Leaked Documents Expose Facebook - Coldfusion, The Guardian

MatsuShimizu

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The latest video:

Previous video by Coldfusion about Facebook:

Video sources are from The Guardian, Privacy Affairs and more. For full list of sources, check out the video description on Youtube.

One of the sources is this news:
From The Guardian news link above:
Facebook puts “astronomical profits before people”, harms children and is destabilising democracies, a whistleblower has claimed in testimony to the US Congress.
Frances Haugen said Facebook knew it steered young users towards damaging content and that its Instagram app was “like cigarettes” for under-18s. In a wide-ranging testimony, the former Facebook employee said the company did not have enough staff to keep the platform safe and was “literally fanning” ethnic violence in developing countries.
She also told US senators:
- The “buck stops” with the founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.
- Facebook knows its systems lead teenagers to anorexia-related content.
- The company had to “break the glass” and turn back on safety settings after the 6 January Washington riot.
- Facebook intentionally targets teenagers and children under 13.
- Monday’s outage that brought down Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp meant that for more than five hours Facebook could not “destabilise democracies”.
 
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... the 6 January Washington riot insurrection.

Just callin' it as I sees it.

I deleted a giant wall of rum-fueled text that was my original reply. You're welcome! :D

It can be summed up with, "The internet was a terrible idea and we should throw the whole thing into the rubbish bin of history. Or, at the very least, we should go back to a time when getting online was difficult and required some level of intelligence."

While I love the immediacy of data, there's tangible evidence of the 'net doing harm. It's not theoretical harm, it's legit harm - from oppression to disinformation, from influence to manipulation.

And, no... No, the answer isn't a Facebook alternative. The answer isn't even a technical answer. The answer is likely in social change and a better education. So, to put it another way, I wouldn't expect improvements any time soon.
 
social change and a better education.
the education bit Os one of my gripes, in my day you were given a project which you had to recherché in libraries, museums etc then assemble the information in your own words, now they push a couple of buttons, cut and paste to get a degree, I doubt many will remember anything of their projects content after12 hrs.
 
Although I admittedly have little experience in social media, not even having had an FB account, mates have and I did once create an anon Twitter account just to observe and occasionally do the odd social experiment. My findings were... ugh!

Twitter, IMHO, is a little like a social Big Brother. You say something "wrong", you get "cancelled", you want a civilised discourse, nobody listens, they label you bigot/racist/phobic/etc. and then you're the badguy. I once saw these two arguing over some celeb cussing some racist word under his breath and TL;DR the Right was saying it was inadvertantly and not intended to be heard, Left said it didn't matter coz someone heard it, Right gave an insane analogy of what if he said it in his own home on private property but a burglar heard it, Left said then he should still face the consequences. Okay, apart from being a conversation as insane as something from Monty Python, it's scary to think that people actually believe you should be accountable for a borderline thought crime. I mean the idea of not being allowed free speech in your own home? Pretty fcking insane.

Twitter's not about facts, just opinions and so-called feelings, feelings that aren't real, just fed to you by the people/groups you follow. I wonder how many people understand the "science" they regurgitate to "prove" their point of view. I wonder how many people actually know the full historical accuracy of what they so passionately spout opinionated BS about.
That model in the one video is spot on: lesser the knowledge, higher the confidence and more vocal they have and are. One take home is being able to laugh at people acting so arrogant about their own ignorance.
My lurking and some curious social experiments on Twitter were eye-opening. It's bad, it's really fcking bad; like if your freezer cuts out while you're on holiday for two weeks in mid summer. Friends/fam of mine weren't kidding about how social media's the root of all the messed up politics today. I blamed mainstream media, and though I still do, I blame social media even more if Twitter's anything to go by. Based on my few brief observations and experimental interactions (deliberately refuted a few people on both sides), I can say, yeah, they're loud, aggressive, toxic, love piling in on a guy, repeat utter historical fallacies, and smugly present pseudo science. And they're all so extreme. I mean a "debate" is like watching a group of 12yo's at it. Worse, I think there's a sort of conditioning going on. No matter the topic, anything controversial and there's no middle ground, the "you're either with us or against us" routine is basically telling people not to think for themselves and promoting tribalism/cliques.

