People are starting to wake up to the fact that as Facebook made changes to monetize social interactions, they have royally screwed up and instead incentivized lies. The NY Times reports on the fake news sites that have been blossoming all over the place. It’s crystal clear what drives them: money.
Jobless and with graduation looming, a computer science student at the premier university in the nation of Georgia decided early this year that money could be made from America’s voracious appetite for passionately partisan political news. He set up a website, posted gushing stories about Hillary Clinton and waited for ad sales to soar.
“I don’t know why, but it did not work,” said the student, Beqa Latsabidze, 22, who was savvy enough to change course when he realized what did drive traffic: laudatory stories about Donald J. Trump that mixed real — and completely fake — news in a stew of anti-Clinton fervor.
More than 6,000 miles away in Vancouver, a Canadian who runs a satirical website, John Egan, had made a similar observation. Mr. Egan’s site, The Burrard Street Journal, offers sendups of the news, not fake news, and he is not trying to fool anyone. But he, too, discovered that writing about Mr. Trump was a “gold mine.” His traffic soared and his work, notably a story that President Obama would move to Canada if Mr. Trump won, was plundered by Mr. Latsabidze and other internet entrepreneurs for their own websites.
“It’s all Trump,” Mr. Egan said by telephone. “People go nuts for it.”
These guys have discovered that peddling bullshit to the gullible is profitable. There are no checks on them at all; in particular, they seem to be completely unhindered by scruples. We have a name for such people: con artists.
NPR also has a story on fake news sites. This phony is painfully disingenuous.
And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn’t give exact figures, but he says stories about other fake-news proprietors making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him. Coler fits into a pattern of other faux news sites that make good money, especially by targeting Trump supporters.
However, Coler insists this is not about money. It’s about showing how easily fake news spreads. And fake news spread wide and far before the election. When I pointed out to Coler that the money gave him a lot of incentive to keep doing it regardless of the impact, he admitted that was “correct.”
Oh, he’s so altruistic — he’s just trying to do good and expose the fake news industry, while profiting mightily from it and not doing a goddamn thing to expose it at all. He did nothing to point out the fraudulence of his stories or to reveal the extent of their spread, waiting instead for a conventional news source to call attention to what he’d been doing.
Another thing in that NYT story, another false excuse I’ve lost patience for. It’s “satire”.
“I don’t call it fake news; I call it satire,” he said. He avoids sex and violence because they violate Facebook rules, he said, but he sees nothing wrong otherwise with providing readers with what they want.
NO IT’S NOT. Here’s a basic dictionary definition of satire.
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
Note the key phrase up there: you’re supposed to use it to “expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices”. Cheerleading for the alt-right or Donald Trump doesn’t count; like that Coler asshole, it only counts as satire if you’re using it to rebuke ideas you find disagreeable. They aren’t. They’re using lies to promote views they agree with or find profitable.
And how can lies be profitable? Blame Facebook. Here’s the story of a fellow who got banned from Facebook for criticizing the alt-right.
As I noted the last time this happened, unfortunately this is the risk you take when you sign on to Facebook and other social media sites. You don’t control the platform. Hell, you can’t even talk to the those who run the platform. And the size of it makes any attempt at real-time moderation by the platform managers a complete joke. Neither Facebook nor Twitter has made any real effort to prevent harassment, bullying, or any of the other more unfortunate aspects of social media. And Facebook has made no effort whatsoever to prevent abuse of their system and they’ve made it impossible for the victims to do anything about it. They are in fact complicit and they are very likely to become more so in the future.
My ban from the platform is the result of Facebook’s lousy architecture, which lets bullies and harassers abuse Facebook’s automated system – a system that was supposedly put in place to make Facebook safer – and I have absolutely no recourse for protest or appeal.
Let’s be honest here. Facebook and Twitter have no motivation to clean up their act: that they are paying out ad revenue to neo-Nazi propaganda is a consequence of the fact that that crap is popular. Rejecting bullying or fascism does not make them money, while providing an outlet for them does.
And now I’m torn. I feel like I should shut down my facebook account, but a) I use it for the good stuff it provides as a social medium to keep in touch with my scattered family, and b) if all the liberals leave, it will become an even worse playground for trolls and scum. What are you all going to do?
I have an account, but I never use it. I got the account to facilitate something, (I’ve forgotten what), but have never used it. It’s never appealed to me.
Not on Facebook, never have been. Never will be.
Make an email list (or several) to keep in touch with family and friends, PZ. Let Facebook rot in its own filth.
