Is the (Anti)Social media train running off the rails

[desol]

I can roll with it.
Social Media is an excellent tool, imo; we’re certainly experiencing growing pains.
If the internet exists and we all reap the benefits of information (sometimes diluted with lies) human connection will exist along the same channels.
The names and websites will change, but people have to accept and learn to behave in a connected society.
It’s all ok!

edit: not to gloss over the points made re: cyberbullying. that is not ok and the occasional tragedy is really sad. However, i don’t know the statistics re: childhood suicide before and after yr 2000

People can't change as fast as technology wants to dictate, and still be healthy. I think you're fooling yourself.  The internet does not reflect reality, nor does it promote a reality that is healthy for people as a whole. Maybe small doses, but then that is left to individual self control.

 

[JohnRoberts]

To be serious for a minute, the WWW and forums like this provide a sense of community for people from all around the world, no matter how distant or rural their home base, sharing a common interest in audio electronics (the real raison d'etre) for this forum.

Unfortunately for some, similar communities when based on politics or social issues can become self-selective, turning into an echo chamber for only one side of any argument, that damps the other viewpoint(s).  I encounter people every day (around the WWW) who clearly believe the echos are the whole story.

JR

 

[desol]

Is this real community? ..or just a sense of. That's basically my point...and I think the point of the thread. People are starting to backlash against what they know isn't good for them.

 

[desol]

Or at least long enough to let the good overtake the bad.

This thread wasn't about this forum...and from what I've seen, Facebook(and social media in general) has tended to cause more bad than good. I have no problem with picking up the telephone to call a relative and see how they're doing.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Coincidentally I received a handwritten letter this morning from an old (very old) friend.

I send him responses using snail mail, but use my computer to print my response (window envelope so I don't need to address the envelope).

My handwriting was crappy when I was young, now it's worse.

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Block capitols is the best I can manage these days, handwriting wise ,If I try and do joined letters it comes out illedgeable ,be fun if and when the techno bubble bursts and we've ended up loosing the power of expression via pen and ink .

 

[Tubetec]

There is something nice about a simple handwritten note ,it carries with it a personal touch and its these simplest of things that are very much missing from the modern world .

 

[jackies]

Great thread lol.
I think for anyone who understands any of the computer technology, it was obvious from the start that using any personal data on the internet is reckless. It's just so clear that social media is an intelligence gathering machine, straight Orwell.
Love the 21st century anyway, you could only see sh*t like that in star trek before.


I was taught to handwrite using fountain pen, because my teacher's opinion was that you can't develop correct cursive without a pen with actual ink in it - as opposed to a pencil or a ball point pen.

 

[desol]

My biggest gripe has mostly to do with entities such as profile engine(which surprisingly - with the facebook uproar - has disappeared recently! - yet disgustingly 'dontated' everyone's information to the wayback archive - which according to him, can't be deleted - loser), peek you(low-lives that seek out and offer people's personal information online - phone numbers, addresses, etc) and open source OS archives hosted by the likes of 'free'bsd(which condone it's employee's harassing people with it's archive) and third party affiliated archives, that then archive them.  :

Of course, profile engine came from facebook.

Then there's Google, which fights people in court that are suing them, for hosting archaic, defaming information that is destroying their livelihood's using the guise of 'transparency'. In real life, people actually do change and have a right to that. Google internet doesn't follow 'realities' rules.  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/businessman-sues-google-to-have-his-crime-forgotten-srdr8d0q8


Anyway, this whole 'superimposed' reality...is actually an atrocity when compared to 'real' reality. All of these entities imo, are jerks, and deserve to be in jail themselves.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Social Media is an excellent tool, imo

Personally, I wouldn't call it a tool, rather a toy. My business partners have tried to convince me it's necessary, but in the end, the only reason it's necessary is because you are outmoded if you're not on FB. FB doesn't do anything useful that e-mails and a website wouldn't.

If the internet exists and we all reap the benefits of information (sometimes diluted with lies) human connection will exist along the same channels.

I do agree with the wonderful knowledge access the internet allows, but "human connection", come on! This group is an actual example of human connection, that doesn't need FB to exist. I think the bond resulting from a shared passion is much stronger than that generated by someone posting a picture of their dinner.

 

[cyrano]

Some dem senators wrote a bill requiring people being paid to post political speech online to disclose that. Seems pretty sensible.

Laws don't apply to computers. Most of the manipulating is being done by bots. Only the Russians seem to use underpaid humans to post propaganda.

Cambridge Analytica has recently done a propaganda round to make war acceptable, mainly to Europeans. Seems war is already acceptable in the US.

 

[cyrano]

If you want to remain completely anonymous then use the free Tor browser.

Funny.

A bit of history.

