Facebook just altered its policies to allow known false advertising by politicians:
6. Conveniently, this new version of Facebook's advertising rules solves a sticky issue. Trump was repeatedly publishing ads with false claims and Facebook wasn't doing anything about it. It's now OFFICIAL POLICY not to do anything about it. https://t.co/4aTevXJIwr pic.twitter.com/0ngI78Ztzs
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 3, 2019
Trump pays millions per week in Facebook ads, and they’ll let him tell any old lie that pops into his head.
The life blood of Facebook is engagement. Democrats need to make a concerted effort both to fight and to delete their Facebook accounts.
Mr. Mack
Surely showing my age and lack of technological savvy….but I find it hard to believe that there hasn’t been any other real attempt to provide a platform as easy as FB to keep in touch with friends/family. I remember Google circles, I think it was called, and that died a quiet death. Is it out of fear of litigation? Is that algorithm so unique?
rikyrah
Because, of course…….
Woodrow/Asim
@Mr. Mack: Define “real” — there have been, and continue to be, dozens if not hundreds of companies and non-profits trying to get traction in the Social Media space.
What happened was (among many things) it turned out there was an unexpected “tipping point” where a social media company could, in fact, just develop a monopoly — just as AT&T did with telephones. FB got to that point — and in an unregulated market is able to do dozens of things, ethical and otherwise, to maintain that position. That’s really all this is.
Put another way — do you really think Apple is just unable to make a great social media service tied strongly to it’s iPhones and iPad products, for example? Or is there, perhaps, something else going on that’s far more complex, and not simply a problem of programming and will?
Trust me — FB isnt’s, from a usage POV, “easy”. It’s just that all my friends, and your friends, are on it, esp. if you’re outside the teenager range, and thus a TON of planning for connections and events only happens on it. Indeed, part of why I keep mine is to support folks who’ve left FB due to their horrific policies for protecting you from abuse; as a cis het guy I can help them coordinate with folks still on FB, w/o them having to have an account.
Yarrow
Treasonbook. Look at their Russian funding.
ThresherK
@Mr. Mack: It could well be about who is on there for you (the proverbial and literal you).
Supplanting FB for the younger set has been going on for years. I don’t have stats on abandoned accounts and age ranges, but it is there.
Personally, I don’t see this as a YouTube-style thing. Would-be competitors to YouTube are fighting the inertia of capturing users who would give up access to a huge library of videos which have been there for years. Facebook or Instagram, not so much I think.
MattF
Yeah, well… ‘millions of dollars’.
JGabriel
Boycott Facebook.
It’s time for all Democrats to boycott Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that he will do everything in his power to oppose the election of a Democratic president, and that he will allow Republicans to lie with impunity on his platform.
Why are Democrats still visiting Facebook?
Boycott it. Boycott Facebook. And boycott every other platform controlled by Zuckerberg/Facebook.
Yarrow
@ThresherK: I saw a segment on some news-y show about Facebook offering a dating option since people are already on it anyway. The reporter went and talked to young people and had them try it out. Then asked them if this dating app option would lure them back to using Facebook. They all said no. They’re on it, but don’t really use it.
Major Major Major Major
Facebook doesn’t give a shit if ten thousand democrats delete their accounts in a huff. They need to be broken up and regulated to a manageable size. I believe there’s a plan for that floating around somewhere.
Kay
Zuckerberg and his wife have a HUGE education foundation that is decidedly “progressive”. My sense is his wife actually runs it (as opposed to just funding it and not being involved) and is actually committed to it. They have lots and lots of progressive allies in the work. I wonder how this turn to the dark side plays with that crowd. Should be interesting. On the one hand the recipients want those charity bucks, but on the other than can’t be allied with an org perceived as racist or anti-immigrant.
Collision course. What he says and does privately is in direct conflict with his foundation.
Major Major Major Major
@ThresherK: YouTube’s anchor in the market is the fact that it works at a massive scale. It’s a huge engineering achievement, like Netflix. Huge upfront investment for any would-be competitor. Facebook, not so much. I can’t even use it in my browser half the time, it takes so long to load and has so many doodads.
