When I read that REI, Patagonia and North Face pulled their Facebook and Instagram ads over Facebook being Facebook and letting Trump and Trumpists spew hate, I thought it was probably a limited campaign. Those high end outdoor brands are quick to boycott, but none of them are behemoths. Ben and Jerry’s is another brand that boycotted shortly thereafter, and they’re in the same boat as the first three.
Then, Verizon, which spent about $2 million on Facebook and Instagram in the last 30 days, said they’re out. They’re the 78th biggest advertiser on Facebook, so that’s kind of a big deal. They were one of the specific targets of the Anti-Defamation League’s campaign against Facebook.
The messaging service Viber, the fifth biggest with more than a billion users around the world, is severing all ties to Facebook as part of a growing boycott of the company by commercial partners. […]
On Wednesday, Viber pulled all advertising from Facebook and its sister app Instagram. Now, the company has begun the more labour-intensive process of removing all Facebook technology from Viber’s own apps.
The company uses a number of Facebook tools, [CEO] Agaoua said. Facebook Connect enables a “login with Facebook” button, common in apps and on websites across the world, while Viber also integrates with Giphy, an animated gif search engine that Facebook bought in May.
It’s one thing to kill ads, but quite another to disable single-signon with Facebook. I’ll wager that feature isn’t coming back, and it’s a big deal when a billion-person platform decides to reject signons from your multi-billion-person platform. And disabling Giphy might seem like a joke, but it’s still another instance of Facebook losing market penetration. (Since Viber competes with Facebook Messenger, this is probably a good competitive move, too, but Facebook gave them a good excuse.)
I don’t get Zuckerberg’s angle here. He could have done what Twitter did –walk away from political ads and give Trump a couple of tiny slaps on the wrist — and probably skated by. Instead, he decided to throw his lot in with the haters and the dummies, showing the world that Facebook is where stupid old people go to read an Internet of hot garbage.
Baud
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Facebook has so many sockpuppets running dedicated and obvious campaigns of disinformation that I have no belief that it can ever be repaired. You can see them spamming any of your local news comment pages every single day – they never comment on cute or normal stories, but if something comes up on economic, social/racial, crime or political matters, they’re super active and come out in numbers.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Baud: Yeah, I saw that but I also saw this:
Which makes me think that Facebook is going to make some change (I’m sure small and cosmetic) in the next 30 days.
different-church-lady
Garan-effen-tee Zuck is gonna let FB go full wingnut within five years. Not because he wants to go that way politically, but because that will be the only user and advertiser base he has left.
germy
Skepticat
Although I was very resistant in the beginning, as it’s basically antithetical to my introverted personality, I use Facebook (though not Twitter, Instagram, or any other of that ilk) because I live on a tiny desert island outside the States. It’s especially useful during lockdown (yes, we’re still locked down in the Bahamas, thank goodness), but I’m having trouble squaring staying on FB with my beliefs. Because I haven’t been on the site for a little while, I’ve missed some important local information. I remain conflicted but happy heavy hitters are doing this.
germy
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
It doesn’t seem that long ago that Zuckerberg was acting like he wanted to run for president.
Traveling the country on his listening tour. Interacting with the humans.
raven
” Facebook is where stupid old people go to read an Internet of hot garbage.”
Oh bullshit, get a fucking grip.
Morzer
I left Facebook about 10 years ago, because I had come to believe that it was where the sociopaths come out to play. Nothing in the past ten years has made me think otherwise.
raven
Use it, don’t use it. Who gives a fuck?
download my app in the app store mistermix
@raven: Are you mad because you’re old, or because you’re stupid? I couldn’t quite tell from your comment
I’m beginning to think you don’t understand Facebook’s role in current politics.
Morzer
@download my app in the app store mistermix: You owe me bigly for the perfectly good cup of joe that just re-entered society via my nostrils.
raven
@download my app in the app store mistermix: I stay in touch with my family and friends, so the fuck what? Sort of like I’ve had to overcome some of the fucking bullshit here to stay in touch with people I’ve come to know.
