Iām still blocked from seeing my advertising preferences on Facebook on the desktop, the only place where you can edit them, something that has plagued them for years and which theyāre unlikely to fix. I commonly say that Facebookās databases are āshot to hell,ā which Iāve believed for many years, and this is another example of it.
I can, however, see who has uploaded a list containing my private information to Facebook, and this ignominious bunch includes Amazon, Spotify (several subsidiaries), numerous American politicians, and others. Iāve never dealt with Spotify, or the politicians, so goodness knows how they have a list with my details, but to know theyāve been further propagated on to such an inhumane platform is disappointing.
I signed up to one New Zealand companyās list at the end of December and already theyāve done the same.
This is a sure way for me to ask to cut off contact with you and demand my details be removed. Itās also a sure way to earn a block of your Facebook page, if you have one.
While weāre on this subject, I notice Facebook claims:
Manage How Your Ads Are Personalized on Instagram
If you use Instagram, you can now choose whether to see personalized ads based on data from our partners. You make this choice in the Instagram app.
Actually, you canāt, so thanks for lying again.
The only advertising settings available are āAd Activityā (which shows the advertisements Iāve recently interacted with, and thatās a blank list, natch), and āAd Topic Preferencesā (where you can ask to see fewer ads on the topics of alcohol, parenting or pets). Unless Facebook has hidden them elsewhere on Instagram, this is more BS, just like how they claim theyāll block an account youāve reported. (They used to, but havenāt done so for a long time, yet still claim they do.)
My friend Ian Ryder writes, āNo lesser names than Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Kevin Systrom (Instagram) have all taken action to ensure the safety of their own families from some of the dangers technology has created in our society today.ā This is pretty telling, isnāt it?
Postscript, January 4: I was surprised to receive another email from the company.
It does not appear to be their fault as their email system, from a company called hubspotemail.net, claims I have been removed, yet keeps sending. I won’t file a complaint as it’s obvious that Hubspot is unreliable.
Post-postscript, January 5: My lovely Amanda says these folks aren’t back to work till January 18, so they might not even know about the list being uploaded to Facebook. I should be interested to find out if that’s been automated by Hubspotāin which case anyone using it needs to be aware what it’s doing in their name, and whether it matches what they’re saying in their T&Cs.
Post-post-postscript, January 13: The company has responded even before they’ve gone back to work, and confirmed my details have now been removed. They took it really seriously, which I’m grateful for. The upload function was indeed automated, but they say that with the removal of my details, the Facebook list will also automatically update. Their T&Cs will also be updated, so I say good on them for being genuine and transparent.
Here are the images that have piqued my interest for December 2020. For November’s gallery, click here (all gallery posts are here). And for why I started this, here’s my earlier post on this blog, and also here and here on NewTumbl.
With the new season of Alarm fĆ¼r Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei nearly upon us, I decided Iād pop into my Facebook group (Iām still an admin) to see what had been happening. Iāve been there a few times this week and I have discovered some of the siteās latest features.
Groups: these now have three posts. Thatās it. Three. It doesnāt matter how long they have been running, Facebook doesnāt want you to be bothered by history or anything so stupid. Therefore, after the third post (fourth if youāve just posted something), youāve reached the end. Saves heaps on the server bills, since I guess theyāre not as rich as they would have us believe.
(This bug has been around for years but now itās the norm, so maybe they eventually figured out it was a cost-saving feature.)
On groups: welcome to the end of Facebook. This is the last post.
Comments: donāt be silly, you shouldnāt be able to comment. This is a great way for Facebook to cut down on dialogue, because they can then just propagate nonsense before an election. We know where Zuckās biases are, so they want to be a broadcaster and publisher. You can select the word āReplyā in the reply box, you just canāt type in it. (Again, an old bug, but it looks like itās a feature. Iām still able to like things, although on many previous occasions over the last decade or more that feature was blocked to me.)
Commenting: they let me have one reply, but replying to someone who has replied to you? Forget it, it’s impossible.
