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Google And Facebook

12 Comments

They’re entering their toxic endgame.

I try to minimize my engagement with both of them, but with an Android phone, it’s hard to avoid Google. But I’ll never download or use an app for Facebook.

[Saturday-morning update]

The useful idiots of Silicon Valley.

They’re wrecked California, and now there’s a danger that they’ll do the same thing to the rest of the country.

[Bumped]

12 thoughts on “Google And Facebook”

  1. Google and Facebook users who bitch about Google and Facebook controlling their lives are analogous to drug addicts bitching about how drugs are controlling their lives. I always think, how’s that again?

  2. It is not an inherit requirement for anyone to “login” to use social media. Someday I hope to see social networks that are true peer-to-peer, until then I regard them as toxic.

    1. Well, this is true in a different way. You don’t have to log in to be a part of their network. They have profiles of people who aren’t signed up and those profiles are used for the dame big data operations as the others. People don’t really have a choice to not participate.

      1. True, but if I’m not participating there is no requirement that the big data on me is accurate, but simply a projection of others. And as far as I can tell, you don’t get far on either of those platforms without a “login” account. Google with search is a bit of an exception, I don’t use Google. And you can always use a Tor gateway & browser before a Google search, avoid using Chrome and let them profile a user they think is from the Ukraine.

  3. Having seen the effect of FB on young friends after a breakup I can attest to the toxicity of FB.
    Had an account once because a guy I was corresponding with (he’d be a good fit here BTW) took up FB and gave up on email. After getting “friends” from all over the world pop up and posts from my Trump hating nieces etc I gave up and destroyed the account (I think but with FB who can tell?).
    Isn’t email peer to peer?

    1. People will put stuff up on their FB wall that’d they’d never in a million years put in an email. A lot of FB wars get started because of unanticipated audience reactions. Part of its wonderful toxicity.

  4. Endgame? No and even when these two companies do end their curtent form the data they have amassed will live on for a long long time. There will be some really seedy companies that arise from the ashes.

  5. The OP link over to “theChive” is yet another case in point. Although they rail against Google and Facebook wth a very prescient article they themselves present would be users with their own toxic accounting & login shenanigans. According to the discussion section after the article a would be user posted this:

    I was this close to signing up again [with theChive], but then I read your terms. Buried in there is a little nugget.

    “You grant Licensees the perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable, and transferable right to use your Likeness, in any and all media now known or later devised and through any media channels (including without limitation, on the Properties and Chive TV), for all commercial and non-commercial purposes, in Administrator’s sole discretion, all without any further compensation, consideration, notice to, or approval by, you.”

    Talk about a “biggest landgrab in the history of modern society”. You will literally own people. I’m guessing this is lawyer BS and not something you intended. You might want to take a closer look to what you are forcing your Chivers to agree too.

    I wouldn’t “guess” that at all. Just more of the same old same.
    What exactly is a “likeness”? Am I forced to post a photo of myself as part of creating an account? What if my profile picture is a mushroom? I would presume a vague non-legal term such as “likeness” might not be just a picture.

  6. I disagree that the “useful idiots” of Silicon Valley are piloting their own demise. Still still “pay penance” by donating to campaigns of the “correct” politicians who will continue to denounce the wealth disparity that SV creates without ever doing anything about. I don’t expect anything to change.

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