Snarki, child of Loki
“Facebook: it’s like Facepalm, but with a BOOK”
May it go the way of Geocities.
raven
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Yea, Facebook and the meeddddiiiaaaa and the Neeeeewwww Yooorkkk Times.
Betty Cracker
Happy to hear this. Facebook has wormed its way into so many everyday functions that it will be difficult if not impossible to organize a consumer-based campaign to force it to change. It sucks to have to rely on corporate behemoths to do the heavy lifting, but if that’s what it takes, so be it.
Judd Legum’s Popular Info newsletter had a piece on how networks spread wingnut misinformation on Facebook and reach an enormous number of people. Here’s an excerpt:
That’s just one purveyor of wingnut misinformation, reaching more people than The Times and The Post. There are lots more. Almost all the top publishers on Facebook are lying wingnuts.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not sure what can be done about the popularity of conservative media on Facebook. There’s a market there, just like there was for right wing talk radio.
John S.
I haven’t used Facebook in any meaningful way in years. I have found plenty of other alternative ways of keeping in touch with friends and family.
I have been asked why I’m not active on it anymore by lots of them, and my answer is simple: because it’s a cesspool of BS and I don’t have time to fight with people I knew 20 years ago about Aunt Jemima syrup (or whatever the outrage du jour is).
If Facebook ever returns to being something other than a hot cesspool of garbage, I will use it again. Otherwise, I will keep using any other alternative.
MattF
Should be noted that Facebook sign ons are done with the ‘help’ of Facebook’s servers, which means anyone who uses a Facebook sign on is being tracked by Facebook— whether or not they are a Facebook member. Facebook collects and analyzes data on everyone.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, part of the problem with social media sites is they love their “engagement” metrics so they’ll tolerate a hell of a lot of bot activity before they crack down, especially since that “engagement” and “time on site” shows advertisers how “sticky” Facebook is. For some reason the bottom-feeding right was first to leverage this weakness, but the bottom-feeding right has always been their first, starting with direct mail.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: People have to complain about something.
OzarkHillbilly
Just gotta say, not me.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: Guess again. I’d bet you’re wrong.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Sez you.
:)
raven
@MattF: OOOOO, boogie boogie.
MattF
@raven: I’m not saying it’s good data. Is Facebook marketing of bad data about you better?
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I agree the popularity of that type of content is a separate problem and not one we can expect FB to address. The problem Legum identifies is the promotion of garbage content through bots. That’s against Facebook’s own rules but they allow it to run rampant.
raven
@MattF: Careful, WordPress is tracking you.
cleek
@MattF: so does Google.
hells littlest angel
Translated into Latin, that would make a hell of a corporate motto.
Stultus populus ire ad vetus ubi legitur an Internet est calidum quisquiliarum.
Pretty classy, huh?
MattF
@raven: @cleek: No argument. I’ll even admit to using Facebook to find a long-lost cousin (hi Joyce!) and to discuss cryptic crosswords. But I think people should be aware.
cleek
all I see on FB are people i’ve chosen to see, and random ads for sneakers and guitar stuff. i don’t see any of this “hot garbage” people are always losing their shit over. that’s because FB shows you what it thinks you like.
if you’re using FB as a source of political bullshit, it’s going to show you more political bullshit. and, whaddayano, your feed is going to be full of political bullshit.
if you’re mad that your grandmother is seeing Fox News clips on FB, be mad at her for seeking them out. because people aren’t forced to watch Trump videos on FB. they choose to watch Trump videos on FB. and people will find a way to make that happen even if FB disappears.
NotMax
@raven
An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
.
;)
LAC
@Skepticat:
so you are not a stupid old person? So there may be others like you out there with same conflicts that still assess FB? Mind…blown.
