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 […]
Read More… from My first tech post in a while: how I use my social-computing time
A couple of years ago, friends in Wellington, who own a business—let’s call it X—were approached by a US company with the same name, though in a slightly different industry. They wanted my friends to give up their page name facebook.com/x to them, and suggested that they should be facebook.com/xnz. No suggestion of […]
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 […]
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, […]
If 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 […]
Read More… from Scheduling posts on Facebook and Instagram? Forget it, it’s not worth the trouble
At 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 […]
Read More… from Facebook continues to give in to fake accounts, much like the UK with COVID-19
When I was in NYC in the summer of 2001, I stood at a Lower Manhattan bakery trying to order a cream cheese bagel for a friend of mine. The proprietor was busy making something. After close to five minutes’ waiting the counter, I asked if I could be served. His response: ‘You want to […]
I chanced upon a mention of off-Facebook activity on this page, and here’s a good page explaining what it is. (That first link has a lot of advice on what you can do to improve your privacy if you have Facebook, much of which I’ve mentioned over the years. But it’s very handy to have […]
Read More… from You can remove and turn off your off-Facebook activity
I was surprised to find that I could access my Facebook advertising preferences again, after the section stopped working in January 2019. What was there was still way off, in June 2021, but it’s nice to be able to edit (read delete) them again after two-and-a-half years. Things move slowly in Menlo Park when it […]
Don’t take what Facebook says about Trump seriously. As Christopher Wylie reminds us: When I reported Facebook to the US authorities, I received a permanent ban for whistleblowing. When Donald Trump incited a violent insurrection at Congress, he received a temporary two year ban that would let him back in time for the 2024 campaign. […]
Read More… from Remember, Facebook usually says one thing, then does the opposite