DARKSIDE of FACEBOOK

Everything That Glitters Isn't Gold

"We’re doing a great job of 'canceling' the master of leverage. That’s how Zuckerberg REALLY became wealthy and worth $101B. Facebook/Twitter may be the champion of ‘Cancel Culture’, but it’s in our power to 'cancel' our dependency of those platforms. I'm a man of integrity; so with me, it’s not about having something to hide. It’s about a business and its CEO's lack of integrity. Facebook has been selling our 'browsing history', 'interests', 'I. P. Addresses', 'Network of Family', and every website you're able to log into by clicking 'LOG-IN WITH YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT' — He's been doing it without our consent. I don't take that lightly. There's a difference between CUSTOMIZING YOUR BROWSING EXPERIENCE and SELLING YOUR USERS BROWSING EXPERIENCE TO A BACKGROUND ENTITY THAT BECOMES THE ALL-SEEING-EYE."

- R. L. Laster

You did not sign up to be a sociology experiment

Hey everybody? How's it going? Today, I want to discuss a Facebook Post that I did recently—that there was a lot of skepticism on. I commended Apple's efforts to protect user privacy. They release this new feature that minimizes the amount of information that is going to be sent with an ad to an app when you sign in with their service. So, if you've ever been to a website that you didn't want to register or sign up in order to post or use it, but you saw a sign with Google or sign in with Facebook button, you've maybe used that because you'll likely already have a GMAIL or a Facebook account. This way you don't have to register, you don't have to have a new password, verify your email and all that. The problem is, god knows how much data Facebook is sharing with any of these Websites—that limits the amount of data that is going to be shared with the application. In addition to this, they've also had other pro privacy features like people being irritated at tracking restrictions in their browser (as if tracking restrictions in a browser is a bad thing for the user). The reason I want to discuss this is because two years later, it appears that Apple has stuck to what it is they told the user which is that ‘we would like to work to protect your privacy’. Now, how do you know that this is true? How do you know that they are working to protect your privacy and that this just wasn't some ‘B.S.’ virtue signaling? One of the biggest rapist mentalities (when it comes to getting your data regardless of what must be done) is mark Zuckerberg—in my opinion. He is very, very mad at this. As Eli the Computer Guy often says:

“Mark Zuckerberg has a rapist mentality. If he wants your data, he's going to get your data. And if he has to break in your window—or roofie you to get your data, he will. That's what he wants.”

There's a good movie about ‘this the social dilemma’ where they go over just the sheer extent to which they track every single effing thing that you do… and it is very creepy. …And also the why of them tracking everything that you do. There's an article that came out recently where Facebook is accusing Apple of ‘interfering with its business at anti-competitive behavior’. This is funny. Apple comes out with features that protect the user's privacy. By protecting the user's privacy or making the user aware of when they are being tracked, this is somehow screwing with Facebook’s 'business model' and anti-competitive behavior. Imagine if you were a locksmith and you installed security bars on people's windows and a rapist came up with you and said

“This is anti-competitive. You're interfering with my hobby. How dare you interfere with my hobby? I'm suing you. I want to be able to rape people. How dare you put bars up on windows so that I can't break into people's houses?”

I (kind of) wonder if Mark Zuckerberg should be making this as public as he is. When someone says: ‘we are instituting a feature that protects user privacy’, and the other person says: ‘how dare you? You're going to destroy our business if you protect user privacy’. It really lets you know everything that you need to know about that situation and in my opinion, who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. So if you read an article I just read it says

“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seriously worried about Apple. He has long labeled the phone manufacturing company as one of Facebook's biggest competitors. Facebook relies on the iPhone and IOS as half of its mobile platform in the United States.”

