Ridiculous Things You Read On Facebook

[Giff]

It's clickbait. You should ignore it as you'd ignore those infernal fucking clickthru slideshows which suck up your data usage.

Hey, it's the 10 Dumbest Slideshows Ever Slideshow!" Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Fuck off.

It's worse than just clicking-thru. You're straight-up giving data about yourself when you fill out the quizzes. Seriously shocks me that people don't realize that these aren't put together just for their personal entertainment.

It shocks me that you think people don't realize this is just for their personal entertainment. What do you think they think it really means?

[Scottie]

It shocks me that you think people don't realize this is just for their personal entertainment.

You might want to re-read that to which you responded.

[The Sybian]

Do people actually think that these Buzzfeed surveys that are supposed to tell you something about yourself (What state should you live in?, What kind of beer are you?, What Saved by the Bell character are you?) are like scientifically accurate or something?

" Oh my God...I can't believe I'm Dwight Schrute! So embarrassing!"

"Yup...Hawaii. I knew it!"

"Carrie Underwood? I'm way more Shania Twain!"

Like, what the fuck are you doing? Say something. Just once in your life, try saying one fucking thing. One thing.

OMG, I am so sick of seeing those stupid updates. I am Joe from Bing Bang Theory! I knew I'd be Joe! WTF is the point? Right, there is no point. Do people choose to post their result, or does it automatically announce it to the world?

While I am at it, is there anyway for ZMan to turn off the updates every time he checks the score of an Islanders game?

[Brontoburglar]

Oh you can completely take those quizzes and not share your results. I'll do them to mess with the algorithms sometimes. (You can find the patterns/what the script is very quickly, so I will see what random answers will get you)

[Scottie]

Oh you can completely take those quizzes and not share your results . . .

. . . with your buddies. But you're still creating and building upon data that is associated specifically with you; data that you can't see, data that is both stored and mined.

[Brontoburglar]

Oh you can completely take those quizzes and not share your results . . .

. . . with your buddies. But you're still creating and building upon data that is associated specifically with you; data that you can't see, data that is both stored and mined.

You act like this is my first rodeo!

[Scottie]

Oh you can completely take those quizzes and not share your results . . .

. . . with your buddies. But you're still creating and building upon data that is associated specifically with you; data that you can't see, data that is both stored and mined.

You act like this is my first rodeo!

Oh, no, not at all. I know that you are very well aware how and why sites do what they do and that "free" is an illusion. Apologies to you if I implied otherwise. I was merely continuing the thought upon which PDX and I were riffing; that "people don't realize", although a broad sweeping generalization, is for the most part remarkably and disturbingly accurate. The average internet user simply isn't aware that a site like Facebook isn't really giving away a free service and that the user is the product. And it is surprising how often those people turn out to be folks who should be able to identify that but don't.

[The Sybian]

Oh, no, not at all. I know that you are very well aware how and why sites do what they do and that "free" is an illusion. Apologies to you if I implied otherwise. I was merely continuing the thought upon which PDX and I were riffing; that "people don't realize", although a broad sweeping generalization, is for the most part remarkably and disturbingly accurate. The average internet user simply isn't aware that a site like Facebook isn't really giving away a free service and that the user is the product. And it is surprising how often those people turn out to be folks who should be able to identify that but don't.

Holy shit, Facebook is the Matrix, and I took the red pill! Or is it the blue pill? I rarely post updates and occasionally comment, but I am amazed by the advertising. If you even look at something on amazon, an ad for that item, or something similar will appear on FB ads. I bought something in a store, and FB just knows! That threw me. I know they have sophisticated data mining software, but sometimes it is outright scary.

[Scottie]

As I said, you don't even need a FB account. Take just about any particular site; some are far worse than others so I'll give you an average example.

Go to http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... ld/283839/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just a normal looking web page, right?

Look at the source code for the home page. You can paste this into a browser's location bar:

view-source:http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... ld/283839/

Or simply right-click, view source. Then CTRL+F to bring up the "find" search function for text within that page. Type "facebook" and count the instances it shows up in the page's code. Facebook shows up 20 times in that one story's page source alone. And that's just what you see; a lot of it (worse) is embedded in scripting which calls server-side functions to run. You do not see this. But it sees you.

