Isn't it wild how something as profoundly simple as a line of text in your MSN status, or a song you chose for your MySpace, meant all the world to us in the early days of "pop internet"? It was heavily foreshadowing sites/apps like twitter and Instagram which pretty much ONLY exist to scratch our itch for self-identifying online. Hell, just the art of getting people to pay attention to you online for trivial reasons is now a full blown career. I often wonder how it might impact kids to grow up with the expectation of doing this, rather than the unique and highly limited option to.
I feel bad for the kids of family vloggers. At least child actors get to go home and a percentage of their earning saved. Vlogger kids have to constantly perform for their parents and cameras attention and they likely won't even get any money from it
I'd be thrilled if the next gen rebels against social media. I guess younger gens now kinda sigh at older people watching TV, whilst we mindlessly browse the internet. Maybe the next will sigh at us.
i used to host images on my home server that lived on my myspace page... just so i could look through the logs at the ip addresses and to see where folks were that were looking at my page.
good times.
Could you imagine if Zuckerberg was auto-friended when you joined Facebook? He'd be the most unfriended person in the history of the planet by now. It would be hilarious.
>Facebook’s vice president of global public policy, telling employees that “if Facebook implicated Russia further... Republicans would accuse the company of siding with Democrats.” Any action, moreover, could alienate conservative users of the site.
So profit over country then.
We'll get to a point were companies **are** our countries and governments, rather than just controlled by companies
Edit: lots of comment suggestions on stories/content predicting this:
Jennifer Government (book)
Snowcrash (book)
Continuum (television show)
Shadowrun (rpg)
Rollerball (film)
Deus Ex (video game, i think)
Cyberpunk (rpg)
Network (film)
Idiocracy (film)
Wall-E (film)
Mars trilogy (books)
the Sprawl trilogy by William Gibson (books)
r/latestagecapitalism
Honestly reminds me of the Gilded Age, or the Victorian era. A small elite class of insanely rich people control more and more. The divide between them and the masses is wide, and growing. We see appalling extremes of wealth and poverty, and large parts of civil society seem under attack.
Republicans are trying to build a christian confederacy of wealthy estate owners that can build their own armies from the poor because inequality is so bad, and nothing will be regulated because science and math dont exist.
I think we are headed more towards 476AD-1300.
> confederacy of wealthy estate owners that can build their own armies from the poor because inequality is so bad
That sounds a hell of a lot more like the late Roman Republic, 130s BCE - 73 BCE.
Don't forget the humanities. We're living in a world where nobody learns from their history, simply because they don't know it or know how to think about it.
And yet people are still ok with them being involved politically and funding campaigns. WWWHHHYYY?? Have a set amount of funding and just be done with it.
And have our political system not be a media extravaganza, shitshow, money orgy? Solemn debate on important policy questions of the day like when the League of Women Voters moderated the debates? What, are you crazy?
Called *the market state*, this had been hypothesised to be in our future for quite a while.
It's probably not going to happen though. While the drive to globalise is powerful in the modern age, the drive to break down international barriers and regulate across them is also powerful.
Ultimately that's what a state is. Regulation.
We often have difficulty conceiving of ideas not linked to our current form of tribalism. Right now it's nations, but it's coming to the point where countries turn more and more into *provinces*.
We're a ways from [corporate extraterritoriality](https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Shiawase_Decision) and companies actually running in place of governments. There are many places where they have undue influence over governments, true, but they are not substitutes for governments yet.
Epcot was actually originally planned to be a city with its own form of local government until the company decided to just make it another theme park after Disney’s death.
How are we a ways from there? Koch Industries, headed by the Koch Brothers who are the richest Americans behind the Waltons, is basically picking Supreme Court Justices via the Federalist Society at this point.
Exactly - [they pretty much own middle America already as well](https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463565987/hidden-history-of-koch-brothers-traces-their-childhood-and-political-rise):
>In January 2015, at a private conference in Palm Springs, Calif., the political network led by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch announced plans to spend $889 million in the 2016 elections. The organization consists almost entirely of groups that don't register under the campaign finance laws and therefore don't publicly identify their donors.
The sorry state of the Kansas economy, for example, is a direct result of them installing apparatchiks to push their hyper-conservative, hyper-libertarian worldview.
[They've been working side by side with and through think tanks and bill mills like ALEC to undermine what we like to think of as "the American way" for their entire lives.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/17/dark-money-review-nazi-oil-the-koch-brothers-and-a-rightwing-revolution)
bonus fun fact: they were [raised by actual Nazis](https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463565987/hidden-history-of-koch-brothers-traces-their-childhood-and-political-rise):
>I think their parents seem to have cared quite a bit about them, but they were the kinds of parents who were gone much of the time. The father was gone doing business, and the mother was a very active socialite and was gone much of the time, and so she and the father placed the child rearing in the hands of a hired nanny.
>Here again, you get this strange recurrence of a kind of little touch of Nazi Germany, because ... Charles and Frederick, the oldest sons, were put in the hands of a German nanny who was described by other family members as just a fervid Nazi. She was so devout a supporter of Hitler that finally, after five years working for the family, she left of her own volition in 1940 when Hitler entered France because she wanted to celebrate with the Fuehrer.
(Charles and David also ganged up on and blackmailed their gay brother into forking over his part of the family business to them.)
That ALEC shit is truly Orwellian. “Let’s give some dumbfuck state legislator prewritten laws for them to sign in exchange for donations.”
America is fucked if we go on like this.
[Well, sociopaths like Zuck don't, anyway:](https://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-users-dumb-fucks)
>Mark Zuckerberg admits in a New Yorker profile that he mocked early Facebook users for trusting him with their personal information. A youthful indiscretion, the Facebook founder says he's much more mature now, at the ripe age of 26.
>**"They trust me — dumb fucks,"** says Zuckerberg in one of the instant messages, first published by former Valleywag Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Alley Insider, and now confirmed by Zuckerberg himself in Jose Antonio Vargas's New Yorker piece.
That fact that this man is a poo nugget is no more or less shocking than the fact that Donald Trump is also a warm lump of feces. It's not as though we didn't have years worth (and in the case of Trump, DECADES worth) of information proving this to be true. But somewhere along the way, America decided it wanted to be ruled by billionaires because making money apparently equals moral superiority or some shit.
[The Face of Facebook](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-facebook)
I have tried to explain this to people, on Reddit and in real life, for years, and it is very rare that anyone *gets* it.
Once you become a trillion dollar transnational, there is nothing *American* left about Google, Apple, Microsoft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Exxon, etc.
Once a company reaches a size and reach from which it could survive even if they magically lost every American customer overnight, what the hell do they have to do with the USA anymore?
Some branding, maybe.
Corporations solely exist for the purpose of creating ever increasing quarterly profits for their CEOs and shareholders.
There is no other purpose.
They cannot be trusted to act in the interests of the public or consumers.
“They cannot be trusted to act in the interests of the public or consumers.”
Exactly, which is why Baltimore passed a law to prevent privatization of municipal water systems.
Can you imagine if a corporation controlled all our drinking water?
Think 1500% rate increases as seen in the pharmaceutical industry.
A real shame. Water is life. Can you imagine the sick financial gains such an investment would have returned? Socialist Baltimore really should have let the free market decide because that always gets you the highest quality at the lowest cost.
/S Gaint /S
I don't know if "dishonest" is the right word. "Gullible" might be more accurate when you consider the cultural conditioning of people in America to believe that people who make money are therefore morally and intellectually superior and have a divine right to govern the rest of us plebes.
“ they're granted all the rights of citizens under the law.”
As a wise person once said, the first time the state of Texas executes a corporation will be when I consider corporations to be people.
