Who can say what is the cause? But this began in November when suddenly images on the Not My Tribe website would no longer appear alongside the NMT articles being crowd-aggregated by Facebook users. Now a link to our Snooze article failed to resolve into a post headline, instead remaining a raw http link, further reducing NMT's visibility on the social network. If eventually we are completely blocked you won't know it. Facebook is the new AOL. Already if a tree falls outside the shopping mall, America doesn't hear it.
Tag: Facebook
Facebook advertisers can repost “likes” in your name so you don’t have to
Users of Facebook are accustomed to seeing friends listed in right-column ads, mentioned liking such-and-such a brand, or two or three. It's understood that those friends at some point visited the brand's page and clicked "like", permitting that company, Amazon for example, to pay Facebook to advertise the "like" as frequently as it wishes. It's also understood that when one "likes" a page, a post is simultaneously shared to herald the act and appears on the user's wall unless that feature is turned off. What you may not know is that your initial timeline post can be reposted, in the center-thread, at the advertiser's whim, perhaps limited to when you're online, perhaps triggered when you log on, but not logged on your wall and thus unseen by you. Does it also boost the number of people pretended to be "talking about" that brand? Are 372,523 talking about Starbucks? That could include "you", repeating yourself ad-maybe-nauseum. Or maybe, for a premium, your original "like" is not shared simultaneously, but doled out as each of your friends comes online to guarantee one hundred percent reach. Who knows. As personalized as we know the ads can be, no doubt the algorithm is not calculated for clarity. Do you remember which pages you've liked or not? Perhaps you clicked like to be able to comment on the page, or to monitor a monopolistic miscreant, or perhaps it was before Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or British Petroleum became persons and not-so-grata. Maybe now you'd rather not be said to like Chevron, Monsanto, or killer Coke. You can review your "likes" under INFO, then INTERESTS. Or you can check the list below. On each page, see if beside the LIKE button, you have the option to unlike, for example, Facebook. Here's a quick list of corporate brands which have fallen from fashion among those with fashion sense. You can click on each to check whether you are counted among their unpaid repeated endorsers. Nike Gap Fox News CNN AT&T Caterpillar Disney Walmart Target K-mart Toys-r-us Lowes Ikea Home Depot And the fat merchants: McDonalds Burger King Hardees Carl's Jr Wendy's Taco Bell KFC Pizza Hut Sonic Chick-fil-A Jimmy Johns Subway Outback Dairy Queen Dunkin Donuts Krispy Kreme
Do you Facebook? You’re a Yahoo
What is Facebook worth? To whom does it belong? Reigning property right schemes aren't reciprocal to Facebook's actual content providers. Maybe an outrageous IPO will prompt a user's bill of rights and a new intellectual rights paradigm, monetizing the net to flow outward instead of inward to the cyber 1%. Facebook is the whole world in a filing cabinet, but they're your files, and you're the volunteer file clerk. Facebook is Yahoo outsourced basically, because Google is too complicated for thought-overwhelmed people. Yahoo mapped the known internet, Google rationalized the database, but the social networking outfits calculated that interests could be predicted along personal ties. We're sheep after all, and we only want to follow where the flock is going. While Twitter's cues comes at you like Space Invaders, Facebook provided the blinders and rear view mirrors to coax the reluctant along, and resurrected the virtual community of the World Wide Web's first internment camp, AOL. This time when everyone is comfortably corralled, it will be interesting to see what becomes of the web's open range.
Step on up folks, He-Who-Shoots-From-Cover Indian name hits nerve with identity-obscuring internet trolls
A little bird tells me there's been a discussion on Facebook, an overnight marathon of name-calling about ME. Alias-extrovert Agent Doubt offered a beer or coffee to whoever could come up with the best quip to counter my Indian-name for Chairforce pilots and other US soldiers who wield disproportionate force: He Who Shoots From Cover. I guess this sobriquet hit too close to home for identity-concealing internet snipers too. In any case, it looks like Doubt's outsourcing his creativity again, and sneaking the makings of a date on an unsuspecting winner.
