back to article 'People ACTUALLY CONFUSE Facebook and the internet in some places'

Ex-Googler, Facebook COO and mouthpiece Sheryl Sandberg claimed this week that some users (sorry, people) actually think that Mark Zuckerberg's free-content ad network is the internet. This shocking assertion came as Zuck's Number Two defended a bullshit report from consultancy firm Deloitte, which claimed that Facebook's …

  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "users (sorry, people)"

    Products!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Half are below the median

      Which is why democracies are at a disadvantage.

      1. Eddy Ito
        Trollface

        Re: Half are below the median

        and I wouldn't want it any other way.

        1. Jonathan Richards 1
          Stop

          Re: Half are below the median

          Politico: We shall not rest until all the [schools|prisons|hospitals|police forces] are performing better than average!

          The Populace: D'oh! Not again!

    2. Sir Runcible Spoon
      Joke

      "Products!"

      In that case where do I get my refund?

  2. Steven Raith

    Facebook/Portugal

    "But still, 358 of you, yes, THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-EIGHT OF YOU favoured Facebook over Portugal."

    Some people just want to watch the world burn.

    Steven "petrol and matches" R

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Alien

      Re: Facebook/Portugal

      Some people just want to watch the world burn.

      "And nothing of value was lost"

      MZARG from ROLZOR XII agrees.

    2. Zippy's Sausage Factory
      Thumb Up

      Re: Facebook/Portugal

      Some days, I wonder if those 358 were the ones that actually live here, the way some people moan... :-P

      +1 for the Deicide quote. "In The Minds Of Evil", indeed...

  3. Russell Hancock

    facebook IS more important than portugal...

    Because it keeps the "people" who are so obsessed with having 10,000 friends stuck on their phone / laptop / tablet / tv / whatever and away from real people in the real world thus making my life more pleasant. :)

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: facebook IS more important than portugal...

      Dey is be famous! This means one day dey will be rich!

      QED

      If there was any doubt that most people utter morons, the Internet has dispelled that doubt. Most of the knowledge of the human race is now available at our fingertips and yet people are still incredibly, incredibly stupid.

      Maybe in another generation the Internet might help change all that. Sometime after WW3 I think.

  4. Brent Longborough
    Thumb Up

    Another Illusion Shattered

    Oh! I always thought that AOL was the Internets! You live and learn.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Another Illusion Shattered

      Get out of here, gramps!

      This one I repost regularly, it's from October 11, 1994 (Newsgroups: comp.society.folklore, Subject: Re: Folklore and stories re: excessively clueless for-profit users). I wonder whether facebook gets complains about various content on the 'net from obsessive-compulsive content correctors?

      "One guy posted a MAKE.MONEY.FAST slime to a few groups, and I sent a message to his postmaster, and attached a curtosey copy to the poster. I get a message back a few hours later, with NO quoted material in it, systematically responding to everything I wrote. He (she?) said that if I reported it to his postmaster, he thought it was very unfair. He was a newbie and didn't know, blah blah blah. Then he asks for the address of his postmaster, so I give it to him. Not long after that, I get _another_ message saying that I shouldn't expect to keep my account for very long because he (she?) reported "my abusive attitude and harrasment" to his service's support. (AOL) I sent another reply back explaining the fine points of the net. I don't know if he ever responded to that; I set slocal up to kill his messages."

  5. Craig 2

    eBay...

    I'm not surprised eBay is losing money, its website has turned into a bloated POS. From constantly showing spurious "Sorry, can't perform that action", to the ongoing attempt to turn it into a "Shopping Destination".

    For example, changing the "Saved Searches" link into "Searches you follow". WTF? Saved searches = searches that I saved. What the hell does it mean to "follow" a search? There are a million similar tweaks that don't add any functionality and just obfuscate the true meaning, all in the name of making it more "social". They should concentrate on making the best tat-selling site instead of trying to compete with the likes of Amazon.

    /rant over

  6. Arctic fox
    Headmaster

    I an pretty certain that the nation Portuagal.........

    .......will survive Farsebook. Indeed I would despair for the future of humanity if I did not believe that this was the case.

    1. harmjschoonhoven
      Pint

      Re: I an pretty certain that the nation Portuagal.........

      I am pretty certain that Portugal can bring a better soccer team in the field than FB.

  7. chivo243 Silver badge
    Coat

    358 people

    Sounds about right. People that speak English that think Portugal is a window on a ship, not a country.