In the reply box, you can highlight ‘Reply’ but you can’t type in there. That would be too much to ask.
Notifications: these never load, had haven’t done for a long time. Remember the ad preferencesā page? They donāt load, either, so Facebook has now extended the ācircleā to notifications. If you donāt see notifications, you wonāt need to continue a threadānot that you could, anyway, since they donāt let you comment.
If you knew what your notifications were, you might stay longer and post stuff that makes sense. No, Facebook is for people who want to spread falsehoods among themselves. You have no place here.
Messages: why not roll out the same spinning circle here, too? They should never load, either, because, frankly, email is far more efficient and everyone should just give up on using Facebookās messaging service.
Time to go back to email: if you were ever silly enough to rely on Facebook for messaging, then you’re out of luck.
I once thought that I encountered bugs on Facebook because I was a heavy user, but as I havenāt even touched my wall since 2017, this cannot be the reason. I also used to say their databases were āshot to hellā, which could be the case. And I still firmly believe I encounter errors because Iām more observant than most people. Remember, as Zuckās friend Donald Trump says, if you do more testing, youāll find more cases.
I’ve even found the “end” of Instagram, at the point where nothing will show any more.
The end of Instagram: when you can find the limit to the service.
No one’s posting much these days. In the early 2010s, there’d be no way I’d ever get to see the end of my friends’ updates.
Solution: donāt use Facebook. And definitely don’t entrust them with your personal data, including your photosāeven if you trust them, they’ll potentially get lost. From what I can tell, the site’s increasing inability to cope suggests that its own technology might fail them before the US government even gets a chance to regulate! Andāthe above topics asideāit may be time to regulate Facebook and pull in the reins.
Whaddya know? Uploading an Instagram video with an Android 7-based phone is fine if itās on a Chinese OS and not a western one. This was a bug I wrote about nearly two years ago, and I wasnāt alone. Others had difficulties with their Android 7 phones with getting Instagram videos to play smoothly: the frame rate was incredibly poor. The general solution posted then was to upgrade to Android 8.
I never did that. Instead I would Bluetooth the files over to my old Meizu M2 Note (running Android 5), and upload to Instagram through that. It wasnāt efficient, and soon afterwards I stopped. By 2020 I gave up Instagramming regularly altogether.
With my switch over to a Meizu Chinese OS (Flyme 8.0.0.0A, which on the M6 Note is still Android 7-based) earlier this week, I uploaded one video and it appears to be perfectly fine.
So all those who wrote on to Reddit and elsewhere with their Android 7 problems, this could be a solutionāthough I know it wonāt appeal to those who arenāt familiar with the Chinese language and would rather not get lost on their own phones. Those who managed to upgrade their OSs have likely already done so.
Hereās a cautionary tale found by Lucire travel editor Stanley Moss. His words: āPhotographer Dmitry Kostyukov recently experienced a rich dialogue with an algorithm belonging to a Scandinavian swimwear company. Heād been auto-mistaken for a Y chromosome, and digitally invited to become a brand ambassador. Dmitry accepted, and received the sample suit of his choice, an influencer name and instructions on how to photograph himself wearing the product. This exposes one facet of what advertising has become, commodified advocacy. Following is the text of his statement about the project, filled with reminders of what today constitutes the new paradigm of product promotion. Caveat emptor.ā
In other words, donāt leave your marketing in the hands of a program. I havenāt followed up with Bright Swimwear, but I hope they’ll run with it, not just to show that they are āprogressiveā, but to admit that there are limits to how algorithms can handle your brand. (They haven’t yet.)
If the world desires more humanistic branding, and people donāt want to feel like just a number, then brands should be more personal. Automation is all right when you need to reach a mass audience with the same message, but cultivating personal relationships with your brand ambassadors would be a must if you desire authenticity. Otherwise, you just donāt know the values of those promoting your brand.