JGabriel
OT, sort of, but it’s good to be reminded every once in a while that Gail Collins is still a national treasure:
Yarrow
@Kay:
It’s not a “turn” to the dark side. They’ve been there. They’re just now being forced to publicly state which side they’re on. Nothing has changed for them except for codifying what they’re already doing.
SFAW
In all of this, I feel bad for Zuckerberg. Without this rule change, his profits might have shrunk to the point where his children go to bed hungry, because he can’t afford to feed them. Will no one think of the poor Zuckerberg children? You libtards talk about caring for the downtrodden, but when push comes to shove …
MattF
In fact, the lifeblood of FB is advertising. FB needs to know the demographics of its users– since those demographics are nowadays trending older and (presumably) more conservative, FB’s policies and practices will mutate accordingly.
Woodrow/Asim
@Major Major Major Major:
Damned straight. As someone who, as mentioned below, actually is supporting people who had to leave FB due to toxicity and shitty support from the company — FB isn’t going to be seriously harmed if even 500K Democrats left the platform. It’s an international entity that’s growing in leaps and bounds; hell, their biggest issue in growth is that their main app had to have a stripped-down version because so many phones couldn’t run the beast!
The analogy I made to AT&T pre-breakup wasn’t a mistake; it’s very similar in a lot of ways, and requires similar efforts. I know it feels great to say “I don’t use X service/company” yet that’s not always the best answer to these kinds of issues — and also, frankly, is oftentimes a very elitist attitude that we should avoid at all costs.
Major Major Major Major
@Woodrow/Asim:
It is much like climate change in this way. Stop eating meat if you want, but the actual solutions are all top-down.
Bill K
Not a fan of Facebook, but couldn’t they be considering all the other political ads that occur, as well as Trump’s? Many political ads just skirt the edge of truthfulness, unlike the Trumpmobile driving it off a cliff. How does Facebook police these? Even fact-checking sites like Politifact get into the weeds sometimes as they mumble about “well…he said 94% but our findings were 93%, so we rate it half-true.” And of course any attempt to correct these politicians will be met with cries of “censorship!! I’m being repressed!”, etc. I don’t envy the Facebook team assigned to such a task.
Yarrow
@Bill K: How does TV do it? They can follow that method.
Cameron
@Kay: “Education?” I thought it was all about charter schools, which are about profit, not education.
[Individual 1] mistermix
I don’t think a boycott is the best way to deal with Facebook, but it isn’t useless. If a large number of Democrats stop using Facebook, this just accelerates what had already been happening with the platform in the US, which is that its audience is looking a lot more like FoxNews every day: older, whiter, conservative and uncool. This is bad news for Facebook because it mustn’t appear stodgy if it is going to capture younger users. Those users are on Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp, etc, but they barely use Facebook.
Regulation is the ultimate answer, but I can’t think of very many other examples where a little simple, relatively painless direct action has a non-negligable impact.
A boycott also is complementary to regulation because if we break up Facebook from Insta and its other acquisitions, the value and viability of the core entity is less.
Yarrow
@[Individual 1] mistermix: Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp so same same. Apparently Instagram is expected to be the main social media app for misinformation and propaganda in the 2020 election. WhatsApp is already being used for terrible misinformation and propaganda in other countries.
OGLIberal
@Mr. Mack: Email? Group texts?
My job is digital marketing and while I’m old I also know how powerful social media is in our world. And also because I’m old I’m not a cool kid who thinks Facebook is just for the olds. That said, I hate Facebook, and did before any of this political, Russian ratfuckery. It’s inane. It’s where people brag about their kids and grandkids and the cool meal they just made/ordered. Or that their feeling “icky” today. I just don’t care. There are some FB groups that I like that post old photos/history of the various towns I’ve been associated with and I like that small businesses can use it in the absence of hiring a developer/designer to build a site and then pay for hosting. I will admit, though, that the few wingnutty FB friends that I do have truly let their freak flags fly on FB, so there is some risk in that non-engaged may think that because Uncle Matt knows about politics and I don’t, the crazy stuff he’s posting must be true.
