I don't mind the ads, I mean I know that's how FB pays the bills.
It's the suggested pages, 3 or 4 at a time, taking up half my feed. And yeah are some pages I might like but thank you I have enough Star Trek stuff in my feed. And while I am of the right age and demographic I will pass on Lion-O's Dank Thunder Meme Stash if you don't mind.
They're all just party crashers in my mind.
I don't mind the people you might know or pages you might like bits, but adding strangers to my stream is just not acceptable!
Its terrible content, terrible search, terrible to actually get to what its alerts are referring to. If my wargame club wasn't on it I wouldn't use it.
I have FB primarily for messenger for some friends and family. One time it had a story about a pro wrestler from the 80s and I was trying to remember who it was so I looked at the story. The next three months were constant stream of pro-wrestling pages filling up the site.
It seems to have replaced forums for wargaming communication, so sadly stuck with it. Aside from all the complaints above, I also get irritated by the algorithm giving me sports posts and articles 3-5 days after the match in question has occurred.
I do not use it at all, I just use messenger to talk to family. It's awful, the suggested posts just take over everything, it's the worst part of social media these days. The entire idea was that you could essentially curate your feed so that you could see the things you wanted to see, no have an algorithm suggest utter dross.
As the user experience declines I wondered how the company is doing, a worse user experience is usually a sign of a struggling company trying to monetize every inch of its property.
So I checked, FB made $39 billion last year, so you can see why they're pushing to make more money.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Does your feed also loop the same 10 comments over and over again for days while ignoring new and relevant posts by friends and family?
Hah yeah mine keeps doing that!
And yes I hate having to constantly go to the comments to tell it to show me everything instead of the few that it "thinks" I want to read.
Honestly it seems Google/Youtube and FB have all turned a corner ni the last 5-10 years that has progressively made their search and display worse and worse. Personally I'm convinced its a combination of bots, a desperation to maximise ad revenue and a shift in human behaviour that has resulted in people just following what the algorithms show, which causes the algorithms to show the same type of thing more and more. The result of which is a positive feedback loop where designers think they are giving people more of what they want because people engage with it more; but that's because its all they are giving people to engage with and a LOT of people are too lazy to search for more (which is then heavily hindered by the search systems not showing many results).
Layered on top I'm willing to bet various blocks of "human behaviour data" is actually bot behaviour as bot detection and bot creation constantly battle each other. So it wouldn't shock me if a huge chunk of the data is based on bots doing bot things to boost channels and so forth with abnormal patterns of behaviour.
Ergo its gone from following and aiding human behaviour to defining human behaviour whilst patting itself on the back that its still doing the former.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: i'm fairly certain banishing an item from my feed is counted as 'interacting' with it, thus making more and more of the same annoying nonsense show up
but hey, at least FB is more usable than X/Twitter
Banishing/ignoring things either tends to make the system think you love it or (more often) makes it think you HATE that content. Thus it doesn't just remove it from your feed, it wants to remove all other instances of that content/creator from your feed (esp on youtube). So suddenly you go from ignoring one thing from someone one time to never getting any updates from them ever.
Steam "kind of" does this with their library news reel in that if you've a game you don't interact with for a while, Steam stops telling you news regarding it. So a game can have a semi-major update and you have no clue its happened.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: i'm fairly certain banishing an item from my feed is counted as 'interacting' with it, thus making more and more of the same annoying nonsense show up
but hey, at least FB is more usable than X/Twitter
Sort of. . . If you use any of the reaction buttons prior to banishing, yes, FB will push that crap even more.
What I've noticed is, every few weeks they'll reset or redo the algorithm. . . Basically, I'll go from having almost no sponsored/forced ads inside my feed (a particular thing I fething loathe, I get you "need" ads, but put them off to the side or something), to at the beginning of a week it will be 30+% of my entire feed. Seemingly every other post will be some sponsored ad or sponsored page. My personal tactic is to report every single one of them. Every. Single. One. its either spam/scam, sexually explicit, or just offensive if I can't be bothered. In my mind its a case of "you waste my time with this gak, I waste your time"
When I got some of the megachurches in the US as "sponsored ads" I made the mistake of leaving the angry react. . . . which then flooded my feed with more gakky megachurch bs. So, if you truly want stuff gone, you just report it/banish it, but DO NOT HIT A REACT BUTTON!!!!
I keep getting religious stuff in my feed. I think it’s getting info from YouTube, as I have an interest in apologetics and the discussion there on, but am otherwise happily atheist.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I keep getting religious stuff in my feed. I think it’s getting info from YouTube, as I have an interest in apologetics and the discussion there on, but am otherwise happily atheist.
It will pull from youtube, google, your search history - anything it can get its hands on.
Also even if you turn things off you can bet its a whole rafter of settings that turn themselves on again next time something gets a refresh/update
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I keep getting religious stuff in my feed. I think it’s getting info from YouTube, as I have an interest in apologetics and the discussion there on, but am otherwise happily atheist.
It could also be your interest in wargaming. I started getting ads for far right “anti-tyranny” tactical gear and Norse rune jewelry shortly after joining a couple of wargaming groups. Those are definitely not things I looked at on YouTube.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I keep getting religious stuff in my feed. I think it’s getting info from YouTube, as I have an interest in apologetics and the discussion there on, but am otherwise happily atheist.
It could also be your interest in wargaming. I started getting ads for far right “anti-tyranny” tactical gear and Norse rune jewelry shortly after joining a couple of wargaming groups. Those are definitely not things I looked at on YouTube.
Edit: and no, Dreamforge wasn’t one of them.
I mean, YouTube (and Google in general, by extension) has a pretty well documented history of quickly dumping hard right content on people after doing, well, pretty much anything on the website. Doesn't surprise me that Facebook does the same, especially given they're all buying your info from each other to refine their advertising algorithms.
