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Former Facebook Employee Questions the Social Media Life
stevegee58 writes "The Washington Post published an interesting article about Facebook's employee #51, Katherine Losse. As an English major from Johns Hopkins, Losse wasn't the typical Facebook employee. But after starting in customer service, she later became Mark Zuckerberg's personal ghostwriter, penning blog posts in his name. The article traces Losse's growing disillusionment with social networking in general and Facebook in particular. After cashing out some FB stock, Losse resigned and moved to a rural West Texas town to get away from technology and focus on writing."
A total Losse for the big Z.
I knew that FB had fake accounts, but apparently it also has fake Zuckerberg and more importantly a fake market valuation and probably a fake business model.
You can't handle the truth.
Where are all the posts? I expect them noooooooooow!
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
What a horror. She saw the light, as did I.
After 17 years of building, learning and promoting I now realise just how awful it has now become. I have left the industry entirely.
Facebook is not a product of Zuckerberg, but a reflection of the inevitability that horrendous and highly penetrative technological processes will have on our lives.
People haven't asked for Big Brother, they demanded him.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
Speaking as an expert (as many of us are), I can say with a certainty that all my friends, my house, my pet, my family are all fully contained within the Matrix. Someday everyone else will realize that their lives are also part of the matrix. Only then will world peace be achieved.
... and off production/consumption treadmill. I r writer!
So Mark Zuckerberg doesn't even use his own site? Indeed he's smarter than I thought.
It sounds like she thought this was something of meaning but, imo, it's not. It's not even really social. From what I can see, it doesn't matter how many "friends" people have. They often don't chat to each other. They talk about themselves and hopefully get a lot of people telling them how awesome they are. That's probably because most people don't have real friends on facebook. It's a list of people that decided to friend them for no good reason or because they met once or twice. It's impossible to have 500 actual friends.
So most interactions on facebook aren't really socialising. That patting each other on the back (or blowing each other depending on how far you take it) and to be honest I think the days of geocities were more social. People made websites with interesting content that would spark conversation even if were just between you and the author via email. I'd genuoinely say the vast majority of content I see people posting on FB is no interesting, it's not remotely deep or thoughtful. it's shit like announcements that someone likes amazon. Well good for you, you're like 99% of the population.
I don't really like having an account which is reflected in the fact I don't use my own name or talk about myself. It's there basically to keep in touch with some people which unfortuantely think there is no other way to keep in contact on the internet and since they're family it's a bit more awkward to tell them to suck it up and use email like a normal person. Though I feel that day coming up pretty soon.
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Kids, if you're wondering what this "irony" thing is that we oldsters like to talk about...?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
An underqualified English major pretending to be a douchebag.
And that's the end of the story because the Washington Post won't let me read the rest.
So, if I understand this correctly, she got rich and decided working wasn't for her and she wanted to chase every writer's dream to lock themselves away in some far off locale to write their lifetime novel?
How is this news? Because it deals with the side of Facebook everyone knows about but ignores so they can post photos of their kids and let other people tell them how cute they are or is there something I missed in the last two pages?
and I wish Facebook an accelerated death as is certain as people grow more wise to their feeding of personal details to an ad making machine
but in reality, Losse's words and opinion seem to have more to do with Losse's own life trajectory than with Facebook itself
human beings are social animals. this has powered Facebook's growth. but the Internet is still young, and you can forgive the world for not understanding the nature of the beast it was feeding. as it dawns on them what Facebook really means to their lives and their society, they will continue to be just as social, but on sites that do not exist for the goal that Facebook does
meanwhile, humans are not universally social, or social their entire lives. some are more introspective and seek a more monklike existence in order to plumb the depths of their spirit or their mind. this is 100% fine and I myself have this tendency. but i recognize that this tendency of mine, and as it exists also in Losse, is not an enemy of human sociability, nor should it be, nor should we evangelize that everyone should tune out and drop out, just like we should not evangelize that everyone should plug in and focus in
to each their own. Losse is making the mistake of projecting her own life's trajectory on the story of Facebook and/ or social networking in general. don't make the same mistake as Losse. unless you yourself are equally interested in tuning out and dropping out. in which case, this is fine, power to you. i hope something constructive comes out of it, for Losse, and for you. now unplug the computer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You get the full article, rather than 4 pages that eventually require you to "sign in" or "register", if you access the PRINT option.