At the end of last century, when the net was young, a Canadian firm by the name of "Zero Knowledge Systems" developed "Freedom". Freedom was an onion router with peer-to-peer communication. All went well. There was software for Windows, Linux and OSX. When the beta testing was nearly done, a representative of the US govt. proposed a deal. The US govt would take over "Freedom" and pay 20 million $ for it. They would also become an important customer of the company. They also made it well understood that, if the company wouldn't accept their generous offer, they would run into trouble. Of course, the company accepted. Most of their turnover today is from the US intelligence services and the US army.

That's the project that was turned into tor.

Around half of tor's exit servers belong to the CIA. Some others belong to other nation's intelligence services.

Anonymity?

Don't count on it. The one thing the US army scrapped from tor, is the peer to peer part. The onion router remained, to keep the image of anonymity.

Remember Echelon? That's 20 years ago. Things didn't get better...

Check the facts.

 

[ruairioflaherty]

I think the bond resulting from a shared passion is much stronger than that generated by someone posting a picture of their dinner.

Exactly.  I love my friends but I don't care what they had for lunch. I love my family but I'm about as interested in their holiday snaps as they are in mine.

 

[Tubetec]

There was another very similar software company ended up the same way ,Promis I think it was called ,after the guy created it he was told ,he'd get contracts from the  M.I.C .  in the end he lost out big time ,but the government continued to use his software to collect/manipulate computer data.

Seems like Zucherburg is at a similar crossroads in some respects ,If I was one of the 170 million Americans who had their details leaked Id be feeling double crossed . But he also must realsise he's become a pawn in his own game at this stage too.
Its almost like the CIA and other dark powers at work inside the government have farmed out some of the data collection/archiveing  to google and facebook. It looks like a certain  proportion of the 170 million people might have grounds for legal proceedings against facebook  ,and there seems to be some cases pending in that regard.

 

[tands]

Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data

Facebook was in talks with top hospitals and other medical groups as recently as last month about a proposal to share data about the social networks of their most vulnerable patients.

The idea was to build profiles of people that included their medical conditions, information that health systems have, as well as social and economic factors gleaned from Facebook.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/facebook-building-8-explored-data-sharing-agreement-with-hospitals.html

 

[tands]

Some dem senators wrote a bill requiring people being paid to post political speech online to disclose that. Seems pretty sensible.

Laws don't apply to computers. Most of the manipulating is being done by bots. Only the Russians seem to use underpaid humans to post propaganda.

What? People run the bots, they're not running themselves.

Meet Sally Albright, who used to run a botnet in the US until she got blown a few weeks ago. Note: Not Russian.

https://twitter.com/likingonline/status/954746743765127168

https://twitter.com/SallyAlbright

She works for David Brock at Correct the Record, and here's who pays for it.

https://twitter.com/likingonline/status/978531716481470464

 

[cyrano]

Thanks, TANDS

Very interesting. Hadn't heard about that one. Too much stuff to read, I guess.

But did she run a real botnet? I feel definitions might be a little hazy here.

By botnet, I mean like one being used to spread malware. Usually, the operators can't be found, unless they start bragging about it. The operators often aren't the people who created the botnet. Etc.

And will she be prosecuted for it? Doesn't show from the Twitter links, AFAICT.

 

[tands]

Lol, no prosecution. Other people are no doubt are getting her paycheck at this point. Buffer updated it's TOS to say 'don't do this', but BFD.

She scooped up inactive accounts somehow, maybe she created them, or bought them from overseas purveyors, and used them to retweet her own account and those accounts who were saying what she wanted boosted, who are likely paid shills of whoever, like she is.

But as Trevor discovered, after an extensive amount of research that he posted online, these were not normal accounts. They appeared to be bots ― automated accounts masked as real people being used to amplify a particular political message. Who is really pulling the strings, however, remains a mystery.

Albright told HuffPost that the accounts were voluntarily handed over by their original users to an unnamed client of hers to be automated in “an analytics program.” She said she was bound by a non-disclosure agreement and could not disclose who was collecting and automating these accounts or for what purpose.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-bot-network-sally-albright_us_5aa2f548e4b07047bec68023

She stole photos of people to 'flesh out' the bots.

https://twitter.com/likingonline/status/968316130820591616

 

[tands]

https://twitter.com/likingonline/status/969048226639724544

 

[JohnRoberts]

The two days of congressional questioning of Zuckerberg has been a feeding frenzy of congress people trying to get sound bites of them talking tough to the Zuk... that they can use in the upcoming midterms.

Zukerberg in his best "brer Rabbit" imitation

  invited congress to regulate social media... since he is one of the established players, regulation will serve as a moat against new competitors taking market share.

Just like brer rabbit actually wanted the fox to throw him in the briar patch so he could easily escape, regulation would be a good outcome for facebook.

Almost time to buy some, but maybe wait till after they report earnings, and we see if there are any more shoes to drop  (like another cambridge analytica). There's never just one cockroach.  :

JR