The creepiness that is Facebook

[Elvis]

---

Zuck Fuckererberg.

This IPO scam is the maybe the best reason yet to have nothing to do with Facebook.

BOYCOTT FACEBOOK

[justdrew]

If anyone had asked ME, I coulda told 'em, facebook is at in plateau phase, and has no where really to go but down. The entire economy continues to dry up and blow away, thanks to the FOOLs at the top hording all the money. In such a climate, no growth is really possible let alone the EXPONENTIAL growth we're always told wall-street demands.

really, making a product to part rich fools from their money is the BEST thing anyone could do, so for that, I salute you fuckerberg o/

(but too bad the liberate money only goes to a different set of rich assholes)

[crikkett]

After hooking facebook to my phone I wasn't able to log in again at my laptop unless I identified people in photographs. That is very creepy, so I won't be logging in.

It's a shame because the phone interface is lousy.

[semper occultus]

Is not joining Facebook a sign you're a psychopath? Some employers and psychologists say staying away from social media is 'suspicious'

By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 22:44, 6 August 2012 | UPDATED: 10:00, 7 August 2012
www.dailymail.co.uk

..Facebook has become such a pervasive force in modern society that increasing numbers of employers, and even some psychologists, believe people who aren't on social networking sites are 'suspicious.'
The German magazine Der Taggspiegel went so far as to point out that accused theater shooter James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles.

On a more tangible level, Forbes.com reports that human resources departments across the country are becoming more wary of young job candidates who don't use the site.

The common concern among bosses is that a lack of Facebook could mean the applicant's account could be so full of red flags that it had to be deleted.

Slate.com tech reporter Farhad Manjoo wrote in an advice column that young people shouldn't date anyone who isn't on Facebook.
'If you’re of a certain age and you meet someone who you are about to go to bed with, and that person doesn’t have a Facebook page, you may be getting a false name. It could be some kind of red flag,' he says.
Manjoo points out that these judgements don't apply to older people who were already productive adults before social media became widespread.

The tech news site Slashdot summed up Der Taggspiegel's story about social networking as 'not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murderer.'

It points out that Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 people and an unborn child and wounding 58 others at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and Breivik, who murdered 77 people with a car bomb and mass shooting, did not use Facebook and had small online footprints.

Breivik used MySpace and Holmes was reportedly on the hookup site Adult Friend Finder.
Psychologist Christopher Moeller told the magazine that using Facebook has become a sign of having a healthy social network.

Psychologists have noted that Holmes, along with several noted mass murderers, have lacked any real friends.

And this is what the argument boils down to: It's the suspicion that not being on Facebook, which has become so normal among young adults, is a sign that you're abnormal and dysfunctional, or even dangerous, ways.

Read more:
Nach dem Attentat von Denver: Kein Facebook-Profil, kein Job-Angebot - Welt - Tagesspiegel
Forbes: Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.' - Forbes
Slate Magazine: Transcript: Facebook stalker: Should I tell a cheating guy¿s girlfriend that we hooked up?
Facebook Abstainers Could Be Labeled Suspicious - Slashdot

[tazmic]

Dark profiles, via cryptogon

“Another time, Losse cringed when she learned that a team of Facebook engineers was developing what they called “dark profiles” — pages for people who had not signed up for the service but who had been identified in posts by Facebook users. The dark profiles were not to be visible to ordinary users, Losse said, but if the person eventually signed up, Facebook would activate those latent links to other users.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ ... story.html

[jingofever]

This claim that people who are not on Facebook are potentially dangerous seems like a desperate attempt to scare people who have shunned the site into joining after the bad news about fake accounts, a plateauing user base, and weak performance on the stock market as a result. I'm surprised the article didn't wonder whether these psychopaths spend their time on Craigslist instead.

[brekin]

Facebook's 'dark side': study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... sfeed=true

Psychology paper finds Facebook and other social media offer platform for obsessions with self-image and shallow friendships

Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a "socially disruptive" narcissist, confirming the conclusions of many social media sceptics.

People who score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire had more friends on Facebook, tagged themselves more often and updated their newsfeeds more regularly.

The research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships.

The latest study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also found that narcissists responded more aggressively to derogatory comments made about them on the social networking site's public walls and changed their profile pictures more often.