Fortunately, I took it in good humour just as Dmitry did and ran the story in Lucire, and you can reach your own conclusions about the wisdom of algorithms in marketing, particularly in brand ambassadorship.
Itās true. I spent time on business development, answering emails, doing tech stuff on our sites, and generally kept on top of things. I often wonder if I would have become an active Facebooker or Tweeter had they been invented and come into my orbit in, say, 2002. We all may have been too busy with our own ventures. The fact they surfaced (for me) in 2007, and became part of my routine the following year as the economy slowed canāt be a coincidence. Instagram, in 2012, also falls into this period. I convinced myself that these social media would provide some advantage, or bring opportunities that otherwise couldnāt be readily located elsewhere, but that wasnāt the case. Like Linkedin, Iām not sure if any of these websites have brought work opportunities that resulted in an invoice.
Once you fall out of the habit, then the device itself isnāt that useful, either, for someone who never really embraced the cellphone as a primary means of communicationāI maintained a landline all these years. I never even had a regular cellphone number till 2006: I got people to call my colleagues who did carry them (I was paying for the damned things, after all). Iām not sure I want to be contactable in my waking hours that readily. Iāll take work calls in my office, thank you, and personal calls elsewhere; and if Iām out, then Iām driving or meeting with someone, and neither is a good time to be interrupted. The landline has this amazing feature called an answerphone, and it records and plays back messages when I’m good and ready to hear them. Since Dad passed, thereās one fewer need to be contactable day and night, and realistically I only see it as something that other members of my family and close friends should reach me on now. The number has never appeared on a single business card of mine, for good reason. As we head into the 2020s Iām hoping each of us decides where lines should be drawn. I think mineās right here: no more cellphones for work; at best, they’re a last resort. I need to organize my schedule better and cellphones just donāt help, apps even less so. It comes back to this crazy belief of mine that technology is here to serve us, not the other way round. By all means, if your cellphone serves you, then use itāI can think of countless professions where it is a must. But for the rest of us, it’s a relief not to be burdened with it.
A few thoughts about Twitter from the last 24 hours, other than āPlease leave grown-up discussions to grown-upsā: (a) itās probably not a smart idea to get aggro (about a joke you donāt understand because you arenāt familiar with the culture) from your companyās account, especially when you donāt have a leg to stand on; (b) deleting your side of the conversation might be good if your boss ever checks, although on my end āreplying to [your company name]ā is still there for all to see; and (c) if your job is āChief Marketing Officerā then it may pay to know that marketing is about understanding your audiences (including their culture), not about signalling that your workplace hires incompetently and division must rule the roost.
Iām not petty enough to name names (I’ve forgotten the person but I remember the company), but it was a reminder why Twitter has jumped the shark when some folks get so caught up in their insular worlds that opposing viewpoints must be shouted down. (And when that fails, to stalk the account and start a new thread.)
The crazy thing is, not only did this other Tweeter miss the joke that any Brit born, well, postwar would have got, I actually agreed with him politically and said so (rule number one in marketing: find common ground with your audience). Nevertheless, he decided to claim that I accused Britons of being racist (why would I accuse the entirety of my own nationāI am a dual nationalāof being racist? Itās nowhere in the exchange) among other things. That by hashtagging #dontmentionthewar in an attempt to explain that Euroscepticism has been part of British humour for decades meant that I was āobsessed by warā. Guess he never saw The Italian Job, either, and clearly missed when Fawlty Towers was voted the UKās top sitcom. I also imagine him being very offended by this, but it only works because of the preconceived notions we have about ‘the Germans’:
The mostly British audience found it funny. Why? Because of a shared cultural heritage. There’s no shame in not getting it, just don’t get upset when others reference it.
Itās the classic ploy of ignoring the core message, getting angry for the sake of it, and when one doesnāt have anything to go on, to attack the messenger. I see enough of that on Facebook, and itās a real shame that this is what a discussion looks like on Twitter for some people.
