Refreshingly, I’ve noticed that my more recent blog posts haven’t been about Big Tech as often. I haven’t changed my views: the ones I’ve stated earlier still stand, and Google and Facebook in particular continue to be a blight on democracy and even individual mental health.
A lot of the posts were inspired by real-world usage of those websites, if you look back over the last decade. As I use them irregularly, and wish others were in the same boat, then there’s little to report, unless I come across new revelations that I might have a say about.
Google is the search of last resort though it has a great translator; now that the news alerts don’t even work, that’s one fewer contact point with the online advertising monopolist. Facebook is good for monitoring who has breached my privacy by uploading my private data to the platform, and to delete off-Facebook activity (Facebook serves these pages at a ridiculously slow speed, you wonder if you’re on dial-up). Beyond that neither site has much utility.
My Instagram usage is down to once every two months, which means it’s halved since 2020, though I still keep an eye on Lucire’s account, which isn’t automated.
I stay in touch with some friends on email and there’s much to be said about a long-form composition versus a status update. It’s the difference between a home-cooked meal and a fast food snack. And, of course, I have this blog to record things that might pique my interest.
Go back far enough—as this blog’s been around 15 years—and I shared my musings on the media and branding. My blog’s roots were an offshoot of the old Beyond Branding blog, but I wanted to branch into my own space. A lot of my views on branding haven’t changed, so I haven’t reblogged about them. Each time someone introduced another platform, be it Vox or Tumblr, I found a use for it, but ultimately came back here. Just last week I realized that the blog gallery, which came into being because NewTumbl’s moderators started believing in the Republic of Gilead, was really my substitute for Pinterest. It might even be my substitute for Instagram, if I can be bothered getting the photos off my phone.
I must say it’s a relief to have everything on my own domain, and while it’s not “social”, I have to ask myself how much of Instagramming and social media updating ever was. Twitter, yes, to an extent. But oftentimes with Instagram I posted because I got joy from doing so, over trying to please an audience. It’s why I never got that many followers, because it wasn’t a themed account. And if doing what suits me at the time is the motive, then there’s no real detriment to doing so in my own spaces. These posts still get hundreds of viewers each, probably more than what I got on Facebook or Instagram.
I don’t know if this is a trend, since setting up your own space takes far more time than using someone else’s. Paying for it is another burden others may wish to avoid. Nor do I have the latest stats on Facebook engagement, but when I did track it, it was heading south year on year. I do know that the average reach for an organic post continues to fall there, which is hardly a surprise with all the bots. Instagram just seems full of ads.
But in my opinion, fewer contact points with Big Tech is a good thing, and may they get fewer still.
Archive for the ‘internet’ category
On publishing in 2021, as told to Business Desk
03.09.2021
Above: Coverage in Business Desk, with me pictured with Lucire fashion and beauty editor Sopheak Seng.
Big thanks to Daniel Dunkley, who wrote this piece about me and my publishing work in Business Desk, well worth subscribing to (coincidentally, I spotted an article about my friend and classmate Hamish Edwards today, too).
I had a lengthy chat with Daniel because he asked great questions—the fact he got a lot out of me shows how good a journalist he is. And he reveals some of our more recent developments, as well as my thoughts on the industry in general—things I hadn’t really got on to record often to a journalist, certainly not in the last few years.
I had my Business Desk alerts switched off so I didn’t know he had already written his story (on the day of our interview) till another friend and classmate told me earlier this week. It also shows that Google’s News Alerts are totally useless, something that I realized recently when it took them three weeks to send the alert (the time between its original spidering of the article and the email being sent out). Those had been worsening over the years and I had seen them be one or two days behind, but now they rarely arrive. Three weeks is plain unacceptable for one of the last services on Google I still used.
Back to Daniel’s story. It’s a great read, and I’m glad someone here in Aotearoa looked me up. I realize most of our readers are abroad and we earn most from exports, but a lot of what we’ve done is to promote just how good our country is. I’m proud of what we’re able to achieve from our part of the world.
