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7 June 2022
[zuck] The Only Good Thing Left About Facebook … A look at Facebook Groups – It’s best feature? ‘Several Facebook-group administrators and members described to me the conundrum of relying on an imperfect platform to create strong, and for many people invaluable, communities. They understand that their groups exist on a controversial site, but they also say that not many alternatives have the capacity to build fellowship the way that Facebook does. “As someone who really tries to live the most harm-reduced life possible, there’s this almost defeat I find when I think about using Facebook,” Alexx Duvall, a co-founder of “NYC Plant Friends Hangout,” told me over the phone. Even though the group, which plans real-life and virtual events for plant lovers, has an Instagram account and an email listserv, Duvall finds that the community it cultivates on Facebook is ultimately more active.’
8 February 2022
[fb] The end of the metaverse hopefully … Some analysis on the future of Facebook/Meta. ‘Basically, Facebook and Instagram is Squid Game, the algorithm is the big piggy bank, and the last three traumatized contestants in tuxedos armed with knives are an out-of-work magician, an antivax chiropractor, and a QAnon mom from Tuscon who runs a drop-shipping pyramid scheme. Which, of course, is not a platform that users will want to use. But it’s all Facebook has to fall back on now that its attempts to “build the metaverse” have been exposed as an absolutely ridiculous bluster.’
25 November 2021
[socialmedia] I Made the World’s Blandest Facebook Profile, Just to See What Happens … A look at the toxicity of Facebook. ‘After just two weeks on the platform, consuming only content that Facebook’s recommendation systems selected for me, I found myself at the bottom of a rabbit hole not of extremism but of utter trash-bad advice, stolen memes, shady businesses, and sophomoric jokes repeated over and over. Facebook isn’t just dangerous, I learned. It doesn’t merely have the ability to shape offline reality for its billions of users. No, Facebook is also-and perhaps for most people-senseless and demoralizing.’
14 October 2019
[socialmedia] The machine always wins: what drives our addiction to social media … A Long Read on social media addiction. ‘Part of what keeps us hooked is the so-called variability of rewards: what the US computer scientist Jaron Lanier calls “carrot and shtick”. The Twittering Machine gives us both positive and negative reinforcements, and the unpredictable variation of its feedback is what makes it so compulsive. Like a mercurial lover, the machine keeps us needy and guessing; we can never be sure how to stay in its good graces. Indeed, the app manufacturers increasingly build in artificial-intelligence machine-learning systems so that they can learn from us how to randomise rewards and punishments more effectively. This sounds like an abusive relationship. Indeed, much as we describe relationships as having gone toxic, it is common to hear of “Twitter toxicity”. Toxicity is a useful starting point for understanding a machine that hooks us with unpleasure, because it indexes both the pleasure of intoxication and the danger of having too much.’
27 February 2019
[moderation] The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America … this long article about the working lives of Facebook moderators is very dark and worth your time. ‘When I ask about the risks of contractors developing PTSD, a counselor I’ll call Logan tells me about a different psychological phenomenon: “post-traumatic growth,” an effect whereby some trauma victims emerge from the experience feeling stronger than before. The example he gives me is that of Malala Yousafzai, the women’s education activist, who was shot in the head as a teenager by the Taliban. “That’s an extremely traumatic event that she experienced in her life,” Logan says. “It seems like she came back extremely resilient and strong. She won a Nobel Peace Prize… So there are many examples of people that experience difficult times and come back stronger than before.”’
13 November 2017
[politics] What Facebook Did to American Democracy … Alexis Madrigal on Facebook’s impact on the 2016 US election. A few days before the election Silverman and fellow BuzzFeed contributor Lawrence Alexander traced 100 pro-Donald Trump sites to a town of 45,000 in Macedonia. Some teens there realized they could make money off the election, and just like that, became a node in the information network that helped Trump beat Clinton.
Whatever weird thing you imagine might happen, something weirder probably did happen. Reporters tried to keep up, but it was too strange. As Max Read put it in New York Magazine, Facebook is “like a four-dimensional object, we catch slices of it when it passes through the three-dimensional world we recognize.” No one can quite wrap their heads around what this thing has become, or all the things this thing has become.
“Not even President-Pope-Viceroy Zuckerberg himself seemed prepared for the role Facebook has played in global politics this past year,” Read wrote.
And we haven’t even gotten to the Russians.
