no fact checking and a ton of bots being added? Sounds like a fantastic place to spend time. /s
I just need to convince my relatives to use Signal…
sell it to them as an alternative to calls + sms that’s free when used over wifi. it already uses phone number as id
That’s whatsapp
Yeah it’s pretty cool.
WhatsApp is owned by Meta as well
way to miss the point
How did he miss the point? If his family is already using WhatsApp selling the idea that it’s free calling + texting over wifi does nothing. They already have that.
He should be trying to sell privacy but unfortunately not enough people care about it.
People should’ve dropped FB back in 2016 or when the Cambridge Analytica happened.
It would be easier if they didn’t buy other products I already used. I hate that shit so much. I wish companies were all banned from buying other companies. A company should be one thing, not own all the things. It’s hard to choose who you do business with in our country because of this. Even if we all drop these apps today and move to something else they will try to buy that too.
Yep, but the second best time would be now.
Stayed with FB despite Cambridge because Portal TV.
I’ll still maintain an account because Portal TV.
It’s a gorgeous product done wrong by meta and in need of a cloning.
It was that combined with the fact that they create shadow profiles for your unborn child when your wife is pregnant. (Found out through FB being allowed to track your browsing history even off the app). That was the final straw right after the Cambridge Analytica issue.
Wait what the bloody fuck? I haven’t heard anything about this. Sounds right up their alley, but what evidence is it based on?
If you look up the practical application of Shadow profiles they have the ability to gather information about non-users, which also includes unborn children in the case of them discovering that the mother is pregnant through whatever web searches that they may be doing even outside of Facebook. The whole science of Shadow profiles used to strengthen the algorithm is incredibly frightening and part of the reason why I left Facebook.
I hadn’t heard of this either but here’s an article about Facebook keeping shadow profiles on non-users that references an article from 2012 where Target’s data collection determined a teen girl was pregnant before she told her dad
People should have deleted it as soon as their parents figured out how to make an account.
Haha! That’s what I did. When my aunt tried to friend request me on Facebook, I bailed.
I joined back in college when it was an invite only walled-garden of college kids. Zucks pic was still in the banner when I joined iirc. They hadn’t release “the wall” or much of what Facebook eventually became.
But when parents and coworkers started trying to friend request me I realized it was time to bail.
So 12 years ago? Maybe just 10.
I have never missed it at all.
that’s when I dipped - graph api was scary powerful
I don’t remember exactly when I did but it was around then. Sooo much happier honestly.
I did
I deleted my Facebook account years ago, probably right around 2016. I met a new girl last year and she wanted me to make a Facebook account so she could send me stuff. I relented and made a “new” account using the same email I used back in 2016. Low and behold, Facebook never deleted a fucking thing.
The ol’ “marked as deleted” lol.
I deleted mine shortly thereafter. I tried to convince friends and family to do the same but got accusations of being paranoid or a conspiracy theorist. Jump to now, everyone’s Christmas gifts from them this year was tatty bullshit from Temu that was advertised to them on Facebook and I spend most of my time with them dismantling conspiracy theories and misinformation they picked up from the dumbasses they interact with on that fucking site.
Once these platforms are perceived as a way for people to make a living somehow, they ain’t leaving. That’s why nice places like mastodon stay niche. Without virality, people don’t see the upside for them. They want a grift they can understand.
That is sounding more and more like a benefit to me. Social media that functions as social media for humans and not just another giant corporate surveillance and marketing machine wearing a fun app costume.
I get it, but I also understand people that need to go “this is me, can I have some money?” on social media.
He’s getting very Trumpy with the orange tint and pale skin around the eyes.
That’s just him using a tanning bed.
Trumps too lazy to even use one.He needs to slow it down because it’s very noticably aging him. Kids, don’t bake your skin in cancer rays just for some outdated 80s “bronze” Baywatch look.
Actually, maybe he needs to do even more sessions now that I think about it.
Usually his eyes are the same color as his skin. So good for him on trying to improve himself.
Other than that he can fuck off lol
But what if I wanna feel like one of those hip young old folks from the soda commercial?
Remember kids: wear sunscreen.
His eyes have always had that going on.
I swear I’ve seen this one before…
It was on that one show, right?
I’m somehow more creeped out by the Greatest American Hero hairstyling.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_greatest_american_hero/s01
His warranty is about to expire
I’m waiting to see what happens before I make any moves. I’ve been on Meta apps for over a decade, I don’t want to lose the connections if I don’t have to.
Howany of those connections would you say are actively maintained instead of just passively there?
Those that are actively maintained you can likely send them something like Signal and start chatting on that instead.
that’s some glorious schadenfreude
zuck just few hours ago: “people who talk about leaving facebook are just virtue signalling”
I only had to google it because they make it so convoluted to find the delete account button.
I don’t care about Facebook, but Messenger and Marketplace I cannot replace them at all for the moment :-/
Instead of market place I use buy nothing, offer up, and just give to local good will.
