Above: I photographed this gentleman praying at Ground Zero during the 9-11 commemorations in 2005. A very moving day and my first return to the site since 2001.
This was never meant as a 9-11 post. I recorded this a few days ago, after chatting to my US friend Jerry, who had voted for Trump in 2016. I concluded that Americans largely had the same concerns, regardless of whom they voted for, yet other interests were stoking the divisions because they had everything to gain from the infighting. I also discussed the shift of their political centre from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s day to today. Back then, the people of the US showed unity, and I still believe they can if they wished, and rid themselves of the vitriol that comes through social media.
Itâs interesting to note that someone as noted as Doc Searls encountered a Facebook bug, which prompted me to comment with the below.
Few things work on this site now. Iâve frequently been unable to share since I joined in 2007. Every now and then I canât like things, and regularly, Facebook removes the choices of hearts, sad face, angry face, etc. If I type a link, Facebook sometimes appends some letters from the status update to the end of it, so when it generates a preview, that results in a 404. Every now and then, with increasing frequency, whatever I type into a status update appears in all caps and bold type (and no, I donât have caps lock on). On almost all groups I see three postsânothing older. Notifications and messages fail to load over 90 per cent of the time. Often I cannot comment, but I can highlight the words âWrite a commentâ, so I have to resort to making an image featuring text and paste it in the comment box! I cannot see my advertising preferences: they have not loaded for the last few years, even if I leave the window open for an entire day while I am out (I only get a spinning wheel).
Iâm no tech, but as a layman what I see is a website disintegrating, with more and more bugs weighing it down. Above is what I experience now but if I go back over the years (especially when there was a Getsatisfaction forum), there were other bugs. I still remember when Facebook stopped working on the 1st of each month! But 2020 certainly marks the year when I get a whole bunch of bugs simultaneously.
My theory has always been that Facebookâs resources are all spent hosting bots that there is nothing left for legitimate users!
I didnât even add that I canât see any Facebook video now (they donât play at all), and there’s no point posting Instagram links as, despite the two companies having the same parent, Facebook won’t show the image:
As to the new look, I have very little confidence. When asked why I was switching back to the classic template, something which will be impossible soon, I wrote (not that these schmucks will care):
You canât tag companies when editing text. You have to begin writing on a clean line, often retyping the post to do it. Waste of time, youâre making Facebook less and less relevant.
When looking at groups people in a group queue have joined, you canât see as many, which makes it harder for group admins to detect fake accounts (as you guys are pretty useless at doing it).
When a friend (a person of colour in the US) wondered why she was seeing a lot of attacks against the Republican National Convention and none against the Democratsâ, even though she is apolitical, I responded (inter alia):
Facebook has plenty of ex-staff and insiders who point out it will always amp up things to get people upset or outraged, as scientificallyâthanks to the work of Professor Fogg at Stanfordâpeople engage more with these. Armed with what they have collected, the algorithms will make a call one way or another to ensure they show you things that will provoke a reaction. As the algorithms have been designed predominantly by white American men (and I know: not all white American men fit into this), I really believe they wonât take in the experiences of people of colour like us, and arguably they wonât understand the international nature of your work. For instance, Facebook used to stop working on the 1st of each month, as our walls would freeze on the 30th or 31st. We would have to wait till it was the 1st in California, which meant in our summer, we would have to wait 21 hours each month for Facebook to work normally. These folks arenât smart when it comes to âoutside Californiaâ, let alone outside the US.
Finally, I will leave you with this gem (every now and then I come up with one) from Twitter:
These days, some say their opinions are as valid as the next personâs. No, theyâre not. Not if theyâre badly argued or reasoned. A fair society doesnât mean all opinions are equal. And an unfair society means that bad opinions have undue weight. In my opinion.
