As with the grunge/flannel shirt thing, this is a rare opportunity for me to be a cutting-edge trendsetter. "Oh, you're just leaving Facebook now?" I will ask disdainfully.
I'm seeing people leave Facebook after this latest Cambridge Analytica thing, and it sort of surprised me, because I suppose I always assumed that all possible privacy violations were already always occurring in worst-case-scenario form.
It's not just because of this - if Facebook is getting less useful and less rewarding for people, it's easier to decide to give it up one day. I barely post anything anymore because it's so disheartening how the algorithm determines whether people see it or not. Honestly it was mostly when I finally realized that Facebook doesn't want you to post YouTube videos and doesn't show them to people when you post them. It felt like such a betrayal.
I loathe their algorithm with all my heart and soul, that's for fucking sure.
And I'm someone who loved Facebook for many years. Without Facebook I would simply not be in touch with people I don't see day to day. I remember the time before Facebook, and I was... not in touch with anyone. I wished I was, but it wasn't. I don't know how to stay in touch with people. But now it's messed up so much that I am again not in touch with people, and most of the people I see on Facebook are the people I see all the time anyway. Something reminds me to go to someone's profile who I haven't heard from in years, and I see they've been posting this whole time, but hidden from my feed. Then they start appearing in my feed again, since I have indicated my interest in seeing their posts. It's finally become scary.
I definitely relate to 4. I don't know that I think that's a recent change, but it's awful and bothers me.
Wait, did you identify a collaborative tattoo artist? I remember up to the point you had some new possibles.
People need to at least be preparing for post-Facebook life.
Back in the Iraq War days, one of the most frustrating aspects of the political environment was the impossibility of action. There was nothing I could do. Well, this is something you can do.
6: Yes! I went to a tattoo convention and looked at every goddamn portfolio, and came up with a list and made myself talk to about 10 artists, and from there came away with a very supportive, collaborative soul who I like a lot, interpersonally.
The other topics I thought to post about were Those Kids From Florida, and can we relax and let them save us? and That Storm From Probably LA But Maybe Vegas, and her interview.
We discussed a few weeks ago, how our media commentators have no memory and keep thinking things are revolutionary when they aren't, especially on social issues, creating a weird narrative where we have apparently made incredible progress on feminism since... the 1990s.
Stormy is another example of this. Like this is the first time a "scandalous woman" from a "sex scandal" is being confident and being taken seriously and getting her own message out there and not caring about being smeared. I don't know, I was pretty young at the time but I remember the Gennifer Flowers era. She was showing up on the Howard Stern show, she had a press conference where she surprised everyone with secret tapes, she was having a career getting stunt-cast in things, and she seemed to be enjoying everything. "I'm a torch singer, I'm a femme fatale, and yes, I seduced Bill Clinton. Good for me."
Personal blogs will come back, and everything will be better again!
I wonder what it would take for Conventional Wisdom to become that it's just too dangerous to be on Facebook. I think individuals would need to feel personal fear, not just collective action fear.
9: I think that one gets forgotten, because it just wasn't much of a scandal, so it gets overwritten by the later Clinton stories that actually involved wrongdoing. Here, you've got Daniels fearlessly telling her story, and you've also got what looks like hush money and campaign finance violations.
Anderson Cooper also did a long interview with Karen McDougal (Playboy bunny with consensual affair whose story was bought and deep-sixed* by the Enquirer folks) on CNN late last week. It is (somewhat) interesting to see the similarities and differences. Biggest difference is that this one was nearly a year long and much more "serious." Biggest similarities were verbal comparisons to Ivanka from DJT, general line of work, and most interestingly their initial lawyer who seems to specialize in celebrity hush up arrangements.
*There's a specific term but I am forgetting what it was.
I very, very rarely use Facebook (The Algorithm is the antichrist), but now a rowing team I have recently joined uses it in ways I sort of need to keep up with so I am sort of bucking the trend (it is a "group" so using it in a more limited way).
But it is really kind of interesting -- the 'sluttier' the woman in a sex-related scandal is, the better her rhetorical position is. A woman who's not previously marked as a slut loses credibility when the question is raised "Wait, maybe she properly belongs in some category of slut, which would change everything about the story!" Like people talking about whether Grace in the Aziz Ansari thing was a 'groupie', at which point he was behaving normally, and what was wrong with her that she didn't understand that the nature of the 'date' she was on was an impersonal fuck-and-get-out kind of thing.
