Zuckerberg is the enemy:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hosting informal talks and small, off-the-record dinners with conservative journalists, commentators and at least one Republican lawmaker in recent months to discuss issues like free speech and discuss partnerships.
The dinners, which began in July, are part of Zuckerberg’s broader effort to cultivate friends on the right amid outrage by President Donald Trump and his allies over alleged “bias” against conservatives at Facebook and other major social media companies. “I’m under no illusions that he’s a conservative but I think he does care about some of our concerns,” said one person familiar with the gatherings, which multiple sources have confirmed.
At least one candidate gets it (because of course she does):
We intentionally made a Facebook ad with false claims and submitted it to Facebook’s ad platform to see if it’d be approved. It got approved quickly and the ad is now running on Facebook. Take a look: pic.twitter.com/7NQyThWHgO
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 12, 2019
Once again, we’re seeing Facebook throw its hands up to battling misinformation in the political discourse, because when profit comes up against protecting democracy, Facebook chooses profit.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 12, 2019
More and more, I think of one of the endgame political choices in Civ VI- Corporate Libertarianism. Break up the tech giants. The end.
Also, that image above is one I commissioned a while back from Wu Stitch. It hangs in my office.
Brachiator
This won’t accomplish a goddam thing. It’s a classic case of applying 19th century solutions to 21st century problems.
This is bullshit and I hope that Zuckerberg is playing these chumps. The right wing has already built a powerful propaganda machine with Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting. Now, they want to control social media and the Internet by making sure that lies, propaganda and right wing extremist conspiracy theories get widely disseminated. Tech companies know that this is bullshit, but they also know that conservatives currently control the government and are out of control in seeking to consolidate their power.
The smarter tech companies also realize that conservatives are pushing for greater control over the Internet, using the usual excuses of fighting crime and protecting children. The battle over encryption is one example. In the end, there may not be much difference between how the US government polices the Internet and how China does it.
Betty Cracker
Has to be done.
laura
Faceberg and social media in general is of the devil.
You are the product.
The Social Network is not fiction.
MattF
It’s not a weird lefty idea to maintain that trillion-dollar corporations that live on their ability to extract personal information aren’t going to be our saviors. Going from ‘don’t be evil’ to ‘um, well, OK, be evil’ is a tell— but Facebook has been there for a while now.
schrodingers_cat
I am not on EvilBook but on EvilBook Jr, Whatsapp for my family and friends in India. I hate it too.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Once upon a time, we were budget conscious and didn’t want to spend precious dollars checking out social media.
Our modems would buzz and beep, and our hard drives would make whirring sounds as we logged in to AOL or compuserve or Prodigy or Netscape, and we’d do some quick research or make a purchase without chewing up too many of our free minutes.
Maybe productivity and social cohesion is demanding that return to this model….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When I saw the head line and the stitching, I assumed you were talking about this billionaire:
For all his talk about gun safety and climate, what he really cares about is his money, which is a proxy for his…. height. Bloomberg hosted/sponsored a big gun safety forum and after Warren spoke he made some smarmy comment about how he wouldn’t be able to host such a forum if it weren’t for his successful company. I keep hoping Warren will challenge him to a public conversation about her policies and how they would impact him and his company. I’d love to see him try to persuade the public that he’s a victim
sdhays
@Brachiator:
He’s not. Zuckerberg may not be a “conservative” because he believes in climate change and doesn’t want to stop gay marriage, but he’s no liberal and he doesn’t really give a shit about any liberal causes. All he cares about is his standing on the billionaires index. Sounds like a conservative to me.
hilts
Any person reading this blog who has a Facebook account should delete it. Zuckerberg and his company are an obscenity and they need to be driven out of business.
Jamie
Sort of related, mostly not– I’d pay a modest subscription fee to read and interact with this site and not have to deal with ads and tracking cookies. I’d rather pay the owners of a site directly than via advertising impressions, but I may be alone in that.
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
No.
But I would add this to the issue of social cohesion:
Apparently, she had been the target of an intense cyber bullying effort, which may have contributed to her problems.
A worldwide problem seems to be the persistence of unapologetic bullying behavior on the Internet. Doesn’t matter whether it is politics, celebrity gossip, sports, gaming, trivia. There are people who feel free to anonymously (and sometimes defiantly and publicly) sling hate with no fear of retribution or consequences.