See the problem? See why I call Facebook the worst (or most successful) virus in internet history?

That's why I have Facebook blocked at every possible level.

ETA: The other thing is that some (very common) internet pages can be making as many as two dozen or more page requests (repeatedly) to Facebook when you think you are loading a single web page. Block it and you are making 95% less data requests. Do you have a data plan on your device or via your ISP? If you do, you should know that Facebook is devouring it whether you know it or not.

[Shirley]

Oh, no, not at all. I know that you are very well aware how and why sites do what they do and that "free" is an illusion. Apologies to you if I implied otherwise. I was merely continuing the thought upon which PDX and I were riffing; that "people don't realize", although a broad sweeping generalization, is for the most part remarkably and disturbingly accurate. The average internet user simply isn't aware that a site like Facebook isn't really giving away a free service and that the user is the product. And it is surprising how often those people turn out to be folks who should be able to identify that but don't.

Holy shit, Facebook is the Matrix, and I took the red pill! Or is it the blue pill? I rarely post updates and occasionally comment, but I am amazed by the advertising. If you even look at something on amazon, an ad for that item, or something similar will appear on FB ads. I bought something in a store, and FB just knows! That threw me. I know they have sophisticated data mining software, but sometimes it is outright scary.

In that case, it's Amazon following you around, not Facebook. There are countless number of advertising networks that use cookies to track your web usage. It's very difficult to get out of it.

Even if you try the big guns, like what Scottie does with Facebook, it probably breaks a lot of pages. Some sites simply don't load if the various ad links in the html or JS don't work.

[Johnnie]

Every time I switch up my VPN I notice the ads switch up too. I'll look at the Ragnar website once and suddenly every ad on every page is Ragnar oriented. If I decide to look at an Amazon product then the next time that book or that authors book is in the next webpage I look at. Or if I forget to turn on my VPN, then everything is in German. The ads are relentless.

[Scottie]

In that case, it's Amazon following you around, not Facebook. There are countless number of advertising networks that use cookies to track your web usage. It's very difficult to get out of it.

Even if you try the big guns, like what Scottie does with Facebook, it probably breaks a lot of pages. Some sites simply don't load if the various ad links in the html or JS don't work.

Yeah. It's not that the site page fails to load as much as it is the embedded Facebook pages within those pages that fail to load (or rather are prohibited from loading as you've told your browser you already have that info at 127.0.0.1 localhost) and making a bloody mess of the page you want. It does render some sites unreadable. Here is an example I recently took of Sun News Network being obliterated by a Facebook embed:



And that is just one Facebook embed. Some sites' pages have multiple Facebook embeds which completely destroy the site itself. CTV News in Canada is a good example of that; multiple embedded Facebook "comment on this" pages that should be tiny text fields but turn into gigantic grey blocks. Terrible mess. Terrible programming!

And Dave is right . . . some of those tracking cookies'n'widgets (ie - Amazon, Facebook, eBay, and particularly Google) follow you everywhere you go. Usually simultaneously and ceaselessly.

[Giff]

It shocks me that you think people don't realize this is just for their personal entertainment.

You might want to re-read that to which you responded.

Carry on.

[The Sybian]

Does Facebook, Amazon and the others pay the websites to allow them to embed, or is this more like hacking that they invade the websites. I am all for keeping governments and regulations out of the internet, but thi shit is really getting ridiculous.

[Scottie]

Facebook doesn't pay to be on other sites. They wormed their way into the internet by supplying the bandwidth for sites to have likes and comments and interactive shit without having to host it all on their own corporate sites. In return, Facebook gets staggering amounts of user data from those corporate pages. Colossal. You would be bowled over by just how much is compiled on you, about you, from you, for you. Or can be. How many keystrokes, clicks, visits, likes, streams, downloads, local and remote server requests, whatever, do you make every day? Every week? Every year? Do the math; it's astronomic.

