Obama's stance on privacy was among the things that soured his presidency for me. Well, that and literal drone assassinations which are very much unconstitutional, not to say anything about using them for killing a bunch of brown people nobody cares about /s Oh, and the push for TTIP with its "IP protectionism." And a bunch of other things...

Still, I'd consider him easily the best president in the last two decades that I actually paid attention to politics.

Perhaps its is subjective bias speaking, but I see no way in which somebody truly knowledgeable would not oppose these practices. The temporary convenience of the "services" provided means little compared to the long-term price society will have to pay.

Unfortunately.

Mostly because people fail to appreciate the scope of interference in their life such systems can cause until they become target of exactly the wrong kind of attention. The fact that political leanings, or just attempts at serving general public rather than a particular lobby, can trigger such attention also being hardly considered.

By the way, London has nothing on New York City in that regard (and mind, the public information of the true scope of NYPD surveillance is highly limited): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Awareness_System

Also, want to drop this very telling hint of how people in power see us plebes. Good luck with the whole "by the people, for the people" part if your income is under seven figures or so:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2011/11/30/bloomberg-claims-nypd-7th-biggest-army-in-world-um-thats-totally-wrong/

Great post(s) here in this thread - this cries out for another feature request:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/remove_facebook_login_option

:-)...

I really don't understand the kneejerk reaction. Is anyone forcing you to use Facebook to log in GOG? I thought not...

It's there for people who want to use it and who already have a FB account, and who don't live in a world of paranoia.

We had 8 votes requesting this feature:

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/login_with_facebook
How about Facebook's ongoing agenda against breastfeeding?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4950648/Mother-banned-Facebook-photo-breastfeeding.html

Just a fyi, the article shows some skin.

I'm not entirely sure what Facebook's stance on breastfeeding has to do with people's convenience to log in their favorite game service using the FB API, but oh well...

I think it has more to do with people not wanting the surveillance machine to be so well fed. The more "convenient" it is, the more people will use it (or more likely, have difficulty getting out of it when they decide they're fed up with the whole thing) . The more users it has the more information it has, the more economical power it has. Economical power that grants them a lot of leeway on doing what they want regardless of what is moral or even legal. BTW, why do you think among Facebook and the US government who supposedly regulates them (ha! As if), that any of them is concerned on making sure that your bulgarian data isn't mishandled?

Look at the big picture. Facebook is pretty much a humongous beast of a machine tailored to take your data and sell it to everyone who might want it. Adverters sure like knowing what kind of ad is more successful to shove in your face, so they're obviously in. The NSA loves Zuckerberg for making their job of spying on everyone so easy. Your bulgarian government might want to know everything about you — why wouldn't they want to?. Political leanings, sexual preferences, who you talk to. Is that reason enough not to like it?

And then you have people who would love to influence people's opinions and votes. Theoretically of course. Oh wait, no; it really happened more than once. Someone hired Cambridge Analytica to make sure the Brexit would win, and a nigerian businessman did the same to fix the Nigeria 2015 election because he didn't want to risk the opposition winning. The american elections just shows that not even their own country is free from possible interference. I won't post links but all this info is just a google search away if you want to confirm it from reputable sources like the Guardian and the NYTimes.

Edit: Oh and what you thought about this only affecting people who use facebook? Yeah, doesn't really work like that. Every page you visit where there is a little facebook button it can be used to know you visited it. (And, you know, if someone can abuse their power with impunity you can be sure they will do it). Turns out, those buttons can also be used to gather data on people who aren't logged in or have never even joined FB — a practice I mentioned in my previous post is called shadow profiles.

Personally I enjoy being datamined :) I've such a web activity that they never get things right and I've gotten many a good laugh with all the suggestions internet has provided. Recently had good laughs youtube suggesting me a music video that was like the opposite of what I wanted on that day. AIs will have millions of billions of miles of work ahead still :)

But I do understand the need for privacy etc.

Johny. (Note the dot) posted a couple of times to the Galaxy sticky about data collected and whatnot:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_galaxy_official_discussion_thread/post1435

Yeah, just noticed it too. Last time I logged in was early to mid March and this wasn't there then.
Weird that they chose to add Facebook first though, especially in the wake of the new concerns raised by the Cambridge Analytica thing (which basically from my cursory glance seems to confirm the things privacy-conscious people already knew), and not also or instead Twitter and/or Google (these 3 being the Unholy Trifecta of logging into sites where one doesn't want to sign up - I personally login via Google to academia.edu because one can't download the scholarly publications posted there without being logged in). Otherwise, I guess we should have expected this "feature" to land sooner than it did, given the tendency of people (myself included) to not want to sign up to new services when they can just login with their credentials from elsewhere.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that GOG now wants to attract the "This site looks cool, but I don't want to create an account especially for it" crowd, and thus it's weird they didn't add Twitter and/or Google, as this would maximise their reach to people who might use more one of the two other services.

Timing is everything in comedy.

One of the issues I see with this option is, that it enables a person who hacked a facebook account to log into a person's GOG account as well. Spending wallet funds, pirating games, leaving hateful comments, and other colorful options of abuse would come to mind... Seeing how much energy GOG spends by randomly locking legitimate users out of their GOG account with reCAPTCHA in order to prevent abuse I'm not sure why they suddenly implemented this.
Seeing how only 8 users voted for an optional facebook login, fulfilling another wish would have seemed more appropriate. Like... Idunno... This one seems nice and has almost 2,500 votes. :)


And just because this bugs me: If we would live in a "world of paranoia", facebook would have like 10 registered users. If we're applying labels it would be more of a world that lacks paranoia - or rather in a world that lacks understanding why privacy has its worth.

the email login option also enables somebody who hacked (for example) Google account to log in to GOG account assuming the user has an account here... same goes with other providers - nothing special about facebook here.

voting on wishlist requires having a gog account already. why people who clearly are fine logging in with their emails would be requesting logging it with facebook there? assuming there is indeed is a group of people interested in logging in with fb above all else, these people most likely do not use GOG because it didn't offer their login option.

Perhaps because Facebook is hardly satisfied with just data-mining its produc- er, "users?"

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-ireland-accused-of-creating-shadow-profiles-on-users-nonusers

It's also hardly "paranoia." Google, Facebook, and associates made literal billions of dollars on data-mining. The evidence of this information being weaponized against Western democracies has long been out there (if you paid attention to the way the Occupy movement was dealt with you would already have recognized such use).

A functional democracy requires high degree of privacy. Otherwise any dissenting or disapproved of voices will be actively silenced. All the more easier in a population that unquestioningly accepts the rule of databases.

Another issue is the power this gives large corporations to shape the society for the sake of increased profit margin. I think it would be in consumers' interest to put some legal limitations on the practice before we get to enjoy "individualized pricing." Already happens in the US where credit score agencies (the people that ultimately decide whether or not you qualify for, say, a loan to purchase own place to live) and insurance companies are already relying on mined data-sets to "streamline" income.

“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Aaaaand there I was, comfortably giggling from afar at all the drama for, about, and by facebook users.

Hahahargl ?