I've been tossed into a Facebook dungeon cell exactly once in my social media career, for poking fun at a comment - and at myself - by pointing out a grammatical error.
As you know, I am going through this right now. FB continues to remove posts including ones where I asked for prayers for my grandsons both after they were moved to a new foster home and heart surgery for my youngest grandson. I had to ask another member of the group to post the good news about how the operation turned out because I had been blocked by FB for several days for making posts which they considered to not meet their "community standards". What I find Orwellian about the whole situation is that when you appeal, you are never told exactly what you did wrong. They even considered spam a post where I encouraged others to contribute to NR. When I appeal, I'm told in so many words that they are understaffed and probably no one will ever do anything about it but I should continue to put my trust in Zuckerberg's almighty algorithms (blessed be his Name!). Add to this the news that Zuckerberg wants to cut staff and you've got a situation where it's truly kafkaesque.
There are people who believe Facebook is on the path to becoming the next AOL, and stuff like this supports that belief.
A good alternate needs to emerge, for those of us who FB's particular form. MeWe exists, but its notion of subscription revenue instead of ad revenue is going to keep it from being that alternate.
You might almost think FB has a death wish. I mean - what company wishing to expand its customer base would intentionally prevent people from using its product, over the stupidest things and often with no explanation at all?
On a Physics FB page yesterday I asked a person whose name was literally written in Greek if his first name was Panos, he replied yes, and we started to chat. He is an astrophysics major at Uni on Crete. I asked him if all the damage from the German bombing of Crete in WW II had been repaired, and he said yes, but there was a bomb that fell on a church that failed to explode. See the interesting stuff that resulted from your posting of the Nazi eagle?😁
– Section 230 does NOT apply, time for UTILITY status
1)
In 1992, a small group of netadmins and programmers from large companies (telco, computer, etc…) were struggling to create a common communications format.
Mainframes/Midframes/growing PCs were all interconnected, yet impossible to easily use by humans for ‘inter-contact’. At this time CERN blessed us with the early webserver, and Mozilla the browser.
Within months of this a few of us created a format to scroll a webpage full of posts with a submit box at the bottom which accepted not only text but URLs for audio/video. (later changed SUBMIT --> CHAT)
Chatrooms (near-realtime conversations) gave rise to the roots of social media. It was a simple, fast, efficient way to converse. It also meant you had to stand for what you said in very short order. Unlike the SINGLE ORATION of Faceplant and Twaddle; response was near-instant; content was purged regularly (unless you had your own room – free at the time) and the ‘get real’ factor was much higher.
The usage amazed its creators (at that time novel ideas rose/fell within months) and most sites had user-ship that grew by 10s of thousands per month. We gave the code away FREE, we wanted to share. Users triggered the ideas of BLOCKing, WHISPERing, Private rooms, and in general were far better behaved.
2)
Given all that; todays asocial media SERVICE, is a travesty. IT needs to be managed as a Utility for a variety of reasons, most importantly for the reason of todays article. RECOURSE is central to a functioning service, and while I say this (choking on a good cup of coffee) a way for users to have recourse to Fplant jail, Twaddle-bans, and such must exist in the manner of a Public Utility Commission.
If a service takes an action it notifies you (w/case number) and submits said number to the PUC.
WHERE YOU can DISPUTE it.
-The service must maintain staff and response times to address inquiries and findings
-The service must put forth a cogent case for a user restriction
- The service must make its processes (algorithms, business practices) available for review
- Poor performance under disputes (see below) means marks against the service that affect its ability to block others, and at certain levels result in HEFTY fines
Users can:
- dispute a ban, having done so the BAN is SUSPENDED during review by direction of the PUC
- If the BAN is found reasonable its held for an accpetable period of time, and revoked
- IF found UNREASONABLE the ban is rescinded, the user is assigned a redress number ...and
the service itself acquires a hit against their standing. (see above)
WE all know the ISSUES with government agencies, BUT it give users a fighting approach to deal with tyrannies and as often happens forces those services to setup effective self management over time.
I'm very suspicious of government remedies to the problems with sites such as Facebook. The solution we'd like to see never materializes as envisioned, regulatory capture happens, and remedies end up working against as often as for. Sure, there'll be a veneer of "better," but after watching AOL implode and FB in decline, I think it far better that these things sort themselves organically.
Please don't interpret my suggestion as any approval of govt processes, in this case (like amoeba moving away from a low voltage on a sample plate) the presence of such a system incentivizes the industry to fix itself.
The only benefit i see is starting a standard of recourse to deal with tryanical children who have neither the wisdom or experience to sort our valid concerns. Complex human systems like this need some catalyst to move off '0', and there is also a certain amount of logic seeing the unjustified 'protection' of 230 disappear and the fear of regulation putting a burr under their saddle.
30 years of Cybersecurity taught me that data privacy and protection was slow to come w/o similar gestalts, beat the daylights out of uselessly arguing the logic of preventative measures, and having to wait for the 'cost' of breaches forcing sadder-but-wiser measures.
I haven't been on FB for over 2 years. Only thing I miss is seeing photos of people I don't see a lot. I am on IG, again mostly for the pics. this is why I have a like-minded group on MeWe and look at Substack. I have most of the other outlets as email notifications - Breitbart, The Epoch Times and the Daily Wire. Even IG has pop ups about my posts are similar to others that were not allowed due to language (ex.] Joe Biden is a moron). I change them to use much lofty words implying the same meaning and it goes through no problem.
"Government wants to control information and control language because that's the way you control thought."
Damn, was Carlin ahead of his time or what? Always was one of my heroes. He was right of course, but could he have foreseen the impact of social media in 2022? Maybe so. I would love to be able to hear his thoughts about the Bizarro world we live in now, where one can become a pariah for stating that a man can't get pregnant.
