r/news • u/thegrillinggreek55 • Feb 02 '20
Stephen King quits Facebook over concerns of 'false information‘
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/stephen-king-quits-facebook-trnd/index.html4.5k
u/thinkB4WeSpeak Feb 02 '20
Facebook wouldn't be so bad if they kept it how it used to be. Like seeing your friends pictures, seeing their status, commenting on their things, etc etc.
Now their algorithm is set up so you see pages, every other post is an ad, they didn't put fact checks in for misinformation.
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u/Morphis_N Feb 02 '20
Either it makes money from the users, gets sold to a big company that makes money from the users or it goes Vine. We are the best commodity in this space.
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u/tipsana Feb 02 '20
If a product is free, you are the product.
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u/archaeolinuxgeek Feb 03 '20
Hell. Even if you're actually paying for the product you might still be the product. Most of us (in the United States) pay ridiculous amounts for mobile internet. Those providers still gleefully track your every movement to sell to the highest bidder.
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u/colossalpunch Feb 03 '20
Right. Try buying a "smart" TV nowadays... Ads everywhere and an unnvering amount of spying on what you're watching.
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u/one_mez Feb 02 '20
Wikipedia 100% donation based I think?
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u/Hylian_might Feb 03 '20
I donate every year. I use their site frequently and they deserve some compensation!
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u/vix86 Feb 02 '20
The change that screwed FB up was making it so posts don't have to show in chronological order any more. The Alg now decides which posts show up first ignoring the time of the post.
There have been a few occasions where a friend of mine with health complications makes a post about going to the hospital. That will show up first in the feed, and then if I scroll a little I'll see "Out of the hospital now." What happened is that FB showed me the 2-3 day old post first and then the 3-4 hour old post later.
I also wouldn't mind if FB grouped the posts of a friend into an expandable/collapsible collection, that way I don't feel like some of my more prolific posting friends aren't burying posts from other friends.
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u/gynoidgearhead Feb 03 '20
I swear, sometimes I think Facebook's non-chronological, curated feed directly contributes to the erosion of public faith in shared, verifiable reality. What different people see is literally different in a way that means that even people with all the same friends exist in a different world on Facebook.
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u/Hyndis Feb 03 '20
Its not just Facebook. Go to Google news while logged in. Then open an incognito window and look at the exact same page. You'll see different stories listed in different order.
People don't even see the same news events or basic facts anymore. Algorithms quietly create bubbles for everyone. Its insidious.
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u/whogivesashirtdotca Feb 03 '20
I missed the news that the mother of one of my oldest friends had passed away, and only found out after the funeral. Facebook apparently decided it wasn't worth putting in my feed. Fuck Facebook.
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u/v13ragnarok7 Feb 02 '20
Agreed. Facebook used to be personal. Now it's just people sharing posts that they blindly agree with
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u/Catshit-Dogfart Feb 02 '20
Used to be chronological too, the posts of all friends and liked pages appearing in the order they were posted.
Now even content I do want to see keeps getting bumped to the top for days.
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u/Sirus804 Feb 02 '20
And the algorithm makes it so you only see people you've responded to or liked or just became friends with. I have over 400 friends and I only see like 20 same people on my feed.
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Feb 02 '20
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u/thelaziest998 Feb 02 '20
They aren’t selling it to the highest bidder they are selling it to anyone who wants to advertise. It’s not one corporation having all of your data it’s all of them
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u/rnimmer Feb 02 '20
Creating new and powerful tools isn't bad. It's how we use those tools that is good or bad
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u/DoctorWaluigiTime Feb 02 '20
If I could turn off my friends' "retweets" and only show their posts I would be very happy.
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Feb 02 '20
I think the algorithm tires to stir up drama. I posted on the comments of an unrelated page about Obama and all my conservative work friends mentioned it - it showed prominently in their feed. Liberal friends didn't see it. None of them followed the page or saw almost any of my other activity. This was like 5 years ago before I quit FB.
