Facebook...er, Meta Hatred

[Argent Stonecutter]

"The Shockwave Rider"

+1000 for mentioning this.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I love/hate Facebook.

Most of my family members and friends are on it so it is the primary way in which I stay in touch with everyone now that I live overseas. I also meet new people there, find work, and other opportunities. From a business perspective, it can be important. And my day job involves social media management.

I only have a FB account to keep up with my family. Nothing else. I decline friend requests and probably spend more time blocking ads and messages I don't care to see than I do actually interacting with people (I've even gotten "PYMK" crap from sex workers! WTF!) It all came to a head this fall during the mid-term campaigns when my brother once again went over the hill preaching to me about the evils of Pelosi and the Dems, even resorting to links from fucking Breitbart! That was enough for me. I completely blocked him, and don't care to ever read the crap he posts.

Before FB, I like to think we had an uneasy truce despite our differences but no more. Now I know he's one of the far-right racist idiot crowd who swallows and repeats any old shit. I've had enough.

If not for my nieces and nephews, I would shut down my FB completely. But one of my nieces is due to have a baby soon and I want to keep up with her and the new arrival. FB is the best way.

 

[Porsupah Ree]

Fancy that!

Facebook hired GOP oppo firm to smear protesters by linking them to George Soros, an anti-Semitic trope: NYT

(It's lengthy)

 

[Pati]

Fancy that!

Facebook hired GOP oppo firm to smear protesters by linking them to George Soros, an anti-Semitic trope: NYT

I just finished reading the NYTimes piece (Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis) and while not totally surprised, when the curtain is lifted a bit and you see the behind the scenes, it can make one feel a bit sick.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Just as important is the part where Facebook itself discovered in early 2016 how deep and extensive the Russian propaganda campaign on its platform had been and covered it up for over a year because it didn't want to be accused by Republicans of "siding with Democrats" on the larger Russian interference issue.

Mr. Stamos’s team discovered that Russian hackers appeared to be probing Facebook accounts for people connected to the presidential campaigns, said two employees. Months later, as Mr. Trump battled Hillary Clinton in the general election, the team also found Facebook accounts linked to Russian hackers who were messaging journalists to share information from the stolen emails.

Mr. Stamos, 39, told Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, about the findings, said two people involved in the conversations. At the time, Facebook had no policy on disinformation or any resources dedicated to searching for it.

Mr. Stamos, acting on his own, then directed a team to scrutinize the extent of Russian activity on Facebook. In December 2016, after Mr. Zuckerberg publicly scoffed at the idea that fake news on Facebook had helped elect Mr. Trump, Mr. Stamos — alarmed that the company’s chief executive seemed unaware of his team’s findings — met with Mr. Zuckerberg, Ms. Sandberg and other top Facebook leaders.

Ms. Sandberg was angry. Looking into the Russian activity without approval, she said, had left the company exposed legally. Other executives asked Mr. Stamos why they had not been told sooner.

Still, Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg decided to expand on Mr. Stamos’s work, creating a group called Project P, for “propaganda,” to study false news on the site, according to people involved in the discussions. By January 2017, the group knew that Mr. Stamos’s original team had only scratched the surface of Russian activity on Facebook, and pressed to issue a public paper about their findings.

But Mr. Kaplan and other Facebook executives objected. Washington was already reeling from an official finding by American intelligence agencies that Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, had personally ordered an influence campaign aimed at helping elect Mr. Trump.

If Facebook implicated Russia further, Mr. Kaplan said, Republicans would accuse the company of siding with Democrats. And if Facebook pulled down the Russians’ fake pages, regular Facebook users might also react with outrage at having been deceived: His own mother-in-law, Mr. Kaplan said, had followed a Facebook page created by Russian trolls.

Ms. Sandberg sided with Mr. Kaplan, recalled four people involved. Mr. Zuckerberg — who spent much of 2017 on a national “listening tour,” feeding cows in Wisconsin and eating dinner with Somali refugees in Minnesota — did not participate in the conversations about the public paper. When it was published that April, the word “Russia” never appeared.