I need to get over my Schadenfreude as I watched this person stumble in a vain attempt to gain some ground, but sometimes people keep digging and digging. And I donāt even like watching accident scenes on the motorway.
And I really need to learn to mute those incapable of sticking to the factsāI can handle some situations where you get caught up in your emotions (weāre all guilty of this), but you shouldnāt be blinded by them.
What I do know full well now is that there is one firm out there with a marketing exec who fictionalizes what you said, and it makes you wonder if this is the way this firm behaves when there is a normal commercial dispute. Which might be the opposite to what the firm wished.
As one of my old law professors once said (Iām going to name-drop: it was the Rt Hon Prof Sir Geoffrey Palmer, KCMG, AC, QC, PC), āThe more lawyers there are, the more poor lawyers there are.ā Itās always been the same in marketing: the more marketers there are, the more poor marketers there are. And God help those firms that let the latter have the keys to the corporate Twitter account.
I enjoyed that public law class with Prof Palmer, and I wish I could remember other direct quotations he made. (I remember various facts, just not sentences verbatim like that oneāthen again I donāt have the public law expertise of the brilliant Dr Caroline Morris, who sat behind me when we were undergrads.)
Itās still very civil on Mastodon, and one of the Tooters that I communicate with is an ex-Tweeter whose account was suspended. I followed that account and there was never anything, to my knowledge, that violated the TOS on it. But Twitter seems to be far harder to gauge in 2019ā20 on just what will get you shut down. Guess it could happen any time to anyone. Shall we expect more in their election year? Be careful when commenting on US politics: it mightnāt be other Tweeters you need to worry about. And they could protect bots before they protect you.
Since I havenāt Instagrammed for agesāI think I only had one round of posting in mid-Januaryāhereās how the sun looked to the west of my office. I am told the Canberra fires have done this. Canberra is some 2,300 km away. For my US readers, this is like saying a fire in Dallas has affected the sunlight in New York City.
Iāve had a big life change, and I think thatās why Instagramming has suddenly left my routine. I miss some of the contact, and some dear friends message me there, knowing that doing so on Facebook makes no sense. I did give the impression to one person, and I publicly apologize to her, that I stopped Instagramming because the company is owned by Facebook, but the fact is Iāve done my screen time for the day and Iāve no desire to check my phone and play with a buggy app. Looks like seven years (late 2012 to the beginning of 2020) was what it took for me to be Instagrammed out, shorter than Facebook, where it took 10 (2007 to 2017).
Some of you will have noticed that Po.st went out of business, so all the Po.st sharing links disappeared from our websites.
The replacement: addtoany.com offers a similar service without the hassle of header codes. Just customize at their website, grab the code, and insert it where you want it. Itās now on the main Lucire website, Autocade (at least on the desktop version), and this blog (desktop as well). Strangely, the plug-in for Wordpress didn’t work for us, and the HTML code with Javascript is far more practical.
There are fewer customization options but itās a remarkably quick and handy way to replace the old code.
Despite providing a sharing gadget, I wonder how much Iāll use one. Itās been seven days since I last Instagrammed and I donāt miss it. Granted, something major happened in my life but organic sharing had been dwindling through 2019, and if their algorithms arenāt providing you with the dopamine hit that you seek, and youāre unlikely to pay for it like a junkie (which is what Facebook wants you to do), then you have to wonder what the point is. It might, like Facebook, just become one of those things one uses for workāand thatās not something I could have predicted even a year ago.
I see Twitter is introducing features where responses can be limited by the user. The logical outcome of this is Tweets that are directed at limited audience members only, maybe even one-to-one. That looks remarkably like email. And these days I seem to be more productive there than I am on any social network.
Iāve discovered that the newer the Instagram, the buggier it is. Weāve already seen that it canāt cope with video if you use Android 7 (a great way to reduce video bandwidth), and, earlier this year, filters do not work.
I downgraded to version 59 till, last week, Instagram began deleting direct messages as its way to force me to upgrade. Neither versions 119 or 120 are stable, and are about as reliable as one of Boris Johnsonās marriages, although they have fixed the filter problem.