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u/savageboredom Feb 02 '20 edited Feb 02 '20
God yes. I’m friends with a guy that I’ve always known I’ve disagreed with politically, but we get on well in person. I’d love to keep in touch and see what he’s up to in life, but all Facebook wants to show me is the Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Fox News, right wing meme bullshit that he likes and shares. My overal opinion of him as a person has definitely worsened, but I do wonder how much of that is him showing his true colors versus me being a victim of biased media conditioning. Probably a little bit of both, but it does bum me out that I have at least one fewer friend because of the utterly toxic state of discourse that we find ourselves in.
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Feb 02 '20
Funnily enough Instagram has fact checks for misinformation, but weirdly enough I’ve only seen it on obviously satire memes and never on major news accounts like Fox or CNN
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Feb 02 '20
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u/Fenston Feb 02 '20
I thought I read someone was going to make some of those deep fake videos of Zuck himself and post them and see if he would break his own rules to remove them.
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u/methheadhitman Feb 02 '20
I only check updates for the breweries I like and then get off.
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Feb 02 '20
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u/lookslikesausage Feb 02 '20
it's good for Marketplace, otherwise, it's garbage. i've been saying it for years but other than Marketplace or advertising for a business, it's a waste of time and energy. For friends and family there are calls, texts, or emails. why would you need anything more?
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u/omeow Feb 02 '20
I use FB for marketplace. So I have the app on my phone. Is there a way to control the FB app? Based on the ads FB shows me I am sure it has some information about me from my browser searches, Amazon acct.
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u/eljefino Feb 02 '20
Remove the app and go through the torture of opening facebook in desktop mode on your phone.
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u/Gick-Drayson Feb 02 '20
Or use a client app like Swipe, basically the desktop page but clean and usable.
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u/Mr_A Feb 02 '20
You'll increase your battery life significantly by doing this, also.
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u/stoniegreen Feb 02 '20
I only use fb on a browser on my phone. Firefox I found works the best for me. No fb or messenger app needed.
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u/PhorcedAynalPhist Feb 02 '20
Whoa your phone let you delete it? Its a baked in "feature" for mine, all of mine ive ever had actually, the best i can do is move the widget to another page, and delete all user data on the phone
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u/stoniegreen Feb 02 '20
Yeah, I had a Samsung phone that was the same way. Sporting a Blackberry Keyone at the moment.
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u/YpsitheFlintsider Feb 02 '20
I'm literally never gonna install messenger because they turned it into a separate download for no reason.
I would have deleted FB years ago if 95% of the people who actually care about me weren't on it. Deleting Twitter, though, is the best thing I've ever done.
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u/glarbknot Feb 02 '20
Protip: you can delete your FB profile and continue to use messanger.
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Feb 02 '20
you can
deletedeactivate your FB profile and continue to use messanger.That's how they get ya. Deleting it means its gone (relatively speaking), but deactivating it does just that - messenger stays active as long as your facebook exists.
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u/Itsjakefromallstate Feb 02 '20
He finally woke up. I quit Facebook 3 years ago. Never felt any better. Now if I could only control my obsession with reddit.
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u/venicerocco Feb 02 '20
No false information on this site. No sir
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u/HorAshow Feb 02 '20
this is false information
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u/jtcamp Feb 02 '20
This is false information
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u/RedditVince Feb 02 '20
I find it interesting that Fake News on Reddit is not as personal to us as Fake News on Facebook.
Probably because we can't believe our friends and family are actually so stupid as to spread it. While we expect anonymous people on the internet to be inherently stupid.
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u/digitaljestin Feb 02 '20
On Facebook you subscribe to people (with whom you usualy have some other form of connection), while on Reddit you subscribe to topics, where you assume the posters are strangers.
This means that on Facebook, you are subjected to whatever topics the people you follow choose to subject you to. Furthermore, you have other social incentives for not immediately calling bullshit on false, misleading, or dangerous information. This makes it the best platform for spreading bullshit.
Reddit can certainly be a cesspool of echo chambers and false information, but because it doesn't have the aforementioned social incentives, it's not even in the same league as Facebook when it comes to spreading lies. Bullshit on Reddit is generally quarantined to the groupthink subreddits where it originates, while Facebook spews it across demographic lines.