As you know, I am going through this right now. FB continues to remove posts including ones where I asked for prayers for my grandsons both after they were moved to a new foster home and heart surgery for my youngest grandson. I had to ask another member of the group to post the good news about how the operation turned out because I had been blocked by FB for several days for making posts which they considered to not meet their "community standards". What I find Orwellian about the whole situation is that when you appeal, you are never told exactly what you did wrong. They even considered spam a post where I encouraged others to contribute to NR. When I appeal, I'm told in so many words that they are understaffed and probably no one will ever do anything about it but I should continue to put my trust in Zuckerberg's almighty algorithms (blessed be his Name!). Add to this the news that Zuckerberg wants to cut staff and you've got a situation where it's truly kafkaesque.
There are people who believe Facebook is on the path to becoming the next AOL, and stuff like this supports that belief.
A good alternate needs to emerge, for those of us who FB's particular form. MeWe exists, but its notion of subscription revenue instead of ad revenue is going to keep it from being that alternate.
You might almost think FB has a death wish. I mean - what company wishing to expand its customer base would intentionally prevent people from using its product, over the stupidest things and often with no explanation at all?
On a Physics FB page yesterday I asked a person whose name was literally written in Greek if his first name was Panos, he replied yes, and we started to chat. He is an astrophysics major at Uni on Crete. I asked him if all the damage from the German bombing of Crete in WW II had been repaired, and he said yes, but there was a bomb that fell on a church that failed to explode. See the interesting stuff that resulted from your posting of the Nazi eagle?😁
TWO items:
– the early days of social media
– Section 230 does NOT apply, time for UTILITY status
1)
In 1992, a small group of netadmins and programmers from large companies (telco, computer, etc…) were struggling to create a common communications format.
Mainframes/Midframes/growing PCs were all interconnected, yet impossible to easily use by humans for ‘inter-contact’. At this time CERN blessed us with the early webserver, and Mozilla the browser.
Within months of this a few of us created a format to scroll a webpage full of posts with a submit box at the bottom which accepted not only text but URLs for audio/video. (later changed SUBMIT --> CHAT)
Chatrooms (near-realtime conversations) gave rise to the roots of social media. It was a simple, fast, efficient way to converse. It also meant you had to stand for what you said in very short order. Unlike the SINGLE ORATION of Faceplant and Twaddle; response was near-instant; content was purged regularly (unless you had your own room – free at the time) and the ‘get real’ factor was much higher.
The usage amazed its creators (at that time novel ideas rose/fell within months) and most sites had user-ship that grew by 10s of thousands per month. We gave the code away FREE, we wanted to share. Users triggered the ideas of BLOCKing, WHISPERing, Private rooms, and in general were far better behaved.
2)
Given all that; todays asocial media SERVICE, is a travesty. IT needs to be managed as a Utility for a variety of reasons, most importantly for the reason of todays article. RECOURSE is central to a functioning service, and while I say this (choking on a good cup of coffee) a way for users to have recourse to Fplant jail, Twaddle-bans, and such must exist in the manner of a Public Utility Commission.
If a service takes an action it notifies you (w/case number) and submits said number to the PUC.
WHERE YOU can DISPUTE it.
-The service must maintain staff and response times to address inquiries and findings
-The service must put forth a cogent case for a user restriction
- The service must make its processes (algorithms, business practices) available for review
- Poor performance under disputes (see below) means marks against the service that affect its ability to block others, and at certain levels result in HEFTY fines
Users can:
- dispute a ban, having done so the BAN is SUSPENDED during review by direction of the PUC
- If the BAN is found reasonable its held for an accpetable period of time, and revoked
- IF found UNREASONABLE the ban is rescinded, the user is assigned a redress number ...and
the service itself acquires a hit against their standing. (see above)
WE all know the ISSUES with government agencies, BUT it give users a fighting approach to deal with tyrannies and as often happens forces those services to setup effective self management over time.
I'm very suspicious of government remedies to the problems with sites such as Facebook. The solution we'd like to see never materializes as envisioned, regulatory capture happens, and remedies end up working against as often as for. Sure, there'll be a veneer of "better," but after watching AOL implode and FB in decline, I think it far better that these things sort themselves organically.
Please don't interpret my suggestion as any approval of govt processes, in this case (like amoeba moving away from a low voltage on a sample plate) the presence of such a system incentivizes the industry to fix itself.
The only benefit i see is starting a standard of recourse to deal with tryanical children who have neither the wisdom or experience to sort our valid concerns. Complex human systems like this need some catalyst to move off '0', and there is also a certain amount of logic seeing the unjustified 'protection' of 230 disappear and the fear of regulation putting a burr under their saddle.
30 years of Cybersecurity taught me that data privacy and protection was slow to come w/o similar gestalts, beat the daylights out of uselessly arguing the logic of preventative measures, and having to wait for the 'cost' of breaches forcing sadder-but-wiser measures.
I haven't been on FB for over 2 years. Only thing I miss is seeing photos of people I don't see a lot. I am on IG, again mostly for the pics. this is why I have a like-minded group on MeWe and look at Substack. I have most of the other outlets as email notifications - Breitbart, The Epoch Times and the Daily Wire. Even IG has pop ups about my posts are similar to others that were not allowed due to language (ex.] Joe Biden is a moron). I change them to use much lofty words implying the same meaning and it goes through no problem.
"Government wants to control information and control language because that's the way you control thought."
Damn, was Carlin ahead of his time or what? Always was one of my heroes. He was right of course, but could he have foreseen the impact of social media in 2022? Maybe so. I would love to be able to hear his thoughts about the Bizarro world we live in now, where one can become a pariah for stating that a man can't get pregnant.
It would be great to have Carlin around now, but he'd be facing the same wrath that such as Chappelle faced.