UncleEbeneezer
Sorry to burst the bubble of the Boycott/Delete Facebook people here but…FB whether you like it or not, has been an absolutely crucial tool for organizing/activism, i.e. the #Resistance. I can confidently say that we would not have been able to elect Gil Cisneros and Katie Hill with using Facebook to coordinate our postcards, canvassing etc. in 2018. Some Resistance groups use Twitter or just good old-fashioned email/websites, but the vast majority use Facebook. Much as I loathe Zuckerberg and F-book, Liberals suddenly abandoning it would make it much harder to get people engaged in all the actions needed to fight the GOP and take back our Democracy.
RepubAnon
@Yarrow: Plus, FaceBook doesn’t like Elizabeth Warren. Coincidence?
laura
I value my privacy and guard my right to be left alone. Also, I went to high school already. Not gonna faceberg. Nope. Nope. Nope. Friends and family do not have my permission to mention me in a post or post my photo. No plan to ever have a social media presence.
I just do not understand the allure, and convenience is not a good enough reason.
the Conster
@JGabriel:
I was just talking about Mitt Romney and his missing cojones last night. He’s such a puzzlement- here is a perfect situation tailor made for someone like him who has ambitions in the party. He’s in a safe seat, has all the money he’ll ever want or need, Hollywood looks and most likely not compromised given his Mormon rectitude and his relationship with his wife which by all accounts is loving, and here he remains on the sidelines coddling the mob boss who represents everything he professes *concern* about. What a gutless wonder.
Chetan Murthy
@Woodrow/Asim: @Mr. Mack: To add a little story to what Woodrow wrote, which is accurate and correct, back in the early (early, early) days of Twitter, there was a joke about the “Dave Winer problem”. Dave Winer was an early blogger, and had a large Twitter following. Twitter was down a lot, and people would grouse about its unreliability, and some even built work-alikes. None of them succeeded, b/c, as some wag put it, until Dave Winer switched, his followers wouldn’t switch, and until enough of his followers switched, Dave wouldn’t switch.
Hence, the “Dave Winer problem”. It’s a folksy way of saying precisely what Woodrow said.
Betty Cracker
@JGabriel:
Hahahahaha!
Chetan Murthy
@Kay:
That foundation does a lot of donations to charter schools: https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/09/06/chan-zuckerberg-education/
Not exactly progressive, but I’m sure they do other, better things, too.
Mandalay
@laura:
The allure for many is to satisfy an inner need (insecurity?) to feel that they matter, and that they belong to a larger group. Facebook, and alternative apps, provide that.
You obviously don’t have that need, but it is deep seated in many.
rikyrah
Trump grows emotional as impeachment takes aggressive steps ahead
Rachel Maddow reports on Donald Trump’s awkward emotional outburst at a press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, and the aggressive, no-nonsense approach House committee chairs are taking to the Trump impeachment process, including in a letter to the deputy secretary of state that getting in the way of the inquiry could land him in prison.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He has an easy path to Towering (if completely overrated and sentimentalized) Historical Figure, like McCain or Howard Baker during Watergate. Or he has a small chance at being the father of the First Mormon President. He wants the latter, and he knows Tagg needs the mouth-breathers to make the White Horse Prediction come true,
That is my theory, which is mine, such as it is.
MattF
@the Conster: And, Romney has been called out, repeatedly and specifically, by various centrist commentators. He’s a phony, IMO.
rikyrah
Pence, at center of Trump Ukraine scheme, scrambles for cover
Rachel Maddow shares reporting from the Washington Post that Donald Trump made Mike Pence the middle man in his scheme to manipulate the president of Ukraine, leaving Pence scrambling to explain how he wouldn’t have been aware of the role he was playing.
Nicole
It IS however, worthwhile for Democrats to share that tweet thread on FB, as I did this morning. I posted it reminding friends to take any ads on FB with a big shaker of salt as we head into 2020.
