Evolution of the Internet...

The media was lying to us long before the internet, it has accelerated immensely with the internet.

I spent a bit of the '90s in the Middle East, getting daily top-secret briefings of goings-on, from intel officers I was friends with. They were history buffs, and loved telling background stories about how and why things are happening, not just the facts. It was the most entertaining thing going in our desert home, much better than the usual briefs.

We had CNN and other news on TV, and often what we were briefed didn't match what was on TV. The intel officers explained that reporters make stuff up to get the scoop first, or to have a better story. Once one media outlet runs a story, and people get excited about it, the other outlets have to go with the story that is making money. If it turns out to be dead wrong, they will all look bad if they retract it, so they just keep going with the original story. Until the next exciting story. Rinse and repeat.

I miss knowing what was really going on, but I don't miss living in a tent in the desert when I wasn't flying.

Ran across this today... the words of Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who worked there from 2005 to 2011, tasked primarily with growing the userbase of the platform:

I agree Carl! A few things I recommend to friends and family...

• Don't use Google, except on someone else's device (library, hotel biz center, etc.) Instead use DuckDuckGo.com which doesn't track you.
• Don't use Chrome browser. Ever. I like Firefox... and use ad and script blocking extensions on your browser.
• Check out eff.org for some good privacy tools.
• Don't use gmail, yahoo, comcast (or any other Google/FB/Yahoo/Amazon owned apps) and opt for ProtonMail or other secure options.
• Don't use Skype or WhatsApp Opt for Wire or Signal (same ownership issue)
• Use a password manager such as LastPass or 1Password, and use it to change to long complex passwords.
• Use a VPN to secure your web traffic, ESPECIALLY over wifi. There are a few good vendors.

These steps are no guarantee but help to make you a little harder target. Even just a couple of these precautions should help, and yes, there is a learning curve for most of these things.

I suspect most folks assumed Orwell's "Big Brother" would be some kind of government entity. Au contraire. Turns out to be Google, FB, etc.

-Chris

Yet another person who worked for FB warning people that they should delete FB:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/20/technology/business/whatsapp-delete-facebook/index.html

Another article that signals the shift in perception of social media: https://jalopnik.com/why-your-favorite-car-channels-are-getting-fed-up-with-1823900084

TL;DR - Motor Trend, after building up a sizable viewership (5.6 million subscribers) on YouTube, is pulling their entire video library off the site and hosting in themselves. YouTube is no longer worth their time and effort. The YouTube business model does not support premium content. Unless you can manage to produce videos that people want to watch for next to no cost at all, it's not a viable means of distributing media.

Finally, the almighty "thumbs up" is no longer king!

'Likes' do not necessarily equal money... whether you're selling yachts, or energy drinks. It puts you name in front of eyes, but awareness only goes so far. There's no commitment in clicking Like.

A 'Like' is no more useful than seeing a gorgeous woman across the room, while joining a forum is actually getting her number.

The Facebook apps seems to be more efficient than you could imagine...

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...d-as-they-delete-accounts-cambridge-analytica

Luckily I have never had a Facebook account or with Twitter or Instagram or anything like that. Feels good today...

1984 - George Orwell

I read that back in 9th grade, but didn't appreciate it at the time... probably due to read it again.

Congrats! I also clicked on the Facebook "Like" button at the bottom of the page!

Yep. See post #29.

-C

Certainly don't want to turn this into a political discussion, but you wonder why nobody isn't looking into that support as "in-kind" donations to candidates (which I believe is illegal if not reported), as it would have been VERY expensive for them if they had to pay.

Kudos to you for pulling the plug on Facebook. I was surprised by the big push over the last 5-6 years where most companies were told they're "required" to be on Facebook or Twitter or "you won't survive".

We really need the "Bill of Rights" to be amended to include the control of your personal information!

I was reading an article over breakfast (but can't find the link now ) about the Facebook app logging calls and text messages. It turns out it was only an Android problem, because Google openly allowed it. Apple specifically prohibits that kind of "integration" so the iOS versions of the FB app couldn't do it even if though they tried.

This article (LINK) specifically talks about the Android problem, but doesn't explain the differences with iOS.

True, but Apple have their own strange things these days, when you update the IOS they are making a backup of your phone to their Cloud..? In the past you made your own backup to your computer, which I would prefer. Now it was possible to delete this cloud backup, at least this is what I tried, but you never know what is left there... The result is anyway that I have now stopped doing OS updates with both my iPhone, Ipad and Macs...