Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

White supremacy is terrorism.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

“woke” is the new caravan.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

We are aware of all internet traditions.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

You are here: Home / Politics / Media / FaceBorg Open Thread: Markus *THEE* Funopticon

FaceBorg Open Thread: Markus *THEE* Funopticon

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… The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment for this story.

Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that, over the next several years, “we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

A rebrand could also serve to further separate the futuristic work Zuckerberg is focused on from the intense scrutiny Facebook is currently under for the way its social platform operates today. A former employee turned whistleblower, Frances Haugen, recently leaked a trove of damning internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and testified about them before Congress. Antitrust regulators in the US and elsewhere are trying to break the company up, and public trust in how Facebook does business is falling…

Eric Lutz, at Vanity Fair, on Zuckerber’s ‘metaverse’:

… On Sunday, the company announced it was hiring 10,000 people in Europe to help build its metaverse, which it has—predictably — cast in utopian terms. “At its heart is the idea that by creating a greater sense of ‘virtual presence,’ interacting online can become much closer to the experience of interacting in person,” Nick Clegg and Javier Olivan wrote in a statement. “The metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social and economic opportunities.”

Ah, but will it? Facebook insinuated its way into millions of peoples’ lives on a similarly optimistic promise; over the last decade, though, we’ve watched as this supposed tool of interconnectedness promoted hate and conspiracy theories, exacerbated divisions, and turned otherwise normal people into compulsive scrollers and posters. The notion that what’s missing from contemporary life is more Facebook seems absurd. But such is the manifest destiny of Mark Zuckerberg, just one of an increasingly out-of-touch class of tech barons who seem to have convinced themselves that we might best solve the issues facing our planet by blasting off to a new one and improve our current reality by augmenting it. Zuckerberg hasn’t even been able to justify the existence of Facebook in this reality; now, he’s intent on imposing its dominance on the meta-reality he wants to usher in, whether anyone wants it or not. This, of course, has always been at the core of Facebook’s problems: an unchecked hubris that can’t be masked by a new name.


Can you find me something that combines ‘Eye of Sauron’ and ‘gaping anus’? Maybe with a suggestion of a hidden 6-6-6, for the OG conspiracy nutters?

Reader Interactions

133Comments

  3. 3.

    Leto

    That “mark” looks like every dystopian future robot head/optical sensor that eventually rises against us to enslave us.

  4. 4.

    piratedan

    rebranding…… when you refuse to fix what’s wrong, so you just change the name hoping people will forget.

  6. 6.

    Leto

    OT: David Corn right now on Joy Reid’s show essentially calling Manchin a liar. Back to our regularly scheduled bashing of Fuckerburg.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    AFAIK the name Blackwater is still up for grabs. Also too Enron.

    Late last night I offered up Supercuddlypuppyfunland.

    //

    Although they’ll probably settle on something anodyne such as DigiLyfe.

  8. 8.

    RaflW

    Major brands changing name don’t have a good track record, do they? OK, Kentucky Fried became KFC but it was already kinda known as that and unless Facebook is planning to be called FB, I just don’t think it makes sense.

    No one really cares if Arthur Andersen Consulting becomes (or spins off? can’t remember, which relates to my point) Accenture. They are B to B.

    But a huge company that is directly consumer facing, it feels sort of either desperate to shift attention away from their malfeasance, or the sort of consultant-driven rudderlessness that wouldn’t surprise me re Zuck and Sandberg.

  14. 14.

    RaflW

    More broadly, I do not want a Mildred Montag-like metaverse to disappear into. Between this shit and the new robot dog with a f*king insanely large gun attached to it’s back, yeah becoming an analog-dial steampunk is feeling much more attractive this evening.

  23. 23.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Baud:   I will follow you to the ends of the Earth, and even set my hair on fire if you think that would help purge that word from not only English, but all languages worldwide.

  24. 24.

    germy

    BREAKING: I just added Mark Zuckerberg as a defendant in my lawsuit against Facebook.

    Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data.

    — AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) October 20, 2021

  28. 28.