Link HERE
I like microcars
....after cashing out.
...when she said she wanted to get away from technology. There is NOTHING in West Texas except a few tumbleweeds and reptiles.
"That's right...I said it."
University graduate experiences growing sense of disillusionment with the corporate world. "Plastics", someone whispered to Dustin Hoffman in a movie made in the '60s. "Stepford Wives", someone noticed about corporate life a little later.
So people don't actually have hundreds of friends they can count on, and their privacy isn't what it was in days before the Internet. A lot of time spent updating one's FB pages means that much time for other things they used to do, like read good books. Is that the big revelation?
Telling the whole world when, where and what you have taken your lunch, when, where and what you did when you were with your gf/bf is a life with no privacy whatsoever
Absolutely not the kind of life a normal, self-respecting human being would lead
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Although the title of the article made it seem like she walked away from social media in general, it seems to me that she merely walked away from fakebook (oops) because she didn't drink enough the Zuck's koolaid (claims that zuck said "I don't know if I trust you" to his supposed ghost writer)...
I was once asked to ghost write (in a quasi-technical context), and I politely refused. Didn't cost me too many points with the CEO as there was plenty of other jobs to do in the company. I understand her position was not necessarily the same, but she took that new job and then apparently didn't like it and probably considered it blood money and needed to clean her soul of it.
I submit that the most common outcome of selling your soul for blood money is usually the same for most people. It destroys you from inside until you walk. You usually never really have to take blood money, but the opportuntiy often comes up in a seductive way and challenges you in your weakest moment. The best thing to do is say no, but not everyone does. I'll wager that she didn't have to move in the the position that left her the most disillusioned, but it was likley a most seductive opportunity (to ghost write for the Zuck)...
Hopefully the lesson about blood money doesn't get diluted by polluting it with the equally intriguing, but overdone story about the dangers in the vitualization of real social interaction and trusting your privacy to a bunch of 20-some frat boy wannabes...
It's a lot worse than you think! FTFA:
"Celebrities had found Marfa too. The town's beloved food truck, the Food Shark, has nearly 1,700 'Likes' on its Facebook page -- including ones from luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Tammy Wynette, and Willie Nelson."
According to Wikipedia Tammy Wynette died in 1998. Facebook was launched in February 2004.
Cites "disillusionment"
Stay tuned for more breaking details of this unique event.
That reminds me of when I tried to pay for something with my credit card instead of PayPal. It went like this:
"Please enter your e-mail address"
clickity-click-click....
"Hey it looks like you have a PayPal account. Want to use it?"
(how the f.....???) [No]
"Ok, give us your credit card info"
clickity-click-click....
"You sure you don't want to pay via PayPal? Last chance!"
[No]
"We're pleased you decided to pay through PayPal. Here's your confirmation; you should receive an e-mail shortly."
(multiple explitives and wishing I had simply closed the browser earlier on....but I did get the item, and no immediate harm done to my PayPal or credit card accounts)
I knew what irony was before Alanis was even a zygote, thanks very much.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Sure thing, Son.
BTW, I notice you're on the Internet wayyy after lights-out, so you're grounded from the computer for the next two weeks.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Read page 2 of tfa if you have the time
There is a mention of "Dark Profiles", and I quote:
"... a team of Facebook engineers was developing what they called dark profiles - "pages for people who had not signed up for the service but who had been identified in posts by Facebook users. The dark profiles were not to be visible to ordinary users, Losse said, but if the person eventually signed up, Facebook would activate those latent links to other users."
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Marfa is where hipsters go to be alone.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Zuck ... Schmuck ... Crook.
It's entomology on the internet about the FB insects.
Well, 'At least they are not twits. But not far removed either.'
LOL
XD
PS my /. passphrase is 'reactive'. How did that happen? ;)
"The only thing worse than someone referring to the readership of their post as "people,""
What's the matter with _you_ people?