Once the woman's openly affirmed position from the beginning of the story is some kind of 'slut', (femme-fatale-torch-singer, porn-star) there's no room for that kind of attack on what the story really means, and the focus stays on what the man did, and what people think of his conduct.
16 gets it exactly right. I didn't think of it that way. That's why this sort of thing is way off base. Finally "sex workers" are being taken as seriously as other women on this issue! Or maybe they've kind of always been taken seriously on this issue. Maybe more seriously.
10: Seconding 12.
I'd like to believe that one day people will look back on twitter and think "What the f*ck were we thinking?"
Once the woman's openly affirmed position from the beginning of the story is some kind of 'slut', (femme-fatale-torch-singer,
I too would like to see more 1940s noir-themed political scandals.
19 written before seeing 9. I had forgotten that detail about Flowers and honestly thought that LB was being purely hypothetical.
The most interesting bit about the Stormy Daniels thing is that some goon was sent to intimidate her. If that's true (and it probably is), its likely not the only time that the Trump organization has sent goons to take care of its problems. I would be very interested to see if other people start coming out with similar stories.
I prefer the personal touch you only get with hired goons.
I had a super irritating conversation with my brother who is exclusively focused on the national debt to the exclusion of every other single problem in existence. He went off on a "both sides do it" tangent, equating the recent tax bill with the stimulus package/bailouts of 2009. There's a grain of truth that the bank bailouts were a free giveaway that weren't done well and that money should have been better spent, but that grain of truth makes the false equivalency that much more enraging to me.
9 years, y'all. NINE YEARS.
I have lived with the spanking/ shark week knowledge for ALMOST A DECADE. #stormydaniels #60minutes
Welcome to hell. 👋
It sounds weird, but before becoming a celebrity Gennifer Flowers's career was the distinctly era-specific combination of lounge singer and TV news correspondent.
I found myself using Facebook less and less recently but only decided to delete it recently. I figured there was no new information for me about how bad Facebook's privacy standards are in the Cambridge Analytica story, but for the first time I feel like there might be a critical level of discussion of Facebook's abuses of power that my deleting my account might motivate others to do so and might be part of a wave of people leaving that might make Facebook rethink things rather than just being seen as random noise.
People need to at least be preparing for post-Facebook life.
The return of the 1,000 comment Unfogged thread!
But much as I love personal blogs, or even some group blogs, things like Facebook and twitter have made mobilisation much easier (not just for the good guys), and we need to remember from before how to coordinate a national strike/march etc. without them. One thing I will say, it was a lot more hard work.
The return of the 1,000 comment Unfogged thread!
Birds are not dinosaurs: go!
I don't really want to reactivate my Facebook account just to delete it. Also, I didn't want to announce I was quitting and then keep using it, and I didn't completely believe I'd quit, so I just kind of disappeared. I more or less quit at the end of 2016, deactivated last year.
How about a project that doesn't try to replace Facebook - like, no feed - but just a mutual system to keep track of contact information? (Instead of a feed it could have AIM-style statuses that are not saved and are only visible if you navigate to someone's profile.)
He went off on a "both sides do it" tangent, equating the recent tax bill with the stimulus package/bailouts of 2009.
I'm annoyed at the conflation of bailouts and stimulus - different administrations proposed these! they're extremely different in basic topic and principles! - but it is true Obama continued and supported TARP and it got more votes from congressional Dems than GOP. Of course they followed it up with Dodd-Frank, better oversight, and more progressive taxation.
Also the stimulus was important to the whole "stave off global economic collapse." There were certainly problems with the implementation, but people who question the underlying need for it are fucking crazy.
Do you mean the bailout? I thought without the stimulus we would have just had a full-on 1890's-style depression.
Apparently the FTC is on Facebook's case now. Slow motion car crash?
I deleted the Facebook apps on my phone in the wake of recent news. Still not sure about further steps, like deleting my account.
It was triggered by the news, but honestly a bigger reason was that Facebook was a mindless time-waster for me. 90 percent of my times opening the app went like this: I was bored, I didn't have access to a computer or book I wanted to read or person I wanted to talk to, and I paged through the news feed for a while. I'd sometimes read the comments and they were uniformly predictable. I'd rarely follow any links. I'd get the gist of news from headlines but no details, which is a mixed blessing. Most of the remaining 10 percent was to coordinate with friends who live in my area but aren't easy to get in touch with in person, or it's a discussion that was hard to have in other formats. Very, very little long-lost friends, or engaging with friends of friends, or any kind of group coordination other than as above, or anything else Facebook is "really" for. So I'll have to find other ways to entertain myself on the bus or elevator. I think I'll survive.
