iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

roy blunt's questioning i mean

is it possible to deactivate your account and still use messenger? that's the only Facebook service i have any use for. i almost full deleted recently after 6 months of not touching fb but then a situation came up where i had to contact someone that i didn't have info for on any other platforms.

are senators allowed to coordinate questions with the interviewee? because there are some irrelevant questions that are getting well-prepared responses.

senator cruz is on the case
i didn't think there'd be someone more punchable in this hearing

and of course cruz' angle is that facebook suppresses conservative news/views

ted cruz is a force of nature

if facebook is a neutral public forum then why haven't they banned planned parenthood, moveon.org, and any democratic candidate for office

ted cruz is a force of nature

― had (crüt), Tuesday, April 10, 2018 3:18 PM (nineteen minutes ago)

similar to peristalsis

so where's our royalties, Zucko??

lol yes. and Google and Comcast and WellsFargo and Amazon and Apple and etc. etc.

it is frustrating sometimes, because so much of online activity is creative, it is akin to labor. a kind of virtual labor. fan art and things increase the value of a private brand, who can profit indirectly (or actively if the narrative fits the promotion cycle) from fan labor. the sad thing in all of this is the fans could be making something entirely original instead.

believe me i would love to live in a world where online labor is not merely harvested one-way but there is a kind of mutual sharing in its value. it can seem to be a crime that companies can profit off of us, but so many do, spanning everything from the insurance industry to cell phones to probably multiple "people" listening in when you bought that can opener last week. Facebook got caught doing shit but it is shit everyone is already swimming in. moneyed interests have compromised virtually every facet of society.

Facebook i can see them marketing some new more curated services. i have no problem with it, it is where my grandma and my aunt keeps in touch w all their kids and grandkids. or where my conspiracy video loving dad gets into dumb political arguments like me (and everybody else on the internet). Facebook is a way for them to connect to all these people they would have not otherwise gotten to spend time with. this is pretty valuable. for all the bad that it does, it does a lot of good things.

we have to deal with this new age of data but this is pure (robot) theater. we are talking an issue far bigger than this website. the dinosaurs in congress are entirely un-equipped to deal with anything computer. well maybe they are learning how to use Facebook lol. fact is, with computers things are very volatile, Facebook could easily slip away one day like Myspace or Friendster.

the 1st amendment was not written in an age of infinite instant global communication and the concepts of speech - not to mention time and space - and person-hood have drastically altered since that time practically, legally, and virtually. we need an internet free speech bill or something imo.

is it possible to deactivate your account and still use messenger? that's the only Facebook service i have any use for. i almost full deleted recently after 6 months of not touching fb but then a situation came up where i had to contact someone that i didn't have info for on any other platforms.

― ciderpress, Tuesday, April 10, 2018 4:07 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes you can. that's what I did.

as I mentioned upthread, whenever I try to do this it reactivates my account. no idea what I'm doing wrong but if I boot up messenger my profile appears back

really? i use the messenger app on the iphone and it does not reactivate my fb account.

It seems strange to me that someone would stop using the Facebook site/app, but continue to use their Messenger.

Like, "I will NOT look at photographs of my friends watching a baseball game, but I WILL allow them to eavesdrop and record every single thing I text, as well as the location I was in when I texted it."

I mean, I've got a Google Voice line I use, and I know that they're likely pulling out keywords to feed me ads. But at least they haven't sold 'em to the Russians.

so much of online activity is creative, it is akin to labor. a kind of virtual labor. fan art and things increase the value of a private brand

I've been toiling to put a little extra shine on the ILX brand for more than 16 years now, and so far, Ned hasn't paid out one dime on my investment.

i have the chrome (lol) extensions that block pixel and the FB ads. i have a flip phone, so no apps. i use FB to keep up with my family and my extremely large number of former students.

https://instagram.com/p/BhaSFhfF7IR/

It seems strange to me that someone would stop using the Facebook site/app, but continue to use their Messenger.

Like, "I will NOT look at photographs of my friends watching a baseball game, but I WILL allow them to eavesdrop and record every single thing I text, as well as the location I was in when I texted it."

― pplains, Tuesday, April 10, 2018 8:20 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For me its just a way to be less distracted, lots of work and finals coming soon.

I mean, I've got a Google Voice line I use, and I know that they're likely pulling out keywords to feed me ads. But at least they haven't sold 'em to the Russians.

― pplains

that you know of.

Photo of Zuck's notes, by AP's @andyharnik pic.twitter.com/wF0WAkDdI4

— Stefan Becket (@becket) April 10, 2018

https://i.imgur.com/pgOCtmK.gif

xp

Zuck is the super creep but today was a reminder that technology reporters (???) are the only people dumber than the US Senate. The world needs fewer Nilay Patels and Leo Laportes.

i use Opera w the built-in VPN and Duck Duck Go as my search engine. plus Privacy Badger to block ad tracking. scrobble THIS motherfuckers

It seems strange to me that someone would stop using the Facebook site/app, but continue to use their Messenger.

Like, "I will NOT look at photographs of my friends watching a baseball game, but I WILL allow them to eavesdrop and record every single thing I text, as well as the location I was in when I texted it."