Neither version has an alignment grid to aid you to adjust an image so itās square, even though Instagramās own documentation says it remains present. Presently, only Tyler Henry and other psychics can see the grid:
I imagine this is Googleās way of saving on bandwidth and it is utterly successful for them as nothing is ever transmitted.
The ZIPping process took probably 15ā20 minutes a go.
A comparable service like Wetransfer or Smash just, well, transfers, in less than the time Google Drive takes to archive a bunch of files.
I also notice that Google Drive frequently only sends me a single image when the sender intends to send a whole bunch. Thereās no age discrimination here: both an older friend and colleague and a young interviewee both had this happen in October when trying to send to me. It is, I suspect, all to do with an interface that hasnāt been tested, or is buggy.
Basically: Google Drive does not work for either the sender or the recipient.
This morning a friend and colleague tried to send me more files using this godawful service, and this time, Google Drive at least gave me a sign-on prompt. Even though I was already signed on. Not that that does anything: you never, ever log in. However, for once, the files he tried to send me actually did come down in the background.
I should note that for these Google Drive exercises, I use a fresh browser (Opera) with no plug-ins or blocked cookies: this is the browser I use where I allow tracking and all the invasiveness Google likes to do to people. Now that it has begun grabbing Americansā medical records in 21 states without patient consent in something called ‘Project Nightingale’ (thank you, Murdoch Press, for consistently having the guts to report on Google), weāre in a new era of intrusiveness. (Iām waiting for the time when most Americans wonāt care that Google, a monopoly, has their medical records, after the initial outcry. No one seems to care about the surveillance US Big Tech does on us, which puts the KGB and Stasi to shame.)
Looking at Googleās own help forums, it doesnāt matter what browser you use: even Chrome doesnāt work with Drive downloads in some cases.
The lesson is: stop using Google Drive for file transfers, as Smash does a better job.
Or, better yet, stop using Google. Get a Google-free phone, maybe even one from Huawei.
Meanwhile, I see WordPress’s Jetpack plug-in did this to my blog today without any intervention from me. I imagine it did an automatic update, which it was not set to do.
Thereās untested software all over the place, ignoring your settings because it thinks it knows better. News flash, folks, your programs donāt know better.
A great way for one tech company to get rid of criticisms of another tech company for a few hours, I guess, harming its ranking in the process. Google itself has done it before.
Farewell, Jetpack. Other than the stats and the phone-friendly skin, I never needed you. I’m sure there are alternatives that don’t wipe out my entire blog.
In the last month, maybe the last few weeks, my likes on Instagram have halved. Interestingly, Lucireās Instagram visits have increased markedly. But as I use my own account more than a work one, I can see the trend there a bit more clearly.
Itās not unlike Facebook, which, of course, owns Instagram. While I havenāt used it for personal updates since 2017, I maintain a handful of pages, and I still recall earlier this decade when, overnight, engagement dropped 90 per cent. It never recovered. Facebook, like Google, biases itself toward those who can afford to pay, in the great unlevelling of the playing field that Big Tech is wont to do.
They know that theyāre structured on, basically, a form of digital drug-taking: that for every like we get, we get a dopamine hit, and if we want to maintain those levels, we had better pay for them and become junkies. But hereās the thing: what if people wake up and realize that they donāt need that hit any more? I mean, even Popeye Doyle got through cold turkey to pursue Alain Charnier in French Connection II.
Iāve written about social media fatigue before, and the over-sharing that can come with it. More than once I blogged about being āFacebooked outā. And as you quit one social medium, itās not too hard to quit another.
Iāve made a lot of posts on Instagram but I value my privacy increasingly, and in the period leading up to the house move, I began doing less on it. And without the level of engagement, whether thatās caused by the algorithm or my own drop in activity, Iām beginning to care less, even if Instagram was more a hobby medium where I interacted with others.
