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New Facebook Video Controls Let You Limit Viewing By Gender and Age
Mark Wilson writes: Videos on Facebook are big business. As well as drugged up post-dentist footage, there is also huge advertising potential. Now Facebook has announced a new set of options for video publishers — including the ability to limit who is able to see videos based on their age and gender. A social network might not be the first place you would think of to try to keep something private, but a new 'secret video' option makes it possible to restrict access to those people who have a direct link. Other new options include the ability to prevent embedding on other sites, but it is the audience restriction settings that are particularly interesting. For a long time Facebook has been about reaching out to as many people as possible in one hit — particularly in the case of pages, which are likely to be used for the promotion of businesses and services. But now the social giant provides tools to limit one's audience. It's fairly easy to understand the reasons for implementing age restrictions on video (although there is obviously scope for abuse), but the reasons for gender-based restrictions are less clear.
I predict that men will whine that they can't see videos set so that only women can see them.
I predict the women who posted the above videos will whine if men post videos set so only men can see them, saying it's sexist, while not realizing the hypocrisy.
I predict SJWs will whine that this somehow doesn't include transgendered people.
I predict that I will sit back with a big tub of popcorn and enjoy the hilarious drama.
I'm probably not going to be interested in any videos that target my 90 year old Two-Spirit facebook avatar, but it will make for some fun stares when I check facebook while waiting for the kids to exhaust themselves in the local jump-o-rama
The talk of gender-related limits made me think of teenage boys and girls in their isolated cliques wanting to share things only with other teenage boys or girls, and in light of that a possible use of age-related limits struck me: if you can set an age ceiling as well, this could be used by kids to hide things from adults, not just by adults to hide age-inappropriate things from kids.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I predict online personalities will be willing to prevaricate around gender and age restricting bylaws.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
They talk about videos being big business right there. If you're going to pay them $$$ for "promoting" your posts, then controlling who you promote them to is...kind of obvious, isn't it?
I mean, promoting on FB isn't the same as a full advertising suite. It's almost more like blackmail. If you have enough followers, then they stop showing your posts to all of them unless you give Facebook money. As a halfway step between promoting and full targeted advertising, this makes total sense.
Share your secrets on facebook. What could possibly go wrong?
Free publicity!
Always read at -1, don't let others decide what you should and should not read.
It's:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get cow-moo
Hope this helps!
Showing off is not what yoga is about... I think the ones making videos do it exactly for this purpose.
Always read at -1, don't let others decide what you should and should not read.
What is this "Facebook"? Is that the thing where people post pictures of what they're having for dinner?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Facebook is a space created for men, by men. Their website and app have no support at all for female accessibility features. Things like breast gesture swipe recognition are left out on purpose and there's nowhere I can go to talk about my period without men ogling my tampon photos. A public company like Facebook must be required to create safe spaces where male predators aren't allowed!
Every time a man sees an ad written with women in mind, or vice versa, somebody somewhere has spent some tiny fraction of a cent sub-optimally.
or a safe space for sexists.. *No boys allowed*
Some men like to share videos of their hobbies without a bunch of women shaming them back to the plantation. Before they'd have to create a separate profile or kick their female friends of their FB account. This gives them another option.
Of course, the real solution is for both to grow a spine and quit worrying about and/or micromanaging what the other sex is thinking/doing.
Wait 'till they get a hold of the 23andMe data from yesterday.
Why not by race too?
Neo-Liberalism destroys nations.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
>> limit who is able to see videos based on their age and gender
How the hell is this supposed to work with transgender options that pretty much let anybody identify as anybody?
Is Facebook getting another filter ready to screen in and out by skin tone and eye color too?
Next, can we have a filter that only allows the video to be viewed by people who haven't used the phrase "Social Justice Warrior"? It would be hilarious...
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This is pretty silly. The gender restrictions will probably have to go, because it will be hyper lulzy if they don't.
What's scary is that you don't realize the Facebook move is about marketing demographics and instead need to fight a social battle for equal treatment of women (SJW), without any irony.