I'm not leaving for political reasons so much as personal reasons. I don't want to be on FB cos I'm spending too much time scrolling around on it, but there are still people on Messenger I don't want to lose contact with. If it were so simple I'd delete my account entirely, but it would mean losing touch with all sorts of friendships I've built up over the last 15 years or something.

But you'd still have us!

https://i.imgur.com/93oN16v.jpg

I'm trying to convince myself to make new local friends to make up for all the friends I lost when I dumped Facebook. It's not going great so far.

Before I deactivated, I messaged everyone I wanted to stay in touch with and sent them my number. I've now got a nice little Whatsapp group with local friends for organising get togethers and such. Not ideal - I don't see myself escaping the ZuckerEmpire any time soon

I still use facebook but i deleted the app and the messenger app and turned off "platform" and all third-party apps/sites.

If you lost a 'friend' because you got rid of Facebook, that wasn't a friendship. Is it really that hard to stay in touch via other means of communication? Certainly not hard to the extent that you would rather cut a 'friend' out of your life altogether.

I really dislike the people who use that app to track when they get defriended and then post about it on fb.

A lot of people I tended to keep in touch with over Facebook were music people - journalists, people in the local scene, musicians and geeks, as well as people back home who I don't really see very often but keep me up to date with what's going on. Always saw it as more than a fancy telephone for me and my pals

Signal isn't as cute as WhatsApp and it doesn't do embeds, but you can do group chat with it and it works fine.

Yep, Signal is perfectly functional.

If you lost a 'friend' because you got rid of Facebook, that wasn't a friendship. Is it really that hard to stay in touch via other means of communication? Certainly not hard to the extent that you would rather cut a 'friend' out of your life altogether.

― pomenitul

oh, bollocks. yeah, i know, if they were real friends we'd be out there sending smoke signals to each other across the continents and the fact that it was a horribly inconvenient and inefficient method of communication wouldn't matter at all. i guess i don't have any real friends, only chance acquaintances i've known and travelled across the country to visit and hung out with continuously over multiple media platforms for more than twenty years.

individual friendships? yeah, i can and do maintain them. an online social circle? no. not without facebook.

not only that but god bless you if your long time long-distance friends have kids and you expect to keep in touch with them

talk about so not gonna happen

Sorry, I'm not buying this Stockholm Syndrome bullshit. I keep in touch with my long-distance friends via e-mail and it works just fine.

tbh that is great for YOU
it doesn't mean your model can apply to everyone else

Given the sheer dystopian sway Facebook has accumulated over the years, it's more than just a question of preference tbh.

I'm not against the concept of social media per se, but I do find the mental gymnastics used to ensure that Facebook remains too big to fail rather unsettling.

it's not stockholm syndrome -- i would gladly go back to having phone conversations if anyone had time to have them with me
i am not defending facebook, i am saying that staying in touch and maintaining actual relationships is more complicated and difficult than most people give it credit for

It is totally a different thing from 'keeping in touch with close friends on a one-to-one basis'. I organise events around my city. I have to get in touch with venue managers, fellow promoters, DJs, musicians, journalists, performers and punters etc etc. Most of the events I run are heavily promoted on social networks, namely Facebook. It's just a better way to track down and get the message out to all these different people.
If my band releases a new bit of music, we want to let our 'fanbase' (ahem) know about it, it's a lot easier to post about it on our page.
There are tons of uses for Facebook beyond just staying in touch with a couple of close friends.

I’m ok with using Facebook for professional PR but to my mind that’s quite different from keeping up with friends. Tbf the way anglophones use the word ‘friend’ is one of my biggest pet peeves as an immigrant so that might have something to do with it.

Facebook execs have some jargony line/term about how Facebook isn't really for keeping in touch with your closest friends, it's for keeping in touch with your more peripheral friends -- the people you went to high school with and want to know what they're up to, former coworkers, neighborhood parents of kids your kids see at the playground, etc. And I find that to be exactly true.

pomenitul yr basking in the light of pure, true friendship...so wise

only got time for real friends. kick everyone else i see hard in the face

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-zC1xXK3E

OTOH one of the weird effects of facebook is that their algorithm winds up creating this arbitrary and self-reinforcing circle of people you interact with most -- for me it's like this friend of my college best friend that I only hung out with three times, a middle aged poet my wife knows, a woman I vaguely had a crush on in high school, a neighborhood mom, a guy I never met who just does really good political posts, and a bass player I played with once, and a lot of this is just about them all being people who seem to post a lot.

I assume you’re taking the piss but it is partly a cultural thing. In many (most?) languages you reserve the word ‘friend’ for a close friend. Kind of like how a small coke in the US would be considered large in France. Everything (formally if not substantially) tends towards the superlative in North America.

Xps

Do you guys ever have the ‘ugh, this friend is liking my posts all the time’ reaction?

yeah, and unfortunately that friend is my mother

I'm not against the concept of social media per se, but I do find the mental gymnastics used to ensure that Facebook remains too big to fail rather unsettling.

― pomenitul

i find the way the human mind works unsettling on a regular basis, sure. i also don't see the point of making it a question of individual morality. facebook isn't going to go away any faster on account of you lecturing everybody who uses it about how wrong they are to do so. nobody cares whether you or i think it's justified for them to use facebook.