MattF
@sdhays: Zuckerberg cares about Zuckerberg. Any other premise is simply an error.
trollhattan
@hilts:
Am proud of my two-prong response to Facebook: 1. Why the hell do I want to hang my life out there for anybody to see? and 2. Being too lazy to figure out how to actually do 1 and then making time for same.
Mah lawn, evacuate, you scamps!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Brachiator:
#BeBest…..
Brachiator
@sdhays:
I don’t think that the distinction between liberal and conservative means anything here.
Also, if we had to apply a label, I suspect that Zuckerberg is one of many techno-libertarians who ultimately believe that technological innovation must be furthered and protected without regard to social consequences.
germy
Speaking of “Man, fuck this guy”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/bloomberg-signals-he-would-run-for-president-if-biden-struggles-against-warren.html?__source=sharebar|twitter&par=sharebar
Martin
@MattF: There’s a capitalistic argument against facebook as well, that network effects force a winner take all approach wrt social graph. That, if your goal is to be able to reach everyone, then everyone must be in the social graph, which is why social media pretty much has to be free to join in order to work. As such, it becomes impossible to compete against anyone who is sufficiently close to completing the social graph, which Facebook is.
The role Facebook is playing is the USPS, who controls the pre-internet social graph by regulating and maintaining and guaranteeing connectivity between individuals through postal addresses and delivery. That too could not be competed against, which is why the government had to own it. And then anyone could use that graph – Sears could send us all catalogues but so could JCPenny, and neither had an avenue to block the other or receive favorable treatment. AT&T had a similar monopoly with phone numbers, and in the early days of cellular the same there with limited ability to call outside of your carrier.
I don’t know Warren’s plans to break up Facebook. At a minimum they can fairly be forced to divest Instagram and Whatsapp. Those are independent graphs that can stand apart from Facebook and also compete with Facebook. They’re sufficiently complete to do that. But I think the government needs to have the same sort of reliable social graph that the USPS does – a registered address for every citizen along with reasonable service interconnects (email, IM, whatever), that also preserve net neutrality. I don’t have a lot of faith in the feds ability to do that properly, but I think we’ll be stuck in this spot until they do.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Yeah, these big technology companies need to get taken down hard. What we really ought to do is take them over, buy them out, and then run them as public utilities, because they are public utilities at this point. The way the world works now, people need to use them every day. People’s businesses depend on them, people use them to keep up with others they need in their lives, and on and on. These are no longer things that should be under the thumb of anybody trying to turn a profit.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat: In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion, making its co-founders — Jan Koum and Brian Acton — very wealthy men.
dmsilev
Copy-pasted from a comment I wrote at LG&M:
Facebook’s “Public Policy Director for Global Elections”, the person setting policies like “it’s ok for Trump’s campaign to run ads that are blatant lies”, is Katie Harbath. Before coming to Facebook, she was, among other things:
* Chief Digital Strategist, National Republican Senatorial Committee
* Deputy eCampaign Director, Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee[1]
* Associate Director eCommunications, Republican National Committee
In other words, Zuckerberg decided to hand over policy decisions to a career GOP apparatchik.
[1] Definitely knows how to pick a winner.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: One of the reasons was the tremendous reach of Whatsapp in India and elsewhere. I was on Whatsapp since before Faceborg bought it.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Fortunately, tech users are very, very fickle. MySpace was dominant until it wasn’t. Young people are already abandoning FaceBook for other apps, and FaceBook has responded by buying competitors. Maybe you should consider restricting FaceBook’s ability to grow by acquisition, even though I suspect that this is unnecessary.
Bottom line is that FaceBook probably should be regulated for its ad practices and other issues, but otherwise, this is a lot of huffing and puffing over nothing. The history of tech is littered with the bones of giant companies that were supposedly eternally dominant, but which became obsolete when users moved on to something better, or just different.
MattF
@dmsilev: Facebook is now the ratfucker’s dream. Say anything, no constraints, no appeal.
germy
@dmsilev: Yes, she’s really something.
HyperSphericalCow
It turns out that having “freck you money” doesn’t actually let your ego say “freck you” to the people who deserve it.
germy
Zinsky
I despise Facebook and will never, ever use it.
tomtofa
Keep in mind, too, that Facebook is not the internet. Z is not interested in what happens to the internet, he is in competition with it.
Mary G
I never got into Facebook just because it’s such a crappy interface. And Zuckerberg made millions, if not billions, off the tax cut bill. He’s no Warren Buffett, he’s a conservative who’s too smart to admit it. Some FB executive supported Bart Kavanaugh, and Sherry Lansing is a corporatist down to her toes.