Facebook- Getting super rich off the kids
Could Facebook become worth as much as $100 billion sometime soon? That's what a recent Associated Press news item about Facebook says could very well happen... Facebook discloses details on (executives') bonuses
Consider the Lilies
My friends are no doubt a scrappy bunch. It's no big surprise that guys like Jon and Adam and--holy shit--Skip, are pissed off and ready to burn a few barns down, so to speak. I don't think I need to look up a bunch of fancy references to convince anyone that things are dire, dire, dire. The college students I went hiking with yesterday afternoon will have to live what, like 20,0000 years to pay off the stupid shell-game debt they supposedly owe. Some guy on Adam's page was trying to convince me the whole business is thus because we never pay our bills. Bullshit. It's like this because a buncha paranoid Fascist clowns have set up a little magick trick to try and convince us they have some legitimate claim to all the cheese. THEY DO NOT!!! So there's a fight working alright, and I've been in it since I was a potential in my Granddad's genetic line. But I recently noticed--this is so weird--we're all fighting the wrong guy, and he is us. If we collapse our little bubble here in our little gob of the quantum foam, we're all screwed; not just us little guys. And we really do have enough guys to kick their Fascist asses on the way down. But guess what, we've all got it wrong! Like it or not we're all in this together. We're each and every one of us as fucked up as the Devil!!! Shit he may have been the only sane one all along--but now I'm just picking at scales. Sorry. Didn't meant to. Ahem. Point is some of us are fucked up differently than others. It doesn't matter. That crackhead? Fuck-ed. The cop beating him down? Fuck-ed. Dominique Kahn-Strauss? Fuck-ed. Who else? The Pope? Me? You? Yeah, you're starting to anticipate if not grok me. I'm a tool. Sometimes I'm also a dick and an asshole. That's another matter--I'm happy about being a tool. A while ago I came back to Colorado from a trip back to Cleveland for the great John Covert's 95th birthday party. The moment I returned to my adopted home town, every television set in the danged known Universe began to trumpet the imminent falling of the sky, talking heads of every political stripe and linguistic camp bewailing the unavoidable collapse of the American dollar and the entire foundation of all civilization along with it. I found myself with time on my hands, so I started tinkering with this blog as nothing more than an outlet for some frustrations, and a place to sling a bit of my ordinary schtick, mainly just at myself, assuming I'd be the only one reading. I played around on Facebook a little meaning nothing more than to hunt down a few friends from the distant past. That's what FB is for, right? A series of rapidly developing events took place and I soon found myself in the position I mean to describe right now, as best as I am able. I
The Pope has a facebook page… just not Benedict…
John Paul 2nd. Yep. Here's my deal... After I've been gone for 6 years... don't try to contact me. No prayers, no seances, nothing like that. If I'm in heaven where i hope, you'll just piss me all the way off. ESPECIALLY I ain't going to be reading any emails, tweets or Friend requests. I would however like to hear from bill collectors so I can tell them to finally kiss off. But other than that, no. Don't call cause I won't answer even if i can.
Revolution in Egypt: cue the jackals
The struggle in Egypt between spontaneous uprising and desperate measures taken by Mubarak has become complicated by covert intelligence action. Looters have been unmasked as security agents, the police withdrew from the streets only to reappear as thugs unleashed on the vulnerable public. As the popular revolution appears irreversible, world bankers and investors are threatening to destabilize Egypt with the usual market sanctions.
What Twitter resisted releasing to DOJ, and we may presume Facebook did not
So the US Department of Justice wants Twitter's records on the Wikileaks crew. So what, it's social media -- why expect that spooks can't follow like everybody else? Except the USG wants to know more than followers or tweets, they want IPs, whose computer, network, when, etc, plus they don't want persons of interest or the public to know what info they're gathering. That's a standard MO when investigating crimes like racketeering, but this is a DoJ fishing expedition with aim to criminalize journalism and whistle-blowing, in the meantime violating the privacy of untold thousands, if you are reading this, very likely yours. Unless you know Kevin Bacon personally, you are separated by fewer degrees from rop_g, ioerror, birgittaj, Assange and Bradley Manning. Twitter notified the users named in the December 14 DOJ request, whose lawyers had a judge unveil the document. The government of Iceland has summoned their US envoy to explain what claim the USG can make to personal data on Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland's parliament. Salon has put the fax online which lists the specifics the DoJ is after: A. The following customer or subscriber account information for each account registered to or associated with Wikileaks ... 1. subscriber names, user names, screen names, or other identities; 2. mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, e-mail addresses, and other contact information; 3. connection records, or records of session times and durations; 4. length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized; 5. telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporary assigned network address; and 6. means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) and billing records. B. All records and other information relating to the account(s) and time period in Part A, including: 1. records of user activity for any connections made to and from the Account, including the date, time, length, and method of connections, data transfer volume, user name, and source and destination Internet Protocol address(es); 2. non-content information associated with the contents of any communication or file stored by or for the account(s), such as the source and destination email addresses and IP addresses. 3. correspondence and notes of records related to the account(s).
