Slashdot Mirror
Mark Zuckerberg's Real Campaign: Save Facebook (axios.com)
From an Axios report: Mark Zuckerberg started 2017 scoffing at the idea of Russia election manipulation on Facebook, and looked like he was contemplating his own possible run for the presidency. Facebook's CEO ends 2017 a very changed man: scrambling to curtail (some of) the manipulation he now acknowledges exists, and to save the most powerful platform in human history. A Facebook exec tells us: "This is the year people will see we get that there's real work to do. We have to change."
Is Damaging Society and Personal Relationships ACROSS THE GLOBE! (Cough, Cough, Bullshit) LET IT BURN! Go OUTSIDE and see your Friends FACE TO FACE!
most powerful platform in human history
the most powerful platform in human history
I would say religions have been and still are far more powerful (yes religion is a "platform", just not a technological one). FB is just faster, but certainly not more powerful.
I agree with none of these platforms.
Decided on a Facebook hiatus this month. Frankly, I don’t really feel I miss much and I posted frequently. Sometimes, you think “this is cool, I should share it”. That feeling usually drops away after 10 minutes. I conclude that it really wasn’t that important then.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The world would be a better place without Facebook and Twitter. It would result in less outrage politics, less radicalization of loaners, less keeping up with Jonses, less depressed people, less echo chambers, safer roads, better sleep. If deleting Facebook and Twitter was a pill, we would all be taking it instead of vitamins.
and looked like he was contemplating his own possible run for the presidency
Until he figured out that he's one of the most hated people in the world, even among the heaviest of Facebook users.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Even with the PR disaster, what does it need saving from? People continue to use it in the absence of any real competitor (Twitter caters to a different crowd and Instagram is mostly owned by Facebook anyway) and the most complaint they ever see comes from interface fuckery that's been going on 10 years now. If anything, the world needs to be saved from Facebook.
"... scrambling to curtail (some of) the manipulation he now acknowledges exists"
facebook founder, users, employees, and critics, all seem to live in a bubble, spouting nonsense back and forth, about a non-incident, backed with no independently verifiable evidence, made up entirely of unverified allegations about, relatively minuscule ad spending by unidentified americans with, fuzzy at best, connections several nodes removed from anything real named kremlin.
sad.
Mark Zuckerberg started 2017 scoffing at the idea of Russia election manipulation on Facebook...
No transparent conflict of interest in that position... [/sarcasm] Of course that is what he would say. Otherwise he and his company are complicit in a crime.
...and looked like he was contemplating his own possible run for the presidency.
$diety save us!
Hmm .... reading between the lines, I would guess that Zuckerberg's real concern is that engagement metrics are falling for Facebook users. I can't imagine that he gives a flip one way or the other about "fake news" or manipulation, as long as people use Facebook.
Just this morning, I unfollowed yet another friend who couldn't resist screaming at everyone with yet another political post. It's getting very, very tiring. Facebook has caused friends of mine to stop speaking (in person) to each other. It's a great platform for seeing family photos, but beyond that I no longer see much utility in using a platform that exists to promote and monetize "us vs. them" mindsets.
Facebook can't die quickly enough.
That The Facebook needs saving is encouraging news... that seems to indicate its popularity and influence is waning.
Even if this is true, it's sad to realize the genie is out of the bottle on this type of social media platform, and something else will replace or compete with Zuck's digital progeny.
Here's to hoping we don't get a replacement that's actually worse, on the order of trading Saddam Hussein for ISIS.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
"This is the year people will see that Zuckerberg is a pimple-faced teenager."
-FTFY
Just release more SJW all over social media. Just let them ban anything they don't like.
Music, art, cartoons, blasphemy, comments about illegal migration, history, book reviews, movie reviews.
SJW will report all reviews, comments, links. Ban accounts. Remove the comments, links.
Social media will be so simple to use then as only a few trusted accounts will be allowed to comment.
Only having a few sites to link from will make news so much more simple to control too.
A perfect brand trusted by big governments, political leaders. The big brands ads and users who like big government and lots of ads.
Positive movie reviews on all movies. Only selected books get reviews. Only linking to a few pre approved news sites.
People will enjoy and really want to return to that kind of hard working social media brand.
Please work hard and show us what SJW want to ban on social media.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Facebook absolutely depends on bad behavior in order to maintain the amount of power it has. The only "campaign to save Facebook" that we can realistically expect is a PR campaign. Actual positive change would harm FB's shareholders.
That should be your real goal.
I remember reading a story about a man who was Facebook mobbed by a woman who accused him of being a pedophile because her kids were in part of a selfie he took. She later apologized and admitted that she was an idiot. The best way to deal with a troll mob is really simple:
1. Lock the account of EVERYONE who shared it.
2. Force them to read a notice that they participated in a troll mob based on defamatory/abusive content.
3. Threaten them that if it happens again within 90 days, they'll be locked out for 30 days.
4. If it happens three times in a year they get a lifetime ban from all Facebook social networks and using Facebook Connect to login to third party services.
