According to Elan Morgan, the Facebook 'Like' button does more than acknowledge your friends' posts.
"On August 1st, I announced that I was going to quit liking things on Facebook. At the time, I simply stated that I no longer wanted to be as active a participant in teaching Facebook how to advertise to me as I had been in the past, but another and much larger issue was my real curiosity: how was my Facebook experience going to change once I stopped feeding its engine with likes?"
Morgan discovered that, amongst other things, once he stopped using the 'Like' button, he also stopped receiving most of the dross that had been spoiling his experience of FB. He also found that he started posting more intelligent comments regarding information that he received rather than just clicking 'Like'.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @04:38AM
The douche who started the company after ripping off the Winkelvoss twins
has publicly stated his derision for Facebook users.
Anyone who uses Facebook is a fucking moron who doesn't deserved to
use oxygen on earth.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @04:50AM
+Like
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Konomi on Saturday August 23 2014, @04:55AM
Still waiting for the +Dislike feature, but apparently on facebook you can only be neutral or positive, don't even think about disapproving of something!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @07:02AM
Facebook doesn't even want you to unfriend people. [insidefacebook.com]
(Score: 1) by T0T4L_L43R on Saturday August 23 2014, @07:07AM
A mod-point, a mod-point! My kingdom for a mod-point!
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday August 23 2014, @06:47AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NCommander on Saturday August 23 2014, @08:12AM
Ok, I saw this on my phone, and had to fire up my laptop to write a response to it.
I use Facebook quite heavily, fully knowing that everything I saw, do and click on it is essentially public. I don't like the company, nor those who run it, and I'm a strong believer of voting with my feet. So you may ask why I use it. The answer is simple, its how I keep in touch with close friends across seven states and 3 continents. I travel a lot, and I tend to make friends in the various places I have lived, I'm still in regular contact with friends from middle school, who live in Florida (for the record, I currently live in Anchorage, AK). I've also got other friends I talk on with a near daily basis in Oregon, New York, and others. There are alternatives, I could call and text folks, but that's considerably more difficult due to timezones, especially when I'm traveling through Asia or Europe; for my friends who are international, its a PITA to get international SMS working, plus costly.
For example, today, I was biking along the Seward Highway/Alaska Route 1, and uploaded photos so my friends can see it, and then had conversations with what I was doing. I do this full knowing that Facebook claims rights to anything I upload to their service. A lot of times, I'm doing shit by myself such as hiking, cycling, or driving to remote places, and at the very least, my friends know what I'm doing, and we frequently discuss it over FB chat, or when I call them.
So, despite the fact that FB is the root of all evil, because it provides me with a service that I personally find valuable, I use it. If there was a realistic replacement, I'd use that instead, but there isn't.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @02:50PM
I use facebook ONLY for family and close friends, my friends list is less than 25 total. I'm not interested in the "get as many as you can" mentality that most users do, and don't read or post stupid stuff. I have adblock, noscripts, and ghostery to get rid of the crap that takes up the right side of the page. For that it's great, but a few days ago I saw an (uncensored and full) video of some cops shooting down an armed suspect on facebook, didn't think it was appropriate and reported it as graphic violence to get it removed. Facebook reviewed it and said it was OK. WTF?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @03:07PM
This is the video I reported as violent content that facebook said was OK. What do you think? https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=670841776267356 [facebook.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @06:08PM
Eh
(1) Videos on facebook don't auto-play so it isn't so in your face.
(2) It is a fake. It is a police training video. Note the camera-work. It is shakey-cam, but it zooms in and out. That never happens with bodycams and is implausible for a phone-cam in the heat of the moment like that.
I think the fact that it is a fake says 100x more about the "pro-cop" people than it says about the "pro-accountability" people. While the intent of the video is to teach cops to be careful, the message that comes across is you are better off shooting first and asking questions later.
(Score: 1) by Kunasou on Saturday August 23 2014, @06:34PM
Interesting, I do the same but I use a separate profile of Palemoon with cookies blocked (only facebook.com allowed), ghostery, adblock edge and privacy badger. It was just an experiment but I liked it.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @05:29AM
Get new editors who can actually write coherent summaries, and stop posting bullshit conspiracy theory articles about Monsanto or "evil Republicans."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Saturday August 23 2014, @05:36AM
The fact that with so many sites using FB as a login you suddenly get all these people that want to follow you or be friended by you because "you tell it like it is/say what I always wanted to/stand up for what you believe" etc...really? is this REALLY what we've come to, with so damned many people that are so afraid to take a stand on anything that all they an do is blindly follow? Really? Every time I see that it just depresses the living hell out of me, that so many won't stand up for themselves but instead live vicariously through somebody else.
I don't know, maybe mom was right that there are sheep and there are wolves and the sheep won't do shit unless a wolf takes charge. i thought that was only online but damned if i didn't run into the same shit in a store the other day, picking up a part for a customer and some douchebag was holding up the line being a prick because dumbshit can't read an expiration date on a fucking store card and there was all these people...just passively standing there...ARGH! I go stomping down the aisle, grab some kid stocking and say "Can you check out? If not find me somebody who can, because that ASS AT THE CHECKOUT obviously isn't going anywhere anytime soon", making sure Mr Douche could hear me, Next thing you know I have a store cheering me and telling me how fricking wonderful i am....fuck.
So that is why I tell folks not to get down on FB, because sadly FB is just a microcosm of real life, same bullshit, different format.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Saturday August 23 2014, @06:04AM
Wired [wired.com] had a story about a guy who liked every single thing on facebook for two days.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Saturday August 23 2014, @07:09AM
This guy's story explicitly references that one in paragraph four. He said he wasn't sure if his feed was really changing or if he just perceived it was (placebo), but then he saw that story and noticed the other guy was getting the opposite results by doing the opposite and clicking "like" on everything, giving him reason to believe the effect of swearing off "likes" was real. That's basically all you have to read if you're only concerned with the tangible effects of eschewing the like button; four paragraphs and you get the conclusion.
