Trump suspensions lifted on Facebook and Instagram. Because of course. Gotta get the engagement up to drive up revenue even if it fucks over the foundation of society and the planet. “New guardrails” is BS too. These Silicon Valley techbro billionaires and their lackeys and sycophants can all go fuck themselves. #trump #facebook #instagram #BillionairesShouldNotExist #DeleteTwitter #DeleteFacebook #BigTechShouldNotExist https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/facebook-instagram-end-trumps-suspension-platforms-rcna67524

Facebook and Instagram end Trump's suspension from platforms

Trump’s accounts, which were suspended by Meta after the Jan. 6 riot, will be reinstated “in the coming weeks” and come with “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”

...and related to my prior post by the end of this year you will have anti-democracy people making the decisions on this stuff on all major social media platforms: Meta/Facebook (see Kaplan, Clegg, Andreesen, Thiel), Twitter (Musk and his band of alt-right tech bro assholes including Thiel again), Tik Tok (god knows what nefarious shit they have planned in collusion with the Chinese government), and then the willful ignorance of others like YouTube who let this shit run wild too. Secondary media is no better sadly, just check out the amount of insanity on Rumble, PeerTube, etc. along with the special built right wing social media systems. The anti-democracy movement is so thoroughly flooding the zone it is inescapable at this point. Most of the world are acting like lambs being led to the slaughter. Disheartening. Infuriating #DeleteFacebook #DeleteTwitter #DeleteTikTok #DeleteBigTech

Teens have abandoned Facebook, Pew study says – Facebook is for parents and older people say teens

Gen Z internet use is on the rise, but the rate at which teens use Facebook is rapidly declining. A Pew Research Center study on teens, technology and social media found that only 32% of teens aged 13-17 use Facebook at all, but in a previous survey from 2014-2015, that figure was 71%, beating out platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.

Yes, the alternatives are far more exciting to teens. Back in its day, MySpace was the absolute dominant social media platform, but newer users flocked to Facebook, and MySpace became a vacuum. It looks like the wheel is going to keep turning, and this is a good thing, as we need healthy competition between social platforms, without lock-in to a single one of them.

It would be good though, to have interoperability coming back, like we had with XMPP providing the glue to communicate between different platforms. If e-mail (and mobile text messaging) can have a common standard that works across different e-mail services, why should our social platforms be any different? That would allow you (or your friends) to change social platform but stay in contact with one another = freedom to choose.

See https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/11/teens-abandoned-facebook-pew-study/

#technology #socialnetworks #deletefacebook #teens
#Blog, ##deletefacebook, ##socialnetworks, ##technology, ##teens

Adam Mosseri confirms it: Instagram is over (as it Facebookized it just got messier)

“Two big things happened in 2016. First, there were the changes to the feed. Algorithmic. Well, all right. Then, the Snapchat imitation: the Story. It was whatever. I didn’t mind it. After a while, I stopped posting photos in favour of posting Stories because more people looked at the Stories. There started to be more ads clogging the Stories, so I stopped watching as many. And I stopped posting photos or Stories as often.”

“Then came the ham-fisted video stuff: IGTV, which I avoided as much as I could, and the TikTok imitation Reels, which were much more difficult to avoid. This is where the algorithmic feed really bit people.”

An interesting article and it helps summarise why in the last week it seems it is just getting too much for people. What made Instagram originally great (when I started using it before Facebook bought it) has seemed to have been pushed out of the way. Many younger users have long moved to TikTok and other platforms, and I suppose this is why Instagram is trying to turn itself into a TikTok.

Commercial interests and the greed for money and the advertising that drives that, is what pushes all these changes. It’s no wonder that decentralised -ad-free alternatives like PixelFed are getting strong growth spurts every time these changes happen. But largely it’s the celebrities that either hold everyone back on a platform, or entice them to move. Hopefully the celebrities actually stay off the likes of PixelFed and Mastodon, as I fear that the advertisers and hoards will try to spoil those platforms too.

It would be interesting to see how the alternative decentralised platforms survive such influxes, but maybe the fact that you can switch hosting instances without having to leave the network, will keep competitiveness alive as there is no walled garden lock-in.

See https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/26/23279815/instagram-feed-kardashians-criticism-fuck-it-im-out

#technology #instagram #deletefacebook #socialmedia
#Blog, ##deletefacebook, ##instagram, ##socialmedia, ##technology

This was predictable. Facebook/Meta is now encrypting the QP data so that Firefox and other privacy conscious browsers that strip the tracking data can't. Only way to avoid it is to not use Facebook at all. #DeleteFacebook #SurveillanceCapitalism https://www.ghacks.net/2022/07/17/facebook-has-started-to-encrypt-links-to-counter-privacy-improving-url-stripping/

Facebook has started to encrypt links to counter privacy-improving URL Stripping - gHacks Tech News

Facebook has started to use a different URL scheme for site links to combat URL stripping technologies that browsers use to improve privacy and prevent user tracking.

After some bug fixes the first 1.0 release of the Kyanite Facebook Archive Browser is now up on the website. You can now actually use the archive Facebook allows you to export so you can #deletefacebook to your heart's content with real access to your data myportal.social/2022/04/09/kya…

Facebook sued for overstating advertising reach – court expanded the pool of plaintiffs to include more than 2 million small ad buyers

Dismissing what he called a “blunderbuss of objections” by the company, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the case can proceed as a class action on behalf of small business owners and individuals who bought ads on Facebook or Instagram since Aug. 15, 2014.

