I’m still pissed off that I’ve never had a facebook. I never gave them any info about me. I gave them no reason to have a profile on me.
Yet because OTHER people have facebook, they know my name, my address, my phone number. I don’t know if they can identify me in pictures that other people post, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Correct. And the same is true for the mobile phones, carriers, and a slew of apps that all look at contacts. They know who you are and who your friends and family are.
There’s a guy in the world of pro wrestling named Jim Cornette that said a quote this reminds me of.
Cornette is known for holding grudges, and being hateful. He keeps a shitlist of people he hates.
Well in the 1980s he was working for a wrestling company, and hated one of his coworkers for a year. Then a new guy came in and was so much worse.
Then one day he says to the first guy “You know, you used to be at the top of my shit list, but with all these new fuckheads coming in, you managed to move down a few spots simply by not doing anything!”
I think Meta is doing a decent job with Instagram. I mean except for collecting all possible data and psychological profiling of users to serve them targeted ads, it’s a decent enough platform. And the only one still allowing for engagement with your actual friends rather than exclusively professional content creators.
Even if you ignore all the ads and data-mining IG its still a shit experience.
You can’t share any links, which does nothing but make it a worse experience, because people just use annoying workarounds.
All the buttons for user profiles, hashtags, and comments are impossibly small.
In the search function you can conveniently “flick” between posts so you don’t have to line each one up perfectly on the screen, but this works nowhere else in the app for some reason.
They created what are essentially 2 completely isolated social media platforms (posts and stories) into the same app, which results in fragmentation of where people post and where you have to look find their posts.
Every time I try to scroll down, I scroll to the side instead.
Every time you open the app, it shows you a post, and then that post disappears 2 seconds later.
They abuse the DM system by cramming other notifications into it for tags and “broadcasts”, presumably to force you to receive them after you’ve disabled all the other notifications.
Of course there’s the flaw of not allowing text posts, which again does nothing except force people to post photos of text, which undermines the fundamental purpose of the platform.
Incessant “suggested” posts that I do not have and have never expressed interest in.
No scroll bar for video, so if there’s something you missed or want to watch again, you have to watch to the end or start from the beginning.
Read receipts subject users to abuse. Any other platform you can disable them.
Standard image posts are hidden by the algorithm, so no point in even posting them anymore, which essentially makes it almost entirely a TikTok/Snapchat clone.
You click the play button on an image, thinking it’s a video, but it’s just a still image with annoying ass audio.
Auto-playing videos.
Stories just flip along without you doing anything, and trying to go back and see them again is a nightmare.
I really don’t understand how people use Instagram. I’ve tried, but it’s about 45% ads, 10-15% posts by people I don’t follow, it’s not in chronological order (or any sense of order for that matter), and regardless of whether I was on there yesterday or 2 months ago, it’ll show me about 40 posts before saying “You’re all caught up from the past 3 days!” and then refuse to show me any more.
I guess this is why I’m here on Lemmy and went crawling back to Tumblr, one of the last vestiges of the old internet. At this point, I’d rather watch a platform die than become marketable to advertisers and shareholders.
Meta is a little hard because they acquired a lot of existing social networks in their prime and have kept things subtle. Think about how long it took EA to finally strip Maxis of everything but The Sims. The only way you would know something is owned by Meta is from the splash screen.
The problem is that FB is the “core forum” for tons of niche hobbies. Irts the only reason I still have a account. They successfully killed off the old php forums.
It’s also the main organization tool for “groups”. I have tried to migrate mine to other platforms with no success.
And also the biggest online classifieds marketplace for trading goods. Even though it’s a fucking awful experience and simply ignores any filters you give it. If you want to actually sell your stuff, or sell it for market value, without shipping, you just have to use it.
Yep, agreed. The biggest problem there is that Meta is generally not making life worse for its users than they’re used to. Facebook and Instagram are giving you almost the same shitty experience you got a decade ago.
Affordable purely by the money you pay upfront. They earn more by the ridiculous amount of tracking they do, and they’re also forcing you to stay within their services.
As with so many other things, you’re paying with more than just money.
And all things Meta.