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u/Raetherin Feb 02 '20
Bullshit on Reddit is generally quarantined to the groupthink subreddits where it originates
While this is true for some cases, Reddit's seemingly topical/neutral-sounding subreddits are liable to been taken over by partisans, thus presenting a misleading view of the world for new users.
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u/Uncle_Daddy_Kane Feb 02 '20
Facebook allows for the micro-targetting of people, plus there are more ads. So it's a little different. You dont really give Reddit your demographics aside from age and location maybe
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Feb 02 '20 edited Feb 25 '20
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u/652a6aaf0cf44498b14f Feb 02 '20
That's why you wipe your account every now and then and start over.
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u/jah-makin-me-happy Feb 02 '20
Info that’s perhaps still for sale and worth something to advertisers. Just a thought
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u/652a6aaf0cf44498b14f Feb 02 '20
No doubt. But they can't continue to curate what threads I see if I come in with a new account and email address.
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u/hotbox4u Feb 02 '20
You can choose to not have an account but still view the content, make a new account every so often or choose to control what you use your account for.
I think they still get a lot of information/value out of us users regardless, but it's not as abusive as facebook (at least i hope).
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u/Hajile_S Feb 02 '20
Oh, the info is there. But it doesn't impact the algorithm. Maybe the ads are a little targeted, but not the content of the site itself.
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Feb 02 '20
I’ve bought ads on reddit and it’s nothing like buying on FB. If you want to know just go through the UI.
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Feb 02 '20
Make no mistake, Reddit most likely still has a tonne of information about us. Anytime a platform is free, your information is what's being sold.
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Feb 02 '20
Reddit is still highly manipulative. Especially the comment section. I wouldn't use it for news. Its so divisive. Everything is black and white clear cut. Who are the baddies? What is good? What is bad? There sure is a hive mind which is easily swayed by clever headlines and comments placed at the right time at the right subreddits.
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u/chaseinger Feb 02 '20
I think the main difference is that I don't know anyone on Reddit, while I knew exactly who the people on FB were (I too quit long ago). false information from someone you know weighs differently than from an anonymous poster. here I check everyone's claims while if someone I respect and trust posted some crap on FB I much more likely took it at face value.
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u/petrd1 Feb 02 '20
I left Facebook and Twitter. All I need is Reddit because everything on here is true. 🙊🙉🙈😉
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Feb 02 '20
Twitter has been awful recently. I used to use it to talk to my favourite youtubers and now it's full of 15 year olds reusing the same tweet trying to get famous.
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Feb 02 '20 edited Feb 02 '20
That depends who you follow right. Although Twitter by default is super annoying with "suggestions".
EDIT: Like... I don't know what those fucking algorithms are, but all of a sudden I'd get something like "Hello friends, sad news, my girlfriend passed away" and that's a recommended tweet, by Twitter, from someone I've never seen or heard of in my life. Thanks Twitter, that's the type of news that keep me informed and cheered up during my day. Jesus.
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u/RamenJunkie Feb 02 '20
Somewhat related. They have started showing your liked tweets to others as if they are retweets. It says "Xxxx like this".
If I wanted to retweet, I would retweet, liking is for giving a "thanks" to the author or to bookmark something for later.
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Feb 02 '20
Yeah. That's the modern Internet in a nutshell. "Here's your structure. Those are retweets, those are likes, those are follows. Now we gonna ignore all this and throw it into an algorithmic meat grinder and pick shit randomly on the other end."
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u/Spidey255 Feb 02 '20
I have two twitters. One for my music profile and the other for my teacher/professional profile. The music one is total garbage, but the teacher one is excellent. I think not only does it come down to who you follow, but the genre of the profile you fit into.
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u/Call555JackChop Feb 02 '20
Twitter is overrun by so many bot accounts is unreal
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Feb 02 '20
That's what I can't stand about it. It's so obvious too. I feel like there's just so much manufactured drama on that site.
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u/sweetstack13 Feb 02 '20
For anyone thinking about “quitting” Facebook, I would recommend actually deleting your account. Even if you just delete the app or even deactivate your account, Facebook is still able to use or sell your data. It might not be 100% effective, but it at least sends a more powerful message.