Ms. Sandberg’s subordinates took a similar approach in Washington, where the Senate had begun pursuing its own investigation, led by Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican, and Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat. Throughout the spring and summer of 2017, Facebook officials repeatedly played down Senate investigators’ concerns about the company, while publicly claiming there had been no Russian effort of any significance on Facebook.

They knew there were fake accounts continuing to make posts, and they knew which accounts they were, and they deliberately left them up for months because they didn't want to upset Republicans by lending credibility to claims of Russian interference that they knew for a fact were accurate.

Also: if you watched the Senate hearing at which Zuckerberg testified and wondered why none of those idiots were asking obvious slam-dunk questions about Cambridge Analytica and private-data theft, the article answers that too - it was because before the hearing, Facebook successfully lobbied committee chair Richard Burr to forbid the senators on the committee from asking about those things.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

My tinfoil hat sense is tingling but I'll put this here:


Thread.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I use FB may by once a month to blast some political vitriol.... Other than that it is nothing for me but an address book full of family, friends and old co-workers.

I loathe writing those annual "this is what I did this year!" Humble brag Christmas letters.. and have no desire to send out daily (Facebook) micro versions of the same thing.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[GradyE]

Never had an FB acct. Never will.

(In hindsight, I will always be grateful to Linden Lab that they did not allow real names at sign up. I was able to do a lot of social network learning without it leading to being harassed in RL.)

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Never had an FB acct. Never will.

(In hindsight, I will always be grateful to Linden Lab that they did not allow real names at sign up. I was able to do a lot of social network learning without it leading to being harassed in RL.)

Twenty years of online anonymity and making an idiot of myself later I might be ready for a LinkedIn account.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

That "hug" icon still hurts.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

How does Facebook connect you with other people?

Simple: install the Facebook app on your phone. Facebook app or messenger doesn't matter, by default it uploads your complete phone book including real names and numbers to Facebook. Though it asks you for your permission to do so nowadays, it is a prime example of what experts do call "dark patterns": it is specifically designed to mislead you and raise the probability that you are answering in favour for Facebook a lot.

Facebook uses them a lot, but Google too.

Also when using WhatsApp again you load up your complete phonebook into Facebook's infrastructure. Instagram should not be much different.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Facebook has published a press statement regarding the "opposition research" it conducted which was exposed in the recent NYT article. As anticipated, they did so at close of business just before the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, meaning nobody will be available for comment until next week - hopefully long enough for the matter to drop out of the news cycle and journalists to lose interest.

The release spins the opposition research firm's hiring as purely an attempt by Facebook to "understand the motivations" of its detractors, and repeats the lie that George Soros funded an anti-Facebook campaign.

 

[GradyE]

Twenty years of online anonymity and making an idiot of myself later I might be ready for a LinkedIn account.

LinkedIn: Connect with people for no reason at all.

 

[Free]

LinkedIn: Connect with people for no reason at all.

I dunno, I enjoy all the job offers for positions I'd never apply for.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Isn't LinkedIn supposed to be purely professional networking?

 

[Free]

Isn't LinkedIn supposed to be purely professional networking?

LinkedIn Really Wants to Get Along With the Cool Kids - Thurrott.com

 

[Kizz]

I rarely go on Facebook anymore. I use an extension called Facebook Purity that makes it much more usable, especially for things like seeing a truly chronological feed by default, but I still don't use it that often.

As far as the negative things about Facebook and social media in general and how it affects society, I think the following video sums it up well:

 

[GradyE]

LinkedIn Really Wants to Get Along With the Cool Kids - Thurrott.com

Not drowning, waving!

 

[GradyE]

Isn't LinkedIn supposed to be purely professional networking?

Kind of like how Flickr is for purely professional photographers. *wink wink