I use a plug-in called Facebook Purity that lets me remove pretty much all the superfluous guff from the site and just use the bits I find useful. I have also removed five-sixths of the thirty people I am “friends” with on there from the news feed to prevent myself getting depressed by their happy, exciting and not at all miserable lives. Mainly I just use the site to message friends (who never seem to reply) and as a pinboard for my depressive rants against all and sundry. There is a certain catharsis to be had from that.
I’m of the opinion that it is all too easy to let the norms and conventions of a medium shape your approach to the world, and efforts must be taken to remain in control of it, rather than letting it control you.
Facebook is where it’s at for millions of people, so leaving isn’t an option for most. It’s not as if LiveJournal is making a comeback anytime soon, or Ello, or Google+ either. There’s so much b.s. out there besides the fake news that’s a bigger issue in the age of Trump anyway.
I sincerely loathe Facebook and always have. Unfortunately for me I am in business so I do have a page for my business on there, because it does help for marketing. I am becoming more and more hesitant to check it. If the poison starts spilling over onto my business page I may stop all together.
I know someone who wanted to permanently delete his account. This proved to be very nearly impossible, took two weeks or so, and he is still not entirely sure his account has been deleted. They REALLY don’t want you to do that.
Like DonDueed @2, I have never had a Facebook account, and I never plan to have one. It offers me nothing that I can’t get by other means.
BTW, the fellow who got banned from Facebook, Jim Wright, is an excellent writer. His blogs are worthy of reading and sharing.
Nothing good survives that kind of injection of capital: big business has to get something and that’s going to always mean it’s going to make it less good – abusive ads, predatory games, marketing weaselage, whatever.
I stopped using Facebook shortly after I started, the day that I went through and “stop telling me about” all the crap that came up on my front page. By the time I had suppressed everyone with kid pictures, cat memes, pictures of their lunch, conspiracies or politics, I had suppressed everyone. Then I realized: Facebook is not for me.
It’s not a bad idea to keep your account live to keep it from getting jumped.
And – FYI – in case any of you have long-dormant facebook accounts, it is possible to claim them using other social media credentials to bootstrap authentication. I was surprised to find that out because I resurrected my long-dead facebook account using a google account in the same name. (This may not still apply: Facebook and Twitter etc are always changing the way their various authentication schemes work)
Facebook has been an exercise in how to increase my stress hormones without ever stepping out the door. I was pretty jazzed about it at first. I thought, how cool, I’ll make contact with my old high school, military and college friends and perhaps some long lost relatives out on the West Coast. Rose colored glasses anyone? Sure, I connected with some of the above and some of it was good, but what else did I learn? I learned about too damn many divorces, illnesses, business failures, drugs, and complete personality makeovers. Old counter culture, anti-establishment types were hiding from their pasts and didn’t want anything to do with their youthful ‘indiscretions’. Some people actually blocked me when I sent a friend request. Others had gone completely 2nd Amendment or right-wing whacko. And my long lost West Coast relatives (most of whom were Okies back in the day and went west in the 30s and 40s)? An angry mix of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian fundamentalists, down on their luck white working class types with huge credit card debts and always in trouble with the law and bill collectors and ex’s. In other words, fertile ground for Trump. And you can guess what happened when I revealed that I was an atheist. Unfriended, you godless pervert. Even my brother, who went full-blown Catholic after his daughter was committed for a mental breakdown after flunking out of college, unfriended me. I guess that was my fault. I had the poor taste to inform him that a straight slate of incompletes was not a benign thing. He seemed shocked to learn that they revert to F’s after a time if the work is not completed. He hasn’t spoken to me since. And my being an atheist is a convenient cover to dis me, I guess.
I still have my Facebook account, but I changed the email attached to it to a gmail account that I rarely visit. It’s okay to learn about the happenings in the lives of the nieces and nephews on my wife’s side of the family, but otherwise, I’m pretty much done with it.
I got rid of my facebook and twitter accounts after using them for about 6 weeks. This was a few years ago.
I am very happy that I made the correct decision not to use these monstrous abominations of “social media”.
Life is too short, put down the damn smartphone and go for a walk.
Your friend,
The Old Canadian Biker Dyke
Twitter rolled out some new tools and seems to finally be making some bigger changes, but likely only because the failure to find a buyer for the company spooked them. Salesforce and the other potential buyers treated them as a potentially toxic firm because of what they tolerated, and they were right.
@PZ Myers
I’ve mostly moved to limit my Facebook reactions to immediate family and friends, only allowing Friends to see my posts, and Friends of Friends to make friendship requests. I never “like” any sort of commercial or company posts on Facebook, because that just feeds the beast – and I refuse to install the app on my phone (mobile is where most of Facebook’s revenue comes from).
