He's sarcastic. No positive futurist is sarcastic. That's why he's able to manipulate futurists.

 

Years ago I was in a side project of a band with two brothers. For the first 10 years of the main band they were straight up with their music and fans. They were heavily Nirvana-influenced and shared that band's sense of humor and disdain for crappy bands and music. After a while though, (the mid-2000s when mainstream music had gotten really dumb) they wrote some dumb Kid Rock-style stuff. The fans ate it up and the band immediately switched everything over to that sound. They are trolls.

 

How is a positive view of the future incompatible with sarcasm?

The metric that social networks strive for is "engagement". They want you to spend a much time as possible looking through the endless stream of content that their platform provides. In non-tech fields we would call this "addiction".

Media businesses used to sell our attention, acquired in exchange for desirable content.  Nowadays we provide the content and the book reads us.

Facebook confirms it records call history, stoking privacy furor

 

Facebook confirmed Sunday that it has been keeping texting and call logs for millions of people who use Android phones to access Facebook Messenger, adding to a growing backlash over how the company handles the user data that drives its record-setting profits.

 

This only affects Android users, as iOS does not provide third party apps with a way to access your call history or text messages.

 

Facebook stressed it didn't sell the data and doesn't record the text messages or the audio of the calls themselves.

 

Well, saying that they didn't "sell the data" is missing the point. Facebook also didn't "sell" user data to Cambridge Analytica ... it provided it to them for free.

So if you have an iPhone you don't have to worry about this?  I remember reading that a long time ago but didn't pay a lot of attention to it. 

I'm assuming all apps are stealing my data and collecting info on me. It's too much to care about it and delete all of the apps that do bad things. I know that's what they are counting on, but I'm not going to go out of my way to avoid apps that I use regularly because they do something dozens of other apps are probably also secretly doing. Hopefully people who care more than me on this issue will get legislation to stop this enacted, but I have too many other things to worry about, personally.

I think a bigger issue is that so many people have no problem clicking or tapping on absolutely anything and I think it's proof that the majority of people really don't care about their privacy being compromised.

 

 

 

I think a bigger issue is that so many people have no problem clicking or tapping on absolutely anything and I think it's proof that the majority of people really don't care about their privacy being compromised.

 

 

 

 

They care about THE GOVERNMENT having that information but not private companies. 

 

So if you have an iPhone you don't have to worry about this?  I remember reading that a long time ago but didn't pay a lot of attention to it. 

 

On iOS, permissions are very fine-grained. So if Facebook tries to access your contacts, you will get a pop up saying "Facebook wants to access your contacts, Allow/Deny." If they want to use your location data, you will get a different pop-up requesting that specific permission. I have never been an Android user by my impression is that when you install the app you get a single screen showing what permissions the app wants to use, at which time most users will just hit "OK" without thinking too much about what the apps are actually going to do with those permissions. Although I think this has been changing to some extent in more recent versions of Android. But aside from the issue of granting permissions, the point here is that Apple does not even provide third party apps with a way to view your call history or read your text messages the way that Android does.

 

Usually the iPhone vs. Android debate is just a P!$$ing match, and I personally don't care what platform anybody else chooses, but one of the reasons I use an iPhone is that Apple is way better about protecting users' data than Google. Fundamentally, Apple's business model is to sell you expensive, premium hardware, and they are not in the social media or advertising business with some very minor exceptions, so they have no incentive to collect a ton of data about you. They also encrypt much of the data on your phone in such a way that it's not possible for Apple (or the government) to access it without having your password (or physically forcing your finger onto your phone's TouchID sensor).

 

Here's a short clip of Steve Jobs talking about Apple's approach to privacy in 2010, when the iPhone was brand new:

 

BTW, I bought a thing of almonds from the grocery store and bought a bag of peanuts recently.  I never use a credit card, so my phone must have heard me eating the nuts because I'm now getting Planter's Peanuts ads on my phone. 

Right now I get constant ads for supplements since one of my stores is next to a GNC.

I'm going to start doing an experiment and talking loudly about products I don't want/need and haven't searched for and see if they show up on my phone or digital ads.

No you won't look crazy yelling, "INDUSTRIAL CLEANING SUPPLIES!!!!!!!!!"

No you won't look crazy yelling, "INDUSTRIAL CLEANING SUPPLIES!!!!!!!!!"

NYC pension fund trustee calls for Zuckerberg to resign:

 

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/04/02/zuckerberg-should-quit-as-chairman-investor-says.html

 

Is it just me or does it seem more than a bit foolish for a public pension to be invested in Facebook?