    Emma from Miami

    Open thread? I have a question.

    I have decided it’s time I got back to blogging, if only to keep my sanity. For those that blog, what software do you use? I don’t think Word plays well in this setting. And Word drives me nuts.

  32. 32.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax:

    AYDIBTU.All Your Data Is Belong To Us.

    //

    Because you dumped every detail of your life onto our site.  Dumbass.™

  33. 33.

    RaflW

    @Baud: Eh, okay. I guess they’ll seem ever so slightly more anonymous/distances from the Facebook product as they gobble up other tech, if they’re called Gork or something.

  43. 43.

    SpaceUnit

    I’d also like to take this opportunity to boast that I’ve never had a Facebook account.

    Shouldn’t that qualify me for some sort of BJ medal?  A complimentary beverage?

  45. 45.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, in Virginia…

    re: Monmouth poll, VA Dem source notes that the pollster found the same four years ago – from September to October, Northam falling from a narrow lead to a tie. (He won by 9.)

    Big Q for Ds remains whether they can repeat that 2017 turnout surge.https://t.co/hmTrEa6N3x pic.twitter.com/4nq9UMitNA

    — David Weigel (@daveweigel) October 20, 2021

    No lie told. Turnout matters!

    Good polling is getting more difficult every day. We have to fight for every vote, every time.

    (via nycsouthpaw)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  47. 47.

    mrmoshpotato

    @SpaceUnit:

    I’d also like to take this opportunity to boast that I’ve never had a Facebook account.

    Shouldn’t that qualify me for some sort of BJ medal? A complimentary beverage?

    Same.  I’ll take a handle of Captain Morgan.

  48. 48.

    Roger Moore

    @mrmoshpotato: ​
     

    Because you dumped every detail of your life onto our site.

    That isn’t why. Facebook continues to track you when you leave their site. They can continue to track you on any web site that has options to like or share on Facebook, and any site that uses them as their ad network. The can also track whenever someone you know discusses you on one of their platforms or posts your picture or video of you there. And all that stuff applies even if you’ve never set up an account on Facebook or one of their many subsidiaries.

  50. 50.

    cain

    if it is going to be a meta company it should be “In Your Face book” IYFB

    I bet he’s going to name BalloonJuice.

  55. 55.

    Ken

    Is this because all the young people think of Facebook as “where my grandparents post photos”?  They’re trying to become “cool” so the “hep cats” will “hang out” at their domain.

  56. 56.

    thruppence

    @Emma from Miami: John Scalzi over at whatever.scalzi.com (can’t link, on my phone) had a post up on the 11th singing his annual praise of WordPress. He’s used it continuously since 2008, which is like a century in blog years. You might want to read what he had to say.

  57. 57.

    Leto

    @Benw: Black Widow was meh. Personally think Florence Pugh and David Harbour stole the movie, and would watch more of their characters. Fast forward through the credits to the very end for the teaser (only 1 teaser).

  58. 58.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Leto:

    You can go sit in the corner with people who proclaim they don’t own a tv, the vegans, and crossfitters. 

    WTF?  Why do you own vegans and Crossfitters?

  63. 63.

    Leto

    @Ken: There’s that, but FB has also fucked up the algorithms for Instagram. They’ve made it almost impossible for the small business users/artists to utilize it because they essentially need to continually post videos to get seen. FB changed the algorithms to try to compete with TikTok and all it’s done is drive people away. They bought out Instagram and then just drove it into the ground.

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Criticizing people for sharing their life on Facebook is like criticizing smokers for getting lung cancer.  Yes, starting wasn’t a brilliant decision, but both businesses stay profitable because they’re incredibly addictive.  Once people start, it’s incredibly hard for them to stop.  And there is a whole second-hand problem, where even those who don’t personally partake wind up suffering.

  71. 71.

    Another Scott

    I’m sorry to say effective immediately @DPRK_News is defunct. I founded the account in 2009.

    Twitter decided today that it violates their rules. I’m not going to label a parody a parody. That moots the point. It gives away the joke.

