Facebook experiences

zero · 2019-04-12 11:06:29

Social media is often referred to in general discussions so perhaps observations about Facebook might be posted below.

I joined Facebook from Oct 17 to Jan 19. Started contacting friends and family. Thought they might tell other past friends they knew about me but they didn’t. You have to seek out people and request friendship. Several I thought would be interested never accepted me. 2 main reasons for that: They are too involved now in their FB world now to have time for reviving offline friendships; They look at the number of FB friends I had and conclude I’m a sad loner.

I then joined some groups of interest and learned new things and got latest news and this kept me on FB for quite a while. But then I realised none of it was essential, it was nearly all trivial. I can’t be satisfied by short conversation pieces for long before I need something more substantial. I joined in discussions, gave my views when asked, did quite well for my comments being liked, but found that nobody was much interested when I started a topic or asked for community’s views on something. The groups are like clubs where you are respected if you’ve been there years and say only the tried and tested things. You can’t be controversial, dare to be different, challenge the leading topic writers. You’re ignored and expected to join another group I think. I joined plenty and it was the same in them all.

I then started to receive a lot of friend requests and thought why not, I don’t know these people but let’s see where this leads. I soon had 1500 friends. I was crazy to accept so many and my news feed was clogged up with all kinds of strange stuff. I could close my eyes, point my mouse and find something I’d never heard of every time. But it was all trivia and ads for dating and consuming mostly. So I decided to delete all these fake friends but only got about half way through and found I couldn’t delete any more. I eventually came to realize that FB wanted me to have more friends so I would interact more and then perhaps even click on a sponsored link. I asked FB to fix my faulty system, but FB don’t reply to help requests, they just direct all “contact us” requests to help pages. On the surface then I had about 500 friends, all good looking and I started to get more friends requests, slightly more genuine I think, from people who commented on my posts now and then, but were probably attracted by the fact that I must be worth knowing cos of having so many friends!

I decided to cut down my time on FB from the 2 or 3 hours a day that it had become, and just watched some local news and listened to some latest music releases. So was down to an hour a day. But the FB changed their algorithms yet again (they do it a lot), so I was not being shown the latest posts I was interested in but seeing related items instead. It was so difficult to find what I wanted to read, even though I was still subscribed to the same topics. I found ways to click in different places to get it more like I wanted but then the algorithm changed again and I realised FB were not rewarding me because I did not comment on related posts, click any adverts, make any new friends, use new features they pushed or generally join in with the “FB community”.

What I’m saying is that FB has more control than you imagine over the information you are presented with. Everything is manipulated to force (yes force) you to like things, accept friends, comment (so you attract interaction) and use all their features. I posted very little personal stuff so I don’t know how exactly they manipulate that but it certainly will not be good. SOCIAL media – you’re anti-social if you don’t interact the way the controllers want you to.

Since I cancelled my account (there’s no way of knowing if FB actually deleted it) I have not missed it at all. I have more time for real things, I made no real friends online so I don’t miss anybody. I get the news I need from RSS and talking to people in real life. I have made new friends who also don’t use Facebook and who also don’t need it and they mostly have SMILES on their faces. (Remember those? I don’t think some FB users do.)

zero · 2019-04-12 11:09:20

Another thing I’ve been noticing (perhaps others can confirm) is that FB users communicate with other FB users and less and less with non-FB users. Because much of their communication is on FB, the FB users carry over their typical behaviour to non-FB users. This manifests as:

Not replying to emails (FBers use FB Messenger or just comment on posts. Perhaps they don’t even check their email anymore)
Less physical contact (whereas calling at each other’s house would have been like for like before FB, they don’t see the need any more and they’ve accepted online contact as enough)
Gradual distancing (their online interests take precedence over real life. They even prefer online chat to face-to-face chat).

I see a gap opening between FB users and non-FB users that will only get bigger. I think there’s a suspicion of non-FBers — what are they hiding? Why are they so private about their personal lives and not putting anything online? Why are they not interested in me and my online personality? (Because if they were interested, they’d join FB, wouldn’t they?) And generally, I think they think that because FB is the norm for them, then it should be the norm for everyone, so non-FBers must be a weird.

colak · 2019-04-12 13:12:37

We recently had similar problems with people actually not checking their emails opting instead for fb. Even telephony is a problem where some of our friends insist of just using viber which although I have installed, I do not have it on all the time. I think that we are getting too old.