The rest of the article dwells on how his own behaviour changed in response to his self-imposed restriction. It was interesting, but more from a psychological angle than a technological one. It tells a lot about his habits, and probably the habits of others that he interacts with on Facebook. I don't know if it's normal for Facebook users, or peculiar to his group, but I found it intriguing that they use a site to keep connected but ultimately end up distanced and disconnected because they primarily interact via the "like" button.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @09:56AM
I found it intriguing that they use a site to keep connected but ultimately end up distanced and disconnected because they primarily interact via the "like" button.
Commercialism corrupts. Because facebook is farming likes for the purpose of selling ads they've devalued the function. If liking something had no other consequences beyond simply signifying approval, like a sort of "e-applause" it wouldn't have such a dehumanizing effect. Facebook's business model requires them to squeeze out as much value from like-farming as they can without quite going over the edge where they make facebook itself valueless to users.
It is like the way the ads in google have incrementally gone from straight-forward and well delineated to trying to blend in with real search results. Both companies want to give the smallest possible value that still keeps people from defecting to other services.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @06:59AM
This story (and the complementary one he mentions in the article about a guy who did the opposite and "liked" everything for 2 days [wired.com]) make plain the problem with targeted ads and Big Data in general - it is all about correlations and explicitly not about meanings and so at best the algorithms are just making guesses about what it is that holds meaning for people.
I think the end result is that the idea of targeted ads - ads that show you products that would be meaningful to you - will fall by the wayside. To be replaced by micro-targeting [wikipedia.org] aka pure manipulation. The advertisers can't know what holds meaning to you, but they can know what is most likely to influence you to buy into what holds meaning to them.
Nubile girls in bikinis hawking lite beer is the quintessential example. For a target audience of men they know that showing nearly naked hotties gets a response. But with Big Data they can refine that - if they know your last three girlfriends were latina, they will specifically show you hot latinas in bikinis. Or take mothers for example, the standard to sell diapers has been to show babies. But if they know you have a bi-racial baby, all the diaper ads you see will have bi-racial babies. It gets more insidious too - if you fit the profile of a white latent racist, then you'll get Willie Horton style political ads, but if you are black you'll get pro-black ads (and since you are unlikely to be friends with a latent racist, neither of you are likely to find out that the same candidate is running both kinds of ads).
The idea of showing you stuff you are interested in is far beyond the abilities of Big Data. But the idea of pressing your buttons in the most effective way is a perfect match.
(Score: 1) by Lee_Dailey on Saturday August 23 2014, @04:03PM
howdy AC,
jeepers, how i wish i had mod points! this is one of the best descriptions i have seen of just how _effective_ adverts really work. thanks!
take care,
lee
(Score: 2) by jcross on Saturday August 23 2014, @02:48PM
Another way of looking at FB's behavior is that it's essentially a huge bait-and-switch operation. The bait is feeling like you're connecting with your friends, so when you begin to use the site, or use it rarely, they show you stuff that feels personal to hook you. If you use it in a like-nothing way, maybe the site figures it doesn't have you hooked, or at least doesn't have you figured out yet. But as you move toward the like-everything behavior, it pulls the switch: the algorithm concludes that you're now hooked and it doesn't matter what it shows you, you'll keep liking it. In that situation, the rational thing to do is show you content that benefits FB the most, which is of course ads, apps or content mills that may share revenue or increase engagement, and so on. It seems some are taking this pair of articles to mean that the algorithm is stupid, but maybe it's just got a different agenda from us and is essentially amoral.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday August 23 2014, @05:16PM
Here's how I look at social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc). They're a necessary evil these days, and as much as I wish they didn't exist, it's not realistic to avoid them. I want to stake out my territory on them so no one else can set up a fake profile or something. Then I try to use them, rather than have them use me. I don't participate in their "likes" and go to web sites in stealth mode with full blocking so they can't track me and link what I'm doing to my account. Instead of having a web site that directs traffic to a social media site, I have my web site's URL all over my profiles for people who want more info about me. I don't reveal anything personally about myself on them other than a few superficial things. I try not to be a sucker, and only use these sites in a way that is advantageous to me.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 24 2014, @01:00PM
Seeing as your whole argument is based on "it's not realistic to avoid them." you could explain why, seeing as I disagree.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday August 24 2014, @03:05PM
I certainly appreciate the position that it's best to avoid social media, and very very very reluctantly was dragged into it. Still, as a software professional (whatever that's worth today), having a LinkedIn profile showing my work history and projects is important for my career, since LinkedIn has become a de facto stand-in for a resume. Not having such a profile would make me totally invisible. And these profiles need to build up over time to make you seem legit. I know people who do not exist on the Internet, and their career prospects aren't as good as mine. YMMV, and I respect anyone who declines to participate.
But ... it's funny that everything I've ever done for my career has backfired, so no one should listen to me, anyway. My current gig is with someone who doesn't even know I'm on social media and doesn't use it, so all my efforts were for nothing. And I saw many hiring managers saying they never know if a programmer can actually produce good code or not, so I spent months putting samples on my web site which no one has ever even looked at. No one hiring programmers would even touch it. Live and learn!
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 24 2014, @03:49PM
"since LinkedIn has become a de facto stand-in for a resume"
Misspelled github, but whatever.
That isn't "using social media and clicking like" I never use linkedin other than as a cloud storage platform for my resume data and keeping up with possible future references. I don't do "social" on it at all.
I don't really use G+ anymore or FB. Although I have accounts.
Apparently most of our disagreement depends on the meaning of the verb "use".