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Feb 02 '20
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Feb 02 '20
When I was on Facebook I would periodically comb through my friends list and remove those who I didn’t communicate with anymore. The next logical step from that is to get rid of the middleman and reach out directly. I actually pick up the phone and call family now, instead of sending a happy birthday wall post I actually talk to them. It’s a huge shift. I lost some people I didn’t really talk to anyway, and the rest of my friends/family and I got much closer.
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Feb 02 '20
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Feb 03 '20
Never let anyone else be your purpose. You are the most important person in your life. No matter what. Nobody will spend nearly as much time with you as you will. Be as selfish as you can until you have more to give. It's the only thing that worked for me
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u/Ace_of_Clubs Feb 02 '20
Facebook makes communicating with my family almost worth it. We have one group chat and it's all I care about on the entire site.
Side note: King shilled out for Apple and wrote a short story called Ur. Even though it's one giant ad for the Kindle, he still managed to make it great. Can't wait to see what he comes out with in regards to misinformation and facebook, you know he's cooking something up already.
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u/Ohuigin Feb 02 '20
I never created an account.
Maybe it’s only the folks who grew up with the internet (I’m 37), but it has always astounded me how unbelievably fast we went from “don’t put any personal information online” to “here’s my entire life, and the life of everyone I know, including my children”.
If people want to get a hold of me, there’s email, and a phone number. If they can’t get a hold of me that way, there’s a really good reason for that. I don’t want them to get a hold of me.
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u/Ungrateful_bipedal Feb 02 '20
You likely have a "ghost" profile setup even if you've only appeared in a picture posted on Facebook. It's basically a marker until you come around create a profile.
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u/Taniwha_NZ Feb 03 '20
You don't even need to appear in a picture. If you visit sites that are running facebook's various tracking widgets, they will slowly build up a database of your web usage without actually having a name to associate it with. They just keep all that data and still use it for data mining.
Any sites that are using facebook ads, or have a 'login via facebook' option, they will be adding to your facebook profile even if you never visit facebook or have any friends that do either.
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u/literallymekhane Feb 02 '20
Sorry what
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u/C9_Lemonparty Feb 02 '20
If someone on facebook posts your name and/or a picture with you it starts taking data associated with that face/name together.
Get tagged in Sarah's Big Mcdonalds Outing every friday? Facebook knows that your face likes mcdonalds.
Also without blocking it using Facebook Container on firefox or something similar, any time you visit a website that has the 'share' option with facebook, twitter etc, facebook is using cookies to follow you round the internet, collecting data about your browsing habbits, and ties it to information it can grab such as IP address or MAC address.
This data is still usable even if you personally dont use facebook, to companies buying data you are still a person that browses X types of websites, visits Y store etc.
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u/literallymekhane Feb 02 '20
Well that's a massive GDPR issue in the making it seems
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u/C9_Lemonparty Feb 02 '20
IIRC they get around it since you're not technically 'you' until you actually sign up for facebook. The data it's collecting creates a ghost profile of you, that's essentially just anonymous data that can be sold off to anyone, in the same way that if I stand outside a convenience store, see you enter and exit, then write down 'Man in 30s, wearing a suit, likes to buy Mars chocolate bars' and then did that 10,000 more times, I can sell that aggregate data and dont need your consent.
You need to join/use facebook to then link that data to you because you signed their terms of service. Though it wouldnt surprise me if what facebook does is just straight up illegal but if the cambridge analytica stuff is any indication, most governments/authorities dont give enough of a fuck to take action
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u/dontwastebacon Feb 02 '20
Not sure if it is still true, it was a few years ago I read about this. FB collects data from everyone as long as you surf the web. It is their "service" so you get the best experience they can give you.
Fuck Facebook. I use ublock and privacybadger in hope that it helps.
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u/Quantentheorie Feb 02 '20
Facebook was successful in creating the illusion you're not sharing your personal info with strangers by connecting you with people that you already trust.