Above: Google News Alerts take an awfully long time to arrive, if at all. I hadn’t seen one for weeks, then this one arrives, three weeks after Google News spidered and indexed the article. Google feels like another site that now fails to get the basics right.
Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, Auckland, Bauer, business, fashion magazine, Google, journalism, JY&A Media, licensing, Lucire, Lucire KSA, magazine, magazines, media, New Zealand, publishing, Saudi Arabia, Scots College, Sopheak Seng, St Mark’s Church School, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in business, internet, media, New Zealand, publishing, Wellington | 1 Comment »
Autocade nets 25,000,000th page view
25.08.2021
Above: The new Honda Civic, the 4,500th model added to Autocade.
In the next few hours, Autocade will have netted its 25 millionth page view, at a slightly slower rate than the last million by several days (it’s two months, 10 days this time). Therefore, it’s not quite a record rate, but I hope it means that readership will continue to be similarly healthy for 2021.
Sixty-five models were added since the last post on this topic in June, a larger increase than in the period before. The 4,500th model was the latest Honda Civic: knowing that the 25 millionth was coming, I didn’t mark the occasion of that car range being added in a separate post.
I probably do need to start adding more Italian exotica, the one genre that’s somewhat lacking; and some additional American cars would complete a few nameplate histories.
It’s still the saloon cars that I find most interesting, and for once, the Mercedes-Benz EQS, the three-pointed star’s flagship electric saloon, was a pleasure to add. I suspect too many new-energy vehicles are dull because they look the same—and I’m talking about the plethora of Chinese crossovers. The SAIPA Shahin, the new Geely Emgrand, the Changan Eado DT, and the Renault Taliant have been among Autocade’s newest current saloon cars that many of you will find dull as dishwater (and, indeed, they may be dull to drive), but which form the backbone of the database.
Because I have OCD, here’s how readership has developed.
March 2008: launch
April 2011: 1,000,000 (three years for first million)
March 2012: 2,000,000 (11 months for second million)
May 2013: 3,000,000 (14 months for third million)
January 2014: 4,000,000 (eight months for fourth million)
September 2014: 5,000,000 (eight months for fifth million)
May 2015: 6,000,000 (eight months for sixth million)
October 2015: 7,000,000 (five months for seventh million)
March 2016: 8,000,000 (five months for eighth million)
August 2016: 9,000,000 (five months for ninth million)
February 2017: 10,000,000 (six months for 10th million)
June 2017: 11,000,000 (four months for 11th million)
January 2018: 12,000,000 (seven months for 12th million)
May 2018: 13,000,000 (four months for 13th million)
September 2018: 14,000,000 (four months for 14th million)
February 2019: 15,000,000 (five months for 15th million)
June 2019: 16,000,000 (four months for 16th million)
October 2019: 17,000,000 (four months for 17th million)
December 2019: 18,000,000 (just under three months for 18th million)
April 2020: 19,000,000 (just over three months for 19th million)
July 2020: 20,000,000 (just over three-and-a-half months for 20th million)
October 2020: 21,000,000 (three months for 21st million)
January 2021: 22,000,000 (three months for 22nd million)
April 2021: 23,000,000 (three months for 23rd million)
June 2021: 24,000,000 (two months for 24th million)
August 2021: 25,000,000 (two months for 25th million)
Thank you, everyone, for your ongoing support of this project.
Tags: 2021, Autocade, cars, Honda, JY&A Media, Mercedes-Benz, publishing
Posted in cars, internet, media, publishing | No Comments »
August 2021 gallery
11.08.2021Here are August 2021’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Sources
Volkswagen Gol G4—more at Autocade.
The fake friends of social media being the junk food equivalent of real friendships, from this post by Umair Haque.
Stay at home, wear a mask—geek humour shared from Twitter.
Thaikila swimwear—seems to have an interesting history.
More on the Fiat 124 Sport Spider here at Autocade.
Jerry Inzerillo, first male on the cover of an issue of Lucire anywhere in the world, in this case the August 2021 issue of Lucire KSA. The story can be found here on our website.