ETA: Cole, did you also get the cross-stitched “Home Crap Home” you wanted? It doesn’t apply to your house anymore.
oldster
@hilts:
Yes!
1) If you have a FB account, delete it;
2) get in touch with everyone you know, via some other means (email, snail mail, whatever) and encourage them to delete their FB accounts.
3) Vote for a candidate who will break up FB.
If we don’t destroy FB, democratically, then FB will destroy democracy.
The rich want to be above the law. Always. We must set the laws above them.
sdhays
@Brachiator: Fair enough. My point was that he wasn’t “playing” the conservatives. He definitely shares some of their “concerns”. I suppose he’s not “conservative” because “conservative” nowadays just means “whatever upsets someone not in my clique today”. But he’s definitely an ally of big money and, at best, agnostic to democracy.
Kay
Not that it matters anymore, but Facebook also lie to and rip off their customers:
They’re a really dishonest company! They’ve had to pay out settlements again and again because they seem to be incapable of telling the truth.
I don’t believe a word Zuckerberg says and no one else should either.
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
Interesting. And she has worked at FaceBook since 2011.
Kay
Wow. What a great company! They also lie to their users. Customers, users, the general public- whoever.
Zuckerberg and Trump are a good fit. Two peas in a pod.
Raoul
Amazing how becoming a billionaire totally rots your soul.
Mowgli
Deleted my FB account almost a year ago, don’t miss it. Still on Instagram and trying to wean my way off.
Anyone interested in a deep dive on this topic should read the book Zucked by Roger McNamee, who was an advisor to Zuckerberg and introduced him to Sandberg. He came to understand the monster he’d helped create and is now all about taking it down. Good read, check your local library.
Kay
When Elizabeth Warren challenged Facebook they sent some hack out to argue with her on Twitter.
When Donald Trump and Republicans challenged Facebook, they got a private meeting with Zuckerberg where he kissed their ass and promised to meet their demands.
That’s very fair and balanced, I must say. No, they’re not wingers at all. No sir.
MattF
@Kay: Facebook lies. I wonder if anyone has collected all the lies in one place— but there’s probably too many.
sdhays
@oldster: The last time I tried to log into FB, about 2 years ago now, they decided that since I hadn’t logged in for awhile and was in Asia at the time that they had better double-check I was who I said I was. So, I needed to scan my passport photo page and send it to them. I shit you not.
And that’s why haven’t logged in since. I can’t even delete my account.
Brachiator
@sdhays:
I would only add that Zuckerberg IS ALSO big money. But I don’t necessarily believe that this is, or has to be, fundamentally at odds with democracy.
I’m not sure that he shares conservatives concerns. The idea that the Internet or social media is unfair to conservatives is inherently bullshit. And ultimately, right wing ideals are a threat to technology and social media. But I don’t know, maybe Zuck is an idiot who is vainly trying to protect his company and doesn’t recognize the threats against him.
MattF
@MattF: I tried searching on ‘Zuckerberg apologies’ and found this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/facebook-zuckerberg-apologies/
Kay
But Warren, who is a US Senator, gets the company intern spouting some boilerplate lie they cooked up in marketing.
Some political speech is more equal than others, I guess. Why the disparate treatment for the two complaints?
FlyingToaster
@Mowgli: We had to get an Instagram account in order to view the photos at Middle School. Not a chance in hell that I’ll ever make a post. We still don’t have FB, and I run “Disconnect” on all of the browsers so that I don’t get tracked.
Sorry, Zuck, but if *I’m* the product, then you have to pay me.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: The point here is that FB is effectively establishing a monopoly by purchasing and/or smothering competitors, etc.
@Kay: They also lied to advertisers about the popularity of video, which spun up the “pivot to video” trend that decimated media companies — dog knows how many people laid off, etc. They were fined $40M for that, IIRC.
Kay
@MattF:
Are people really like “oh, this an ethical and well run company”?
They rob their customers and their users. They only stop when they get caught. They would have continued to steal from their business customers except a whole bunch of them brought a class action. They’re kissing GOP ass because they hope to avoid regulation in the hopes they can steal in the future – until someone finds out and sues. This is how the company operates.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bloomberg and Howard Schultz should buy an uninhabited island in the Pacific and run against each other to be its President.
ruemara
@Raoul: If you knew the history, Zuckerberg was rotted before he was a billionaire.
trollhattan
@Kay:
They also livestream mass murder, so there’s that.
sdhays
@Brachiator: The person running FB’s elections policy is a Republican apparatchik. He didn’t blunder into that decision.