And since I have less time to check it, I actually donāt notice that I have fewer likes when I open the app. I only really know when I see that each photo averages 15 likes or so, when figures in the 30s and 40s were far more commonplace not very long ago.
So whatās the deal? Would they like us to pay? Iām not that desperate. I donāt āGram for likes, as it was always a hobby, one that I seem to have less time for in 2019. I never thought being an āinfluencerā on Instagram was important. The novelty has well and truly worn off, and as friends depart from the platform, the need to use it to keep them updated diminishes. In the last fortnight I recorded three videos for friends and sent them via Smash or Wetransfer, and that kept them informed. You know, like writing a letter as we did pre-email, but with audio and video. Instagram just isnāt that vital. Email actually serves me just fine.
As I said to a friend tonight, even Twitter seems expendable from oneās everyday habits. Especially after March 15 here. You realize that those who are already arseholes really want to stay that way, their life ambition probably to join certain foreign-owned radio stations to be talking heads. But since they lack the nous, the best they can manage is social-media venting. And the good people want to remain good and have the space to live their lives happily. So why, I began wondering, should we spend our time getting our blood pressure up to defend our patch in a medium where the arseholes are, by and large, gutless wannabes who darenāt tell you have of the venom they write to your face? Does anyone ever put a Stuff commenter up on a pedestal and give them respect? While there are a great many people whom I admire on Twitter, and I am fortunate enough to have come into their orbit, there are an increasing number of days when I want to leave them to it, and if they wish to deal with the low-lifes of this world, it is their prerogative, and I respect them for doing something Iām tiring of doing myself. Twelve years on Twitter is a long time. At the time of writing, Iāve made 91,624 Tweets. Thatās a lot.
Unlike the arseholes, each and every one of these decent human beings have successful lives, and they donāt need to spend their waking moments dispensing hate toward any other group that isnāt like them in terms of genitals, sexual orientation, race or religion. And, frankly, I can contact those decent people in media outside of social.
Maybe the fear of Tweeting less is that we believe that the patients will overrun the asylum, that weāre the last line of defence in a world where racists and others are emboldened. That if we show that good sense and tolerance prevail, as my grandfather and others wanted to do when they went to war, then those who harbour unsavoury thoughts toward people unlike them might think twice. I canāt really argue with that.
But I wonder whether Iāll be more effective outside of social. I publish magazines, for a start. They give me a platform others do not have. I donāt need to leave comments on articles (and over the years, I havenāt done much of that). And I have websites I visit where I can unwind, away from the shouting factories of American Big Tech. Most of us want to do good on this earth, and the long game is I may be better off building businesses Iām good at rather than try to show how much smarter I am versus a talentless social media stranger.
No, Iām not saying Iām leaving either medium. I am saying that Iād rather spend that time on things I love to do, and before 2007 I had enough to do without sharing. Some of the colleagues I respect the most have barely set foot in the world of social, and right now I envy just how much time they have managed to put into other important endeavours, including books that are changing lives.
Big Tech must know the writing’s on the wall.
PS.: From a discussion with the wonderful William Shepherd when he read this on Twitter (the irony is not lost on me given the subject).āJY
One thing about Twitter, it never sleeps. So when I can't sleep, it is an easy way to waste the early morning. 4:15 in LA, hey Jack.
"Last line of defense" is a good way to phrase it. Or, at least know when they have gone totally crazy from their own venomous rage.
My feeling is there will be an exodus soon but I donāt know why yet. My online activity on Facebook is not unlike my forum activity during Bush 43. And I know itās diminishing here and on Instagram.
I remember on Vox, I was happy blogging to an audience of strangers, and I wonder whether something similar is going to be the next creative outlet for people, especially as workālife balance becomes more important, and the US ā20 election cycle heats up.
The media will give politics wall-to-wall coverage, the consequence being that the public tires of it when going on to social media platforms. At some point, self-preservation has to kick in and that rage is going to do no one any good. The bots will also put people off.