Kent
I gotta wonder what percentage of the Trump 2020 campaign is actually grift.
My sense of 2016 was that the entire campaign was grift and they accidentally won. Today they are raking in hundreds of millions from the rubes. How much of that is going to get skimmed off by various Trump-associated business entities? 50% 70%?
Trump 2020 is the televangalist-style grift exported to presidential politics. Instead of monogrammed bibles they are selling MAGA hats.
Yarrow
@Kent: All of it, Katie.
Frankensteinbeck
@the Conster:
There you go. It would end Romney’s ambitions in the party. He could get away with in Utah, but the Republican Party in general would disown him. Besides, like most supposedly neverTrump Republicans, his only actual objection is that Trump is so crass.
Gin & Tonic
@Kay:
“Turn”? For a service that started its life as “Fuckbook”?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MattF: one of his closest advisers called him a political etch-a-sketch.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: this dynastic explanation also applies, I think, to the Bush Bros and George P, but Matt Yglesias had a good thread on them yesterday, on Broderist tenet that, somehow– mercy me! whatever has happened!– Donald trump has remade the Party of Lincoln in his own image
I’m only surprised that that personal animosity doesn’t bubble up more often. Reminds me of Nixon’s (the real one) observation that Barbara was the only real man in the Bush family, because she knew how to hate.
the Conster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That has occurred to me, but he’ll be vying with the Trump kids for the remnants of the party of Trump when this is over. I just can’t imagine being him and surveying the landscape, especially the media landscape that desperately wants to find a *good* Republican to fellate as a successor to McCain, and not stepping up. It’s really just mind blowing how utterly useless he is as a person.
WaterGirl
@JGabriel: I still have my Dogs Against Romney magnet on my car. It is quite faded, but I still love it.
unknown known
@Mr. Mack:
There are plenty of other platforms, it’s easy to make them. The problem is called “network lock-in”. I quit facebook, but all of my old school friends and distant family members are there,and not on whatever other site I might use. So if I want to see their news feeds and message them, etc, then FB is the only place I can find them all.
Now if EVERYBODY migrated to another new platform then that solves the problem (that happened to MySpace), but trying to coordinate tens of millions of people to all pick the same other platform, and all move to it and start using it… yeah.
This is why the most realistic solution is to separate FB into two companies: One that runs the interface, and one that manages the network of contacts and posts (and which licenses it out to ANY other platform that will pay – including the other FB company, but to competitors too). My guess is that this is what Liz Warren means by breaking them up (though I haven’t checked).
This is essentially what happened to the phone companies. Ma Bell was the monopoly provider, and then was split up into one company that managers the wires and connections, and other companies that sign contracts with consumers for X amount of service (who then have to contract on their own with the infrastructure company to connect the needed wires, etc).
Yarrow
@rikyrah: This whole thing with Pence completely cracks me up. Trump will throw everyone under the bus in an attempt to save himself. He’s going to do everything he can to make Pence the fall guy. It’s going to get a lot worse for ol’ Mikey. This is only the beginning.
rikyrah
@JGabriel:
Willard has no spine. Never did.
CaseyL
I de-activated my account months ago, though I suppose am still considered a “member” for their statistical/advertising rate purposes. Hardly ever go there at all anymore.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: Yep. There is no “turn.” They’ve been bad from the beginning. They’re just putting it in writing now.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
This really is a good and funny segment by Maddow. She outlines how ridiculous it is for Pence to pretend that he’s not eyeballs deep in all of this.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I was away from the news yesterday. Is there a link to Trump’s outburst?
rikyrah
Conspiracy theory packet may have supplanted US foreign policy
Rachel Maddow explains what is understood so far about an unusual meeting called by the State Department inspector general at which he delivered what is reported to be a collection of conspiracy theories that are apparently the basis of the State Department’s dismissal of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and the Trump administration’s manipulation of Ukraine.
the Conster
@Frankensteinbeck:
You’d think getting away with it in Utah would be enough, and if he were principled about anything he expresses *concern* about, he could turn the media narrative about spineless cowardly Republicans around and make it all about him and his legacy. I just don’t get it.
