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A sigh of relief has been heard across the Internet as behemoth Google has finally relented in it's ever intruding necessity to have a Google+ account from every service and function from signing up for Gmail to posting comments on YouTube.
From Slate to The Verge and everywhere in between there is dancing in the streets as Google finally got the message... no, not today Google, I don't want Plus. Plus will not be going away, it will become it's own property, left to stand on it's own, and unhooked from every Google service under the sun.
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No More Google+, They Finally Got the Hint
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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-- Ingmar Bergman
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday August 03 2015, @03:13PM
I can't believe I actually have to give my anecdotal story to refute this: I know a woman who was abused. She and her husband ran a business and they absolutely needed social media for the business. The business is how they earned money to live and survive. So WTF is wrong with using pseudonyms (like Common Joe or Anonymous Coward) on social media? Do people have to be careful? Absolutely. Best not to show her face. Do they have to close themselves off from all facets of today's life? Not really possible if they want any kind of quality of life. Love it or hate it, being social in today's world means using social media in some form or fashion.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday August 03 2015, @03:53PM
Love it or hate it, being social in today's world means using social media in some form or fashion.
100% false. Go out and interact with people; that's called being social. Garbage media is not needed for being social, and I suggest that no one have a garbage media account, otherwise you're just being used by scumbag companies.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday August 03 2015, @06:26PM
What do you think about social media like meetup.com?
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday August 03 2015, @06:29PM
I think they're utter garbage and that people should value their privacy and anonymity more.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday August 03 2015, @06:48PM
Ok. Fair enough. Serious question since I'm not getting the results I want when trying to get out and meet people face-to-face (and I'm using social media to do it).
In today's world, how would you recommend meeting technology people face-to-face without websites like meetup.com? Specifically, I'm looking for an internship and to finish becoming fluent in German -- which requires a lot of face-to-face time. (I've already finished German school and I have over a decade of experience in the IT field I want to work in.) I'm an American living in Germany. So far, I've been turned away from a lot of companies because of my German and because I can't get a face-to-face with managers. (The HR barrier.) I've primarily used social media to give me starting points then I go out and meet people face to face.
I'm pretty social when chatting with one or two people, but pretty lousy at just "going out and meeting people" or when dealing with a room full of people. If you do have ways I'm not aware of to accomplish my goals, you would actually be a great help.
Thanks in advance.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday August 03 2015, @07:45PM
In today's world, how would you recommend meeting technology people face-to-face without websites like meetup.com?
Normally if possible or not at all. I would just keep trying. I don't think the ends justify handing your information over on a silver platter to these companies, even if that is the only option, which I don't think it is.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:21PM
Not just any watering holes, either. Get a lead on the boss you want to work for, and find out where he goes for a cold drink. Be there. Talk to him/her. Screw HR. I have zero use for any HR representative - they've never done me any good at all.
Of course, the judicial use of social media may be useful in finding out where your potential boss goes for water . . .
(Score: 2) by Francis on Monday August 03 2015, @04:25PM
I doubt she absolutely needed to have FB, Twitter or any of the other social media accounts for business. I know that FB and whoever else would like you to think that it's necessary, but direct to customer email-lists are much more effective. Not to mention company blogs that can be run from your own hardware or on accounts where you get to decide on the data being shared.
And the reason why people's quality of life is suffering due to lack of social networking is because of people like you. Congratulations, you are the problem. There's no good reason why everybody has to use the same social networking sites. Or really any of them, but people are getting more and more anti-social in part because they can have "friends." Why bother with friends when FB keeps an entire list of "friends" for you? And as a bonus, you don't even have to actually interact with them ever.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday August 03 2015, @06:22PM
Actually, I'm about as anti-social networking as it can get. I hate almost all forms of it... but from a business perspective, why not if both parties are into that kind of stuff? And to be frank, websites like Soylent News are a kind of social media. Not the popular kind, but one of them none-the-less. Email lists and company blogs (as you mention) are actually part of social media too and a business like hers can use something like that without posting her real name. (This thread is about masking real names, if you recall.)
And to be honest, as much as I hate social media, I've used it to my advantage to meet hundreds of people face-to-face in the past couple of years. (New city in a new country.) I sign up to certain existing groups that caught my eye then go out there to meet and greet. I've actually made a couple of really good friends that way that we've invited over for dinner more than once. Groups on Facebook, Meetup.com, and XING may be the most popular, but there are others too. I met one guy face-to-face because I introduced myself on Slashdot when I realized we lived in the same city (before Soylent News).
And before I'm nagged about using social media while simultaneously hating it: I hate washing dishes and I hate shopping but I do both. Sometimes, to accomplish what I want, I have to buckle down and do some things I hate. As for Soylent News? It's about the only form of social media that I currently enjoy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday August 03 2015, @06:43PM
Categorizing sites like SoylentNews as "social media" sites is ridiculous. The types of comments you'll see are totally different, the purposes of the sites are totally different (Facebook, Google+, and others exist to gather as much information about people as possible so they can make money off of suckers who give it away), there is no real name policy or even an atmosphere that expects you to give away your real name, the site's goal is not to allow you to find and keep track of the mundane activities of real-life acquaintances or family members, etc.
Just about everything would be a "social media" site using this logic. If the website has any degree of interaction with others whatsoever, then it would be "social media". Not a very useful definition to me.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday August 03 2015, @07:04PM
Hmmm... Then I suppose you and I have different definitions of social media. I based my definition off of this one: www.google.com/search?q=define+social+media [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday August 03 2015, @07:54PM
Right. Not a very useful definition, at least not for how you're using it. There are many words [gnu.org] that, while commonly used and accepted, only serve to cause confusion or spread propaganda. But we can fight back.
The one that came up for me (on a different search engine) is this: "websites and other online means of communication that are used by large groups of people to share information and to develop social and professional contacts". I block Google 100%, so I don't know what came up for you. But I would say that "to share information" is too vague, but that the purpose of this website isn't really to "develop social and professional contacts". But then, that is also rather vague, and it depends on what you take 'social contact' to mean. I don't think it's a very useful definition; it's too vague and broad.
(Score: 1) by Pino P on Monday August 03 2015, @07:02PM
In order for a site to let users log in with their Twitter credentials, the site's operator has to have a Twitter account in order to register the site with Twitter. The same is true of Google and Facebook.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:52AM
That's essentially creating a single point of failure, which is foolish. It's more foolish when you realize how terrible most people's passwords are, even for more important things. I wish web developers would get a clue and actually learn how to develop a website like they're supposed to know how to do rather than relying on all sorts of third party nonsense from privacy-violating companies. For most websites, I see RequestPolicy block 10+ third party sites, with the worst ones having over 20. Not just advertisers, either. It's absolutely ridiculous.
(Score: 1) by Pino P on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:43PM
You appear to claim that protocols such as OpenID Connect are "foolish". But in an era of registration confirmation e-mails routinely getting mistakenly eaten by spam filters, what is supposed to uniquely identify a user account and allow for resetting a forgotten password?
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:02AM
But in an era of registration confirmation e-mails routinely getting mistakenly eaten by spam filters, what is supposed to uniquely identify a user account and allow for resetting a forgotten password?
Check what was identified as spam yourself. If that's too hard for a significant amount of your users, then you should rethink your target userbase.
In general, I recommend relying less on third party websites. Especially don't rely on the likes of companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, etc. All this nonsense does is allow for more cross-site tracking and gives attackers access to more of the user's accounts if they manage to break in. All for convenience.
(Score: 1) by Pino P on Thursday August 13 2015, @01:39AM
Anyone who breaks into your Google account or Microsoft account can already read your Gmail or your Hotmail and request password resets.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 03 2015, @11:42PM
I dunno, I quite identify with what Common Joe is saying. These days it is weird if you don't have a social media presence. It's as weird as if you tell people you don't do email.
That said, I follow the principle of Minimum Correct Thing (MCT) on social media. I disclose as little as possible on social media, but what I do disclose is true. My profile picture is me, pics of my wife and kids are their pics, but I don't post my thought for the day or pics of my lunch or anything like that. I present the public face online that I wish to. I don't think that practice is all that weird, but I've had people on Soylent excoriate me for it and "unfriend" me.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:44AM
I dunno, I quite identify with what Common Joe is saying. These days it is weird if you don't have a social media presence.
So be "weird"; who cares? But he said that "being social" necessitates social media, which is false.
My profile picture is me, pics of my wife and kids are their pics, but I don't post my thought for the day or pics of my lunch or anything like that.
You've given them some nice facial recognition material. I feel sorry for the kids, because they're probably not old enough to understand the issue. When I was growing up, we didn't have things like Facebook, so my parents never had a chance to upload pictures to websites owned by giant privacy-invading anonymity-destroying corporations. One of my younger family members did grow up with social media nonsense, but they chose never to create any accounts and understand the privacy issue; if someone else uploaded pictures of them, they wouldn't even have a choice.
Unless I misunderstood that and they uploaded pictures themselves. But I do see people kind of forcing the social media nonsense on their kids. And even when it is voluntary, once these companies have your information, good luck ensuring that it's deleted if you ever change your mind.