Although ironically, over the past week I've used Facebook for networking with former co-workers, and getting in touch with a college friend who was in town. (We didn't meet up in person but maybe next time.)
I downloaded all my FB data as suggested and... there's not much there. List of who my friends are, some ads I must have clicked on years ago, and the photos I intentionally uploaded. The only moderately sketchy thing is a couple things I thought were posts from friends were apparently ads and clicking on them for more details gave some other advertiser permission to see my list of friends. Maybe I got lucky in my choice of technology platform and somehow navigating their security settings a while back?
I'm the least savvy person in the world, but apparently Android phones turn over more data than iPhones?
I was told it would have my phone call/message history, but it didn't. Admittedly I haven't had the app on my phone for a while, but I did for a long time, and I must have given it contacts permissions then because I used to get phone contacts autopopulated from FB contacts. (I've never had anything non-Android.)
"Facebook has made a series of allegations surrounding Dr Kogan's use of data. The University of Cambridge takes matters of research integrity and data protection extremely seriously. We have to date found no evidence to contradict Dr Kogan's previous assurances; nevertheless, we have written to Facebook to request all relevant evidence in their possession.
"In 2015, Dr Kogan applied to the University for ethical approval to use data collected on behalf of GSR for his academic research. His application was reviewed and subsequently rejected. Dr Kogan was in the process of re-applying when Facebook requested deletion of the data; hence the application was withdrawn."
How ever will you people see pictures of my granddaughter, the cutest toddler in the history of toddlers?
I have never even been on Facebook.
Android is lousy with permissions it grants, so many apps want access to so many things they shouldn't have access to and it's either accept or don't install the app. I end up not installing a lot of apps.
Don't forget Donna Rice! Also, attractive and self-confident. She was involved with Gary Hart, the frontrunner for President in 1988, until a reporter followed her to his house.
The photo of the happy couple on a yacht, sealed it.
I believe she was very publicly born again as her period of fame was winding down, and spent a few years on the televangelism circuit. I expect that may be Stormy's next move.
How about Christine Keeler? The ur-sex scandal of modern times.
41: Later, I wondered what would have happened if Gary Hart had tried to tough it out.
I had figured (based on Gary Hart) that Clinton was finished when the Gennifer Flowers scandal broke. But Bill just rode it out. I was never sure if there was an important difference in the "scandals" or if it was just that Bill Clinton was tougher or more shameless or......
39: Boring serious answer: tinybeans.com. Made for sharing pictures of children and nothing else.
42: You would say that, wouldn't you.
43 -- I think the second time for scandals, political ones at least, bites less because there's a sense that oh yeah they do that. House members should try overdrawing their checking accounts; I bet no one gives a shit.
43: In 1992, HW Bush didn't make much of Clinton's Gennifer problem because he had his own Jennifer problem. He had been whatever-ing with Jennifer Fitzgerald for more than a decade, and got her jobs in the White House so she could travel with him. Everyone knew. Spy Magazine published the story before the election but it wasn't picked up anywhere else.
According to
http://www.dkosopedia.com/static/j/e/n/Jennifer_Fitzgerald_e075.html
The Washington Post, when reporting her appointment as protocol chief, described Fitzgerald as having served Bush "in a variety of positions".
Wasn't the full quote "served under the President in a variety of positions"?
Dammit, I looked it up and I'm wrong.
"... under the president in a variety of positions, above him in one position, and in front of him in two positions."
I've mentioned before that JF was my mom's best friend in high school, and is one of her closer friends even now. They're both on Facebook, I'm sure.
My mom believes the denials, which is good enough for me. Lots of people gossip about women who work with men. I don't know anything, obviously, about this situation, but the tendency to assume that a female subordinate who's doing a staff job well is probably also doing the boss deserves some pushback.
It's kind of hard to believe former president David Cop-a-feel could pull off the secrecy.
I've mentioned before that JF was my mom's best friend in high school,
I met JF's mom in 1988; the account linked in 47 quotes her. She struck me then as the exact sort of not taking any bullshit woman of that generation who'd've been (and was) my grandma's friend as well. (They lived like a block away.)
I expect that may be Stormy's next move
No way.
If I were Stormy Daniels, my next move would be getting those ridiculous implants removed.