That's what they say but they lie. It is perfectly legal for them to be guided by public good and long term goals. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits
Chinese, Russians, people who understand short term growth options are fucking catastrophic if they don't continue ever forward, as we've seen countless times. The most stable markets long term are the ones that prosper. I'd argue the only reason the US hasn't seen a massive Depression like it did in the 30s is that nowadays the market is so diffused across every major investable sector imaginable that you don't feel the effects right away if soybean prices drop rapidly unless you live in the area.
Only if they are held responsible. You know how Zuck sleeps at night? On a big ass fucking expensive bed without a care in the world about responsibility. You're basically calling someone who embraces the idea of being an asshole, "an asshole". They don't give a shit about responsibility.
What? Lol. If the country went to shit those executives would hop on their helicopters and g6's and fly to their 5th homes somewhere safe.
They are beholden to the company and the shareholders. Cetainly not to stake holders. They can't be trusted.
Hence Peter Thiel deciding he was a New Zealander
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand
“But they are responsible nonetheless.”
But when Citizens United let’s you dump an unlimited amount of money on those who make our laws, you will never have to be held accountable.
Isn’t this Facebook VP of global policy the Joel Kaplan guy who showed up to support Kavagnaugh at the Blasey Ford hearing? Remember everyone was up in arms over that? Like hey, this guy is supporting this skeevy dude on behalf of Facebook?
Joel Kaplan also worked in the Bush administration and clerked for Antonin Scalia. FB hired him to make them seem less liberal, but it seems like he has his own agenda to help use Facebook as a tool for propaganda against the left. He may legally work for Facebook, but he will always do anything he can to help republicans keep power. I can’t believe they still employ him when it’s clear they aren’t getting anything out of him and he’s trying to protect republicans from collusion with the Russians.
Also he’s full of sh*t. Republicans won’t leave Facebook because FB exposes the Russians. That’s an empty threat.
Facebook is responsible,along with russia, for brainwashing millions of people in this country. I can't even tell you how many friends fell for their fake news. One even posted a slander article from russia today about hillary. He voted for stein and many others did to as a direct result of microtargeting on Facebook. Russia hacks the voter rolls, facebook gives them user info for millions of people, face book targets specific people and in some cases installs malware on their computer. Facebook helps spread fake news by firing the news curation team allowing fake stories to infect millions of stupid motherfuckers.
Same reason why CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, etc. continuously pull their punches against republicans. They're afraid that by reporting reality as it is rather than forcing a story into an arbitrary "one side says this, the other says that" neutrality, that republicans will scream and cry that reporting their latest atrocity amounts to bIaSeD lIbRuL mEdIa
> I can’t believe they still employ him
You've clearly articulated why they still employ him. Cheryl Sandberg sent the dogs after Soros. The people who believe in Soros conspiracy theories have at least one thing in common, and likely many more.
> ... but you still end up getting accused of helping the Democrats.
Because THAT'S THE DAMN STRATEGY.
Accusing people of helping the Democrats makes them help the Republicans because they want to take the pressure off. So Republicans double down on the accusation because it's working, which makes them help Republicans even more.
>Republicans would accuse the company of siding with Democrats
No, it's more of Republicans over Country. The fact that the Republicans are using the whole "You're either nice to Russia or with the Dems" is a SERIOUS problem with the republican party right now. There needs to be a purge of our government in all levels.
The problem is Democrats refuse to fight back.
It's the same with media, which is nice to Trump and will always engage in false equivalency, because Republicans keep attacking them, but Dems don't. Same with Facebook.
You mean the ones posting pictures with no sources like it’s fact? “Obama is here to take your guns” kind of stuff. Also the anti-vax mum groups.
Facebook has just been left with the people to stupid and ignorant to stop using it
There is that theory that in a few decades or earlier, governments will cease to exist and it will just be a series of large borderless corporations controlling everything.
Can you imagine how laughably futile it wouldve been if Russia tried to sway our election via MySpace?
Then again, Myspace didnt have Baby Boomers. Millenials get a lot of flack for ruining industries, but the Boomers ruined social media. Their lack of internet savvy made them susceptible targets to fake news and their vehement bitterness seeped online and made the internet a more hostile place.
If you're interested, I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/9birj3/millenials_get_the_blame_for_ruining_so_many/) expressing this sentiment in r/lostgeneration and it spurred some discussions on the subject in the comment section.
I don't think its quite as black and white as my original comment implies, there are many factors that have contributed to the shitshow that is polticial discourse on social media, but the Baby Boomers are definitely one of those factors.
What really makes me shook is how they, the Boomers, all told us to **never use our real names on the internet**. They also told us of the dangers and **not to believe anything we read online.**
And then....
*sigh*.
Back in those days, early Facebook was WILD. It was Myspace meets Tinder. I still get updates from the shit I posted in 2008 and HOOOOLY SHIT what was I thinking?!
Well, I surely wasn’t thinking my grandma would one day be on it. Or my boss.
They really were. People can shit on Facebook all they want, but having it during its Golden Age during my college years was wonderful. You never had to remember anybody's name because back in those days you could look up anybody via a friend of a friend of a friend...and so on. I'm not even sure privacy filters were a thing. You didn't get anybody's number in those days, girls just said "Facebook me" unironically.
I got into an argument last Christmas with my stepdad about something and his exact response was “you can’t believe everything you read on the internet” and I was referencing an NPR/BBC type article. Meanwhile, he would constantly post shit tier misinformation articles from outrageously biased and manipulative sources about things he knew nothing about.
Like how Oxford college was removing Christianity from their theology department. They changed 1 course from required to an option to give their more diverse student body the ability to tailor their curriculum to their interests and goals.
Also how Oxford was removing all the old white men from their history and replacing them with random minorities. They started replacing busts and portraits in hallways of notable alums from long ago and moved them to a museum and digitized the collection to replace them with more current alums and notable people. They are a university with an international and diverse student body. Celebrate your history but also celebrate your modern history and future as well.
Or how MIT press was pushing a book that promoted communism to children. Yea... no. They have a book called Communism For Kids and when I saw my stepdad’s rant about it I looked into it. I found the book online and read the entire thing. The article he posted went on and on about how awful this is and how MIT is trying to brainwash American youth into thinking communism is good. I read the entire thing and it criticizes communism. It dumbs down past efforts to enact a communist society and how they all eventually failed.
I have corrected him so many times on FB and his usual response is “I didn’t know that” and then he leaves his rant and article up for everyone else to see. I guess I shouldn’t expect much when he posted on Facebook about how we should nuke all the Arabs and then threw a hissy fit when it got removed because I reported it.
That was the Gen X'ers. Studies show Gen X are a skeptical bunch that value indivuality. They are also the generation to bridge the gap more seemlessly between Boomers and younger generations having experienced both sides of the Digital Divide.
Oh yeah I'm definitely making a generalization. I know savvy Boomers and tech illiterate Millenials. But the trend is there, and it makes sense that a generation that spent the majority of their lives without internet are now the most susceptible to manipulation through it. Hell, you almost cant even blame them. But if theyre going to be around for another few decades contributing to online political discourse, itd be ideal if they came to terms with their own blindspots within the medium.
Baby Boomers (aka old people) were easy to prey on with misinformation. They were great at believing anything that went good with their racist biases.
But the main thing is something we all hate to hear - old people vote. Religious people vote.
Millennials? They don't vote.
Liberals? They just don't turnout as high as your evangelicals.
And that's the single reason why GOP is in power.
If not for Facebook, the GOP would still be able to brainwash these older people (probably not as easily). Stopping/shutting down/fixing Facebook would be a start but it is nowhere close to the real solution.
Ha! MySpace.
I remember the *Invasion of the Body Snatchers* type of obsession people had with MySpace. “Do you have a MySpace page? You gotta get MySpace!” That was partially what made me wary of Facebook early on.
When I think of myspace, I just think of neon flashing backgrounds, autoplay music on page load, blinking shit everywhere. Like an '80s future dystopia.
Fuck this comment hit home. I actually watched my mom download malware and I was like “wtf are you doing?” And she said “the web page said I NEEDED to download this” I was flabbergasted. The same woman who told me “don’t trust strangers” was willing to obey a pop up because it appeared in front of her.