I bet if interest rates were higher pension funds wouldn't have to resort to buying Facebook shares in order to get actual return that outpaces inflation.

I just downloaded the "archive" that facebook has on me (you can find yours under "account-settings").  I've never been closer to deleting the whole thing altogether.

I just downloaded the "archive" that facebook has on me (you can find yours under "account-settings").  I've never been closer to deleting the whole thing altogether.

 

Huh, what kind of info did you find?

I just downloaded the "archive" that facebook has on me (you can find yours under "account-settings").  I've never been closer to deleting the whole thing altogether.

 

Huh, what kind of info did you find?

 

Every FB friend ever, every message ever sent using FB, phone calls and texts from 2014/2015, every time I clicked an ad, every advertiser who has my contact info (17 companies apparently), the name of all the contacts in my phone plus some random ones (including people who aren't my facebook friend), etc.

Wow, ok I’ll be checking that later.

I just downloaded the "archive" that facebook has on me (you can find yours under "account-settings").  I've never been closer to deleting the whole thing altogether.

 

Huh, what kind of info did you find?

 

Every FB friend ever, every message ever sent using FB, phone calls and texts from 2014/2015, every time I clicked an ad, every advertiser who has my contact info (17 companies apparently), the name of all the contacts in my phone plus some random ones (including people who aren't my facebook friend), etc.

 

Android, right?  Apple doesn't permit that sort of access for apps, supposedly.

I hope Mark Zuckerberg is grilled about this tomorrow

Livestream of hearings. He looks like a deer in headlights. But so far all of these bloviating senators are even more obnoxious :P

 

Livestream of hearings. He looks like a deer in headlights. But so far all of these bloviating senators are even more obnoxious :P

 

 

The big meme is him sitting on a cushion.  I'm not sure that wasn't intentional, to distract from the content.

 

Nor am I sure of the purpose here.  If it was to study the potential for further wrongdoing, it would have been more productive in a closed session.  If it was to investigate legal wrongdoing, there's nothing in the Constitution granting Congress the right to do such a thing (I know they quite gleefully ignore this).

 

It must suck trying to explain things to people in power who don't even understand the basic principles involved....

Our Senators don't know how the internet works.

A lot of people don't. That's why Trump won the election. And it's why this whole thing is going on. People that didn't grow up with the internet (especially the early days of it) are getting in a lot of "trouble" on Facebook.

Trump did not win the election because of collusion with the Russians or Russian Facebook trolls. Trump won because of a combination of frustration from being taken for granted by many residents of the heartland coupled with an extremely weak candidate on the democratic side who really did not offer much to the people of the heartland and spoke to them as if they were second class citizens.  Just because people may not be educated does not mean they cannot sense the distain from that candidate towards them.  Facebook trolls is just a cute convenient excuse

^ If social media advertising is ineffective, then why do campaigns spend money on it? 

Because it engages an already energized audience. It does not change votes or opinions. The people who voted Trump would never vote Hillary and vice versa. Nobody saw an add on Facebook that said Hillary sold US Secrets and said, gee I liked her but I cant vote for her now, so I guess I will vote Trump since she is dishonest.

 

They just go to energize the so called base, and it is debatable how effective FB ads are in doing that.

Because it engages an already energized audience. It does not change votes or opinions. The people who voted Trump would never vote Hillary and vice versa. Nobody saw an add on Facebook that said Hillary sold US Secrets and said, gee I liked her but I cant vote for her now, so I guess I will vote Trump since she is dishonest.

 

They just go to energize the so called base, and it is debatable how effective FB ads are in doing that.

 

By engaging, I think you mean making them more likely to vote right? Also, fake news helps to suprress votes as seen here:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/03/a-new-study-suggests-fake-news-might-have-won-donald-trump-the-2016-election/?utm_term=.d894fa48fd0f

 

Which reflects what Trump's digital team said that they were engaging in:

 

http://fortune.com/2016/10/30/trump-voter-supression-operations/

 

 

The format of the event was also built for grandstanding by Senators rather than actual examination of the witness/examinee.  I think every Senator had something like 5 minutes, maybe 10, of questioning, and 44 different Senators were given a chance to ask questions, which meant a lot of duplicate questions because no one had time to have their staffs coordinate questions with each other (and, of course, as already noted, many of the Senators barely understood the questions they were asking--they asked their staffs to draft some questions and tried to just recite them as convincingly as possible).

 

The sad fact is that each Senator had so little time that even the ones who wanted to do something a little more than grandstanding had no real opportunity to do so.  All Zuckerberg had to do was give a somewhat rambling answer to one question and time would be basically up before he'd have to answer another from any given Senator--no real opportunity for follow-up.

