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Deleted my facebook account because Facebook are a bunch of amoral scumbags. Next step is Google, much more difficult because Google actually provides useful services along with their scumbag behaviour.
Ideally these monopolies would be broken up as they are supposed to be under capitalism.

Yeah google is so hard to avoid.. I changed my browser to duckduckgo as they dont harvest any data, but damn, sometimes the results suck.. really old sites, totally irrelevant etc..so I often load up google anyway.

I'm less concerned about a picture of me.

I only use facebook for hobby stuff (groups, chats, etc.). We arrange gaming on a private group we created, etc. I've turned off pretty much every feature I can on Facebook. I don't post anything personal, no photos, etc. I don't put location tags on my photos, etc. I don't use Facebook on my phone, nor have it installed, etc.

My birthday on Facebook is wrong, and it continues to ask me for a mobile number (nope), and I refuse to "finish" my profile. So no listing where I live, work, etc. As such it's not gleaning too much information off of me, and I find it a useful hobby tool.

 Matt Swain wrote:
A. People are telling me something I know is true because I've had it happen to me isn't true,

No, people are telling you that you are mistaken as to the reason that it happened.

and B. Not one person has answered the question I posted.

Likely because the question was based on a flawed premise.

Well, I’ll bite, for the giggles.

Facebook already has pictures of me, posted of my own free will and “informed” consent. So one more picture would mean feth all to me.

Further, a person could submit anything. Doesn’t have to be a picture of your face. Send them a picture of the moon. Or a Goat. Log. Batwing. (Have you ever seen the movie Waiting... ?)

Send them a picture of your leg. Or someone else’s leg. How aee they gonna know? Send them a picture of people on a cruise. You *could* be one of them.

So yes, I would happily submit a picture of my bright, smiling face. Even if I didn’t want to submit a picture of my face, I would happily submit *something* as a picture. This isn’t exactly hard to work around.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Further, a person could submit anything. Doesn’t have to be a picture of your face. Send them a picture of the moon. Or a Goat. Log. Batwing. (Have you ever seen the movie Waiting... ?)

Given that the reason for them asking for the picture is a manual verification process for security reasons before they unlock your account, I would expect that submitting a picture of anything other than yourself is not going to get you very far.

*shrug* Pragmatically speaking, if you don’t want to submit a picture of your own face, by submitting something you may pass whatever test is being issued. Doubtful they’re checking things manually. And there’s really no way to know, without trying.

Like I said, I wouldn’t be bothered putting a picture of my semi-haggard face in... but I’d currently be interested in submitting something not of my face. Like a picture of my foot. Or a reasonably accurate faccimile, but not actually a picture of my face. A decent drawing might be fun to submit.

I mean, I’m a bit of an odd duck, but testing systems is kind of fun. (?)

 greatbigtree wrote:
*shrug* Pragmatically speaking, if you don’t want to submit a picture of your own face, by submitting something you may pass whatever test is being issued. Doubtful they’re checking things manually. And there’s really no way to know, without trying.

I think you and I have very different interpretations of the word 'pragmatic'...

If someone says to you 'I've locked your account until your identity can be verified. Send me a picture of your face so I can verify your identity.' and you honestly think that sending them a picture of your foot might work, I don't know what to tell you. What I suspect would happen in that situation is that whatever facial recognition software they use for the first pass would flag the picture of your foot as unreadable, and you would be referred to some sort of manual verification process. The system would be absolutely pointless if whatever you submit is just waved through.

Pragmatism: Valuing efficiency, effectiveness and expediency over other virtues (such as cooperation or honesty, in this case.)

Yeah, they might want a picture of your face, but if you prioritize NOT sending a picture of your face, due to privacy concerns, then why not send a picture of something else? If a person had been careful not to include personal (as in, of themself) pictures, what can Facebook compare it to?

The one fellow has a lego fig for a picture... submit another LEGO fig with the same face. The facial recognition software might just give you a pass.

Again, pragmatically speaking, there’s essentially a no-risk option to protect one’s privacy, if someone’s got the paranoids about it.

Pragmatic / paranoid / dishonest chain of events...

1: Submit whatever picture suits your fancy.
Pass? Carry on.
Fail? Submit stock photo of someone from the Internet.
Pass? Carry on.
Fail? Create new account. Previous account had no personally identifying info, new account won’t either.

Reconnect with previous friends. They probably accept your paranoids if they know you in real life, or just start over with acquaintances in old groups.

Little to no effort involved. Like I said, easy work-arounds.

If you're that paranoid about your privacy, it's a lot less effort to just not use Facebook, surely?

I dunno, I’m not personally bothered. My name’s Tom Parks, and if you search Facebook for me, my profile pic is a dude, at a cottage, on a deck, wearing a black vest over a black and white flannel shirt.

However, someone has expressed such concerns, and no, creating a “fake” account (which I don’t endorse, just sayin’) takes very little effort and allows the rewards of joining Facebook pages, connecting with like-minded persons very easily, setting up games at local shops / clubs. All you have to do is google *age-sex-race-face picture* and then save it somewhere, to supply should Facebook demand it. Or request it, as it sounds.

 greatbigtree wrote:


However, someone has expressed such concerns, and no, creating a “fake” account (which I don’t endorse, just sayin’)

Would you denounce the creation of fake FB accounts? Just curious. I wouldn't. Someone the other day tried to convince me that Reddit rules were a bit like real-life morality, and that I was a bad person for flouting some of them. I disagreed, obviously.

I fully endorse the creation of fake FB profiles

I don’t denounce it, provided the fake accounts aren’t being used to harm someone.

If someone just wants to feel like they have a greater degree of privacy, all the power to them.

To me, if you’re using a fake account, FB is still collecting data on you, it just doesn’t match your name. But it probably tracks your location, or at least your IP’s location. So things like local advertising will still show up to you, and the data still gets put in the pool.

I figure that I don’t have anything to hide, so I’m not really worried about it. I wouldn’t put something online I wouldn’t put on my front door.