Tags: 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2000, 2010s, 2011, 2021, actor, advertisement, advertising, Bali, Brazil, business, car, celebrity, COVID-19, culture, fashion, fashion magazine, Fiat, Ford, France, Google, humour, Indonesia, internet, Jerry Inzerillo, Lucire, Lucire KSA, magazine, Mazda, newspaper, Otosan, prediction, publishing, Renault, Sean Connery, society, Turkey, Twitter, UK, Umair Haque, USA, Volkswagen
Posted in business, cars, culture, gallery, internet, publishing, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
The pathetic snowflakes of Big Tech
10.08.2021
We all know what will happen. This is one of two fakes who have sent me a Facebook friend request this week. The first was given the all-clear despite having spam links; and no doubt this will be judged to be perfectly acceptable by Facebook. (In the meantime, a post from Lucire that featured the latest PETA ‘would rather go naked’ campaign was instantly removed.)
What isn’t acceptable, is, of course, criticizing them. Bob Hoffman writes (original emphases):
According to Vice, recently the Cybersecurity for Democracy project “has revealed major flaws in Facebook political ad transparency tools and highlighted how Facebook’s algorithms were amplifying (COVID vaccine) misinformation.” This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been conscious for the past few years …
This week Facebook, in an act of abject unscrupulousness, suspended the accounts of several of the researchers from NYU who are leading the Cybersecurity for Democracy project and need to access Facebook to do their work. One of the researchers called Facebook’s action “‘disgraceful’ at a time when the disinformation around COVID-19 and vaccines is literally costing lives.”
This is how weak and pathetic Facebook is. Instead of doing better (which they claim they try to do), they’d rather shut down criticism. A bit like a dictatorship.
They’re not alone, of course. In the news recently were the snowflakes of Ebay, who also can’t take a bit of criticism.
Ina and David Steiner publish a news website about ecommerce and were critical of Ebay in its latest incarnation. The CEO wasn’t happy, nor was Ebay’s head of global security, James Baugh, who began a campaign to terrorize the Steiners.
The Steiners found their fence tagged, then Ebay’s staff began sending ordering items to be sent to them, including a fœtal pig, a mask of a bloody pig face (witnessed by a police officer), a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a package of live spiders and fly larvæ, and a sympathy wreath, among others. Then Ebay’s employees went to Boston, near where the Steiners lived, and planned to plant a tracking device on their car. The Steiners spotted the rental vehicles stalking them. Understandably, they couldn’t sleep properly, and even slept separately fearing they would be physically attacked.
It was thanks to the Steiners’ own efforts that they managed to get the number plate of one of the vehicles tailing them, which was then referred to police, who finally managed to figure out what was going on.
One person has been sentenced in all this mess to 18 months in prison, and there have been other arrests, though as this is the US, the CEO gets off scot free with a US$57 million golden handshake.
This isn’t that out of the ordinary, and entirely predictable for anyone who has followed this blog. Or the news, for that matter.
A few years ago, I blogged about how Elon Musk and Tesla tried to get one of its whistleblowing employees killed by telling the police that he was planning a mass shooting. According to Bloomberg Businessweek:
Many chief executive officers would try to ignore somebody like Tripp. Instead, as accounts from police, former employees, and documents produced by Tesla’s own internal investigation reveal, Musk set out to destroy him.
The employee, Martin Tripp, allegedly was hacked and followed before the attempt to have him swatted.
Former Gigafactory security manager, Sean Gouthro, said Tripp never sabotaged Tesla or hacked anything, and Musk knew this, but still wanted to damage Tripp’s reputation.
You can read more directly at the source.
My negative encounters with Big Tech, which I put down more to shoddy programming or incompetence than malice, are pretty tame.
Put together, the pattern of IP theft, censorship, inciting genocide and misinformation, and targeting individuals, is very obvious. It’s part of their culture these days, since the US keeps letting these companies do what they wish with impunity, and to heck with what anyone would reasonably think the laws actually say. And it’s not just the US: when has our Blairite government or its predecessor moved against Big Tech in any meaningful way, on taxation, or on apportioning some responsibility for their part in COVID-19 misinformation?
