, making it possible to pinpoint the sender’s location to less than a meter.
Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger
posted by griphus (79 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
(Full Disclosure: I will be starting an internship at Facebook on an unrelated team in June of 2015)

Hey, check out the creepy shit that Facebook's all encompassing data hoovering allows you to do! BTW, I am going to work for them and thereby personally enable them to do more of this.
posted by indubitable at 10:43 AM on May 27, 2015 [25 favorites]


See, Kill Switch was not an unrealistic episode of the X-Files, it was the future!
posted by The Whelk at 10:46 AM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


(Full Disclosure: I will be starting an internship at Facebook on an unrelated team in June of 2015)

Yeah, because the best way to impress your summer internship company is to point out how invasive and creepy their product is. At least everyone will know your name!
posted by Huck500 at 10:49 AM on May 27, 2015 [9 favorites]


Unlike previous instant message applications, Facebook messenger has no concept of away messages.

The message is hardly subtle: You can never go away.

(But seriously, Facebook's utter disregard for human factors is starting to reach crisis levels. It's getting harder and harder to communicate without subscribing to an all-encompassing "platform." SMS was a quiet last bastion of sanity before iMessage broke that too.)
posted by schmod at 10:51 AM on May 27, 2015 [16 favorites]


Years ago I used to keep a list of reasons why I left Facebook, because at that time the company didn't seem quite as intrusive. I've forgotten most of them by now, and I mainly roll it into two categories: Privacy Concerns, and I Don't Need To Keep In Touch With You People Anyway. Now? I think I'll just cut that down to Privacy Concerns. Thing is that it used to be when I told people, "I deleted my Facebook account" I had to present a reason. Lately I've noticed that when it comes up no one asks why anymore.

I'm curious why Facebook is collecting this data. I mean I know it's the same reason that Google does similar things - the more you know about your users the better you can sell them ads, or whatever. But this - this is just a next-level move. Why in the world would my friends need to know where I am, with +/- 1m level of precision with every innocuous message? Don't get me wrong, I've used the "send my location" function on my iPhone once or twice, but this? Why have it on by default, all the time? How will Facebook knowing which corner of my favorite restaurant I prefer to sit in do them any good? It's ominous, and I don't feel paranoid or irrational in saying that.

I'd love your theories on why this level of precision is considered so important that it's on by default.
posted by komara at 11:07 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


schmod: "(But seriously, Facebook's utter disregard for human factors is starting to reach crisis levels. It's getting harder and harder to communicate without subscribing to an all-encompassing "platform." SMS was a quiet last bastion of sanity before iMessage broke that too.)"

Uh. iMessage is so much better than SMS in practically all ways imaginable that it's not even funny. To wit: Not paying for messages, being able to send all sorts of attachments, syncing of messages across devices, having a desktop client so I can actually write messages on a proper keyboard when I'm at my desk, everything's encrypted (with something at least better than the weak, broken crypto SMS/GSM relies on), being able to merge messages from the same contact but from different IDs into one chat...
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:08 AM on May 27, 2015 [15 favorites]


Civilian GPS, especially on your phone, doesn't provide sub-meter accuracy and it doesn't default to on for me. So I'll take the rest of the claims with a grain of salt, I think.
posted by Craig Stuntz at 11:14 AM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


So I've R'd TFA, but I'm still not sure: does the location data only come with messages that are sent from FB's Messenger app? Or does this apply to all of them, always, ever?
posted by sacramental excrementum at 11:15 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'd love your theories on why this level of precision is considered so important that it's on by default.

There may or may not be any nefarious or important reason so that it's on by default now.

But if it is on by default now at some point when there is a nefarious or important reason to have that level of precision, it will have been the accepted default for so long that people will have forgotten it exists and whatever uses that data will be able to slip in, relatively unnoticed as nothing about what is being collected will have changed.
posted by splen at 11:16 AM on May 27, 2015 [11 favorites]


So, is there any way to turn this feature off?
posted by gottabefunky at 11:17 AM on May 27, 2015


Civilian GPS, especially on your phone, doesn't provide sub-meter accuracy and it doesn't default to on for me

Yes, this. 911 can't even pinpoint locations when called from a cellphone half the time. On the other hand if someone was like "here is PROOF that facebook is powered by the actual devil and all his minions" I would believe it immediately so. idk.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:17 AM on May 27, 2015 [9 favorites]


"Future nefarity." Got it.
posted by komara at 11:20 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Uh. iMessage is so much better than SMS in practically all ways imaginable that it's not even funny.

Except, you know, for being able to use it on one's device of choice (if one chooses to have a non-apple device somewhere in their workflow).
posted by sparklemotion at 11:21 AM on May 27, 2015 [20 favorites]


So, is there any way to turn this feature off?

Yes, but I'm pretty sure it turns itself back on every time the Messenger app updates.