Remember that Jon Stewart joke about CNN? "Why do I have to follow CNN on Facebook? Why can't I follow CNN on . . . CNN???" And that's amusing enough but he doesn't give you the answer; CNN (and countless other sites) is dumping a heap of user activity to their Facebook page because if Facebook handles the traffic then that's a few million bandwidth hits that CNN doesn't have to take every day yet people still think they are using CNN. Again, do the math. Every day becomes every week becomes every year becomes a phenomenally big number. And big bandwidth gets expensive.

Facebook doesn't do this for benevolent or philanthropic reasons. The users are the product. They sell the product. For profit. Lots of it. It is a good business model. You don't supply an actual product (other than a cheap user interface which, like everything else about Facebook, is very probably stolen code or built on stolen code), you collect user data, mislead your users about the extent to which you use it, and then mine the fuck out of it for profit. Think about this . . . what other purpose does running Facebook as a business actually serve? None. "Oh, hey, the Facebook IPO was for a guhzillion dollars! And it's $70 a share on NASDAQ right now!" And that's exactly my point. You think a company becomes that valuable because they give away an internet "social media" service for free?

It's like the Savers (Value Village) thrift store. They get recognition as a charity because they give the absolute minimum possible to charity (in Canada about 0.3% of any profit after all the rent and bills and salaries are paid). What is the product? Well, they don't manufacture anything, they don't buy and then re-sell anything. Nope. People show up by the truck loads and drop off free items to them to which they assign a price and then sell it. Good business model, right? All you have to do is sell other peoples' stuff that they willingly gave you while they were under the impression you were something rather different than you really are.

For years now I've been telling people that Facebook is not some "free service" you use to keep in touch with your buddies and to use as an online diary. If a business gave away its product for free it would have a business life expectancy of zero. And people either didn't want to hear this or thought I was some sort of kook. Fine, I'd say, go ahead. But go to a site like CTV.ca and look at the source code. On each page there are dozens of code lines similar to this:

tracking ref: https://www.facebook.com/ctv/app_571363346254183" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" class="" target="_blank" data-corp-click-tracking='300_poi_home' data-corp-serve-tracking='true' return:hidden

Facebook does not publicly advertise what they are doing to users. That code (above) is from a Canadian television news service. Nobody knows that by visiting CTV's site they are being tracked by Facebook (and multiple instances at that); it would never cross their minds. Your average internet user has NO idea how pervasive and how intrusive and how fucking gigantic Facebook's clandestine stealth data gathering really is.

I get a kick out of people saying "Oh, well, Facebook has less and less users now and a lot of what they count as users are really bots and inactive accounts and soon it will fade as a trend like Instant Messaging faded". Not important. Completely looking at it wrong. That doesn't matter. This is a fallacy and would only hold true if people actively posting shit on Facebook was of any relevance. It isn't. The data gathering aspect is alive and well and not going anywhere. And it is far far far larger than you can imagine.

This merely scratches the surface of why I have Facebook blocked right across the map.

[Sabo]

I'm not on Facebook, but I saw this pic on Twitter and thought I'd share.

[Scottie]

Every time I see a screencap of silliness from Facebook the user pics are pixelated and the names are blacked out in pretty much the same way. What's up with that? There's nothing remotely illegal about screencapping from that site.

[The Sybian]

I'm not on Facebook, but I saw this pic on Twitter and thought I'd share.

Just like I have been telling J-Lo, Occam's Razor proves G-d controls everything. G-d is Great is a much more concise and easily grasped concept than all of the science and facts Professor Pixelated was spewing. Coincidentally, I saw Ray "Banana Man" Comfort's book called something to the effect of "Knowing G-d, Scientific Proof of G-d's Existence." I was so tempted to buy it because I have to see his logic and evidence, which I am sure you could drive a truck through. I am also tempted to read his book You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics.

Scottie, thanks for the explanation. In the end, what they are doing is selling info for targeted marketing, right? It does scare me that this info is stored somewhere and will inevitably be hacked.

[Scottie]

You're welcome, Syb. But you really shouldn't worry about someone stealing information from Facebook as much as you should worry about the fact that Facebook is stealing information from you with no accountability whatsoever for what they do with your data. It would be somewhat naive to think it is merely for "targeted marketing" purposes. If I had that amount of personal data, targeted marketing would be merely part of my business.