I'm proud not to be a part of that shite. I mean we carry phones to keep in touch, we can create groups on Whatsapp, I see no need for FB, and from my limited experience, Twitter's just one side of angry morons yelling at the other side of angry morons. Don't get the point of it. Glad I fell out of touch and live under a rock. I like my rock.

Or, at the very least, we should go back to a time when getting online was difficult and required some level of intelligence.
Totally agree! I've been saying this since the 2000s and I didn't even have proper internet then, I was tethering my phone. Besides the obvious of idiots teaching idiots to be bigger, more vocal idiots online, I always held that making life intellectually easier is unhealthy. It's basically like encouraging people to drive 500 meters to the shops just to get a bottle of Coke.

now they push a couple of buttons, cut and paste to get a degree, I doubt many will remember anything of their projects content after12 hrs.
My one mate's wife used to type random sentences from students' essays in quotation marks into Google and search them, then call students on it. Only once did one do it blatantly. The rest were often just reworded info with minimal effort, clearly directly sourced from Wikipedia since most of the essays contained nothing except what was on Wikipedia, no more, no less (she always checked Wikipedia against essays). Anyway, after a while, the parents stirred, the school stirred, she was reprimanded and told it was coincidental (30 odd kids IIRC, over loads of essays, yeah, coincidental, very). These kids are our future leaders and scientists. Lord help us. Lucky I'll be dead at an early age; uncontrolled epilepsy has its up sides.
 
I'm proud not to be a part of that shite. I mean we carry phones to keep in touch, we can create groups on Whatsapp, I see no need for FB, and from my limited experience, Twitter's just one side of angry morons yelling at the other side of angry morons. Don't get the point of it. Glad I fell out of touch and live under a rock. I like my rock.

Living under a rock must make you Patrick Star then :p

patrick star rock.gif
 
While I'll agree FB is well-known for doing some very sleazy crap for at least the last decade (and it should be abolished because of that), I find it a bit coincidental and suspicious that this talk about regulating FB (which will eventually lead to more regulation of the web in general) is happening at the same time that Klaus Schwab and his cronies have been priming humanity for a situation FAR worse than what's been going on since the last decade. If anything, they've been wanting to limit free speech on the web for a while now so it can help push their agenda further along, and just like Covid, an opportunity presented itself and they immediately jumped on it.
 
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While I'll agree FB is well-known for doing some very sleazy crap for at least the last decade (and it should be abolished because of that), I find it a bit coincidental and suspicious that this talk about regulating FB (which will eventually lead to more regulation of the web in general) is happening at the same time that Klaus Schwab and his cronies have been priming humanity for a situation FAR worse than what's been going on since the last decade. If anything, they've been wanting to limit free speech on the web for a while now so it can help push their agenda further along, and just like Covid, an opportunity presented itself and they immediately jumped on it.
I'm against any censorship, but the platforms do tantamount to that anyway by their selective content algorithms, acting as a hub or base of operations for cancel culture, clearly non-neutral political leaning in their Ts&Cs, which accounts I've seen banned on Twitter for mere infractions compared to heinous hate speech accounts that remain going, and deplatforming (whatever you think of Trump, and I'm not a fan -- of him or Biden -- that set a precedent of it being okay to censor anyone across the web for perceived inciting violence, something that 4chan users do every moment -- well, did, in my day, last use was ~10 years back -- not to mention enumerable Reddit users who glorify violence on certain r/'s whose name we do not speak)
Google's no better (departing from social medis for a moment). A guy did a Clinton/Trump experiment in 2 VMs with identical OS/browser config aside from a little technical entropy. In one, he visit pro-Trump sites, etc. On the other, Hillary. Then he compared the Google result for a search for scandals, etc. Pro-trump gave pro-Trump results, pro-Clinton gave pro-Clinton results at the top. Total echo chamber.

