Observing the changes over time happening with many Facebook Friends

[Bassplayer1]

Hello!
I'm not a fan of Facebook. I joined about 4 years ago as a musician seeing that there may be some benefit to joining certain FB groups, for example, to engage with other musicians, especially discussion and technical advice etc. On the whole, if I stick to literally this its not too bad. But over time, we make new like minded friends and I've noticed these people slowly changing and it concerns me. I see their posts pop up and I'm thinking how they would NEVER have said such a thing/behaved in this way, even a year ago!

One of my concerns is the increasing comfort that people have willingly sharing intimacy on Social media. The numbers of people revealing more and more personal/emotional thoughts is growing. I'm also aware of parents who won't allow their children to do FB until they're older, yet they post pictures and discuss their children, often daily!! Just one picture and a comment provides a ton of info that can be logged and ready to target these children as soon as they join FB.

More and more people don't think twice about sharing every thought and feeling and these people are smart and intelligent but its like they feel safe in this 'world' and forget about such a thing as profiles being built on all of us!

Also, the quality of posts is declining. What would once have been interesting discussion is changing into more and more selfies, pictures of last nights sausages and mash, and forgive me for being harsh, but mindless comments about the queue in the supermarket or the color of lipstick or Beyonce strutting around in a thong lol! It's like I'm observing smart people's minds changing and how they're communicating ...

Very few people stop to think about the exchange of energy on these platforms - that it gives them a free-for-all to post anything and everything.

Is social media replacing the one-to-one over a few pints in a cozy pub?

Another thing that this kind of narcissism is spreading is a lack of awareness and disrespect across platforms like Youtube. For example, I enjoy watching music/audio production tutorials and I'm always grateful for people's generosity (whatever their experience) with sharing their knowledge and resources with us. But the comments!!! Its like its become ok to be publicly harsh and judgmental. Its like people feel they're entitled to express what they think regardless of whether its actually kind or hurtful. People forget to think about the words they share. I see it even on websites where people share their recipes and the comments can be quite cruel and hurtful. Didn't we used to live in a world where most people wouldn't have considered being so rude!

Anyway, sorry for my rant and I know I'm only repeating what you guys have been saying for years ... but it really is like observing a desensitized world unfolding - and that's the nice smart people!!!

xxx

[justntime2learn]

Greetings bassplayer1,

Looks more like credible information than a rant to me.

Here's the change I just recently noticed on Facebook. My son and girlfriend were just in Las Vegas when she sent me a picture of him. I posted it on my wall and at no time attached him. It used facial recognition as he was the only one in the picture to attach him without my permission.

I've been warning the few that will listen about the change in algorithms and it looks like this party just started.

Many thanks ~ J

[Bassplayer1]

Posted by justntime2learn (here)
Greetings bassplayer1,

Looks more like credible information than a rant to me.

Here's the change I just recently noticed on Facebook. My son and girlfriend were just in Las Vegas when she sent me a picture of him. I posted it on my wall and at no time attached him. It used facial recognition as he was the only one in the picture to attach him without my permission.

I've been warning the few that will listen about the change in algorithms and it looks like this party just started.

Many thanks ~ J

Thank you justntime2learn, your experience sadly, confirms what I've been thinking. What you've described reminds me of the film Ex Machina and the classic scene where the young man is in the laboratory and the guy who is the mastermind behind the A.I project and his 'robots' or whatever you want to call them, tells him how he managed to make the female 'robot' lifelike and responsive, and my understanding is that it wasn't so much about the technology behind creating the robot that made this guy who is was, but the data mining program he developed to collate all the info needed to build or map onto a robot to make it human. It was software that collected our photos, fingerprints from touch screens, our voices, our thoughts and feelings and habits - every nuance, which everyone freely gives away on their devices daily. I said to my husband at the time that whilst the film was interesting, the concept is NOT cool because you can be sure its being done in reality!!!

[Valerie Villars]

I think it's more the KIND of information being shared. In other words, if we were sharing Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" for example, and discussing its merits or not, it would be a very positive thing.

Of what real value is a shot of Beyonce's a(s or other pornographic and inane things?

It's an infective virus and it's very painful to watch people you love or thought you knew, become infected.

I know. I love humans and I am rooting for us. With all my being.

[chancy]

Hello Everyone:
I am definitely not a fan of facebook!
Here is my experience for what it's worth.
Everyone tells you that facebook is the place to be so I figured I should see what all the fuss was about.
Not knowing who I knew on facebook I struggled at first to figure it out to a point of feeling that I knew how to use it ok.

I tried to locate a few people I had lost contact with over the years and to my surprise they were NOT on facebook. That made me search deeper since I'm always told EVERYONE is on facebook!
facebook kept trying to get me to be friends with people that I didn't know so I would say "hello: How are you today"?
Only a few people responded and that was fine by me since it didn't matter one way or another to me. I have a great life without facebook and telling all the dirty laundry isn't my thing.