I think it is fundamentally at odds with democracy. Billionaires should be outlawed. An imbalance of power is always going to be present, but there’s a point where individuals have so much money that they can undermine society without any consequences. That’s fundamentally toxic to democracy. I didn’t always think this, but I do now.
oldster
@sdhays:
You cannot delete the account you once established, because FB wants to keep compiling info on you.
And that’s the same reason that I cannot delete a FB account that I never did establish.
I was at a cocktail party a few years ago with a FB exec, and told him that I don’t have a FB account. He responded:
“You *think* you don’t have a FB account.”
You see, whether you ever signed up or not, FB has an account for you. Accumulating information about you. Surveiling your web-activities, your credit-card purchases, your movie-rentals, and any other information that they can Hoover up, by purchase or theft.
They already know who I am IRL, what nyms I use where, and what my medical conditions are. They won’t share it with me, but they have it.
This is not paranoia; this is just their business model.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Ummm….what? Is Ham Rove just sad that Dump is screaming all the Russthuglican fuckery that was whispered before?
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
People are still leaving FaceBook, especially younger people. I noted that they have attempted to stem the tide by buying competitors, noting for example the $16 billion that they paid for WhatsApp.
No Internet company has ever been able to maintain a monopoly. Users are too fickle and easily move on to something better.
Anti-trust solutions supposedly protect customers who are held captive by rapaciously big companies. Internet companies can be big and profitable, but so far, have never been able to hold customers captive. It is also questionable whether current tech companies can stifle innovation.
The “Internet of things” may be the next big thing, along with AR and VR. Nobody controls this arena or shows any signs of dominating it.
FaceBook is evil and merits regulation. But otherwise, some of the issues over manipulation of users through their data is an inherent problem of a free and open Internet, and focusing on FaceBook ignores the larger dangers.
Wapiti
@germy: Maybe Bloomberg can get a call in to Howard “Rich Entitled Guy” Schultz and get an idea of how far his money might take him.
Zelma
I have a Facebook account which I visit daily and post almost never. I do occasionally post articles. Interestingly, the only reason I got the account was because I wanted to read the comments on Charlie Pierce’s blog. I’ve “unfollowed” most of the people who asked me to “friend” them. I’m not really interested in their lives, I fear. One of the groups I do get messages from is “Pantsuit Nation.” Since those “friends” whose posts I still read are all liberal, I don’t get any of the dark stuff that comes across the site.
I’ve thought of cancelling, but I do get an occasional picture of my granddogs. That’s all my son ever posts. He’s a Congressional staffer so is very discrete. Also I have a dear friend in Venezuela and I do hear from her on Facebook on occasion. I want to keep all avenues of contact with her open.
I wonder whether it’s a good idea for us to get off Facebook, however bad it is. Won’t that just leave the place to the crazies? Also, I’m not exactly sure how to cancel. My tech skills have atrophied in recent years.
I’m really glad Warren is fighting back. Perhaps fighting back is the best choice but I’m not sure how. Certainly the company has to be broken up. It never should have been allowed to buy Instagram, etc.
Also, Zuckerberg is a pig.
texasboyshaun
I had deleted my FB account for about a month. But then I got reminded that I’m bilingual and the co-admin of my job’s FB page (people often comment/message us in Spanish). So I am reluctantly back.
Starfish
@FlyingToaster: See this type of nonsense is what has left some of us stuck with that platform. Because people are lazy, they communicate through Facebook, the laziest Medium possible and cut everyone who is not on the platform out of their social circles. I try to talk to people about this stuff, but no one wants to think critically about their digital communications.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Keep right on telling yourself that while FB openly accepts rubles for ad purchases intended to sow chaos and division and skew U.S. elections, illegally collects and sells personal data to bad actors for all kinds of nefarious purposes, and smothers and/or engulfs competitors that might pose a threat to its money spigots. Waiting for it to go the way of MySpace is a pipe dream, IMO. It’s already too big, and its tentacles reach too far already.
sdhays
@Starfish:
Of course they don’t. It’s exhausting! I’m in IT and I hate thinking about it.
Sister Golden Bear
I’m in no way defending Zuckerberg, because both his personal behavior Facebook’s behavior have been appalling.