Judge-shooter Bruce Nozolino indicted before Facebook friends can jump ship
Conservative petition-circulator Bruce Nozolino warned would-be litigants that he had a reputation, "a propensity to shoot judges and lawyers" and it turns out whoever got in his way. He poses with a rifle on his Facebook profile. Today a local grand jury indicted Nozolino for murder. While Nozolino loitered outside the courthouse beyond a boundary court-ordered by the judge, his associate Doug Bruce was granted immunity for testifying against him. Other Republican friends were not so lucky. Local cronies Bob Balink and Jeff Crank and state crazies Bob Beauprez, Kent Lambert and Dave Schulteis have ties to the self-styled gun-toting avenger, and Facebook has the paper trail! There's also Robin Coran, whose profile pic features attack-mite Michelle Malkin, local Tea Party heavies Crista Huff and Michelle Morin (Who unfriended Nozolino as I typed this), and other locals who I'll list here for posterity: "Bob" Clark, Andy McElhany, Carolyn Borgwardt, Jim Pfaff, Judy Rydberg Reyher, Kathy Peterson, Kay Rendleman, Mark H. Barker, Robert J. Lane, Shawn Mitchell, Tom Wiens. This "Likes Cooking bacon with a machine-gun" profile is almost too perfect to be believed, but you can't claim a Facebook friendship without being accepted.
Gaza Flotilla & Knessit member Haneen Zoabi faces Facebook mob death threat
After her participation in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla aboard the Mavi Marmara, Palestinian-Israeli Knessit member Haneen Zoabi came home to a Facebook page which called for her death. "Execute MP Haneen Zoubi" it screamed with the graphic at right, and angry Israelis were friending the effort by the thousands. Making such a threat is of course illegal. An Israeli storekeeper has been reprimanded for offering free groceries for life to whoever would murder Ms. Zoabi. Shouldn't Facebook members who add their personal endorsement to Kill U with a "join", "friend" or "like", be considered accomplices to attempted intimidation?
Everyone Draw Mohammed ALI
A clever rebuke of the Facebook mob-insensivity effort to advocate Everyone Draw [the Prophet] Mohammed Day, was to follow sidewalk wannabe blasphemers with extra chalk on MAY 20, to add boxing gloves and append the name "Ali."
Betty White’s muffin on the boob tube
Which came first: the Snickers ad, the Facebook group, or SNL's crowdsourced mandate to fete American sitcom icon Betty White? To me this blonde's netroots smack of a publicist's hand, and White's performance Saturday night all but validated SNL's reluctance until now to spotlight the octogenarian's one note routine. The SNL tribute could laud only her age, raising the specter that a proverbial domestic bread might have been named for her. Betty White was a broadcast fixture, not a luminary. On the plus side, she hasn't stooped to pitching life insurance on infomercials, although I suspect her screen persona lacked the gravitas. It does look like the Snickers "Divas" campaign wants to boost White's brand recognition up to the visibility of its other stage and screen legends. Of course Betty's first name predates namesake archetypes of American comedy, but it's no indication of her contribution. When a McGruber sketch had the title comic break character to wend an impassioned I Love You to grandmother White, I was horrified to predict that the actress's persona had no stretch to stray from her signature negativity. White may have begun her career in the age of the Honeymooners, but her caricatures belong squarely to the American sitcom as it devolved into cynicism. The high notes of Mary Tyler Moore and Golden Girls were achieved in spite of muddy cutouts like Betty White. The social relevance of every sitcom that followed was twilighted in my opinion by Oliver Stone's brilliant parody of American television in Natural Born Killers. Seeing Betty White on SNL reminded me of attending a celebration of another show business icon Shirley Jones. Both larger than life, both admirably spry, and both masters of well-honed chops, but we're talking pork chops, with no more hue than the rosy cheeks of Paula Dean. Luminescent as they come, Jones could emote with a twinkle, but that didn't make her Lena Horne. I know, apple pie is not an art medium. Betty White can play the ditz or calculating shrew. Where else was SNL going to go with her but convalescent home vamp? I'm not sure the jokes made at the expense of her muffin weren't clammier than Alec Baldwin's Schweddy Balls. Hohoho, the ultimate promise of the boob tube. Like surviving veterans of the wars quickly receding in our memories, White deserves honors rekindled with every new generation. Like the soldiers' contributions, I'd say her deeds in particular were forgettable. We don't ask our aging vets to reenact their killings. Bad jokes are worse than reenacted, they're swung around afresh. Leave Betty White to shill for candy bars, she's part of America's cultural pantheon and deservedly so. Laugh track optional.