A number of previous studies have linked narcissism with Facebook use, but this is some of the first evidence of a direct relationship between Facebook friends and the most "toxic" elements of narcissistic personality disorder.

Researchers at Western Illinois University studied the Facebook habits of 294 students, aged between 18 and 65, and measured two "socially disruptive" elements of narcissism – grandiose exhibitionism (GE) and entitlement/exploitativeness (EE).

GE includes ''self-absorption, vanity, superiority, and exhibitionistic tendencies" and people who score high on this aspect of narcissism need to be constantly at the centre of attention. They often say shocking things and inappropriately self-disclose because they cannot stand to be ignored or waste a chance of self-promotion.

The EE aspect includes "a sense of deserving respect and a willingness to manipulate and take advantage of others".

The research revealed that the higher someone scored on aspects of GE, the greater the number of friends they had on Facebook, with some amassing more than 800.

Those scoring highly on EE and GG were also more likely to accept friend requests from strangers and seek social support, but less likely to provide it, according to the research.

Carol Craig, a social scientist and chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being, said young people in Britain were becoming increasingly narcissistic and Facebook provided a platform for the disorder.

"The way that children are being educated is focussing more and more on the importance of self esteem – on how you are seen in the eyes of others. This method of teaching has been imported from the US and is 'all about me'.
"Facebook provides a platform for people to self-promote by changing profile pictures and showing how many hundreds of friends you have. I know of some who have more than 1,000."

Dr Viv Vignoles, senior lecturer in social psychology at Sussex University, said there was "clear evidence" from studies in America that college students were becoming increasingly narcissistic.
But he added: "Whether the same is true of non-college students or of young people in other countries, such as the UK, remains an open question, as far as I know.

"Without understanding the causes underlying the historical change in US college students, we do not know whether these causes are factors that are relatively specific to American culture, such as the political focus on increasing self-esteem in the late 80s and early 90s or whether they are factors that are more general, for example new technologies such as mobile phones and Facebook."

Vignoles said the correlational nature of the latest study meant it was difficult to be certain whether individual differences in narcissism led to certain patterns of Facebook behaviour, whether patterns of Facebook behaviour led to individual differences in narcissism, or a bit of both.

Christopher Carpenter, who ran the study, said: "In general, the 'dark side' of Facebook requires more research in order to better understand Facebook's socially beneficial and harmful aspects in order to enhance the former and curtail the latter.

"If Facebook is to be a place where people go to repair their damaged ego and seek social support, it is vitally important to discover the potentially negative communication one might find on Facebook and the kinds of people likely to engage in them. Ideally, people will engage in pro-social Facebooking rather than anti-social me-booking."

[Weather Balloons]

Foursquare-Type Check-In Service Facedeals Uses Your Facebook “Like” History to Sweeten the Deal

Facedeals may still only be in its trial period, but the Foursquare-like deals program that uses facial-recognition software to check you in on Facebook when you enter participating businessed is sure to incite all manner of responses when it's rolled out for the general user.

Relying on the preauthorization of its proprietary app via your Facebook profile, Facedeals maps the current physical appearance of your face by scanning your most recently tagged photos. When you enter a participating business, a custom-developed Facedeals camera will scan your face and automatically check you in. Then Facedeals will send personalized deals and discounts, based on your Facebook "like" history, directly to your smartphone.

The standalone Facedeals cameras have been developed around open source—including Raspberry Pi, Arduino, OpenCV, and the Facebook Graph API—and can be configured remotely and require only a standard 110 volt wall outlet and a wifi connection.

Facedeals, as mentioned earlier, is still being tested and tweaked by Red Pepper Land (the ad agency/invention lab pioneering the project) and is seeking further funding.

[beeline]

Link

German official: Facebook must delete faces
The Associated Press

BERLIN - A German data protection official called Wednesday for social networking site Facebook to delete biometric profiles of people stored without their explicit consent, saying they breach European privacy rules.

In other words, he wants Facebook to delete users' faces from its databases.

Johannes Caspar, head of the Hamburg office for data protection, said talks with Facebook to bring its business practices in line with German and European Union privacy rules had failed. Caspar said in a statement that he is now re-opening a stalled probe of the Menlo Park, California-based company "in order to find a legally sound solution with regard to the use of biometric data."

