6 Apps and Extensions for a bit more Transparency on Facebook

Over 1.8 billion people use the platform monthly. 1.15 billion daily on the smartphone. 23 percent more than a year ago. One billion people use the company's messenger at least once a month. 1.2 billion Whatsapp.

Five new profiles are created every second. The Like and Share buttons of Facebook are spread over over 10 million websites. All parts of the huge Facebook network. The company looks deep and knows almost everything about us. Recently, developers have been focusing on giving users privacy, or at least informing them of what data Facebook actually collects about us all. We have collected six exciting projects.

Data Selfie

Photo: flegido / Openverse/flickr (BY)

It's a creepy look behind the scenes of the Big Data octopus. After 24 hours, the browser extensions provide quite detailed information about their own activities. And a bit creepier: the look in the mirror. Data Selfie declares its own inclinations, consumer habits, political and religious views. Pretty apt and that with the data after just one tag Facebook usage. Data Selfie collects data through the click history and length of stay on individual postings. For example, the extension by the supercomputer IBM Watson and the machine-learning algorithm Apply Magic Sauce is the data self. Everything in the name of transparency and privacy protection . The developer, Hang Do Thi Duc and Regina Flores Mir, Do not use the data themselves. They just want to clarify the mechanisms behind Facebook. How the record looks after several years of active membership?

Godotify

Photo: avhell / Openverse/flickr (BY-SA)

In the Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas are the most wonderful things. Such as a Virtual Reality doorbell or the Beer Selfiestick . Developers Iain Nash and Anastasis Germanidis have developed an app that, when a message arrives in the Facebook Messenger, suggests an immediate response to the sender through the ominous luminous dots - without the recipient having started typing at all. Plus: The app also saves the time the sender sits in front of the glowing dots waiting for a response. The name of the breakthrough invention is not in vain for the world-famous play by Samuel Beckett.

Go Rando

Facebook's "Reactions" give users the opportunity to show how they feel about the content displayed. Helpful for the friends to evaluate the effect of their postings, even more helpful for even more detailed monitoring, even more accurate advertising, even better representation of the inner life of billions of users. "Haha". The extension Go Rando provides remedy. The extension veils your own feelings on Facebook. For each "like" click, the program randomly selects one of the six responses. In the course of time, the profile in Facebook's server center appears as just as right as a Zen monk. The emotional outbursts are perfectly balanced. The users can self-reacting even choose a reaction, if it is afterwards.

FBUnseen

Facebook can be exhausting. You get news and sometimes do not want to write back immediately. For Google Chrome, there is a handy extension that takes us a little from the everyday pressure to be reachable everywhere and especially through the Messenger. FB Unseen lets us mark the news we receive as "seen" when we want it.

What Facebook thinks you like

Facebook knows a lot about us. This is also due to the 1,200 categories in which the company assigns us according to our preferences, postings and pictures. She knows the smartphone brand and the exact model. White, in which countries we have logged in, our computer at home and in the office.

Photo: See-ming Lee (SML) / Openverse/flickr (BY)

What Facebook Thinks You Like , a project by ProPublica , helps to decode these enormous records. Users can see exactly what activities, brands, and products Facebook's records hold true for each user. In doing so, exciting details come to light. Especially the category "Lifestyle & culture" keeps some surprises hidden from the personal data set. Promised🙂

Stalkscan

Photo: avhell / Openverse/flickr (BY-SA)

With Stalkscan , all publicly accessible information from Facebook profiles can be filtered and searched. This does not violate privacy policy settings. Therefore, the app works only if the person is searched for in the own friend list. In addition to the publicly visible information on work, family and Likes, you can also use Stalkscan to display all posts or photos, where the user has clicked on "Like". This is not really wanted by Facebook - by Stalkscan but very simply possible. Stalkscan is based on the now limited graph search, which is really only with English terms correct. Through Stalkscan one comes however also problem-free in German.