The decision is another setback for the social networking giant after court filings in 2021 revealed that its audience-measuring tool was known by high-ranking Facebook executives to be unreliable because it was skewed by fake and duplicate accounts.

LinkedIn is facing a suit accusing it of inflating video-viewing metrics to lure and overcharge advertisers. Snap Inc., the parent of the Snapchat social-media app, was sued in 2017 by a former employee who claimed the company was inflating growth metrics ahead of its initial public offering.

The moral of it seems to be that where the social network (business) is driven by profit, then those metrics are going to be maxed out. “For years, Facebook repeatedly confronted a choice between telling customers the truth or preserving its revenue: at every turn, Facebook chose its revenue,” lawyers for the ad buyers said in a court filing.

I logged into my mom’s FB account this week to delete it this week (she has not used it in over two years), and a quick glance at the friends showed also no posts for months to a year plus, apart from one younger family member who seemed to still have posted a month ago.

MySpace at least died a lot quicker, but that death was driven by its users deserting it for a new, better platform. Our challenge in 2022 is we have too many alternatives, but better to choose a federated platform, than another walled garden like Facebook.

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/439268-facebook-sued-for-overstating-advertising-reach.html

#technology #socialnetworks #deletefacebook #classaction
#Blog, ##classaction, ##deletefacebook, ##socialnetworks, ##technology

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak: ‘Of all Big Tech, Facebook is No. 1 that I don’t like’

Steve Wozniak is officially done with Facebook.

On a March episode of the “Steve-O’s Wild Ride!” podcast, hosted by entertainer Steve-O, Wozniak said that he and his wife both recently deactivated their Facebook accounts over data privacy concerns. When he “likes” a friend’s post, the interaction isn’t about connecting with someone he knows, the Apple co-founder said – it’s about revealing his interests to advertisers.

That’s enough to keep him off the platform for the foreseeable future, he said, noting that he’s “scared a bit” about the amount of access Facebook had to his life: “Of all Big Tech, Facebook is probably No. 1 that I don’t like.”

Wozniak seems to have been aware of Facebook’s privacy standards for some time, but the tipping point that led him to deactivate his account wasn’t sparked by personalized ads on his feed. Instead, it came from months of habitual, mindless scrolling on social media.

Yes, I was also officially done with Facebook products at beginning 2020 when the straw broke the camel’s back. So there went my FB, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts, as well as my planned purchase of an Oculus Rift headset. For me, it was the metadata being extracted from WhatsApp actually, as I had already deleted my FB account before that.

See https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/why-apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-deactivated-his-facebook-account.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist

#technology #deletefacebook #stevewozniak #privacy #socialmedia
#Blog, ##deletefacebook, ##privacy, ##socialmedia, ##stevewozniak, ##technology

No, you need to #deleteFacebook completely if you value #privacy https://www.maketecheasier.com/facebook-restricted-list/

They learn nothing. They continue to do effectively nothing. #DeleteFacebook

https://twitter.com/verge/status/1495035693172674564

Just #deletefacebook ... that gets rid of everything very fast https://www.maketecheasier.com/facebook-delete-comments-likes-reactions/

As though you needed another reason to #deletefacebook.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/02/facebook-hate-speech-misinformation-superusers/621617/

Facebook Has a Superuser-Supremacy Problem

Most public activity on the platform comes from a tiny, hyperactive group of abusive users. Facebook relies on them to decide what everyone sees.

Hopefully more people will #deletefacebook under "META" (fake name, PR, distraction from scandals) will reach its true market value: zero or less https://baronhk.wordpress.com/2022/02/05/facebook-bans-me-for-three-more-days-for-criticizing-the-minneapolis-police-departments-botched-no-knock-warrant/

Facebook bans me for three more days for criticizing the Minneapolis Police Department’s botched “no-knock warrant”. Blames COVID-19 for not allowing me to appeal.

Facebook’s so-called “AI” has banned me for three more days for a news comment criticizing the Minneapolis Police Department’s botched “no-knock warrant” which r…

#deletefacebook

Only 80 more percentage points to go before I'll be happy #DeleteFacebook marketwatch.com/story/meta-sha…

#facebook #censorship #taxpayersFundedEspionage #deletefacebook #imperialism https://sputniknews.com/20220122/muting-sputnik-arabic-facebook-control-is-something-any-dictator-would-dream-of-analysts-say-1092455229.html

#espionage agency #facebook exercises #censorship for imperial and corporate objectives https://sputniknews.com/20220121/facebook-blocks-posting-on-sputnik-arabic-page-1092432515.html #deletefacebook

"My account was purely personal, but I should download my pictures and kiss it goodbye. I think I'll try to find time by the end of the year." #deletefacebook #FBInstagram https://social.doma.dev/@jonn/107626058391105024

Jonn (@jonn@social.doma.dev)

@margodeweerdt@mastodon.social absolutely. My account was purely personal, but I should download my pictures and kiss it goodbye. I think I'll try to find time by the end of the year. :bow:

When you are writing your serializers for JSON...do *not* make the it an array or not an array depending on whether there are 0, 1, or more than one item in the set you are serializing like Facebook does with their user's exported archives. #DeleteFacebook

● NEWS ● #CommonDreams #deletefacebook ☞ Opinion | Why We Must Challenge Zuckerberg's Ring of Power https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/12/27/why-we-must-challenge-zuckerbergs-ring-power

Opinion | Why We Must Challenge Zuckerberg's Ring of Power

"Learning to appreciate that control is an illusion is hard, especially when we are prepared to sacrifice almost everything, to pay any price, to control others."