What he said
Don't you see these simple facts? Destroy Facebook and restore human Liberty
What could be more warmly received on this brisk winter's day than a delicious, heartfelt bellow of rage from a Reg reader who could bear it no more. We haven't had one in a few years, but Sir, you are our Flame of the Week... and nobody claims their five pounds. Nobody wins any pounds. In fact, nobody wins. This is …
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 14:49 GMT chivo243
Rant?
You call that a rant? Don't get me started... one of my luddite friends finally drank the purple Kill-Aide, that is the last fucking straw. My wife has to be pried from FB almost daily. If that stupid prick Zuck was here I'd punch him in the back of the head, then in the front. Now for the rant....
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 15:19 GMT Arctic fox
Way to go Andrew!
I think that you can guess what my attitude is to this example of
antisocial media when I describe it as "FarceBooK". It reminds of nothing more than the circular letters that we used to get from a certain type of middle class acquaintance in the seventies and eighties, "Jeremy has done extremely well in his O-Levels and Samantha is becoming very horsey...." Excuse me while I puke. -
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 18:20 GMT Turtle
Re: can I just say that....
"Amazing how many USians confuse the USA with the entire world."
Only you can do that?
"And that 'all men are created equal' was extremely contentious political issue in a country that used slaves for much of its cotton (and other plantation-grown production), which was so important in the world economy that England was very, very close to giving diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy."
Incidentally, perhaps you can explain why England never outlawed slavery in the colonies when they had the authority to do so. Or, in consideration of your "holier than thou" attitude, why it took until 1807 for England to outlaw the slave trade.
Or maybe you could just kinda actually learn something about the history of slavery, instead of simply looking at it from your narrow, ahistorical, bourgeois-moralist point of view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 18:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: can I just say that....
I think you missed the point train today, And that 'all men are created equal' is a joke and nobody said the British empire didn't use slaves we just don't bullshit our people as much as America does.
Anyone can grow up to be president, that one still makes me piss my sides though not as much as Land of the Free, What's that shit yo all be smokin over there?
Also if you want to be all pedantic, judging by how many black people earn shit wages, hold no positions of authority (don't even go there with puppet leader Obama) do menial work or get shot by white police I would determine slavery is still alive (This also applies to your illegal slave labour from the south).
I don't have a problem with America or Americans but I do with blatant hypocrisy and bullshit.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 20:17 GMT Updraft102
Re: can I just say that....
No one can force anyone to stop taking actions that defeat themselves. The urban black culture is incredibly self-destructive. Black kids who want to get educated are beaten down and accused of trying to be white. Those that speak proper English get the same treatment. Then they vote for leaders who base their entire electoral strategy on being the savior of the downtrodden masses. Well, when you do that, you need a large and permanent group of downtrodden masses, so there is never any real effort made to help put an end to the cycle of poverty and ignorance. The people most negatively afflicted by bad schools keep voting for the very political systems that prevent them from improving.
More whites are killed by police, as a percentage of police contacts, than blacks. They don't get the media attention because they don't support the media's agenda, but it's a fact.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 21:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: can I just say that....
More whites are killed by police, as a percentage of police contacts, than blacks. They don't get the media attention because they don't support the media's agenda, but it's a fact.
I would hope so with the population being mostly white (2010).
White 196,817,552
Black or African American 37,685,848
Then per million shot by the police,
0.29 White
0.43 Black
0.26 Native American
So based on the above what actually is the media's agenda?
I also disagree with the urban black culture defeating itself I just think the opportunities given to white people just aren't given to black people. Think of it as coming from slavery to present day, those prejudices will still exist for at least another generation. My kids step-father is a racist and I set them straight at every opportunity.
I just see numbers as they are and ignore the media and their interpretations thereof. To be fair I just try to ignore the media or view it through shit tinted spectacles.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 20:05 GMT Updraft102
Re: can I just say that....
It actually was not a complete joke, and slaves were used in agrarian capacity, not industrial.
The founders recognized the evils of slavery, including those who owned slaves by means of inheritance and were prohibited by law from freeing them.
In order to win independence, the founders were going to need the help of the South. Slavery was going on without any problem in the colonies, and as far as anyone knew, if they remained as colonies slavery would go on forever. Thus, they tolerated slavery and made no mention of any inclination toward prohibiting it, even though they universally wished it banned.
If you consider the writings and correspondence of the founders of the US, it is clear that they considered slavery to be an institution that was an abomination and that would eventually be eliminated in the country they were creating. They were, of course, correct, both in that and their view that the issue had to be handled very cautiously, as that very issue tore the country in half the better part of a century after its founding.