    1. Chris Hawkins
      Pirate

      Re: 358 people

      Actually, you mean "People of a trans-pond variety that speak English that think Portugal" is a person of the feminine persuasion passing "a window on "the left hand side of" a ship! ;))

      "Left-hand down a little bit, Chiefy!!!

      A luta continua!!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Internet for dummies

    That's how I've been calling Facebook for years. It was designed to be exactly this. There was nothing innovative in FB, just you got it in a single place with a dummies-oriented interface. In turn, it allowed its users to easily gather all the information they needed about products (aka Facebook 'people') without having to correlate them from different sources. FB was successful because of this. People who had troubles to use the different services available on the Internet, found FB, the Microsoft Works of the Internet, a simpler solution designed for their low skill level. From Zuckerberg perspective, it was a winning move. He's a dummy enough to understand what dummies want. Sometimes being clever doesn't help you to go far, you easily forget a lot of people aren't.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Internet for dummies

      Sometimes being clever doesn't help you to go far, you easily forget a lot of people aren't

      But then you open the morning paper and read what various branches of govnm't are doing. And then you remember.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just say NO

    To Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp etc etc

    You know it makes sense.

    Your life will be a whole lot better if you don't use them.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My friend...

    recently said his wifi must be playing up because the extension cable is now so long it will be difficult for BT to get the signal to him...

  11. Terry 6 Silver badge

    The email is broken etc

    Of course they think FB is the net.

    We all surely have had my experience of staff calling me to say that "The internet/email is broken" and found that the whole machine was blue screened/frozen/dead. It's the same thing.

    And needless to say they've never asked the person on the next desk if they had the same problem.

  12. Mark 85

    Facebook != Internet; Google = Internet

    Most of the users (sorry, idiots) that I deal with use Google to get to Facebook. To them, Google IS the Internet. Facebook is a part of Google.. err.. sorry, Internet. So when Google crashes, the Internet is down. When Facebook crashes, Google is down. It took me awhile to learn the lingo. Like the big box isn't the computer, it's the hard drive. The screen isn't the monitor, it's the computer.

    And no amount of correcting their nomenclature will change them. What's really scary is that this is what they will teach their children. We're on the long (well, maybe not so long) slippery slope to hell.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Facebook = Internet; Google = Internet connection

      Maybe once. Today for many Google is the home page, FB is the Internet. On phones, where the seasrch engine is embeded and not so visible, FB is "the Internet" even more.

      The problem for Google is that you enter "Google" (the search engine") and then get out to land somewhere else, and for the "average social product" that's FB - where he or she stays much longer.

      That's why Google tried its Google+, etc - to retain p(roducts)eople inside its network when it can track them. Ok, GMail and YouTube allow for a lot of tracking, but not that kind of DPI - Deep People Inspection - that FB allows.

      Sure, if Google doesn't work on their PC to access FB they think "the connection to the Internet is broken", than they see that FB works on the phone and they still think the "Internet works". If Google works but they can't access FB, than the Internet is really broken... especially since they "can't do nothing".

  13. pixl97

    Most tech types would get it wrong too.

    Ask most people who or what the Internet is and you'll they'll give you some strange answer, even most tech people that don't directly work with it. How many people will say off the top of their head that IANA makes the Internet, the internet?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Most tech types would get it wrong too.

      I've always pointed out that the "Internet" is not the "WWW" nor other types of applications or protocols running OVER it. But whenever I say the "Internet" is just a trasnport layer designed to shuffle TCP/IP packets around people stare at me as if I'm a green alien just arrived.

      That also explains the overuse of HTTP as a transport protocol instead of TCP/IP itself, and all the silly ideas to try to overcome the limits of the former and make it as useful as the latter (like WebSocket and other stupid, useless technologies). But that's a lost fight...

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Re: Most tech types would get it wrong too.

        Who do you point it out to?

        Techies know.

        Public still think, as already noted, that the internet is another word for Google.

  14. Dominion

    No longer possible to get "the internet"

    The problem now is that it's impossible to get "an internet connection". Every provider meddles with it and puts in in useless DNS servers and web content filters that invariably hike up the prices, when all want is a "an internet connection".

  15. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Facebook is the internet?

    Who writes this rubbish?

    I thought everyone knows that "the internet" is a small box ... I know because I saw it in sit-com ...

  16. Oninoshiko
    Joke

    Corrections

    I don't know why you guys keep misspelling "Content-free ad network"

  17. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Maybe not confused?

    "People will walk into phone stores and say 'I want Facebook'. People actually confuse Facebook and the internet in some places."

    Or they are obsessed with Facebook, and actually only care if the phone can use Facebook, not any other web site (or the rest of the internet for that matter.)

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