The location feature gets it amusingly and spectacularly wrong sometimes, like when it told me my friend riding a bus across SF was in Arizona, no, Massachusetts, no, North Dakota...
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:26 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


read receipts and last active times in the messenger are what drove me to delete my profile entirely. the total lack of room for plausibly not being aware of/reading a message from someone i don't necessarily want to speak with immediately, without coming off as rude, is totally infuriating and coercive. fuck that
posted by p3on at 11:26 AM on May 27, 2015 [28 favorites]


the latitude and longitude coordinates of the message locations have more than 5 decimal places of precision, making it possible to pinpoint the sender’s location to less than a meter.

As a side note, this disregards the concept of significant figures. Precision is not accuracy.
posted by indubitable at 11:29 AM on May 27, 2015 [21 favorites]


Why in the world would my friends need to know where I am, with +/- 1m level of precision with every innocuous message?

What Facebook's Messenger Mess Means to Marketers [Advertising Age]

One more note on the privacy-based fire that has sweltered around Facebook: Brands, which routinely request and get granted access to contacts, serve ads based on your search history and do things like map your latitude and longitude, aren't often skewered by privacy advocates the way social networks are. It's an interesting highlight about Messenger that shows privacy has more to do with interpersonal communications than with purchase, search or location details. Even Google, which routinely listens to and serves ads against the language in your email conversations, search history and location, escapes the same hostility. Perhaps this is because Facebook, more than any other service, holds the keys to the most intimate relationships of your life, and that -- more than where you are, what you buy or what you search -- is what you care to protect. And of course, that emotional ground is exactly where brands want to be associated during the formative years Messenger is hoping to own.

TLDR; it's not your friends this is information is intended for.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:37 AM on May 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


sparklemotion: "Except, you know, for being able to use it on one's device of choice (if one chooses to have a non-apple device somewhere in their workflow)."

Which is why it integrates with SMS too, to the level now of actually having SMS messages I receive on my phone show up on my other devices and letting me reply to them via SMS from those (non-SMS enabled) devices. SMS doesn't normally work on non-phones, which are also "one's device of choice" in many cases.

(I use Telegram too, which has somewhat less tight integration, but works on many phones and also has a desktop client, so it's superior to WhatsApp, at least, if less common.)
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:37 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Uh. iMessage is so much better than SMS in practically all ways imaginable that it's not even funny.

Except, you know, for being able to use it on one's device of choice (if one chooses to have a non-apple device somewhere in their workflow).


And those months when a not-insignificant portion of my messages seemed to disappear into the ether. As crappy as the cell companies are, I've never had a confirmed lost SMS.
posted by chimaera at 11:41 AM on May 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Civilian GPS, especially on your phone, doesn't provide sub-meter accuracy and it doesn't default to on for me. So I'll take the rest of the claims with a grain of salt, I think.

I think there's some well-worn engineering quote about precision vs accuracy. He gets sub-meter precision.
posted by GuyZero at 11:46 AM on May 27, 2015


This Lifehacker article seems to indicate it's on mobile only and also how to turn it off.
posted by emjaybee at 11:51 AM on May 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Fuckerburg
posted by hellojed at 11:52 AM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


A lot of tech-y people are confused about why consumers seem so willing to give up personal privacy.

But regular people do get worked up about privacy from time-to-time: e.g. Snapchat's best friends feature (which revealed publicly who you communicated with most, until it was removed and then redesigned), or that overhyped story about Target's machine learning models predicting a pregnancy before the woman told her family.

The common factor is that those were cases where people were being exposed to people they actually knew. It seems like nobody actually cares if a corporation has access to incredibly detailed information about them (except maybe really sensitive stuff that could be used for identity theft, and medical records). You just want to be able to keep secrets from your friends, family, and coworkers.

Which makes me wonder why the hell Facebook has this on by default?!? I think they naturally would collect this location data semi-quietly and sell it in aggregated form to advertisers. But what possible benefit do they get from silently showing your minute-by-minute location to all your friends, none of whom are paying customers?
posted by vogon_poet at 11:53 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'd love your theories on why this level of precision is considered so important that it's on by default.

I think you've got it backwards. I've written location-aware apps, and by default you get the most precise value from the browser or OS. It takes work to generalize it.

There's a simple solution:
* Instead of yes/no permission for location sharing, browsers or operating systems (iOS, Android) should give you the option to provide Exact/Within 5 miles/Within 100 miles/Random answers to "Facebook wants access to your location".

Don't blame Facebook for using the information, blame yourself, your browser, or your O/S for giving it to them.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:56 AM on May 27, 2015 [10 favorites]


Ha, you live in the Quad. Sucks to that.

Seriously, though, this isn't why I stopped using Facebook--I dropped off mostly because I really don't care what any of my acquaintances who I don't regularly see are doing--but it sure doesn't help. It's one thing to expose your vitals to advertisers who mostly use it in Big Data-type ways--which is sort of part-and-parcel, really--but to expose, by default, detailed location information to your contacts is a bit dense, isn't it?
posted by uncleozzy at 12:07 PM on May 27, 2015


This Lifehacker article seems to indicate it's on mobile only and also how to turn it off.