Lit major in over her head at a tech company feels the heat and comes up with the rationalization that she really didn't like it there anyway. Snore.
...after you have cashed in your stock and made a not insubstantial sum of money. I wonder how much effort, if any, she will put into combating the type of issues she is now decrying.
Considering all of the other social media 'experts' I've heard of had majored in psychology or sociology, this sounds more to me like the usual self-important Washington Post article passing judgment on how we non-rich people from outside the East Coast live.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
Sigh .. the worst thing about knee-jerk 'that's not irony' Alanis references is when they are actually irony ... how sadly ironic can you get. FYI, it is actually irony that the 'preferred method' of signing in is Facebook for an article discussing desire to stop using Facebook.
The pampered generation was the one born in the very early 90s onwards; she was born in the mid-70s, and kids were still having 'traditional' childhoods for a good 15 years after that point.
Also, most of the estimates I've seen place people in their mid-30s (ages 34-37, perhaps) either in the overlap between two generations, or outside of both. The childhood technological experiences of Generation X and Generation Y are drastically different thanks to the sudden rise of home computers, microwaves, VCRs, 1st/2nd wave of video games, etc. -- and the mid-30s crowd lands in-between the two.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
In her first days, she was given a master password that she said allowed her to see any information users typed into their Facebook pages. She could go into pages to fix technical problems and police content. Losse recounted sparring with a user who created a succession of pages devoted to anti-gay messages and imagery. In one exchange, she noticed the man’s password, “Ilovejason,” and was startled by the painful irony.
One billion... thats a lot of plaintext passwords. Just sayin'.
Electronic posts can't take the place of physical contacts and personal emotions, yet this isn't discussed, but most people recognize the need for social contacts.
Facebook like many websites social or otherwise, became famous out of necessity. The product it delivers is outstanding no doubt, if you haven't seen the movie you should, true it has many inaccuracies but it makes you realize what people are really after, online. The fakeness is a perception, the website is really massive and will only get bigger. JMHO.
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Seemed like an interesting article but it demanded registration on page 5.
In one exchange, she noticed the man’s password, “Ilovejason,” and was startled by the painful irony.
If she could see a users password, doesn't that mean that FB stores passwords in clear text? Or at least did so a few years ago. Is there any other explanation?
A real rebel, this one... not. Well, what would one expect from a macbook and iphone touting woman, English major, no less.
I never had an account and never will. Neither should you.
English majors don't go into technology for interest in tech. They go into it for the money. Thatvone explaination why she has a distaste for tech (once she made her bucks).
Another fact is rich folks (or ones that cash out) sure have their opinions.
I don't have an account but that doesn't mean FB isn't tracking me somehow. I have facebook's ip blocked in my hosts files, and run several tracker removing tools like privoxy, ghostery and adblock+. However people take photos of me, friends and family, and not being on facebook, I can't keep track of them. I'm sure some of them are "helpfully" tagging my face on their profiles. I tell people I don't like FB when I can, but you can't really be take the initiative without becoming the "man that's proud to not own a TV/FB/G+" etc. As a result it's hard to tell who is tagging me and who isn't. Worse yet while I ask people to stop tagging me when I can, I never ask for being untagged, because that's useless, FB won't ever forget about that.
This doesn't mean I will stop caring and make an account already. Ghost profiles are by their very nature, sketchy and unreliable. The less information they have on me the better. And no, it's not simply privacy. For as much as I complain that I want my privacy, I do realize that FB itself isn't interested in me. I don't buy at all the bullshit that they are going to make life better for me by offering me products I'm interested in. This kind of marketing isn't about helping me. It's about finding the right market strategy to sell me things I wouldn't buy otherwise.
The real danger are FB clients. Groups like the US government or UK police departments. Groups that would try to use FB vast database to cast a net and trap people for stepping away from control. The thing that saddens me about FB is that it's a tool for suppression of social progress. The huge hypocrisy is that we know this, and we know it's good and we even encourage it in other countries. Yet we've left our covernment build a safety wall against their own citizens...
FB, one way or another, manages to depress me almost every day somehow.
But... the future refused to change.