Meanwhile, I was amused to see this under Arthur Turnure’s entry in Wikipedia:
So Turnure starts Vogue but decides to work under an 18-year-old in another city.
The reference linked doesn’t back this up at all.
I know Wikipedia is full of crap that we can all go and correct, but as we’ve seen, shit sticks and on the internet, bullshit sticks, including one item that I’ve blogged about before that remained for over a decade.
What gets me is why someone who doesn’t know a subject would deem themselves sufficiently knowledgeable to write about it. Because I just wouldn’t dare.
As detailed before, you don’t see as many inaccuracies in the Japanese or German versions of Wikipedia, and you have to conclude, especially now with politicians doing the same thing, that the Anglosphere is increasingly an anti-intellectual place to be. ‘The fundamental problem with the English-speaking world is that ignorance is not considered a vice,’ said the brother of my friend, Prof Catherine Churchman. My earlier post from 2018 stands now more than ever.
Tags: 2019, 2020, 2021, Anglosphere, Big Tech, Bloomberg, Bob Hoffman, Boston, Condé Nast, crime, Ebay, Elon Musk, English, Facebook, language, law, Massachusetts, Natick, spam, terrorism, Tesla, USA, Vogue, Wikipedia
Posted in business, culture, internet, technology, USA | No Comments »
Admiral doesn’t understand that I’m not blocking ads, only trackers
21.07.2021
It’s pretty bad that Admiral, which detects whether you are using an ad blocker or not, now advises this with Privacy Badger.
Let me make this very clear: I am not against advertising on websites. I have advertising on our websites.
I am against tracking by people such as Google. And that is all I am blocking: the tracking part. There is a difference.
Frankly, if you need to track in order for your ads to work, then there is something deeply wrong with your model. You’re actually doing your clients out of exposure.
This goes for the ad networks that work with us, too. If you have Privacy Badger installed and both you and I miss out on ads on our sites, then so be it.
What is so wrong about using the context of the page and delivering ads to suit? Everyone still wins with this model and we don’t feel as violated.
So I won’t be disabling Privacy Badger, thanks.
It also means I’ll be happy to charge a premium on advertisers who want to appear on our site because the content is relevant—and because the non-tracked stuff will at least get seen by an engaged public.
Tags: 2020s, 2021, advertising, internet, marketing, privacy, publishing
Posted in business, internet, marketing, media, publishing, technology | No Comments »
It feels like half of Facebook is bot
21.07.2021
Here’s a screenshot from the new members of one of my Facebook groups—actually the only public one I still have. Since Facebook lets spammers join now, we have to block them manually. Their posts don’t make it through to the group as we have safeguards there, too. But I’m not going to let them inflate, falsely, the member count, which in turn will make it harder for posts to reach group members.
A lot of these bots—they hunt for large groups and their scripts join them—seem to hide under the guise of role-playing for the Pinoy TV series Halik, and they all chat to each other in automated fashion. As Facebook is stupid enough not to recognize the bot activity, you’d think that at least they could see the script at play here, as these accounts are often new, and they set to work joining large groups and pages.
They don’t recognize them, or, they do recognize them and allow the bot activity to carry on with their blessing. Each one of these blocked accounts was reported, and as usual they were found to be perfectly fine.
In this screenshot, there were five legitimate accounts. We used to keep the numbers well down because potential members had to answer basic questions, and even some legit people are too lazy to do that. Back then we would see one legit account joining after weeks or months. I think I preferred that, because it kept the spammers and bots away.
It certainly gives the impression that bots, based on this sample (and others like it since Facebook’s pro-bot policy change arrived with this group), are running at about 50 per cent of the total, which gels with recent research that Instagram is 46 per cent fake (that is, 46 per cent of all accounts are not legit). Nevertheless, I still see far more bots than humans overall: just get yourself into the fake Halik accounts of the Smiths and Montefalcos, and now they’re branching out into other surnames like Montenegro and Buenavista. Thousands, untouched, the only consistent activity on the wasteland that is Facebook.