But as we begin our latest round of slagging on Facebook, I want to point out that Facebook, Instagam, WhatsApp, YouTube, Tumblr, and social media in general, have been invaluable in helping LGBTA+ people — trans people in particular — connect and form communities. We wouldn’t see the level of awareness and activism about trans issues without them.
Back in the day, I grew thinking I was the only in the world who was “different.” Even pre-Facebook, finding online communities was a challenge.
A fifth of the LGBTQ+ communities (at least 3 millions people) live in rural areas. It’s easy to say “everyone with a Facebook account should immediately delete it” when you’re part of the norm.
But for a lot of LGBTQ+ kids in rural, red states, social media is their only lifeline — quite literally given the horrific rates of suicide attempts among trans teens, which equalled only by combat vets suffering PSTD.
I wish it wasn’t Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp that was that lifeline. But I’d rather have live trans kids using them, then dead trans kids who aren’t.
Starfish
@Sister Golden Bear: I am seeing a lot of people speak more fondly of Tumblr when it comes to these issues than a lot of other platforms.
Martin
@Brachiator:
MySpace wasn’t even remotely graph complete. Facebook is. There are entire industries, and even entire countries where Facebook is synonymous with ‘internet’. Yes, new users will likely continue to start around other social graphs, but many of them won’t fill in sufficiently.
You have similar dynamics around payment systems and other things that historically have been either governmentally run or at least highly regulated (like the federal reserve check clearinghouse). We’ll be facing comparable problems with medical record sharing (which is still mostly done via fax). These spaces really only work when they are complete, and by virtue of that, they are inherently anticompetitive.
guachi
I use a plug in called FB Purity that allows me to customize Facebook.
I can eliminate many of the things that clutter my feed. And best of all I can eliminate Facebook ads. All I see on my screen are posts by friends. Nothing else.
lumpkin
FB’s policy is very libertarianish – let everybody say whatever they want and let the marketplace of ideas sort it out. It makes superficial sense if you forget everything you know about actual human beings.
It’s very challenging to identify a clear line between preventing egregious lies that lead to bad outcomes and outright government control of public communications. Having content neutral guidelines, enforced at arm’s length via some kind of licensing process might work. I think I would trust a Warren administration to implement this above any other possibility I can think of. No need to even say what I would expect from any gop administration.
oatler.
I don’t use Facebook myself. yet here the FB icon stands on the Balloon Juice site, cacklin’ in the darkness like a half-remembered nightmare seen through a cracked mirror of regret!
h/t Patton Oswalt
TerryC
Don’t take away my Facebook until you can immediately replace it with something better. Something that will let me easily stay in touch with +2,500 people ALL of whom mean something important to me, whether you can believe that or not.
I am in touch with relatives I haven’t seen in person for a decade but whose lives I am part of; people I went to school with 60 years ago; friends from a three-decade career in higher education publishing; friends around the world in my competitive sport.
I run more than a hundred Pages and Groups on a wide range of topics. At my 70th birthday party I met, f2f with three friends who had hitherto been virtual, and many of my friends also met others there f2f for the first time after knowing them through me only on the Book of Faces.
I’ve spent 15 years building that and will fight for it.
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear:
Oh, no question. The reason we need to regulate these spaces is because they are all so tremendously valuable. So much so that we shouldn’t really entrust them to Zucks profit seeking or anyone else’s for that matter. By creating a universal social graph, then you could build an independent and moderated LGBTQ community on top of that graph, for example.
Basically, the social media communities worked in this role because silicon valley is more LGBTQ friendly than most industries, and because they took a hands-off role, which also led to many of the abuses of social media (Russia).
Kay
One thing the Trump Administration has done has made me really appreciate brave professionals.
Like a breath of fresh air :)
Although they could sure use a catchier name!
Steeplejack (phone)
@Jamie:
Install an ad blocker and send Cole some money. Boom. Problem solved.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
O/T
The Idiot-in-Chief only has one tool in his kit – the infliction of pain and the abandonment of about 65 years of soft power.
I think that NATO is dead for all practical purposes, with the current set of announcements on Turkey.
Ivan X
I think Zuck’s scum too, and I’ve never really used Facebook from the beginning because I don’t value knowing inanities and trivialities of people’s lives nor the sharing of my own, but being righteous about how you don’t use FB is like being that guy from a generation ago who proudly proclaims “I don’t have a television.” Who gives a shit? It’s a communications medium. You think whoever owns your cell carrier or your home ISP etc is some great paragon of virtue? By all means vote with your wallet and feet, but the idea that it makes you better than those who choose to use the services of a scummy company because they are useful or entertaining I don’t find credible.
