Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/26/how-ben-shapiro-exploits-faceb.html
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Sounds to me like the problem is not just FB, although FB does give easy access to their garbage. It would be possible to see what advertisers are on these sites and then question them if they’re happy to be associated with racist scaremongers. If the ad revenue craters i think that goes a long way with getting rid of these scummy sites.
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Yep - things that make you mad or fearful make you want to share them more.
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Racist kapo right-wing sourpuss Ben Shapiro
Fixed that for you. And I don’t think anyone’s surprised to see him using scumbag spam tactics to spread his toxic opinions, although the mechanisms are interesting.
While Benny Shaps and his confederates are bad actors, they’d be nothing without Facebook and its engagement-driven advertising business model. And while shaming advertisers works to an extent, this is not something that the market alone will solve. Facebook has the ability and ability to kick off any account it chooses, and yet it lets purveyors of hate and dangerous disinformation flourish so long as they know how to game things to bring in the advertisers.
[for the inevitable freeze peachers concerned about “unpopular” opinions being “censored” in such a pervasive forum, perhaps you might more productively focus on seeing the goverment apply anti-trust regulation to this garbage company]
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This type of stuff gets massive traction, yet if I check FB after a three-month hiatus it runs me out of friend-related content in under 20 minutes (and that’s WITH a 1:3 ad-to-friend presentation ratio).
FB had very little value to me when I started, and now it just feels like huckster heaven.
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Yikes, he hasn’t posted since April. I hope he’s okay!
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I hope some day to be able to give Shapiro the sucker punch he so rightly deserves. What a fuckstick.
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Curious how many of those 2+ million ‘followers’ are legit accounts. It took Twitter how long to finally admit how many bots and fake accounts there were? Having Easily-gamed metrics be rewarded by generating ad revenue is one of the foundational ‘problems’ of the current iteration of the internet. I put ‘problem’ in quotes cuz it’s clearly easily solvable from a technical standpoint. But of course actual non-gamed usage numbers lead to plunging revenue/ stock prices, which are by far the most important metric to these psychopaths, even at the expense of destroying democracy.
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I always have trouble telling those RWNJ apart. Is this “Ben Shapiro” the tall one or the stupid one?
ETA: Never mind. I googled him; he’s 5’7".
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The money behind Daily Wire is the other petro bros, the Wilks Brothers. Christian Nationalists, Project Blitz, etc.
I guess Ben is fine working for people who only tolerate Jews because they’re necessary for prophecy to happen, and then they’d better convert real fast.
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Don’t want to betray any confidences, but last I heard from him, he was just fine. Opting out of here and taking it easy.
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Ironically one way things get shared more and don’t get detected is when they are as images - jpeg’d memes and text statements that at first look like text. I don’t know if Daily Wire is doing that but I do know that’s how a lot of garbage is breaking through to posts facebook suggests to me. Ironic because 1) facebook’s algorithm also favors pictures and 2) anything FB might have in place to catch hate speech will not catch these (unless maybe they’re checking for swastikas, which I’m not seeing).
Also THIS
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I’ll just leave this here. Maybe money will sway this idiot’s thinking.
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That works for me! Thanks for the update 
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Unfortunately, you’re preaching to the choir.
I abandoned Facebook years ago. How do we convince everyone still clinging to it? It’s so pervasive.
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Sometimes, I think the only hope is something easier to use. One problem is finding an alternative that doesn’t have the same privacy and content issues. The other problem is that whatever the masses use and enjoy, FB will attempt to buy and absorb - or destroy.
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A legitimate competitor needs to exist. I still use FB although my participation in it is really quite minimal, but it allows me to stay in touch with friends and family from abroad and across the country. The alternatives right now are Twitter (haha… No), WhatsApp (owned by FB and more annoying), Instagram or Snapchat (Neither is for me). Whatever is left are platforms that aren’t widely used so unfortunately FB is the default.
The plus side is that i don’t feel the need to share or comment on other people’s business so its relatively easy for me to avoid most of the nonsense that comes attached with the site.
What really got to me was the level of stupid that I saw coming from friends of friends. I’ve managed to keep MAGA away with one degree of separation. Not so much with two.
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Over the years i have defriended and hidden getting notifications from posts from certain friends that were likely to engage in that kind of stuff. Thankfully now i don’t really run across it on FB at all, i’m sure it’s nowhere near as easy for other people. I’d leave FB in the drop of a hat though if something genuinely better comes along
