Secret List On Facebook That's Tracking You Online

Facebook may be tracking every app that you visit.

If you do online banking, they’re probably tracking when you click on your banking online app through your phone.

To see your own Off-Facebook Activity you need to go to Settings on the Facebook app, find Your Facebook Information and then click on Off-Facebook Activity.

To delete the list just click Clear History. A message should pop up saying “Your activity has been cleared”. The apps that have previously been listed in the section should disappear.

You can also select the More Options button. Here, you can download the information collected about you or manage any future data collection.

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Facebook Problem

Tech News and Views

If you are a Facebook user, you should read the following item:

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What Facebook Isn’t Saying - It's The Only Part That Matters

Listen Carefully to What Facebook Isn’t Saying About Apple’s Upcoming Privacy Change.

Instead of creating a better product, it's trying to create a bad guy.

Facebook has said a lot about Apple's upcoming privacy changes, due to arrive with the next update of iOS 14. That change will require app developers to request permission before they track users. Facebook takes particular issue with this since its business is almost entirely based on tracking what users do online and then showing them what it calls "personalized ads."

Clearly, Facebook views those changes as an existential threat. To that end, Facebook has accused Apple of attacking small businesses, of having self-serving motivation for making the change, and even of favoring its own apps over third-parties. I think we could debate each of those things, but honestly, what's much more interesting, is what Facebook isn't saying.

Facebook is trying to create the narrative that Apple is doing something nefarious that is targeting Facebook's business and hurting small businesses. What Apple is really doing is simply giving users a choice over whether they want to be tracked.

Facebook knows that a lot of people don't want to be tracked at all. Everyone has had the experience of looking for something online, only to have an ad appear for the exact pair of shoes you were looking at. Even worse is that often people don't even remember looking something up, they just thought about it, or had a conversation with their partner - and now they're seeing ads on Facebook.

No, Facebook isn't listening to your conversations - it doesn't need to. It just knows that much about you because it tracks you across the internet and even the apps on your smartphone. If all of that seems a little creepy, you can understand why the company doesn't want you thinking about it. In fact, the only reason they get away with it at this point is that most people aren't.

And, that's the point: Facebook doesn't want people thinking about it at all.

But Facebook can't say that, because it would require admitting that it realizes people think all of that tracking is creepy. Facebook doesn't want to be the bad guy in this story, so it had to create one - Apple. You know, the company that wants to give you a choice over whether you'll be tracked.

By the way, Apple isn't saying that Facebook, or any other app for that matter, shouldn't track you. It's just saying they should have to ask permission. Even that goes too far for Facebook because it knows that - if given a choice - a non-zero number of its users will opt to not allow the social media app to track them.

Think about that for a minute - Facebook knows that some number of people that it is currently tracking, would rather the company didn't. The only reason it gets away with it is that they either don't know it's happening, or they don't know they have a choice.

When given the choice, they'll decide they no longer want Facebook to scoop up their browsing activity. Sure, there's probably a lot of people who very well may not care at all. They may be perfectly fine with being tracked. They may even value the personalized ads. They should still have a choice.

The thing is, Facebook isn't making a case for that either. Instead of trying to solve the problem by coming up with a better product that doesn't invade people's privacy or creep them out, Facebook is trying to figure out how to keep it all a secret. It doesn't want to talk about that part - at all.

Instead of acknowledging that some people might not be comfortable with that level of privacy, it's trying to distract its users by pointing at how terrible Apple's decision is for small businesses - many of whom, by the way, were around long before you could advertise on Facebook.

Maybe that's the part it really doesn't want to talk about.

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Facebook Is Dying Because It Seriously Sucks

What was once a truly dynamic platform that allowed people to build useful social networks and promote their companies has now turned into a saccharine community messaging board manipulated by algorithms designed to sell you things Facebook believes you are interested in. From a user's perspective, the social media outlet is getting worse and worse.

Ever wondered why you see an ad on Facebook that seems to be calling your name?

Perhaps you need a new pair of running shoes and have just been talking to a friend about it. Then an hour later you see an ad for a pair of running shoes on your Facebook feed. Yes, this could be a weird coincidence, but in the world of Facebook, there’s no such thing as coincidences - just deliberate and intentional actions, all in the name of profit.

Facebook used to be all about connecting with your nearest and dearest. These days, though, it’s more about Facebook wanting to connect with you as a commodity for data mining. The level of privacy that they violate in exchange for you to access the app is, in a word, disturbing.

The algorithm that they configure to target you as a consumer and the way these ads follow you no matter where you are on the internet is a serious cause for concern.

Every time you log onto Facebook now though, you're shown a conversation from a day or two ago by a friend you may have briefly interacted with over the past week that you have absolutely nothing to do with. You're shown random posts that are not in any sort of chronological order that you're not interested in whatsoever.

All the sites and pages you follow in no longer show up on your feed (unless you've interacted with it in the past week or so), and you're stuck scrolling through your feed to dig for something, anything, that you're vaguely interested in. This isn't a knock on any of your friends, but you rarely see anything they post because they are all experiencing the same thing you are and have left the social network in favor of, well, anything other than Facebook.

Facebook continues to condone paid ads with political leanings that will pop up in your feed, regardless of whether the information you read is true or not. Fake political news is nothing new, but the fact that Facebook now encourages it for profit is a sign of the times, and a disturbing premonition that democracy may be on its way out.

We now live in a world where money = power, but it’s nothing new. Based on history, it was only a matter of time before Facebook got too big for its own good and decided to exploit its powerful position as one of the biggest social media websites in the world.

Clearly, Facebook has put money over morals and decided to throw ethics out as a result. They care much more about making a profit than keeping your information private and only seem to be interested in spearheading the data revolution, where you’re much more of a commodity than a human being with a profile page and real connections with other people.

So, if you want to keep your personal information safe from being mined by greedy companies, and you want to stop supporting the dark side of the free market, maybe you should quit Facebook for good.

It may feel like you’re powerless to such a giant and that you don’t have a choice, but the reality is that you do. Facebook is only as good as its users, and the fewer users it has, the less power and control it has as well. The fact is, people are leaving facebook in droves already.

Boycotting Facebook is the only way to send a clear message that, as a society, we still value morals over money and expect companies, no matter how powerful, to conduct themselves accordingly.

Facebook may see you as a consumer commodity, but at the end of the day, you’re a human being that shouldn’t be forced into sacrificing privacy for someone else’s profit.

Credit: thedailybanter.com and quantummarketer.com