Now that Aotearoa New Zealand has lifted our COVID-19 restrictions after getting rid of the virus on our shores, other than keeping our border closed, I Tweeted:
Last time I felt this much part of a national team was when celebrities sang ‘Sailing Away’ to the tune of ‘Pokarekare Ana’. #COVID19
and between Cachalot on Twitter and I, we actually wound up with a variation of the song (incidentally, he was first with the chorus, showing that great minds think alike).
Here we come, weâre isolating Here we come, weâre on our way In a team thatâs called New Zealand Weâre together, thatâs our way.
Then back to the refrain.
Out of respect to the language in which the song was composed, te reo MÄori, here are the original, poignant lyrics. It’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching song. There’s a further explanation to it here.
PĆkarekare ana,
ngÄ wai o Waiapu
Whiti atu koe hine,
marino ana e.
Refrain
E hine e,
hoki mai ra.
Ka mate ahau
I te aroha e.
Tuhituhi taku reta,
tuku atu taku rīngi,
Kia kite tĆ iwi
raru raru ana e.
Refrain
Whati whati taku pene
ka pau aku pepa
Ko taku aroha
mau tonu ana e.
Refrain
E kore te aroha
e maroke i te rÄ
MÄkĆ«kĆ« tonu i
aku roimata e.
You couldnât make this up.
Fortunately for us all, RussInCheshire on Twitter has summed up Cumgate, or whatever itâs being dubbed in the UK.
No matter how bad our politics could get, I think we should be pleased that we have not followed the UK, and that we have dealt with COVID-19 far better than they have. Given the behaviour of their government, perhaps this is no surprise.
I donât know how to combine the lot in one embed, so I hope Russ will forgive me for quoting his Twitter thread in full. The original may be found here.
The week in Tory (Cummings special):
1. Dominic Cummings, one of the few men to have ever been found in contempt of Parliament, moved onto contempt for everything
2. When the story broke, and he was accused of doing things that look bad, he said he didn’t care how things looked
3. Then ministers said press outrage meant nothing, only the opinion of the people mattered
4. Then polls showed 52% of people wanted Cummings to resign
5. So Cummings decided to show the public some respect, by turning up 30 minutes late to make his explanation
6. He began by saying he wasn’t speaking for the govt, which must be why he was in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street
7. Then the self-styled “enemy of the Islington media elite” said his wife, who works in the media, had been ill in their house in Islington
8. But she was only a bit ill, so he popped home, got himself nice and infected, then went back to Downing Street for meetings with lots of vitally important people in the middle of a national crisis
9. But then he got ill too, so then it was suddenly important
10. Sadly he couldn’t get childcare in London, even though 3 immediate relatives live within 3 miles of his London home
11. So because he was carrying a virus that can cross a 2 metre distance and kill, he immediately locked himself in a car with his wife and child for 5 hours
12. He then drove 264 miles without stopping in a Land Rover that gets maybe 25 MPG
13. Then the scourge of the metropolitan elites made himself extra-relatable by describing his family’s sprawling country estate, multiple houses and idyllic woodlands
14. He explained that he’d warned about a coronavirus years ago in his blog
15. Then it was revealed he actually secretly amended old blogs after he’d returned from Durham
16. And anyway, if he’d warned years ago, why was he so massively unprepared and slow to react?
17. Then he said he was too ill to move for a week
18. But in the middle of that week, presumably with “wonky eyes”, he drove his child to hospital
19. Then he said that to test his “wonky eyes” he put his wife and child in a car and drove 30 miles on public roads
20. Then it was revealed his wife drives, so there was no reason for the “eye test”, cos she could have driven them back to London
21. Then it was revealed the “eye test” trip to a local tourist spot took place on his wife’s birthday
22. Then cameras filmed as he threw a cup onto the table, smirked and left
23. And then it emerged his wife had written an article during the time in Dunham, describing their experience of being in lockdown in London, which you’d definitely do if you weren’t hiding anything