America was born with the slavery problem. The British colonists, while still subjects of the Crown, were the ones who started and popularized that particular institution in the New World.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 15:46 GMT Androgynous Cupboard
That's it?!?!?
It has punctuation and capital letters, not too many and not too few. No swearing. No questioning of the authors parentage, species, sexual orientation or inadequacies , or of the their mothers.
Frankly that's a miserable effort. 1/10 and only because "sick" is repeated five times.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 15:47 GMT James Hughes 1
Wow, lots of hate...
You could, you know, just ignore FB if it's not your cup of tea, and leave those people who are quite happy using it to, you know, use it.
Really amazes me the amount of hate it gets (but not as much hate as the Cambridge Cycling, see here...http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge-station-bike-park-plan-triggers-Twitter/story-28692620-detail/story.html#comments)
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 16:37 GMT Mage
Re: just ignore FB if it's not your cup of tea
Impossible, because the human race is on average gullible. Loads of people in the family, friends, workmates etc using it.
Companies or media outlets you want to use are promoting it or using it.
Ignoring it is about as viable as using translation, video sharing, maps and search with Google. Is babelfish still running? Dailymotion instead of Youtube, Apple or MS instead of Google maps/Streetview/Earth, Er ... Bing/Yahboo instead of Google?
It's only slightly easier to ignore Twitter.
Idiots keep joining Linkedin and giving them all their email adresses. There ought to be a law against that and Whatsapp's slurping of addresses.
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Wednesday 10th February 2016 00:05 GMT Oengus
Re: just ignore FB if it's not your cup of tea
If you haven't seen the effect of facebook, its subtle influence has worked on you. The harvesting of your details allows facebook to "hide" their impact.
You no longer notice the advertising has shifted, the "paid" content is more directed, your thinking is more attuned to the "masses".
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Wednesday 10th February 2016 13:42 GMT SImon Hobson
Re: just ignore FB if it's not your cup of tea
> I find it no problem to ignore Facebook or Twitter, and no none of my immeadiate friends or relatives use FB or twatter
And do you completely avoid all sites that include FarceBork's tracking code ? Do you even know which sites use FarceBork's tracking code ?
No ? Then FarceBork do have a profile on you.
It's "interesting" (more like, scary) to read some of the background documents in the Max Schrems case. The level of detail in a profile they hold on a non-user is disturbing.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 15:59 GMT Paul F
Bottoms up
Well that's sorted then. I miss the FOTW, and wonder at its absence. Could it be that we have a better class of commentard these days, or is the staff too pissed to be bothered? Either way, I've wanted to rant at the distinguished Mr. O myself once or twice, but then I was too pissed to be bothered.
Another pint!
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 16:03 GMT Bota
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
How Zuck considers his users privacy (see: sheep)
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 16:39 GMT John 104
"You have one identity." Zuckerberg's identiy-destroying silo, the biggest plague that has threatened to engulf mankind in a long time.
While not a physical plague, it certainly is a mental one.
<rant>
And I, too, would punch zuk in the face if I had the opportunity. FB is a steaming pile of crap (and not just the joke of an interface). If it isn't people using it as a life comparison tool to bring themselves down, then its an oversharing, who gives a fuck about your vasectomy operation, or your kitten's cute face, waste of humanities time. To be fair, it isn't just FB. It's all social medial. It is a societal killer. Less and less face to face interaction and more and more avoidance of real people.
</rant>
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Wednesday 10th February 2016 02:23 GMT PJF
"You have one identity."
" It's all social medial. It is a societal killer. Less and less face to face interaction and more and more avoidance of real people."
I'm anti-social to begin with (I see dumb people everywhere). So, if I use some sort of S.M., (not S&M...) they may be 2 outcomes..
A) I'll become more "sociable" and interact more with strangers
or
B) I'll become a pathological killer in/of society
I think "B" may be more my route...
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 16:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
The worst bit about this rant ..
.. is that it isn't (a rant, do keep up).
Apart from being disappointingly tame (for a rant, not for an uncensored text), its main problem is that its author is absolutely spot on because this Facebook effort was pretty much the same in nature as Microsoft's 20th century charity before Melinda put a stop to it: utterly self serving and a one way trap for the fools that went for it.
Giving gazillions of innocent Indian people access to Facebook pretending it is the Internet is about as bright an idea as educating kids about the world by feeding them crack. If FB was offering connectivity without strings, fine, but that was explicitly not the plan, and no amount of American bullshit (sorry, it's called Marketing) could cover that up.
So my upvote goes to the ranter insofar that he is right about FB's efforts and thus, in a way, also about the general tone of the article - this time, I disagree with Andrew Orlowski (and no, I'm not in any "I hate author x" club like some commentards seem to need, but I reserve the right to make up my own mind).