Facebook is pure garbage. I've never created an account but I see lots of my friends waste huge piles of time on it. The best thing for Facebook would be to blank the filesystems of every server they have and use their massive amounts of equipment towards something more noble, like protein folding simulations which may actually cure disease.
Mark Zuckerberg is a useless tool who will hopefully be a footnote in history and nothing more.
This guy gets rich off of you voluntary giving your personal information to him. And you don't even get paid. What suckers!
Look forward to seeing face in the trash as well. To bad Murdock is running out of fun dollars to buy it's carcass. That was a great coffin nail for myspace.
Hasn't it turned into MySpace? Only teens and olds posting pictures of their lunch? All the millennials seem to have departed for Reddit and Instagram.
He thinks his company is worth saving.
"This is the year people will see we get that there's real work to do. We have to change."
Hopefully by going the MySpace way.
Facebook needs to do far more than just curtail fake news. It tries to curtail "hate speech", however does not have a clear policy on what exactly constitutes "hate speech". As a result, Facebook moderators routinely curtails the free expression of conservative ideas. Just because a person disagrees with you does not make it "hate speech". Just because you do not like what a person has posted does not make it "hate speech". In truth, very little of what gets labeled as "hate speech" is truly "hate speech". Facebook should remember that it MUST embrace the concept of ideological neutrality or it will be working hand in hand with those that produce fake news.
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
The crime of selling 100k worth of ads, that promoted both sides ?
"Both sides"? What side do Russians have in the US election? Last I checked they were neither democrats nor republicans. They have no business being involved at all. If Facebook facilitated their actions then there is a good chance Facebook was complicit in attempted election rigging and quite possibly in violation of federal election laws.
Which statute does that break exactly ?
There are plenty of articles on this very topic.
If anything, the ads just served as confirmation bias to people on either side, and were used more to sow discord than to actually influence the election one way or another.
Russians buying ads is by definition an attempt to influence the election. You are making a distinction without a difference.
Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed.
-Dave
Let him scramble and let him fail. Facebook never did anything really innovative anyway. It's like one giant, topicless bulletin board where everyone posts shit about their lives most people don't want to read anyway. Facebook ruined the concept of friendship and relegated it to something far less meaningful and rich. Instead the platform has been divisive, promotes hatred, and promotes revisionist history. I'm now 60 days free from that giant clusterfuck known as Facebook. Facebook is psychologically toxic!
Fake news spreads very fast. People will post things that they agree with (or find interesting) without thinking and checking to see if it is true. One harmless but false post that I recently seen on Facebook posted by a couple of my FB friends is that in 2018 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, ...12/12 will all occur on a Sunday. It is a fun fact if it was true, but with just a little bit of thinking it is easy to realize that it is false. Yet I have a couple of FB friends who posted it without thinking. Posting without thinking and checking is a problem Facebook can not solve.
By the time a human looks at the post and determines it is fake news, the post has been reposted hundreds of times. An algorithm can find some fake news posts but how many false positives would there be. People would also figure ways around (or game) the algorithm, so it would be an ongoing battle. And what determines fake new? Is it one misleading statement? Does a slanted story with only one side counts as fake news? Is an opinion that is misleading fake news? It is hard.
Then there is the issue of censorship. Is it right for Facebook to ban posts? Should Facebook mark posts as possible fake news and put it far down in its curated list of posts? I think something can be done, but it is not an easy problem to solve, and it will never be completely solved.
Shoot, about 75% of the stuff I see are things like this: Apple will lose xxx share...click here for the details New campaign to take down xxxx politician, click for the details and on and on. Click bait, to get people to go to a website, in order to run up the click count, so the website can charge more for advertising.
Oh! If only Jim Jones were alive today! He coulda done in over 60 million!
I find your continued absolute faith and undivided attention to this narrative most disturbing. You're letting the whole world burn around you! The internet really shows off our dirty laundry hanging on the balcony there! This psychosis is epidemic in the extreme. I'm left to wonder if the entire physical universe is doomed to the same horrible fate. After all, everything that happens, everything we do, is all perfectly natural and logical. You can trace it all the way back to the *big bang*. If this is nature, the best thing to do is to move to the tropics and wait it out, and hope for better luck next life. It doesn't end, you know. There is no rest. One instant you're there, then you're not, then you are again... It sucks! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug?
You still can. Just share it on social media, instead of giving it to Facebook. Email is still there. Slashdot and Reddit are still there. And all of those platforms are more powerful than Facebook anyway. Facebook doesn't even let you post a fucking hyperlink! Go ahead and try to hyperlink a description of what the link points to, and you'll see what media works vs what is hopelessly broken and at least two decades behind.