Gin & Tonic
This week has seen massive, disastrous flooding in western Ukraine. Unprecedented amounts of rain have certainly contributed, but illegal logging is a major factor. Travel anywhere in the Carpathians and you see evidence of clear-cutting; talk to the locals and old-timers and it’s the first thing they bitch about. The old joke in one province is that usually the chain saw is the only thing in the garage that runs. In an impoverished area of a relatively poor country, people have to feed themselves, yes, but a lot of this is not locals trying to make a dollar, but shady operators “from away” – people on the payroll of oligarchs or organized crime. But still, you have to sell the lumber. And a report out this week from an organization called Earthsight provides compelling evidence that IKEA is a major buyer. This isn’t the first country in which they’ve been accused of this, either.
Next time you’re in the market for cheap furniture, try to find out where the materials are sourced.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@cleek: Sure, but some people have relatives who are nutty right-wingers and also post family pictures and events. So they’re pushed hot garbage along with pix and invites.
Also, I’m not as certain as you are about grandma’s “choice” – anyone who has a Fox News watching relative has probably seen them get radicalized over the years as Fox crams its bullshit into their brains. Yeah, they chose to watch Fox, but the constant lies and bullshit have slowly normalized what they probably wouldn’t have accepted as normal a few years ago. I think a Facebook feed crammed with bot-promoted hate probably has the same effect.
Pinacacci`
As far as hot garbage: went to the dentist yesterday. Dental tech couldn’t wait to tell me why everyone is wrong about masks because her sister-in-law shared a (debunked by snopes) post purporting to be from OSHA about how they don’t prevent viral infections blah blah blah. She shut the door, I’m sure because she didn’t want Dr. Diaz to overhear. She did wear a mask and face shield while she had her hands in my mouth, though.
Suspected she got this on facebook, checked it out when I got home and sure enough that’s where it’s spreading.
So the pernicious nonsense is dangerous, too.
I’ve been going there for decades but she made me nervous with her talk of not wanting to live in fear and family barbecues they’d been having…
Uncle Cosmo
Zuck Fuckerberg.
mrmoshpotato
Speaking of a wingnuts, LGF got PWNED!
How, oh how, will Charles recover from such a devastating insult? Please keep him in your thoughts during this difficult time.
cleek
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
people curate their own gardens in FB. if you don’t go looking for wingnuts, you’re not going to see any. but if you do look for wingnut nonsense and your friends are wingnuts, you’re gonna see wingnutty stuff.
The Internet Is Full Of Porn! cries woman who discovers her husband’s 15 YouPorn tabs. duh.
mad citizen
I have a fake facebook account which is useful sometimes when a newspaper or whatever site lets you sign in that way. Otherwise never used.
It seems that even though it is a giant platform, perhaps the barriers to entry aren’t really that great in this tech world–seems like flavor of the day prevails more often than not–TikTok.
MySpace
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Tend to agree, I know lots of photographers on FB, many young. Photographers use Instagram a lot, pretty much any photographer or model will trade IG accounts with you. It’s sort of like a business card these days.
waspuppet
“I’m extremely rich, therefore I don’t have to learn anything. That would possibly require me to change something that I’m doing in life, and that can’t possibly be right. After all, I’m extremely rich.”
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: Seeing as I don’t interact with facebook in any way shape or form, at best it would be tangential and minimal. To say the least, I’m not worried about it.
low-tech cyclist
This. I avoid FB like the plague*, but my wife uses it to stay in touch with friends and extended family. Since she’s from central Florida, a lot of her extended family and people she was friends with in HS can’t seem to leave off pushing toxic bullshit on FB. Which puts her in the position of having to choose between being exposed to her relatives’ toxic bullshit, or missing out on family news. It’s really ripping her apart.
What gets me about these people and FB is that there are a million places online where one can go and talk or argue politics with people you don’t know, and you don’t have to ruin longtime relationships over politics. If I piss some people off here with my views, c’est la vie, but I’m not pissing off a family member or a friend I’ve known for 40 years.
So I wonder, why don’t these people find someplace online where if they piss people off with their politics, those people are strangers rather than friends or family? Or is the point that they want to beat friends and family over the head with their politics, and that’s more important to them than familial relationships?