    The DPRK never complained. One of you did. pic.twitter.com/29C6B8i53P

    — President Dawg (@PresidentDawg) October 20, 2021

    It seems to still be up though. Dunno what that means.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Roger Moore:

    And there is a whole second-hand problem, where even those who don’t personally partake wind up suffering.

    And then the other problem, which is that the tabaccy companies are, y’know, funding the death squads that wanna murder us all. But hey, at least I get that clean nicotine buzz in the morning, the evening, before and after meals, at coffee breaks, right before I go to bed, and … and … and …..

    Facebook actively supports fascism.  That ought to be fucking enough to get people to quit.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack

    @Emma from Miami:

    WordPress is a pretty good platform for basic blogging. (Most of the criticism it gets—including here—is due to advanced features and add-ons.) It’s easy to get started, and there are a lot of tutorials, support forums, YouTube videos and other resources. You can start out with a free blog account at WordPress—say, yourblog.wordpress.com—then get your own domain and hosting service and go big-time with yourblog.com.

    One of many starter articles: “Set Up Your Blog in Five Steps.”

    What software you use to actually write your blog posts—Word or something else—is a somewhat different issue. That’s going to be the input for the blog site, much as the comment box here provides the input for the threads.

  84. 84.

    JoyceH

    @Roger Moore:

    Once people start, it’s incredibly hard for them to stop.

    And for most of us, there’s no particular need to stop. I’m not offered the ‘dark side of Facebook’, the ‘suggested for you’ sort of thing I get is cute kitten videos. And so many local businesses and governments now have a presence on Facebook – it’s where I go to watch my local health care system’s COVID town halls, for instance. The Hibachi Box posts their specials and the school posts that the buses are running late. For so many different entities and activities, it’s your one-stop shop.

  87. 87.

    Chetan Murthy

    I know this is the wrong post for it, being about politics (and usually I can’t get politics off my mind) but I just watched Dune (the new one) and had a question for those who have seen it but not read the book.

    I remember when I saw the first Lord of The Rings movie, and thought: “Gee, it’s really swell and all, but I can’t imagine that anybody who hadn’t read the book had a f*ckin’ clue what was goin’ on”.  And I kinda felt that way about Dune, too.  Don’t get me wrong: I’ve read Dune I-don’t-know-how-many-times, so I noticed that the dinner scene was missing, no greenhouse, that the visit to the spice factory was wrong, that there were myriad little bits that were just *different* from the book.  But at some level, the story didn’t seem to knit together the way the book did.

    Maybe I’m just too much of a nerd, and the uninitiated thought it was Great!  Which, I wouldn’t mind.  I mean, I really liked the book.

    Anyway, that’s my question: “Do those who never read the book, understand the story the movie was trying to tell?”

  91. 91.

    Poe Larity

    Zuck should just buy North Korea and be done with it. He’d be a nuclear power and Kim could move to Hollywood.

  94. 94.

    Chetan Murthy

    @NotMax: Well, yeah.  Exactly.  Other examples: we see the painting of The Old Duke, we see repeated shots of the bull’s head, but no blood on the horns (that I could see) and no backstory.  Duke Leto doesn’t get either much screen time, or much interaction with Jessica.  And on and on.  Sure, for somebody who’s read the book, the shot of the bull’s head brings in the backstory; but what of the viewer who’s not read the book?

  96. 96.

    Immanentize

    I think Zuck should just go with the original Harvard days name:

    Hot or Not.

    That is still his primary concern.

  101. 101.

    Leto

    @Benw: I could really do a Crimson Dynamo/Red Guardian series. He’s so good!

    @Chetan Murthy: I was honestly hoping that with it being two movies, they might be able to bring more of the story to the screen. I could tell things were already off just from the trailer, but was trying to give it the benefit of the doubt. I don’t need a word for word recreation, but I’ll watch it soon enough and judge.

  105. 105.

    zhirem

    @Baud: to quote some character, whose name escapes me, and my unwillingness to run this down presently, I recall a Bob Newhart show of some flavor where some minor character local yokel says to a young lady: “I’d eat bees for you.”