24. A govt scientific advisor said “more people will die” as a result of what Cummings had done.
25. Boris Johnson said he “wouldn’t mark Cummings ” down for what he’d done.
26. The Attorney General said it was ok to break the law if you were acting on instinct
27. The Health Minister said it was OK to endanger public health if you meant well
28. Johnson said Cummings’ “story rings true” because his own eyesight was fine before coronavirus, but now he needs glasses
29. But in an interview with The Telegraph 5 years ago, Johnson said he needed glasses cos he was “blind as a bat”
30. Michael Gove went on TV and said it was “wise” to drive 30 miles on public roads with your family in the car to test your eyesight
31. The DVLA tweeted that you should never, ever do this
32. Then ministers started claiming Cummings had to go to Durham because he feared crowds attacking his home. The streets were empty because we were observing the lockdown.
33. And then a minister finally resigned
34. Steve Baker, Richard Littlejohn, Isabel Oakeshott, Tim Montgomerie, Jan Moir, Ian Dale, Julia Hartley Brewer, 30 Tory MPs, half a dozen bishops and the actual Daily Mail said Cummings should go
35. The govt suggested we can ignore them, because they’re all left-wingers
36. Then a vicar asked Matt Hancock if other people who had been fined for doing exactly what Cummings did would get their fine dropped. Matt Hancock said he’d suggest it to the govt
37. The govt said no within an hour. Cummings’ statement had lasted longer than that
38. And if the guidelines were so clear, why were people being stopped and fined for driving to find childcare in the first place?
39. Then a new poll found people who wanted Cummings sacked had risen from 52% to 57%
40. Cummings is considered the smartest man in the govt
41. And in the middle of all this, in case we take our eye off it: we reached 60,000 deaths. One of the highest per capita death rates worldwide.
42. We still face Brexit under this lot.
43. It’s 4 years until an election
44. And it’s still only Wednesday
The Hon David Clark MP is not a story in this context. Though the former opposition leader’s 1,000 km round trips are.
Finally, a podcast (or is it a blogcast, since it’s on my blog?) where I’m not “reacting” to something that Olivia St Redfern has put on her Leisure Lounge series. Here are some musings about where we’re at, now we are at Level 3.
Some of my friends, especially my Natcoll students from 1999â2000, will tell you that I love doing impressions. They say Rory Bremner’s are shit hot and that mine are halfway there. It’s a regret that I haven’t been able to spring any of these on you. Don’t worry, I haven’t done any here. But one of these days âŠ
I know what youâre thinking. âDid he have six kids or only fiveâ. Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself.
For a guy who gave up updating his own Facebook in 2017, and uses it just for work stuff, Iâm still amazed at how many bugs I come across.
Two days ago: discovered that you canât post links. The âPublishâ button is greyed out.
Yesterday: I wanted to tag one of our writers on Lucireâs Facebook page. Donât think it worked but the other thing that didnât work was the link preview. This is an old bug and I remember it from when I used Facebook regularly, so things must move really slowly there. You can post links againâsort of. Basically, the posted link and the link in the preview have different URLs. The one in the preview takes you to a 404: itâs the correct URL with the authorâs Christian name appended to it, to make it wrong. Iâm glad that for the most part, I leave this page to automationâitâs actually more accurate than going in there and posting directly into Facebook! You would think the opposite would be true.
What is good is that you can delete posts now, which you couldnât three weeks ago.
Today: theyâve got rid of the news feed, which is actually a good thing, but I know how others like it. I went in just before I wrote this post in case it was a fleeting bug this morning, but thereâs still no news feed.
Iâll might look again next week if work stuff comes up. Three visits like that, one or two a day, is anomalous for me these days. All these visits showed is that Facebook is no less buggier than it was half a decade ago, with pretty much the same bugs: regular failures in posting, linking, and displaying databased content. In fact, it may be worse as the whole thing appears to crumble under its own weight.