In conclusion: (1) not a rant, (2) the commenter was right. So there.
PS: if you want proper rants, publish guidelines that allow good ones to survive the moderation process. One of the best ones ever (having the most impressive upvote count in El Reg's history) almost didn't make it because it wasn't infested with enough asterisks to satisfy the Politically Correct mob.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 17:30 GMT Dan 55
Re: The worst bit about this rant ..
And if poor brown people are to use a social network banned by the elites after lobbing by rich white people (sorry, I wonder what came over me so that I would write that kind of nonsense), Twitter would be better for simplicity, notifications, and low bandwidth. Imagine posting market prices in Facebook.
A bespoke app would be even better, and open Internet access allows that. An on-ramp onto Facebook is not what the world's poor really need.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 17:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
plus ca change
500,000 BC - Ughhh Ughhh Ugghhh (translates as - the kids are using this new fangled talking thing, I don't understand it but it must be bad).
100,000 BC - This painting on cave walls has got to stop, it's just a way for shamans to steal our mammoths
14,000 BC - The kids are writing stuff down with this alphabet thing on stone slabs. No good will come of it, if your name is written down it will cost you your soul, and the king will probably just use the scratches to put up taxes.
2500 BC - can't someone stop these scribes and their 'Abraham begat Issac' - who wants to know every blooming detail of Joseph's lineage?
1550 AD - What's with this obsession with printing everything - if I wanted to read books I would hire a scribe?
1883 AD - Put everyones' phone number in the yellow pages ?- not my number, why would I want anyone to know that? They'll just use it to junk sell top hats.
2003 - Facespace/Mybook - I'll never use that , it's just going to lead to badness, or madness
2023 - Brain link implants, you won't get me using one of those.....
Repeat ad nauseum, muttering 'kid's today' or 'when I was young' as appropriate.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 23:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: plus ca change
You're framing American corporate social media as a part of the natural progression of human communication. It's not.
The printing press liberated people. Copyright was created to control information.
The internet liberated people. Social media was created to farm people for data, and re-enclose them.
One belongs on the timelime of emancipation, the other as short lived business models of their era.
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 17:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Facebook is and will be the biggest waste of time ever used by the human race. I admit I used to go on it many years ago then I remembered why I don't keep in touch with some people, it's cause I don't like them enough to put the effort in and I don't want everything I do recorded by some creepy company.
The Indians have had a lucky escape if you ask me, no pet pictures, no here's the curry I just made, no here the remnants of the curry I made, here's the kids, here's the kids for the 1000th time, I'm depressed today, the weathers bad this monsoon season, I'm happy today, I just farted and followed through, I just split up from Rahul he's a shit everyone block him, open ended statuses that are intended to generate mystery so every other idiot asks what's going on, topical statuses such as "It's great I've got internet but I would prefer water/food/electricity or not being so fucking poor that I earn $1 a day and struggle with daily life."
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 21:13 GMT 100113.1537
Yeah, yeah, FaceBook bad...
But that wasn't the point of the article. The article was about "net neutrality" campaigners who are actually nothing of the sort. It was the people who campaigned to get a law passed in India (which deprived very very poor people of access to something the rest of take for granted) who were the target - in this case competitors to FaceBook, but that was purely incidental to the point of the article.
As as long time Compuserve user (in the days before ISPs) I was very happy to have the few channels that they offered because is was better than nothing. That is what we are talking about here - better than nothing. As soon as they have better options, Indians will use those.
But hey, if you want to pile in on FaceBook, go ahead - Orlowski started that in his second sentence - hardly the language of a paid hack!
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Tuesday 9th February 2016 23:03 GMT John 104
Re: Yeah, yeah, FaceBook bad...
Oh bull shit. We aren't talking about an exclusive dial up network from the 90s. This is connectivity to a modern infrastructure with networking capacity to see the world and all its horrors. With Compuserve, you could still get out on the internet if you wanted to. It just sucked because it was slow. This is restricting people to the shite service that FB is so that they can gather demographics, sell them ads and whatever else.
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Friday 12th February 2016 23:43 GMT Michael Wojcik
Welcome to the club
As a one-time FotW winner myself, I'd like to congratulate PAT MCCLUNG on finally winning this award after a number of enthusiastic, if perhaps not sufficiently enraged, curmudgeonly rants over the past couple of years. While I may not agree with the man on many things, I respect his lack of respect.
(And while I will refrain from expressing any opinion on Facebook's plan and reactions to it, I will say that I enjoy seeing so much of the debate in the middlebrow press being framed as critiques of cultural imperialism, whichever way it leans. It's nice that some postcolonial theory has been taken up outside the rarefied circles.)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