So I don't want censorship, I want transparency from Google -- lol, wishful thinking -- and social media platforms burned with fire.
 
One way I can see FB falling into it's own grave is a growing number of businesses and online personalities publicly announcing their severance from it in response to this. Granted, it would be the typical virtue signaling PR strategy, but at least it would cause greater impact than the small but growing number of random people severing their ties with it. Since the masses love to follow their favorite businesses and personalities on social media, it would make sense for them to follow them on whatever platform they switch to, and then get used to using the features that other platform has to offer. Idk or care which platforms will gain popularity from this, because after getting addicted to social media in general, I abstain from using it. Before I abstained from it, I got into using sites based on the fediverse (a collection of federated social media platforms), where anyone can join or create their own site based on the platform's FOSS. Because anyone can create their own site, this makes the fediverse a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows more freedom of choice. On the other hand, it allows more gatekeeping. It's one thing if an online personality has a following on these fediverse platforms (in fact, a number of them already do). However, if a number of greedy corporate bigwigs, who sell products by shilling politics and causes, came together to create their own Diaspora site (Diaspora being a FB alternative), it would lead to a site almost similar to FB emerging, which would later crash and burn just like FB. The only difference is, it would do significantly quicker because the users could switch to another Diaspora site.

While Twitter and YouTube have become garbage platforms as well, they don't get nearly as much attention from the mainstream media as FB does, but after it goes, those two will become bigger targets for media scrutiny (some might even advocate Google being broken up, which will never work, because it has too much influence). When that happens, alternatives like Mastodon (Twitter-like platform) and PeerTube (YouTube-like platform) will gradually gain more popularity. Again, idc either way if my prediction comes true or not, but I will be happy to see ALL Big Tech social media sites FINALLY become abolished.
 
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Along with all described on the first video, Fascistbook is also a playground for all religious sheep, including those working in the company. Atheist groups were deleted for no reason and were categorized as "dangerous entity", people banned for a long time simply for being atheists and on top of that hate speech, calls to genocide on people and racism are tolerated and not punished ever but if you say you're an atheist, that's instant 30 days ban! That's why I deactivated my account on Fascistbook and left. I know for a fact they don't delete accounts, despite the e-mails warning you about pending deletion chosen by you.
 
Along with all described on the first video, Fascistbook is also a playground for all religious sheep, including those working in the company. Atheist groups were deleted for no reason and were categorized as "dangerous entity", people banned for a long time simply for being atheists and on top of that hate speech, calls to genocide on people and racism are tolerated and not punished ever but if you say you're an atheist, that's instant 30 days ban! That's why I deactivated my account on Fascistbook and left. I know for a fact they don't delete accounts, despite the e-mails warning you about pending deletion chosen by you.

What's strange about Zuckerberg is he once identified himself as an atheist, now his religious views have completed a 180
 
The internet is fine if you use it just like using a library. But I figure out that most social media sites, including Facebook, are awful.

The problem is, these social sites keep rising. Facebook, Twitter was years ago. Today, in addition to Facebook, we have TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat, and Whatsapp groups. Should Facebook dies, its competitors will rise and replace FB, they could be worse than FB.
 
The internet is fine if you use it just like using a library. But I figure out that most social media sites, including Facebook, are awful.

The problem is, these social sites keep rising. Facebook, Twitter was years ago. Today, in addition to Facebook, we have TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat, and Whatsapp groups. Should Facebook dies, its competitors will rise and replace FB, they could be worse than FB.

I can say "Let's make Big Tech uneconomical", but VERY few people on here will actually stand behind that and make it happen. I've said numerous times before that we NEED legitimate replacements for Big Tech, and I still don't have anyone 100% on board with helping me make that a reality.
 

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