What is the use case for Messenger, anyway? My assumption was that most Facebook users are middle-aged (ie, over the age of 30) and I wonder how they would be using Messenger to communicate on mobile. For planning an evening out? For chatting?

Are the over-30's still engaged in peer-centric social behavior that includes frequent texting with friends over Mobile anyway?

Personally, I rather dislike having long texting conversations on my mobile/smartphone, although I do chat with people from Facebook itself from time to time on desktop (where precise location is not shown).

That said, there is definitely an adversarial relationship with Facebook. I know that I am fairly careful about protecting my privacy on Facebook, if only to prevent social engineering and identity theft. I actually use a false location in Japan instead of my actual city in Canada, which is pretty interesting because when I run into acquaintances on the street they always think I live in Japan.
posted by Nevin at 12:08 PM on May 27, 2015


Civilian GPS, especially on your phone, doesn't provide sub-meter accuracy and it doesn't default to on for me

Yes, this. 911 can't even pinpoint locations when called from a cellphone half the time. On the other hand if someone was like "here is PROOF that facebook is powered by the actual devil and all his minions" I would believe it immediately so. idk.


Except FB isn't getting just GPS data, but your smartphone's location data, which also uses cell-tower position and WiFi network databased to pinpoint you. It might not be sub-meter most of the time, but if you're within 10 meters of a hotspot (even if not connected), you can be pinned down to that level of accuracy. If you live in a town or city, you're basically always positionable even without GPS.
posted by thegears at 12:09 PM on May 27, 2015 [9 favorites]


Android phones aren't using primarily or only GPS to do location services these days. I'm not 100% on this order since it's been a few years since I built a location-aware app but, I think it goes something like this. First, they try to triangulate you based on what wifi networks are in view, next they do the same with cell towers, and finally they fall back to GPS.

I don't know about iOS but I'm guessing they work similarly.

GPS is a pretty bad option for locating a phone due to reception and power usage issues, so it's the option of last resort. I don't know if they accurately take advantage of their available precision or not, but wifi triangulation in particular can be remarkably accurate, especially in urban areas where wifi base stations are common, so it doesn't seem out of the question. On android, you can disable this across the board in Settings under the Locations tab. Of course there are a million android versions so yours may differ.
posted by feloniousmonk at 12:13 PM on May 27, 2015


I almost never use Messenger but just checking on my phone, the location setting is off and I don't remember turning it off.

Is Messenger actually used all that much? I have ~150 Facebook "friends" but I think that I've used Messenger less than a dozen times.
posted by octothorpe at 12:13 PM on May 27, 2015


"I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic Facebook to see if I can track the killer's stalker's IP address."
posted by slogger at 12:17 PM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


Mixed iMessage/MMS conversations break in unpredictable ways.

In particular, there is no guarantee that all participants of the conversation will receive every message, or receive messages in the same order.

I will make no argument that SMS/MMS are good, but iMessage's SMS integration only exacerbates the ways that SMS is already broken, and doesn't provide any recourse for users who are unable to use Apple devices.

One can argue that Apple's always-closed approach was better than the way that Google and Facebook quietly extinguished XMPP support on their respective platforms, but it's burying the issue that the web is rapidly becoming less open and more fractured.

The loss of XMPP support also means that users who relied on 3rd-party chat applications for accessibility purposes are no longer able to do so, and need to use Facebook's client, which has exceptionally poor support for disabled users.
posted by schmod at 12:19 PM on May 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


Also, as a data-point: My friends and I use Facebook Messenger extensively for group chats.

Facebook group messages are easy to set up, and offer the least-broken chat experience that has lots of subscribers, and works well across multiple platforms.

There's a certain irony in the fact that Facebook are actually well-positioned to offer a standalone, cross-platform chat application (because, again, their offering is actually quite good for something with a closed API). The standalone Messenger app is proof enough that chat doesn't need to be tightly integrated into Facebook's core offering. It works quite well as a standalone microservice.
posted by schmod at 12:22 PM on May 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Also my friends and I are so old that we use email lists (Google groups, now, actually). So if Google cares to know who's bringing brownies and who's bringing salad and who's going to be a little late ... I suppose they can.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:25 PM on May 27, 2015


I've never had location turned on. I disregard Messenger's pestering of me to turn on notifications. I don't like the app at all. Kind of hard to remove it, though, as it is useful just enough to keep it.
posted by Chuffy at 12:27 PM on May 27, 2015


Even the last "I will never have a smartphone" holdouts in my social group have given in, but not all of them use Facebook and I would never suggest they use nor install it on my phone for precisely reasons like this.

If I could get all my friends to use a Slack instance, I would.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:29 PM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


As crappy as the cell companies are, I've never had a confirmed lost SMS.

Wow, really? I have. Which is less annoying than the times they decide to go on walkabout for 2-8 hours and then show up in a bunch. All of which happens less than it did ten years ago (way less, particularly with network to network peering) but it's still imperfect.

