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'What's Facebook?', Elon Musk Asks, As He Deletes SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages
It is unlikely that Facebook will see a significant drop in its mammoth userbase following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But on Friday, the #DeleteFacebook campaign, which is seeing an increasingly growing number of people call it quits on the world's largest social network, found its biggest backer: Elon Musk. Responding to WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton's "#DeleteFacebook" tweet, Musk asked "What's Facebook?" That was the beginning of a tweetstorm, which saw journalists asking Musk why his companies -- SpaceX and Tesla -- maintained their Facebook pages. Shouldn't Musk, they asked, delete them? Musk agreed. As of this writing, the official Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla, both of which had more than two million followers, are nowhere to be found. The Facebook page of SolarCity is gone too, if you were wondering.
The move comes months after Musk said Zuckerberg's understanding of AI was limited.
The move comes months after Musk said Zuckerberg's understanding of AI was limited.
Now delete Twitter too.
Generic Relative/Friend: What Facebook did is horrible! Someone should go to jail. Muh privacy!
You: Hey, I heard about this other social media site with different business model. You want to try it out together to see if we like it better than FB?
Generic Relative/Friend: No! I have no time for that! *Posts more crappy memes on Facebook*
In terms of reputation, if Comcast is the bottom of the barrel, Facebook's rep is now buried 6 ft under the barrel and Generic Relative/Friend cannot even spend 10 minutes to try a competing site.
This is why politicians are absolutely justified in thinking the masses are moronic asses.
> on the world's biggest social^H^H^H^H^H^Hcommercial sellout network,
FTFY.
That's like complaining how unhealthy McDonalds food is while eating at an Arby's. Twitter is no better.
ALL OF THEM
At it's beginning, I checked their User Agreement and whatever content I would post there pictures etc., it would become Facebooks property and that was not to my liking, never looked back to there. Proofed me just right in doing so by not participating on this circus.
(Anonymous Coward disappeared in a puff of logic)
After years of resisting joining Facebook, I caved after publishing my first novel. I figured that it was a potential place to spread the word of my book and I couldn't ignore it. As a method of spreading the word, it's pretty bad, though. If you post something, everyone who follows you won't see it. Not unless you pay Facebook to spread it to more people than the people they deem will see your message. If a group of people follow me, I'd think they should ALL see my message, but apparently Facebook disagrees.
I'd be interested in any alternatives to Facebook that people can recommend. (And, no, "get off all social media" is not a valid alternative.) Are there up and coming social media sites that are viable alternatives to Facebook? Obviously, they might not have the number of users that Facebook has, but if you set the page to be public, it doesn't matter if the person is a subscribed member or not.
At this point, I'm thinking of going back to my blog and maybe using IFTTT to auto-post links on Facebook about my blog posts.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Someone has been paying those third rate news sites - The Verge, Techdirt, Buzzfeed, with a couple stories in Bloomberg as well - to give Facebook and Google 100% negative coverage, nonstop, no matter what the topic is. Remember when those bloggers were typing "kill all bl" into the Google search bar, in order to get it to suggest "black people", which they could then be offended by? They're not saying it, but this has been their goal for over a year.
That's what happens when you steal all your ideas and don't actually create anything new.
Get rid of social media, we are pretty good at being anti-social anyway.
Facebook has been used for market research and political research for years, and people generally viewed this as a positive: finally, campaigns could figure out what people actually wanted and liked. And the TOS make it pretty clear that data can be used for such purposes. All of a sudden this is a problem or a scandal? Why?
It makes no sense to quit Facebook and still use Instagram.
It's the same damn company collecting the same damn data.
I don't respond to AC's.
Musk doesn't like Zuck, and Zuck returns the favor. Not surprised Musk taking opportunity to dog-pile on the kid when he's down (his version of 'down' anyways).
I've noticed the cattiness between these two for a couple years. They've been chippy in public regarding diverging views on AI. And probably didn't help that SpaceX blew up Facebook's pet-project satellite - which I thought was totally worth the firework but Faceboy not so thrilled about it if I remember correctly.