28 April 2017
[social] Climbing Out Of Facebook's Reality Hole … Buzzfeed on Facebook’s virtual reality projects … ‘The Facebook CEO took the stage at the company’s annual F8 developers conference a little more than an hour after news broke that the so-called Facebook Killer had killed himself. But if you were expecting a somber mood, it wasn’t happening. Instead, he kicked off his keynote with a series of jokes. It was a stark disconnect with the reality outside, where the story of the hour concerned a man who had used Facebook to publicize a murder, and threaten many more. People used to talk about Steve Jobs and Apple’s reality distortion field. But Facebook, it sometimes feels, exists in a reality hole. The company doesn’t distort reality – but it often seems to lack the ability to recognize it. The problem with connecting everyone on the planet is that a lot of people are assholes.’
25 January 2016
[fb] Why Facebook Won, and Other Hard Truths … some interesting thoughts on Facebook’s success against the Open Web … ‘People read the web now at the level they read email – they look at a lot of stuff. And what they want (and what many people continue to shame them for) is a standard interface that allows them to do that without feeling stressed. You want to win against Facebook? Let go of the idea of people reading your stuff on your site, and develop or support interfaces that put your readers in control of how they view the web instead of giving the control to the people with the servers. Support people looking into federated recommendation systems. Make friends with the idea of full copies of your stuff flowing across the web instead of links.’
20 January 2016
[fb] How to block the companies tracking you on Facebook … useful step-by-step guide to improving your privacy with Facebook
8 January 2016
[fb] An Inside Look at a Facebook Data Center …. ‘Maybe this is why some of the moments where conversation switched from the technical operations to Facebook-speak felt so awkward, but unintentionally so, like when Facebook’s algorithm decides to fill your Year in Review with pictures of an ex-boyfriend. It’s a brand that becomes harder and harder to empathize with the more it insists on trying to be empathetic, maybe because it’s not clear if there’s a distinction between an empathy engine and a branding engine or maybe because I am generationally disinclined to trust anything that’s too big to fail.’
26 October 2015
[web] God Tier: Facebook moms run the meme game … a look at the rise and fall of the Image Macro … ‘Post-memes seem targeted at parents, Christians, and conservatives. Again, this is just the core audience. But many expressions are unexplored in post-memes. A Minion”Š-”Šor Garfield or Tweety or Snoopy”Š-”Šnever means “I’m cooler than you.” It never supports the young against the old. It never seeks to upset the status quo. It is never sexual. And it is never truly weird. Until it is.’
9 April 2015
[social media] Many, many Facebook users still don’t know that their news feeds are filtered by an algorithm … a look at how Facebook automatically filters your news feed … ‘ Without understanding Facebook’s algorithm, these participants resorted to developing other theories for why their social lives changed on the site. Some blamed themselves for being bad at Facebook. “These participants felt that they missed friends’ stories because they were scrolling too quickly or visiting Facebook too infrequently,” the researchers write. Others figured that their friends had stopped sharing with them. “I have never seen her post anything!” one study participant said of a friend. “And I always assumed that I wasn’t really that close to that person, so that’s fine. What the hell?!”’
5 February 2015
[facebook] The Creepiest Things You Can Do on Facebook … ‘Facebook has essentially just dropped this one right in your lap. If you go to someone’s profile, look to the left. If they have chosen to keep their relationship status hidden, you’ll see a small line prompting you to prod them for that very same sensitive information they’ve actively chosen to keep private. The future!’
[tags: Facebook][ permalink][ Comments Off on The Creepiest Things You Can Do on Facebook]
30 December 2014
[joke] Possibly The Best And Most Convoluted Knock Knock Joke Ever… a masterclass in how to derail a joke with Facebook comments … ‘Knock Knock. Who’s There? Irish Stu…’
10 November 2014
Nauseating Inspirational Bullshit From Facebook … a tumblr collecting annoying inspirational quotes from Facebook. 
25 August 2014
Getting to News Feed Zero … What happens if you hide everything on Facebook? … ‘Then, after 500 hidden posts or so, something strange happened. Facebook needed to take a breather. There are no more posts to show right now, it said. I felt like Columbus setting out to find the edge of the Earth, and succeeding. As someone who used to explore the boundaries of video game maps-hoping to find a glitch in the system that would unlock some heretofore unexplored wonders in lieu of actually playing the game itself-this felt momentous. And then it felt lonely…’
24 August 2014
I Quit Liking Things On Facebook for Two Weeks. Here’s How It Changed My View of Humanity … ‘Since I stopped liking altogether, though, my Facebook stream is more akin to an eclectic dinner party. There is conversation, there is disagreement (mostly) without hostility, and there is connection. It seems as though I am getting more of what I actually want rather than just being served more extreme versions of what I Like.’
