It’s not at all clear to me that they broke the law (and I don’t mean that as a retorical gambit, I mean it literally. It’s undeniably illegal for a foreign company to buy those ads, but it’s not at all clear that it’s illegal to sell them. See, for example, the same magazine:
(Currently, FB ads are not regulated I believe, but I’m not a lawyer (and I imagine you’re not either)).
The number of people who don’t seek out reading material has been on the rise for a while (see the comment above about “the Dumbening”). As a result, they take in whatever is spoon-fed to them while they are on a web site or watching TV. This is why they are easily led by anyone or anything that sounds convincing.
The other problem is that you used the word “anything” as part of the mantra. Folks who don’t believe anything they read are more likely to be victims of “the Dumbening.” Those who don’t believe everything they read probably check more than one source, etc…
I should have been more clear, people might stop using FB at some point - though I do doubt it given the saturation, it’s like expecting that people will stop using Amazon any time soon - but the issues with FB discussed here will persist, IMO, just on another platform.
Critical thinking is not a graduation requirement and there for no longer a emphasis in public school systems. And being too much of a free thinker tends to be detrimental to a public school student.
(I added the emphasis there.)
That’s the thing. I walked away from my FB account five years ago, and I don’t miss it. But time and again, people and businesses I’d like to deal with online use it as their platform, and it’s frustrating. Case in point-- I’m loving a rock band I came across, and I want to see if they will be touring my area soon. They have their own website. But when I click the Tour link-- it takes me to a FB page. It won’t let me see that page unless I sign in to FB. Hello? I’m more than ready to give them my money for a concert ticket and they’re blocking me because I’m not on Facebook. Seriously??? 
I’m considering making a burner FB account, if there is such a thing, for occasions like that. I really do not want to do it. But it’s today’s media giant, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to completely avoid it.
I would think if the Russians can have thousands of burner accounts, you can have one. 
At this point, yes, businesses and musicians rely very heavily on FB/twitter/instagram for a variety of reasons. Reach and ease being the biggest things for sure.
If I had a business of any kind, I would use all three heavily. The new coffee shop around the corner from us had a massive open house, due mostly to FB. Several of my favorite restaurants and breweries update daily on that and instagram. If I want to know which food truck is going to be at Fall Brewing tomorrow, that’s where I look.
For those kinds of businesses, IG is especially handy for daily updates since you can post to all three things instantly.
I still appreciate at least a one-pager web site for businesses with phone number, address, hours, etc… but at this point in time, you have to have a social media presence.
The real problem was defined by Wittaker and Baxter over 70 years ago and has been used successfully to prevent national health care in the US among other things. The left won’t acknowledge this fundamental law of human nature. However, their political operatives squander such vast sums to try to exploit this fundamental law of human nature that they have corrupted the Democratic party to the point where we have Donald Trump today.
Somehow those of us on the left need to acknowledge the fundamental fact that the average American simply does not care, does not even want to do the right thing politically. The only way that they get engaged is through a good fight or a good show. I say that we need to coalesce around the idea that health care is a right. The financial sector needs significant regulation, and money needs to be taken out of the political system. Those of us who do care need to work together to create the good fight and the good show to get the average American engaged. We can do this but not when we simply don’t acknowledge the fundamental truth of the situation and start working to open source the solution based on truth ans shared values rather than high priced political consultants or facebook trolls.
You seem to be pretty surly about a lot of things on the BBS lately; just an observation.
I didn’t say anyone would follow that advice, but it is sound advice. We can live without FaceCrook. If folks continue to use it, I guess they’ll keep allowing their personal data, photos, family, friends and relative’s data to be abused. Why give anybody that much power over you voluntarily? I don’t get it.
I was thinking about this earlier – it’s like the old warnings about Blue Star tattoos, but with near-instant, and potentially worldwide, distribution.
On that, we are in agreement. The problem isn’t FB, it’s the economic and political system to which Facebook has been optimized.
