Facebook is abusive. It's time to divorce it Every relationship has its rough edges, places where actions scrape, and through constant repetition, rub raw. Those tender spots can heal if left alone and if the parties are wiling to listen. But where the irritation continues, this raw spot becomes a wound that never closes, forcing a choice between continuing pain and a …
Also worth reading Mark Pesce on the Farcebook issue:
+1000
I committed Facey suicide a few years back when I got to 100 "Friends". I looked at the list and thought "I didn't even like you in school!" and pulled the plug.
Regrettably, I've been sucked in again in order to access a couple of groups. However, setting up using photo ID and dedicated e-mail account isn't too painful and you can't be friended or seen by "Friends of Friends" if you have no friends....How Life mirrors Facebook :)
Well-said, Simon
Also worth reading Mark Pesce on the Farcebook issue:
Why I quit Facebook (and you should too)
(the link is corrected in the above :) )
I'd venture one massive caveat regarding that linked article, though: it makes the mistake of considering Google less dangerous. The reality is that Google has been even harder at work to get its grubby paws on your life as it also reads your email, joins Facebook in watching what you get up to on the Net (to put it simply, every Facebook and Google icon you see on a web page can be a spy) and keeps track of what you search for.
"Social" media is anything but, because it was designed by what DSM IV would class as psychopaths...
There's something worse, Pesce writes "Privacy is dangerous, but privacy is not criminal", although he also writes "Privacy is the foundation of freedom".
There's really nothing "dangerous" in privacy - which doesn't really mean "keep hidden from others our dirty, nasty habits" (that's better defined by hypocrisy). It's just to be conscious there's a private space (at several levels - i.e. personal, coupe, family, etc.) where we can live and be ourselves without peers and social pressure. Privacy defines us as a "person", and not just an element of a group.
It's no surprise in continental Europe privacy became more important than in the USA (and many Anglo-saxon countries) - because in continental Europe Fascism, Nazism and Communism tried to remove it wholly, and force everybody to be part of controlled groups which didn't allow for any individuality (but for the leaders, of course, just as Zuckerberg, Brin, Page, Schmidt privacy is important, but yours is not), thereby people understood what the loss of privacy means - that's actually dangerous, not vice versa.
Privacy cannot be defined with a "negation" as in "not criminal" - it's the removal and loss of privacy which is criminal.
"(to put it simply, every Facebook and Google icon you see on a web page can be a spy)"
Semi-false: _Is_ a spy as the icon almost never appears by itself, there's always a spy script attached to it, fetched directly from FB/Google site.
Sole intention is to spy on you _on whatever page you are on_.
Both FB and Google even create phantom user accounts to track those people who don't have an account. Whatever to collect data to sell.
If the dangers of trusting Facebook with our data were not already apparent, this article reveals how their data were used to influence Brexit and Trump's election using techniques developed for psychological warfare by Cambridge Analytica.
THought About IT, that Guardian article is written by MI5. Remember MI5 were batting for Remain as were almost all the media and government. MI5 even arranged the 'death' of an MP to swing it for Remain but although that had a huge influence it still ultimately failed.
Terry is just making the best of a bad job. She stood back during the BREXIT vote and stepped in when it was over. All the EU rules will still apply except they will be reworded for the UK. The merger of our military into the EU is still happening. BREXIT will be reversible.
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Another Facebook hit piece, yet The Register still hasn't covered the now several-day-old story about the US Department of Justice opening a criminal investigation of Uber?
Following lawsuit and embarrassing viral video, Uber hit with DOJ investigation
Just read the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. The social media companies are exactly like the AI in these novels. Hiding between the cracks and leaching from us every time we move from one place to another. They have delivered a couple of "advancements", but only for their nefarious needs. So they can start leaching off us. Their moral level is about the same too.
One thing I would love to see would be a Shrike making a thorough inspection of the Facebook HQ. Pity that this (for now) is just a figment of my imagination.
Or read READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline.
In that novel, the social media giant is largely benevolent due to the ambitions of its founder, but it's in an advanced state of being the only 'real world' and a less benevolent corporation wants control.
Exactly. I've long since decided which of the parties I despise least, and which ones I can hold my nose and vote for -- if I have to -- in order to keep out the ones I despise most. If any of them want me to change my mind after all these decades then they're going to have to make some significant changes to their manifestos, and convince me that they're not doing so cynically. So far this time round there's no sign of that in the junk mail stuffed through my door, and if they can't manage it there then I'm not going to chase some transitory online targeted ad to look for it.
Rich 11: there's a tragedy about democratic voting wherein one is allowed to cast votes only in support of one candidate; even though most often, none of the candidates are all that acceptable.
My proposal is to permit the choice of casting a negative vote. The premise is that if enough people are PO'd enough about a candidate that they achieve a net-negative vote (more votes cast against them than for them), then they are declared un-electable.
Here's the best part: let's say many people hate all of the offered candidates, let's say it was Hillary vs Donald. Well in this scenario, it is highly likely that BOTH candidates would generate net-negative results, and so both would be declared un-electable.