There’s a buy nothing app. It’s a free community run organization for local things that started on Facebook then they made an app. It’s all give away stuff but I’ve gotten since nice stuff off there and given a lot away too. It’s not as active as their Facebook buy nothing groups but I refuse to use Facebook since I watched my mom turn into a crazy conspiracy trump shit person in 2020
It comes preinstalled in a lot of phones and cant be uninstalled and in some phones they dont preinstall the main fb app instead they’d have something like ‘facebook manager’ or ‘something service’ which only shows up in app list when you select the “show system apps” option.
I’ve read stories that fb is basically the internet for countries in Africa. It’s their version of America Online, but much worse.
In mexico most (if not all) cell service providers give social media for free, ie it uses no data in your phone plan.
What is social media, according to these companies? Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram. That’s it. Everyone uses Facebook marketplace and WhatsApp for everything, because it’s “free”.
I think most people don’t understand the stranglehold Meta has over a huge portion of the world’s population. I’m confident this arrangement is not only going on in mexico.
Worst part is the only free part is the texting, any kind of multimedia will consume data, but people never read what they sign and then get mad when they run out… And then they sign for a bigger data plan to compensate instead of adjusting their usage.
That’s a great strategy for creating a stranglehold on the market. I hate it.
And that’s why net neutrality is important!
Thats what internet.org was about, fb partnered with major telecoms in many countries with no net neutrality laws to let people use fb for free and a few other websites but except for wikipedia most were pretty much useless.
Internet.org redirects to https://about.meta.com/ just FYI.
Probably because you’re accessing it from a country where its not available. free.facebook.com is also another link that only works in countries their internet.org is available.
I think that just further proves how bad it is, with both links. I wasn’t aware it was so expansive.
Just use UAD to disable the service, easy
It comes preinstalled in a lot of phones
Those are typically carrier-sold phones.
Most unlocked phones purchased directly from the manufacturer (or via a retail store like BestBuy) do not have it pre-installed, and even if it is, its removable.
Nope. My Galaxy S23 is unlocked and it has Facebook and Meta crap installed as “system” apps. Same with an older Sony phone.
We all know that in the end only maybe 1 or 2% max will delete their account
That’s fine. 1% per uberweird news cycle is the death of facebook.
I’d delete mine, but I don’t have one for 10 years or smth.
meh its no longer growing.
Exactly this. Wasn’t Netflix going to sink after everyone cancelled when password sharing was banned? But everyone I know just ended up buying extra logins…
Super easy, barely an inconvenience. The age of social media needs to die
Why die, though? There are open source and federated alternatives or there.
Doesn’t matter. The whole 'ness of it is bad for humanity.
eh. the format sucks but forum type things would be cool to have again.
Bring back NNTP!
A federated system of discussion groups. That’s such a 90s idea.
The age of social media dying is tight!
Says dude on social media
This is more like a-social media dawg lol
i’m so tired of nothingburger feel good ‘stories’ about search trends
this really is just reddit lite
Critics see the move as an attempt to cater to the incoming Trump administration and avoid political retaliation,
Give me a break. Since when does the billionaire parasite class have anything to fear from the US establishment?
Since the people in charge went full fascist.
The billionaire parasite class ARE the people in charge.
The fascists serve them, genius. That’s the whole point of fascism.
Billionaires or not, they don’t have control of state militaries (yet at least). In fascism, the state is at the top, and corporations bend the knee and become an extension of the government to be used at the whims of its authoritarian leader.
What it ultimately comes down to is power and the capacity for violence. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, if a government can just drone strike your entire family, does it?
they don’t have control of state militaries
Of course they don’t. They don’t need direct control of the military. That’s what their pet political establishment is there for. You know… the political establishment who gets to decide who they will ALLOW you to vote for every four years?
In fascism, the state is at the top
And liberalism differs from that… how?
and become an extension of the government
And what did you think the Military-Industrial Complex was?
You’re not describing anything here that differs from liberalism in any fundamental way. You’re not wrong - I just don’t think you realize the full implications of what it is you are saying.
It doesn’t matter how much money you have,
We’re not talking about the surgeon who lives in the nice part of town and drives a Merc here… we are talking about the capitalist class who controls ALL of our society INCLUDING it’s repression apparatus. And Trump, an incompetent capitalist nepobaby cosplaying as a fascist, needs Zuckerberg far more than Zuckerberg needs Trump. Trump knows it, and the entire US political establishment knows it.
Lol you just said liberalism is the same as fascism… Stopped reading there.
Also helps when you see a user you previously tagged confirming that you were correct the first time.
Yes that’s what we’re Increasingly moving towards.
Beware though, that all of this is a spectrum…
Yes that’s what we’re Increasingly moving towards.
Nope. We’ve been there for a long, long time now. People are only figuring it out now, though.
Beware though, that all of this is a spectrum…
The (so-called) “political spectrum” becomes perfectly irrelevant once you understand WHY and HOW our political establishments dangle the liberal carrot and the fascist stick before us.
Nope. We’ve been there for a long, long time now.