Take your lives back, people.
everything millennials want. ....and never forget who started this trend https://ih0.redbubble.net/imag...
the non-conformist tony stark.
in all seriousness, what did you expect from facebook? to hoard your data under some secret cave and xored with a 2Tb key? Whoever gets surprised by this, either lives under a stone or is genuinely stupid. I mean, come on, you are the product, what did you expect? ffs.
Musk is more worried about his hairline and the emission taxes that he manages in some states, than the personal information of some idiot who joined the mod into the facebook.
But without Facebook how am I supposed to know what kind of ratchet stuff my neighbor's ex daughter in law's new step daughter is doing so that I can feel superior to my neighbor???
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
Facebook has been used for market research and political research for years, and people generally viewed this as a positive: finally, campaigns could figure out what people actually wanted and liked.
No people don't regard this as a positive. People are indifferent to it the vast majority of the time if they are aware at all. I doubt you would find many people that think "gee Facebook being used for market research is a good thing for me". But it usually doesn't hurt them so they don't worry about it.
All of a sudden this is a problem or a scandal? Why?
Because sometimes it takes the masses a while to realize something is bad. Sometimes it takes a company doing something unsavory at a moment when people are sensitive to it for the problem to get fully recognized. Sometimes it's just a perfect storm of circumstances coming together. Whatever the reality might be it is "all of a sudden" a problem. It's always been a problem - just not recognized as such by a many people.
Will anything come of Facebook's latest effort at being a Bond villian? I'm not optimistic. But hopefully it will be the start of some actual positive change.
Well as with every strategic decision you have to make, there is always advantages that come with disadvantages, and you have to accept that and chose accordingly.
Being on facebook gives you a big amount of visibility but the audience is a rather not very clever one. they sell you quantity not quality but you take it anyway Mr.Musk. because maximum visibility is what i think you are seeking. otherwise you'd be good with RSS feed on your websites.
My guess is that his facebook pages won't stay off for long. just surfing on the hype.
Look Google has a script that goes something like this
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
I put that on the website and both the website and the visitors get tracked. It's the same with facebook, bing, twitter and amazon; these guys are up our asses with a microscope. Sure we can block this technique, but they'll soon find another. it's like the story,
Likewise these companies collect data and sell both data and advertising, it's what they do and why they exist.
If you don't want your data collected and tracked, you pretty much have to go live with sasquatch.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
...do we all go back to myspace?
I have never had and desire to be on Facebook because it seems like it was full of righteous political hollier than though types. Now that all the socially conscious gentry are jumping off the Facebook band wagon, it is time for me to sign up.
If you are heading against the mass of humanity you are heading in the correct direction.
'Insanity in individuals is unusual. In groups and countries it is the norm'
-some famous person who was accused of being a Nazi and a homosexual homophobe by the masses
I’m too early. I deleted all the social shit earlier this year.
For all those folks who think the fBook is here to stay, do y'all remember AOL (America Online)?
It was the cat's pajamas (to use an antique phrase) in its day.
That's what Facebook is good for. You use it to create accounts for sites in the web in which you want to make comments. All the resulting trash will go to your Facebook account. I haven't checked out mine in years, but I am sure that it must be brimming with garbage. Let the Facebook minions deal with that. You see? Facebook is good for something.
That's good enough for me. If Elon can delete so can I
I have my own RSS aggregator for news. However, I primarily use my Facebook account to like companies like SpaceX, Tesla, and other interesting companies I like to find out about new products, watch cool videos they may publish, and sometimes see news they publish I may miss in my RSS feed. So, without this, I'm not less likely to know what SpaceX and Tesla are doing excpept negative news stories now posting how behind Tesla is on Model3 orders. Overall this will be bad for the company in terms of exposure, as that's how Tesla got it's real following. Alientating much of their base.