Because it engages an already energized audience. It does not change votes or opinions.

 

That's an awfully bold statement.  Advertising (facebook or otherwise) does not change votes or opinions...  Ad sales reps around the country are shaking in their boots after reading that statement just hoping that you don't write and influential book that changes the advertising industry.

 

The people who voted Trump would never vote Hillary and vice versa. Nobody saw an add on Facebook that said Hillary sold US Secrets and said, gee I liked her but I cant vote for her now, so I guess I will vote Trump since she is dishonest.

 

They just go to energize the so called base, and it is debatable how effective FB ads are in doing that.

 

You've clearly never met my mother.  She changed her mind no less than 4 times during the last campaign and each time it was based on something she had seen on facebook.  Not everyone is as politically engaged as most of the people on this forum and to the disengaged those silly facebook influence campaigns can be very effective.

A lot of these male Trump voters were idle politically until they kept seeing memes, fake news and whatnot. ONLY BETA CUCKS VOTE FOR HILLARY

A lot of these male Trump voters were idle politically until they kept seeing memes, fake news and whatnot. ONLY BETA CUCKS VOTE FOR HILLARY

 

Trump didn't outperform the average successful Republican candidate among male voters, his victory margin within the demographic was on par with Bush, for example, and about half as large as Reagan and HW. Bush. Trump had similarly average margins among white voters. Facebook, memes, etc. weren't a significant cause, let alone the root cause, for Trump's victory. If they were, we'd see it in the results - more of the targeted demographic would have voted for him.

 

The root cause, of course, was his opponent. Hillary Clinton is a wet blanket and wasn't capable of motivating her base.

oooohhh, I see, it was just an "enforcement error." What a joke!

 

^ as usual the conservatives were only there to play the victim card.

 

The root cause, of course, was his opponent. Hillary Clinton is a wet blanket and wasn't capable of motivating her base.

 

And Hilary was a wet blanket in part because of the Trump fake news operation on Facebook which depressed votes.  Just like they planned.

 

http://fortune.com/2016/10/30/trump-voter-supression-operations/

 

Trump didn't outperform the average successful Republican candidate among male voters, his victory margin within the demographic was on par with Bush, for example, and about half as large as Reagan and HW. Bush. Trump had similarly average margins among white voters. Facebook, memes, etc. weren't a significant cause, let alone the root cause, for Trump's victory. If they were, we'd see it in the results - more of the targeted demographic would have voted for him.

 

 

It's not just the victory margin that is important.  It's turning those people out to vote while suppressing the demographic that supports your opponent.  Is this your first election?

^ as usual the conservatives were only there to play the victim card.

 

yeah, imagine. Censoring free speech and then claiming to be a victim. Those people should just shut up. Right?

 

^ as usual the conservatives were only there to play the victim card.

 

yeah, imagine. Censoring free speech and then claiming to be a victim. Those people should just shut up. Right?

 

 

Free speech as in the first amendment is generally accepted as a governmental limitation on speech.  If you don;t like Facebook's censorship, you are free to use other social media platforms.  Isn't that the conservative philosophy. 

 

There was a change in the algorithm which affected many other users.  But let's continue to play conservative victim. 

Facebook is essentially AOL in 1999 now. People got censored all the time there and it acted as the de facto Duplo internet for people who weren't good with the real internet.

Free speech as in the first amendment is generally accepted as a governmental limitation on speech.  If you don;t like Facebook's censorship, you are free to use other social media platforms.  Isn't that the conservative philosophy. 

 

There was a change in the algorithm which affected many other users.  But let's continue to play conservative victim. 

 

As a matter of constitutional law, absolutely.

 

But while the Constitution may be the highest law, it's also not the only law.  Far from it.

 

For example, I'm not an expert in this area, but I think Facebook (and YouTube, and other ostensibly neutral social media platforms) could get in trouble under the DMCA if they censor only one side of the political spectrum or otherwise editorially control the content of the speech on their platforms.  That's not because they would be violating anyone's constitutional rights.  It's because they would lose certain statutory immunities under that law that are very important to their business model.

 

The root cause, of course, was his opponent. Hillary Clinton is a wet blanket and wasn't capable of motivating her base.

 

And Hilary was a wet blanket in part because of the Trump fake news operation on Facebook which depressed votes.  Just like they planned.

 

http://fortune.com/2016/10/30/trump-voter-supression-operations/

 

Maybe it's time for Hillary voters to stop playing the victim card :( :( :(

Free speech as in the first amendment is generally accepted as a governmental limitation on speech.  If you don;t like Facebook's censorship, you are free to use other social media platforms.  Isn't that the conservative philosophy. 