@Martin your comments are always so smart and good. You should be an FPer.
Percysowner
I use FaceBook to 1) view Nextdoor to find out what is going on in my neighborhood 2) Follow some animal rescues 3) follow some businesses to see what events they have going on. Other than that, I don’t use it.
NotMax
Been saying for years, shall say it again.
Social media is neither.
Another Scott
@Ivan X: The baseline trouble with FB, as mentioned above, is that even those of us who have never signed up have an “account”.
We’re not the customers of FB, we’re the product. Even when we never signed up and clicked on their “agreement”.
That’s inexcusable, IMHO.
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@texasboyshaun: I only joined Fb because my youngest was going on tour with Disney for 2 years, and she said it would be the easiest way to keep in touch while she traveled. She toured much of the world and the 2 years stretched to 5. She came home about 4 years ago, and now the whole family is on Fb. We use the text app on our phones so we don’t really need it to stay in touch with them, but there is a large block of friends I’ve known for more than 20 years, starting on a now-defunct forum and a related second forum. Fb killed them deader than a doornail as well as the platform they and many other forums were on.
I intended to shut down my account, after that story about them spying on Soros. I still need to rescue a few photos from my files there, add them to my online collection, and bid my friends farewell.
sdhays
@TerryC: This is why the “boycott FB” drive will never go anywhere. That network people have built is valuable to them, not just FB and its customers. That’s why some other solution is needed, and that probably means some sort of regulation.
trollhattan
@Jamie: @Steeplejack (phone):
Aping Colbert, “Balloon Juice, Platinum!” your premium Balloon Juice user experience. Yet more John Cole’s this fucking old house. 24/7 Steve. Betty C. resurrects her illustrations and wine capsule sculptures. Badger, Badger, Badger, plus ducks!
Let’s monetize the crap out of the joint!
Ivan X
@Another Scott: it’s hardly the only inexcusable thing about them. I think choosing not to use them is a reasonable and rational decision if it’s one you want to make. It just doesn’t make one better than someone else who chooses otherwise, IMO, which I sometimes get the implicit vibe of when people proudly declare their personal boycott, and when calling for others to do so. (I also don’t think Google, Amazon, etc are really any less inexcusable in their data gathering practices.)
lgerard
I had to laugh when I saw that Brent Bozell was one of the wingnuts invited to meet with mark. He was last relevant about 20 years ago when he was a leading advocate for strict censorship of all media.
Parfigliano
@Zinsky: Yup never joined any social media.
oldster
@Sister Golden Bear:
This is an argument for having a public utility that provides the services that FB provides, without the revenue-generating backend (which is really the whole purpose of FB).
What they sell you is a small bit of convenience in making connections with other people.
What it costs us is our democracy.
There is no reason not to have a 21st century Post Office that runs a utility like FB, where people can connect to each other.
And that utility will not surveil us, will not profit from keeping dossiers on us, will not allow employers to exclude job-candidates on the basis of age or race, will not allow companies to target the products to Nazis, and so on and so on.
The actual value that FB provides is very simple, and easily separated from the profit-driven, mind-control juggernaut that FB has become.
Nothing about the value of connection, even for the isolated and oppressed, provides an argument for allowing FB to continue in its current configuration. Remember: FB will turn on LGBTQ and anyone else in a heartbeat, if there is money to be made by doing so. They aren’t your friend.
Denali
Anyone questioning FaceBook practices need only look at what happened with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. Carole Cadwallr documented Facebook’s targeted advertising to voters based on their harvested data. Truly scary.
Miss Bianca
@guachi: How difficult is that app to put on, say, a Mac?
Sister Golden Bear
@Starfish: Unfortunately, thanks to SESTA/FOSTA, and Tumblr’s resulting crackdown on any potential “adult” content, Tumblr is far less useful to LGBTQ+ than it used to be.
In part, our mere presence can get flagged as problematic content — there was a huge issue with YouTube about this awhile back (although I’m at work, and don’t have time to track down the details)
Martin
@TerryC: This again illustrates the importance of the social graph. That’s not something you should have to trust some 3rd party to maintain. You should be able to create that set of associations independently of Facebook and then be able to interact with them using Facebook on top of that graph, or Instagram or whatever else.