I don’t know. But FB has become such a toxic stew that I just don’t bother with it. I’ve tried it a couple of times, but it just doesn’t work for me.
*Which we’ve got one of for comparison purposes ;-)
Betty Cracker
@cleek: It’s true that clicks mostly drive the type of content people receive on their feeds. But what about bot-propagated content; is that an issue? Facebook apparently recognizes it as a problem because they have a rules against it…which they don’t enforce.
How about political influence campaigns, where foreign nationals pay FB in foreign currency to micro-target US voters to spread lies and exploit existing divisions? How about FB working with outfits like Cambridge Analytica? How about hate groups organizing on FB to plot murder and mayhem?
It’s a complex problem. FB has displaced legacy platforms for content distribution but has largely avoided the regulation that kept the old platforms from going off the rails to society’s detriment. That’s not a trivial issue, IMO.
RAM
Just spitballing here, but it just could be Zukerberg decided to throw in with the haters and the dummies because he’s a hater and a dummy, too.
low-tech cyclist
The Internet is for porn
The Pale Scot
FB sucks the humanity out of us and monetizes it. I don’t need to find out the people I went to Dead shows and CBGB’s with aren’t wearing masks because it’s a liberal conspiracy. The past is the past, keep the memories safe
RAM
I use Facebook to keep in touch with my high school friends and my relatives, and to post announcements whenever I put up a new post on my blog. I automatically skip over any ads. I think it must be my superpower, because I couldn’t tell you the last time an ad on Facebook registered with me. I do post links to news stories that interest me and to blog posts–like many here on BJ–and I’m extremely careful about who I friend–including relatives. I ALWAYS check their homepages before I friend anyone. I try my best to use Facebook and not llet it use me.
Betty Cracker
@RAM: Who could have guessed that a platform invented to objectify women would turn out to be so useful to a global fascist movement? ?
Capri
My partner got onto Facebook around 6 months ago for the first time. He uses it to connect with folks from his old home town and meet up with baseball and old car nerds. He tries to post a baseball-related song every day.
I’ve noticed in the past month or so he’s begun bringing up right-wing talking points: “Face masks are dangerous,” “illegals at the border,” and other similar junk. He never watches TV so me must be getting it off Facebook. It’s sad and spooky.
Emma from FL
@raven: Well, if you ask the young’ins at my academic institution, he’s right on the money. Facebook is what they use for talking to Mom and Dad.
(oops) should have read the whole thread before commenting. My very very bad.
Another Scott
A couple of things from this end:
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Keith P.
It probably has something to do with one of his private meetings with Trump
The Pale Scot,
@OzarkHillbilly:
Need to use a Snitch/firewall. FB and about 1100 ad servers are blocked on my machines. Interestingly, I’ve never gotten a warning about potential malware servers when I’m on BJ. So it’s not like advertisers don’t have a choic
“Your comment is awaiting moderation.” Well that’s interesting. Save me Watergirl-wankanobi
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Capri:
This is the phenomenon I’m talking about – the notion that people will expend the time to consciously curate and cull their social media feeds, and that they will only expose themselves to stuff consistent with their political beliefs, just doesn’t capture human nature correctly. People will do that kind of curation for their deepest interests – like, probably, your partner and baseball. The other stuff just leaks in, because it takes too much energy to cull it out.
Barry
“I don’t get Zuckerberg’s angle here. He could have done what Twitter did –walk away from political ads and give Trump a couple of tiny slaps on the wrist — and probably skated by. Instead, he decided to throw his lot in with the haters and the dummies, showing the world that Facebook is where stupid old people go to read an Internet of hot garbage.”
AWOL
@Skepticat: So your computer doesn’t get newspaper websites, email, Balloon Juice, alicublog, LGM, Vox, Baseball-Reference, Vogue, et al.?
Just Facebook?
Fascinating.
AWOL
@mrmoshpotato: I thought he was John Cole v.2? There’s another guy with Johnson’s name who is a white-supremacist Holocaust denier.