Trolls and scum will have a playground either way. If they were left without targets, many would disperse to their other playgrounds and/or any new places where they will find targets. They won’t self-quarantine, so leaving that particular scummy area may not accomplish much in the way of reducing your risk of infection. If anybody out there is so clueless about the rest of the internet because they’re so insulated by Facebook, then I’m sorry to inform you that basically all of it is already infected. In an environment like the internet, there is nowhere to go, and any new “places” will not remain uncontaminated for long. So if it comes down to a choice of fight or flight, then we’ll have to pick fight.
I don’t use Facebook or Twitter (glad the latter was at least mentioned). I do get news from lots of different sources, while doing what I can to make sure the information is reliable and can be supported by some evidence. These aren’t free of infection either, but as I said, basically nothing can be.
Facebook users have a responsibility to check their sources, if they’re going to get any news from it (or all of their news from it). If you’re learning about “news” from the same place where you talk with distant friends/family/etc., where you share recipes and selfies, where you network for jobs, where you sign petitions, where you play Farmville, or whatever the fuck people actually do there while avoiding work, then you’re not taking much responsibility at all for how you get your news. You’re not being especially discriminating about what this firehose of a website washes all over you, so don’t be so fucking surprised that it’s polluted, or that it’s useful to people who want to spread their shit far and wide to others who aren’t being discriminating.
The internet’s very big. It is not one website (with a zillion gadgets) which does it all for you. No site, medium, corporation, etc., can or should do it all for you. Mark Zuckerberg, however responsible he is, didn’t tell you that you had to waste your life in the gated community you formed for yourself at his shitty website. He did not screw up the goal of ensuring you would never have a reason to leave your comfortable little bubble with all of its comfortable lies, because that was your goal every time you compulsively logged in without giving a shit about the rest of the real world, and that wasn’t a goal you should’ve had.
I’ve deleted my Facebook account earlier this year. Facebook has become too hysteric and negative. And fake news aren’t the only problem – negative news in general are much more succesfull than positive news. Basically social media is like yellow press journalism, just way bigger and way more powerful.
And I would challenge your assertion that “it will become an even worse playground for trolls and scum”, PZ. Imagine all reasonable people leave Facebook so only trolls and scum are left – then whom would the trolls troll and whom would the scum scum?
Trolls and scum are so powerful today precisely because Facebook has so many members which gives them a) a huge audience and b) credibility – these people have always existed on the internet, even in usenet, but you knew who they were so you could just avoid them. They existed in their own little world of lunacy. Now they’ve suddenly become powerful members of a community that numbers in the billions.
In my opinion, the best way for us to fight these people is to depopulate the world they live in. Let them have Facebook and Twitter!
We’ll have to sacrifice the positive aspects of social media, but for me personally that’s totally worth it.
When I post satire on Facebook, I have started explicitly identifying it as such, like this: [humor/satire]. Never thought it should be necessary, and maybe the stuff I post is too obvious to be mistaken for news. But… I want to promote the idea of always identifying if something is not actual news.
Maybe I should start using [news/commentary] as well, where it applies.
Also, fuck that guy. He acts like he’s doing us all a big favor. I’ve got a suggestion for a big favor he could do for us all…
I had a Facebook account to see pictures of the grandkids when we were living in a different state from most of them and a different country from one of them. I simply stopped going there about five years ago when one son-in-law began posting political comments that were extremely offensive and upsetting to me. I stopped following him, but my daughter always had his posts on her account, interspersed with pictures of the grandson. It was too upsetting to me, so I ignored it.
I’ve had to convince the kids to either e-mail or text pictures to me.
Interesting bit about fake news from Sakartvelo (aka “nation of Georgia”). I read an article recently about a cottage industry in fake news located in Macedonia. Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article about the Putin tie in to fake news citing two sources they said had researched it. Later, someone on AlterNet accused one of those sources, PropOrNot, of being unreliable and little more than “Cold War anti-Russian propaganda.” (Fairly common for people to confuse Russia with Putin.)
Then, Andrew Smith on The Guardian website has an article titled “The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy” which goes into the FaceBook tie in. It carries the subtitle, “If most adults get their news from Facebook we need laws to make the social networks accountable.”
That’s a scary proposal. I’m not sure what “accountable” means, how it would be regulated…government?, and the loss of privacy that might be entailed.
The bottom line is we need smarter citizens digesting the news. There are a number of memes floating around FB (yeah, I’m on it) trying to get this point across. That’s good, but the problem is complicated.