23 August 2014
I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here’s What It Did to Me … ‘My News Feed took on an entirely new character in a surprisingly short amount of time. After checking in and liking a bunch of stuff over the course of an hour, there were no human beings in my feed anymore. It became about brands and messaging, rather than humans with messages. Likewise, content mills rose to the top. Nearly my entire feed was given over to Upworthy and the Huffington Post. As I went to bed that first night and scrolled through my News Feed, the updates I saw were (in order): Huffington Post, Upworthy, Huffington Post, Upworthy, a Levi’s ad, Space.com, Huffington Post, Upworthy, The Verge, Huffington Post, Space.com, Upworthy, Space.com.’
24 June 2014
21 Screengrabs That Will Make You Quit Facebook Immediately … ‘U have a brain us it!!! Don’t make me ur brain that thinks for u.’
2 January 2014
14 kinds of Facebook people you want to block, but you can’t because they’re sort of your friends … ‘That guy who posts way too much… Get a life! Note that “too much” is defined as “more than you”.’
29 November 2013
7 Ways To Be Insufferable On Facebook … the humblebrag, image-crafting, attention craving – a pretty comprehensive list of annoying approaches to Facebook … ‘A Facebook status is annoying if it primarily serves the author and does nothing positive for anyone reading it.’
5 November 2013
Facebook of the Dead … ‘When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?’
10 September 2013
Facebook is just fine … How to hide your way to a better Facebook … ‘My newsfeed is almost all signal. This is, in part, because I am ruthless. If you are overtly negative (which is different than having opinions differing from my own), you get hidden. If I don’t find value in your postings, you get hidden. If you’re a high school friend I friended just to be nice, I hide. I hide unhesitatingly. I hide remorselessly. Hiding is your super power. Hiding is one of those few pure joys of the Internet through which”Š-”Šamidst the near-endless entropy of online content”Š-”Šyou can take a stand, push back in a way that meaningfully affects the data you see.’
14 February 2013
Why Facebook Makes You Feel Miserable … ‘The most common cause of Facebook frustration came from users comparing themselves socially to their peers, while the second most common source of dissatisfaction was "lack of attention" from having fewer comments, likes and general feedback compared to friends.’
27 December 2012
Here’s How Facebook Gives You Up To The Police … a fascinating look at what Facebook hands over to the Police after a legal subpoena … ‘Your entire Facebook browsing history – When you click on someone’s profile, it’s logged. Other Facebook users don’t know you’re looking at their profiles, but Facebook itself most assuredly does. Or rather can, if the police come asking.’
26 June 2012
[tags: Facebook][ permalink][ Comments Off on Facebook Just Changed Your Email Address – How To Fix It.]
19 June 2012
Entire Facebook Staff Laughs As Man Tightens Privacy Settings … “Look, he’s clicking ‘Friends Only’ for his e-mail address. Like that’s going to make a difference!” howled infrastructure manager Evan Hollingsworth, tears streaming down his face, to several of his doubled-over coworkers. “Oh, sure, by all means, Jason, ‘delete’ that photo. Man, this is so rich.”
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22 March 2012
Resume, references, password: Job seekers get asked in interviews to provide Facebook logins … ‘[Justin] Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn’t see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information. Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn’t want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.’
[tags: Facebook, Work][ permalink][ Comments Off on Would You Handover Your Facebook Login To A Potential Employer?]
26 September 2011
[web] The Relative Sizes of the World’s Largest Photo Libraries: ‘…this year people will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook, suggesting around 20% of all photos this year will end up there.’
29 June 2011
[internet] Social Fax Machines … James Shelley On Social Media … ‘Imagine that you were one of 300 people with fax machines. Each one of you program your respective machines to carbon copy every fax to all 299 other machines. Then, together, you go about your day diligently reading the faxes that pour in.’ [via Sore Eyes]
25 May 2011
Bradley Manning’s Facebook Page … I can’t help myself but be fascinated by this archive of Bradley Manning’s Facebook Wall … ‘Manning’s Facebook postings are a vivid, if partial, portrait of his life in the military and of the political and social issues that he followed closely. They reflect his commitment to gay rights and defiance of the military’s ban on openly gay or lesbian soldiers. They track the anguish in his personal life. And they conclude with an entry, put up in Manning’s name by his aunt, explaining his arrest with a link to a WikiLeaks website.’