 

There was a change in the algorithm which affected many other users.  But let's continue to play conservative victim. 

 

As a matter of constitutional law, absolutely.

 

But while the Constitution may be the highest law, it's also not the only law.  Far from it.

 

For example, I'm not an expert in this area, but I think Facebook (and YouTube, and other ostensibly neutral social media platforms) could get in trouble under the DMCA if they censor only one side of the political spectrum or otherwise editorially control the content of the speech on their platforms.  That's not because they would be violating anyone's constitutional rights.  It's because they would lose certain statutory immunities under that law that are very important to their business model.

 

But one would first have to prove that they did actually discriminate only against one side of the spectrum.  Most neutral sources say that many different sources were "censored" when an algorithm changed.  Proving that it was intentional and that they were treated differently would be difficult. 

 

The root cause, of course, was his opponent. Hillary Clinton is a wet blanket and wasn't capable of motivating her base.

 

And Hilary was a wet blanket in part because of the Trump fake news operation on Facebook which depressed votes.  Just like they planned.

 

http://fortune.com/2016/10/30/trump-voter-supression-operations/

 

Maybe it's time for Hillary voters would stop playing the victim card :( :( :(

 

Are you calling the Trump campaign liars?

Imagine the outrage if your cell phone company muted you when you talked about certain topics, or refused to transmit text messages that contained certain vocabulary. Imagine if Google wouldn't deliver emails about certain topics, or if your ISP or any number of DNS owners along your route refused to deliver specific packets (the outrage over net neutrality was immense and that was only about prioritizing content!). I don't consider social media platforms to be any different, in principle. If they exist to provide a platform for communication (and they are gradually becoming one of the primary platforms for modern communication), they should treat all communication equally. Free speech is a human right, and when a handful of companies control the means of the bulk of modern communication, they have an obligation to humanity to help protect that right. Any company that doesn't should be shamed.

Imagine the outrage if your cell phone company muted you when you talked about certain topics, or refused to transmit text messages that contained certain vocabulary. Imagine if Google wouldn't deliver emails about certain topics, or if your ISP or any number of DNS owners along your route refused to deliver specific packets (the outrage over net neutrality was immense and that was only about prioritizing content!). I don't consider social media platforms to be any different, in principle. If they exist to provide a platform for communication (and they are gradually becoming one of the primary platforms for modern communication), they should treat all communication equally. Free speech is a human right, and when a handful of companies control the means of the bulk of modern communication, they have an obligation to humanity to help protect that right. Any company that doesn't should be shamed.

 

You don't have to use Facebook.  Bad analogy.  Also, there is no evidence that a bias exists.  Many sites were affected it's just that conservatives are the biggest snowflakes about perceived slights.

Imagine the outrage if your cell phone company muted you when you talked about certain topics, or refused to transmit text messages that contained certain vocabulary. Imagine if Google wouldn't deliver emails about certain topics, or if your ISP or any number of DNS owners along your route refused to deliver specific packets (the outrage over net neutrality was immense and that was only about prioritizing content!). I don't consider social media platforms to be any different, in principle. If they exist to provide a platform for communication (and they are gradually becoming one of the primary platforms for modern communication), they should treat all communication equally.

 

Agreed completely.

 

The system you're discussing is called a common carrier system.

 

On the Internet, the analogous system of traffic nondiscrimination is also called net neutrality.

 

Obama's FCC instituted it.

 

Trump's FCC got rid of it.

Are you saying that Facebook is a common carrier?

Imagine the outrage if your cell phone company muted you when you talked about certain topics, or refused to transmit text messages that contained certain vocabulary. Imagine if Google wouldn't deliver emails about certain topics, or if your ISP or any number of DNS owners along your route refused to deliver specific packets (the outrage over net neutrality was immense and that was only about prioritizing content!). I don't consider social media platforms to be any different, in principle. If they exist to provide a platform for communication (and they are gradually becoming one of the primary platforms for modern communication), they should treat all communication equally. Free speech is a human right, and when a handful of companies control the means of the bulk of modern communication, they have an obligation to humanity to help protect that right. Any company that doesn't should be shamed.

 

You don't have to use Facebook.  Bad analogy.  Also, there is no evidence that a bias exists.  Many sites were affected it's just that conservatives are the biggest snowflakes about perceived slights.

 

First you say that "there is no evidence that bias exists," then you say "many sites were affected..."--Which is it?? And if it's the latter, can you give some examples of those (sites) on which liberal content has been suppressed or otherwise adversely affected? (since the remark was made in context of complaints of bias by conservatives)