Not that iMessage isn't just as whacktacular sometimes but I wouldn't call SMS bulletproof.
posted by phearlez at 12:33 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't mind FB so much. I don't use it much - just share pictures so my mom feels like we are close, and I don't have to talk to her. See how my HS friends kids are growing. It's also sort of my offsite disaster recovery plan for my vacation photos.

Messenger on the other hand... Well, FB bought Whatsapp for 16billion, and by god, you are going to use it. I kind of hate the way it takes over the phone, so I uninstalled it. If someone makes the mistake of FB messaging me, they'll have to wait until I get to a desktop to respond. Sorry, not sorry.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:36 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Are the over-30's still engaged in peer-centric social behavior that includes frequent texting with friends over Mobile anyway?

Yes.

I have a couple of friends out of state who I still talk to on a not-regularly-but-occasional basis via Facebook messages; I don't always happen to be sitting at my computer when that happens and neither do they.

I can't use Facebook on my work computer but I can use it on my phone; conversely, my spouse turns off her phone's ringer at work but can sometimes check Facebook (and does when she gets home anyway). FB messages are more likely to get to her in a semi-timely manner than SMS.

The first thing I do with any app is look at the settings and turn off annoyances and security/privacy risks. I had location disabled in Messenger before I ever sent or received a message. I still don't think location data should be part of a message at all, much less on by default, and FB has been known to stealthily add privacy-breaking defaults in updates.

I look forward to Android M which is rumored to have the ability to opt in or out of features on a per-app basis (such as denying location information).
posted by Foosnark at 12:50 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's getting harder and harder to communicate without subscribing to an all-encompassing "platform."

And that just became a whole lot harder, as of yesterday, when Facebook finally unplugged its messaging system from the XMPP gateway that made it work with third-party IM clients like Adium, Empathy, and Pidgin.

There's no replacement API. Sure, on mobile devices there's an API that lets you call the Facebook-provided "Messages" application in order to let the user send/receive, and then go back to your app, but you can't send and receive messages from within any other application anymore, like you could with XMPP.

Basically: if you want to chat with your friends who are only on Facebook, you have to use the Facebook Platform... you either have to log onto the Facebook website, or you have to use the Facebook mobile app. The days of being able to use your own IM program are, apparently, dead as far as Facebook is concerned.

This drives me nuts, because I don't want to use their goddamn platform. Hell, I don't really want to use Facebook chat at all, but they managed to sucker so many people into using it that if you want to keep in contact with friends—and I really like instant messaging, just conceptually; I've been doing it for decades and it's a medium that works really, really well—you are stuck using them. Getting a critical mass of people to move to a new communications service is really hard and the companies that have that critical mass have a huge amount of power as a result of it.

Google Chat seems to still be working, for the moment, but they made their own (stumbling) lunge towards an exclusive platform a while back, even though they eventually stepped back and clarified their position. (Which is, basically, that they don't implement XMPP well or correctly, and they seem to have no interest in interoperating with anyone else, but they aren't going to block 3rd-party clients either.)

It just ... sucks, and it's particularly sucky because there's no fundamental reason why it needs to be like this. Text-based chat is not a hard problem. This isn't like artificial intelligence or machine vision or self-driving cars. This is a problem that any CS student can solve on the technology side, but where the business side has led us into a tarpit of shittiness and gradually-decreasing functionality.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:58 PM on May 27, 2015 [13 favorites]


I haven't installed Messenger on my phone, though I do have mobile Facebook. (It is rather annoying that I get the push notifications about someone messaging me, but I can't actually see them on the app - I just get prompted to install Messenger) Like Pogo_Fuzzybutt, I usually wait until I'm on my laptop to respond. I do have a workaround if I need to respond before I get home: I just go to Facebook on my mobile browser (I use Chrome) and I'm able to see and respond to messages. (I have a feeling it will only be a matter of time until Facebook disables messages on all mobile browsers, though.)
posted by SisterHavana at 1:01 PM on May 27, 2015


Settings->Privacy->Location Services
Messenger->Never

While at it, turn off all System Services (bottom of page) except for "Find My iPhone".
posted by standardasparagus at 1:07 PM on May 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


If you're not running Facebook in your phone's web browser then you're not doing it right. Just don't allow it to have location data when you first go to the site.

Yes, it's kind of a pain as opposed to the app, but unless you're constantly uploading photos or checking in, you probably won't notice much of a difference.
posted by lattiboy at 1:11 PM on May 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


> I haven't installed Messenger on my phone, though I do have mobile Facebook. It is rather annoying that I get the push notifications about someone messaging me, but I can't actually see them on the app - I just get prompted to install Messenger.

Yes, exactly this. I refuse to install Messenger on my phone, and Facebook obstinately won't show my messages. In the effort it took to push the notification, you could have included the message text too, you ^$%&^**&.