Major Major Major Major
@unknown known:
IIRC there were two parts to her plan. One, winding back the mergers, is straightforward. The other one would create a new classification of ‘platform utilities’ and take aim at their ad network and is a little iffier, but I get where she’s coming from.
A Ghost To Most
@laura:
Same here. I also found out my sister released our DNA to the world without a second thought about her relatives’ wishes.
J R in WV
“Are you talking to ME?!?!?!” Trump shouts at reporter asking, Yes, Trump, a question! Question asked was “What did you want Ukrainian President to do for you?” which enraged Trump, who then ordered the reporter to ask the Finnish President a question.
It was amazing to watch Trump break down that way. I haven’t seen him do the Bully Routine like that ever before. “Are you talking TO ME?!?!?!” How dare you speak to me like that, with a question you know I don’t want to answer. Scary too, because you know that’s the tone of voice he would use to order a war up to wag the dog in the middle east.
And when it started to look like we were losing that Trump-ordered war he would use exactly that bullying tone of voice to order a massive increase in violence, like the first use of nuclear weapons. So, really scary to a guy who feared a nuclear exchange when I was 10 years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
OGLiberal
@Frankensteinbeck: Trump didn’t break 50% in 2016 in Utah but still won the state. McMullin got 22%. (of course, most of Clinton’s votes were from Salt Lake) Wonder how many of those would have voted Trump is he wasn’t a third option. My guess is, most of them. So, yeah, Mormons only don’t like Trump because he doesn’t know how to use his indoor voice.
Matt McIrvin
@Mr. Mack: There’s no protected IP issue here, there’s a network effect involved. I liked Google+, but the problem every one of these platforms has is that users expect to be able to sign on, have the service scrape their contacts list, and see many of their friends and family already there. If they aren’t there, prospective users figure the scene is dead and nope out. That makes it very hard for a new player to break in. There was lots of good discussion happening on G+ for years but the mainstream consensus was that it was a “ghost town” almost from the beginning.
Chip Daniels
A useful reminder that Russians worked both sides of the aisle in 2016;
A few of the more strident lefty pages I “liked” turned out to be disinformation accounts.
All they care about is division and confusion, it doesn’t matter in what direction.
I deleted my account, and have never missed it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@the Conster: and (as I said) George P Bush, but also Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, poor little Ben Sasse may think he can be the Reformer, I predict the Green Rooms will never get over Paul Ryan’s big blue eyes (even if the true base laughs him back to Janesville, or Georgetown, or wherever he moved after making such a show of sleeping in his office, the smarmy little asshole fraud), and let’s throw in Marsha Blackburn who’s probably dumb enough to think she can make a serious run and canny enough to know she’ll have to do it before her looks are gone.
And, the one person who gives her peers in the trump and Romney and Bush families a run for their money in the born-on-third-base-thinks-they-hit-a-triple lucky-sperm sweepstakes: Within ten years, Megan McCain will run for her father’s old seat on a platform of I AM JOHN MCCAIN”S DAUGHTER! (read that in screech font), and will be stunned when she spends a good chunk of her Budweiser trust fund to get smoked by Kelli Ward for third place in the primary.
Wild card: Barbara Bush the Younger starts a political career in Texas as a Democrat.
geg6
@laura:
As Uncle Ebeneezer explains a couple of comments above yours, it has pretty much been invaluable to our local Dems, Resistance, etc. for organizing, getting volunteers, etc. Conor Lamb would not be in office right now without it. It was the most important tool for our Beaver County for Change group to make sure people were out canvassing, attending events and writing postcards.
Chip Daniels
@J R in WV:
The turning point for every authoritarian is when people stop fearing him and start mocking him.
rikyrah
Clinton: Ukraine ‘the canary in the coal mine’ on Trump schemes
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talks with Rachel Maddow about why it’s in the national interests of the United States to support Ukraine against Vladimir Putin’s aggression and why Trump’s Ukraine scandal is just one piece of a bigger picture of what Trump and his allies have been up to.