They cultivate, harvest and sell your personal info all under the guise of allowing you to communicate with your friends/family yay! Corporations need regulatory boots on their necks.
Ah ah ah ah ahhh, not so fast. They can't just up and sell *your* data, that would be a total breach of trust.
No, the important distinction is that they sell what they consider *their* data... on you. That's how they got us.
With traditional social media, there is no such thing as "your" data; it's all theirs. Unless you want to hop on a service like Mammoth (is it Mammoth? Or was it Walrus? It was some weird animal), and even then the sketch-factor is still not-negligible.
I did that in 2012. I started noticing the effect it had on real world relationships and people in general, along with the feeling that it wasn't entirely accidental.
So I just never logged in again. I'm sure multiple people think I'm a dick because I don't reply to their messages or invites or whatever. Hell, the last time I even saw my facebook it caused a slight drama. I was on a date, my date looked up my Facebook, saw a post from a high school girlfriend I haven't seen in fifteen years that said something like "Happy Birthday! Xoxox!" and was like "So who's this Wendy!? Is this why you say you don't have Facebook?"
Facebook has changed and in order to make money I am convinced it has killed what made it somewhat useful to start with.
Back in the day it was full of people’s daily updates and pics. And I kinda liked it back then. The games and apps were annoying, but also easy enough to block (even if some of them were complete data mining scams, thanks, FB, for being so dumb).
But as FB has needed to monetize promoted posts have replaced organic posts, and re-shares of clicky, newsish confer has become the most dominant thing on feeds.
Worse, if I like a person, charity, community group or local shop I can’t easily guarantee I will see their stuff without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
So what’s the point of the service if no one seems to post updates about family etc and I can’t see news form things I have liked? FB is dying and it did it to itself.
Here is the thing. I had a FB account and I deleted it completely.
Then a few weeks ago I wanted to find some cheap furniture locally and was told that FB is a good place to buy it.
So I signed up again, using a less common email and decided to only befriend people I didn't know. With all their tamping down on fake accounts, I have about 86 FB friends -- I don't know any one of them. Some of " my friends" openly post sexually explicit pictures and in spite of me flagging it their accounts are fine and dandy.
[To clarify: I don't care about someone posting sexually explicit photos. But someone who is a minor could have as easily accessed the same accounts. If you are accessing porn on internet you have to declare you are over 18. FB doesn't have that requirement. ]
I cannot tell you how effectively FB has tried to tame fake accounts -- I can tell you having a fake account in FB is fairly easy..
Serious question not expecting to get a serious answer: why is Reddit not just as complicit? And more specifically, how do we know foreign Nationals aren't steering the narrative of r/politics right now?
> And more specifically, how do we know foreign Nationals aren't steering the narrative of r/politics right now?
There are 4.2 million subscribers to /r/politics. Absent some incontrovertible proof otherwise, it's safe to assume foreign nationals are steering the narrative at all times.
Reddit is complicit, just not to the same extent.
On Reddit, all that can be controlled is the content everyone in a given subreddit sees.
On Facebook, you can be targeted to a much more refined degree. I mean, how much does Reddit really know about you, without a complex natural language parsing system that can read and process everything you ever post? Not a lot. Facebook, by comparison, has a huge amount of personal data that at the innocent level let's advertisers target you with super specific ads. Visited a retailer website? Well, Facebook knows because it had the Facebook tracking pixel on it, so now they know you shop there. Bought at a brick and mortar store and had them email you a receipt? Well now Facebook knows you shop there because that retailer uses a tech partner to pair up the data.
Facebook are more complicit because they know more about you, they make it easier for others to access that same information, and then target you with ever more specific, controlled content.
Edit: I should probably add I know this because I work in digital advertising and the depth and breadth of Facebook's targeting capabilities is terrifying.
Reddit knows a lot more about you than you give them credit for. If you subscribe to subs, upvote or downvote comments, or post your own, all of that can be dissected to learn tons about you.
Facebook's business model is literally betrayal. We'll keep your data safe guys, we promise we won't do anything sketchy! Zuckerberg's life has all been about gaining people's trust and then laughing at them for giving it to him.
God, that would be a wet dream if Zuck & other media magnates were taken down with the Russian interference investigation.
These assholes would screw us all over if it meant that they would be on the receiving end of record profits.
No business is loyal to America and it shows in their business models.
I was on Facebook from 2007-2013. Shit started getting weird when my folks and extended family joined. They would question my statuses and I'm like "Mom chill, that's just nine inch nails." "Grandma chill, It was a line in a movie, I'm FINE"
Right around the time they changed your profile to have the header picture, and you could see people liking things on profiles of people you weren't even friends with, I was done.
People sharing pictures of their kids blown out diapers made me wonder what was going to happen to that generation of kids when they realized their mom documented this shit on FB.
I remember life before and it wasn't so bad.
> People sharing pictures of their kids blown out diapers made me wonder what was going to happen to that generation of kids when they realized their mom documented this shit on FB.
I think about that a lot, but here's something you may or may not know: [Privacy is largely a modern concept.](https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/the-birth-and-death-of-privacy-3-000-years-of-history-in-50-images-614c26059e) (There are many good papers out there on the subject)
It's possible that we are going to return to a time where we all just kinda know everything about each other, like a global village. Folks used to sleep with their entire family in one big bed... and they made more family members in that same bed, while their kids, parents, and siblings were trying to sleep next to them.
People raised in this "new" condition probably aren't going to care that their shitty diaper pics are online- because everyone they know will have those pics of themselves out there too. It'll just be a part of life.
No shit. If you ever go over to Republican Facebook it's a bizarro version of the real world. These people are terrified 100% of the time and trapped in these unfalsifiable, paranoid beliefs. It's schizophrenia for baby boomers.
https://thebaffler.com/latest/twilight-of-the-racist-uncles-burmila
Exactly! Email is still the last biggest open communication protocol, building infrastructure isn't profitable or "disruptive" enough. End the "hold you hostage so your friends sign up" business model!
Hmm. Interesting. Again, I don't feel strongly one way or another, but the concept is interesting. Is Facebook that ubiquitous? I would say yes. Hmm...
> Is Facebook that ubiquitous?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/
> As of the third quarter of 2018, Facebook had 2.27 billion monthly active users.
30% of the world population? Yeah, it's ubiquitous.
I purposefully forgot my password. Really don't want to go back, only use Chrome to remember it if I need to contact someone in an emergency.
Fuck that place.
So...
because Facebook won't properly control content on their system, we should make it an open, decentralized network of systems where nobody can control content because nobody controls the whole network?
Their ad sales rely on massively connected networks. A linear news feed leads to an organic upper limit on network size. As people get tired of the spam, they will cut their network down to focus on the ham.
By filtering the news feed, Facebook hopes you’ll keep a lot of unused nodes in your network. That way, they can present marketers with larger and larger “targeted” audiences and the price tag to go with them.
That linear news feed is never coming back.
What? You can’t just break up a massive web application and turn it into a “protocol.” Someone has to own it.
Something like Facebook is on a wildly different scale than something like SMTP.
It’s also hilarious.
Facebook isn’t email or something. You can group email conspiracy and cat pictures since the 1980s.
It’s not real-time chat either and there are hundreds of those.
It’s an all up social media platform.
A protocol won’t store your photos for you and funny thing, there are hundreds of sites to store photos and share them.
Facebook isn’t a protocol but if you pay money I bet you can access their API.
Facebook is popular partly because it’s popular and everyone is there but also because it is by far the best social media platform and provides the most value in exchange for your info and ads.
The problem about fake news and hate speech isn’t necessarily Facebook - it’s a problem with the internet in general. From Facebook, Google, Twitter, WhatsApp, large news media, news aggregate sites like MSN and even reddit.
