Facebook

[Otherworld]

Right upfront, I have never had a Facebook account and never will.

Was anyone here truly affected by the Facebook outage?

If so, in what way?

Seeing the Whistleblower testimony just confirms what we knew all along. IMO regulation of this sector is long overdue.

[rodox_head]

I've avoided social media since the days of myspace; saw no personal use for it anyway. I don't know what the testimony was but I heard from a coworker that it had to do with them leaving hateful pages up for ad revenue. My response was basically "wait, didn't I know this already?".

[Otherworld]

Yup, we knew that.

Congress has to act because now they know it.

They have to be regulated.

[admin]

I keep my social media accounts active to advertise this and my other sites, my YT channel, and to promote my art to make sales. It has worked better than any non-social media sites, and as far as I'm concerned, advertising your wares is the intended use of social media. The "social" part is a front, the people in charge pretend social media is for social interaction. It's for collecting data to sell for targeted advertising, though, which I think the many leaks over the yearsr make clear.

Any good aspects of something like Facebook are not unique to Facebook, and have in fact been done MUCH BETTER by other social media sites in the past, like LiveJournal. The problem is that social media sites that collect and sell your data to advertisers are hugely profitable, so they've replaced the less harmful websites.

Facebook could be gone tomorrow and there would be no good reason to complain about it, unless you're an advertiser, imo. There are other ways to communicate online. We got by without it in the past, we could get by without it in the future.

I certainly wouldn't mind if people returned to using forums and sites like LiveJournal.

[Annin_Tofu]

I just go on there to look for acting jobs.

[rodox_head]

Facebook could be gone tomorrow and there would be no good reason to complain about it, unless you're an advertiser, imo. There are other ways to communicate online. We got by without it in the past, we could get by without it in the future.

Do you think the same could be said for just about all the other major social media platforms? The ability to connect with others on such a wide open forum seems to bring an inevitable air of narcissism and egotistical behaviour. I think I've seen much more productive conversations in YouTube comment sections.

[admin]

Facebook could be gone tomorrow and there would be no good reason to complain about it, unless you're an advertiser, imo. There are other ways to communicate online. We got by without it in the past, we could get by without it in the future.

Do you think the same could be said for just about all the other major social media platforms? The ability to connect with others on such a wide open forum seems to bring an inevitable air of narcissism and egotistical behaviour. I think I've seen much more productive conversations in YouTube comment sections.

The problem with Facebook, Twitter, TikTok is that the algorithms have been shown to be harmful. For example, a young girl could be looking for recipes, healthy food, workout videos, and eventually her feeds devolves into pro-anorexia shit because other users have gone on that path through the recommended content. And with the US political shit, insurrection and so on. This is driven by "engagement" algorithms which do not have a moral code, because they're algorithms.

It could be fixed, I think, by going back to social media which lacks these algorithms (which are very profitable, and that's why the big ones have them) and goes back to human-curated things, which is why I am currently trying to migrate over to SpaceHey.

[LostInTheFog]

To me the problems with social media as Facebook is the greed and the lack of social control. The algorithms and everything else will follow these metrics - to gain as much money as possible no matter what and to hide or avoid any kind of control. Nothing will ever work like this, never did. If we shut down Facebook, another social media, even worst will take over.

The Internet, it's services and the social tools build over it were made inside liberal democracy paradigm, and banked by liberal economics. Both are in deep crisis, we don't know if will even survive.

We stopped to discuss Mark Zukemberg because he was so greedy than have sabotaged it's own company, but without deep changes in our society we won't have any Internet by the end of this century, will fall as a cards castle. Facebook is just an episode.

[rodox_head]

Carried over from another thread as I thought the conversation fit here better:

Kinda retro this spacehey. I read that it was created by a startup, and I understood they work on mythical past of Internet. My first impression is sort of "remake" of an old fashioned social media.

I tend to think the real change should be the model, and we should go ahead, not backwards. I think I should pay for my space in social media and have a different kind of relationship with the companies behind or nothing will change.

Just thoughts...

In terms of overall design, I find the older style much better. Easier on the eyes, much less bloated, and concise in its structure. I'm not quite sure what is meant by "paying for space in social media" though.

[Annin_Tofu]

Facebook will never be better than using forums.

OK. For contacting family members, it's better for doing that...