Not withstanding that I canât edit my advertising preferences on Facebookâthey took that ability away from me and a small group of users some time ago (and, like Twitter, they are dead wrong about what those preferences are)âI see they now lie about what ads Iâve seen and clicked on.
I can categorically say I have not seen an ad, much less clicked on an ad, for the US Embassy.
Itâs pretty hard for a person who doesnât use Facebook except for work to have clicked on any ads on their platform.
And as Iâve largely quit Instagram itâs highly unlikely I accidentally swiped and clicked on an ad there, too.
On the remote chance that I did, then it shows that either Facebookâs or the US Embassyâs targeting is appallingly bad since Iâm not American. I doubt that the US Embassy would have had such a wide market as to include me.
I theorize, and I do so with zero proof, that Facebook is so deep in its con to claim certain advertising reach numbers that itâs falsely attributing hits to random users across the site. These may have been hits done by botsâbots that it endorses, incidentallyâand now they want to pin them on legitimate people.
Itâs a hypothesis but given that Iâve been right about a few way-out ones (false user numbers, bot epidemics, malware downloads), Iâm going to advance it. Now letâs wait four years for this to blow up into something.
Above: The only way I can view my advertising preferences on Facebook is through the mobile version. But here they cannot be edited. (The web version won’t show them at all.) They are also quite wrong that these are my interests, but since when have they been right anyway?
Hereâs quite a funny one for you this Easter weekend: Facebook apparently has filed suit against companies that do the following, according to Social Media Today.
âą Companies that sell fake followers and likes, which Facebook has pushed harder to enforce since New York’s Attorney General ruled that selling fake social media followers and likes is illegal last February
âą Two different app developers over ‘click injection fraud’, which simulates clicks in order to extract ad revenue
âą Two companies over the creation of malware, and tricking Facebook users into installing it in order to steal personal information
In other words, Facebook has filed suit against people who do things that are variations of what Facebook itself does.
The first. This has long been proven by Veritasium, and one would hope the defendant points out that Facebook has endorsed such behaviour, and that its terms and conditions have generally meant squat. Facebook allows hate groups (hate speech is âcounter-speechâ, they tell me), hates drag queens and kings, drags its heels in removing illegal content (eight clips of the Christchurch massacre are still on there, a year later), and preserves bots, fake accounts and phishing pages, all contrary to what their own terms and conditions say. These happen with such frequency that one might say they are Facebook policy.
Now, Facebook mightnât do the second but it certainly extracts ad revenue from customers, and not necessarily fairly. Click fraud? How about audience fraud? Thatâs been the subject of lawsuits against it. Weâve gone through this before on this blog, least of which is Facebookâs lying about its user numbers. It cites heaps of people but we know among them are bots; and we know that it claims more people in certain demographics than there are people. I’ve said this for a long, long time.
Third: Facebook tricked users for years into installing a âmalware scannerâwith purposes it would not go into. But it essentially admitted their scanners collected data from users (as reported in Wired, ‘Facebook tells users when they agree to conduct the scan that the data collected in the process will be used “to improve security on and off Facebook”ââit seems reasonable to conclude this is personal information). The scanner never appeared in oneâs installed programsâ list, either, and in my case, knocked out my real antivirus software. We also know that when Facebook accused certain people of having malware, the company was lying. The scanner took a long time to run, so what was it sending back to the mothership? Conclude from all of that what you will, but tricking Facebook users into installing software that is hidden on a userâs PC and takes data off it is right out of a fraudsterâs playbook.
Given the amount of crooked activity that Facebook itself engages in, and the lies its team tells, criminals would be forgiven into thinking that it was a website that collected and ran scams, and that Mark Zuckerberg was a kindred spirit.
The hypocrisy remains strong at Facebook.
PS.:This fake page has been up for days, and its posts, promoting a phishing link, apparently do not violate Facebook’s standards. Duly reported, but what really is the point since Facebook seems to love these?
