Facebook Screwed?

[Ed P]

Gizmodo thinks it may be. I will personally add a small cheer if that turns out to be the case as it had all the hallmarks of a State-funded mass ‘big-brother’ machine.

[Alan Wood]

I’m with you there. It should be renamed TwoFacebook.

[Richard]

The longer it went on the less social it appeared to be. A massive monetising business that tried to make as much as it could, while it could from users while offering the minimum in return. I am unimpressed by the suggestions that Governments were interested in anything other than the (overly small) amount of tax they could make from their like. Was it like a ‘big brother machine‘, in my book yes and it harvested more crap than a CSI vacuum cleaner. If it dies as it is being suggested, well again in my book it was already primed to do so, but I don’t care. Whatever else can be said in my book it was a mass people manipulator, nothing more nothing less and if fewer sheep get manipulated, let alone slaughtered perhaps that is good.

[tadka]

I think FB could do with much better personal privacy options but otherwise it’s not a bad social media website. As for sharing user data…. they only know my name, not much to share.

[Dave Rice]

I like the tweet from Snowden:

“Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as “surveillance companies.” Their rebranding as “social media” is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense.”

[Bob Williams]

The upsetting thing for me is that I use it mainly to keep in touch with a far-flung group of friends and family. Losing that will be a blow, but I am going to close my account.

Any takers on a bet that Zuckerberg comes back with what he will insist is a new, squeaky-clean version? The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and FB is very big. Apparently.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[PlaneMan]

Bob, maybe Google Groups could be just the thing for you.

[Drezha]

I’m waiting for the cadet units to role out the proposed new communication tool – one of the Wings in the Northern region has been trialling this software and I believe it’ll be rolled out to all squadrons now across the Corps. Once that happens, I can leave Facebook behind. At the minute, it’s just to handy for keeping cadets and parents informed on what’s happening on the squadron.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[RSB]

@bullstuff2 Why not get your friend and family to sign up here? You have private messages and you have facebook style posts! Plus an added bonus of not being harvested for add’s. And if that’s not enough you could even create your own forum group for friends and family which only mods and your members can see.

Just a thought 🙂

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[keith with the teef]

The guy behind the app was interviewed on radio4 this morning.

Golly.

[Bob Williams]

RSB wrote:

@bullstuff2 Why not get your friend and family to sign up here? You have private messages and you have facebook style posts! Plus an added bonus of not being harvested for add’s. And if that’s not enough you could even create your own forum group for friends and family which only mods and your members can see. Just a thought

Would have been good Lee, but I have been considering the whole Social Messaging thing.

I don’t really use FB that much now and it is becoming less and less important to me. The extended family that I actually want contact with, I have as many email, phone and snailmail messages with, that both they and myself are happy with. There are other family members that had very little contact with, even when I lived in the next village to them, before moving here to Lincolnshire in 2000. None have ever been to any home where SWMBO and I have lived and none have ever been here since we moved. Although my brother visited Louth on a “Jolly” with a couple of mates about 9 years ago. I was living 2 miles away, he had the address but I knew nothing about the visit until afterwards. Same brother used to walk the fields behind my Nottinghamshire house with his wife, but never called.

This morning I called the cousin in Staffordshire that I grew up with, to let him and his sisters know about my health problems. Immediately he wanted to come over here, but I asked that he wait until I was out of hospital: it’s a long journey across 4 counties and we have no room to put them up. Both his remaining sisters and 3 of his old mates want to come: as I lived there for almost 3 years as a kid, they were my mates too. In comparison, when I called my eldest niece in Notts, there was no mention of coming here from them.

All the other friends and family are available by phone, email or letter. I am going to just not connect with the rest: I know that means loss of contact, because there will be no attempt by them to contact myself and/or my missus. I have found that does not bother me and I am OK with that. I am fine with the people who mean as much to me, as I do to them. The rest can KMA. That isn’t bitterness, it’s reality. I will keep my FB account for now, but don’t intend to visit unless necessary. To show what I mean: yesterday I had 23 ‘messages’ which were all about other people talking with other people. Only one was someone I speak to regularly, my Gt nephew in the North of Scotland. I emailed him and sorted out something he wanted to know, asked him to phone, email or write if he wants to talk.

Thanks for the suggestion, but there is also the fact that some of those I mention would suffer by comparison with the company here on Forumite.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[RSB]

I am watching the hearing on bcc news live from washington and it truly is a joke. People asking the questions can hardly string a sentence together and the questions seem to be BS. More like a circus. Have a laugh, take a look.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Richard]

I have only seen a few bits of yesterday’s master class. The comments suggest he had a book of scripted answers, was more wooden than a chidren’s puppet and that the questioners were due for a retirement home sometime last year or the year before. I am not sure how they were chosen but it was not apparently on the basis of having any relevant knowledge, the time of day as a question would probably have needed 24 hours notice. As a dog and pony show the dog was wooden and the ponies could not trot.

[RSB]

Some of them started of by saying he was brilliant and proud of him, a credit to america and one of them even went on to say that facebook was started and built through trust between colleagues and friends. Seriously? Who are they trying to kid. There either dumb egg’s that knows nothing about facebook or playing it up or putting on show but in the long run in the american way trying to protect one of it’s useful to them love childs. As far as Zuckerberg is concerned he is still just a child or at-least comes across that way. An utter Trotters Independent Trader.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[The Duke]

The issue is electrical officals, even non elected ones, no matter how bright, are not going to understand 1 percent of what MZ is talking about. There will be a small percentage of the small subset of  geeks in the world that would understand just half of what MZ is speaking about. So he can say anything and they couldn’t question him properly.

Hell be saying the bare minimum in the most complex way. It’s why different jobs has silly languages. To keep common folk out, to make us look and think we are more cleaver.

Everyone from armed forces, marketing to law, and all jobs inbetween do it. It’s just programmers do actually talk a foreign language and knowing the basics just isn’t near enough to understand the workings of search and algorithms.

I could have a laymen term bash at an overall loose discretion, but even then I’d leave a layman like my wife dumbstruck. Nothing against my wife, but she knows not of programming languages or even the basics of the computing world.

So imagine how the likes of MZ can just bamboozle laymans, just explaining the littlest possible in a complex way.

Take our Dear Leader and her love of speaking about encryption and the need to kill it. Should good when you add it will save lives, but misses the whole point of it would break the whole Internet. I don’t blame her, some marketing bloke has had memo of GCHQ or the Met and neither nor he or the PM understand the issue, but know the masses don’t ether, so add, either terrorism or kids porn into some techno statement, and people will instantly agree without question..

FB Zuckerberg and his Lawers will be crafting the equivalent to his gov now. Basically tell them what they want to hear, with out telling them anything. It’s easy when you know the people you talking to understand zero of what you have to say.

[Author]

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