To a degree yes, but the intensity changes. And I know there were times, where there was even greater inequality (e.g. Mansa Musa). Yet it’s not really comparable with the modern world, which largely relies on speculative assets, and growth.
becomes perfectly irrelevant
No it doesn’t, fascism is a different level than liberal establishments. Our democracies are far from perfect, but they at least have some form of control by the people, to keep power somewhat in check. Fascism is definitely concentrating on centralizing power, with the tendency to escalate (as obviously seen in the past). Also there are a lot of statistics, which show, that we were in a comparably very peaceful state for some time (since the last world war), but we’re currently getting out of that period again (though still relatively peaceful), into a more autocratic world again unfortunately.
I’m speaking as european, where things are not (yet) that bad. The “democracy” in the USA is definitely less democratic than let’s say scandinavian democracies… And I don’t want to even begin with something like Russia or China.
No it doesn’t,
How many times will the liberal establishments have to blatantly show you what it truly is before you believe them? They’ve been doing it at least since 1919, but it has never been more blatant than now.
Since you’re European, I’d like to know what thought-terminating cliches you use to explain to yourself why Germany’s oh-so-liberal political establishment has co-existed, side-by-side, with a securotocracy that was filled to the brim with Nazi war criminals ever since the end of WW2.
You’d think the oh-so-liberal Global North being exposed red-handed funding yet another colonialist genocide would make a dent in those cliches, but I guess it’s true what the anarchists say… scratch a fascist and a liberal bleeds.
Fascism is definitely concentrating on centralizing power,
Fascists don’t “concentrate” power - they are HANDED power that has ALREADY been concentrated FOR them. You wanna guess who it is that concentrates it before handing it over to them? Do tell… how has police funding been doing under all these liberal regimes in Europe, eh?
Let me ELI5 it to you so that you cannot claim nobody told you.
The capitalist ruling elite, like all ruling elites throughout history, requires TWO things to stabilize their own power and privilege. They need a way to CO-OPT certain segments of the populace they rule over, and a way to brutally REPRESS those parts they can’t or don’t want to co-opt. Carrot and stick - no need for a fancy poli-sci degree to understand this.
Therefore, the capitalists have developed a POLITICAL wing, which we call “liberalism,” and a REPRESSIVE wing, which we call “fascism.” That is what they have been since the start (ie, long before Mussolini gave fascism a name) - and which one you get depends on how much of a threat the capitalists think you pose to their precious world order.
Fascism and liberalism is joined at the hip - you can’t have one without the other.
After all this text-wall, I’d be interested in your political attitude.
Fascists don’t “concentrate” power - they are HANDED power that has ALREADY been concentrated FOR them.
So you agree with me? I didn’t say fascists are concentrating power, but they definitely maintain it (just look at the third Reich and literally all other fascistic states). (And in reality they definitely sought after concentrating power, yet again just look at the history of the third Reich…)
The world is much less black and white as you depict it here. True, all the (liberal) democracies to date have their flaws and at least traces of fascism (unfortunately) growing this time again. I can rant about it all day if I wanted to (but I consider that a waste of time after having wasted too much with that already).
But (true) liberalism is not fascism, say what you want. After all, it’s about being liberal (I don’t consider our late-stage-capitalism liberal btw. capitalism is as we see right now in the US also concentrating power to the rich)…
I consider liberalism closer to anarchism (not the capitalistic kind of course). There are obviously differences, but as being liberal has to do with personal freedom, and anarchism is about being against all forms of authority, it’s per definition closer to that than fascism.
How it’s interpreted is a whole different story. Same with all the “communistic” kinds of states. I don’t think we ever had “real” communism, only authoritarianism with the label of “communism”.
Will never happen. Those platforms literally push addiction. It’s why the fediverse won’t ever compete imo - there’s no dopamine hit here of likes, # of friends, send a snap right now (or whatever they are called), streaks, etc.
And this is exactly the reason I am here 😃
i agree with what you’re saying and i think we’re mostly on the same page here. i just felt it would be worth saying that, from my perspective, the point of the fediverse isn’t to compete with those websites but instead to be an alternative to them. it’s to offer a picture of what social media can be like without dark patterns, extreme surveillance, and constant enshittification. and there is a really comfort in that. it feels really nice to not have to worry about a website or app getting worse every time i use it.
i also feel like the people on here tend to behave more thoughtfully (in general) than people on reddit and other for profit social media websites. and it wouldn’t surprise me if that was in part due to the absence of dark patterns making lemmy feel more relaxed and less high stakes. there’s also a bit of a small town feeling on this website that i kind of like too.
I get it. I left Facebook when they changed the feed like a thousand years ago and I haven’t missed it.
My wife is definitely addicted though. She left it for a year, went back just to check in on family after a friend of hers had a baby and she didn’t know about it. She hasn’t put it down since.
She’s a very family oriented person and everyone is on Facebook. Their family is the type to wake up first thing in the morning and start calling each other.
Within minutes of being up, “Ok kids let’s talk to mamaw. Let’s talk to aunty. Now we’re calling great grandma!” Cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody. They’re always talking.
My family is tight like if something goes wrong, but we don’t talk much otherwise. Sister needs help with a bill, someone’s car breaks down, blah blah blah. We can count on each other, just not to talk.
I get why it means so much to her and why it’s been easier for me. I’ll know my cousin had a kid when I bump into her with it at the grocery store. That’s good enough for my people. :p