Same death as USENET, myspace, and all other forum type systems. They eventually become so polluted with spam they are unbearable and useless. The only reason Facebook is still used by anyone is because old people are afraid of losing their contact list and pictures. Young people don't care about archival or contact lists and are willing to throw it away and start over any day so they jump around and try new social networks.
Audience. Once upon a time, my audience was here on slashdot with the journals. Everyons moved, and most ended up on Facebook. I never really got the point of Reddit... I have an account, but the site just doesn’t speak to me. I’m getting old. I can just keep my thoughts to myself... or at least learn to.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
He should read the story of what happened to Ma Bell when the government decided that she was too large.
Passionately Indifferent
Maybe, just maybe.. At least until Peter takes over the job.
the most powerful platform in human history
There is no general definition of the word "platform" that supports this assertion. You're going to have to be a lot more specific here.
If Facebook is in danger of destruction, I want to know: how can we help? Help destroy it, that is. I am a moral person, after all.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why is the onus on Facebook? Shouldn't we be able to discern what is true and what isn't? I get that people are lazy, but that doesn't absolve themselves of responsibility.
I never really got the point of Reddit... I have an account, but the site just doesn't speak to me.
I'm with you there. Reddit drives me crazy. I can never follow the threads of discussion there.
May 2018 bring the crickets to FaceBook
May it join GeoCities and MySpace
May the sound of tumbleweeds in the wind
Dominate it
Problem is.. 2 billion fools who will blindly jump to the next platform.
The entire fake news thing is sad and embarrassing. It's people admitting that they cannot think critically, and will believe just about anything. They're crying "Do something! Do something!" when all they have really ever had to do is think critically for a few moments and the problem is solved.
Corruption is rampant and legal in this county. Our representatives are so openly owned that nobody even blinks an eye, its no longer news. So normal that nobody even bothers to fact check anymore. Politicians are all dirty as hell, of course they did %THING. Corruption and bad behavior are so normal that people just assume it's true. Even our MSM.
Meanwhile, our media is so sanitized and washed out that other countries are able to manipulate our population with fucking memes, lies, and cartoons. This is a problem for our giant divisive media companies, not more corrupt politicians.
Really fucking sad.
Assume every politician is dirty as hell, and every single person you meet is out for your wallet and assets. Voting won't help, and you can't run for office without selling your soul to corporations.
The only play left is to remember everything in America is a fucking scam and act accordingly. Even the fucking news.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Disconnect from Facebook and bankrupt this evil manipulator.
How many of those photos and videos of cats on Facebook are Russian while hiding their true identity and nationality? Are we being covertly influenced by Russian cats?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
He is leftist by the way but I don't think that matters.
I would argue that it does matter. There are exceptions to everything, but statistically speaking I would say it makes a huge difference. You either understand and appreciate the scientific method, or you don't...... If you want other people to believe what you believe that is called religion, not fact.
The critical thing is that most of the people in Crimea are Russian and want to be part of Russia.
We should never have made such a fuss about it. Because screaming about marginal cases weakens your ability to scream if Russia becomes truly aggressive. It also strengthens Putin politically.
There is a feeling that national borders are sacrosanct, even though they are often the result of arbitrary historical processes and have little to do with ethnic boundaries. Particularly where colonial powers were concerned. Borders should follow ethnic lines, and locals should be able to chose. Kurdistan should exist.
Imagine what the USA would be today if the southern states had been allowed to succeed.
Hello everyone,
We gives out short and long term service to serious individuals that are capable of paying back the service in good faith with a low interest within any duration you would need. So feel free and transact business with us as we are a financial refuge and powerhouse to individuals in need of adequate financing to help solve their financial needs and ease their stress. The loan amount you need will be granted to you and we will indeed be happy to transact business with you. quickloanpayment@gmail.com
Await your reply
> But just like reading no lower than 2 on Slashdot, I can
> unfollow friends on Facebook and no one gets booboo feelings.
Are you *SURE* they won't get upset? https://modenook.com/facebook-...
> In nearby Mountain City, Tennessee, a couple is dead because they
> unfriended the wrong person. A woman's father murdered the couple,
> leaving their infant alive in the mother's arms, because they unfriended his
> daughter on Facebook. You can read about that story here on The Tennessean.
https://www.aol.com/2011/11/03...
> Police in Des Moines, Iowa, have arrested 30-year-old Jennifer Christine
> Harris (pictured left) for allegedly setting her neighbor's house on
> fire, according to the Des Moines Register. The suspected motive?
> Retribution for being "de-friended" on the popular social networking site.
I agree with Mark Zuckerberg on one thing. Facebook users are indeed dumb fucks.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Or change his mind.
Nothing else will. Too greedy.
Facebook, Twitter, etc. have the same potential negative consequences as alcohol, drugs, tobacco, etc. and they should be regulated in a similar manner.
First, children should be barred from using them. Second, they should be taxed and money used to defray the costs these companies impose on society. Third, they should be banned from any form of advertising, especially ads that target children.
Silicon Valley has become a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, filled with whores and sociopaths.