Caspar is highly critical of Facebook's photo tagging feature, which asks users to attach the names of people in pictures they have uploaded. Facebook then uses the unique facial characteristics in each picture to automatically identify the same person in other photographs on its site. Users can opt out of the service, but Caspar wants them to have to opt in.

"Facebook will be obliged to delete this data unless it obtains approval by all concerned users," he said, adding that "due to the immense potential of misuses of biometric data the explicit consent is a legal requirement for the collecting and processing of biometric data."

Facebook responded with a statement saying that it believes the photo tagging feature "is fully compliant with EU data protection laws."

[MayDay]

The research revealed that the higher someone scored on aspects of GE, the greater the number of friends they had on Facebook, with some amassing more than 800.[/b]

Those scoring highly on EE and GG were also more likely to accept friend requests from strangers and seek social support, but less likely to provide it, according to the research.

The hardest part of being Occupy Everywhere on fb was sifting through endless friend requests to be sure I was making the right connections. I quickly realized that accounts with Guy Fawkes masks were best left undealt with- I clicked the 'not now' option rather than 'confirm friendship' in these annoyingly frequent cases. I asked very few people to be my friend, mostly people I've met or heard of. I had some interesting conversations- a tipsy late-night im session with a playful, if somewhat dark Adam Parfrey of Feral House, correspondences with Joan d' Arc of Paranoia magazine, the random connections with musicians I've long adored.

I didn't take the whole thing too seriously (accept in terms of the actual content shared through and on my page, which I swear I tried my best to keep relevant, accurate, and to the benefit of the movement (we all make mistakes sometimes. I apologize if I offended anyone). For awhile I fancied only accepting requests from gorgeous young men (irreverent and self-mocking as ever), fully aware that many users of the site behave in this manner as a matter of course, and knowing in the back of my mind that I would soon be finished with fb. I was often discouraged by the content my so-called friends were posting, unable to overlook the narcissism and shallow self obsession prevalent on the site. It's as if the whole thing was set up to increase these negative aspects of our present society. As my partner often says (also not an fb user), it's the commodification of friendship, turning relationships into contests to see who can post cooler pictures of what they did this weekend. I've heard stories of people who briefly attend social events just so they can say they were there on their fb page.

I amassed over three thousand 'friends' in just a few months, between late Sept. '11 and late February '12, at which point my profile became inaccessible- facebook directed me to identify photos of random 'friends' in order to prove that I was actually the person named Occupy Everywhere (why they feel the need to remain subtle at this point confounds me). This was highly frustrating as I was just on the verge of deleting my profile when they locked me out. I randomly tried to log into the site every now and then with no luck, until one day in mid July when quite by dumb luck I was able to accurately match all of the names provided in a multiple choice format with the random photos displayed by fb.

You can be sure I was curious by what mechanism these photos were chosen- why does my moderately radical cousin Bill, with whom I've recently visited following a 7 year separation, appear in the line-up? Are these photos of of people who are at present highly active within local Occupy groups? Was this line-up the result of some indiscernible algorithm, or was this laid out by some hostile human party? I quickly deactivated my account, permanently (it can be done, although it's said they keep your info in their databases permanently), and I will not be returning to the site.

I've often half jokingly lamented to my real friends that facebook, smartphones, and google would be the last wedge between myself and society, since I refuse to use any of them, a decision based on that lost concept once referred to as 'principles'. And not to mention the sick feeling I get in my gut when I consider the true nature, the long term implications for society, of any one of these so called necessities. A certain vertigo wells up in me, not unlike what one experiences when one becomes a bit over submerged in the silent contemplation of Eternity. Try explaining that one to a potential employer.

Will the day come when choosing privacy over 'normalcy' actually equates to being an anti-social psychopath in the minds of most people? I personally feel that this culture is doomed to fail well before this would come to pass. War, famine, pestilence and death, and we brought it on ourselves- not through the agency of some angry old repressed and misogynistic Father in Heaven, but by our own arrogance, greed, and complicity.

[Elvis]

---

MayDay, that's really interesting.

I'm really digging not being on Facebook. I always did insist on being "different" and the pressure to join Facebook is like being corralled into a pen. I don't even have a cell phone. Websites are asking me to "Log into Facebook so we can learn more about your interests." Thanks, but no thanks.

