Facebook are evil
- Thread starter editor
- Start date
paul mckenna
Bellend
they did when it was down -64%
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Facebook/Meta cleaners organising against redundancies again, email tool thing here:
No redundancies at Meta
Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU) needs your support. Cleaners at Meta are organising against cuts at Meta's London Offices ( 10 Brock St, London NW1 3FG, and 11-22 Canal Reach, London N1C 4DB) who are looking to halve staffing numbers and hours. The potential job losses...
actionnetwork.org
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Crossposting here:
On Tuesday in London, there's an emergency demo against the cuts to Meta cleaners' hours:
Despite our campaign @meta, Churchill are pushing ahead 500 hours of cuts across their 2 London sites.
They have continued consultation despite mutual agreement of suspension pending negotiations.
Join our emergency protest on Tuesday to demand no cuts.
TUESDAY JULY 9
@Meta King’s cross, N1C 4DB
3.30PM
Bring banners. Bring flags. Bring noise.
On Tuesday in London, there's an emergency demo against the cuts to Meta cleaners' hours:
Despite our campaign @meta, Churchill are pushing ahead 500 hours of cuts across their 2 London sites.
They have continued consultation despite mutual agreement of suspension pending negotiations.
Join our emergency protest on Tuesday to demand no cuts.
TUESDAY JULY 9 @Meta King’s cross, N1C 4DB 3.30PMBring banners. Bring flags. Bring noise.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
I’m not a “like to see businesses fail” guy, but I really would like to see a decline in addictive social media usage. I really have seen no overwhelming argument that generations’ attention being sucked into those machines is an entirely good thing for humanity. I think they have far more reach than their value allows. I find them incredibly controlling. The idea that they make money from our very attention gives me the dystopian willies tbh.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
I am. When businesses get to the size of Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple, they become too powerful to be kept honest by other businesses, their customers, and even governments. Even if they don't become de facto monopolies, their sheer bulk ensures that they can tip the scales in their favour when it comes to the markets, the law, and the media. On top of that, they're almost always publicly traded corporations, meaning that it's the shareholders who ultimately call the shots, and the only thing those evil pieces of fucking shit are truly interested in, is making even more money than ever before, and nothing - not law, not ethics, not morality - is really allowed to stand in the way of squeezing ever more blood from that stone.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
I'm with you. I was being simplistic. I mean I don't want a business to fall just becasue it is a business, a part of teh capitalist machine. I have found silicon valley particularly insdeous tbh, and these big companies. It's all dressed in a sort of forward thinking liberalism (it;s why they would rather be shot than seen in a suit) that is seen as wonderful and creative (when it's not even them, it's the creators themselves), ground breaking. But it's more closer to waht they describe when they say "disrupt" - they will play with humanity in a wreckless way which can be pretty disturbing.
Last edited:
BigMoaner
We will all go together
Three times today I logged onto YouTube and theee times I got served up Tommy Robinson. It’s that sort of ethical issue that they don’t seem to give much of a shit about. I mean Tommy Robinson is one thing but serving it up to millions of brains over and over? It’s not even really him proliferating his shite, it’s THEM. It’s that sort of thing and the fact they have whole teams of geniuses tspending their whole days on how to make them more addictive or how someone like Bezos doesn’t seem to give a single fuck that the busy high street is gone and will likely never return with his hand in that somewhat. Just shrug your shoulders and go on rogan. There is ethical issues in variety but few seem to give a fuck (too busy mainlining content to care or do anything about it)
BigMoaner
We will all go together
What I have noticed in the recent past is the philosophers and critical thinkers are really starting to take it on. Likely have no affect but there are groups of people reframing the whole ecosystem critically and this wasn’t happening at all. It had to happen because we are in the midst of something as powerful if not more so than the Industrial Revolution. When i stare down the bus and not a single person is doing anything other than staring at a monitised reel, then I turn to the philosophers who make me make sense of it because it sure feels dystopian sometimes.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Are you hitting the "Don't recommend this channel" when that shit turns up? I've found that consistently using that feature has eventually trained YouTube to not serve me reactionary bullshit. At least for the main videos; they still occasionally crop up on Shorts.
I really do prefer how YouTube allows me to watch what I want, when I want, without being restricted to a viewing schedule dictated by some broadcasting executive. But there's still a lot of squandered potential within the YouTube model, especially with how it treats creators of quality content in addition to the algorithmic nonsense you've mentioned.
I'd like to think that the tide is starting to turn on social media. Facebook is already considered a platform for old people. Newer platforms like TikTok have yet to run their course, but there is an increasing awareness of how addictive and psychologically damaging social media can be.
For my part I've stopped using the big corporate social media platforms, with the exception of Reddit. But even then I stay away from most of the larger subs, and if the problems with bots, shills, and professional trolls gets much worse then I will serious consider logging out permanently. I don't know if Discord counts, but I use that to stay in touch with family and connect with other players of the video games I enjoy.