I honestly hold absolutely nothing about Facebook in the last week to two weeks newsworthy or surprising given I've known for years friends email and contacts were being stolen via SPAM I would get on my email account, and thus made sure all apps got privileges revoked, and minimized my exposure. You're stupid to know assume your data on facebook was NOT being mined. Not a game changer for me.
Why the hell isn't there some sort of open source solution for this? We could call it SNTP (social network transfer protocol) people set up and control their own SNTP content, anywhere you want . Companies could compete at doing this for you. Other companies (of governments) could aggregate this stuff, compete to bring it together and present large databases and portals of this information. The internet would be the wild west again, as it should be.
They're extracting your data and using it against you. What if your data isn't your data. What if the things you like and argue about aren't really things that you care about? The answer is that it screws up their data about you. Now what happens if every 20 year old boy is a 73 year old woman on facebook? ... Their valuation plummets.
This is why politicians are absolutely justified in thinking the masses are moronic asses.
The real problem for democracy is that those same politicians are selected from those same masses.
And, no, "get off all social media" is not a valid alternative.
Yes it is. You are looking for a free way to advertize your book but social media platforms make their money by charging people to advertize. If this is what you are looking for get off social media and pay someone to advertize for you.
What disturbs me about such deletion is the casual destruction of all the information and entertainment in the posts and comments. I know Facebook is renowned for the ephemeral and lightweight nature of its content, and almost all wouldn't have been worth preserving. But worthwhile stuff and history has also been lost.
I felt the same way when IMDB deleted its fora.
You must lower me into the steel.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Nothing can be really deleted at Facebook. Those things are forever once posted there!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
IT IS TIME! I knew this day would come!
Rise, my golden demon!
and'll never ride to Mars?
Guess a handful of Tesla/solar city and / SpaceX employees are wondering what they're gonna be doing tomorrow ...
back in 2013. What did i win?
has been revealed to be B.S.. It's not about giving people what they want, it's about manipulating them into doing as told. The CEO got caught on tape saying as much..
I'm not opposed to advertising. Advertising can be a positive good. It can make people aware of things they never knew they wanted. But this wasn't advertising. This wasn't about convincing people they wanted Trump. And it certainly wasn't about Trump finding out what people wanted so he could give it to them. These people had long since decided on their political views and agenda and wanted to know how to get folks to go along with it, regardless of whether it benefited those people. This is the worst kind of politics.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There are proper places for these things.Worthwhile stuff should be posted in their proper locations, instead of the wasteland we call Facebook
And to use your example, movie trivia in forums should find a location on entertainment channels.Will it save the planet? Probably in a script somewhere being written.
http://boards.4chan.org/b/
I'm not gay, but we're I , he'd be it.
It is the ultimate tool for massive mind control and world domination.
Something that Stalin, Hitler and others of the kind could never dream of.
There are a half dozen or more facebook-esque open source federated (like email, nntp, xmpp, etc using s2s networking) social networking platforms. But much like XMPP itself, they were either ignored or coopted and walled off by proprietary software companies over the years while our society of lazy dullards chose a particular service and stuck with it, just like the cliques of high school, rl social scene, and corporate past and present.
But Mark Zuckerberg was Time magazine's "Person of the Year"!
Digital Citizen
More companies should shun Facebook.
Our school district had an emergency, and instead of having the information freely available on their website, they posted the information on Facebook. Unforgivable.
I'm sure he's got a gigantic ego -- it don't think can be that successful without one -- but he's the least asshole-ish of the tech leaders. Plus, I like his sometimes punny (the "boring company" bit), sometimes outrageous sense of humor (not just launching Starman, but broadcasting "Life on Mars" to the solar system while doing it -- yes, I know you can't hear sound in space, but that's part of the fun so lighten up Francis).
He seems like someone that would actually be fun to talk with (as opposed to someone like Zuckerberg or the former head douche of Über, both of who's smug arrogance I don't think I could stomach for more than a few seconds).