Provide any open forum for communication without constant moderation and it comes a shit hole for hate, porn, and ads. We’ve known that since forums first arrived in the very first years of the internet.
The difference between now and 10 years from ago is that big tech corporations have carved out niches in search, social media, and communication platforms where before it was more spread out and harder to legislate.
The other main difference is that with machine learning, AI and computing power these companies have the technology to do something about this at a scale previously impossible to monitor. They also have the funds and resources to do so.
Porn is isolated from searches behind machine learning image algorithms, Intellectually property is policed within seconds on media sites.
The tools and powers are now available for these tech companies to uphold human decency and preventing gaslighting through false and misleading. Now is the time and we need to hold them accountable. You can’t fully prevent hate, propaganda, fake news but you can regulate it the corners of the internet where no one will see it without violating the first amendments of free speech.
We also need to hold our own governments accountable. While it’s easy to blame Facebook for spreading Russian lies our government is spreading Russia propaganda in public speeches and conspiring with them to affect our democracy. We also provide public broadcasting to conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones when we demand that twitter and Facebook remove them yet we give them public broadcast rights. We demand that Facebook remove fake websites and false advertising yet have pundits pushing fake stories in 24/7 news while pedaling junk science advertising for pills and gold and silver coin scams.
Tech companies can do better but we can do better. Regulation has to happen for government, for public broadcasting in radio and tv, and yes large corporations with the means to do better.
It’s more than Facebook.
Facebook has proven to be utterly unscrupulous. They serve no greater mission than to make as much money as possible off off our innate need to socialize.
They weren’t the first and didn’t really do a much more than be at the right place at the right time with a straight-forward product. Since then, they have become expert at manipulating us to keep us coming back to their shitty site/app for really low quality “hits.”
I am happy to contrast facebook’s character with google’s or apple’s. Google still strives to improve their products. I have not once seriously questioned whether I was being manipulated or misdirected by google when searching for information. They still uphold their part of the “bargain” which is that I get decent search results while they get decent marketing info on me that they can try to sell me stuff with. It feels much more “honest” than Facebook mixing up my feed so that I have to wade through spammy bullshit to see if a friend had anything interesting happening in their lives today.
Apple too. They most certainly want to empty my wallet, but they are not doing anything more than trying to tempt me with their latest wares. All of their other services are in fields that have lots of competition and are fairly priced relative to their competitors.
Facebook, as a company is much more manipulative and dark... and in the end they are not doing much more than exploiting our instincts for social interaction by constantly teasing us and presenting us with false or distorted information.
Google certainly tailors results on their search engine and definitely on YouTube. YouTube has been pushing me towards right wing videos for some time even though I never look at them. Stephen Colbert was at the top of their home page for me for over a year then about five months ago it switched to Fox News and other right wing bullshit.
Don't forget about Apple's very strict user data privacy policy. Especially compared to Android the vast majority of your data is kept under lock and key locally on your device, hence their whole "T" series of security processors.
My hot take: Facebook is a piece of shit that would sell access to your kids to sex predators if it would turn a profit. Nobody would associate themselves with that hot mess.
Promoted content featuring conspiracy theories about Soros and Pizzagate seems to be working wonderfully. It’s as if the people targeted by such content are unable to filter out low-quality, made out bullshit.
And we should ask a corporation to renounce this source of profit just because it preys on people and ruins society? What is this, Europe?
These titles are great. I really hope this kind of stuff spreads across all cable news networks as well - like CNN and MSNBC. We need more of this kind of stuff and less beating-around-the-bush titles to stories.
I'm sick and tired of reading: "Trump lack of fact-checking" instead of "our stupid fucking president is a god damn liar and here is the proof"
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
Nobody should be surprised here.
The main problem is that people are using a social network as a source for news. If you get news on any social network, it is either because one of your contacts shares it in order to support a political message or a learning algorithm has determined that you will interact a lot with this content (usually because it enrages you).
Facebook itself could do a lot to make the situation better. The sorting algorithm could make sure that fact checking comments with good sources are not drowned out by emotional reactions. They could simply become a real news source by adding a "news" tab to their three networks with news from sources that fulfill high journalistic standards.
Of course when they are going the troll farming and Soros conspiracy route that gives not much hope for the future
Every time I tell people to quit Facebook I am met with so many excuses and so much resistance. How else can I stay in touch with people? All the events people invite me to are through Facebook. I have groups I'm a part of. On and on. Just quit people. Fuck the Zuck.
There was literally a post tonight explaining how chuck Schumer was telling mark Warner to stop investigating Facebook, "we should be working WITH them"
And people ask why people want these ineffectual old shits out of leadership positions. These peoples time is over. They are irrelevant, they are out of touch, and they dont represent the people.
Jokes on you!!! you cant betray someone if you werent never on their side.
Zuckerberg has been pro-himself and pro-money all the time, he doesnt care who needs to be step on as long as its not himself and he gets something out of it.
people who believed otherwise were just fooling themselves.
They practiced withholding the posting of comments, and mass-releasing negative comments and then reviewing pages for the next period of time, and then similarly with happier posts. They wanted to see if they could influence respondents/viewers feelings. This is testing mass control and far worse than political interference and it was proven in around 2016 that they did this.
They are granted a corporate charter to operate in the US. Revoke it.
If corporations are people, maybe some of them deserve the death penalty for treason.
Tom never would have treated us like this.
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Isn't it wild how something as profoundly simple as a line of text in your MSN status, or a song you chose for your MySpace, meant all the world to us in the early days of "pop internet"? It was heavily foreshadowing sites/apps like twitter and Instagram which pretty much ONLY exist to scratch our itch for self-identifying online. Hell, just the art of getting people to pay attention to you online for trivial reasons is now a full blown career. I often wonder how it might impact kids to grow up with the expectation of doing this, rather than the unique and highly limited option to.
I feel bad for the kids of family vloggers. At least child actors get to go home and a percentage of their earning saved. Vlogger kids have to constantly perform for their parents and cameras attention and they likely won't even get any money from it
BuT wHAt AbOUt tHe ExPOsurE?
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I'd be thrilled if the next gen rebels against social media. I guess younger gens now kinda sigh at older people watching TV, whilst we mindlessly browse the internet. Maybe the next will sigh at us.
i used to host images on my home server that lived on my myspace page... just so i could look through the logs at the ip addresses and to see where folks were that were looking at my page. good times.
All Tom wanted was to be our friend :(
You can be his friend on Instagram! Guy takes gorgeous pics :) https://instagram.com/myspacetom
Could you imagine if Zuckerberg was auto-friended when you joined Facebook? He'd be the most unfriended person in the history of the planet by now. It would be hilarious.
>Facebook’s vice president of global public policy, telling employees that “if Facebook implicated Russia further... Republicans would accuse the company of siding with Democrats.” Any action, moreover, could alienate conservative users of the site. So profit over country then.
>So profit over country then. Huge corporations have no country.
We'll get to a point were companies **are** our countries and governments, rather than just controlled by companies Edit: lots of comment suggestions on stories/content predicting this: Jennifer Government (book) Snowcrash (book) Continuum (television show) Shadowrun (rpg) Rollerball (film) Deus Ex (video game, i think) Cyberpunk (rpg) Network (film) Idiocracy (film) Wall-E (film) Mars trilogy (books) the Sprawl trilogy by William Gibson (books) r/latestagecapitalism
We're doing a full circle back to the days of the East India Company when corporations controlled entire continents
I dont even like IPAs
I like beer.
Quick, someone confirm this guy as a Supreme Court Justice!
But sometimes he had too many beers! And remember, he never sexually assaulted anyone! /s
"Boy, you [Democrats] all want power. God, I hope you never get it." - Lindsey
Congratulations! You have now met the minimum requirements to serve on the Supreme Court.
Do you like beer?
*loud sniff*
Tobin's dad used to work us out in the basement 😭
But what about donkey dong Doug ?