In other words -------
neither candidate would win, and the election would have to be a do-over, with new candidates.
And there's the possibility of a distant, third runner who somehow squeaks in with +5 votes, becomes declared King of the Kountry.
(I've had people tell me this idea is ridiculous, but I promise you, there is precedent: sometimes if you answer a customer satisfaction survey they allow you to craft your response on a scale from "highly satisfied" to "highly dissatisfied". Somehow this isn't too complex to judge your satisfaction with a burger stand; yet I'm told it's far too complex for selecting an elected official. Hmm, I'm not convinced.)
@Grunchy
The fatal flaw in current democratic process, is that it's nothing more than a popularity contest. Political types make sweeping promises based on what they think the bulk of their constituents want, and frequently have no intention of following through. They will generally have a plausible excuse to hand so that they can be re-elected again and again.
I'd personally like to see politicians apply directly for cabinet positions. John Smith QC wants to be lord high bean counter, so instead of policy and promises, he needs to submit a document outlining his skills and experience in big business finance. The public can then vote on who has the best apparent skillset for each key position, and then perhaps the first runner up can be part of the wider ministerial pool, both for purposes of coverage in case of illness or incapacitation, and for the normal checks and balances that we westerners prefer. This would not only stifle the whole popularity contest debacle, but also potentially abolish party politics. I personally feel that you don't necessarily need to like the person running the show, so long as they have the skillset to run it well.
My proposal is to permit the choice of casting a negative vote
I'd be in for this!
And maybe.. Maybe there could be a level of "vote them out of the country" as well? Ie if all votes against them are negative and there's enough of them, they take the hint and bugger off...
/me queues up Motorhead's "Traitor" followed by "Sweet Revenge"
"with upcoming elections & likely massive ad budgets spent on social media"
And a corollary: Do you *REALLY* want social media and their evil infrastructure INFLUENCING elections? The 'lame-stream' media is bad enough already. But they don't know the details of YOUR life. The 'big brother' nature of knowing EVERYTHING about you, applied to an AI algorithm, and THEN targeting you with specific political advertisements in order to MANIPULATE your voting pattern... well that 'sentence' lacks a verb but I think the rest is obvious.
"Just Say NO" indeed.
/me plays 'Uprising' by Muse - gotta love that 'Dr. Who' mono-synth solo opening
Simon, so true. You hit the nail on the head here when you highlight how Facebook has become intrinsic to many organisations' businesses. Think of the schools, colleges, pubs, shops, etc that direct you to their Facebook page for information. That easy solution to not building your own website has ensnared these organisations into something they can almost certainly not get out of without serious financial investment.
Facebook has transformed from an interesting social experiment to something not far off a dystopian nightmare. What right-minded company continues to claim they will "police" videos of hangings, murders and suicides without having a moderate before publish policy? one that is interested purely in profits, I think we'll find, and not the human impact of their greed.
You hit the nail on the head here when you highlight how Facebook has become intrinsic to many organisations' businesses. Think of the schools, colleges, pubs, shops, etc that direct you to their Facebook page for information. That easy solution to not building your own website has ensnared these organisations into something they can almost certainly not get out of without serious financial investment.
Any company that forces clients to contact them via a medium that forces them to screw over their own privacy is effectively in breach of EU (and UK) Data Protection rules, because that falls under non-voluntary disclosure. In addition, a little known problem with the use of Gmail by companies is that email received from the public must be protected - by handing it off to Google to have a good rummage in the content they commit a breach as well as they have not sought permission from that user to do so.
At present especially the Google thing is kept quiet to prevent a trade war, but I suspect that won't be the case come September when the EU Art 29 working party revisits the Privacy Shield excuse.
However, there's nothing stopping anyone to file a complaint with the company in question and follow it up with the ICO - they're already looking for complaints about such companies because that gives them the incentive to launch a more generic investigation without being accused of being on a witch hunt.
Complain, and cc the ICO. Silence is what makes bad things grow.
I refuse to use any service which tries to treats me as a product, this is especially bad when by widely used business networking sites, like linkin, and many lazy retail sites!
I use several security filters including NoScript and uMatrix to stop all sites, including lazy retailers from bundling spying by demographics and analytics businesses, who probably sell the information to others too! One I recently spotted was iesnoop.com on a sports nutrient retail site payment page, when it was mainly seen previous on betting sites!
I think a lot of this blatant disregard for privacy is from r-type (Rabbit) human behaviour, which is disloyal and promiscuous, so often deceitful and immoral. The obvious, significant, left-wing bias in 'social' and search sites, including the fake-fake-news censorship, while often ignoring genuinely damaging stuff, in Facebook, Twitter and Google strongly suggests r-types driving business policy there!
I refuse to use any service which tries to treats me as a product, this is especially bad when by widely used business networking sites, like linkin, and many lazy retail sites!
But interestingly, you still read The Register. We're the products here, nice literate well educated professionals with disposable income ready to be advertised to.
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