Tag Archives: Facebook

September 25, 2011 · 7:08 pm

Facebook Defeats MSM!

For the past couple of years, my internet consumption has been divided into roughly 3 parts.  I get most of my news from the Huffington Post.  Sure, I follow links from there to other places, but they’re fairly comprehensive.  They keep me up to date on celebrity gossip and the major

New York's Arab Spring

news items of the day – or so I thought.  I go to Wonkette for entertainment.  Seriously.  They are way, way funnier than the Onion or Cracked.com, although I sometimes check them out, too.  And, of course, Facebook, which my friend Jim Freeman once described as “the gift that keeps on taking.”  I mock it, I criticize it, but I’ve got to admit I love it.

The Huffington Post, of course, is an online newspaper, which gives them several advantages over the print media.  They can update as fast as a story breaks.  They’ve got no space limitations.  And they are still evolving.  Unfortunately, they seem to view themselves as part of the mainstream media, the status quo.

And so, despite the fact that the “Occupy Wall Street” protests have been going on in New York for a week, I just learned about them this morning on Facebook.  Wonkette may have had something, but I’m not really looking for news there.  After finding out about them on Facebook, about how harmless women who were already confined behind a police barricade and clearly unarmed and not even slightly dangerous, were suddenly and without any real provocation pepper sprayed; about how a man was brutally thrown to the ground and handcuffed for writing the word “Love” on the sidewalk -in chalk; about how a group of well dressed 21st century Marie Antoinettes stood on their balconies and drank champagne, laughing at the plight of the unemployed, the uninsured, the homeless, the American desperate class; I went looking for the story on Huffington Post and I did find it, buried well below Herman Cain’s straw poll win in Florida, a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a couple of things about taxes, an article on some mass graves in Libya, a dog eating festival in Asia, a piece by Alec Baldwin on why he didn’t attend the Emmy Awards Ceremony,  and many other stories.

But everything they had, I’d already seen on Facebook.  It seems the mainstream media doesn’t want to cover these protests, and the Huffington Post views itself as part of the mainstream media.

So, I guess we will just have to carry on informing each other.  If the mainstream media withers on the vine and eventually dies, it will be their own fault.  Report the news or GTFO.

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September 24, 2011 · 4:08 pm

Mark Zuckerberg Tries to Take Over The World

Nicholas Thompson, writing in The New Yorker, says “One way to change something big is to get people really riled up about how you’ve changed something small. Repaint the boat, and let them to argue about that. By the time they’ve realized that green is no worse than blue, they won’t have

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly...

the energy to wonder whether it was a smart idea for you to set sail for Australia.  Inadvertently, perhaps, this seems like Facebook’s strategy this week.”

I believe Mr. Thompson has hit the nail on the proverbial head, except I don’t think it was inadvertent at all.  I don’t know Mark Zuckerberg, but I know he’s not dumb.

While we’re all complaining about the relocation of the birthday announcements and that epilepsy inducing streaming status update thingie, Facebook is preparing to make some big changes.  According to the New Yorker article, Zuckerberg’s goal is to make facebook the place where we watch music videos and films, where we can read entire magazines online, the go to place for all of our internet needs.

In short, Mark Zuckerberg wants to take over the world.  First, I must confess that I don’t understand it all.  I am about 5 years behind the technological curve.  Still, I’m an avid user and I’ve got my opinions.

I’m excited, but also afraid.  The internet is constantly evolving, developments will lead to other developments, pictures will get bigger and sharper, speeds will get faster, and whatever Mark Zuckerberg has up his nasty, greedy, grasping little sleeves, it won’t be the last word.  He’s not the only computer geek who wants to control the world.  Between them, they seem to be building an artificial intelligence, a world mind, and I think that could lead to fantastic things.

Short term, though, Mark Zuckerberg could wind up making Rupert Murdoch look like a grade school gossip.  It is way too much power to have in one person’s hands.

For myself, I’m going to continue using Facebook, because I want to direct traffic over here to my blog.  I really don’t care what anybody had for breakfast.

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July 28, 2011 · 4:19 pm

Facebook Does Not Own The Internet

Facebook marketing director Randi Zuckerberg (Mark’s sister) wrote an opinion piecethe other day in which she said that internet anonymity had to go.  That people should be willing to sign their name when they give their opinions.  She feels that this would curb a lot of the bad behavior

You just worry about your own site, Randi Zuckerberg. You don't own the internet.

on the internet, like cyberbullying, for instance.  I can see her point, but I totally disagree.

There’s a good side to personal responsibility and there’s a good side to the freedom of anonymity.  When I speak to somebody I know, in person, and I expect to see them again, I try to avoid saying things like “Jesus Fucking Christ, you are a moron.  I don’t know how you manage to dress yourself in the morning.”  On the internet, I can say that.  I usually don’t.  First, it’s not very nice, but it’s also counterproductive because even stupid people can come up with insults, and they will.  Also, I am not entirely anonymous.  Yeah, I use the name gurukalehuru, but anybody who digs a little bit could find out who I am.

But that’s just me.  Anonymity allows for total free speech, which I think is a good thing.  It may disturb some people to see racist, sexist, threatening and downright evil language on the internet.  O.K., tune in to a set that moderates comments.  If we’re talking about Facebook, it’s really, really easy to defriend people.  I defriend teabaggers and evangelical Christians.  Don’t even feel bad about it.  They have plenty of sites they can go to.

Fortunately for the future of the internet, neither Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook or the United States government has any authority over the internet.  This is an entity which grew up by itself.(O.K., Al Gore started it to link up military and university computers – ancient history)  It transcends national borders.  Randi Zuckerberg can spout off all she wants about how it should not be anonymous, but she can’t actually make it not be anonymous.

I have a suggestion.  Let there be sites where people can post anonymously, and sites where people have to give their names, and people can choose which sites they want to visit.  Actually, I’m still waiting for somebody to establish a site which insists that everyone who posts there learn how to spell and know the difference between your and you’re.  I’m not holding my breath, though.

 

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