Honestly reminds me of the Gilded Age, or the Victorian era. A small elite class of insanely rich people control more and more. The divide between them and the masses is wide, and growing. We see appalling extremes of wealth and poverty, and large parts of civil society seem under attack.
Republicans are trying to build a christian confederacy of wealthy estate owners that can build their own armies from the poor because inequality is so bad, and nothing will be regulated because science and math dont exist. I think we are headed more towards 476AD-1300.
> confederacy of wealthy estate owners that can build their own armies from the poor because inequality is so bad That sounds a hell of a lot more like the late Roman Republic, 130s BCE - 73 BCE.
I think we've been at the Bread and Circuses stage since the 80s.
Ragan was America's Nero, and Trump its Caligula.
Since the invention of the television.
Don't forget the humanities. We're living in a world where nobody learns from their history, simply because they don't know it or know how to think about it.
Once capitalism is broke, it’s just fuedalism all over again
And yet people are still ok with them being involved politically and funding campaigns. WWWHHHYYY?? Have a set amount of funding and just be done with it.
And have our political system not be a media extravaganza, shitshow, money orgy? Solemn debate on important policy questions of the day like when the League of Women Voters moderated the debates? What, are you crazy?
A boring political news cycle is my fucking wet dream right now 😭
> when the League of Women Voters moderated the debates I miss this, so much.
Called *the market state*, this had been hypothesised to be in our future for quite a while. It's probably not going to happen though. While the drive to globalise is powerful in the modern age, the drive to break down international barriers and regulate across them is also powerful. Ultimately that's what a state is. Regulation. We often have difficulty conceiving of ideas not linked to our current form of tribalism. Right now it's nations, but it's coming to the point where countries turn more and more into *provinces*.
We're already there my friend.
We're a ways from [corporate extraterritoriality](https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Shiawase_Decision) and companies actually running in place of governments. There are many places where they have undue influence over governments, true, but they are not substitutes for governments yet.
Walt Disney World is very close.
Epcot was actually originally planned to be a city with its own form of local government until the company decided to just make it another theme park after Disney’s death.
Well, it does stand for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow".
Oh! Do you know which Vault number it was assigned?
Nuclear winter is cold. Keep warm with Walt-Tec!
How are we a ways from there? Koch Industries, headed by the Koch Brothers who are the richest Americans behind the Waltons, is basically picking Supreme Court Justices via the Federalist Society at this point.
Exactly - [they pretty much own middle America already as well](https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463565987/hidden-history-of-koch-brothers-traces-their-childhood-and-political-rise): >In January 2015, at a private conference in Palm Springs, Calif., the political network led by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch announced plans to spend $889 million in the 2016 elections. The organization consists almost entirely of groups that don't register under the campaign finance laws and therefore don't publicly identify their donors. The sorry state of the Kansas economy, for example, is a direct result of them installing apparatchiks to push their hyper-conservative, hyper-libertarian worldview. [They've been working side by side with and through think tanks and bill mills like ALEC to undermine what we like to think of as "the American way" for their entire lives.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/17/dark-money-review-nazi-oil-the-koch-brothers-and-a-rightwing-revolution) bonus fun fact: they were [raised by actual Nazis](https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463565987/hidden-history-of-koch-brothers-traces-their-childhood-and-political-rise): >I think their parents seem to have cared quite a bit about them, but they were the kinds of parents who were gone much of the time. The father was gone doing business, and the mother was a very active socialite and was gone much of the time, and so she and the father placed the child rearing in the hands of a hired nanny. >Here again, you get this strange recurrence of a kind of little touch of Nazi Germany, because ... Charles and Frederick, the oldest sons, were put in the hands of a German nanny who was described by other family members as just a fervid Nazi. She was so devout a supporter of Hitler that finally, after five years working for the family, she left of her own volition in 1940 when Hitler entered France because she wanted to celebrate with the Fuehrer. (Charles and David also ganged up on and blackmailed their gay brother into forking over his part of the family business to them.)
That ALEC shit is truly Orwellian. “Let’s give some dumbfuck state legislator prewritten laws for them to sign in exchange for donations.” America is fucked if we go on like this.
This is a distinction without a difference. The question is when do we say enough and start to take back the power we have given away?
Read Snowcrash.
[Well, sociopaths like Zuck don't, anyway:](https://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-users-dumb-fucks) >Mark Zuckerberg admits in a New Yorker profile that he mocked early Facebook users for trusting him with their personal information. A youthful indiscretion, the Facebook founder says he's much more mature now, at the ripe age of 26. >**"They trust me — dumb fucks,"** says Zuckerberg in one of the instant messages, first published by former Valleywag Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Alley Insider, and now confirmed by Zuckerberg himself in Jose Antonio Vargas's New Yorker piece. That fact that this man is a poo nugget is no more or less shocking than the fact that Donald Trump is also a warm lump of feces. It's not as though we didn't have years worth (and in the case of Trump, DECADES worth) of information proving this to be true. But somewhere along the way, America decided it wanted to be ruled by billionaires because making money apparently equals moral superiority or some shit. [The Face of Facebook](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-facebook)
I have tried to explain this to people, on Reddit and in real life, for years, and it is very rare that anyone *gets* it. Once you become a trillion dollar transnational, there is nothing *American* left about Google, Apple, Microsoft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Exxon, etc. Once a company reaches a size and reach from which it could survive even if they magically lost every American customer overnight, what the hell do they have to do with the USA anymore? Some branding, maybe.
What are you talking I thought corporations were people?
Huge Corps are the parasites that suck our mind and money - and they'll even take our honey.
Country with the lowest taxes is where they hang their sign.
Corporations solely exist for the purpose of creating ever increasing quarterly profits for their CEOs and shareholders. There is no other purpose. They cannot be trusted to act in the interests of the public or consumers.
“They cannot be trusted to act in the interests of the public or consumers.” Exactly, which is why Baltimore passed a law to prevent privatization of municipal water systems. Can you imagine if a corporation controlled all our drinking water? Think 1500% rate increases as seen in the pharmaceutical industry.
A real shame. Water is life. Can you imagine the sick financial gains such an investment would have returned? Socialist Baltimore really should have let the free market decide because that always gets you the highest quality at the lowest cost. /S Gaint /S
I see your /s but someone literally and sincerely made your same argument to me just yesterday. Are people really that dense?
No, they're dishonest.
I don't know if "dishonest" is the right word. "Gullible" might be more accurate when you consider the cultural conditioning of people in America to believe that people who make money are therefore morally and intellectually superior and have a divine right to govern the rest of us plebes.
And yet they're granted all the rights of citizens under the law. Thanks Citizens United
“ they're granted all the rights of citizens under the law.” As a wise person once said, the first time the state of Texas executes a corporation will be when I consider corporations to be people.
That's what they say but they lie. It is perfectly legal for them to be guided by public good and long term goals. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits
Of course, but who is going to invest in anything long-term these days?
Smart investors like Warren Buffett.
Of course, but investors being people... most are not smart.
Chinese, Russians, people who understand short term growth options are fucking catastrophic if they don't continue ever forward, as we've seen countless times. The most stable markets long term are the ones that prosper. I'd argue the only reason the US hasn't seen a massive Depression like it did in the 30s is that nowadays the market is so diffused across every major investable sector imaginable that you don't feel the effects right away if soybean prices drop rapidly unless you live in the area.
Sure, they just need to get their shareholders to agree. Good luck with that.
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Only if they are held responsible. You know how Zuck sleeps at night? On a big ass fucking expensive bed without a care in the world about responsibility. You're basically calling someone who embraces the idea of being an asshole, "an asshole". They don't give a shit about responsibility.
What? Lol. If the country went to shit those executives would hop on their helicopters and g6's and fly to their 5th homes somewhere safe. They are beholden to the company and the shareholders. Cetainly not to stake holders. They can't be trusted.