One recommendation is to Google the story to see if other sites are covering it, but that’s iffy because “viral” is the very nature of these things. Then there’s check whether the story’s source is a reliable outlet, whatever “reliable” might mean. Is the Washington Post a reliable source? Not according to someone on AlterNet. Is the writer on AlterNet reliable? How much does AlterNet regulate the articles they publish?
Finally, there’s checking Snopes, which I often do. However, Snopes isn’t omnipotent so they can’t get to everything. And, there’s no assurances that Snopes can’t be gamed.
I’m taking a cautious position about any news, whether it’s on FaceBook or directly from the source (I also routinely use Google News and the Guardian, sometimes AlterNet, my wife is an avid NYT reader and feeds me links).
I do wish I could get FaceBook to stop posting 50 pieces a day to my timeline about DonTheCon from Huff’N’Puff.
I have had a hard time explaining how I see the “web” to people who are kind of new or at least to me seem rather naive.
I see it rather like the real time square or any other down town area full of all kinds of stuff both good and bad dangerous and just plain crocked. It is all there no one would think of just trusting everyone there to be a long lost friend but they do all to often. I think it is because the “web” is accessed from a safe place your own desk at home or work, your own computer with all your cool stuff on it and increasingly from your own hand held mini computer that pretends to be your telephone, there are none of the usual visual cues we use to help understand things we just do not notice that we are standing naked in the middle of time square and have no idea what the hell it all is or who is saying what or why.
uncle frogy
Someone needs to invent “antisocial media” I’m thinking it’s gonna be quiet and peaceful and – unless I’m dishing it out – relatively full of bullshit.
Facebook cheapens human interaction and is no way to keep in touch with the family.
I deleted my account a couple of years ago, and never looked back.
Since then, I have to actually make the effort and call my relatives. We’ve been speaking a lot more, and I live on the other side of the planet from them.
No relationship that is worth anything needs Facebook to be sustained.
@3 I can not love FB purity enough. I’m sure it will be the victim of its own success soon when Facebook realizes that they’re not getting enough advertising in my face.
I nominally have a Facebook, but the only update I ever make is when people send me birthday messages, so once a year. I find the interface non-intuitive, difficult to handle, and the constant barrage of ads utterly offputting. Since I stopped watching cable TV a few years ago, I find I have almost no tolerance for ads, especially autoplaying video ads. And this leaves aside the further questions PZ raises, about abuse and trolls. The system simply has too many negatives, and not enough positives, to make it worth my while. The people who care about me know to email me if they want my attention, or text, or call. I don’t feel the need to know when they’ve let rip a really good fart, or whatever the kids* today are posting about.
*Kids, ha. Facebook is for OLD PEOPLE, folks. The kids are there in the same way they have their family’s numbers in their phones: because they really have to be, not because they want to be. They’re much more interested in other forms of social media, though.
Deleted mine like three to five years ago, don’t remember anymore.
what Great American Satan said @22 It was, even then, far too invasive.
The thing about Facebook from my perspective is that it’s now far, far different from the site I originally signed up for. Really, it’s a different thing altogether.
I was one of the very first people in the UK to sign up for Facebook, in the dim and distant past of late 2004. When I signed up it was limited to students with institutional emails from a handful of universities. I was about the 40th person in the country to sign up, and I did so at the urging of a friend who was having a competiiton with another friend to see who could accrue the most friends on their profile.
Back then, of course, it was still written by hand, with quills on vellum, and you had to dispatch a specially briefed friar to the palace of Markus of Zuckerberg to update anything on your profile. It was available in two languages – Latin and Old Welsh – and the whole site closed down on high holidays so they could wave perfumed censers over the cartulary rolls, conduct any vital maintenance pogroms and bless the foundations to ward against the Plague.
I rather liked the original. There were no status updates, no apps, no games, no commercial pages, no commenting facility on posts (you had to send a message or write a separate message on a friend’s wall), no newsfeeds. You filled in the boxes on your profile with personal details and things you liked, uploaded a profile picture (or didn’t), and then sent messages, viewed other people’s profiles (which you had to go searching for by typing in their names) and wrote on your wall or other people’s walls. And everybody was a university student, because they didn’t let anyone else on. That was it. It was much better.
Faceplant statistics:
1.65 billion active monthly users.
Average 50 (fifty) minutes DAILY use.
We are sooooo doomed.
I have no faceplant account, no instagram account, no twitter account, no shapchat account. Good for me. Pfffbbtthhh on the 1.65 billion users who urinate 50 minutes away every day of their lives.