Villago Delenda Est
@jack is an ass.
Betty Cracker
So, during a “yellocopter” session (the screaming over the rotor noise in response to questions that has replaced traditional press briefings), Trump just suggested that President Xi of China should investigate the Bidens.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: where to begin? It’s all over the MSNBC website, I think this is a link to the Montage of Crazy Brian Williams ran at the end of his show
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
Betty, you should take action immediately to copyright yellocopter, or whatever it is you do to declare ownership of something.
The Moar You Know
Nope. Facebook’s success is because of its user demographic. The kids – y’know, the young people who don’t vote even though most of the legislation passed over the last 40 years has fucked them harder than any other group – don’t really use it save to keep in touch with their parents.
And frankly, Facebook made themselves real easy to use. Google Circles was fucking impossible.
Villago Delenda Est
@unknown known: The Ma Bell breakup was not what you think it was. The Local Exchange entities (most of which have been brought back together under the ATT corporate umbrella, which was obtained by one of them) still own the infrastructure, which is a HUGE problem. The only thing restricting monopoly control is state regulatory agencies, and if you’re in a red state, you’re fucked.
sdhays
@the Conster: Don’t forget, he ran the most dishonest campaign in modern history until Trump. He lied so regularly that he got tripped up by it in the second debate with Obama. And his performance in the first debate was a preview of Trump’s debate style: say the lies confidently and loud and the press will say you won.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thank you! I couldn’t bear to google and see his ugly mug everywhere as I waded through options to find it. Off to watch it now.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: I heard it elsewhere so cannot claim credit. ;-) Here’s a clip of Trump committing another impeachable offense on camera:
Every Republican in Congress should be asked if they’re okay with this. I mean, we know they are. But ask them.
the Conster
@rikyrah:
I’m sure it’s all just a *coincidence* that Tad Devine and Paul Manafort left their partnership working for Putin’s candidate in Ukraine, to return to the US to run the Sanders and Trump campaigns. Devine went to Kiev to meet Kilimnik (GRU) short months before he showed up on Bernie’s door to convince him to run as a Democrat. The “lock her up” chant was developed for Tymoshenko by Devine.
This has been a long game.
Betty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You left out Liz Cheney? Keep an eye on her.
sdhays
@Betty Cracker:
We need to get this term in the dictionary!
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe it’s just me, but none of that looked like Trump melting down. It looked like standard everyday Trump, to me.
Yarrow
@the Conster: Sure has. And it didn’t start in 2014 or 2015 either. Been a very long game.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: So, how many lies-in-a-row was that?
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Wow. Trump really cannot comprehend that what he is doing is wrong.
rikyrah
@Kent:
His son and THOT are getting paid $50k from University of Florida.
50k?
You gotta know that’s not the only speech they’re doing.
It’s all grift.
Didn’t you see the post from someone about that tech guy over the campaign, that his company is taking millions from the campaign.
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major:
Yesterday I asked a (very anti-Trump) friend what her husband thought. She said, “Oh, he doesn’t pay attention to these details. He’s absorbed in more cosmic problems, like the fact that we’re destroying the planet.”
So paying no attention to efforts to get rid of Trump, whose regime has been accelerating the destruction of the planet, means you have your mind on higher things.
Leto
@WaterGirl: @Betty Cracker: I still prefer Colbert’s, “Chopper Talk!” But “yellocopter” is also good stuff.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: it always amazes me how self-righteous people can be about admitting they find politics too confusing, or too complicated, or whatever.
At least (and I’ll give this guy/couple the benefit of the doubt) they’re not tote-baggers of the variety who say they’re so concerned about climate change, or corruption, or foreign policy… but, you know. we were just getting crushed by taxes. Could barely afford the landscaping at the lake house.
Leto
@WaterGirl: It’s not just that he can’t comprehend, it’s that elected Republicans see no problem with it. They need to be continually pressed why it’s ok for the President to ask foreign nations (because it’s multiple nations now) to interfere with our elections.