It’s of little wonder WHY the social media giant closely monitors any update by Apple. The rift between Facebook and Apple intensified on recently during Facebook's quarterly earnings call with Investors last month. Facebook took out a full page newspaper attack ad against Apple. Zuckerberg continued the attack by accusing Apple's new changes around ‘identifier for advertisers’ are actually being intended to harm Facebook's business interest and not protect consumer privacy. Apple delayed releasing a privacy feature as part of its IOS 14 update after developers including Facebook complained it would decrease their ad revenue. The update will ask users permissions for apps to track them for advertising purposes. Now; one of the things you should be cognizant of is when he says ‘anti-competitive’. What social network is Apple running? Is Apple running at themusic.com? Is Apple running a Myspace? Is Apple running a foursquare? I find this interesting. So; if you're going to inform the user as to what the application is collecting and limit its ability to collect information from people without their consent or knowledge, this is considered anti-competitive. The weasel word type of language here is something to be cognizant of and I'm going to go over that full-page attack ad in a moment. Apple announced that the feature originally planned to be rolled out in September would now be released early this spring. Facebook is worried that the feature will decrease Facebook's revenue. The social media giants chief financial officer (Dave Weiner) said the company would face significant ad targeting headwinds in the first quarter of 2021 because of Apple's privacy changes. Apple may say they're doing this to help people, but the moves clearly track with their competitive interest: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said recently. He criticized Apple of making misleading privacy promises to people while offering a messaging service (iMessage) that has less privacy than Facebook's ‘WHATSAPP’. Now, again. When he says this, what is most of the functionality involved in Facebook? It's seeing people's posts. It's the community pages. It's the ability to create all these little communities and all that. It's not just the messenger by itself. To say that this is anti-competitive simply because Apple has a messaging app 'in my opinion' is ridiculous. You can message people using a special messaging app. Or you can just message people over basic SMS. There are many different ways to message people. Simply limiting people who use the app store's ability to track every single effing thing you do “in my opinion” is not anti-competitive. It says over here we have lots of competitors who make claims about privacy that are often misleading: Zuckerberg said. Apple responded by saying ‘that is the pot calling the kettle black’. Apple recently released so-called nutrition labels which focus largely on metadata that apps collect rather than the privacy and security of people's actual messages. ’iMessage’ stores non-end-to-end encrypted backups so your message is by default unless you enable disable iCloud: he said. Okay… so disable ‘iCloud’ and then it won't store it. Zuckerberg went further to accuse Apple of anti-competitive behavior.

“We're also seeing Apple's business depend more and more on gaining share in apps and services against us and other developers. Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how apps and other apps work—which they regularly do to preference their own and this impacts the growth of millions of businesses around the world.” Zuckerberg said.

If this wasn’t mind baffling enough, Zuckerberg continued.

“...While Apple may say they're doing this to help the people, the changes clearly track their competitive interests. I think that this dynamic is important for people to understand because we and others are going to be up against this for the foreseeable future.”