Tags: 2021, Big Tech, bot, deception, Facebook, spam, USA
Posted in business, internet, technology, USA | 1 Comment »
Scheduling posts on Facebook and Instagram? Forget it, it’s not worth the trouble
21.07.2021If someone who has never been authorized to have a role on a Facebook page can have full admin access to it, then it stands to reason that a legitimate owner of a Facebook page cannot do what she needs with it.
That’s exactly what happened to my friend Holly Jahangiri, who has a Facebook page and an Instagram profile, both of which are connected. She can read her private messages. She can log into both, and she is the admin of both. Facebook has her email address and cellphone number. But she couldn’t schedule a post for either, and that’s when Facebook sent her into a loop—not unlike the one that Google sent me on in 2009, although Google’s forum person was way ruder.
Facebook kept asking Holly to review her connection and confirm she is admin of her own page—information that they already had. Unless their databases are so shot to hell that even internally they cannot determine this.
She would love to click ‘Confirm’ but the button was greyed out, saying, ‘You must be an admin of the associated Page’s business in Business Manager to confirm the Instagram account.’ But she is the admin.
Even if she tried disconnecting her accounts and attempted to reconnect them, so she could review that connection that they asked for, no confirmation email ever arrived. And when she logged into both Facebook and Instagram, on desktop and mobile, the accounts were indeed linked and confirmed in their Account Center.
It seems a small ask to be able to schedule a post on a page—mind you, Tumblr wouldn’t let me for some time, as every time we got to the scheduled moment, it would alter the day and move it forward into the future—but Holly persisted and decided to send them a message through their Business Support Center. She was lucky: she actually got a response. I never have. Or maybe she was unlucky that they responded.
Their first piece of advice was to ask Holly to do what she had already done: disconnect and start over. She proved she did it with the screenshot they requested, and that it still didn’t work.
Then they asked:
… in order for us to assist you better, please provide us with the following:
1. A screen recording in which illustrates the steps up to the section where the issue is showing. Please ensure that it is of the entire screen, including the URL bar at the top of the screen. For screen recordings, we recommend to upload the video on Dropbox and email the link to us. Do ensure the URL link is set to public. As in case we may need to forward your concern to the relevant team, this file will be very useful.
2. Page URL/ID where you are connecting your Instagram Account to.
Even though Holly has the knowledge to do a screen recording, she felt this was getting ridiculous, and, like me, she wasn’t prepared to upgrade her Dropbox just to host a video for Facebook. And she had already given them (2).
She explained things once again but that Facebook kept asking her confirm her Facebook page and Instagram connection—and providing her no means with which to do it. And that the Account Center said the two were connected.
She did one more screenshot with URL showing. In it, Facebook is still asking her to ‘Confirm Your Facebook Page and Instagram Connection’ but giving her no means to do it.
Facebook responded by saying they still needed a video. And Holly answered that it wasn’t going to happen.
Then she received this:
Hello Holly,
Thank you for contacting Facebook Concierge Support. We greatly appreciate your patience while waiting for an update.
We understand that you are unable to provide the video recording of the actual steps you are taking to show the issue being experienced.
What we can see is that the [Holly’s page, redacted] is added on a Business Manager account where you have no role. Please be informed that if a Page is connected on a Business Manager account, the Instagram account you are trying to link on that Page must also be owned by the same Business Manager account.
If you know who are the admins of the Business Manager account that owns the Page, please check with them if the Instagram account – [Holly’s Instagram account, redacted], is also added on that Business Manager. Also ask them to grant you admin access on that Business Manager. Once that is done, you can try again linking the Page and Instagram account.
Feel free to get in touch with us if you need any further assistance and we will be very happy to assist you further.
Do not hesitate to find our best support via https://www.facebook.com/business/help for future inquiries. We look forward in making your journey with Facebook a better one.
Thank you for contacting Facebook Concierge Support. Have a nice day!Kind regards,
Yoyo
I would be fuming by now, because Holly is the admin of both, and there was no evidence of hacking. No one else is there as the admin.
