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29 June 2014
the suck that is facebook
Breaking:
Facebook is running experiments to see if they can exploit and
manipulate its user's emotional states. Tell Facebook to stop abusing
its users and their privacy: http://cms.fightforthefuture.org/facebookopt-out/
You can read more about this story here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/06/facebook_unethical_experiment_it_made_news_feeds_happier_or_sadder_to_manipulate.html
You can read more about this story here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/06/facebook_unethical_experiment_it_made_news_feeds_happier_or_sadder_to_manipulate.html
Doc Tor Mandrake and Beth Kmitch commented on this.
27 June 2014
diaspora
I'm not entirely certain of how it works just yet, but in order to alleviate the need to say Hi to people and post various pictures of kittens, Victorian cabinet cards, klosterarbeiten and various other things, my friend Brian suggested I try diaspora. And so I have. I can't guarentee I'll be any more attentive to it than I've been to this poor blog! but if you want to follow me there they had this spiffy link. https://nerdpol.ch/i/a06583bc736b
Insofar as I know Denise has made a lovely fan club for me on facebook. Since I can't get in there I've not seen it, but it's out there. I'll try to get y'all the link later.
One of the other gals also set up a petition to try to get facebook to reinstate me. Since they discourage the hell out of any kind of human-to-human communication- I posted earlier about all the red tape I had to go through just to find a functional email to facebook, and ranted a blue streak to them on their twitter. They still haven't replied to either by the by. But I digress. I doubt a petition will do any better than my personal efforts, but if you feel like signing it and signal boosting this whole story, here's the petition link.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Rael_OneCloud_fan_club_let_her_keep_her_name/?sZMEMhb
I don't want to dwell on the whole #facebook fiasco, but it IS a kind of warning that those of you still addicted to it might want to consider getting off, or at the very least saving all your posted pictures, writings and your facebook contacts somewhere else besides facebook! Clearly there are some screwed up changes coming down the pike for that site. Insofar as I'm concerned I'm still entirely in the right to NOT want to just give them my ID. NO website deserves to demand that much information about people.
I was pretty much done with the short mourning process and ready to just find something else to do, and I have, but a lot of my facebook friends are interested n the political ramifications of all this. I'm fairly sure it was just some idiot who, instead of just blocking Candy Crush as an app, reported my post as spam, but if I really wanted to put on the tin hat for a mo, I HAD been posting a LOT of political stuff lately.
Anni has a facebook group called "Me no corporate whore" (back off grammar nazis, it made me wince too. *L*). Because Anni is one of my besties I joined it. Believe it or not, I'm not all that political in my interests.
Logically though all the tightening police state stuff, and bi and transgendered rights, and homeless rights and such were things that would interest me, but often, to be honest, not enough to read the whole articles I would find! I'd just see something, think 'huh. That's important. Someone'll wanna know.' and just forward it to MnCW. One day I looked in the group and realised that 90% of the posts were mine! Which probably made me look like the most radical, fightingest lefty ever, except that well, I'm not. Certainly not anymore, since all those posts have been conveniently vanished (Jimmy tells me that group is now nearly empty since they erased all my posts as spam).
But I suppose I can see that this IS a political issue also, at least in terms of the way big businesses like facebook have no respect or interest in the concerns of their users. I made a lot of my points in the rant I did on their twitter account (which is one or two entries in below) but I suppose the primary one to come back to is- what right or interest have these faceless facebook owners got to ask for anyone's ID or cellphone info anyway? Do we really WANT a business that won't allow you to contact them and makes arbitrary beatdown decisions on people without warning or a fair chance to defend themselves to be so deeply entrenched in our personal online activities? It's already a known fact they sell your info to advertisers. There's been cases of people's personal photos being used without their permission on advert sites and in hate groups that facebook refuses to take down even when people report them. There's been rampant censorship before this- in particular the pathetic obsession with removing any pictures of breasts that aren't being shown in a sexist manner (ie. misogynist groups can post all the titties and booty they like, but if an art piece or someone's personal breastfeeding shots are OBSCENE and bannable offenses!) I don't think I know a single person who hasn't got a 'that's odd, why did they remove my post about -insert statement here-' story, and that was well and before this happened to me.
