rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

Is that active users? People engaging with the site on a regular to semi-regular basis? People who have profiles but never or rarely utilize them? Global users don't necessarily mean users in the US?

I mean, I understand your point,but that little squib doesn't actually tell us a lot.

If the 25-34 year old set uses it mostly like an extension of LinkedIn, and the older sets tend to use it like we use ILX, then that would make sense to me...but I'm not sure those sorts of metrics are available?

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Monday, September 14, 2020 7:31 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Do you have any actual information or statistic to refute? I don't necessarily think the burden of proof is on me to disprove your gut feelings. Unless you were basing that on something other than your own bubble and impressions and I missed upthread.

I feel like not using Facebook is the new "I don't even own a television" and we think that abandoning it is much more prevalent than it is overall (I say this as someone who suspended my account and hasn't been on for three months)

I've never had a FB account. Bow down y'all.

FB is still used for a lot of political organizing on the left, not just the right. All the young commies I know are on FB, make events there, etc.

fb's enduring popularity is understandable, i guess, but it's sad. it's like a small town where the only meetup place is an airport waiting lounge blasting fox news

Can't speak for other countries but in Romania it has an almost complete monopoly on social media. Almost no one uses Twitter there for some reason, so the political class is 100% FB-bound.

xp

sorry, dumb post. not only does it not make sense, but it's not even what i was trying to say. nailed it other than that though!

also i'm on instagram, so of course there's hypocrisy there. instagram doesn't have the same toxic culture as facebook (yet) because it's much harder for the racist trump-loving uncles to infiltrate. but all of the ugliest parts of facebook - the constant monitoring of your behavior and attempts to sell your psychometrics to anyone and everyone who is willing to pay for it - are all present in instagram as well, only with even more emphasis on monitoring via images and video.

the constant monitoring of your behavior and attempts to sell your psychometrics to anyone and everyone who is willing to pay for it

Off-topic, I guess, but: Someone monitoring my behavior and analyzing my psychometrics knows the following things:

1. I hate Trump and, by extension, Republicans
2. I like my children
3. I like to buy musical instruments and then play them
4. My wife is nice and I like her
5. Trees and birds are nice
6. Sometimes I ride a bicycle to get places

Not sure what the threat is here, because I would also say all those things out loud to anyone who asks.

I think people should absolutely quit Facebook for mental health reasons if they think it will help (has in my case)

though I do knew a few people who have made a big stink about quitting FB for political reasons (privacy, data mining, Zuckerberg, enabling right wing shit) then the move to Instagram and shit up my feed with these FB style screeds except they write them on their notes app and take a screenshot of it, which I find really funny (in that they don't seem to understand FB owns Instagram and probably doesn't care which of their digital voids they are shitting their lives into and annoying in that it makes Instagram into what I left Facebook to escape)

I don't think the burden is on you to prove anything, but I just know that a ton of Facebook accounts are hardly touched by the people who started them. Active engagement with social media is different than creating an account and never looking at it, and from my own personal observation, Facebook has become more and more like LinkedIn over the past few years, particularly for younger people-- it's like a placeholder page with little to no content on it.

But that is my observational experience, of course. I still post to Facebook, but use the Newsfeed Eradicator Chrome extension, so I never see anything anyone posts.

On FB I post links to articles I've written, YouTube videos of musical performances I like, and jokes about stupid PR emails I've received. On IG I post pictures of books and CDs I purchase or get in the mail, plus the occasional eldritch horror like the bag of ceviche-flavored plantain chips I spotted at the grocery store the other day. If this data is worth mining, they can have it.

xps

YMP i would suggest that based on those things alone, facebook knows a lot more about you than you think.

there's also the whole similarity to the "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to fear" argument

Facebook soon to be supplanted by TIKTOK

If people are still planning to Vote for tRump at this point, they are hopeless and nothing can save them from themselves

then again, everyone's been living under a million security cameras and satellites, so maybe civil liberties is more of a 20th concern at this point

i still find it very crepey

20th ^century^ concern

(i want to be, laura dern)

Dunno, sounds tasty.

xp

Someone made a point the other day taht without news organizations and magazine editors to filter articles/opinions of Americans we are seeing the extent of racist/stupid/unscientific ideas among the general population - in a era when anyone can have a FB page or Youtube channel

the surveillance in “surveillance capitalism” is only part of the problem, it’s the endless a/b testing to drive engagement and manipulate user behavior that really gets in my craw.