[Jerloma]

So what would you use it for then? Well, not you specifically but what's the worst case scenario that you envision here with FB?

[howard]

So what would you use it for then? Well, not you specifically but what's the worst case scenario that you envision here with FB?

Loss of privacy actively changes the behavior, and the thought processes of people. Whether that privacy is surrendered willingly or stolen, whether the agent watching you is a malevolent government or a malevolent group of corporations intent on manipulating thought and behavior to increase their profits.

Sadly, the right to privacy is so taken for granted, few notice the loss, much less consider how the loss affects them. I am astonished at how severely the condition of privacy has degraded in just a few years, with widespread oblivion.

[Scottie]

So what would you use it for then? Well, not you specifically but what's the worst case scenario that you envision here with FB?

Power. Social engineering. Political and economic determination/manipulation. Big Brother. Various levels of global-scale espionage, intrusion. None of it benevolent. All of which is happening, by the way. When one considers the significance of that much data on that much of a population, "targeted marketing" becomes a side business.

It never ceases to amaze me how few people seem to know how heavily they are being mined. Barely over 0% is a fair estimate. Almost always willingly. So very few do anything to prevent it. One of the all-time funniest examples of this I saw a year or two ago. This "free man" type anti-government group that felt the United States government was too intrusive in the lives of citizens, that believed the government knew far more than they needed to know about people's lifestyles, purchasing habits, social history, etc etc etc . . . was operating entirely via a Facebook group. Well played, Cletii.

[Rush2112]

My boss had a cold a couple weeks ago and I recommended that he make some green chile stew. He got a call the other day that the chile he bought was being recalled due to a listeria scare. Mined using his frequent shopper card.

[The Sybian]

I still maintain Amazon is the worst. I recently read Contortionists Handbook. I only posted it in the Swamp and discussed it on my hotmail account. Every amazon ad is for that book or one by another author.

ETA: Just figured it out. I posted a link to a picture of the book cover from Amazon, so they obviously know I searched the page. Never mind, carry on.

[P.D.X.]

It's great how you can purchase something and then get ads for that same thing everywhere you go. Way to use your brains, programmers.

[Scottie]

I still maintain Amazon is the worst. I recently read Contortionists Handbook. I only posted it in the Swamp and discussed it on my hotmail account. Every amazon ad is for that book or one by another author.

ETA: Just figured it out. I posted a link to a picture of the book cover from Amazon, so they obviously know I searched the page. Never mind, carry on.

Amazon really can't even be compared to Facebook. You'll never see tracking embeds from Amazon written into millions of websites that contain remote functions deliberately disguised and hidden. Amazon is a good example of targeted marketing, in fact.

Everyone should try this one experiment. Just once. Make a list, or make note, of the ten or twenty or fifty sites (excluding this one) that you visit most often. Or the ten, twenty, however many sites that you think are the most popular out there. On each, right-click and look at the source code. Search the source code for "Facebook". Typically you'll find at least a dozen instances on any given page. Look at all the various Facebook functions and calls and references in the code. Ask yourself why it's all there. Why is it all there on pages that don't even appear to have any connection to Facebook whatsoever?

Here's a great example. This is from today's CNN story about the Craigslist girl that claims to be a serial killer. There are (as usual) multiple instances of Facebook in CNN's code. This line stands out:

<!--
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js"></script>
-->

That is javascript that is running behind the scenes. It is running script from the server side, not CNN's or your ISP's server but rather from a Facebook farm to your computer/device, and you won't see that javascript code in the source code in which you found it. It is running a script from "connect.facebook.net". Good luck visiting that, you can't. You won't see the effects on the website you load; won't even know it is there. But you are, make no mistake, feeding it and it is not just a simple one-time ping back of data, it is dynamic, active and on-going, often after you've long since left that CNN story. So what does it do? One of the more disconcerting aspects is that you will never know exactly what it does. But you can identify most of what it does and it isn't good. Load:

http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js

. . . in to a browser and you'll see the code itself. (Or you can click this to see it.) It's huge and is making a tremendous number of different requests and performing a number of different functions. The keyword "tracking" shows up over a dozen times by itself and that doesn't scratch the surface of tracking functions that are not blatantly named "tracking". It is staggering how much is in there and how much it does (or can do). Consider that all of that gigantic amount of code from Facebook is embedded in just ONE SMALL LINE of code hidden in the CNN source code; one line of many lines calling Facebook functions. And that is just what you can see and it is massive. Make no mistake, what you cannot see is far more nefarious, far more disconcerting and far far far larger.