Cleek’s law and all that.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: the problem with google+ was that google is absolutely terrible at delivering a good user experience.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
As I said the last time this started up, I practically live on FB these days. There are several one-man software companies who aren’t willing to spend a lot of time creating their own customer support fora, and I spend a great deal of time in their groups and in related groups.
I loathe and avoid their “news feed”, but then I’m one of those weird people who hates Flipboard, too.
Between Fluff-Busting Purity and uMatrix, I have it stripped down enough to be tolerable.
Kelly
I’m not on Facebook but my wife is. Out here in the hinterlands Facebook is how the local news gets around. Where are the fire trucks headed? What is the school board up to?
Kent
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Problem is, the MAGA types (and I’m related to a bunch of them) don’t think there is any reforming to be done. From their point of view they finally have the most pro-evangelical, conservative, anti-abortion, protect “religious freedoms” (freedom to freely discriminate), pro American culture (white culture) president they have ever had. What’s to “reform”?
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No. And in fairness, he’s 90, so he’s kind of sick of it all.
Leto
@zhena gogolia: I don’t know if you’ve seen the new Netflix “Dark Crystal” series, but that’s basically how the bad guys came to power. The “guardian’ was off contemplating “higher things”, the shitbirds took over, and basically destroyed everything.
Leto
@Kelly: I’m still on it for various friends (we’re spread out across the globe), but I do follow my local representatives (local and state officials) and what they’re saying/doing, as well as local events. While I’m thinking about it, I need to see if another round of “THE PURGE” is needed. Facebook “Hunger Games” is another apt analogy.
Kara B
If you delete your Facebook account does it delete your reviews on businesses’ pages? A ton of small businesses around here use Facebook as their main business website, and I’d like to delete my account without screwing them out of positive reviews, if possible.
unknown known
@Major Major Major Major:
Interesting. I don’t know how you split out the advertising, because that’s the revenue part of the equation. But splitting apart the network infrastructure (e.g., the list of who is friends with who, and the basic contents of your timeline, etc) from the client (e.g., the interface that a user logs into that shows them their friends & sends messages etc) is pretty straightforward and has been done before – with the phone companies for one, but also with AOL messenger back in the day (there was a similar network lock-in then, and I believe they were forced to separate their network so that other people could write front-end clients that you could log into, that would still be able to find and message all your same friends).
(also I’d skimmed the thread before posting but not very closely – I see I’m not the first one to the phone company analogy).
RAVEN
yawn
Major Major Major Major
@unknown known: IMO the big problem, which nobody is talking about, is that google and amazon provide the low-level backbone internet services for like, the whole fucking planet. That’s going to need to be figured out before long, and the status quo is not the answer.
Tenar Arha
@Betty Cracker: I hardly ever click the straight clips if they’re not embedded in comedy bits. Even then I spend most ?clips flicking his head & yelling when I’m home alone & on a mobile device, or otherwise I mute the tv or audio feed.
In addition, it drives me crazy to listen to the reporters’ shouted bad questions. So many stupid yes/no questions fishing for the drama the reporter wants. Or all the open ended questions using GOP framing, so instead of asking Dolt45 “Why are you trying to manufacture evidence of a scandal against Hunter Biden?” “They ask why are you investigating HB?” I just can’t even, y’know?
unknown known
@Chip Daniels:
I deleted my account, and the only time I miss it is when there are local events that I don’t find out about because it’s one of the best ways to disseminate info. Or when we were trying to give away and sell some furniture and stuff, there are apparently good local FB swap groups.
Again, the problem here is network lock-in. I didn’t want FB itself, but that’s where all the people I needed were…
unknown known
@Villago Delenda Est: Perhaps my mental model is skewed by how things work in the UK then.
The landline phone part is a (regulated) monopoly still (which matters less and less in the age of cell phones), but broadband internet via phone lines is broken up how I describe. You can buy it direct from British Telecom (the original monopoly), or you can buy it from any number of competitors, who then contract with BT to provide the physical infrastructure.