I started to sign up for facebook several years ago, after my sister contacted me. But the information they wanted went beyond what I considered necessary, especially for someone who is an atheist in a at-will labor state working for a small privately held company. Never have regretted not completing my sign-up.
I personally don’t have a beef with FB — I use it more than it uses me.
(A bit of discipline is required; I have yet to post on my wall or click on an advertisement)
In relation to blaming it for fake news sites’ popularity, I just don’t see it. It’s just a place where they either advertise or where your “friends” feature those sites.
(Anyone who ever clicks on any advertisement or believes stuff purely because a friend likes it has only themselves to blame)
I just checked my FB account.
(my password is scribbled in Sharpie on what looks like a bar napkin but it still works)
The picture is me but only 3 or 4 other people on earth have even a remote chance of recognising me.
The birth date is mine.
Everything else is bullshit.
however
The little ads on the side-bar reflect some of my recent internet activity.
Do you think it could come through the pipes?
chigau: https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies/
Those little FB buttons on websites? They track you.
John Morales #29
um, wut?
wait…
really?
Do you think it could come through the pipes?
It’s on this very site, chigau.
(Most people either don’t know how or can’t be bothered to control what domains their browser accesses)
uh, chigau, not sure what “it” is supposed to be which comes through pipes, but you can basically assume you’ve been told this….
FACEBOOK: all your pipes are belong to us.
FACEBOOK: You have no chance to survive make your time.
PS obviously*, they also do traffic analysis; they know the people with whom you interact and their habits, too.
—
* Their business model is predicated on it.
Right, to be fair to facebork, as Morales said, FTB is a card-carrying member of the Pipe Illuminati as well, along with most websites. Getting rid of the javascript and cookies and such would make it a lot more challenging to pay for the site through some other system….
re: John Varley short story novella
“Do you think it could come through the pipes?”
Press Enter
… Not that there’s any real need for having facebork buttons on FTB, of course. That obviously isn’t needed for FTB’s ad revenue. It’s just a stupid gadget which has the handy feature of spying on you. People love gadgets, even when they have no clue how they work or what they do or why they’re using them.
You want to leave facebork, PZ? Easy into it slowly. Step one: get rid of their trash on your own website, which you think is supposed be for sharing your content on their platform.
Or sure, ease into it. That works too.
I mean, seriously, is it that hard to copy-paste a hyperlink? Why a special Facebook-approved button for “sharing” them? You don’t need their proprietary crap to do simple shit like that.
I love reading all the “Well, I don’t have Facebook” holier than thou comments.
F.O.
Do you have to be an asshole or were you really trying hard here?
—
Anyway , I just opened a Facebook account a couple of weeks ago. Joined my hiking group and that’s what I use it for- reading their news and watching photos from our hikes.
It’s useful. People find it useful for other things. I can live with that.
@39
That “holier than thou” line is a really cheap way of dismissing the problem. It’s the line of argument usually employed by trolls.
I agree that the comment you’re quoting is not ok – he’s extrapolating his personal experience to others which is certainly something one shouldn’t do. But you could explain that to him instead of going for the “holier than thou” line.
And then there’s the argument that simply by having a Facebook account you’re supporting trolls by supporting the environment they need to sustain themselves. I would not construe this as a moral argument – you like what Facebook does for you, that’s just fine. But I think you should acknowledge that there’s a problem instead of dismissing it mindlessly.
I see Beatrice (Hi!) but I don’t see Beatrice dismissing the fact that FB is full of assholes and trolls, just that FB can be useful for [things]. I agree with Beatrice.
As for the bit that she quoted,
Well, apparently I have several worthless relationships, then. I’m sure glad I’m managing to sustain them on FB.
I like Facebook. I have a couple of long time friends whose views I don’t always agree with. Just as I’m pretty sure they don’t always agree with mine. On Facebook you can ignore the stuff you disagree with. That’s a lot harder to do in a one on one email exchange.
But I sure do miss live journal.
tho mue,
How many people proudly declaring they don’t use Facebook were talking about or even caring about the problem. This isn’t the first or last discussion about Facebook I’ve been a part of, on this site or elsewhere. F.O. was the extreme example, but how many others were talking about the problem?
I would love to know how many of them don’t want ot support Facebook because of bad policies and how many don’t give hald a shit about those, but like to proclaim how different they are. They aren’t like those silly masses who share their lives on Facebook. They have class. They have intelligence.
I have no interest in giving an explanation to that commenter. They were extremely thoughtless. That’s not a problem of not understanding how people work (that some may find Facebook a valuable tool for communication and keeping in touch with others), that’s a problem of being an asshole.