I liken reading source code to reading the ingredients labels on food. You wouldn't deliberately eat something every day if you knew it was that toxic, right?

[Johnnie]

Why does opening that link make a buzzing noise project from my monitor?

Hold on, I'm going to get a tinfoil hat. I'll be right back.

[Scottie]

Heh. It's a text version of the script; nothing will run. Quite safe, entirely so. It's a tinfoil-optional source code page!

[Johnnie]

Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 Billion And the deal could rise to $19 Billion. Holy crap.

They only paid $1 Billion for Instagram, comparatively.

I'm not liking this. I use the app over here in Europe because unlimited texting doesn't exist. Basically, he wants 450 million users cell phone numbers. Or wants to sell ads to them. Or whatever Facebook does.

One thing to note: The founder of WhatsApp, Brian Acton, was turned down by both Twitter and Facebook when looking for a job after leaving Yahoo in 2009. Now he's Oprah rich.

Fuckin' A I wish I went into coding out of high school.

[Pruitt]

Apparently underwater pyramids have been discovered!

An actor friend of mine buys any new age crap (and is also vehemently anti-vaccine). No one ever said actors were the brightest lights.

http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics. ... stigating/

While the Portuguese Navy still hasn’t determined the origins, many might question why this hasn’t been first reported on sooner than late 2012. Certainly the NOAA who studies volcanic activity in the area of the pyramid would have discovered the pyramid through sonar imaging and so forth since the area is heavily studied due to volcanic activity.

And inevitably...

Is this the sunken continent of Atlantis?

[Scottie]

<History Channel narrator guy>
Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that the existence of underwater pyramids is evidence that prehistoric Salukis had been genetically manipulated by extraterrestrials. Is it possible, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that hounds were once able to breathe water while they worked to fulfill the mysterious intergalactic instant messaging system of a Poseidon-like liquid space voyager and, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that all contemporary humans and puppies are either descendants or creations of those extraterrestrial beings who intended to land on Earth but sort of missed and hit the bottom of what is now known as the Atlantic Ocean?

[The Sybian]

<History Channel narrator guy>
Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that the existence of underwater pyramids is evidence that prehistoric Salukis had been genetically manipulated by extraterrestrials. Is it possible, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that hounds were once able to breathe water while they worked to fulfill the mysterious intergalactic instant messaging system of a Poseidon-like liquid space voyager and, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that all contemporary humans and puppies are either descendants or creations of those extraterrestrial beings who intended to land on Earth but sort of missed and hit the bottom of what is now known as the Atlantic Ocean?

That's complete bullshit. This clearly proves The Great Flood and Noah and shit.

[P.D.X.]

This is the second day in a row that I've woken up to see a fat grey squirrel eating the prayer flags that are hanging around the side of my deck. Before this I had no idea how they were mysteriously getting torn to pieces. Geez, I sure hope that he gets a belly ache. Jerk!

Not completely ridiculous but… Prayer flags. By a white girl living in California.

[Rush2112]

I find i more ridiculous that she wishing harm upon an animal that's eating something that came out of an animistic religion.

[The Sybian]

I find i more ridiculous that she wishing harm upon an animal that's eating something that came out of an animistic religion.

Wheels within wheels.

[cerrano]

I find i more ridiculous that she wishing harm upon an animal that's eating something that came out of an animistic religion.

Wheels within wheels.

WARPIG!

[govmentchedda]

Size the day

[The Sybian]

Size the day

That is closing in on Boom, Patents as my favorite. Love you, Cerrano and Chedda.

[govmentchedda]

Size the day

That is closing in on Boom, Patents as my favorite. Love you, Cerrano and Chedda.

Is that your analysis?

[The Sybian]

Size the day

That is closing in on Boom, Patents as my favorite. Love you, Cerrano and Chedda.

Is that your analysis?

Too soon. Ha!