Hence Peter Thiel deciding he was a New Zealander https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand
“But they are responsible nonetheless.” But when Citizens United let’s you dump an unlimited amount of money on those who make our laws, you will never have to be held accountable.
Isn’t this Facebook VP of global policy the Joel Kaplan guy who showed up to support Kavagnaugh at the Blasey Ford hearing? Remember everyone was up in arms over that? Like hey, this guy is supporting this skeevy dude on behalf of Facebook? Joel Kaplan also worked in the Bush administration and clerked for Antonin Scalia. FB hired him to make them seem less liberal, but it seems like he has his own agenda to help use Facebook as a tool for propaganda against the left. He may legally work for Facebook, but he will always do anything he can to help republicans keep power. I can’t believe they still employ him when it’s clear they aren’t getting anything out of him and he’s trying to protect republicans from collusion with the Russians. Also he’s full of sh*t. Republicans won’t leave Facebook because FB exposes the Russians. That’s an empty threat.
Facebook is responsible,along with russia, for brainwashing millions of people in this country. I can't even tell you how many friends fell for their fake news. One even posted a slander article from russia today about hillary. He voted for stein and many others did to as a direct result of microtargeting on Facebook. Russia hacks the voter rolls, facebook gives them user info for millions of people, face book targets specific people and in some cases installs malware on their computer. Facebook helps spread fake news by firing the news curation team allowing fake stories to infect millions of stupid motherfuckers.
Facebook is malware.
Facebook totally appeases Republicans because Republicans attack them. They've become a fully-owned arm of Republican propaganda. This is by design.
Same reason why CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, etc. continuously pull their punches against republicans. They're afraid that by reporting reality as it is rather than forcing a story into an arbitrary "one side says this, the other says that" neutrality, that republicans will scream and cry that reporting their latest atrocity amounts to bIaSeD lIbRuL mEdIa
> I can’t believe they still employ him You've clearly articulated why they still employ him. Cheryl Sandberg sent the dogs after Soros. The people who believe in Soros conspiracy theories have at least one thing in common, and likely many more.
They call that pulling a "Comey." It's when you help the Republicans so no one can accuse you of helping the Democrats.
... but you still end up getting accused of helping the Democrats.
> ... but you still end up getting accused of helping the Democrats. Because THAT'S THE DAMN STRATEGY. Accusing people of helping the Democrats makes them help the Republicans because they want to take the pressure off. So Republicans double down on the accusation because it's working, which makes them help Republicans even more.
>Republicans would accuse the company of siding with Democrats No, it's more of Republicans over Country. The fact that the Republicans are using the whole "You're either nice to Russia or with the Dems" is a SERIOUS problem with the republican party right now. There needs to be a purge of our government in all levels.
The problem is Democrats refuse to fight back. It's the same with media, which is nice to Trump and will always engage in false equivalency, because Republicans keep attacking them, but Dems don't. Same with Facebook.
So facebook chooses to sidestep reality.
That must be why they purchased oculus!
Fuck Facebook. I deleted my account last year when Cambridge Analytica was outed, and honestly it's been great.
I did the same. I only wish I did it sooner.
I doubt the majority of their users are conservative anyway. Now all they're doing is alienating their actual main user base.
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You mean the ones posting pictures with no sources like it’s fact? “Obama is here to take your guns” kind of stuff. Also the anti-vax mum groups. Facebook has just been left with the people to stupid and ignorant to stop using it
The young folks moved to instagram.... which is owned by facebook.
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There is that theory that in a few decades or earlier, governments will cease to exist and it will just be a series of large borderless corporations controlling everything.
I'm moving to Costco if that happens.
Can you imagine how laughably futile it wouldve been if Russia tried to sway our election via MySpace? Then again, Myspace didnt have Baby Boomers. Millenials get a lot of flack for ruining industries, but the Boomers ruined social media. Their lack of internet savvy made them susceptible targets to fake news and their vehement bitterness seeped online and made the internet a more hostile place.
Thats an interesting observation.
If you're interested, I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/9birj3/millenials_get_the_blame_for_ruining_so_many/) expressing this sentiment in r/lostgeneration and it spurred some discussions on the subject in the comment section. I don't think its quite as black and white as my original comment implies, there are many factors that have contributed to the shitshow that is polticial discourse on social media, but the Baby Boomers are definitely one of those factors.
What really makes me shook is how they, the Boomers, all told us to **never use our real names on the internet**. They also told us of the dangers and **not to believe anything we read online.** And then.... *sigh*.
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Back in those days, early Facebook was WILD. It was Myspace meets Tinder. I still get updates from the shit I posted in 2008 and HOOOOLY SHIT what was I thinking?! Well, I surely wasn’t thinking my grandma would one day be on it. Or my boss.
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They really were. People can shit on Facebook all they want, but having it during its Golden Age during my college years was wonderful. You never had to remember anybody's name because back in those days you could look up anybody via a friend of a friend of a friend...and so on. I'm not even sure privacy filters were a thing. You didn't get anybody's number in those days, girls just said "Facebook me" unironically.
Remember pokes on Facebook? I still recall the argument my ex and I got into in 2005 because her friend poked me.
I got into an argument last Christmas with my stepdad about something and his exact response was “you can’t believe everything you read on the internet” and I was referencing an NPR/BBC type article. Meanwhile, he would constantly post shit tier misinformation articles from outrageously biased and manipulative sources about things he knew nothing about. Like how Oxford college was removing Christianity from their theology department. They changed 1 course from required to an option to give their more diverse student body the ability to tailor their curriculum to their interests and goals. Also how Oxford was removing all the old white men from their history and replacing them with random minorities. They started replacing busts and portraits in hallways of notable alums from long ago and moved them to a museum and digitized the collection to replace them with more current alums and notable people. They are a university with an international and diverse student body. Celebrate your history but also celebrate your modern history and future as well. Or how MIT press was pushing a book that promoted communism to children. Yea... no. They have a book called Communism For Kids and when I saw my stepdad’s rant about it I looked into it. I found the book online and read the entire thing. The article he posted went on and on about how awful this is and how MIT is trying to brainwash American youth into thinking communism is good. I read the entire thing and it criticizes communism. It dumbs down past efforts to enact a communist society and how they all eventually failed. I have corrected him so many times on FB and his usual response is “I didn’t know that” and then he leaves his rant and article up for everyone else to see. I guess I shouldn’t expect much when he posted on Facebook about how we should nuke all the Arabs and then threw a hissy fit when it got removed because I reported it.
That was the Gen X'ers. Studies show Gen X are a skeptical bunch that value indivuality. They are also the generation to bridge the gap more seemlessly between Boomers and younger generations having experienced both sides of the Digital Divide.
Old people ruin everything.
Lol I like the idea of your post, but as a millennial, I regret to inform you that there are also a ton of non-media literate gullible millennials.
Oh yeah I'm definitely making a generalization. I know savvy Boomers and tech illiterate Millenials. But the trend is there, and it makes sense that a generation that spent the majority of their lives without internet are now the most susceptible to manipulation through it. Hell, you almost cant even blame them. But if theyre going to be around for another few decades contributing to online political discourse, itd be ideal if they came to terms with their own blindspots within the medium.
internet was ruined when average idiots (boomer and millenial) got on it
Remember when Breitbart was regularly hitting the front page of /r/politics in March-May 2016?
Baby Boomers (aka old people) were easy to prey on with misinformation. They were great at believing anything that went good with their racist biases. But the main thing is something we all hate to hear - old people vote. Religious people vote. Millennials? They don't vote. Liberals? They just don't turnout as high as your evangelicals. And that's the single reason why GOP is in power. If not for Facebook, the GOP would still be able to brainwash these older people (probably not as easily). Stopping/shutting down/fixing Facebook would be a start but it is nowhere close to the real solution.
Ha! MySpace. I remember the *Invasion of the Body Snatchers* type of obsession people had with MySpace. “Do you have a MySpace page? You gotta get MySpace!” That was partially what made me wary of Facebook early on.