I am not dismissing it.
I wasn’t even addressing it, I was addressing people who skipped right over “Facebook is problematic” to “I’m SO not a loser who still uses Facebook”. Now that is mindless and has little to do with Facebook’s problems or ways to fix it and more to people liking to feel better than others.
As for problems with Facebook… That shit is useful. I don’t want to see it gone, I want to see it improved. I don’t know how people cen put pressure on it to remove users who aggregate fake news, but I would like to see that happen.
The future is here. If people don’t get targeted marketing and news from Facebook, they’ll be getting them from somewhere else. Sure, Facebook using it makes it evil(ish). But then again, Google is pretty evil too. Should we all just stop using it?
That’s what laws and regulations are for. So that when bad people corrupt good things, you don’t throw the good thing away – you regulate the shit out of it.
Or at least that’s how things should work. But that’s socialist and evil and anti-open market.
I use FB. I find it useful for keeping in touch with all those “worthless” friends and family around the world that I otherwise would find it impossible to keep in touch with. Start an email, someone up thread said. My friends and family don’t all know each other, so that would get cumbersome. Tried Twitter, never got into it.
I manage the FB ads by using AdBlocker. I manage the trackers by using Ghostery. The only FB ads I see are the suggested ads that show up directly in my feed every once and while.
If you are all anti-FB because of the trackers and all, I’m sure none of you use any Google services – no gmail, no Blogger, no Google docs, no nothing, and don’t leave yourself logged into that account either.
Beatrice:
That’s just the tip of the iceberg with Facebook. Fake news on it is just the newest thing Facebook users will ignore again in a few months.
What a bizarre statement. The present is here, and it’s awful.
Sure, why not?
But did you miss the part where Facebook tracks non-users as well? Considering that all I have to do is be practically anywhere on the internet, it’s not a question of whether I or you will personally will be Facebook users. Sites all over the place could refuse to be complicit in Facebook’s empire of bullshit, just like ordinary people could be. Why not?
So what is the plan? What do you think are the good parts? What do you think are the bad parts?
I too reacted negatively when I went to sign up on face book they asked too many questions and my suspicion/paranoia recoiled and I left never to return.
as for the sentiment
I understood it to suggest that facebook was not the only way a worth while relationship can be sustained. If it is indeed a worthwhile relationship there are many ways it can be sustained.
What do I know I am bad at relationships and FB carries too much baggage for me. Anyone is free to do as they wish but when I hear anyone proclaiming this or that is the best and only way to do something I hear bull shit from someone who has stopped thinking and is advising me to do the same. I do not want to get on no bandwagon I feel safer down here on the dirt walking slowly.
I wave and smile at all those passing me by.
and for all those who think they are in some way superior because they are more clever than I am I say
“hurry on brother hell ain’t but half full”
uncle frogy
CR @ 36:
I’ve been posting about how problematic FB is pretty much since I started Affinity. I don’t have a FB account. That said, I do have the FB button enabled on Affinity, because for all the problems, and they are vast and deep, it’s one of the primary ways to boost the signal on very important issues and struggles, such as what’s happening at Standing Rock. Natives have had very little presence and power on the net, but it’s grown a hell of a lot, and much of that is down to what is affectionately referred to as Facebook Indians.
As far as my personal preference, I’d love to leave FB completely out of my online presence, I simply can’t afford to do that, because it’s still that important to get news out about crucial issues, especially ones which are not going to get much media coverage, if they get any at all, outside local news. Today, I posted about sDakota gearing up with more anti-transgender legislation, not something which is going to get coverage, but the more people who share it, the more of chance there is of successfully fighting it.
The whole fucking thing infuriates me, because FB’s constant fuck ups, their double standards, manipulation, and so much more, oh, they deserve to sink without a trace, but there are good things too, and there’s simply no viable platform which has actual good standards to provide competition, and that’s the one thing which would sink FB.
Hold on. I don’t understand. Your blog pages have addresses. You can link to those addresses on FB (or on any other signal-boosting platform or anywhere else) by simply copying it and putting the link wherever you want it to be, using the open/public/non-proprietary standards that everyone has had since the web was created. It’s a glorified link, and we already had those without the bullshit smothered on top which nobody wants.
If it’s somehow slightly more convenient for FB users to save a fraction of a second by clicking their bullshit-button instead of linking like a normal person, that has to be weighed against my interests of not being tracked by a company that I do not want to support, do not have any business with, never signed any sort of agreement with, which never got any consent from me to invade my privacy or take my information.
