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Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Use Facebook’s Reactions Buttons theantimedia.org May 16 2016
Belgian police are warning users not to use the Facebook Reactions feature to respond to posts if they want to protect their privacy. In February, the series of six emoticons, allowing users to express a range of emotions from anger to love, were added to the original thumbs-up option. They came in response to calls for a ‘Dislike’ button.
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The statement warns that users are simply a ‘product’ to Facebook, claiming their reactions to posts are helping the social networking giant build up a profile of them. As a result of the profiling, the site will target ads it thinks users will be more receptive to based on how they are reacting to specific posts at the time.
“By limiting the number of icons to six, Facebook is counting on you to express your thoughts more easily so that the algorithms that run in the background are more effective,” the police said. “By mouse clicks you can let them know what makes you happy.”
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more: http://theantimedia.org/shouldnt-use-facebooks-reactions/
There is no escaping Facebook’s advertising reach. The social network has announced that it will now be foisting ads on to every single person who uses third-party sites that are signed up to its advertising scheme, regardless of whether the user has a Facebook account or not.
Until now, Facebook showed ads only to its members when people landed on third-party sites that were signed up to its Audience Network ad system. That meant that it only ever bothered tracking what Facebook users did, in order to learn about them and better target advertising.
Now, though, reports the Wall Street Journal, it will use the same techniques—largely plug-in and cookies, but also Like buttons too— in order to track what everyone does when visiting those web pages. Andrew Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s ads and business platform, explained to the Journal:
“Our buttons and plugins send over basic information about users’ browsing sessions. For non-Facebook members, previously we didn’t use it. Now we’ll use it to better understand how to target those people.”
It’s not a new model, and it’s one you’re used to already. Say you’ve spent 20 minutes browsing for a new pair of sneakers: Facebook knows you’re interested in sneakers, so plasters ads for them all over the cookery website that you’re using to look up a dinner recipe.
So it’s not innovation—but Facebook has a huge dataset of intimate personal details behind it that it can leverage to do all kinds of clever things. “Because we have a core audience of over a billion people... who we... understand,” explained Bosworth to the Journal, “we have a greater opportunity than other companies using the same type of mechanism.”
In other words, Facebook plans to square up more firmly than ever against Google in the world of online advertising. And now, there’s no way to avoid the reach of Zuck’s promotions.
The New Arab
Dislike: Facebook names Netanyahu's former advisor 'head of policy'
The social networking site and the Israeli government cooperate to tackle the BDS movement [Getty]
Date of publication: 19 June, 2016
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Binyamin Netanyahu's longtime senior adviser Jordana Cutler has been named as Facebook's head of policy and communication in Israel's latest bid to tackle the BDS movement online.
A longtime senior adviser to Israeli Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been appointed as Facebook's head of policy and communication in the latest cooperation between the social networking site and the Israeli government to tackle the BDS movement.
Jordana Cutler, also chief of staff at the Israeli embassy in Washington, has joined Facebook's Israel office to oversee the planning and execution of measures taken to combat BDS campaigns.
Cutler's new post was applauded by the minister of public security Gilad Erdan, who announced on Thursday a series of legislative measures taken by his government against promoting the boycott of Israel.
"If we want to convince the world that de-legitimation of Israel is something wrong and that there should be consequences, we must start here in Israel," Erdan was quoted by Israeli media as saying during a conference in Herzliya.
"There will now be a real price to pay for someone working […] to isolate [Israel] from the rest of the world. I set up a legal team, together with the ministry of justice, that will promote governmental legislation on the matter," Erdan said.
"There has been an advance in dialogue between the state of Israel and Facebook," he said, "Facebook realises that it has a responsibility to monitor its platform and remove content. I hope it will be regulated for good."
"We will use legitimate democratic tools to fight this battle. We will make companies shift from being on the attack against Israel to the defence of protecting themselves," he added.
[Translation: Meet Facebook's latest lobbyist for Israel!]
The BDS movement, which describes itself as a global movement of citizens, advocates for non-violent campaigns of boycotts, divestment and sanctions as a means to overcome the Israeli regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid
Upon its launch in 2005, the campaign was widely ignored and even laughed at, by Israel and its supporters around the world.
But the Jewish state has since been troubled by the wide growing popularity of the movement, whose latest campaign Tov Ramadan raises awareness on Israeli settlement products and encourages people breaking their fast during the month of Ramadan to boycott them.
seemslikeadream » Mon Jun 20, 2016 8:54 am wrote:I saw a commercial last night begging for money to feed the starving people of Israel .....thought maybe they could take some of the billions we already give their military for that
The statement warns that users are simply a ‘product’ to Facebook, claiming their reactions to posts are helping the social networking giant build up a profile of them. As a result of the profiling, the site will target ads it thinks users will be more receptive to based on how they are reacting to specific posts at the time.
“By limiting the number of icons to six, Facebook is counting on you to express your thoughts more easily so that the algorithms that run in the background are more effective,” the police said. “By mouse clicks you can let them know what makes you happy.”
The “people” they are listening to are not just users but other advisers and researchers. The “more ways” to react is actually a limited set, premised on the notion that users would rather click a button than use language to express their feelings. And one’s feelings about some piece of content are typically a mixture that one may not be able to sort out: Maybe jealousy is mixed with congratulations; joy mixed with anxiety; a sense of discovery mixed with a sense of shame. The design of Facebook’s Reactions repudiates the possibility of such ambivalence, suggesting mixed feelings are abnormal, atypical. It presumes we have an immediate, precise response.
As several commentators have pointed out, the new Reactions feel more constricting and prescriptive than the Like button ever did. A Like, when it was the uniform currency of attention in Facebook, had a certain ambiguity: It could be spent on anything. But the greater precision of these Reactions says you can spend your attention in only six ways.
Accessing the Reactions menu does not make using Facebook easier or quicker, but more cumbersome. Rather than the binary process of saying yes or no to “liking” content, users now have a two-step process in which they decide to “react” and then pick a reaction. Then they have to get to the menu itself — a few seconds, but an eternity by Facebook’s own standards of time management. After all, this is a company that rolled out Instant Articles because it believes a few seconds is too long for users to wait for content.
MinM » Mon May 09, 2016 10:04 am wrote:MinM » Mon May 02, 2016 10:43 pm wrote:I’m sure people who work for Facebook don’t believe that they’re working for the company that will destroy the world. But, you know, they are. And everyone gets through the day rationalizing their own existence. ~ Jonathan Nolan@TheAVClub
The exec producers of Person Of Interest suspect Facebook will destroy the world http://avc.lu/26JpAf4
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