Destry · 2019-04-17 16:00:54

15 months of fresh hell

bici · 2019-04-17 17:52:33

#FARCEBOOK

I wonder how many likes this twerp gets

Last edited by bici (2019-04-17 18:04:52)

Destry · 2019-04-22 13:41:07

This kind of stunning evidence about how ruinous Facebook is to democracy just keeps piling up, and Suckerberg keeps getting away with everything liked the privileged spoiled child he is.

‘Multiple crimes took place during the referendum, and they took place on Facebook.’

Welsh jounalist, Caroline Cadwalladr, who exposed the illegal facebook ads around Brexit. TED talk

Destry · 2019-04-22 14:43:39

Also relevant, We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads.

But we all know that, right?

The best thing anyone can do with Facebook is quit it ASAP, and try to convince everyone else they know to do the same. Along the way, hopefully, it will be crippled by legal suits too. The seige needs made from every angle.

zero · 2019-04-22 17:37:15

The structure and business models of AI and its algorithms will no doubt be argued to be politically neutral by those using it, but the way it is developing and being used is very capitalist or elitist. The capitalist system protects the owners of corporations through the shares system by removing the owners’ liability to prosecution for the suffering they cause via their corporations. So, for example, it allows Suckerberg to turn down requests to appear at hearings around the world, even though all decent human beings intuitively know he is twisting and manipulating human values for personal gain. Those algorithms and AI have, like the corporations in which they operate, an above-the-law status disconnected from those that make and use them. If you’re in the privileged position to benefit from this AI you can literally get away with murder – just as political elites have been doing for all time.

Although we can act within the system and make some beneficial changes, AI, as Zeynap describes it, would almost inevitably prevent any community or networking resistance because it is so individually targeted. On Faecebook I saw very little activity wrt resistance against 5G, Smartmeters or Vaccines. I posted about these in groups I thought would be concerned but only found a few people in agreement. The majority were swallowing the status quo as being benign – evidence to me that they were already strongly under the influence of the algorithms.

Here’s a link to something I think is a serious answer that might beat the system – the InPower Movement. It’s about using ancient law to challenge people in power who are affecting our health and well-being.

bici · 2019-04-22 17:58:07

You had me, until the link provided wants us to opt out of vaccinations.

We are having an epidemic of measles outbreaks in my province because of these bat crazy notions. What next? Polio will make a comeback?

colak · 2019-04-22 22:54:49

Destry wrote #317726:

Also relevant, We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads.

But we all know that, right?

The best thing anyone can do with Facebook is quit it ASAP, and try to convince everyone else they know to do the same. Along the way, hopefully, it will be crippled by legal suits too. The seige needs made from every angle.

This is one of those strange coincidences:) Just before I clicked to read the new posts in this thread I was reading this.

zero · 2019-04-23 22:57:51

bici wrote #317729:

You had me, until the link provided wants us to opt out of vaccinations.

There’s an increasing amount of censorship of anti-vaccine information – good information about what vaccines contain, how they only target 5% of viruses, how 95% of vaccines only have the effect of weakening the immune system, etc. Vaccines can be effective if properly targeted, but big pharma wants everybody to have mandatory vaccines — big bucks. They are using the measles “epidemic” (315 deaths out of 350 million Americans) as “proof” that anti-vaccine campaigners are crazy and are successfully getting their info banned from media outlets. This is extreme censorship, stifling of debate. If they can successfully achieve this ban with AI, they will do it with who knows what. Trying to keep this on-topic: Faecesbook are already doing it

Edit: Because it is hard to find reliable vaccine information on search engines now, here’s a link. Dr Merola is very sussed out about preventative medicine and health, uses scientific evidence to back all his articles and is a constant thorn in big pharma’s side. I’ve been reading his newsletters for 12 years or more, so can vouch for him, although you might call that bias I suppose. Measles is one article, there are many more on this site.

Last edited by zero (2019-04-23 23:32:38)

bici · 2019-04-24 00:06:01

lots of polio still rampant in the modern world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio

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#1 2019-04-12 11:06:29