Social Media is Evil

[KevinM1]

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?

[DodosAreDead]

Unfortunately this video says it's not available in my country... can you maybe give me the gist of what it's saying?

Facebook is a toilet.

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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?

With great power comes great responsibility and all that. As said in the troll advert in Jamie Oliver's video, Facebook gives people a voice. And usually more people can hear that virtual voice than anyone's actual voice, so for the most part: greater power. Greater responsibility. Ideally that responsibility should be on people to police their own opinions and be more careful of what they're saying. But 90% of people are idiots. So at least from a practical viewpoint Facebook should take up that responsibility to avoid grave consequences such as what happened in Myanmar.

[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.

[KevinM1]

Which is what I was trying to get at.  Facebook isn't a news source.  It's a way for news to be shared, sure, but it's merely a middleman.  Facebook doesn't really produce content.  So, it becomes a bit murky when it comes to someone trying to blame the platform for things that aren't really its responsibility.

Ideally, people would have the tools to figure out what's truthful and what's propaganda via solid education.  But I find it a bit weird to blame Facebook for a country's failure to provide that to its people.  There's also the practical matter that Facebook can't vet everything that's posted or shared.  The amount of information is ridiculous, and there's no AI currently available to go through it all, especially not in a way that's as fast/seamless as users would demand.

And, like you say, there's also the opposite side of the issue - do we really want corporate entities determining what information people consume?  Like, yeah, everyone (myself included) celebrated when Stormfront was booted down to the dark web, but I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with the broader scope of that.  I don't want Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. becoming our de facto media regulatory body.

[KevinM1]

See, shit like this (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/msn/faceb...ar-AAAGHHB) is blatantly evil. It's also a prime example why we need regulation (preferably not written by elderly people who cannot figure out email, but are firmly in the pockets of various ISP corporations).

[bennyboy]

I have to say, I'm kind of perplexed by Facebook. I tried it, and the result was: 1) I had peer pressure to pretend to give a shit about people's cat pictures, or that their demonspawn offspring were adorable; 2) people I hadn't seen in a long time, and didn't want to, had an easy way to contact me. Changed address? New phone number? No problem-- Facebook will let your crazy bitch ex-gf figure out where you live!

No. Just, no.

[AFTT47]

I don't begrudge the common moron to have a forum which meets their needs. I begrudge the rest of us being sucked into it.

I wish discriminating people would recognize that forums like Facebook are not remotely a replacement for dedicated message forums like this one. They are two different formats. Let them have theirs but let's keep ours!

Yeah, message boards cost money to maintain but we're managing here, right?

[KevinM1]

I have to say, I'm kind of perplexed by Facebook.  I tried it, and the result was: 1) I had peer pressure to pretend to give a shit about people's cat pictures, or that their demonspawn offspring were adorable; 2) people I hadn't seen in a long time, and didn't want to, had an easy way to contact me.  Changed address?  New phone number?  No problem-- Facebook will let your crazy bitch ex-gf figure out where you live!

No.  Just, no.

Eh?

1. Succumbing to peer pressure is a human flaw, not a platform flaw. Moreover, unless the other person is a loser, no one cares about whether or not you like or comment on something. Most people, even those with their face glued to their phones, understand that other people work and have IRL responsibilities.

2. Learn to use privacy features. Don't give Facebook your phone number. Don't provide it your address. Set privacy to friends-only (or friends of friends). Disallow your profile to be found in search results. Don't use your real picture as your profile picture.

There's 0 reason to give any social media account anything aside from an email address (preferably a burner address) and a password.

I only have contact with the people I want to have contact with. And setting it up that way is trivial. 5 minutes, tops.

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I don't begrudge the common moron to have a forum which meets their needs. I begrudge the rest of us being sucked into it.

I wish discriminating people would recognize that forums like Facebook are not remotely a replacement for dedicated message forums like this one. They are two different formats. Let them have theirs but let's keep ours!

Yeah, message boards cost money to maintain but we're managing here, right?

How are you being sucked in? All I've seen is whinging about something you're not even partaking in.

Regardless, AF is managing because of donations and Tibs being willing to make up the monetary difference between costs and donations.

Do you have $500/year to dedicate to running a forum? Do you think most people do? Or the time, to not just do the technical work, but the initial moderation, while also vetting other members to be the initial staff? Do you think that just setting up a forum will result in a large enough and loyal user base to donate and cover some of the costs? Online forums are not set it and forget it software.

Again, it's not that people who use social media in lieu of traditional forums are idiots. It's that traditional forums are disappearing because of the resources required to run them. I mean, shit, TTA just disappeared because of this (I guess someone else may be taking over the forums, at a different domain name, at some point in the future, but I have my doubts re: if it'll actually happen and how long that will last).

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that Facebook or Twitter are great and awesome and wonderful. It's just that, even in this thread filled with intelligent people, 99% of the criticism leveled at them is idiotic.

Want to complain about how Facebook mishandles people's personal information, like selling phone numbers used for 2FA to advertisers, or the just announced breach of 50M accounts? Go for it. Want to blame Facebook for social unrest both in America and elsewhere (Myanmar)? I'd need to hear some more details (proliferation of bots and other false accounts? sure, that's a valid complaint. blaming Facebook for a lack of media education with the populace? nope, sorry). Want to blame Facebook for letting people find you, or other things re: the information you shared? No, that's on you for being an idiot and over-sharing on the internet.

[AFTT47]

How are you being sucked in?  All I've seen is whinging about something you're not even partaking in.

I'm being sucked in because the way things are going, there won't be any conventional message boards left.

I'm a member of a few Reddit forums because there is no conventional alternative. People aren't making them anymore.

So message forums cost money. How did all those message forums survive before the scourge of social media came upon us? They all managed. I would gladly contribute $100.00 a year to one of my Reddit groups if they would replace it with a proper forum.

[KevinM1]

How are you being sucked in?  All I've seen is whinging about something you're not even partaking in.

I'm being sucked in because the way things are going, there won't be any conventional message boards left.

I'm a member of a few Reddit forums because there is no conventional alternative. People aren't making them anymore.

So message forums cost money. How did all those message forums survive before the scourge of social media came upon us? They all managed. I would gladly contribute $100.00 a year to one of my Reddit groups if they would replace it with a proper forum.

The internet has moved on, in terms of the kind of hosting to use (don't really want ads injected into every page, right? Because that's what free hosts and even some shared hosts do), security (free hosting is notoriously unsafe... shared hosting is either locked down (no shell access) or, again, unsafe), speed, etc.

If you want a decent forum, you need, at the minimum:

1. A decent VPS (virtual private server... Linode, DigitalOcean, etc.) account with enough RAM to handle all the requests in a snappy manner.
2. Security. A lot of it is free, but needs to be configured properly. Everything from the firewall, to SSL certificates, to monitoring/jailing like Fail2ban, etc.
3. Backups. If your system is borked, or if it gets compromised, you'll need to be able to restore.

It's not the late 90's/early 00's any longer. The cost of running a forum has grown with both the ubiquity of always connected devices and the ever present threat of script kiddies, bots, etc. No one can get a free hosting account, load up some off-the-shelf PHP forum software, and call it a day any longer. It's not the same world, and the time/costs associated with doing it right reflect that.