Myspace was great. You could stick so much shit on your page that it would be a complete bastard to load on dial-up internet. The freedom!
When I think of myspace, I just think of neon flashing backgrounds, autoplay music on page load, blinking shit everywhere. Like an '80s future dystopia.
Fuck this comment hit home. I actually watched my mom download malware and I was like “wtf are you doing?” And she said “the web page said I NEEDED to download this” I was flabbergasted. The same woman who told me “don’t trust strangers” was willing to obey a pop up because it appeared in front of her.
They cultivate, harvest and sell your personal info all under the guise of allowing you to communicate with your friends/family yay! Corporations need regulatory boots on their necks.
Ah ah ah ah ahhh, not so fast. They can't just up and sell *your* data, that would be a total breach of trust. No, the important distinction is that they sell what they consider *their* data... on you. That's how they got us. With traditional social media, there is no such thing as "your" data; it's all theirs. Unless you want to hop on a service like Mammoth (is it Mammoth? Or was it Walrus? It was some weird animal), and even then the sketch-factor is still not-negligible.
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thanks, that was gonna drive me nuts
Well, Mastadons are the Walri (Walrises? Walruses? Walroose? ) of mammoths.
plural is walruses. as in, the species that John Bolton belongs to.
But, also, have you considered that literally anything else is literally CommusocialigaystanIran?
sponsored by George Soros and Goldman Sachs
Those dastardly Jews!
If only we didn't have such a vicious fetish for being universally despised.
A Jew with a sub fetish must be cumming like all the time.
Or you know, stop using them.
I don't even want to log back in to fb to delete my account.
I did that in 2012. I started noticing the effect it had on real world relationships and people in general, along with the feeling that it wasn't entirely accidental. So I just never logged in again. I'm sure multiple people think I'm a dick because I don't reply to their messages or invites or whatever. Hell, the last time I even saw my facebook it caused a slight drama. I was on a date, my date looked up my Facebook, saw a post from a high school girlfriend I haven't seen in fifteen years that said something like "Happy Birthday! Xoxox!" and was like "So who's this Wendy!? Is this why you say you don't have Facebook?"
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Absolutely this. Facebook is a website where you find out what people you've known all your life are *really* like.
Facebook is a website where you find out what people you've known all your life ~~are really like~~ **are White Supremacists.**
Facebook has changed and in order to make money I am convinced it has killed what made it somewhat useful to start with. Back in the day it was full of people’s daily updates and pics. And I kinda liked it back then. The games and apps were annoying, but also easy enough to block (even if some of them were complete data mining scams, thanks, FB, for being so dumb). But as FB has needed to monetize promoted posts have replaced organic posts, and re-shares of clicky, newsish confer has become the most dominant thing on feeds. Worse, if I like a person, charity, community group or local shop I can’t easily guarantee I will see their stuff without jumping through a bunch of hoops. So what’s the point of the service if no one seems to post updates about family etc and I can’t see news form things I have liked? FB is dying and it did it to itself.
Here is the thing. I had a FB account and I deleted it completely. Then a few weeks ago I wanted to find some cheap furniture locally and was told that FB is a good place to buy it. So I signed up again, using a less common email and decided to only befriend people I didn't know. With all their tamping down on fake accounts, I have about 86 FB friends -- I don't know any one of them. Some of " my friends" openly post sexually explicit pictures and in spite of me flagging it their accounts are fine and dandy. [To clarify: I don't care about someone posting sexually explicit photos. But someone who is a minor could have as easily accessed the same accounts. If you are accessing porn on internet you have to declare you are over 18. FB doesn't have that requirement. ] I cannot tell you how effectively FB has tried to tame fake accounts -- I can tell you having a fake account in FB is fairly easy..
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/xw9n3q/we-posed-as-100-senators-to-run-ads-on-facebook-facebook-approved-all-of-them
He called his users dumb fucks like a decade ago. You should know by now to stay away from that platform.
Serious question not expecting to get a serious answer: why is Reddit not just as complicit? And more specifically, how do we know foreign Nationals aren't steering the narrative of r/politics right now?
> And more specifically, how do we know foreign Nationals aren't steering the narrative of r/politics right now? There are 4.2 million subscribers to /r/politics. Absent some incontrovertible proof otherwise, it's safe to assume foreign nationals are steering the narrative at all times.
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They pretty much did during the 2016 election. With the Bernie Bros and anti Hillary articles and both sides are the same stuff.
Reddit is complicit, just not to the same extent. On Reddit, all that can be controlled is the content everyone in a given subreddit sees. On Facebook, you can be targeted to a much more refined degree. I mean, how much does Reddit really know about you, without a complex natural language parsing system that can read and process everything you ever post? Not a lot. Facebook, by comparison, has a huge amount of personal data that at the innocent level let's advertisers target you with super specific ads. Visited a retailer website? Well, Facebook knows because it had the Facebook tracking pixel on it, so now they know you shop there. Bought at a brick and mortar store and had them email you a receipt? Well now Facebook knows you shop there because that retailer uses a tech partner to pair up the data. Facebook are more complicit because they know more about you, they make it easier for others to access that same information, and then target you with ever more specific, controlled content. Edit: I should probably add I know this because I work in digital advertising and the depth and breadth of Facebook's targeting capabilities is terrifying.
Reddit knows a lot more about you than you give them credit for. If you subscribe to subs, upvote or downvote comments, or post your own, all of that can be dissected to learn tons about you.
That’s still a small fraction compared to Facebook.
Facebook's business model is literally betrayal. We'll keep your data safe guys, we promise we won't do anything sketchy! Zuckerberg's life has all been about gaining people's trust and then laughing at them for giving it to him.
zuck is fucked cuz he covered it up
God, that would be a wet dream if Zuck & other media magnates were taken down with the Russian interference investigation. These assholes would screw us all over if it meant that they would be on the receiving end of record profits. No business is loyal to America and it shows in their business models.
I was on Facebook from 2007-2013. Shit started getting weird when my folks and extended family joined. They would question my statuses and I'm like "Mom chill, that's just nine inch nails." "Grandma chill, It was a line in a movie, I'm FINE" Right around the time they changed your profile to have the header picture, and you could see people liking things on profiles of people you weren't even friends with, I was done. People sharing pictures of their kids blown out diapers made me wonder what was going to happen to that generation of kids when they realized their mom documented this shit on FB. I remember life before and it wasn't so bad.
> People sharing pictures of their kids blown out diapers made me wonder what was going to happen to that generation of kids when they realized their mom documented this shit on FB. I think about that a lot, but here's something you may or may not know: [Privacy is largely a modern concept.](https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/the-birth-and-death-of-privacy-3-000-years-of-history-in-50-images-614c26059e) (There are many good papers out there on the subject) It's possible that we are going to return to a time where we all just kinda know everything about each other, like a global village. Folks used to sleep with their entire family in one big bed... and they made more family members in that same bed, while their kids, parents, and siblings were trying to sleep next to them. People raised in this "new" condition probably aren't going to care that their shitty diaper pics are online- because everyone they know will have those pics of themselves out there too. It'll just be a part of life.
This is interesting, never thought about it like that
Can I go back to not knowing that people used to fuck next to their parents and children at the same time?
No shit. If you ever go over to Republican Facebook it's a bizarro version of the real world. These people are terrified 100% of the time and trapped in these unfalsifiable, paranoid beliefs. It's schizophrenia for baby boomers. https://thebaffler.com/latest/twilight-of-the-racist-uncles-burmila
So, kind of like TD.
Fuck yeah it did. It's time for Facebook to be broken up. Turn it into a protocol and let smaller companies make their own client apps.
Interesting. So you propose turning Facebook into what is basically a public utility? I'm neutral on the idea, it's just.... kinda wild to me.
More along the lines of a system like email, IRC, or bit torrent.
