Facebook

[X5N]

Dumb question, but...

Am I right in my criticism of Facebook, that despite how "hip" and whatnot it claims to be, it's the cold corporate demon-spawn of venture capitalists and yuppies that exists only to exploit it's users for profit?

And...is there any "professional" criticism that runs along these lines? (i.e. articles, books, that sort of thing)

[theblackmask]

Eben Moglen is probably one of the better critics of Facebook. I suggest his talk Freedom in the Cloud (http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/10/highlights-eben-moglens-freedom-cloud-talk/).

He does alot of ripping on Google and Facebook for basically offering "free" services in exhange for spying on their users...good stuff.

[The Jay]

As un-serious as this may seem it is pretty true. I don't use facebook anymore.


ZJ380SHZvYU

[ComingUpForAir]

I use Ghostery an Adblocker plus -- no trackers and no ads.. for sites I frequent I try to donate or let my adblocker add exceptions...

The LIKE button is there to track your entire personality. Make no mistake, there are plenty of people studying trends in order to figure out how to throw more products at us.. Facebook would be great in a communist society...unfortunately as is it is corrupted by the need for profit. It's a cultural wasteland of group-think..where people don't LIKE things because they like them, more often its politics...some nice things about it for sure but mostly its a burden and has caused me a lot more harm than good in my personal life.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Facebook is kind of a good tool to stay in touch with people or get back into contact with someone you may have lost contact with, people should just be smart about it and not post stupid shit, like photos of their drug stashes or status updates about how much they want to burn down the White House, etc.

[Ostrinski]

^I agree. I'm not really a sociable or extroverted person, but I look to talk to some people every now and then and facebook is practical for that.

[MrCool]

People without Facebook accounts are 'suspicious' (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/08/06/beware-tech-abandoners-people-without-facebook-accounts-are-suspicious/)

So I'm a mass murdered, and will never date anyone.

[Igor]

facebook is a handy way of being in touch with people and all meta discussion on social media and facebook is usually pointless as fuck and i don't really care at all about what kind of "criticisms of facebook" one could have because for most people it's something you use to chat with people.

let's have a marxist circlejerk on MSN messenger too shall we. what does it REALLY mean guys

[Igor]

The LIKE button is there to track your entire personality. Make no mistake, there are plenty of people studying trends in order to figure out how to throw more products at us..

More products targeted at me? dear god no

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I think it's one giant marketing scheme but I'm pretty sure reality has turned into one giant marketing scheme, so avoiding one node isn't really gonna stick it to anyone. Chances are you still google everything and watch shit on YouTube. My only concern is that people have more or less turned 100% of their free time into social network time. Do people still take a moment and do some internal reflection? Then again that may have never happened so who knows.

[fug]

A prime way for the state and its apparat to control you, still it's nice.

[smellincoffee]

Facebook is, I think, a dangerous website considering our biology. It allows us to constantly be in contact with each other, at the expense of our privacy and the separation that allows us to truly appreciate one another. It's a platform that encourages us to air our opinions on EVERYTHING, and to get instant feedback as if said opinions merited the attention and consideration of others -- whether those opinions are thoughtfully-considered notes, or self-obsessed complaints about what's wrong with the world. And don't even get me started on the constant notifications and the addictive lure of those games.

But the wretched thing is, as much as I despise facebook I can't help but swing by several times an hour just to see if anything has changed. And I don't even play any games!

[cyu]

http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/01/facebooks-community-double-standards/

after over five years of operation, popular Facebook page Anarchist Memes was permanently taken down by Facebook. With approximately 90,000 likes and hundreds of comments each day, Anarchist Memes established itself as one of the radical left’s most prominent Facebook pages. It posted feminist, anti-racist, pro-LGBT*QA, and anti-capitalist content numerous times a day. For years, the page and its administrators experienced endless harassment and trolling, yet it demonstrated an outstanding, resolute commitment to establishing a safe, non-oppressive digital environment.