    Peace,

    – NOoC

  110. 110.

    Leto

    @NotMax: Nah, he’s too fit! Maybe Liet Kynes though…

    Watched the second trailer and idk, they’re just expanding roles of people who didn’t have roles. Does it add to the story? No clue yet. Avalune and I just finished “Only Murders in the Building”, Hulu’s show that stars Steve Martin, Martin Short (affectionately known by their power couple name of Steve Short), and Selena Gomez. It was a really good show. Great acting, very good writing, and they set up the second season just perfectly. I would def watch it again.

  111. 111.

    SpaceUnit

    @zhirem:

    Pretty sure the character’s name was Larry.  He had a brother named Darrell.  And another Brother named Darrell.

     

    ETA:  I actually got to meet Bob Newhart once, very briefly.  His manager was the biggest dick I ever came across.

  112. 112.

    Another Scott

    @Chetan Murthy: I haven’t read the book(s). I didn’t really understand what was going on in the version with Sting.  I felt the same way about 2001, but I think the book came out after the movie.

    They’re different art forms and ultimately have to stand on their own, of course. Sometimes the spectacle is enough, sometimes it isn’t.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  113. 113.

    LeftCoastYankee

    Getting out the magic 8 ball, I predict they will create a parent shell company (e.g. like Google and Alphabet) with a bunch of “future tech” divisions, and slowly shift their personal shares/wealth out of New FB into the parent company and/or out of the organization completely.

    They will use the “future tech” horseshit to keep the stock prices stable while they do this, and keep the gullible rich and institutional investors excited about FB Parent Co.

    Then in the not too distant future they will spin off New FB as a standalone company/headache, blaming it on government regulation and antitrust fears.  We will all be scandalized by the brave “leakers” who then tell us FB’s business model sucked and didn’t justify it’s stock market valuation.

  114. 114.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Leto:

    Nah, he’s too fit!

    I think Leto meant Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, not Baron Harkonnen.  In the book, IIRC, he was described as quite trim, fit well into his military uniform. But I might be misremembering.

  115. 115.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Another Scott: Oh, nice!  Well, if you don’t read the book before you see Dune (that is,if you see Dune at all), I’ll be curious what you think.

    The Guardian review was …. *gushing*, which is what prompted me to ask the question.  It seemed to not really address the question “is it good storytelling”, so rapt was it, with the spectacle. Which, sure, the spectacle is pretty thrilling.

  116. 116.

    namekarB

    Can you find me something that combines ‘Eye of Sauron’ and ‘gaping anus’? Maybe with a suggestion of a hidden 6-6-6, for the OG conspiracy nutters?

    I once entered a traffic circle with the same design. Had a helluva time getting out of it

  122. 122.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @Chetan Murthy: I read the book years ago & Im going to see it Monday or Tuesday. I’ll see if I can’t post my opinion on this issue on some late night non-political thread then

  123. 123.

    Kalakal

    @Just Chuck: The truly weird thing about that David Lynch movie was it spent about an hour and 15 minutes covering the first chapter  and then tried to cover the remaining 400 pages of the book in an hour. It was beyond incomprehensible. Had it been about 30 hours long it would probably have been really good as it was it was just a self indulgent mess

  124. 124.

    Freemark

    Just change it to Skynet 2.0. There is a NSA program called SKYNET that “that performs machine learning analysis on communications data to extract information about terror suspects customers” (Wikipedia). And of course there is the Skynet from Terminator that takes over civilization and destroys it. Both seem directly relevant to Facebook.

  125. 125.

    Bill Arnold

    @Just Chuck:
    Herbert’s description of mind/time/possiblefutures was informed by psilocybin mushrooms. (And by the biology of fungi in general.)
    David Lynch was a pretty good fit for the really Weird bits of Dune. (Might be best to see the Lynch Dune on mushrooms; not sure.)

  129. 129.

    BigJimSlade

    @NotMax: CIA – Complete Internet Assholes.

    Funfact: my first internet service provider was the The CIA – The Complete Internet Access.

    It was fun the have the email address [username]@thecia.net

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