Whatever; it's not like I care about any messages via Facebook, and there's nothing that won't keep till I get to checking on my laptop.
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:15 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


What is the use case for Messenger, anyway? [...] Are the over-30's still engaged in peer-centric social behavior that includes frequent texting with friends over Mobile anyway?

Yes. I didn't think I was demographically that far out of the MeFi mainstream, but in my social circle(s)* people use it all the time. For example, my partner and I just met up with two other couples of recent acquaintance for dim sum and planned it all on FB Messenger, which is particularly useful in that you can see who is caught up to which part of the discussion based on little plinko-bubble icons.

Also, for a lot of the people I've met in recent years, I've connected with them via Facebook long before I've learned their email address or phone number. (Again for example, I just confirmed that I'll be officiating my sister-in-law's wedding via FBM since I don't have any other direct contact info for her.)

*urban 30/40-something gays, friends from college & grad school,** extended family, etc.

**especially those who are overseas, since international SMS from the U.S. is worse than awful

posted by psoas at 1:30 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


I stopped using Messenger when I woke up one day to discover that my phone -- which had been plugged in for eight hours -- was down to 30% battery and hot enough to melt butter, and 99% of the battery usage since plugging in was attributed to that one app. Intrusive and incompetent - truly the Facebook way.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:35 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Are the over-30's still engaged in peer-centric social behavior that includes frequent texting with friends over Mobile anyway?

What a creepy sentence. It sounds like something a corporate AI came up with.
posted by clockzero at 1:45 PM on May 27, 2015 [16 favorites]


SMS was a quiet last bastion of sanity before iMessage broke that too.

hahahaha Oh wait, you were serious?
posted by entropicamericana at 1:59 PM on May 27, 2015


I'm over 30. I'm never going to install any facebook app on my phone. I don't want to be notified 10-15 times a day when my cousin posts inspirational messages. Or that guy I was sorta friends with in high school who posts pictures of his dog much more frequently since his divorce. Or the other guy I was sorta friends with in high school who feels FUCKING GREAT now that he's on a gluten-free paleo diet and won't rest until everyone does it too. Or my ex-girlfriend from over 20 years ago who lays in wait for me to log on because she wants to chat incessantly about her grandbaby.

I'd quit facebook, but it's easier to just not use it.
posted by double block and bleed at 2:10 PM on May 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Just once, it would be nice to have a Facebook-related post here that wasn't overrun by people competing to write the most holier-than-thou reason why they don't use Facebook.

We get it.

Meanwhile, everyone's other favorite privacy whipping boy, Apple, is actually doing this right with their Find My Friends iOS app, which is explicitly opt-in.
posted by mkultra at 2:31 PM on May 27, 2015 [10 favorites]


I knew it was sending this data — and when it first launched, that FB messenger defaulted to recording your mic even when the application wasn't active — but so many of my young coworkers used it that it was often faster than actually calling them or texting them.
posted by klangklangston at 2:32 PM on May 27, 2015


I don't want to be notified 10-15 times a day when my cousin posts inspirational messages. Or that guy I was sorta friends with in high school who posts pictures of his dog much more frequently since his divorce. Or the other guy I was sorta friends with in high school who feels FUCKING GREAT now that he's on a gluten-free paleo diet

...That's not how Facebook works. You wouldn't be getting notifications about all those updates unless they were all posting it to your wall specifically, in which case block blockity block, sir.
posted by psoas at 2:32 PM on May 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


So, is there any way to turn this feature off?

The only winning move is not to play. Barring that, you can reach a sort of stalemate by removing/never installing the Facebook & FB Messages app, restrict location services to your 'find my device' and GPS nav apps, and if you're using Apple's iMessage, at least deactivate the 'read reciept' fuction, if not all of iMessage, as well as Facetime and Find my Friends.

I've been holding off on getting a new iPhone for a couple years now, and if I didn't need it for work, I'd much prefer just to deactivate my iPhone service and use it with wifi only, and go back to a dumbphone - I even have been seriously considering (if they still even exist anymore) pairing a dumbphone with a simple SMS capable beeper.

It took quite a while to get to this point, but I no longer have any desire to put up with all this nonsense anymore, and though I will probably not go full-on Luddite anytime soon, my bags are packed *.

* It's funny that I was unable to easily find a picture of one of these from a google image search, so I had to dig mine out of a closet and take a picture of it with my fancy phone. It only came up when I searched the specific model of the case, a Western Electric KS-16606-L2 telephone carrying case - the cords (with the old school 4-pin connectors) have been set aside for a better view.
posted by chambers at 2:36 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: OVER-30'S STILL ENGAGED IN PEER-CENTRIC SOCIAL BEHAVIOR THAT INCLUDES FREQUENT TEXTING WITH FRIENDS OVER MOBILE
posted by benzenedream at 2:51 PM on May 27, 2015 [20 favorites]


I have never been gladder of my stubborn refusal to use mobile Messenger.
posted by corb at 3:03 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


You wouldn't be getting notifications about all those updates unless they were all posting it to your wall specifically

Or you've added them to the "Close Friends" group. That's what you get for having friends, pal!