Along these same lines, Firefox was locking up so I just installed the Google Chrome browser. Google wants me to "sign in" to their browser ("See what you're missing!"). Thanks, but no thanks.

I don't like the way Google+ and Facebook etc. want to organize your life and personality. Thanks but no thanks. I can handle it.

[Elvis]

---

Found this while surfing:

Facebook issues 'mental health' warning to CLG editor over posts

September 10, 2012 by legitgov

ShareThis
Facebook issues 'mental health' warning to CLG editor over posts --'You're receiving this message because a friend is concerned about something you posted on Facebook.'

By Lori Price, http://www.legitgov.org/ 11 Sep 2012

On Monday, I received a 'substance abuse' warning email from Facebook. The CLG Facebook page has over 4,200 'likes' and frequently includes '9/11 inside job' commentary. A trace of the email header indicates that the email was actually from Facebook. The email is posted below. [Hey, Zuckerberg: I don't need 'Psychology Today.' I need a real investigation into the pre-9/11 put options, why Building 7 fell after the BBC reported its collapse following the command by 'Lucky' Larry Silverstein to 'pull' it.]

This is not my first tango with Facebook. In February, I was forced to change my profile name. Facebook Disables CLG Editor's Account Name, Claiming It Is 'Illegitimate' --'The name you entered was not approved by our system.' 17 Feb 2012 Facebook has decided that 'Lori Price Legitgov,' the personal Facebook account title of the Editor-in-Chief of Citizens for Legitimate Government, is (suddenly) not 'legitimate' and therefore disabled. Price's Facebook account was established in September 2007 as 'Lori Price Legitgov,' and she never received any notifications or warnings from Facebook regarding the account. The official page for Citizens for Legitimate Government was not affected.

Update: On September 11, Facebook would *not allow me access* until I checked a box on a pop-up to acknowledge their 'substance abuse warning,' purportedly issued due to the 'nature' of my posts. The message was identical to the email I received from Facebook below, with this additional wording: 'I have read the message above,' and a box which had to be checked in order to access my account.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Facebook" <notification+ovzlcgzz@facebookmail.com>
To: <lori at legitgov dot org>
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 8:36 AM
Subject: Facebook Warning

Hello,

You're receiving this message because a friend is concerned about something you posted on Facebook. Facebook is working with the the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to provide resources and support for those who may be struggling with substance abuse.

You can contact the SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or 1-800-487-4889 (TDD), where help is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The Helpline provides free and confidential information and treatment referrals, in English and Spanish.

SAMHSA also offers a Treatment Facility Locator (http://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/), which provides a comprehensive listing of drug and alcohol treatment programs across the United States.

To learn more about SAMHSA, please visit http://www.samhsa.gov/.

You can also find support through resources like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Psychology Today's online listing of counselors and therapists.

Note that we provide these resources whenever this type of content is reported to us.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team [Yes, The Facebook Team: NSA, CIA, DHS, FBI, DOD, DARPA, and Facebook.]

*****
Here is a portion of the email header:

Return-Path: <notification+ovzlcgzz@facebookmail.com>
X-Original-To: lori at legitgov.org [redacted info]
Received: from mx-out.facebook.com (outmail003.snc7.facebook.com [69.171.232.137])
X-Facebook: from zuckmail ([MTI3LjAuMC4x])
by our.intern.facebook.com with HTTP (ZuckMail);
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 05:36:13 -0700
Subject: Facebook Warning
X-Mailer: ZuckMail [version 1.00]

I've been mulling about how a cooperative, non-profit 'social network' site might work. I just might join, and even pay a membership/ownership fee. One person, one share.

"Share" THAT, Facebook.

[Nordic]

If you have enough money to invest in the stock market AND short a stock, short the shit out of FB.

I wish I could.

Schadenfreude, sure. But in this case it's a sure thing. Watch it fall to five or six bucks and stay there for a good long time.

Young people are abandoning it by droves.

[Hammer of Los]

...

Good.

No-one needs Facebook.

Just one identity?

Ya gotta be kiddin' me.

...

[Elvis]

If you have enough money to invest in the stock market AND short a stock, short the shit out of FB.

I wish I could.

Schadenfreude, sure. But in this case it's a sure thing. Watch it fall to five or six bucks and stay there for a good long time.

Young people are abandoning it by droves.

Somebody must be making a lot of money off the Facebook stock "fail."