I wanted to come to your website to read your content and decided I would risk my computer speaking with it, not dozens of other websites which are hidden under the surface of which neither of us has any control. If I want to link to it anywhere else (including FB, if I feel like using FB), I can easily do so. So it looks a whole like we can take them out of the equation and nothing of value would be lost.
How convenient is it for me, a non-FB user, that not only is my computer (by default, although I can essentially opt-out if I take numerous measures to prevent it) spending time talking with your blog, but also needs to have a chat with FB’s computers and its advertisers’ computers? It slows things down for everybody when that shit is plastered all over the web, just for the purpose of supposedly making the web-surfing experience of FB users more convenient or idiot-proof or however they may market it for their users. (That is, if it worked that way it would be a legitimate purpose for it that you might actually like, not the tracking purposes of FB.) That time you saved clicking the button certainly has to be dwarfed by all of the time our computers spent loading all sorts of pages everywhere, which are bloated with their crap even when we don’t use FB or click its buttons. So it doesn’t even look like you’re saving time or getting anything else out of the deal. So what does it actually do?
CR @ 48:
Yes, that’s true, but a lot of people won’t do that, they want the button to click. I’m not making excuses, I know it fucking sucks. Right now, it’s more important to me, personally, that certain information gets spread, and I use the tools I have to do that. So yes, I’m part of the problem. I’m part of the problem because as I noted in two recent posts about the FB problem, over 45 percent of people use FB as their primary news source. There are stories and information I’m near desperate to get out, so yeah, big part of the fucking problem here.
If I set up a facebook account, I could have all my posts automatically linked to it, but then I’d have to have a fb account, and I don’t want one of those. I’ve done a whole lot of refusing to compromise, sticking to my principles, even when it’s hurt me personally, and done things like seriously cut into my income. Increasingly, I feel like I get to be all alone in such actions, because no one else cares to do jack shit. I don’t have nifty answers, fuck, I don’t have answers at all. I do have a whole lot more stress, and an increasing sense of desperation. Right now, I feel extremely isolated and surrounded by very hostile people, full of bigotry. So, yeah, I can kill all the convenient little buttons, but how many other people would do the same, across the ‘net? How much would that impact FB and the other social media sites? It would be nice if people gave me some answers now and then.
I probably shouldn’t have even commented in the first place, because people will still be pissed off about it all, and just dump me in the “not helping” file. So okay, I’m not helping in this, and I am sorry, and as I said before, extremely conflicted, and yes, I feel guilty as fuck, but right now, other things are more important.
Hi,
I use fb, mainly as a messenger but as well to keep in contact with people all over the world and get some easy updates about their lifes. When everyone is working and has busy weekends, time differences can make it hard to actually call people frequently enough. I see why people might not like it, but especially the tracking is a general problem and heaps of companies use it. Not just the usual suspects. They should definitely make it easier to report and get rid of fake pages though (and a lot of pages where the people running them are convinced they promote truth, but are utterly bollocks or even dangerous). Just don’t know how that would actually work since you can’t just go by number of complaints because some groups would just abuse it to shut down pages with which they disagree.
Regarding the tracking by implemented buttons: I remember that there was a two-click-system a few years ago. Facebook (and google) couldn’t access your information unless you clicked on the link. Only then were the scriptsloaded. Not sure if this is still an option but it was nice. Although it never really spread past “nerd” pages.
Caine, I understand that it’s hard and that one person can’t do much except make their little corner of the intertubes slightly less exploitative. Still, less is better here, even if not much better.
Just tossing this out, especially since you’re apparently adept at this sort of thing…. Have you considered making an image of your own (perhaps with blueish-gray features, etc.) which is purely self-promotional and says something like “Share this on Facebook”? Along with it, you could include the text of the address for that page (maybe not a proper link, to prevent them from clicking it when they’re already on the page). That way, your readers will be reminded to share it on FB, like the button does only in a more personalized fashion and without the invasive features. It wouldn’t even need to be a picture — just some text that pops out or attracts a little attention somehow would work. Of course, no matter what, that’s asking for some extra effort on your part. But are you sure FB-using readers would not take advantage of something like that?
It also wouldn’t have to be so specific to linking things on Facebook, because there are also these other unnecessary widgets for other sites, so maybe design it with that in mind. Anyway, that’s one kind of approach you could take to engaging with such users, without apparently sacrificing much of anything. (Or that’s what I gather — not a user myself, so I don’t know if I’m missing something here).
Facebook is OK, but it requires some level of cyber awareness. Too many people don’t understand the potential impacts of putting lots of personal info on their web page, like:
– The date and place of their birth. This makes it possible to narrow down their social security number to just a few possibilities.