In a recent statement (apparently directed to Facebook, but without naming the company) Apple CEO Tim Cook leveled a blistering condemnation of conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms as he discussed the new privacy tool the iPhone maker plans to roll out. Cook cited recent social unrest to a broader argument that app tracking tools are turning consumers into advertising products. Now, if we were to talk about what the average person is more concerned with in society—whether or not there is some sort of anti-competitive action occurring regarding, Apple's messaging platform and Facebook's messaging platform, or the fact that we are increasingly being turned into the product rather than the customer—where our information is shared and utilized often in malicious ways to try and keep us in this little dopamine receptor loop so that we stay on the effing platform all day and getting to arguments with our friends and family and manners that we just never would have imagined five to ten years ago. Now the full page ad they took out makes the arguments that this is going harm small business. By not being able to mine people's data—to the degree that Facebook does and by Apple giving people the tools and the knowledge to avoid their data being mined to such an extent and to understand when their data is being mined, that harms small businesses. This is madness. I'm a small business. In the past, I was stupid enough to use Facebook advertising. I was actually paying an advertising professional that I had worked with in the past. I kid you not. …Thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in not a single customer. …All of the work. …All of the data mining. …All of the tracking. …All of that stuff is not improving their platform's ability to allow small businesses ‘that advertise’ to make money. I don't have bad ratings on these platforms. It's not like I’m a one-star business on these platforms. My customers are finding me through many other means, but it's not Facebook. I realized this is just one anecdote of just one small business owner, but I really do call B.S. on him saying that our inability to roofie our users—and take their data is going to be bad for small business. I think that this is crocodile tears. I think he is the one that is pretending to actually care about protecting the little guy when in reality he’s just trying to make money off of robbing you of your data. Regardless of what dismay he causes in society, he does not care. I deleted my Facebook for the first time in 2014 and again around 2018 or 19. I was stupid to re-register. I remember listening to Eli the Computer Guy's Facebook Posts and when he covered a news story about the psychological experiments they were playing. That was enough. …and this is back in 2014. This is seven years ago. For those of you who are unaware or who weren't following this at some point, here it is. Facebook (without having their users opt in without their consent) was having one group of users be given a lot of happy stuff in their profile. And then another set of users where they promoted all of the sad and miserable and angry stuff in their profile. They wanted to see how the two types of content affected the user. If we show this set of people a bunch of happy stuff and this set of people a bunch of sad stuff, will it affect how they go about their day? Will it affect what they post? The findings were that it actually did. The people that had a bunch of happy stuff in their profile tended to post happier stuff and the people that had a bunch of sad stuff in their feed tended to post sad, depressing, angry updates. Facebook was using the data that they mine and using the data that they get to manipulate users and screw with their heads. Facebook was doing psychological experiments. This is the type of crap that Mark Zuckerberg does. Regardless of my issues with Tim Cook—regardless of my issues with Apple—regardless of them being about right to repair—regardless of their internal repair programs often coming out late and only after a lawsuit—or the design issues with their products or me not being able to buy parts, one thing I can say about Tim Cook and Apple is that they don't run psychological experiments on their users. They don't screw with without consent. They don’t use you as an guinea pig to actually see if they can affect your day. 'Can I make you just a little less happy today?' That's the type of thing that mark Zuckerberg does and I hope that people see this for what it is. You have someone who is trying to protect people from breaking into your house… Who's putting proper security doors in and bars on your windows, and then you have the rapist next door that's saying:

“How dare that locksmith put bars on windows? How am I supposed to break in next door and rape?”

You have to see this for what it is. I hope that people are able to see through this crap. I hope that these advertising campaigns don't change people's minds in the manner of thinking that this is all about small business. I don't know a single small business owner that think that Mark Zuckerberg should be able to continue taking advantage of people and taking their data just because something is in E.U.L.A.. And here's the thing that you can do to take away Facebook's power. One of the best things that you can do to take away the power that Facebook has over you, is delete Facebook. Disallow Facebook cookies in your browser. If you delete Facebook and you don't allow Facebook cookies, you take away their power over you. There are other ways for us to communicate without allowing this invasion and exploitation of our online preferences.

We should never settle for any entity that profits off psychological experiments on non-consenting users and mining every single last piece of data that we provide them. There are things that the app store does get wrong where Facebook may have justifiable reason to be angry, but this is not one of them.

Facebook instituted a type of feature where you could donate money to small businesses. They could do live streams and Facebook was not charging for this feature. They weren't taking a cut of the revenue and it says that Apple takes 30% of this purchase right under the button that would allow you to buy the class. There's a reason that they're putting that there. If Facebook advertises a feature that's supposed to be charitable with helping struggling small businesses—that are not legally allowed to open because Cuomo, they're people that are choosing to spend 100 or 10 or 50 bucks with the business they're going to be mad if the business says:

“Oh thank you so much. I really appreciate the 70% you gave me.”

“Wait! What? I gave a hundred.”

“Yeah, I got 70 out of that 100 dollars; that goddamn Facebook.”

They're going to blame Facebook because it's the Facebook app. They're not going to know the inner workings of the app store to understand that Tim Cook takes a 30% cut of all in-app payments. If you're going to introduce a charitable feature and 30% is going to be given to a multi-billion dollar company, you need to let the user know that. Mark Zuckerberg would say it's not me, but they're pointing the finger at Tim Cook rightfully so and they actually did not allow this statement to be in the app. This statement (or something like it) needs to be in the app. if I give a hundred dollars to a business out of charitable purposes and that business says they only got $70, I’m going to be steaming mad at whoever it is that is claiming this charity when in reality they're taking 30% cut. I could have just paid the business myself. Eventually; they did update it to say Facebook doesn't take a fee from this purchase. They're not saying ‘hey Apple's taking a 30 cut of charity’. They're just saying:

“Listen, man. If somebody's taking a cut of the pay, it isn’t us. Do a little bit of Google and you'll find out who it actually is.”