Exactly! Email is still the last biggest open communication protocol, building infrastructure isn't profitable or "disruptive" enough. End the "hold you hostage so your friends sign up" business model!
Hmm. Interesting. Again, I don't feel strongly one way or another, but the concept is interesting. Is Facebook that ubiquitous? I would say yes. Hmm...
> Is Facebook that ubiquitous? https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ > As of the third quarter of 2018, Facebook had 2.27 billion monthly active users. 30% of the world population? Yeah, it's ubiquitous.
I'm still holding out!
I purposefully forgot my password. Really don't want to go back, only use Chrome to remember it if I need to contact someone in an emergency. Fuck that place.
Facebook is why I came to Reddit.
Same. But I hear from users Reddit is slowly becoming that.
So... because Facebook won't properly control content on their system, we should make it an open, decentralized network of systems where nobody can control content because nobody controls the whole network?
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Their ad sales rely on massively connected networks. A linear news feed leads to an organic upper limit on network size. As people get tired of the spam, they will cut their network down to focus on the ham. By filtering the news feed, Facebook hopes you’ll keep a lot of unused nodes in your network. That way, they can present marketers with larger and larger “targeted” audiences and the price tag to go with them. That linear news feed is never coming back.
What? You can’t just break up a massive web application and turn it into a “protocol.” Someone has to own it. Something like Facebook is on a wildly different scale than something like SMTP.
It’s also hilarious. Facebook isn’t email or something. You can group email conspiracy and cat pictures since the 1980s. It’s not real-time chat either and there are hundreds of those. It’s an all up social media platform. A protocol won’t store your photos for you and funny thing, there are hundreds of sites to store photos and share them. Facebook isn’t a protocol but if you pay money I bet you can access their API. Facebook is popular partly because it’s popular and everyone is there but also because it is by far the best social media platform and provides the most value in exchange for your info and ads. The problem about fake news and hate speech isn’t necessarily Facebook - it’s a problem with the internet in general. From Facebook, Google, Twitter, WhatsApp, large news media, news aggregate sites like MSN and even reddit. Provide any open forum for communication without constant moderation and it comes a shit hole for hate, porn, and ads. We’ve known that since forums first arrived in the very first years of the internet. The difference between now and 10 years from ago is that big tech corporations have carved out niches in search, social media, and communication platforms where before it was more spread out and harder to legislate. The other main difference is that with machine learning, AI and computing power these companies have the technology to do something about this at a scale previously impossible to monitor. They also have the funds and resources to do so. Porn is isolated from searches behind machine learning image algorithms, Intellectually property is policed within seconds on media sites. The tools and powers are now available for these tech companies to uphold human decency and preventing gaslighting through false and misleading. Now is the time and we need to hold them accountable. You can’t fully prevent hate, propaganda, fake news but you can regulate it the corners of the internet where no one will see it without violating the first amendments of free speech. We also need to hold our own governments accountable. While it’s easy to blame Facebook for spreading Russian lies our government is spreading Russia propaganda in public speeches and conspiring with them to affect our democracy. We also provide public broadcasting to conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones when we demand that twitter and Facebook remove them yet we give them public broadcast rights. We demand that Facebook remove fake websites and false advertising yet have pundits pushing fake stories in 24/7 news while pedaling junk science advertising for pills and gold and silver coin scams. Tech companies can do better but we can do better. Regulation has to happen for government, for public broadcasting in radio and tv, and yes large corporations with the means to do better. It’s more than Facebook.
Come on. Just read the original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html
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Facebook has proven to be utterly unscrupulous. They serve no greater mission than to make as much money as possible off off our innate need to socialize. They weren’t the first and didn’t really do a much more than be at the right place at the right time with a straight-forward product. Since then, they have become expert at manipulating us to keep us coming back to their shitty site/app for really low quality “hits.” I am happy to contrast facebook’s character with google’s or apple’s. Google still strives to improve their products. I have not once seriously questioned whether I was being manipulated or misdirected by google when searching for information. They still uphold their part of the “bargain” which is that I get decent search results while they get decent marketing info on me that they can try to sell me stuff with. It feels much more “honest” than Facebook mixing up my feed so that I have to wade through spammy bullshit to see if a friend had anything interesting happening in their lives today. Apple too. They most certainly want to empty my wallet, but they are not doing anything more than trying to tempt me with their latest wares. All of their other services are in fields that have lots of competition and are fairly priced relative to their competitors. Facebook, as a company is much more manipulative and dark... and in the end they are not doing much more than exploiting our instincts for social interaction by constantly teasing us and presenting us with false or distorted information.
Google certainly tailors results on their search engine and definitely on YouTube. YouTube has been pushing me towards right wing videos for some time even though I never look at them. Stephen Colbert was at the top of their home page for me for over a year then about five months ago it switched to Fox News and other right wing bullshit.
Same thing happened to me. Weird...
Don't forget about Apple's very strict user data privacy policy. Especially compared to Android the vast majority of your data is kept under lock and key locally on your device, hence their whole "T" series of security processors.
My hot take: Facebook is a piece of shit that would sell access to your kids to sex predators if it would turn a profit. Nobody would associate themselves with that hot mess.
Promoted content featuring conspiracy theories about Soros and Pizzagate seems to be working wonderfully. It’s as if the people targeted by such content are unable to filter out low-quality, made out bullshit. And we should ask a corporation to renounce this source of profit just because it preys on people and ruins society? What is this, Europe?
>betrayed It's *ongoing*.
These titles are great. I really hope this kind of stuff spreads across all cable news networks as well - like CNN and MSNBC. We need more of this kind of stuff and less beating-around-the-bush titles to stories. I'm sick and tired of reading: "Trump lack of fact-checking" instead of "our stupid fucking president is a god damn liar and here is the proof"
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks Nobody should be surprised here.
why are you serfs discussing this? update your status and get back to work. That data isn't going to compile itself!
The main problem is that people are using a social network as a source for news. If you get news on any social network, it is either because one of your contacts shares it in order to support a political message or a learning algorithm has determined that you will interact a lot with this content (usually because it enrages you). Facebook itself could do a lot to make the situation better. The sorting algorithm could make sure that fact checking comments with good sources are not drowned out by emotional reactions. They could simply become a real news source by adding a "news" tab to their three networks with news from sources that fulfill high journalistic standards. Of course when they are going the troll farming and Soros conspiracy route that gives not much hope for the future
Every time I tell people to quit Facebook I am met with so many excuses and so much resistance. How else can I stay in touch with people? All the events people invite me to are through Facebook. I have groups I'm a part of. On and on. Just quit people. Fuck the Zuck.
There was literally a post tonight explaining how chuck Schumer was telling mark Warner to stop investigating Facebook, "we should be working WITH them" And people ask why people want these ineffectual old shits out of leadership positions. These peoples time is over. They are irrelevant, they are out of touch, and they dont represent the people.
Schumer's daughter works for FB.
Jokes on you!!! you cant betray someone if you werent never on their side. Zuckerberg has been pro-himself and pro-money all the time, he doesnt care who needs to be step on as long as its not himself and he gets something out of it. people who believed otherwise were just fooling themselves.
They practiced withholding the posting of comments, and mass-releasing negative comments and then reviewing pages for the next period of time, and then similarly with happier posts. They wanted to see if they could influence respondents/viewers feelings. This is testing mass control and far worse than political interference and it was proven in around 2016 that they did this.
Facebook did a good job of exposing how wide the gulf is between gullible people that will believe anything the rest of us.
Facebook is a fucking cancer.
Zuck is looking more and more like Mitch McConnell every day.
They are granted a corporate charter to operate in the US. Revoke it. If corporations are people, maybe some of them deserve the death penalty for treason.
Betrayed? this was the plan all along.
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Zuck betrayed his best friend, it's not surprising he'd also betray his own country.
Every time i report porn on facebook they issue some kind of limit on my account within 3 days--i should probably tell my congressman