Right, but you don't have the hips to match them.
Anyway, now I feel a little bad about 51, but not that bad.
I was going to look at the list of people with the name Cohen and see if Michael Cohen was the biggest asshole with that surname, but the list was just too long.
Not Facebook - but annoying and possibly malware tech. Does anyone get these pop-ups on the iPhone that day something like. Congratulations you've won an Smazon gift card. Tim said that you were supposed to go into Airplane mode and then clear the cache in Safari. And I've done that, but the damn things keep coming back.
It sounds like you keep browsing an infected page. If there are limited number of pages you browse on your phone, you could try to find out which one it is by the process of elimination.
My Andriod phone has started serving me ads. It alerts me from time to time about a new app it thinks I should install.
It would be one thing if I got hacked, but in the case the ad spam is coming directly from the phone manufacturer. Apparently the manufacturer - "Blu" - installed this adware as part of the most recent OS software update.
They've decided that selling 16 cents worth on ads on my phone is worth never having me buy a Blu phone again.
Its amazing what a sewer the Android ecosystem is.
Yesterday my Android Samsung phone updated its browser and now Unfogged looks terrible. In the old browser it looked exactly like the site does in my desktop web browser. Now I can barely tell if I've looked at a comment, the grey and blue are really close together and the font is not whatever the site sets but something completely different and annoying.
Spy came out with its long report in its August 1992 issue, a free copy of which was placed on the seat of every delegate at the Democratic convention in New York. A cover story by Joe Conason giving a thousand reasons not to re-elect Bush had as number one, "He cheats on his wife."
hahahahahahahaha oh boy
I always assumed that all possible privacy violations were already always occurring in worst-case-scenario form
Like most assertions of cynical fatalism, this isn't actually a helpful thing to believe.
One consequence of my updated Samsung browser is that I can't post to the blog from my phone anymore, it forbidden, I don't have permission to access /cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi...
This comment was posted from the Samsung browser (updated) of a Samsung phone. I don't really use the Samsung browser for anything but unfogged. I use Chrome for the rest.
I tried again and got the same error message. I also only use the Samsung browser for Unfogged. I feel betrayed.
I haven't left FB but I have taken it off my phone.
If I wanted to maximize privacy while still being able to use gmail and play Pokemon Go, what kind of phone would I get?
Why on earth are you using the Samsung browser?
72 Habit. Also I found the Chrome browser unintuitive.
Yes. When I first got this phone, Chrome was very awkward to re-size the text so that I could read here. It isn't now (I just checked), but I have habits.
For years, I wasn't sure if Samsung had its own browser and during those years, I've owned multiple Samsung tablets.
Can I recommend checking out Firefox, Dolphin or Opera? Though the latter is now owned by the Chinese, so maybe if privacy is your concern it wouldn't be the best.
Opera Mini is good for unfogged, on an antique Samsung. Though, as GY says, China.
I use Firefox and Chrome, except on iOS, where I use Firfox and Safari. I'd prefer Firefox only, but on Android Chrome allows some font-size/scaling overrides that make it easier for me to read. iOS doesn't allow any of that*, so there's no advantage to using Chrome and I'd skip Safari except iOS forces some links to open there.
*There are accessibility options but those are more than I need. I just want to be able to read text without scrolling horizontally. I read unfogged in landscape orientation because I can't read it otherwise.
Maybe Unfogged needs its own app! That would be great except, you know, not.
Look, I'm sorry I dropped off Mastodon, OK?
People need to at least be preparing for post-Facebook life.
Remember when everyone thought Second Life would be a thing?
I'm liking Brave as a desktop browser; haven't tried it in mobile yet.
I still have FB on my Android phone, but I will never install Messenger, which gives FB rights to do almost anything on your phone; for example, taking incredibly unflattering, awkward naked pictures of you and sending them to your junior high school nemesis, who lives on a Greek island with a gorgeous partner, accomplished yet not smug children, and a shelf full of awards in the field in which you have spectacularly mediocre. I mean, just for an example of a thing that could happen only if your phone were controlled by our data-mining overlords.
When I use Chrome to get to Unfogged on my (Samsung) phone, I often but not always get the offer to see the pages in a "mobile friendly" format. I tried it once and it eliminated all the information in the comments except the footer line.
The sincerest form of criticism.
81: A tour of the abandoned campuses of Second Life.
84: My last phone did that. I found it can be disabled in Android Chrome.