Some are stopping the advertising through the end of the year. It’s a token gesture, but in combination with the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign that more major brands are joining it’s enough to spook the markets and make FB’s share price fall (the only thing Zuckerberg cares about). That, in turn, has led to this panicked response that does everything except address the actual problem
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Exactly. I always wonder what people talk about when they complain so much about other users on Facebook. By all means complain about their advertising and their data hunger and their pernicious influence on political culture but if it’s other users you are bothered by then you desperately need better friends or friends with better friends. I can probably count on one hand the times I have been confronted with Trump, AfD or Brexit followers in the decade or so of my being there in anything but public groups which are basically the equivalent of newspaper comment sections.
On the other hand a lot of my professional contacts depend on being connected on Facebook. My field doesn’t congregate on Linked In and Twitter usage is sporadic.
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I think it’s more an expression of general frustration that people they otherwise respect are still on that garbage platform. Personally, beyond setting an example of never having been on it and explaining why when asked, I don’t complain about people I know staying on FB. The people who matter in my life know they can get to me by e-mail and text, etc. and they know not to bother sending me links to FB posts.
That is an area where, if I were in your field, I’d make a more active effort to get people off Facebook and onto a more professionally-oriented and grown-up platform like LinkedIn. LinkedIn is far from perfect, but it’s not the toxic sludge pile that FB is.
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LinkedIn is entirely unsuitable for something like academia. It’s entirely geared towards the corporate world.
And if you want to try to herd a bunch of medieval archaeologists, many of whom are over 65 towards a new platform, be my guest to try.
(I’m not being snarky; it is what it is)
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Surely there are professional social networking sites geared toward academia (if not, please let me know – that’s a business opportunity waiting to happen).
Doing your professional networking on Facebook is like choosing to hold an academic conference in a derelict Chuck-E-Cheese that’s filled with rat poop and that has deranged old people shouting racist statements wandering through it, while creepy voyeurs record the attendees’ every move and sell the footage to fascists and grifters.
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But that’s my point. It’s more like a fairly clean Holiday Inn in a business park that otherwise contains mostly rat infested Chuck-E-Cheeses. The nature of social networks is that like associates with like and a lot of what I am talking about happens in closed groups with tight entrance requirements and moderation.
There are social networking sites for academia btw. (such as academia.edu or Researchgate) but they are mainly used as public repositories for papers. If I quickly want a sherd identified by the world’s experts on a specific pottery style, posting it on those will do nothing while asking in the right (closed) FB group will give me a comprehensive answer in minutes.
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Any business park that allows that situation to exist is not one any self-respecting professional would go near, unless they see no other options (which seems to be what you’re describing). And I get it about the inertia and lack of imagination.
Thanks. I might have one of my clients look into seeing if either of those sites would want to add real social networking and CV/credentialling functionality into their offerings.
Closed listservs used to accomplish that sort of thing when I was in grad school, many aeons ago.
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Oh, and the worst public meltdown and drama I have seen in that world recently was on… a listserv mailing list.
Edit: I actually wrote this comment before reading your answer mentioning listservs. Well, there you go. Plus ça change…
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Yeah, you’re going to get drama and meltdowns on any platform. But you have to admit that a meltdown on a platform that (unlike FB) doesn’t actively encourage and enable them to promote “engagement” is a lot more entertaining (at least before the offender is kicked off – something FB won’t do). All the more so when academics are involved.
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Well just like on a listserv it’s the moderators who would kick the offenders out of the group so Facebook doesn’t really come into it.
But we are clearly going in circles here, I think we have both made our points.
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Related news on this scumbag company.
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people have been doing the research and noticing that many have just moved their cash off facebook and into their advertising on other facebook owned websites. I guess that works if you already signed a check. still though thats shitty.
in a world where there is a sizable homeless population that has cell phones I get why there is an assumption on the issue but NOT EVERYONE HAS A PHONE. the fucking arrogance of that geez.
and all this snooty shitting on people who do something out of convenience is discounting the people who are too fucking stupid (no offense meant) to set stuff up in other ways. enough articles have been written on people abandoning E-Mail for texts you are just going to have to get used to the idea that people are going to flock to a giant behemoth sitting there waiting to be used “for free”.
currently have E-Mail accounts that just get filled with notices from other sites I visit. having to wade through that to read either long form letters or quick back n forth would be annoying. I use facebook like the equivalent of texting. throw an ad blocker on it and only use messenger and you are fine.
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Via Eschaton
Take, for example, the campaign of genocide against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. I don’t know exactly how Facebook accounts for its role in inciting the violence and ethnic cleansing that forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee the country as refugees, but I do know that no one at Facebook was fired over its deadly failures. No one resigned. No one staged a “virtual walkout”. No one put together a hastily arranged press appearance to quell outrage from advertisers.
Heyer’s killer has been convicted and sent to prison, but how does Facebook evaluate its role in the event? Does the calculation change at all when you consider that just a few weeks before Charlottesville, I sent Facebook a spreadsheet with links to 175 neo-Nazi, white nationalist and neo-Confederate hate groups that were using its platform to recruit and organize? And that Facebook had declined to take any action against the vast majority of them until after Heyer’s murder, when it belatedly cleaned house?
The neo-Nazis and white nationalists I had written about published articles with my photograph that described me as a “racial molotov cocktail” with “the cunning of the Jew and the meticulous mathematical mind of a Chink”. They encouraged their followers to go after me too, and I received a steady stream of racist vitriol on Twitter, on Facebook and by email. I tried to ignore it as much as I could. I tried not to ruin Thanksgiving. The worst were the messages that referenced my family, or imagined my rape.
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When hate hurt people, Facebook did nothing. Now that it’s hurting Facebook, we’ll see what it really values.
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FYP 
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That’s exactly what I was just thinking. One of us needs to have the looks, the other the brains! 
(Edited 'cos I misremembered the words. Added the video.)
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“It’s not us that it the problem, it’s you! Leave FB alone!”
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