23 May 2011
FaceFacts … Jason Scott on Facebook … ‘[Facebook] is like an ever-burning fire of our memories, gleefully growing as we toss endless amounts of information and self and knowledge into it, only to have it added to columns of advertiser-related facts we do not see and do not control and do not understand.’
5 April 2011
[books] James Ellroy Signs Off From Facebook … ‘Sayonara Motherfuckers!!!’
10 February 2011
Is Facebook Making Us Sad? … ‘Facebook is, after all, characterized by the very public curation of one’s assets in the form of friends, photos, biographical data, accomplishments, pithy observations, even the books we say we like. Look, we have baked beautiful cookies. We are playing with a new puppy. We are smiling in pictures (or, if we are moody, we are artfully moody.) Blandness will not do, and with some exceptions, sad stuff doesn’t make the cut, either. The site’s very design-the presence of a “Like” button, without a corresponding “Hate” button-reinforces a kind of upbeat spin doctoring.’
18 January 2011
[Facebook] Mary’s Welcome to Facebook … ‘Kellen, why did you sign me up for this?’
21 November 2010
Who’s going to win X Factor Based On Facebook Likes … ‘Facebook isn’t going to show lost votes (its rare for people to UNLIKE) and its less effort to hit a like button than pay to vote, but should still reflect increasing popularity, so keep an eye on those ‘LIKES’.’
18 November 2010
Facebook: Privatising The Internet, One Poke At A Time … Andrew Orlowski on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook … ‘At a typically oversold launch event yesterday, Zuckerberg complained about the “friction” generated by having to compose a simple email. You had to type a subject line in, he said, incorrectly, making people wonder if he’d ever used email himself. It’s too formal, he concluded. The poor love – I’m surprised he hasn’t thought about suing the developers of POP3 for emotional distress, as well as repetitive strain injury.’
10 November 2010
Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook … interesting look at the cautious was some teenagers approach Facebook … ‘She’ll leave a Like up for a few days for her friends to see and then delete it. When I asked her why she was deleting this content, she looked at me incredulously and told me “too much drama.” Pushing further, she talked about how people were nosy and it was too easy to get into trouble for the things you wrote a while back that you couldn’t even remember posting let alone remember what it was all about. It was better to keep everything clean and in the moment. If it’s relevant now, it belongs on Facebook, but the old stuff is no longer relevant so it doesn’t belong on Facebook. Her narrative has nothing to do with adults or with Facebook as a data retention agent. She’s concerned about how her postings will get her into unexpected trouble with her peers in an environment where saying the wrong thing always results in a fight.’
23 August 2010
Random Facebook Status Generator … ‘Darren… Subscribes to the tenets of irrelevant herrings.’
15 July 2010
Effectively manage your Facebook privacy settings with three simple lists … if you’ve got OCD and time to spare this is probably an effective how-to on dealing with friends, work colleagues, family and acquaintances on Facebook.
10 May 2010
Apparently Facebook Considers Your Current IP Address To Be “Public Information” As Well … more privacy issues with Facebook … See that header in your Facebook notification email that looks like this?
X-Facebook: from zuckmail ([NzYuMTY5LjIzLjU2])
That’s your friend’s IP address…
29 April 2010
[internet] Getting depressed with this whole Social Media thing … ‘Where is the social technology, the social news, the social web? Instead we get networks flooded by marketers looking for ways to manipulate us all under the guise of having conversations. Instead we get flooded with follow and friend requests where 4 out of 5 are spammers or marketers. Instead we get a Web that is being treated like a business acquisition where we are nothing more than shares to be bought and sold.’
11 January 2010
Conversations About The Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee … an interview with a Facebook employee about internal practices at the company … Q: When you say “click on somebody’s profile,” you mean you save our viewing history?
Facebook Employee: That’s right. How do you think we know who your best friends are?
13 November 2009
Facebook Status Bolsters Alibi In Armed Robbery Case … ‘His defence lawyer, Robert Reuland, admitted that it might be possible for anyone who knew Bradford Junior’s username and password to have made the update, while dismissing the scenario as highly unlikely. “This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this. He is not Dr. Evil,” Reuland told The New York Times…’
12 November 2009
[funny] Lamebook … a real guilty pleasure website … (more…)
6 October 2009
[comics] Super-Social Networking: Superhero Facebook Status Updates … ‘Bruce Wayne is glad to see the new law requiring skylights in all buildings was passed.’ [via Sore Eyes]
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