Just a few months ago, Facebook generated much controversy for its intransigent refusal to remove photos glorifying rape and violence against women. Facebook takes no issue in hosting pages like “I kill b**ches like you” and “Domestic Violence: Don’t Make Me Tell You Twice,” featuring scores of photos of beaten women. These individual pages were taken down as a result of the controversy the article generated, yet, today, many similar misogynist pages still exist. Facebook proceeded to lash out against those critiquing its censorship practices, blocking administrators of feminist pages who uploaded pictures protesting the site’s misogyny.

it will “leave a picture of a woman who lies, obviously physically hurt, at the bottom of stairs, captioned ‘next time don’t get pregnant’. At the same time Facebook will delete a picture, taken from a news item, of a woman who displayed her breasts at a political protest and temporarily ban all the administrators of a page that displayed it.”

Anarchist Memes posted a picture simply reading “Some women have penises. Get over it!” No violence, no graphic image (no image at all), no nudity, no pornography, simply text that happens to say the word “penis.” Facebook, however, took the photo down and banned some of the page’s administrators.

It can cry “Graphic content!” or “Nudity!” when it opposes particular content, and it can allow graphic content and nudity to go unaddressed when it is not opposed to it.

[AmilcarCabral]

Hi TriceraMarx: The problem I see with Facebook, is that Facebook is set up like a social club, like a sort of dating social club. And not a great place for serious discussion of politics, diets, philosophy etc. Because the way it is built. Even if you havhttp://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/editor/menupop.gife 2000 friends on your Facebook friends list and for example you ask a question about diets to start a debate about it, it would take like 1 to 3 days to see any answers to that question. And who in the world has the patience to wait days to get an answer and to start up a serious debate about any topic.

That's why I quit Facebook because of the extreme boring nature of it





As un-serious as this may seem it is pretty true. I don't use facebook anymore.


ZJ380SHZvYU

[Yuppie Grinder]

i still have facebook because I have one good friend out of state who doesn't have a twitter yet who i like to stay in touch with
i honestly hate facebook

[Axiomasher]

Facebook seems designed to trivialise and infantilise human interaction. I accept that it has some genuine use for some, like keeping in touch with friends who are at distance, but mostly it's just people trying hard to look interesting and gain approval of their peers in the shallowest of ways.

[FSL]

Dumb question, but...

Am I right in my criticism of Facebook, that despite how "hip" and whatnot it claims to be, it's the cold corporate demon-spawn of venture capitalists and yuppies that exists only to exploit it's users for profit?

And...is there any "professional" criticism that runs along these lines? (i.e. articles, books, that sort of thing)

Facebook and Google make pretty much all of their money from ads.
The reason internet ads is a growing sector is exactly because they can track your preferations, your searching patterns etc and give you ads "you'd like to see". Some people might like that I guess, me not so much.
Youtube was mentioned. Watching videos was fun, it stopped being fun with all the ads thrown everywhere and with me selecting a song to hear in the background, changing pages to carry on doing whatever I was doing and then needing to re-change pages to remove the annoying ad that started playing.
I installed adblock+ and have been loving it. You can remove it for certain pages if you like, but I know I'll be keeping it for places like youtube where the content is becoming compromised.




These sites are also proven to be working together with the NSA in its surveilance programmes. But people don't really care about that either, it's all good, they'll still go ballistic if someone mentions Stazi for some reason.

[Sinister Intents]

Facebook and Google make pretty much all of their money from ads.
The reason internet ads is a growing sector is exactly because they can track your preferations, your searching patterns etc and give you ads "you'd like to see". Some people might like that I guess, me not so much.
Youtube was mentioned. Watching videos was fun, it stopped being fun with all the ads thrown everywhere and with me selecting a song to hear in the background, changing pages to carry on doing whatever I was doing and then needing to re-change pages to remove the annoying ad that started playing.
I installed adblock+ and have been loving it. You can remove it for certain pages if you like, but I know I'll be keeping it for places like youtube where the content is becoming compromised.