Take the ACLU Facebook quiz to see what kind of open book you are
Maybe you don't fear facing off with an army intelligence interrogator, FBI detective, or secret service agent sitting in a Fusion Center determined to anticipate your next move. But what about a loan officer, insurance adjuster, arbitration negotiator, prospective employer, or plaintiff's lawyer taking your deposition, who's armed with your psychological profile made up of your Facebook quiz answers? Your plan to defeat an IRS polygraph by clenching your butt-cheeks is a plan B of olden days. The ACLU has been anticipating these eventualities for you. They've devised their own Facebook quiz to illustrate. The Facebook disclaimer makes clear, between the lines, that when you "allow" an application access to your personal information, the app's third party can suck up every last detail of your file, "for the quiz to work." It also grants access to each of your friends' entire files, each time YOU click "allow." Now you may feel like you've put everything up on Facebook voluntarily. You can presume your friends did too. And although our info is limited to our friend circles, we probably assume that determined sleuths can extract it all anyway. And that's certainly true. Even casual idiots can sidle up to glean important details without arousing our suspicions. We presume no insurance company or parole officer is going to preemptively fill their files with happenstance biographical queries, and so we feel safe. We overlook that the great value of social networks to us, the web of connections, provides the filing tabs by which information aggregators can accumulate their data in a useful, ie. commercial, manner. Soon we'll have to worry about underwriters or graduate schools or fiance's parents dismissing us outright based on our DNA. When that day comes, every marriage will be arranged, and preschools will have sufficient information to accept applicants in utero. For now the thought of an accessible collation of my Watson-Glaser, Yale-Brown, Myers-Briggs, and which-potted-plant-most-resembles-you tests already hinders my being able to look you in the eye. I am who I want to be, and my 16th Century royaum is shrinking.
Who killed Neda Agha-Soltan?
The video footage is shocking. An attractive young woman watching the demonstrations in Tehran is struck by a sniper's bullet and dies before several video cameras. The tragedy is projected unto Facebook and Youtube, with advocates hoping it will galvanize (American) public support for the brave reform movement in Iran. News accounts blame "Basij snipers" on the rooftops. Other protesters have been killed in confrontations with Iranian riot police, without the benefit of video witnesses, much like two million Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis et al. Poor 27-year-old bystander Neda Soltani stood at the quite improbable convergence of bullet and camera --correction-- cameras. I don't have to suggest the scene was staged; whether or not the triggerman was an American is immaterial. Think about just the improbability of your seeing this video. When was the last time the mainstream press has circulated a snuff film? The average person is embarrassed to watch a person die. It's exploitive. Even when America was fixated on beheaded hostages, our television gatekeepers refused to broadcast the footage. Many horrific war killing moments have found their way unto Youtube, which antiwar activists could only hope would find wider distribution, if only to bring home the inhumanity of our soldiers' deeds. It never happens. The western press is running with this story because it demonizes the apparently naked inhumanity of Islam. Muslims stone women, hang gays, look: the bastards shoot their own people arbitrarily. Curiously our media doesn't make hay with the hapless victims of US snipers. The Neda Soltani snuff footage hit internet shores prepackaged with a smiling mug, and a name that translated means "the voice." Could a casting director have picked a better title character to represent Iran's repressed? The western press is even poised to outdo the Muslims in indignant piety, already lauding Neda as a martyr, whom we are informed should launch a thousand Shiite funeral processions. Western pundits compare Neda to the first Shiite martyr, the grandson of Mohammed himself. Of course, also showing excessive Islamic sensitivity, western reporters readily dismiss the vanishing of Neda's body, to the Muslim tradition of hasty burials. For the record, in case you missed it, Neda dies onscreen from an apparent gunshot. We do not see the bullet strike, nor now can anyone habeas corpus. If the scenario was acted entirely, given the success with which the girl's face is being made into an icon, young Neda's life is probably as utterly expendable now as already depicted. You think you're mourning Neda now, imagine her fate if this is a hoax. OR the gunman could just as well have been a US black-op hit-man who had his eye on the videographers approaching innocent Neda. The US military has long admitted that special forces are already operating in Iran. If the Iranian forces are shooting civilian protesters, what's the harm of helping them out where there's a camera ready? When we're not meant to see it, the soldiers shoot the cameramen too. It could be the work of Moussavi henchmen, who are
Putting my best Facebook forward
For real in virtual reality. I've constructed an image of myself on Facebook. I did MySpace too, just in case my cyber hologram lacked a dimension. What dimension, a fourth? Before that my virtual world representative was an avatar in Second Life. I make this distinction because I'm online already, in a blog. If that's not a proxy of myself too. What is left of me off line in the old three dimensions? So much of my resources are spent updating and uploading to fashion my idealized electronic profile. But I discover that my ability to keep my best side facing toward the camera, so to speak, escapes my control just like real life. Other have pictures. Deeds are linked, past words, past lives, with no degrees of separation. We have Google to thank for pinning our press clippings to our shoulders. It's as if our business card now comes attached with our personal Rolodex. I'm deluding myself obviously to cling to selective anonymity. We've all taken our first steps unto the internet with alter ego usernames in sundry chat rooms, user groups and forums, revealing our true selves behind web masks. Who we are in-world soon approximated who we are out, as N approaches an infinity of monkey archivists. For flakes who think they can tailor their best Face[book] forward, no respite. Except that it feels like the real world me has become a facade too. I think I've become an empty vessel, discarded like an outgrown skin, untended, un-watered because everything's going online. What do photographs of the actual me represent anymore? Pictures of me when I used to inhabit the real world. Pictures of me wanting to be online.