I can imagine that Facebook will be replaced by something else.
I have difficulties imagening that it will be replaced by something better.
Why would anyone use Facebook, much less believe anything they read there?
2010
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks
Instant messages sent by Zuckerberg during Facebook’s early days, reported by Business Insider (May 13, 2010)
It doesn’t even need to be self-aware. It just have to be creative enough to come up with unexpected solutions to the problems it is asked to solve. Given the task of reducing pollution, it may decide that the simplest way is to get rid of humans.
I agree. I mean the full scope of the problem is more complex than that, but you are correct. I was responding to the use of the term Skynet. In the Terminator films, the decisive factor is…
T-800: “Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, Auguest 29th. In a panic they try to pull the plug.”
Sarah Connor: “Skynet fights back?”
T-800: “Yes.”
Because that description of Judgement Day is so ingrained in the cultural zeitgeist, Skynet brings to mind the idea of a self-aware AI regardless of whether audiences remember that scene or have even scene the movie themselves. To that franchise’s credit, they never further anthropomorphized it, merely ascribed to it a survival instinct, though even that is probably not necessary for a rampant machine intelligence. They were still way ahead of their time in that regard, though I suspect that was more of an accident of wanting to make it a faceless alien menace so that the humans’ own shortsightedness could be cast as their tragic flaw.
Regardless, it is because most people associate Skynet with self-aware AI that I declared it to be a distraction. No offense was intended.
I know that same problem. It seems that most small artist groups (not only music) or maybe all small enterprises dealing with the public went FB only in the past years. From their point of view, it is a rational decision: they don’t have much money and managing a personal web site is expensive (even more so today, where hackers run bot networks to break in thousands of them). Probably more than 99% of their user base has a FB account, so they don’t lose many customers by being FB only. FB has evolved into a monopoly, which is the real problem.
FB makes them pay to reach their fan base, BTW.
You can make a FB account under a dummy name, even if it is prohibited by FB TOS. The problem is that it is not very useful. You will get the dates of the concert, but if you need anything else than info (say: concert tickets), you will need to pay and that requires a valid payment option, which is normally linked to a real name.
Another problem is that FB is very apt at spying on you. If you run a FB burner account, the only way to prevent FB matching it with you is to dedicate a computer to that burner identity (on Unix like systems, you may manage to simply dedicate a user account on that burner identity). This is massively inconvenient and even that may not be sufficient as FB traces your i.p. Depending on your web connection and country you live in, just knowing your i.p. may identify your precise location.
A quick, one-paragraph explanation. All FB buttons you may have on a page you browse without having a FB account report back to FB. They are actually constructed as mini-web pages. They lay a cookie on your computer, possibly more. Possibly other elements on visited web pages link back to FB as well. Possibly, some web merchants which you use and therefore gave your name and address to have some agreement with FB where they exchange data. That would mean that, when you first create a FB account, FB already know that the particular computer you use is regularly use by people with such names and addresses and has the history of sites browsed in the past years. FB officially denies doing so, as such practices are illegal in some countries, but they have the technical capabilities of doing just that.
You don’t just pull the plug.
First, you distract the AI with some top-notch AI porn.
If we haver have to fight AIs, we must play to our strengths.
(Edit: typo.)
Despite title, SFW (unless you’re a robot)…
This is a very important remark: people are more and more desperate for social connections. Various studies show that, in western society, people spend less and less time interacting with friends and family in real life. They get out less, invite their friends less, sometimes dramatically less within a few years. Clubs and associations report having less active members and find it increasingly difficult to find volunteers to run their activities (more so in Europe than in the USA, I think). I should research the details, but I have read studies which paint a worrying panorama of increasingly estranged individuals.
This book (and the essay it’s based on) covered the issue very well:
There’s also the issue of fractured families. Multi-generational family living is not the norm in the U.S. (for better and worse), so we have to work harder to maintain those connections, too. Facebook offers a false shortcut to solving these problems.