I had a twitter for a few hours in 2010 iirc. Never used anything else.

Karl, I agree but am still a little fuzzy on why I should be especially terrified about that (as opposed to the 94,317 other things I'm supposed to be terrified about right now)

the only good social media site is discogs.com I think

(hotornot.com breaks down in tears)

Someone made a point the other day taht without news organizations and magazine editors to filter articles/opinions of Americans we are seeing the extent of racist/stupid/unscientific ideas among the general population - in a era when anyone can have a FB page or Youtube channel

I think there's a good deal of truth to that, and also on the other end of the political specturm some people are aware they share left wing/socialistic views with a larger number of people than the media would have ever indicated.

want to hear my super pessimistic scenario about trump and facebook?

what if a fascist american president (a stretch, i know, but this is fantasy) demanded access to all of facebook's psychometric data

(of course, any good citizen with nothing to hide has nothing to fear)

oh wait, and one more thing: you find out about it on facebook, where people mostly responding to the news with "lol 2020 is the worst!"

"filter bubbles" that keep everyone polarized

I've mentioned this before but FB did once try to tag me in a photo that I was definitely in (way in the background) even though I did not know nor have any mutual friends with anyone in the foreground. thought for sure I was gonna delete it after that but its too useful for keeping up with family and such

Only reason I keep it is to promote readings and books, as well as be reminded of friend's birthdays.

I believe this might be the year I delete entirely

one time I wore a Leatherface mask and it asked me if I wanted to tag my friend V1ct0r, thinking it was him

i've barely touched FB in the last two weeks and it's been amazing

i don't even remember my facebook password

i don't even own a password

idk i think it's becoming increasingly obvious that facebook misinfo is out of control, don't know how it affects the outcome of the election other than not good

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/14/disinformation-oregon-wildfires-spreading-social-media

i don't even own a password

lol

misinfo circulating at high rates is precisely one reason I had to cut back reading social media so much.

and i barely have any of those idiots on my feed.

Same.

hell I remember people starting a panic during a hurricane in 2017 based on a rumor heard on one news network. the rumor being the hurricane had shifted and we were now getting the eye of the storm in Orlando.

it was a stupid panic to begin with because we should have been prepared for the possibility, but it didn't happen. 3 years later, there are Orlandouches insisting we got the eye of the hurricane that night even though we only got trop force winds and it went west of us.

and it was a Twitter/FB rumor that got out of hand fast

I still post to Facebook, but use the Newsfeed Eradicator Chrome extension, so I never see anything anyone posts.

killfile

don't think 538 have taken this stuff seriously before, remember them dismissing it entirely earlier in the year

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-if-trump-loses-and-wont-leave/

― 这是我的显示名称 (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, September 14, 2020 8:55 AM (four hours ago)

i thought this was one of the best articles of the genre, so far

i feel like we're all seeing footage of this train wreck, months before it takes place

I have determined the one foolproof answer to the dilemmas posed by that fivethirtyeight article. Trump must die immediately after the polls close in Hawaii.

i still believe that this is all going to end with the trump gang packed into a helicopter, flying toward putin's loving arms. i'm hoping putin will just send them to siberia, in a coldblooded cruel twist, but we'll see

the 538 article was at least the first one that actually utilized plausible scenarios and had an actual understanding about how the government works.

tbh, the Dems should just do what they did when the rumors of firing Mueller started flying, just start publicly saying "Trump's gonna try and stay in office, we need a bill to prevent that" (which we don't), to where he can't possibly do something that the lamestream media wants him to do, so he defies them by leaving office when he loses.

the umair haque one, which was far more popular, was one of the worst pieces of writing I'd ever seen.

the umair haque one, which was far more popular, was one of the worst pieces of writing I'd ever seen.

Umair Haque is a singularly awful writer.

Not sure where to put this, but the people responsible for editing this wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election - have decided in their wisdom to use these two pictures of trump and biden and... we are in the bad place.

https://i.imgur.com/EX7EQi5.png

BREAKING: In 4-3 decision, Wisconsin Supreme Court keeps the Green Party ticket off of Wisconsin's ballot.

Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn joins the court's three liberals to form a majority.

This means clerks do not have to reprint ballots and can now mail them.

— Patrick Marley (@patrickdmarley) September 14, 2020

This decision may well cost Trump Wisconsin.