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin: I’m in violent agreement that Facebook needs to be regulated. Not sure how practical it is to break-up, since that defeats the purpose of social networking, although I’m sure there’s ways to consider (aside from the obvious one of forcing to divest YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp).
I like the “public utility” idea — but with the Trumpies running the government who want to eradicate me and my peers from public life — I’m less than sanguine about having the government actually running a Facebook-type site. But I’m open to ideas.
@oldster: I wasn’t arguing for the status quo, I was reacting against the perennial self-righteous “people should just stop using Facebook” comments that come up every time. Ain’t that simple folks. And until we come up with something better — which we should — it won’t be the first time that minorities have to work within an imperfect, evil system to acheive their own good.
Martin
@oldster:
I don’t even think it needs to provide the services, just the graph.
The ‘look at this video’ part isn’t really where the problem lie – it’s knowing and traversing the A is friends with B and B is friends with C part. That’s the part that should be centralized and regulated, in part because now nobody can hold that hostage (per TerryC above) and in part because that’s how the Russian troll mechanisms work. If Facebook doesn’t own that graph, they can’t as easily abuse it. We wouldn’t allow russian trolls to set up millions of postal addresses in the US for the purpose of boosting voting rolls or whatever, but we’ll let them do the equivalent online. The USPSs job is to regulate that, which gives it a kind of accountability as well.
I get that nobody wants the US government knowing our social graph either, but it could be set up as an independent agency or even NGO with explicit powers granted by Congress. Something more akin to the Federal Reserve, etc.
TerryC
I just had an out-of-the-blue phone call from a woman whose Catholic family lived across Drury Lane in East Liverpool, Ohio, from my Protestant family in the early 1950s. I haven’t seen her in 60 years!
Next week we plan to spend an hour talking about my adult, deceased, mother, whom she adores. I never got to know my mother as an adult.
Thank you Facebook!
sgrAstar
@schrodingers_cat: distinction without a difference. Facebook owns WhatsApp.
NotMax
@sgrAstar
And is going to great lengths to integrate/interconnect the two services.
sgrAstar
@Mary G: what does Sherry Lansing have to do with Facebook? I think you’re talking about Sheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg’s collaborator and enabler.
oldster
Hey, I’m still mad at Shari Lewis.
Free Lambchop!
Brachiator
@Martin:
Doesn’t matter. People, especially younger people, are bailing on FaceBook.
You are certainly mixing apples and tangerines and pennies here.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Again, the fact is that people, especially the most desired younger demographic, are already bailing on FaceBook. I have noted that regulation of its ad business and other areas is certainly in order. There is also a moderate case to be made to prohibit FB from buying competitors.
Feathers
@Sister Golden Bear: But this means that who is LBGTQ+ is now in the hands of Facebook and sold to credit rating agencies, health insurance companies, and, if there is a subpoena, law enforcement. My sister was suggesting Facebook support groups for mental health, but I will not give knowledge of my condition(s) to the corporate data machine in exchange for access to these groups.
Someone is looking now at Facebook seeing IBM and the Holocaust as a lesson. Cambridge Analytica won’t be the last to piggyback evil on all that data.
janesays
@Mary G: Mark Zuckerberg has a personal net worth of just under $70 billion. He’s the 8th richest person on the planet, and the 4th richest person in America.
He made billions off the Trump tax cut.
janesays
@Brachiator:
At the company’s peak, MySpace had around 76 million monthly active users and 1,600 employees when it was sold for $580 million to News Corp.
Facebook still has around 2.4 billion MAUs (just under 1/3 of the entire human race), 40,000 employees, and a current market cap of $523 billion. It is presently the world’s 6th largest company in terms of market cap.
The two companies aren’t remotely comparable in terms of their peak global influence or power.
FB is terrifying in a way that MySpace could never be.
Raven Onthill
“Jesus. I just read this article on how Facebook is helping Trump spread lies. It quotes Facebook official Katie Harbath who defends the company’s policy. So I go check out her Twitter. Jesus. I just read this article on how Facebook is helping Trump spread lies. It quotes Facebook official Katie Harbath who defends the company's policy. So I go check out her Twitter. This is literally her latest tweet.
“Harbath is Facebook’s head of global elections policy. She literally worked for Rudy Giuliani. I can’t make this up.” – Brandon Friedman, NY Daily News columnist
Mary G
@sgrAstar: My wrong. Should have checked.