Also, if you turn off the Location permission for the Facebook app there's a side benefit -- you'll be able to check in anywhere in the world. Your friends will be wondering how you found that shrimp po-boy in Nairobi.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:12 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


psoas: "...That's not how Facebook works."

I installed the original version of the app who knows how many years ago. I'm pretty sure my phone binked and bonked every time someone scratched their nose until I deleted it a day later.

mkultra: "Just once, it would be nice to have a Facebook-related post here that wasn't overrun by people competing to write the most holier-than-thou reason why they don't use Facebook.

We get it.
"

I'm not telling you not to use it. If you find it useful, then knock yourself out. I'm relating how Facebook pissed me off to the point where I almost don't use it. That seems relevant in a post about Facebook doing another thing that pisses off users. I'm not the only one in my circle of friends and acquaintances who are getting really tired of them. Since Facebook depends on "over-30's...[to] engag[e] in peer-centric social behavior that includes frequent" use of their service, that's sort of a problem for them if we all wander off and use something else.
posted by double block and bleed at 3:23 PM on May 27, 2015


Are the over-30's still engaged in peer-centric social behavior that includes frequent texting with friends over Mobile anyway

Even some of us over-40's are still engaged in peer-centric social behavior.
posted by frumiousb at 3:27 PM on May 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


Even some of us over-40's are still engaged in peer-centric social behavior.

Shhh! Quiet, or they'll write a NYT lifestyle article about us.
posted by entropicamericana at 3:38 PM on May 27, 2015 [15 favorites]


Joakim Ziegler: "sparklemotion: "Except, you know, for being able to use it on one's device of choice (if one chooses to have a non-apple device somewhere in their workflow)."

Which is why it integrates with SMS too, to the level now of actually having SMS messages I receive on my phone show up on my other devices and letting me reply to them via SMS from those (non-SMS enabled) devices. SMS doesn't normally work on non-phones, which are also "one's device of choice" in many cases.

(I use Telegram too, which has somewhat less tight integration, but works on many phones and also has a desktop client, so it's superior to WhatsApp, at least, if less common.)
"

Seconding Telgrram. Windows, Linux, OS whatever it is now, iStuff, Android, Windows Phone, even just plain old web...

Also, back in topic... Why, gosh, color me SO surprised FB is all about the user data?
posted by Samizdata at 3:41 PM on May 27, 2015


Yeah, avoiding Facebook is kind of like that person who didn't have a cell phone in 2008.

Like, we get it. You're just super chill and operating on a wavelength us normals can't really comprehend, but it's really just a pain in the ass for people who would like to organize an event or share a picture.

The thing is basically a utility at this point. Not saying Facebook will be that utility in 10 or 20 years, but something with similar capabilities will be.
posted by lattiboy at 3:42 PM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


avoiding Facebook is kind of like that person who didn't have a cell phone in 2008

Good analogy ... if there were a bunch of other devices that did the same thing as a smart phone.

I stopped using FB a few years back with little loss. I won't delete my account b/c that would be stupid, but I don't use it at all. It's not on my phone (tho wasn't easy to find one without it pre-installed.)

Unless you play the third-party games or work in the Web/software industry, Facebook is basically a medium for messaging all of the people you know. Sort of like email. Or Twitter. Or LinkedIn, LOL.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:19 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, avoiding Facebook is kind of like that person who didn't have a cell phone in 2008

Facebook is hardly necessary and the comparison to a telephone is fallacious.

Facebook is necessary in the same way that watching Honey-Boo-Boo or the Kardashians is necessary in order to keep up a conversation with your friends who watch that sort of thing. Of course if you choose to not have friends who watch that sort of thing ...
posted by AGameOfMoans at 4:47 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Wait is the better option to engage in social behaviour with our non-peers? Because man, I've been trying, but my Betters just keep whisking away to the Hamptons.

I guess I could engage in anti-social behaviour with my peers, but I don't want to get an ASBO.

I'll just stick with peer-centric social behaviour in the attempt to find myself a pair-bond, thanks.
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:05 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


iMessage is so much better than SMS in practically all ways imaginable that it's not even funny. To wit: Not paying for messages

...unless you'd prefer to put > $60 per month (cost for a data plan) into some other cause than a data plan, or you can't imagine paying $60 per month per phone, and you'd like to be able to send SMS messages when you're say, on the bus, and not near free WiFi. Like I imagine is true for a lot of people.
posted by amtho at 5:21 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Are the over-30's still engaged in peer-centric social behavior that includes frequent texting with friends over Mobile anyway?

Only if you're running late, or they're running late, or they can't find you, or you can't find your partner, or you decide to text to decide where to have lunch, or they get spotty cell reception in their house and you want them to call you when they're in a good spot, or you want to check which entrance to meet them at, or you can't find your theater seat, or you want to find out if they're awake without making the phone actually ring. Or etc.
posted by amtho at 5:26 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


So yes, Facebook is creepily invasive. But for a lot of people it is incredibly useful. Some of us really enjoy low-level social interaction that you can disengage from periodically without offending anyone. Some of us actually interact with people of a variety of age groups, and Facebook has managed to gain a universality that makes it the logical choice for that. It makes no sense to develop a separate network for a large community that communicates sporadically when practically everyone in the community is already on Facebook. Some of us have family scattered all over the world with whom we can finally keep in touch off and on without the effort it takes to initiate intentional individual contact.

