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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.
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.
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
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.
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 !
...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.
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 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?
Marfa is where hipsters go to be alone.
So... she's a hipster because she quit Facebook before it was cool to do so?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw