Alyson Shontell writes at Business Insider that Peter Thiel, a longtime friend and mentor of Mark Zuckerberg, recently gave a talk that imagined what a Zuckerberg-less world would look like and it's pretty grim. According to Thiel, the web would be a not-very-safe, not-very-fun, totally anonymous place and it wouldn't be baked into our social lives at all. "You can imagine an alternate history in which people don't become comfortable using [the Internet] to meet their friends and family," said Thiel. "It could have remained a wild and dangerous place — maybe an exciting place to escape for a while, but maybe not part of your daily social life. Facebook has led a long and subtle but deeply important trend away from mob behavior, away from the kind of nastiness that hides behind masks and rules in shadow."
Thiel added that without Zuckerberg, information would be at the center of the Internet, not people. "If you could go back to the first years of the new millennium in Silicon Valley, you would hear a lot more about 'information' than about people. 'Organizing the world's information' was the idea of the age," Thiel told the audience. "While the implicit goal of computer science had been to build a machine that can do everything a human can do, Facebook has made software that only makes sense as a tool for humans. Its success in doing so has helped to gradually orient software developers away from the mania for replacing people." Thiel made his speech while Zuckerberg received the first-ever Axel Springer Award for being an outstanding entrepreneur (Google translation) in Berlin. Thiel and Zuckerberg have known each other for a long time and Thiel was an angel investor in Facebook who invested $500,000 in Facebook in 2004 and cashed out in 2012 for $1 billion.
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Two Soylentils wrote in with an update on Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. After these stories were submitted, it appears to have been confirmed by The New York Times that Thiel paid $10 million to fund the lawsuit.
Peter Thiel Funded Hulk Hogan's Lawsuit Against Gawker
Peter Thiel, the billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist and libertarian who we have reported on several times, reportedly bankrolled former wrestler Hulk Hogan's (real name: Terry Bollea) lawsuit against Gawker. After Gawker published a sex tape featuring Bollea, Bollea sued and was eventually awarded $140 million by a jury. That decision is being appealed.
Thiel has had several run-ins with Gawker's reporting on his political and financial decisions, but the most prominent incident was in 2007, when the website's then-running gossip vertical Valleywag outed Thiel's sexual orientation in a post titled, "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people."
Thiel, who is now open about being gay, later called Valleywag "the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda."
Although the exact details of the arrangement between Thiel and Bollea are unknown, if Thiel negotiated for a share of the lawsuit's proceeds, he may get to stick it to Gawker while earning millions of dollars.
[Continues...]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 29 2016, @01:17PM
The history revisionists are already at work, while the history is still being made.
Somehow, I don't recall the internet being all that dangerous before Suckerberg came along. If it was "dangerous", then it is still equally so today. Someone - anyone - define "dangerous" for us.
Now, all because of Suckerberg, the internet is "safe"? "Tamed"? "Civilized"? Huh, wut?
Wasn't long ago that the US government announced that someone had hacked into their databases, and stole all the personal information on government employees. "Safe".
Revisionists can't even wait til Zuckerbugger is an old man before they start rewriting history.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday February 29 2016, @01:51PM
Somehow, I don't recall the internet being all that dangerous before Suckerberg came along. If it was "dangerous", then it is still equally so today. Someone - anyone - define "dangerous" for us.
I assume he means there are fewer unpatched machines (by percentage) out there connected directly onto the internet without at least a NAT protecting them from incoming traffic. Coupled with bandwidth bottlenecks everywhere meant there were real consequences that slowed down the acquisition of porn. Code red used a significant portion of my incoming traffic back in the day, partly due to it's prevealance, partly due to how limited bandwidth was.
Today's dangers are different, they're not blind worms using up bandwidth and processing power, they're far more targetted attacks, but on the other hand they don't affect individuals as immediately.
Different danger I think
(Score: 2, Informative) by massa on Monday February 29 2016, @02:00PM
This has absolutely no relation to Fackbook.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @03:34PM
I believe isostatic is trying to warn us to mind our privacy online!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @03:42PM
Now, all because of Suckerberg, the internet is "safe"? "Tamed"? "Civilized"? Huh, wut?
In a very limited sense, he's right. For a lot of people, Facebook is the internet. If you never leave your walled garden, you're relatively safe. If you randomly wander the wilderness, eventually you're gonna stumble upon 4chan or something.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday February 29 2016, @04:16PM
> you're relatively safe...
... from everyone except the gardener.
Besides, don't we still hear regular stories about teen suicides prompted by facespace-related "cyber-bullying"? Face it, walled garden or not, if you've got a system with a billion+ people communicating with one another, then some of those people will be shitholes, and you can't make people "safe" from them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday February 29 2016, @03:51PM
FaceBook is a cage. Cages are usually pretty safe from things outside. Of course, sometimes the problem is the other things in the cage.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday February 29 2016, @05:54PM
Any time you put any bunch of animals in a cage there is always a pecking order established, with the weaker ones having nowhere to hide.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Monday February 29 2016, @08:32PM
Indeed. Isn't one of the biggest vectors of malware Facebook serving up malware through games and ads?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday February 29 2016, @08:39PM
They have done their part to make what was once a very safe space into one crammed full of land-mines.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Tuesday March 01 2016, @12:30AM
It is safe.
Without Facebook, all of those lamewads, dipshits and morons would be let loose on the interwebs in general.
Think of it like a prison, where the scum of society are locked up for the greater good.
As a side note, and a FTFY for the article;
Zuckerberg received the first-ever Jerry Springer Award for being an outspoken enabler of bullshit arguments over mundane topics.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 5, Touché) by pe1rxq on Monday February 29 2016, @01:25PM
The internet was indeed a dangerous place: it allowed facebook to be created.
However the internet still is a dangerous place as facebook still exists.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @03:12PM
AC walks into the bar, the saloon doors swing closed after him. You then hear the theme music to The good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Its the most dangerous thing online, someone utilizing their anonymity.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday February 29 2016, @05:24PM
Bar tender, carefully wiping the glasses with his dirty rag, looks up into the mirror, sees AC and ducks behind bar.
Cowpokes sitting at table playing cards quietly grab their chips and head for a corner.
Piano player whispers to the dancer girl sitting beside him: "Is he good, bad, or just plain ugly?"
Ennio Morricone starts whistling...... as AC bites harder on his cigarillo......
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by CHK6 on Monday February 29 2016, @01:27PM
I like the untamed wild and the un-imagined potentials it has to offer. The ability to run freely and explore whatever peeks my interest. Sure danger is always a factor and it adds a bit of excitement, but what's exploration without a bit of the wild? It's called a museum or a school.
Faceplant is nothing more than an exploitation of core elements with the human psych feeding the narcissism and voyeurism monsters within. If FB is about taming the Internet, it's a kin to neutering the greater population into thinking "it's about the people not the information" which is a load of digital crap. All FBhas given us is "why haven't you friended me" and "do you like my post?" Such great strides in advancing the humanities FB. If the internet is such a wild and scary place, then stepping into realm of FB is a bit like some mommy freak show of people begging for constant attention.
Give me information and not people, I am capable of finding my friends on my own.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Demose on Monday February 29 2016, @01:31PM
I can at least name Myspace. I believe that this is fair evidence that social networks were a thing that would have happened with or without Zuckerberg.
(Score: 5, Informative) by isostatic on Monday February 29 2016, @01:46PM
I can name usenet. And we used our own names too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday February 29 2016, @04:24PM
However that was not enforced by Usenet, but by social pressure (and possibly for some individual servers by the local newsmaster, but then only for those posting through that server). In other words, you were not excluded for not using your real name, you just had to accept that every now and then other users might tell you that you should use your real name (and some might actually refuse to read your posts because of it).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @05:43PM
(and some might actually refuse to read your posts because of it).
This sounds oddly familiar!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday February 29 2016, @06:00PM
Well, the means of communication change. The humans don't.
However in Usenet, no posting was hidden by default. Only if you actively put users into kill files/score files, that would hide them from you (and only from you).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday March 02 2016, @12:56PM
There were some moderated groups, but they were the exception. It's rather sad the way that usenet fell to web forums with moderators. Spam was a problem of course, but no more than posts being deleted and users blocked in today's replacements.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday February 29 2016, @04:22PM
Don't forget friendster. And, you know, AOL, which is really the role Facebook mostly fills during the modern time. On AOL though, you had screen names...now if someone has it in for you, they tend to have your real name. In the name of "safety".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @05:30PM
It also ignores the other social platforms after it came into being, Youtube, reddit, snapchat (where the cool kids hang out for now), yahoo, etc.
Social platforms were even being tinkered together by people using messenger, icq, aol chat, etc.
Facebook only exists because it stepped over the dead bodies of the dozens of previous platforms. I even skipped joining for a few years as I figured it was just yet another in a line of doomed platforms. I guessed that wrong! :)
(Score: 1) by turonah on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:23AM
According to Thiel, the web would be a not-very-safe, not-very-fun, totally anonymous place and it wouldn't be baked into our social lives at all.
Yeah because like Demose said, there was no MySpace, Bebo, or any other precursors to Facebook at all.
The web was fun long before Facebook, and will continue to be fun long after it has died. Unlike what your grandmother and uncles think, Facebook is not the internet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:32PM
Weekend is over. No need to post crappola like this self-serving drivel of a hedgefund cocksucker.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @02:34PM
Sober up Ethanol. The unemployment office opens up in a few minutes.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 29 2016, @02:59PM
Hedgefund. Cocksucker. That's one hell of a mental image. Please, unpost what you have posted, and let me unread it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @03:52PM
if there's a bustle in your hedgerow don't be alarmed now
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:33PM
I have no Facebook account and will not. It is a trap that can make one unemployable with the simplest misstatement or picture.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Monday February 29 2016, @01:45PM
Everyone has a facebook account. If you don't, you're unemployable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:50PM
Never had an employer try to look at my Facebook profile. Hell many of them don't even look at LinkedIn either.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @02:22PM
I'm going to say that if they're an employer who cares at all if you have a Facebook account they're an employer you shouldn't want to work for.
Admittedly, I work for a municipal IT department so maybe the "atmosphere" is different here than businesses that are in the business of making money, but zero of the people in the department (there are 11 of us) have ever used Facebook here.
Which arbitrary websites you choose to use or not use has no relevance to your ability to do a job.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Monday February 29 2016, @03:30PM
The assertion that the AC made was that employers look at facebook, somehow get pas the privacy settings, and find a post they don't like so discount you from the job.
Those employers are just as likely to discount you from the job if you don't have a facebook account at all.
(Score: 2) by DNied on Tuesday March 01 2016, @01:07AM
So slyly suggest you're not on FB because it's a waste of time, and you'll turn your absence into a plus (you're not one to waste time). Don't be blunt - because if you call it a waste of time right there, you'll insult your prospective employer for being on FB. Say something like "I've seen from my friends' experience FB can be so addictive that I prefer to stay away from it, I would probably spend way too much time there".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 29 2016, @02:33PM
Everyone has a facebook account. If you don't, you're unemployable.
By Facebook. There are other employers out there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @02:20AM
Um, been steadily employed in IT for the last 24 years. Stayed on the bleeding edge most of the time. Have comfortable income, have no Facebook account.
Get off my lawn.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:39PM
This sounds like something that would be read at his memorial service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @05:37AM
Facebook is dead. ((Zuckerberg)) met with Merkel, and is ramping up "anti-migrant" censorship.
This is the death knell for Facebook. Cue the stories praising it to bolster investor opinion and ensure a good price on the stock cash out.
Twitter is dying too. For the same reason too: The Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gravis on Monday February 29 2016, @01:42PM
According to Thiel, the web would be a not-very-safe, not-very-fun, totally anonymous place and it wouldn't be baked into our social lives at all.
this implies that facebook is:
* safe
* fun
* not anonymous
* part of your social life
only one of his claims is valid.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @03:33PM
this implies that facebook is:
* safe
* fun
* not anonymous
* part of your social life
only one of his claims is valid.
Wait. Which one?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @07:05PM
not anonymous [manchestereveningnews.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:54PM
And all this time, I was under the impression that Facebook's little experiment had a smaller scope than "Organizing the world's information": Organizing information about the world's inhabitants in order to profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @08:04PM
Oh they have vision. You just might not know or like it. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday February 29 2016, @02:05PM
Sure I can imagine that alternate history. In that alternate history, facebook has completely taken over the Internet.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday February 29 2016, @02:21PM
Facebook (as with any online tool) isn't actually about people at all. It's about personas, who may or may not bear much relationship to people that share the same name. Facebook as a company would sure like them to be exactly the same thing, because that improves the quality of the advertising targeting that is their entire business model, but they are most definitely not.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by meustrus on Monday February 29 2016, @05:40PM
The whole internet is about personas. The problem with Facebook is that you get exactly one with no chance to reinvent it ever, and everybody who ever knew you in real life can show up to harass you for it.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @02:18AM
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." --Kurt Vonnegut
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 01 2016, @11:00AM
I'll immediately start pretending to be filthy rich! ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 01 2016, @03:20AM
I think you're right about that: social media presences are constructs. I know I treat mine that way. If you don't have a social media presence you're discounted now, but you can certainly be selective about the persona you project. Years ago I read a novel by Heinlein, Friday I think it was, wherein the protagonist argued the merits of using cash versus credit in a world that tracked you intimately from your purchase history, and how having no purchase history (because you paid cash for everything) was worse than having a full, true purchase history because you paid for everything with credit. The trick was to leave a trail that you want others to find to conceal what you actually do. It made a lot of sense to me then and I've never forgotten it, and I find it's quite applicable to this age we find ourselves in now.
Create the persona you want others to see. People who really know you, know you. For all others, it's putting your best foot forward.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday February 29 2016, @02:24PM
I would rather be inclined to believe that while Facebook is not as dangerous as Twitter, where lives and careers are ruined in under 160 characters, it's still quite dangerous. In particular, the idea that somebody can upload a picture of somebody else doing something that they would probably not want an employer or say their mother to know about, tag them, and chaos can ensue. In particular I can see this being troublesome for LGBT people and Muslims these days, oddly more dangerous than it was 10 years ago. I assume white supremacists are either not as stupid or too proud of what they stand for to care (insert oblig Voltaire quote).
Pseudoanonyminity (pseudonyminity?) is the only way to go online. I have a token Facebook account for my legal name and occasionally respond to friend requests from co-workers, but I use a different account for my real social circle. Even then I really only use it when somebody sends me a friends only link. LinkedIn is the only place that has up-to-date information under my legal name.
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Monday February 29 2016, @02:28PM
According to Thiel, the web would be a not-very-safe, not-very-fun, totally anonymous place and it wouldn't be baked into our social lives at all.
If only there were still people alive from the time before Facebook who could regale us with tails of those heady, lawless days.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Monday February 29 2016, @02:31PM
Let me see if I follow his argument here..
Before facebook:
* Anonymous
* Discussion was unmoderated and not archived
* Centered on information
Usenet before AOL/September That Never Ended:
* People mainly used traceable accounts from schools and companies
* Servers archived and could be moderated
* Centered on information
So, he is trying to say that Facebook undoes much of what AOL did but at the same time killing off the main value (centered on information)?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gidds on Monday February 29 2016, @02:47PM
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'grim' that I wasn't previously aware of.
Also: a really powerful and influential man's long-time friend and mentor claims to like what he has done? Really? Gosh, that is surprising.
As we say round my way: MRDA. (Mandy Rice-Davies Applies, i.e. "Well, he would [say that], wouldn't he?")
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by pgc on Monday February 29 2016, @09:54PM
Or as the dutch would say: "Wij van wc-eend ..."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by RedIsNotGreen on Monday February 29 2016, @02:54PM
Business Insider should be blacklisted for the abundance of clickbait, fluff, and speculation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday February 29 2016, @02:54PM
The article is simultaneously flamebait and a troll.
I mean what the actual fuck. Anonymity is not in itself unsafe. You only endanger yourself online if you provide information to someone else who is dangerous. So don't provide important private information to someone whose identity (or reputation) you cannot verify. Same goes for a stranger you meet in a bar, or a shop, or the street. Beyond that, the internet used to be about sharing information voluntarily and that is good. It's much more fun than some stupid fucking centralized walled garden. People who find this shit "fun" just want to be controlled. Mindless compliance is totally uncool.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Monday February 29 2016, @05:50PM
Oh, we're all aware of the typical equation "anonymity + audience = asshole/troll". Facebook tries to get rid of the anonymity, but all that it really accomplishes is growing the audience. It used to be hard to spread misinformation on the internet because we formed smaller communities that actually knew each other. Now with Facebook, we are bombarded with something a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend wrote or forwarded or liked, without much discussion about the idea itself and without really knowing who that person is.
The equation is more like "anonymity * audience = probability of being an asshole". And the anonymity part isn't really about anonymity, it's about lack of consequences. And on Facebook, even though there are in fact serious consequences to your "permanent record" so to speak, people don't always realize that and are still assholes. So really it's "lack of perceived consequences * audience = probability of being an asshole". This can be written even better since "lack of perceived consequences" is really the inverse of "perceived consequences".
Therefore, the Asshole Quotient: "Audience / Perceived Consequences = Probability of being an asshole". Remind me which part of this equation Facebook is supposed to make better?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday March 01 2016, @03:08PM
You just ignore them. Really, it's easy. The internet figured this out years ago.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday February 29 2016, @08:46PM
No thanks. Please, please people, don't use Facebook. Don't enable this beast.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday March 01 2016, @12:12PM
I agree with you 100%. I'm not sure who modded me Disagree. Maybe I used one too many naughty words. *Sighs*
I accept that Shontell who wrote TFA was just the messenger, reporting on Thiel's talk without expressing any opinion, so perhaps Thiel should be given the -1.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @03:39PM
Fuckerberg has done more damage to the internet than anyone I can remember. This piece of shit has created an huge walled garden that censors and spy on you. To make things worse, it has become the norm to think that people without a FB account are weird and should not be employeed. In my country it's almost impossible to participate in political discussion without an FB account and public broadcasting stations direct you to FB to participate in anything.
The day Facebook falls, will be a day of celebration.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 01 2016, @03:26AM
It will fall eventually. There have been many before it, there will be many after it. Remember MySpace? Friendster? Meetup? They all linger, as Facebook will, as shells of their former selves.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by goodie on Monday February 29 2016, @03:55PM
Seriously, I can't imagine what that was like... Oh wait I remember: small, tight communities of people on BBS, newsgroups, emails with close family and friends, phone calls, anonymity. Less tracking, no stupid Share on FB button everywhere.
Man, that sounds like the Web I fell in love with when I was a teenager and dearly miss.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Nuke on Monday February 29 2016, @10:32PM
How did we live before Facebook??? ........ Seriously, I can't imagine what that was like...
It was Hell. God, it was Hell.
People had silly names like "Goodie" and "Nuke", and on websites named after cult films they made sarcastic remarks about how the rest of humanity kept itself amused. It was so dangerous that you could lose all you karma with one ill-worded post, and my fingers would tremble with fear as I typed. We were all just waiting for Zuckerberg to come along really.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DNied on Tuesday March 01 2016, @12:46AM
The only good thing Facebook did for me: It jailed all the email forwarders within its walls and kept them there, for which I am thankful.
Before Facebook, my... uh... less discerning acquaintances used to forward me funny-to-them and insightful-to-them emails. They no longer do nowadays, being busy exchanging pearls of wisdom with like-minded people on Facebook. Also, Usenet became slightly more usable since Facebook attracted much of the scum.
So Facebook actually did some good (to whom didn't join it, of course).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @05:00PM
Who would have guessed that a proud and outloud libertarian like Thiel would absolutely love one of the biggest anti-privacy corporations in the world? Unelected groups that extract a tax from people by taking their privacy and selling it, often without their knowledge are sooo much better than government!
The older I get, the more it becomes apparent that people just pick labels that justify their own biases (which usually means their own $$$).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @10:34PM
If Zuckerberg made me a billionaire, I'd sing his praises too. I LOVE the Facebook!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @08:41PM
He was already comfortably wealthy, thanks to the CIA.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/agent-of-intelligence-how-a-deviant-philosopher-built-palantir-a-cia-funded-data-mining-juggernaut/2/ [forbes.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday February 29 2016, @05:13PM
In one word:
Facebook sucks, is really stupid and i'm glad i am not on it and will not ever go on it!
I'll stick with non-face-book, spank you very mucho gracias. I like to live wild and dangerous, cause that's the kind of non-sucky facebook kind of person i am! :)
Unfriend me if you can!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 01 2016, @12:08AM
Sure I can. I just have to friend you first. Ever wondered what that face in comment headers is for?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @09:14PM
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
OK, that was a pretty good joke. It was a joke, right? Right?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Yaa101 on Tuesday March 01 2016, @12:06AM
Facebook is the most horrible gossip rag that brings out the very worst in people.
Thiel and Zuckerberg are the in flesh representation of the same.
Humanity will thrive without all of them.
No comment...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @01:36AM
I remember the old days when people warned you about sharing personal information online: someone out there can and will use it against you. This axiom was the first thing i learned, and it still holds true today.
How that paradigm has changed to "why don't you have a facebook account" just says how dangerous the internet has become because of this stupid service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @02:15AM
Oh yeah?
I remember a teenage kid getting seduced, abducted and now nowhere to be found because she met some guy through facebook.
If anything, facebook allowed parents to think that the internet has become a child-friendly place, which resulted in things like these happening.