So much as I find it mildly amusing that I'm being kinda 'martyr'ed to this movement, I can agree that it needs to happen. Facebook are invasive, and tarnish all they touch with their own very screwed up set of morals. If people are going to continue using it, they need to know their content is safe, and that their want for whatever level of anonymity is respected. If not? People -really- need to consider joining or creating! a different social network, and send these faceless creeps to the same net graveyard as they themselves sent MySpace.
Their time is up.
Personally? I hope this inspires some very clever coder to make a nice, hands-off, well encrypted social network that goes facebook one better. As both facebook and most of our governments and police forces become more invasive and dangerous, it would be good to know we can still have online lives, anyway, that are simply None Of Their Damn Business.
R. O-C.
Insofar as I know Denise has made a lovely fan club for me on facebook. Since I can't get in there I've not seen it, but it's out there. I'll try to get y'all the link later.
One of the other gals also set up a petition to try to get facebook to reinstate me. Since they discourage the hell out of any kind of human-to-human communication- I posted earlier about all the red tape I had to go through just to find a functional email to facebook, and ranted a blue streak to them on their twitter. They still haven't replied to either by the by. But I digress. I doubt a petition will do any better than my personal efforts, but if you feel like signing it and signal boosting this whole story, here's the petition link.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Rael_OneCloud_fan_club_let_her_keep_her_name/?sZMEMhb
I don't want to dwell on the whole #facebook fiasco, but it IS a kind of warning that those of you still addicted to it might want to consider getting off, or at the very least saving all your posted pictures, writings and your facebook contacts somewhere else besides facebook! Clearly there are some screwed up changes coming down the pike for that site. Insofar as I'm concerned I'm still entirely in the right to NOT want to just give them my ID. NO website deserves to demand that much information about people.
I was pretty much done with the short mourning process and ready to just find something else to do, and I have, but a lot of my facebook friends are interested n the political ramifications of all this. I'm fairly sure it was just some idiot who, instead of just blocking Candy Crush as an app, reported my post as spam, but if I really wanted to put on the tin hat for a mo, I HAD been posting a LOT of political stuff lately.
Anni has a facebook group called "Me no corporate whore" (back off grammar nazis, it made me wince too. *L*). Because Anni is one of my besties I joined it. Believe it or not, I'm not all that political in my interests.
Logically though all the tightening police state stuff, and bi and transgendered rights, and homeless rights and such were things that would interest me, but often, to be honest, not enough to read the whole articles I would find! I'd just see something, think 'huh. That's important. Someone'll wanna know.' and just forward it to MnCW. One day I looked in the group and realised that 90% of the posts were mine! Which probably made me look like the most radical, fightingest lefty ever, except that well, I'm not. Certainly not anymore, since all those posts have been conveniently vanished (Jimmy tells me that group is now nearly empty since they erased all my posts as spam).
But I suppose I can see that this IS a political issue also, at least in terms of the way big businesses like facebook have no respect or interest in the concerns of their users. I made a lot of my points in the rant I did on their twitter account (which is one or two entries in below) but I suppose the primary one to come back to is- what right or interest have these faceless facebook owners got to ask for anyone's ID or cellphone info anyway? Do we really WANT a business that won't allow you to contact them and makes arbitrary beatdown decisions on people without warning or a fair chance to defend themselves to be so deeply entrenched in our personal online activities? It's already a known fact they sell your info to advertisers. There's been cases of people's personal photos being used without their permission on advert sites and in hate groups that facebook refuses to take down even when people report them. There's been rampant censorship before this- in particular the pathetic obsession with removing any pictures of breasts that aren't being shown in a sexist manner (ie. misogynist groups can post all the titties and booty they like, but if an art piece or someone's personal breastfeeding shots are OBSCENE and bannable offenses!) I don't think I know a single person who hasn't got a 'that's odd, why did they remove my post about -insert statement here-' story, and that was well and before this happened to me.
