Social Media is Evil

[CapnAwesome]

In the early days of the internet, before the World Wide Web, we had Usenet. This was a primitive implementation of message boards like this one. They were very useful for connecting like-minded individuals together. Message boards was the web's answer to Usenet. We got the utility of Usenet with the multimedia capabilities of the web added in. That was progress.

Then came the fucking disease called Facebook. It's not that I have anything against people keeping up with family and long-distance friends to chat about who's fucking who and who's in rehab and who's got herpes and who needs hemorrhoid surgery. Those things are all fine. But why to fuck do people get the idea that a forum like that is an arena suitable for replacing dedicated forums like this one? It makes me want to fucking scream!

I do not want ANYTHING to do with Fucking Facebook or Reddit or any other of the fucking stupid social media websites. I have no desire to discuss the boil growing on my left nut or what the huge turd I deposited this morning looked like. But those fucking cancers are drawing everybody in so that people are abandoning dedicated message boards like this one.

This SUCKS! I lived to experience a huge upgrade in life when I was suddenly empowered to connect with like-minded individuals on the other side of planet. Now, I can only do so if I submit to joining organizations I want nothing to do with!

Web 2.0 isn't an upgrade; it's a massive, fucking downgrade!

Who feels the same?

Bold is mine.

Wtf is going on on your Facebook?

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He made a lot of humorous jests about Facebook's failures, but the bulk of his video focuses on the example of Facebook in Myanmar (Burma).  In Myanmar, Facebook was originally excluded from data charges for Myanmar users, making it essentially free, resulting in Facebook becoming the prime source of information for many in Myanmar.  In Myanmar, for many years, Facebook was used to spread hate speech against the Rohingya, in part due to the fact that Facebook had insufficient Burmese speakers such that they couldn't properly police the content (still a problem).  Thus hate in Myanmar was spread wildly, was believed as fact, and not adequately policed, thanks to Facebook.

Thanks to Facebook, or thanks to an ineffectual (or, completely effectual if this is the desired outcome) government?

This brings up an interesting gray area - Facebook itself is not a news organization. It's merely a social media platform. To what extent should it police people's opinions? I mean, obvious hate speech, harassment, trolling, etc. seems a pretty obvious 'no' on any platform, but what about people who use dog whistle terms? Or just regular language, but in a provocative way?

Should Facebook have the responsibility to vet every purported news source that people share on it?

I don't think Facebook has the responsibility (or capability) to vet shared it ideas. They should absolutely vet their advertisements, but how are they going to police the content of a billion people. They are not.

People can vet appointment information for themselves. If you think a multi-billion dollar corporation is the best entity to be responsible for that, it's sort of a scary thought.