Not in my opinion. It just seems to be really selective and ignores the two other options for the sake of making a joke.
PS: That's not how you use ellipses. ;)
Picked the book up at the library over the weekend and finished about 80 percent of it last night.
She is a pretty good writer, very descriptive and colorful... about what I would expect from a English grad student.
As many comments before point out she was in the right place at the right time.
The book is really her look at the inside of FB, from an outsiders point of view. She has a very limited understanding of any technologies that were involved in building, operating or maintaining the actual site. The engineers were in a different world from her even when they were in the same room. She had difficulty fitting into the main cliches at the company.
You will find no tech knowledge in this book, if that is your goal skip it!
She struggles to understand that someone answering email was really only worth 30K when a developer was worth 80K.
She refers to all of the male employees at FB as "boys" and then points out misconduct the occurs, while shocked that a small percentage of the employees are female. (Less than 10% of my Computer Science class were females so this is really not a shocker)
The introduction chapter really puts it in perspective that she is of a very liberal mindset and it appears again through many of the chapters. As her career progresses she does take on some interesting assignments and contribute to the success of FB. I applaud her on sticking with it and using her talents in a productive manner. When she finally becomes a salaried employee, finally she gets a real taste of what IT is like(e.g. oncall, always accessible).
Her views regarding FB, social media and how it impacts our lives is interesting and accurate. Friending someone on FB is not the same as being friends in the real world. It struck me as having a visitor to the zoo write a book about the life of the animals.
The town's beloved food truck, the Food Shark, has nearly 1,700 'Likes' [...] According to Wikipedia Tammy Wynette died in 1998. Facebook was launched in February 2004.
The Food Shark is that good. Went there on Spring Break this year while visiting Guadalupe Mountains, Davis Mountains, and Big Bend. Best meal we had all week.
FB serves it's purpose, if someone spends a lot of time on it, I know they're someone I want to avoid.
This person, a so-called 'refugee' from Facebook, is full of it. I mean, she left Facebook to write a 'tell-all' about Facebook under the guise that she left the company to get away from it? Yeah, that does't resonate at all with me.
Let me preface the rest of my comment by saying, I am not a supporter of Facebook. I am a software engineer, I have a Facebook I seldom use and keep private, I eagerly await Facebook's inevitable decline.
Her book and perspective do not help anyone but herself and her 'career'. My takeaway is that she wasn't trusted and bitterly did what would be expected of a disgruntled writer... she wrote about her previous employer for personal gain. Its a good thing she left technology behind because no one in the industry should trust her after this.
Her point revolves around the 'problem' with Facebook being rooted with users and not Facebook as a technology or communication method. Basically, all I hear is her calling users 'stupid'.
The reality of the situation is this... Facebook is where the users are, so its where the money is. If history repeats itself (which it does), Facebook will inevitably meet its end the same way other communication and social platforms have historically gone (pagers, aol, Friendster, Myspace, RIM et al.), when users leave for another platform or technology.
The problem with Facebook is that it exploits users, rather than empower them. Sure, that's a sweeping statement, but its the truth. Their features exist merely as a way to proliferate user data for the purpose of advertising. It is this trend in the industry that's the problem and Facebook isn't alone. Its also the symptom of a company with an ad-hoc business model, something investors have been critical about long before they went public and the single largest reason why they can't figure out how to make mobile profitable.
Its easy to pick at problems with something (a product, solution, situation), but its something else entirely to find solutions. She's seems so focused on the problems with Facebook and her conclusion is "I'll use it again, but with caution".
She had an opportunity to make a tremendous difference in the Facebook culture and platform, instead she plays the victim and proclaims (with heavy overtones of self-righteousness) that Facebook isn't the answer to... what? The human condition? Her career? (I'm honestly not sure what the question even is that she's trying to answer)
Well no kidding, technology has a shelf-life and exists as a step, bridging the gap to the next 'thing'. Facebook is no exception. One thing I do know for certain is that whatever the next thing is, she will play no part in it with her uninspired, defeatist perspective and that's the one good thing I got from this article.
But instead, I'm off to update my Facebook page.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"