A lot of the difference between lovers and haters of Facebook's core user service (as opposed to what they are selling) seems to be the difference between schmoozers and non-schmoozers. You don't have to be a Kardashian watcher to be mildly interested in the fact that your old high school buddy just got married or did this cool thing or read this cool article. Some, perhaps even a lot of, people don't want or need that kind of socializing, but for me, at least, it takes the place of the casual conversation one might have over weekend extended family respect visits, or porch conversations, or small town sidewalk conversations, when I am either unable or unwilling to invest the time that all of those take, or when I'm not in the kind of setting that permits those conversations to arise naturally, without my having to constantly rebuild alternatives. And not everyone likes to just casually shoot the breeze, but the user numbers suggest that a lot of people do.

And it really bothers me that this amazing utility comes in an inextricable bundle with such nasty, creepy, invasive nonsense. But it doesn't negate the utility.
posted by bardophile at 7:42 PM on May 27, 2015 [9 favorites]


poffin boffin: "911 can't even pinpoint locations when called from a cellphone half the time."

Note that the 911 service is only able to use the data that the cell provider can provide (i'm guessing mostly what tower you are connected to and maybe meta data like tower density). The software on a phone has access to much, much more data to pin point your location. Including hardware specifically designed to assist in locating you. Modern Apple products can narrow your position down to a few metres for example.
posted by Mitheral at 8:30 PM on May 27, 2015


Are the over-30's still engaged in peer-centric social behavior that includes frequent texting with friends over Mobile anyway?

I can't tell which part is too horrible to contemplate for the over-30s: peers, social behavior, texting, frequent texting, friends or Mobile? It's true that one's 30s are a LOVECRAFTIAN ABYSS OF UNSPEAKABLE HORROR but at least you get to keep your friends, your fingers/voice, and your phone, for the most part.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 8:40 PM on May 27, 2015


gottabefunky: "So, is there any way to turn this feature off?"

Yep. Very, very easy. On Android, in Messenger, click the "Settings" cog and uncheck "New messages include your location by default". It's not nested deep in some subsetting, it's right there on the main settings page, 4th item from the top. That doesn't make it suck any less that it's on by default, but deactivating it is no big deal.

prize bull octorok: "Yes, but I'm pretty sure it turns itself back on every time the Messenger app updates."

Nope. At least, not on Android. I turned it off when I first installed Messenger, and that must have been more than a year ago. I just checked, and it's still turned off, after who knows how many updates.

There are some things about Facebook that annoy me, but there are some things about everything that annoy me. Overall, I like it. Some MeFites hate it because of data collection, and I totally get that. But some MeFites hate it because they don't want to read boring shit from people they don't like and aren't interested in. Paleo diets, crossfit, baby pictures, whatever. What I don't get is, "Why the hell are you friending these people, then?" It's like writing your phone number on a bathroom stall door and saying "Telephones suck. I don't want to spend my day getting creepy calls from perverts."
posted by Bugbread at 8:56 PM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


Some of us actually interact with people of a variety of age groups, and Facebook has managed to gain a universality that makes it the logical choice for that. It makes no sense to develop a separate network for a large community that communicates sporadically when practically everyone in the community is already on Facebook.

vs.

"Why the hell are you friending these people, then?"

That is the disconnect that will kill Facebook (or is killing Facebook).

You need Facebook to communicate with your UniversalNetworkTM, but you don't want to see all that shit your UniversalNetworkTM posts.

Yes, I know you can customize your feed (or you could), but they change the algorithms weekly/quarterly, etc etc.

Plus, the celebs will only interact with you on Twitter now.

I really don't use a computer or phone at all anymore (so 2000s). Except to kvetch on here.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:39 PM on May 27, 2015


mrgrimm: "Yes, I know you can customize your feed (or you could), but they change the algorithms weekly/quarterly, etc etc."

They're not doing a very good job at fucking things up, then, because I customized my feed to be how I liked it years ago, and it's still fine.

Now, the actual UI stuff ("Hey, we're gonna put things in non-chronological order!" "Hey, we're gonna put this stuff in that bar over there!") that's different. They're pretty good at fucking that part up.
posted by Bugbread at 10:02 PM on May 27, 2015


I use Telegram too, which has somewhat less tight integration, but works on many phones and also has a desktop client, so it's superior to WhatsApp

Telegram seemed interesting at first blush but on further examination seems to be just another walled-garden, "let's invent a new proprietary protocol slightly higher on the stack" exercise in wheel-reinvention. They have a desktop client, which is kinda nice, but you can't use third-party clients. So it's another thing to have running. (They also seem to make a bunch of very difficult to evaluate security claims, which I'm not qualified to rule on, but has a certain snake-oil stench to it.)