Twitter and Reddit went so much to shit and lowered the bar so much that Meta actually became almost not bad in my eyes, almost.
Meta is still on a whole other level when it comes to data privacy.
Gee are you implying that storing passwords in plaintext is a bad thing? /s
That’s security, not privacy.
helenslunch - the slayer of untruths
How much privacy do you have when someone has your account password?
You have none, because your security has been compromised. This is a flaw. Poor privacy is intentional.
I’m still pissed off that I’ve never had a facebook. I never gave them any info about me. I gave them no reason to have a profile on me.
Yet because OTHER people have facebook, they know my name, my address, my phone number. I don’t know if they can identify me in pictures that other people post, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
That shouldn’t be allowed. I did not consent.
Correct. And the same is true for the mobile phones, carriers, and a slew of apps that all look at contacts. They know who you are and who your friends and family are.
There’s a guy in the world of pro wrestling named Jim Cornette that said a quote this reminds me of.
Cornette is known for holding grudges, and being hateful. He keeps a shitlist of people he hates.
Well in the 1980s he was working for a wrestling company, and hated one of his coworkers for a year. Then a new guy came in and was so much worse.
Then one day he says to the first guy “You know, you used to be at the top of my shit list, but with all these new fuckheads coming in, you managed to move down a few spots simply by not doing anything!”
They’re doing a Bradbury, in a way, kind of like Tumblr and Steam. Everyone else is shooting themselves in the foot.
I think Meta is doing a decent job with Instagram. I mean except for collecting all possible data and psychological profiling of users to serve them targeted ads, it’s a decent enough platform. And the only one still allowing for engagement with your actual friends rather than exclusively professional content creators.
Even if you ignore all the ads and data-mining IG its still a shit experience.
I could go on but I digress.
I really don’t understand how people use Instagram. I’ve tried, but it’s about 45% ads, 10-15% posts by people I don’t follow, it’s not in chronological order (or any sense of order for that matter), and regardless of whether I was on there yesterday or 2 months ago, it’ll show me about 40 posts before saying “You’re all caught up from the past 3 days!” and then refuse to show me any more.
I guess this is why I’m here on Lemmy and went crawling back to Tumblr, one of the last vestiges of the old internet. At this point, I’d rather watch a platform die than become marketable to advertisers and shareholders.
It’s not. Instagram is popular the way it is because “It’s going to be a lot harder to pull off massive protests” there.
Don’t worry that’ll change, they haven’t owned it for that long yet.
they acquired it in 2012.
…OK, well I guess we wait until the wrong person is in charge of that division. Also I’m old because that feels like yesterday…fuck.
Meta is a little hard because they acquired a lot of existing social networks in their prime and have kept things subtle. Think about how long it took EA to finally strip Maxis of everything but The Sims. The only way you would know something is owned by Meta is from the splash screen.
The problem is that FB is the “core forum” for tons of niche hobbies. Irts the only reason I still have a account. They successfully killed off the old php forums.
If you live in rural America sone information is only posted to Facebook, from private businesses to small county or town governments
Additionally FB Marketplace killed Craigslist, at least in my area (also US). Nextdoor somewhat is a counter but that has its own problems.
Meta probably is the hardest one given that in many influencal countries WhatsApp is the app everyone uses for communication
It’s also the main organization tool for “groups”. I have tried to migrate mine to other platforms with no success.
And also the biggest online classifieds marketplace for trading goods. Even though it’s a fucking awful experience and simply ignores any filters you give it. If you want to actually sell your stuff, or sell it for market value, without shipping, you just have to use it.
Yep, agreed. The biggest problem there is that Meta is generally not making life worse for its users than they’re used to. Facebook and Instagram are giving you almost the same shitty experience you got a decade ago.
at least they are developing affordable vr
And locking it behind their account system
Yeah they’re subsidizing the price to get between you and reality.
Affordable purely by the money you pay upfront. They earn more by the ridiculous amount of tracking they do, and they’re also forcing you to stay within their services.
As with so many other things, you’re paying with more than just money.
they’re also pushing the technology and pressuring other manufacturers to adopt and be competitive