The Pale Scot,
@Pinacacci`: I would have noped right out of there and told the dentist why. These idiots can go work for a landscaper. Three friends of mine are dead (NJ/NYC). These people should be classified as involuntary organ donors and immediately harvested.
The Pale Scot,
@low-tech cyclist:
It’s better to own the libtard you know. And it’s waving the tribal flag
germy
@Pinacacci`:
I wonder if this is her passive-aggressive way of destroying her boss’s business. I’m sure she believes what she’s saying, but the fact she’s so eager to share her opinions with patients, but doesn’t want Dr. Diaz to know.
Maybe she resents working for a Dr. Diaz?
Another Scott
@The Pale Scot,: (The comma in your ‘nym this time is different, so you’re now a “new poster”, so an admin had to approve your “first post”.)
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@cleek: Right: that must explain why I get ads for the NRA whenever the topic of gun control comes up here at Ballon Juice — because the algorithms figure out what I “like”.
different-church-lady
@cleek: I thought you were smarter than this.
Feathers
The problem with Facebook is that it allows people to do things privately, secretly, and at scale, that would bring huge public shame upon them if done openly. It allows bad actors to target lies at people Facebook has identified as being especially vulnerable to believing those lies. That is what the “algorithm” is doing. Finding marks and suckers and lining them up to be fleeced, financially and emotionally. Facebook knows if you have been blocked by your family after sharing certain topics, and will feed you more of the same.
Facebook can predict if users are suicidal, but does nothing, because admitting they had the capability to alter someone’s feed to bring them back from the brink would open them up to liability. Facebook kept the feed going, even as it became obvious to the world that Facebook was being used to promote and coordinate genocide in Myanmar. They have now admitted publicly that this was the case. Facebook wants maximum growth and market penetration, even if that means actively cooperating with repressive regimes around the world.
I am really fed up with people I know who are all about social justice and anti-racism, but run their business on Facebook and Instagram. Had to point out to a friend sharing an article about IBM and the holocaust that her kids were probably going to have the same attitude towards her Facebook accounts.
Facebook began, with stolen material, as a way for Zuckerberg to shame female classmates at Harvard who he and his friends did not want to fuck. It hasn’t improved. Anyone still engaging with it is providing a fig leaf for its bad behavior. Everyone is all about boycotting Fox News, but Facebook is probably worse at this point. At least you can see the garbage on Fox News. Facebook hides it from you so that you will stick around and keep making money for them.
matt
The report that Zuckerberg voluntarily hangs out with Ben Shapiro clarifies a lot, doesn’t it?
The Pale Scot,
@Another Scott: OOppss
different-church-lady
@AWOL: That’s a big part of why FB is evil: they sucked up so much of the mindshare that people honestly believe there’s no other way to do any of these things.
germy
@matt:
Ugh. Can you imagine those conversations?
Gvg
Well I would like to get the Facebook apps off my phone and tablets. It comes preloaded which annoys me. Facebook offended me long befor I heard how toxic they are , by being too pushy. When I kept encountering sites that woildn’t Let me browse their catalog to see if I was interested unless I signed up for a Facebook account to then log onto their page…I said nope, good bye, no sale. They are an unethical company.
we need more regulation in general. Big issue.
what I don’t get about Zuckerberg, is he’s Jewish, right? How can he think it’s safe to hang around with fascists? Being rich won’t save him forever. If they get enough power, they’ll just take his money. It nags at me that he seems to be doing something so shortsighted. He’s not the only one.
Betty Cracker
@AWOL: Cole was a wingnut, but he never ran a racist hate site and promoted people like Pam Geller, who provided inspiration to terrorists like that nut in Norway who killed several dozen people. Johnson did. I’m glad he came to his senses, but to call Johnson a Cole 2.0 is a disservice to Cole 1.0, IMO.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Worth noting that You Tube used to have a massive problem with racists and got it under control. You Tube only did it because their major advertisers refused to be part of it.
Another Scott
@different-church-lady: Yup. Look at what they did to Funny or Die.