Thing is, from what I remember of life before the internet started dominating everything, people at bus stops weren't living in some pre-lapsarian utopia where they politely debated the finer points of philosophy with each other. They just had their heads buried in books, magazines and newspapers instead, or were wearing Walkmans and staring off in a direction unlikely to catch someone's eye. You might have even spotted someone playing a Gameboy. It's the perfect context for such petty distractions, and I feel that bemoaning people for using the time to play with their phones is to miss the point. I recently had the realisation that the computational power of my modern smartphone made it possible to turn it into a multi-platform retro-gaming device. I can play classic Doom and Quake and run emulators for systems such as the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, and I can even connect an Xbox controller so I don't have to be stuck with touchscreen controls, which are usually terrible.
The real dystopian element, I think, is what isn't obvious from glancing at fellow public transport passengers in waiting. The dark patterns that keep people hooked on short-form videos or disinformation outlets, the algorithms that channel reading habits down particular directions. That kind of thing.
No. I don't mean to offend, but he seems a little too influenced by the kind of Continental philosophers that I personally find rather tedious. But the dominance of the tech giants provides plenty of attackable surfaces for a wide range of philosophical and ideological outlooks.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
Sure, we were allways distracting ourselves. It's very hard not too. We have to fill those gaps. I think the difference though is when that distraction is designed to be addictive, and is monitiesed, and the "time spent" is so large in scope. An argument can be made it was the same with plonking infront of the TV, or sitting in the cinema. But I still think there's huge qualitive differences between distractions, and where we place our attention, and it's affect on attention, and it's affect on the human, too (and affects on childhood, too). You could say a new form of attention has arisen since the internet and the smart phone: hyperattention, a sort of flitting between multiple forms of distraction and satisfaction - an inability to be without somesort of pleasure - more ways to avoid pain. Is sat staring at instagram for hours each day harmless? Probably. But maybe that's the problem. It "stops pain becoming elequont, it stops pain expressing itself" - to quote BCH. The death of boredom. I understand what you're saying about philosophy - philosophers will likely find social media repulsive due to its non-contemplative nature, and especially the up-the-arse-and-round-the-corner post modern types. But their lense is also useful sometimes. Baudrillard's terrifying view of reality is one. You can read him and literally see it everywhere and its all persuasive, but one lense amongst many, no less. And of little use. I think all human's can do is ask themselves is what does this stuff do to us, in the here and now. What affect is it having right now in my life. And I think people are doing that on a far more large scale than they were. Which is a good thing, I think.
Byung Chul Han I would say is a sort of communist conservative, lol. He think traditions, rituals, codes of behaviour, even friendliness are being lost - "everything that once connected us is slowly disappearing" - pubs, clubs, social clubs, youth clubs, working mens clubs, "true eroticism", third spaces. He brings tech into the overall play of neoliberalism. His bleak conclusion is that tech is stealing "confrontations with the other" - and everything is being smoothed out, edges, rounded. We become "project managers of the self". The "master slave dialective is now internalised" - constantly pushing ourselves, constant self help, improvement, "gains". "The self exploits itself", "the bird takes the whip from the master and starts to whip itself to feel like a master". "Survival" at all costs, "surival" as naturalised, inherent. He is the philosopher of "atomisation" par excellence. A true heavyweight, knows the history of philosophy back to front. His work is stunning, tbh. Short, thin books. Descriptive rather than prescriptive, and I suspect deeply (eastern) religious. Worth a look. He's very popular amongst young people. A very exciting writer.
This is a good little podcast discussing a chapter of his work:
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Facebook partner admits smartphone microphones listen to people talk to serve better ads
One of Facebook's advertising partners has reportedly admitted listening to spying on people's conversations through smartphones to serve curated ads.
www.tweaktown.com
savoloysam
Ready to move into the light
It's nothing new now. Facebook, Google etc know more about you than your closest kin.
Governments love this shit. Spying and collecting data on us has never been so easy. Orwell under estimated his idea of the future but what do I know? I am from the tin foil brigade.
Governments love this shit. Spying and collecting data on us has never been so easy. Orwell under estimated his idea of the future but what do I know? I am from the tin foil brigade.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
My favourite is the data they get from sleep, from mere walking to the shops. Now, There’s few corners of the human that is free from money being made. But they wear converses to the office and never suits so all good.
BigMoaner
We will all go together
People have suspected this for years. Talk about holidays to a mate, few minutes later holidays appear in your add feed.
Facebook partner admits smartphone microphones listen to people talk to serve better ads
One of Facebook's advertising partners has reportedly admitted listening to spying on people's conversations through smartphones to serve curated ads.
Boris Sprinkler
Dont be scared
Yes. A main culprit is the instagram app.