I go to college for marketing and business administration, Facebook and Google always seem to be used as examples for marketing, et cetera. I still have a facebook, and I find the ads so fucking annoying. I seem to be being targeted with dating ads and what appears to be one pornographic ad, but I'm not quite sure. I hate advertising so much and often times its just excessively invasive. I have adblock+ installed as well but it seems to be outdated and I got my mom's computer a virus downloading music and I've been getting obnoxious ads from rvzr-a.akamaihd.net and several other annoying things. I've been struggling to remove the malicious adware and other viruses, but now I think I've made progress installing a
Malwarebytez.

These sites are also proven to be working together with the NSA in its surveilance programmes. But people don't really care about that either, it's all good, they'll still go ballistic if someone mentions Stazi for some reason.

What's your source? I do believe you and I've heard this before and know this, but I'd like to do more reading on the subject of the NSA's surveilance shit.

[FSL]

What's your source? I do believe you and I've heard this before and know this, but I'd like to do more reading on the subject of the NSA's surveilance shit.


The troubled mobile phone maker BlackBerry still has at least one very loyal customer: U.S. President Barack Obama.

At a meeting with youth on Wednesday to promote his landmark healthcare law, Obama said he is not allowed to have Apple's smart phone, the iPhone, for "security reasons," though he still uses Apple's tablet computer, the iPad.

Apple was one of several tech companies that may have allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) direct access to servers containing customer data, according to revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The companies deny the allegation. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/us-usa-obama-apple-idUSBRE9B402Y20131205


They don't deny the requests though and after Snowden blew the whole thing up, they even complained to the state:

"We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens," said the letter from the eight firms which also included Microsoft Corp, Twitter, LinkedIn Corp, Yahoo Inc and AOL Inc.

"But this summer's revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide.

"The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual - rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It's time for a change." http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-usa-security-surveillance-idUSBRE9B807K20131210

[AmilcarCabral]

Axio: you are totally right about the excess of self-attention, narcissism and self-absortion in many Facebook users, even in many progressives.


Facebook seems designed to trivialise and infantilise human interaction. I accept that it has some genuine use for some, like keeping in touch with friends who are at distance, but mostly it's just people trying hard to look interesting and gain approval of their peers in the shallowest of ways.

[DasFapital]

They also took down "The Soldiers are Not Heroes They Are Tools of War" page which had 13 thousand likes.

[Sea]

As un-serious as this may seem it is pretty true. I don't use facebook anymore.


ZJ380SHZvYUI never used it in the first place, but a lot of webpages try to connect to FB...
I use Ghostery an Adblocker plus -- no trackers and no ads.. for sites I frequent I try to donate or let my adblocker add exceptions...

The LIKE button is there to track your entire personality. Make no mistake, there are plenty of people studying trends in order to figure out how to throw more products at us.. Facebook would be great in a communist society...unfortunately as is it is corrupted by the need for profit. It's a cultural wasteland of group-think..where people don't LIKE things because they like them, more often its politics...some nice things about it for sure but mostly its a burden and has caused me a lot more harm than good in my personal life.You should use BeeFree and noscript too. And on Adblock, turn off "like" buttons. It's easy to do in the settings. :)
They also took down "The Soldiers are Not Heroes They Are Tools of War" page which had 13 thousand likes.It's still up, but with 13 hundred likes.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

I only really use it to keep in contact and keep a finger on what's going on in terms of music in Hull. Most of my likes are for bands (because occasionally fb chucks up something half decent) and a few news sites (not particularly radical ones either.) Other than that I like to flag all the adverts with bizarre reasons why i didn't like them (unless it really is sexist shit which is too often the case) although weirdly that's left me with ads for muslim dating sites and bulk-buying fruit.

[GreyWolf]

Dumb question, but...

Am I right in my criticism of Facebook, that despite how "hip" and whatnot it claims to be, it's the cold corporate demon-spawn of venture capitalists and yuppies that exists only to exploit it's users for profit?

And...is there any "professional" criticism that runs along these lines? (i.e. articles, books, that sort of thing)

If you think its right criticize then criticize it :) Personally I think it does serve some purpose as a means of communication, conveying ideas and information, but no more so than other outlets. Other than that its basically an advertisement whore market like you say. I find the fact they allow high interest, unregulated financial institutes to advertise on there particularly disgusting. I wouldn't be too sad to see it disappear overnight along with the owner.