– When they are out of town. This lets thieves know when the house will be empty
– Opinions of politics, embarrassing photos, etc., that can come up in a background search by potential employers.
If you do want to put personal information on Facebook, understand and apply the privacy settings to set a level you are comfortable with (because friends can share with their friends) and limit who you accept as a friend. You have to understand the risks and how to mitigate them.
CR @ 51:
Given a bit of time, yes, I could do that. I’m afraid free time is non-existent in my life at the moment, but when I have a bit of space to breathe and think about it, I’ll design something and give it a try, it’s the least I could do.
I use Facebook a lot. I engage with several different communities including multiple IRL ones. I go often to places where they have fixed beliefs and try to get them to be more reflective and aware of reasoned methods with some success.
The news problem could use a user influenced trust system where there is a mechanism to indicate how well the site follows rules of fact checking and citing sources and including a broad perspective rather than a selective one.
I use FB to stay in touch with the friends and family that are scattered across the planet, will not connect it to my phone, and limit it to basic info that is only visible to friends. In the last two weeks I have made very dedicated use of all of their reporting tools. Fake news, spam, and hate speech spread like the plague. They have never been responsive until the last two weeks. It was sad to be shocked when two of the hate speech posts I flagged actually got pulled down, but I am even sadder that it took this disaster election to get the tech dudes of the world to realize that allowing a multitude of other dudes to gaslight HRC for profit was a horrible moral choice with actual consequences.
FTFY.
Of course, before the internet we had prank callers and letters to the editor…
None of these issues are in any way unique to Facebook. I’ve been around long enough to see several generations of internet social networking (from way before we called it that) abandoned to the trolls. Constantly retreating doesn’t seem to be working.
There is something I don’t know, if a FB user could tell me please, what happens when you do click the ‘share this on FB’ button? Is it just a link? Or is it a title and link? Or is it a title, link, and small quote?
@57: Title, link, teaser paragraph, thumbnail image (usually just the FTB logo), and the opportunity to say something of your own to introduce it. That’s exactly what you get when you share a link on FB via any other means too.
Dunc @ 58:
Thanks, I was afraid of that. The fact that it’s not just a link makes it more difficult on my part to vanish the button.
So, Facebook and Twitter, two services I never bothered to join because I predicted they’d eventually just be replaced with something else anyway (Remember MySpace? Geocities?) and also because I have a fundamental problem with one giant company basically “owning” social interaction itself, are having trouble. Facebook looks like it’s still doing okay, but Twitter is falling apart.
(Don’t misunderstand the real reason Twitter is failing. It lacks growth potential. There’s nowhere to go from the top, and Twitter is sitting right there. Being amazingly successful is bad for business when it comes to the stock market. People don’t buy stock to keep it’s value the same, they buy it so it can increase when the company does better down the line. Twitter’s got no plan for increasing their business beyond “grand pubar of all social media”, so they are failing. It’s ridiculous, but that’s the stock market for you. Yeah, some people are leaving Twitter because of all the vile and hateful stuff being spewed on it on the daily, but kids still say “hashtag _____” as casual speech, like, in the real world, and everyone still talks about the latest twitter talk. Don’t believe it’s lost enough users to really be threatened by people leaving out of disgust with the army of haters on there.)
Facebook, on the other hand, is showing growth entirely because of their recent focus on “news” feeds. Yay! Market forever! No…
But you asked what I’d actually DO. Well, I intend to sit around with a smug sense of superiority while saying “I told you so” and making sarcastic comments. I mean, I do that anyway because I’m a tire fire of a human being, but I’ll do it with some extra special focus on these two social media companies. Hurra~ NO! What I mean to say is I won’t be doing anything that actually affects real change, because I have no good ideas on how to actually do that. I could complain on social medi… wait… oh… Well, what I really think needs to happen is the creation of an internet standard, like HTML or IPV6, which replaces social media as it is now. Instead of a handful of giant super companies basically controlling the standard of social interaction online, it would be an open standard that any company can just “plug in” to, but which is owned by no one. This singular standard would be used to maintain things like feeds from family and friends and contacts. Hosting would be provided by numerous companies, including Facebook and Google, but not controlled by any of them. Someone could even provide their own hosting on their own PC at home if they should so wish it.
It’s a very tricky situation. We want a world where people are able to ignore abusive jerks online, while simultaneously making sure they don’t all cloister themselves into little isolated groups only reading the news that fits their own world views. I’m really not sure how to thread that particular needle.