So much as I find it mildly amusing that I'm being kinda 'martyr'ed to this movement, I can agree that it needs to happen. Facebook are invasive, and tarnish all they touch with their own very screwed up set of morals. If people are going to continue using it, they need to know their content is safe, and that their want for whatever level of anonymity is respected. If not? People -really- need to consider joining or creating! a different social network, and send these faceless creeps to the same net graveyard as they themselves sent MySpace.
Their time is up.
Personally? I hope this inspires some very clever coder to make a nice, hands-off, well encrypted social network that goes facebook one better. As both facebook and most of our governments and police forces become more invasive and dangerous, it would be good to know we can still have online lives, anyway, that are simply None Of Their Damn Business.
R. O-C.
26 June 2014
Badass. Apparently I have a fanclub now.
Unfortunately, it's on facebook, so ironically I can't join it... but you can if you want to.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/728454667213334/728951000497034
https://www.facebook.com/groups/728454667213334/728951000497034
So, grooveshark has kinda weird layout
which means posting my setlists is too hard.
But...since my facebook is gone I can no longer maintain the PostMortem Espresso page, so I'll post the lists of what we showed here from now on, I guess.
But...since my facebook is gone I can no longer maintain the PostMortem Espresso page, so I'll post the lists of what we showed here from now on, I guess.
June 24th, 2014
08:29 am
Had a pretty disappointing day yesterday. I was hanging out in the afternoon, when Ozz told me he couldn't reach my facebook. He was going to message me an article and kept getting various weird error messages, and couldn't find my profile.
So naturally I went to go log in and see what was what.
I got this message that said my account had been suspended because they didn't think I was a real person. Apparently someone reported one of my posts as spam. Who? No idea. Sometimes if people see your game posts they flag them as spam because they don't play. Or maybe somebody in one of the forums I used to post in didn't like one of my posts and decided to be a heel. Either way, without warning, and for pretty much no reason whatsoever I haven't got facebook anymore.
Now, to be fair, 'Rael OneCloud' isn't a real name. and I've been ignoring the insistent little facebook suggestions that I give them my mobile phone number since they started making said invasive request. But, to reinstate my account, the page said, I would need to load a jpg of my ID.
Nope. Not going to be doing that anytime soon.
For one? Yeah, I have no mobile phone AND I have no ID marked 'Rael OneCloud'. I could, and maybe even will at some point make an account under Leslie.... but to be honest I wouldn't want to post from it much, because I really don't like the idea of having to have a 'real name' account if I don't want one. Scads of people know me as Rael! it's been my stage name/writing name for ages now. Most of my friends from the tail end of living in NY, and all my time in VT, WA and GA only know me as Rael. Some of them wouldn't know a Leslie if it hit them with a brick, and therefore wouldn't accept a friend request from such an odd name.
I tried scrolling through all of their not-very-helpful Help links, and looking in the search engines and forums for some solution, but facebook are nigh impossible to contact. The emails on their pages? Dead. I wrote them an email and it bounced right back. The phone number they have listed is also a zillion years old and leads to a hub with no choices that seemed useful, and there's no place to leave a message.
The page of links how to get help either via computer or by mail have inactive URLs. They don't link to anything.
So pretty much, it's a done deal. One person, out of spite or negligence clicks the spam button, and an account I've had since 2006 is just gone. All my friend contacts, all my picture albums, all my silly little journal entries. Gone.
To be sure, we've all lost stuff. Had things stolen. Broken out of relationships, jobs or projects that were the pivot of our life and leave you wondering 'what the hell do I do now??' But it's always so sudden, and it's always just such a hollow feeling when a thing is over.
Even if I could get the account back, what then? Obviously the trust is gone. If this is the new policy with facebook, I don't really want a new account, and all I'd want from the old is to grab back everything I entrusted there, my pictures and writings, and then I'd probably get all of my friends' contact info and tell them why I was leaving in search of a new social network. Who can trust their stuff in there after that?
But...yeah. Sad because this sucks. It sucks, but I also know I tried my best, and in the end it's not something I have any power over. It's not the first website I had stuff vested in that came down either, which is why I tend to remember the thing I learned first in computer class many moons ago, which is 'Save work often!'
If I'd only made backups to a different site, there'd be a lot less heartbreak and loss involved.
But I didn't.
Anyway, how's your day?
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