Facebook video is already filled with copyright infringement from YouTube channels, where rebranded content is being posted. The rebranding of content, plus the limited lifespan of most videos plus the inability to find it publicly, are causing pain in the "YouTube Star" group.
How is the MPAA/RIAA/Whomever going to deal with Facebook facilitating massive copyright infringement? I mean, it's one thing to share a fairly powerless guy's content with 20 million followers, get caught and just have to remove it. But when I want to see a movie my friend has, so he just posts it so only I can see it...?
Given how Facebook is trying to make most people's whole internet experience solely based on their servers,t his is the one time I'm hoping the MPAA can make a ton of trouble for someone.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
When I read the title, I though this was a function for users rather than publishers. As in "From now on I only want to see videos of girls in the age span 19-24".
The pervs at your favorite three letter agency still get to see what they want, profiled by whatever they see fit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'd rather have a script that filters everything a SJW posts and copies it to ... a certain board we all know with well meaning, very eloquent users who would never DREAM of invading a FB account of someone with a misguided agenda and flood it with insightful (or is that spelled inciteful?), helpful information on how to clean up the gene pool.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Could you be more stupid and ignorant?
More ways to alienate ourselves from each other. More protection for our views. Another place to ignore people on the internet and wonder why we feel so lonely. Mankind is already proficient at dividing ourselves. I predict this technology will only speed the separation even more. If people retreat into their own little conclaves they only get more radical and more insular. The longer we go on shielding ourselves from views we disagree with or running from the criticisms of our own deeply held beliefs, the more likely were are to revert to tribal tendencies and war. Thanks Facebook.
Separate, but equal. Jane Crow and all that.
I'm just hoping to deny access to people who think that a warrior for justice must automatically be a bad thing.
It's one thing to disagree over what real Justice is, but rejecting even their own definition of it is a dangerous sign.
Right, because a person who considers justice as a pejorative, and an applied pejorative as proof of a misguided agenda, really has some insight?
I'm not sure you have to go that far to do some quality work on gene pool cleansing.
Using "SJW" as a pejorative doesn't mean one is against social justice. "SJW" is supposed to refer to someone who follows feelings more than facts, who believes everything a woman/PoC says about being harassed (as long as it fits their agenda, otherwise they have "internalized misogyny/racism"); they're also pretty much just keyboard warriors who don't fact-check. They're the sort who look at the many injustices in the world and then want to push them too far in the other direction; they idealize and fetishize the oppressed. It's perfectly reasonable to be against this sort of outlook while still advocating for actual social justice.
That being said, there are plenty of people who get mislabeled as SJWs. Social justice is a great thing, and we should strive for it (because we clearly haven't gotten there yet). I think using "SJW" to refer to those sort of people was a mistake, but that's where things are right now.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
I mean, you could already create a list of your female friends and make certain posts only visible to them, so those weren't the only options. This new thing will make it easier, but they had the option before that.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Because if I were a marketing agent at Tampax, I'd like to do my fellow men a favor and set those directly-sharable-to-your-timeline-and-eligible-for-autoplay videos I'll be uploading to the brand's official page to "women only" because not too many guys care to be shown advertisements for a product that they're not (generally) anatomically equipped to use, much less have a valid need of, because they have one or more of "that friend", or worse, "that family member", that shares the weirdest damned shit, including advertisements for women's sanitary products.
This becomes increasingly important when I'm paying per-impression to have these videos pop up on random people's newsfeeds in the ad slot. I don't want to pay for someone who'll almost certainly never care about my product (guys: do you really sit there and make decisions on which sanitary products your female partner uses? Do you sit there and think about what bit of cotton will sop up the most blood? No, she just tells you what to buy and you squeamishly get in and out of the store ASAP with the damned things, and hope you don't run into anyone you know during it all.) to see an ad that they have absolutely zero use for.
(I know I'm gonna get flamed for this, but it just came to mind as possibly the number one important use-case for gender controls.)