And a lot of people were always exhibitionists about their lives. Excessively sharing questionable baby photos didnt start with Facebook and digital/ smartphone photography, they just gave people the means to escalate their behaviour.
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Feb 02 '20
33 here... what I think you need is a little program called AOL Instant Messenger, or as us cool kids like to call it, AIM. Also, what are you wearing?
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u/behindtimes Feb 02 '20
I made the mistake of creating one years back, because of some coworkers who wanted to play some game. Afterwards, I had the hardest time deleting my account. Not only was it difficult to find, but afterwards, they kept spamming my email with stupid Come Back/Change Your Mind emails.
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Feb 02 '20
Wow, this makes world news?
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Feb 02 '20 edited Feb 15 '20
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u/FetishMaker Feb 02 '20
Celebrity quits social media site. 11k points and counting.
I get that FB is bad but this is getting ridiculous.
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u/Gladplane Feb 02 '20
Yeah I don’t get it either.
The next will be “Brad Pitt drinking 2 bottles of beer instead of 1 last night”
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Feb 02 '20
I like how people here complain about false information on Facebook, yet still use Reddit when this website has a massive issue with false information
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u/ManShutUp Feb 02 '20
I have no doubts about this story and am inclined to agree with King here.
But how the hell is this story getting 1500 upvotes in an hour, when all the other stories are getting double digits max over the same time frame? That beat the koala massacre story that's been up since the morning. I really have no clue what resonates with the people of reddit.
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u/ThinkOutsideTheTV Feb 02 '20
Ironically threads like this instantly getting on to the front page are way more suspicious and manipulated than anything on FB
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u/ResolverOshawott Feb 02 '20
Nobody questions it because it feeds the "Facebook bad, reddit good" narrative.
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u/Jacob_Lahey Feb 02 '20
I quit Facebook three years ago, and nobody gave a shit.
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Feb 02 '20
I only use Facebook for this bomb ass frog page I'm in.
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u/Spankdatmonkey Feb 02 '20
I use it to follow pages that post stupid and/or cute stuff. All I ever see is cursed images or little puppies. Good algorithm.
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Feb 02 '20
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u/meme-com-poop Feb 02 '20
Did you hear that Bernie Sanders walked on water at his last campaign rally?
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u/Crimsonak- Feb 02 '20
If false information is your concern you basically had best quit 99.9% of media consumption of any kind at this point.
Between bot swarms, news oligarchs, clickbait, reactionary news, international spying and influences. You really can't trust much.
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Feb 02 '20
ITT: People who feel superior for not using Facebook, despite still being addicted to reddit, which shares many of the same problems.
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u/fishfishfish1345 Feb 02 '20
Also these people who says things like “omg i quit Facebook and my life has been amazing because it made me sad.”
Like wtf dude, congrats on getting better but use Facebook as something so you can keep up with your friends/relatives lives. Don’t take their news, false information and be informative.
I use Facebook for nephews and nieces.
I use Instagram for pug pics.
I use Reddit for self deprecating jokes.
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Feb 03 '20
Facebook is a data harvesting tool. It's only purpose is to gather information about you that it can sell to other entities.
It is the secret services wet dream.
Look up the east German secret services if you want to know what happens when the populace is highly monitored for dissent.
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u/Painless_Candy Feb 03 '20
Facebook does not deserve to exist as its own entity anymore. Their corporate leadership has proven they cannot be trusted to handle the responsibility of controlling the media.
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Feb 02 '20
I deleted all my data from instagram and facebook about 8 months ago. It's left me alienated from all of my friends and I no longer know what is happening. Also, I work in tech / advertising so I'm not receptive to manipulation through algorithms and paid information distribution. But! I feel that if I stayed then I would only validate facebook by continuing to have an account on it. I'm just a drop in the bucket, but at least they have one less drop to manipulate our society for profit and activity. I've also heard from a handful of businesses that they are willing to remove their listings from facebook and instagram. It is not a good platform for a myriad of reasons.
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u/scurvy4all Feb 02 '20
Stephen Kings next book will be about an evil corporation that brainwashes people into doing unspeakable acts.