She wrote: ‘So who BUT me would own that business manager account? If it belongs to someone else, how do I undo that and create my own? How do I straighten this out? If it’s something I did incorrectly, then clearly I’m asking you: HOW DO I FIX IT?’
In classic Big Tech support, it seems Yoyo never read her message. They wrote:
Hi Holly,
Thank you so much for your email.
I can perfectly understand that you are not aware on who is the Admin of the Business Manager. Therefore, what I can do for you is, I will submit and Admin appeal for you by you will need to provide me the with some information and documents as below :
1) A copy of a valid government-issued photo ID, such as a current driver’s license or a passport, of the individual signing the statement. See the different kinds of IDs we accept in the Help Center: https://www.facebook.com/help/159096464162185
2) A signed statement from a person with sufficient knowledge and authority over this matter that includes all of the following:
a) The Facebook email address or profile URL associated with the Facebook account that you wish to have added as the new admin
b) A description of requestor relationship to the Business (and authority to request access to the Business, as applicable);
c) An explanation of your request, and whether there has been a termination of the employment and/or business relationship with the named person(s)/Business, as applicable;
d) The past three invoices/billing statements on the ad account(s) that the Business owns AND the last 4 digits of the credit card(s) on the account(s);
• If the BM does not have any ad account, please declare such information in the statement
e) A declaration that the information you have provided is true and accurate (e.g. “I certify that the information provided is true and accurate”) – your statement must include similar language.For any other issues, please feel free to initiate a chat support session at the following link:
https://www.facebook.com/business/help
For any feedback regarding our features within platform, please use the link:
https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/268228883256323
Thank you for contacting Facebook Concierge Support and have a good day ahead!Regards,
Yoyo
If you’ve made it this far, you’ll know why Holly shouldn’t need to provide any of the above. The first paragraph from Yoyo is completely wrong since Holly is aware of who the admin is, but Facebook seems to want to ignore that.
At this point she was prepared to delete the lot—something I’m prepared to do, too, but haven’t. Apparently gadgets like IFTTT are tied to my account and they run things on Lucire’s Facebook page, which, based on the decision of the majority, is still being used by the team.
She showed Yoyo another screenshot that confirmed she is the sole admin. And told them that she would not provide any additional documents.
Their response, inter alia (and by this time, Yoyo was calling Holly ‘Yoyo’):
When it comes to data protection and privacy, Facebook does not reveal any information, the documents mentioned are mandatory since you are not the Admin of the Business Manager in which the Page is connected.
We are not advising you to close your account for the sake of your business; rather, we are attempting to assist you.
Please submit the mentioned documents as soon as they are ready so that we can assist you further.
I can hear you screaming, ‘But she is the admin!’
Any sane, reasonable person could empathize with Holly’s reply:
So, the point is, I AM admin of the business account that any of my own pages/account are connected with unless I somehow orphaned them THIS MORNING after my last email to you, and your request at this point is tantamount to phishing. I’m not playing – I will not be sending you additional ID; you have my email, phone number, address, etc. (I have sent my driver’s license to Facebook, in the past, and I now deeply regret it. I will not be doing it again; I do not believe you safeguarded it in the first place.)
“We are not advising you to close your account for the sake of your business” – what a joke. My business has never benefited from Facebook in any way, shape, or form. I opened the Business account because Facebook led me to believe I had to have one in order to upgrade and maintain my pages. I HAD an ad account, which I deleted, this morning. Ads I ran in the past were basically sent to EXACTLY the opposite of my target demographics and never led to ONE SINGLE SALE, so that is useless to me.
- As an individual, all purchases I have ever made from other “businesses” on Facebook or Instagram have been scams.
- I report fake and imposter accounts and I am told that they do not violate community standards.
- I have reported actual kiddy porn in the past, to be told that it did not violate community standards.
- I can only conclude, at this point, that Facebook prefers bots and scammers and phishers of men, because – I guess – they don’t cause as many headaches and the numbers look GREAT to advertisers.
I am now stuck in some sort of hellspace between your business center and your creator studio and ready to delete my personal profile as well as my pages and groups because I cannot figure out how to disconnect them from your “business center” thing.