[Sinister Intents]

If you think its right criticize then criticize it :) Personally I think it does serve some purpose as a means of communication, conveying ideas and information, but no more so than other outlets. Other than that its basically an advertisement whore market like you say. I find the fact they allow high interest, unregulated financial institutes to advertise on there particularly disgusting. I wouldn't be too sad to see it disappear overnight along with the owner.

I understand everything you're saying, but why call it a 'whore' market? I find it curious your use of the word whore :P

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Rev left is my Facebook.

[Sinister Intents]

Rev left is my Facebook.

Heavily seconded!!

[Futility Personified]

I was stridently opposed to facebook for a long time, slightly edgier and more anti-social me of the past felt that it was A: A great way to find yourself on some sort of blacklist, B: To promote the narcissist individualist impulses that capitalism thrives on and C: A free-for-all for prompting the bigoted or moronic responses that I'd come to expect from my peers. I still feel roughly the same way, but now that so many of my friends are scattered across the place it's nice to see what's going on in their lives and keep in touch with them for free.

[GreyWolf]

I understand everything you're saying, but why call it a 'whore' market? I find it curious your use of the word whore :P

Hehe, ok ill explain :) Its seems to me to function, at least partially, as a platform for companies to whore out there product or services, thus my use of advertisement whore market. Maybe an extreme use of the word, but in my opinion it rings true. I cannot even check my news feed without being prompted to visit pages such as WongaLoan or Mc Donalds. Just my 2c anyway.

[AmilcarCabral]

Right: The real problem I see for leftists, and people who are very devoted to any kind of intellectual topic like nutrition, fitness, philosophy, astronomy, the search of extraterrestrial life, religion etc. Is that I think that most people that use Facebook regularly do not take those types of topics very seriously. You might see lots of leftists in Facebook with pictures of Che Guevara, Hugo Chavez, Lenin, Marx in their main profile image avatar. However, even the people who you think are hardcore radical ultra-leftists are very colder, like the Foreigner song says: "You are cold as ice"

I used to get desperate when I used to propose any type of leftist topic, like workers-control, workers states, the proposal, and possibility about the formation of a super large leftist radical front composed of all authentic leftists of USA who are very leftists, far to the left. In order either to compete in the 2016 elections or to wait for a revolutionary economic situation, in order to save millions of americans who are living right now in real physical pain (because they can't turn on their heaters in winter months) and things like that. Those types of people who are in real pain, in actual physical pain right now are the ones who need the salvation by a large united front of radical ultra leftists

But nobody even responded me, nobody cared about that. So I think that most people of Facebook are really middle class people who hate The Democratic Party, The Republican Party, wars, who support Occupy protests, who support Edward Snowden, who hate CIA, FBI corporations, bankers the imperialist zionist government of Israel. But at the same time those people are not *desperate* for a change. I think that most Facebook leftists are not living a very painful life, (in other words: socialism for them is not a question of life and death, they can live very fine within the ruling of The Democratic Party and the republican Party)

So that's the real problem I see with most Facebook leftists, that most of them are too cold, not desperate enough, and are able to live pretty well within the present neoliberal capitalist economic model of The Democratic Party and The Republican Party





I was stridently opposed to facebook for a long time, slightly edgier and more anti-social me of the past felt that it was A: A great way to find yourself on some sort of blacklist, B: To promote the narcissist individualist impulses that capitalism thrives on and C: A free-for-all for prompting the bigoted or moronic responses that I'd come to expect from my peers. I still feel roughly the same way, but now that so many of my friends are scattered across the place it's nice to see what's going on in their lives and keep in touch with them for free.

[Rss]

I sure am glad I never fell into this neurotypical-catering bourgeoisie narcissism project.

[RedWaves]

Facebook proves that all you have to do is put on a suit, smile, and call yourself Mark Zuckerberg, and you can data mine the shit out of anyone and anywhere and then sell the information for more financial gain, and no one will give a shit. No one gives a fuck what Facebook does but they get all bent out of shape when the government finally admits to doing the same goddamn thing that Facebook has been doing since it's existence and doing much better.