They’re evil in all kinds of ways.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Pinacacci`: I’d ask her how she can do her job when she refuses to wear required equipment but then again we have women at work who do that long before this pandemic and are in constant trouble with management. In fact Asian Karen yesterday at work walked out on the production floor with no ESD or a mask on and got chased off, again.
It really comes across like they think these things are “just the guys being silly” and not necessary for work quality or safety.
ThresherK
@The Pale Scot,: There is also an add-on for Firefox I use which keeps FB from using its little gremlins on non-FB sites. I’m not at my home PC now, but it’s another useful piece of the total puzzle suite.
Just Chuck
I started the process of deleting my FB account some time back. It’ll be permanently deleted on … July 4. Appropriate.
ema
@Gvg:
Just go to the apps page and Uninstall. That’s the first thing I did on my new phone.
Exregis
@RAM: Exactly. When people show who they are, believe them. Zuckerberg started Facebook as a sexist college site rating the fuckability of female classmates.
Today, Facebook’s business strategy is pretty much the same as the World Wide Wrestling Federation: phony aggression.
AWOL
@Betty Cracker: Then I apologize to this blog’s owner. I never read LGF in the old days and just checked a hyperlink of the site the other day and saw he was anti-Trump (and anti Charles C. Johnson).
Tenar Arha
@Gvg: It’s complicated. But the TLDR; is that Zuckerberg is an autodidact college drop-out who hasn’t taken a survey course on how the Nazis started their propaganda
ex. Like by attacking “foreign” (& poor) Jewish communities first, & then they came for the Rothschild & enobled Jewish people who thought their money made them acceptable & safe.
ETA phrasing
ETA 2 It’s worse in that the older American Jewish billionaires do know this history, & some of them are still giving $$ to the GOP.
J R in WV
@germy:
My dentists (it is a practice of three guys, two older brothers and a son/nephew) have a large office with many exam/work rooms. There are exactly 3 doors, on their private offices. There is no legitimate reason to have doors on dentist office exam work rooms. None.
The techs can’t close the door, there is no door. People can’t stare at you in the chair, I feel private enough, but no doors, none!
Not necessary — these guys are really straight up great guys — but sexual predation is much more difficult without doors. Think about it… I would never return to a dentist who wants a door to close on his exam rooms.
artem1s
I have been avoiding personal use of Faceplant for a while now. I still have active pages but never ever go there. Now I am actively avoiding using businesses that don’t have a legit website and only have a Faceplant page. I had one event that I used to coordinate that I used FB to advertise but stopped paying for the boost this year. I don’t think it hurt our participation numbers one bit. I may continue to cross post those event pages to specific user groups but honestly, I finding those group pages are so sporadically updated anymore that I may even stop doing that next year. Once it has lost it’s usefulness for promoting that one event, I may actually delete the last of my accounts and pages. My traffic was OK and didn’t generate much BS but if I clicked thru to any of my family members, their BS was suddenly plastered all over my page. This is the problem – you can control your surfing but if you have one ‘friend’ who can’t resist the click bait, you get to share all his/her garbage posts with all of your other ‘friends’. I’d rather not participate in the hate spreading even if it is not of my making.
Betty Cracker
@AWOL: No apology necessary! Johnson is generally held in high regard in these parts, and I have no doubt he’s fully reformed. Just wanted to note he came from a much darker place than garden variety turn-of-the-century wingnutitude.
Sebastian
Facebook is controlled by the Russians.
No, I am not crazy, I work in this industry.
There was a time not long ago when Facebook was in serious crisis. Russian oligarchs jumped in with a significant cash injection. Nobody gives hundreds if millions without getting influence. This was widely known, so much so that the TV show Silicon Valley changed their intro sequence to have the Facebook logo flicker between Latin and Cyrillic writing.
Then Facebook started a massive fraud campaign in which they overstated their video engagement numbers. This is THE MAIN REASON why local newspapers went under. The whole publishing industry was forced to pivot to video, laid off reporters and journalists in order to produce online video content.