In fact, Holly would have added, given the chance (these are her words):
- I have been told by Facebook to download and install their partners’ anti-malware products and run them, despite my having my own premium subscription to Norton; I refused to do so, and was punished by a suspension of indefinite length (ended up being a couple of pleasant weeks away from Facebook);
- I have had my wrist slapped for posting factual COVID info and stats DIRECTLY from the CDC, articles I wrote on Medium.com, and most lately, a link to a Wikipedia article explaining the origins of the classic nursery rhyme, “Humpty-Dumpty”
In other words, I’m not alone with the endless frustration this site causes. I’m still frustrated and I barely use it, because of all the basics it gets wrong, constantly. And normally I would never take a dig at someone’s name but ‘Yoyo’ describes what Holly went through.
Holly wound up deleting all her ad and business accounts and reverted back to a personal one. When I read the above, I’d rather have the usual silence than what Facebook thinks passes for ‘support’!
Tags: 2021, Big Tech, customer service, Facebook, Holly Jahangiri, technical support
Posted in business, internet, technology, USA | No Comments »
Facebook continues to give in to fake accounts, much like the UK with COVID-19
10.07.2021At the beginning of July I noticed Facebook had changed its reporting options. Gone is the option labelled ‘Fake account’, replaced by ‘Harmful or spam’. It’s a small change that, I believe, is designed to get Facebook off the hook for failing to remove fake accounts: since you can’t report them, then you can’t say they’ve failed to take them down.
Except, if you choose ‘Harmful or spam’, Facebook does acknowledge that your report is for a fake account:
Of course they’re harmful. Harmful to us regular people who have to pay more and more money to reach our human supporters since the fakes command an increasing amount of fans on our pages, for instance. It isn’t harmful for Facebook’s revenue or Zuckerberg’s wealth. So it really depends how you define harmful; one would imagine that a competent court would define it from a consumer’s point of view.
Their new group policy, where Facebook has also given up against the bot epidemic, letting fake accounts join public groups, is a disaster. As you can see, the majority of new members to one group I oversee—and where I usually get tips to new bot accounts—are fakes. They’ve used scripts to join. It’s a bit of a giveaway when there are brand-new accounts joining groups before they’ve even made friends. The legit names have been pixellated; the fakes I’ve left for you to see.
It’s not as bad as, say, giving up on the people who elected you to run the country and letting COVID-19 do whatever it wants, killing citizens in the process. But it comes from the same dark place of putting people second and lining your pockets first—Mark Zuckerberg does it, Robert Mugabe did it, etc. Distract and plunder.
In The Guardian:
Boris Johnson will revoke hundreds of Covid regulations and make England the most unrestricted society in Europe from 19 July despite saying new cases could soar to 50,000 a day before masks and social distancing are ditched.
In fact, one Tweeter jokingly showed his interpretation of the UK’s COVID alert levels:
On this, let our own Prof Michael Baker have the last word. Also in The Guardian, which I shared three days ago on Mastodon:
Baker said public health professionals were “disturbed” by the UK’s return to allowing Covid to circulate unchecked, and that the phrase “living with it” was a “meaningless slogan” that failed to communicate the consequences of millions of infections, or the alternative options for managing the virus.
“We often absorb a lot of our rhetoric from Europe and North America, which have really managed the pandemic very badly,” he said. “I don’t think we should necessarily follow or accept Boris Johnson and co saying: “Oh, we have to learn to live with virus.’
“We always have to be a bit sceptical about learning lessons from countries that have failed very badly.”
We really need to be confident of our own position on this. There are too many, especially those propelled by foreign forces with their friends in the foreign-owned media, advocating that we follow other Anglophone countries—probably because they lack either intelligence, imagination, pride, or empathy. I’ve spent a good part of my career saying, ‘Why should we follow when we can lead?’
Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, COVID-19, deception, epidemiology, Facebook, leadership, media, Michael Baker, New Zealand, newspaper, pandemic, politics, social media, The Guardian, UK
Posted in business, internet, leadership, media, New Zealand, politics, UK, USA | No Comments »