So since I was trying to see what the appeal of facebook was I typed "hello, how are you today"? to supposedly an employee of facebook it said on their profile. They replied facebook is not to be used that way?????????
I asked what they meant by that since I was knew and had read the facebook rules and did NOT VIOLATE their rules in anyway.
The next time I went to sign in I was locked out of facebook! The only way I could supposedly get back into my account was upload a drivers license, birth certificate or anything they requested. Still was wondering why???
I tried to contact facebook and that was the most interesting experience I have ever had online!
Basically there is NO WAY TO CONTACT facebook.
I finally found a way to contact technical support I think they call it or security or whatever they supposedly are??
I send them an email asking what I had done to get locked out of my account? 3 days later they emailed me back and told me they would unlock my account with no reason why it was locked etc.?
Well to my surprise they didn't unlock the account but sent me to where I was to upload picture ID?????
Since I am just playing with facebook I will NOT UPLOAD a PHOTO since it becomes facebooks as soon as it's uploaded.
Know that I have nothing to hide BUT I do not believe in giving facebook any information that they will file online until the cows come home or the drunken sailor starts to sing!
I wrote facebook back and asked what I had done to get locked out and why I needed to send picture ID??
NO ANSWER?
I don't need to access my account since it means nothing to me except to see what the heck people go google eyed about when talking about facebook.....
I haven't found anything that makes me smile about facebook. Just a bad taste in my mouth about being locked out for no reason anyone can tell me.
I searched this up online and it happens to apparently millions of people and they are like me...What did I do they all say and ask to no avail.
Now I know why I see no reason to have facebook in my life
chancy

[Tintin]

Posted by Villival (here)
I think it's more the KIND of information being shared. In other words, if we were sharing Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" for example, and discussing its merits or not, it would be a very positive thing.

Of what real value is a shot of Beyonce's a(s or other pornographic and inane things?

It's an infective virus and it's very painful to watch people you love or thought you knew, become infected.

Oh, I know this only way too well. I no longer use Facebook (stopped about 2 years ago). After I had stopped using it for several months a very good friend of mine called me out of the blue absolutely convinced that I was the source of some unkind comments being made about her. I absolutely protested complete ignorance of whatever it was and reminded her that I hadn't been using Facebook for several months. Anyway, it's not my style to say anything wilfully unkind about anyone even in a face to face situation, and certainly never in all the years I have been online, although I may have occasionally got up on my hind legs and had a rant.

She phoned back a few weeks later absolutely mortified about her behaviour, apologised, and we've never had to revisit the 'scene', as it were.

The moral: she had identified the psychological impact on her behaviour that Facebook was effecting and came offline from it for a while.

Most of us here know that this is a dangerous tool developed by an individual, from Harvard, with a psychology major. Not an IT whizzkid, although he had some assistance there clearly, but a self confessed sociopath with a psychology major

It is a social engineering device as well as a clutch of other things, to be avoided at all costs, and I would absolutely recommend that everybody STOPS using it at all. Along with the devious machinations that drive this animal the content and noise on it also simply reflects the social engineering and the relative mundanity of most peoples' existences; lives can be pretty boring out there. That's not a judgement call, just an observation.

If you can't say anything positive, intelligent or kind, then don't say anything at all would be a motto for any online engagement, anywhere, whether on Facebook, Twitter, this forum, or even in an email.

I absolutely concur: it is the value of what you are saying and having sufficient empathy to identify how it is likely to be received. That's really important.

[happyuk]

Yep, Facebook and its bottom-feeding, mouth-breathing, Jeremy Kyle watching typical users can all go and take a run and jump.

Software developers at Facebook working with C++ code for computer graphics have come up with a new unit of time to work with called a "flick" - short for "frame-tick" if you're willing to overlook the absence of the letter "l" from either word, a flick lasting 1/705,600,000 of a second.

Is this based on the average attention span of the average Facebook user perhaps?

[Bassplayer1]

Thank you everyone for your responses!

[Foxie Loxie]

Just yesterday at my hairdresser's, she complained how that the passing of her son-in-law was on FB before they had even had a chance to tell the children!!!

I mean.....Come on!

[Valerie Villars]

Foxie, the same thing just happened to my best friend when her Mom died. Her brother's girlfriend put it on Facebook within 30 minutes. And then my friend started getting consolatory messages texted to her on her cell phone (from the Facebook notified crowd) when they were on the way home from the hospital.

My friend said she didn't even know who most of the texts were from. So, what would have been the long ride home after losing someone you loved, turned into a very non private circus. Where is the meaning and respect in any of that?

[O Donna]

Been watching "Hitlers Empire The Post War Plan" documentary series and thoughts go to wondering how Hitler and Joseph Goebbels would have used the technology in their time.

Probably like shadowy and not so shadowy elements are using it today.

[justntime2learn]

Posted by O Donna (here)
Been watching "Hitlers Empire The Post War Plan" documentary series and thoughts go to wondering how Hitler and Joseph Goebbels would have used the technology in their time.

Probably like shadowy and not so shadowy elements are using it today.

Almost as if there is a preselection avoiding "the ramp"?



"Slaughter Bots" instead of trains?

Should I say more?