I actually agree with Facebook when it comes to these cases, but the larger case that they're trying to make—that Apple protecting its users from companies (that try and snoop every single last bit of your data) is bad for small business… That's bull crap. There's no other way to put it. You can often tell whether what a company is doing is good or bad for a certain set of people. Just base it on who are happy or sad. For instance; you have the private prison industry. Biden made some announcements about ending private prisons they absolutely tanked. What you'll notice is that they immediately bounced back and are actually in better standing than where they tanked. Why did that happen? It’s because the actual order was in favor of the department of justice. This might’ve affected a small number of prisoners out of the millions of prisoners in private prisons; we’re talking about 14,000 people nationwide. All the while, investors in the private prisons are like:

“…Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm doubling down. I'll buy more stock. Muah Ha Ha Ha.”

You can tell that there's probably not a lot that's going to change there. When you have Apple and Facebook, you have a person who is one of the best known people in the country for mining your personal user data in a fairly disgusting fashion (and he's angry at Tim Cook). He's pissed at Tim Cook and running full-page ads against Apple and their practices. You can probably bet your ass that Apple actually does care about user privacy if someone worth over 60 billion dollars is paying for full page ads against that company. Yeah. They're probably doing the right thing when it comes to privacy. Remember; just because we dislike Apple for what, what they do when it comes to right to repair and the repair ability of their products— and how they treat their users when it comes to hardware defects, that doesn't mean that they get everything wrong. They're one of the few companies that I see that is putting an effort to do this right.

The reason this is important is because many companies tend to copy Apple. Take Samsung for instance. Apple removes the headphone jack from products; Samsung removes a headphone jack from their product. Apple removes the micro SD card slot; Samsung removes the micro SD card slot. Apple starts pairing devices things like a camera screen and Samsung follows suit with some of their phones. Apple stops including the charger in the box; Samsung stops including the charger in the box. Many companies are completely incapable of forging their own path. What they do is they look at Apple and copy what they do. This is because they lack something that Apple has. I'm looking at you Samsung. This is important to understand because if this takes hold; if Apple actually starts caring about user privacy and protecting user privacy (and it does well for them), then maybe every other company will do what they always do when it comes to Apple. Just maybe they’ll follow suit and consider it the trendy thing to do. They’re going to copy Apple regardless of whether it's the bad stuff or the good stuff. They might as well start replicating honorable trends. Maybe we'll finally live in a world where we have a little bit more privacy and a little bit more information about what's mining our data.

My Wrap Up

"Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lost more than $7 billion in personal wealth as companies stopped advertising on the social media platform." - Bloomberg's Billionaire Index.

Honestly, he owes his users some of that money. Hell; probably most of it. The behemoth of social media experienced a decline in usage, from 67 percent of Americans ages 12 and older to 62 percent of that same audience, according to Edison and Triton's survey of 2,000 randomly selected persons. This drop is seen in every age and gender demographic as well.

"We’re doing a great job of 'canceling' the master of leverage. That’s how Zuckerberg REALLY became wealthy and worth $101B. Facebook/Twitter may be the champion of ‘Cancel Culture’, but it’s in our power to 'cancel' our dependency of those platforms. I'm a man of integrity; so with me, it’s not about having something to hide. It’s about a business and its CEO's lack of integrity. Facebook has been selling our 'browsing history', 'interests', 'I. P. Addresses', 'Network of Family', and every website you're able to log into by clicking 'LOG-IN WITH YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT' — He's been doing it without our consent. I don't take that lightly. There's a difference between CUSTOMIZING YOUR BROWSING EXPERIENCE and SELLING YOUR USERS BROWSING EXPERIENCE TO A BACKGROUND ENTITY THAT BECOMES THE ALL-SEEING-EYE."