Zuckerberg should be in prison, his wealth confiscated, and Facebook nationalized for the damage they have done. And this is without the enabling of genocide and fascism worldwide.
Or the fact that he is a sociopath. I don’t say this lightly: Zuckerberg is a sociopath. That fucking movie The Social Network and Jesse Eisenberg humanized him and we are paying the price ever since.
The Moar You Know
@raven: Yeah, that’s Nextdoor.
Actually, it’s not wrong. FB’s user base is definitely on the older side. And the content, sadly, even with my carefully culled group of friends, was, in fact, mostly hot garbage.
Their user base is not quite as old as Fox News, but old enough. You can find plenty of youngs on there, but they have accounts mainly to keep up with their parents. The active users run squarely in the 45-80 demographic.
I used to do a lot of band advertising on there and you can see who is actually using it (multiple logins every day) and who has accounts of convenience (logs in once every three months). And their age, general location, probable ethnicity, probable net worth…and that’s for the free version. You start paying for ads they give you ALL KINDS of data about their users.
Now that the band is defunct for the forseeable future, I cancelled my account entirely. My old work and high school friends can do without me. I won’t be back.
If I ever get back on the stage again, I’ll be finding different ways to promote. FB, frankly, in spite of the ability to target ads as well as a smart bomb, was not helping us very much. Lost in the noise of people bitching about whatever.
cain
There is also an employee revolt coming – employees don’t want to be associated with a company that ostensibly are using their skills to spread misinformation, hate, and bigotry. Telling people you work for Facebook is probably not a point of pride at this point – I work with facebook people often and they are good people but this stuff must be weighing on them…
different-church-lady
WaPo has it the Unilever has joined the party. Not for just a month, but for the rest of the year.
Barbara
@The Moar You Know:
Obviously, everything is relative, but just based on my own review (about monthly now) the people most likely to be posting are my cousins, mostly my age or older. One of my daughters still posts a bit.
I don’t think people should apologize for using Facebook but I can do without the defensive “get off my lawn” attitude for people who use and just don’t want to think about all the ways Facebook undermines privacy and distributes gross misinformation. At least be cognizant of what’s going on.
cain
@cleek:
Actually should alarm you is not that.. but the data mining that is happening. Log in through facebook, install messengers, facebook is getting a list of all your activities (for free I might add) and it will snoop on your convos via messenger and then give you ads. So even in your offline world you are getting spied on.
If you use the face recognition they have a list of faces that you have no control over. That means govt can use it to find out if you’ve been out protesting. (and not necessarily just ours)
Website you visit, if you still have that facebook token will track that you’ve been there and tell facebook about it.
It is an insidious platform.. that’s why I’m not on it.
Quaker in a Basement
About once a month, I have to send my family a link to Snopes debunking their latest garbage chain-letter Facebook post. I suppose I can be grateful it’s not more often than that. I have tried explaining to them that yes, there are manipulators out there seeding Facebook and other social media with disinformation, but they’re gulled into passing along the next bullshit post that lands on their feed. The latest was “The Irish were slaves first but nobody talks about that because bias against white people.” I’m ready to quit Facebook AND the family.
Calouste
Unilever just dropped all US advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the rest of the year. That’s a Big Biden Deal, Facebook stock is down 7% today.
(Also posted in the most recent thread, but more appropriate here. )
El Cruzado
Not to go light on Zuckerberg himself, but I’ll start believing FB is on the mend the moment they cut all ties with Peter Thiel (and hopefully shoot him to the Sun as well).
Pinacacci`
@J R in WV: apologies for necroing a dead thread but I’m not sure if you’re saying I’m making it up? My dentist has doors. He’s the best guy on earth, he fixed my crown the day after xmas while the office was being remodeled, I tripped over loose cables and I wasn’t even the only person who came in for an emergency repair that day. But there are doors in his office. I’ve never felt threatened. Apologies if I have misunderstood.
VFX Lurker
@Feathers:
Facebook and Instagram have all the customers now.