I don't know how, but it seems like text messaging as a medium just somehow failed to launch properly into a mature utility-esque service. There was a moment back a few years ago where it seemed like we were finally moving towards something like email, based on XMPP, where anybody's messaging server was going to be able to talk to anyone else's, and could implement server-to-server or client-to-client encryption based on who supported it, and we'd all live happily ever after.

And I'm not even sure what went wrong, exactly. Some combination of design-by-committee dysfunction (hey let's make it do voice telephony! and video! and get into a fight with the SIP people!) combined with none of the major players wanting to actually cooperate, and despite what seemed like a everyone-wins outcome, now we're going back to the 1990s model again, where in order to talk to all your friends you have to run 3 or 4 different client programs. And now, it's even worse, because in the 90s most people only had one or two computers, now you have to run n clients on m devices, where both numbers are likely 3+. Progress, indeed.

I hope that this is a temporary thing, before people decide how goddamn ridiculous it all is; that's what eventually happened after the proliferation of chat programs on the desktop, the last time around (remember having ICQ, AOLIM, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger accounts, with their accompanying clients? I guess somebody thought it was fun). People getting fed up with client proliferation led to unified clients like Trillian, etc., and then from there the services slowly condensed down.

Perhaps naively, I assumed that was sort of a one-way street and not a cycle that we're going to repeat with each generation that gets online.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:34 PM on May 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


add me to the list of people who decided that neither the Messenger nor the main FB app added anything worthwhile to my life, and uninstalled both of them from my phone. I use the mobile web browser and haven't noticed any difference except for the part where my phone battery lasts a shit ton longer.

the thing is, I (so I guess woohoo go late fortysomething me?) have an intricate number of semi-overlapping social circles that I interact with (work, close friends, bike teammates, family, ex roommates and former colleagues from a decade ago that I still go out with occasionally, former classmates, local MeFites, the neighborhood potluck clan, the collegiate racers I coach, etc ad nauseam...)

the ONE thing that all of these networks have in common? At least 90% of all of them, regardless of locale or demographic, have Facebook accounts. Yes, that includes the tweens and high school kids in the junior cycling club I teach clinics for, despite that media tells us they're abandoning FB in droves.

So if I want to create an event or do a group chat with any or several of these groups (as I just did to create a going-away party for a friend who overlaps 4 different of these friend networks) my options are... Facebook or nothing. Not everyone has gmail or Google accounts, nor is everyone willing to create a Google account for various reasons, not everyone is on Twitter, and I have phone numbers for fewer than 50% of them.

We have one friend who notoriously does not have a Facebook account or a mobile phone, doesn't use IM, and only ever interacts sporadically online via an ancient Yahoo email address. Not unsurprisingly we've somewhat fallen out of touch with her lately and she doesn't get invited to much. I almost always attempt to include her on invites, but it requires going out of the way to send a separate email, and then she's disinvolved in the entire planning conversation, so she lacks any agency in our decisions on where to meet and when.

I don't actually like that this is the way it is with our interpersonal dynamics, but increasingly if someone in our friend network doesn't have a FB presence, they aren't exactly shunned, but it's difficult to maintain connections with them.
posted by lonefrontranger at 1:03 PM on May 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Kadin2048: "Telegram seemed interesting at first blush but on further examination seems to be just another walled-garden, "let's invent a new proprietary protocol slightly higher on the stack" exercise in wheel-reinvention. They have a desktop client, which is kinda nice, but you can't use third-party clients. So it's another thing to have running. (They also seem to make a bunch of very difficult to evaluate security claims, which I'm not qualified to rule on, but has a certain snake-oil stench to it.)"

I don't know if there actually are any 3rd party clients, but both Telegram's API and protocol are open and explicitly allow and encourage third party clients, and they're opening the source of their own clients and apps (they're doing security audit before releasing it, apparently).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:19 PM on May 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Just once, it would be nice to have a Facebook-related post here that wasn't overrun by people competing to write the most holier-than-thou reason why they don't use Facebook.

It's the "I don't even own a TV" of the 2010s.
posted by Foosnark at 1:23 PM on May 28, 2015 [6 favorites]


Is that something I would need a difference engine to understand?
posted by Bugbread at 3:32 PM on May 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Hold on, let me run down to the library to look that up in the encyclopaedia.
posted by mkultra at 11:17 AM on May 29, 2015


"...That's not how Facebook works. You wouldn't be getting notifications about all those updates unless they were all posting it to your wall specifically, in which case block blockity block, sir."

Nah, you get notifications for all that stuff in your sidebar now, which has been true for some time.

Anyway, I did trawl my messages with the Marauder Map and found that in the last three years, only 15 of my friends have included their locations, for a total of 28 data points. So good on our data hygiene, I guess.
posted by klangklangston at 12:32 PM on May 29, 2015




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