To illustrate, I get my broadband through one of the competitors, so they are the one I pay money to, and they provide all the bundles of options for different speeds, tech support, etc, to me… but I first ordered it (and when I moved) they had to call up a BT engineer to come to my house to hook up the actual wires, because the signal goes through their physical network. BT would presumably love to shut out all of their competitors from using their wires, but they aren’t allowed to.
OGLiberal
@Kent: And they don’t care that he has no strong conviction about any of that shit – especially not the stuff that has any connection to religious beliefs – other than white power/privilege. The man says shit to get lunatics to scream for him at rallies and follow him around like groupies for a 70s hard rock band. That’s all he cares about. That he doesn’t really believe in or care about the shit they care about and they still love him says a lot about themselves. Any one of the folks running against him in 2016 in the primary would have supported the same shit he does, would have nominated the same judges the Federalist Society handed to him/her. And some probably would have even really cared about it. (and probably wouldn’t have conspired with foreign nations against political rivals – but maybe they like that too!) But they didn’t hate on the browns and the libs and the media like he did. Plus, President Rubio wouldn’t have had rallies for people to attend and scream their hate. Like my wife said, many of these people have holes in their lives and going to Trump rallies and ranting about “secular humanists/socialists” online is their social life. There was a story about Trump rally goers and one of them was somebody who attended over 20 and is still going. How does she make her living? SS DISABILITY. Because she really deserves it, not like those lying, lazy, video game playing, pot smoking, undeserving brown people.
There was more than one person profiled who attended many Trump rallies in many states. Who does this? Obama didn’t hold these rallies but would even the most excited Obama supporter been setting their schedule and using their budget to see him speak in 10 different states? These people are disconnected from reality.
Tenar Arha
@Tenar Arha: @Betty Cracker: & just in case I didn’t make it clear, I admire anyone with the intestinal fortitude to actually sit thru the ?’s brain vomiting rants to extract each new impeachable offense.
lee
Zuckerberg said he was going to go to the mat for Trump if Warren is the nominee. Looks like he has already made up his mind.
He might do well to remember that Trump has the Merde touch.
Oklahomo
@Major Major Major Major: I read somewhere that the insane HTML to envade ad blockers is part of the problem wirth the Facebook load.
Mr. Mack
I feel better informed than I did at comment #1. Appreciate the info. My only push-back is that FB is incredibly easy to use for nearly everybody. Linking is easy, posting video and photos is just very very easy, and us olds appreciate that. My kids (in their 20’s) are mostly on other platforms and I have attempted to interact there but find them way harder to navigate. I use Air bb solely because it also is very easy to use, and I stay booked so I have no incentive to switch to another. I imagine a day when people will look at you when you reference FB much the same way I look at people who me an AOL email addy.
lee
@Matt McIrvin: Yep. I really wanted it to work but Google screwed it up from the get-go.
They wanted to roll it out like Gmail: ‘Invitation Only’ at first then to a wider audience (I actually got all my family’s email addresses this way). Even then everyone commented ‘stupidest rollout ever’. So what you described was exactly what happened. People got an invitation, logged in and found no one else they knew was there and never went back.
Mr. Mack
@lee: Yes that was exactly my experience.
The Moar You Know
@Kara B: No, and in point of fact it “deletes” nothing. They keep your info – every single last bit of it – forever.
Family member of mine had nuked his several years ago, tried logging back in – the account was still there, the last password was active, and nothing was gone.
Chris Johnson
@Major Major Major Major: You’re on fire today, 4majors. Everything you’ve posted in this thread is 100% relevant and important.
Some of this is a bit like the impeachment thing: if you don’t even ask questions about holding people accountable because your first thought is ‘what if they say no?’ then you’re defeated before you start. It’s long past time to call some of these people’s bluff. It’s like part of the DNA of these giant megacorporations to just explode outward taking everything they possibly can and wrecking everything that interferes with their bottom line, and that is societally useless behavior that must be checked.
(((CassandraLeo)))
Liber facierum delenda est.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.