The more social media spirals out if control, the more I miss the old Internet, before social media platforms had really started. Back when it was forums and people's own random Web pages. Those where the equivalent of the Wild West period in USA. Short lived, but very energetic. Now it is sguffinf lore and more to a sanitised corporate medium.
I've been getting 'content exhaustion' issues on my phone. After a couple of refreshes or FB, and scrolling down 20-30 pages, it stops and gives an error, and doesn't show any more. Once that happens, it'll take hours before it lets me scroll more than that 20+ pages down.
This is just since the start of this year.
This is course a perfect example of “engakification”. Which is a proper word now.
What used to be a fun and useful way to keep up with friends and family, is now a corporate hellhole devoted solely to making a ridiculously wealthy man even wealthier.
We’re kind of seeing the same thing with Streaming. Amazon now carries ads (nowt too annoying thus far, but if it could figure out I Don’t Care About Sport, that’d be great), and prices are only going up, ads or not.
I quit facebook a decade ago, and I don't miss it at all. I'd hardly been using it before that.
But lots of the stuff I used to find on forums and blogs seems to have moved onto it sadly. I recently decided to make "burner" account to join some of those groups, but I realised that making an email nowadays pretty much REQUIRES your phone number. I went with Protonmail but then they had a go at me for using it to try to sign up to Facebook and wouldn't show me the confirmation email.
Honestly pretty shocked at how restrictive and invasive the major services have gotten, it's much worse than I thought.
Da Boss wrote: I quit facebook a decade ago, and I don't miss it at all. I'd hardly been using it before that.
I shadow quit. I couldn't delete my account because (believe it or not) Uncle Sam is a heavy user in military accounts. When I got mobilized for the covid, I had to have access to it.
That being said, I deleted just about everything in my profile, including the photos, etc. I used to get notifications to entice me to log back in, but that stopped after a while.
Recently, though, I got a notification of a password reset, and that caused me to want to log in. I put in my password and then facebook demanded I give them a copy of my current photo ID for "verification." Um, no. I got another notification, and this time clicked on the button saying "No, I didn't authorize this," and facebook's response was "okay, no problem."
But now the notifications are starting back up, hot and heavy.
They're literally phishing their users, using threats of unauthorized access to get users to change their password. My wife deleted her account long ago and when they phished her she said they needed to stop or she would contact law enforcement, so they did.
I don't think that's FB fishing as I've had those emails and didn't require any ID or anything. It's more likely scammers trying to get into your FB by just hitting as many accounts as they can
Overread wrote: I don't think that's FB fishing as I've had those emails and didn't require any ID or anything. It's more likely scammers trying to get into your FB by just hitting as many accounts as they can
I think both are likely, but it was strange that facebook - the actual site, not an email - said that they needed to confirm my ID so could I kindly send them an image of my photo ID.
The site makes its money from selling people's private information, and no other site asks me for that kind of stuff. At most they'll ping your phone and email of record. Actually saying "hey, photograph your gov't ID and send it to us! We're totes trusthworthy" is weird.
Overread wrote: I don't think that's FB fishing as I've had those emails and didn't require any ID or anything. It's more likely scammers trying to get into your FB by just hitting as many accounts as they can
I think both are likely, but it was strange that facebook - the actual site, not an email - said that they needed to confirm my ID so could I kindly send them an image of my photo ID.
The site makes its money from selling people's private information, and no other site asks me for that kind of stuff. At most they'll ping your phone and email of record. Actually saying "hey, photograph your gov't ID and send it to us! We're totes trusthworthy" is weird.
Yeah but at the same time you do get clone accounts created of actual real people that scammers then use for all kinds of nefarious purposes. FB thus probably does need to sometimes verify that you really are who you say you are because there's two people registered with the same name in the system and they need to make sure they ban the right one.
Another layer might also be if your activity suggests that your email might be compromised and thus they want ID proof to verify that you are you and that its not someone has gained access to your email and then used that to gain access to everything else that you have through "oh send me a reminder".
There are certainly risky parts and even these verification elements, which could be totally developed for the end-user benefit ; could be twisted by staffers or management into something else for another use.
It's layers of the onion sadly that make things complicated.
Commissar von Toussaint wrote: I think both are likely, but it was strange that facebook - the actual site, not an email - said that they needed to confirm my ID so could I kindly send them an image of my photo ID..
If it's been a while since you logged in, and scammers have been trying to access your account in the interim, it's not really that strange that they wanted to confirm you were actually you before giving you access to the account.
I would agree that asking for photo id is not the best way to go about that, and that photo id isn't something to trust to any social media site... but the idea behind it is reasonable.
insaniak wrote: If it's been a while since you logged in, and scammers have been trying to access your account in the interim, it's not really that strange that they wanted to confirm you were actually you before giving you access to the account.
I would agree that asking for photo id is not the best way to go about that, and that photo id isn't something to trust to any social media site... but the idea behind it is reasonable.
It's a paradox: to secure my account I'm asked to do something fraught with security risks.
This is why other sites ask my first grade teacher, or first pet, or where I met my spouse - information that is meaningless trivia.
Anyway, it's best just to stay away from the place.
It's not really a paradox - your bank or such can also require more proof than a random pet name (often something you have to write down so you don't forget which "favourite pet" you chose or if you chose a name that wasn't actually your pet so someone can't hack into your account).
FB is just more "serious" about it than a forum which is happy for just a basic confirmation level of info.
Overread wrote: It's not really a paradox - your bank or such can also require more proof than a random pet name (often something you have to write down so you don't forget which "favourite pet" you chose or if you chose a name that wasn't actually your pet so someone can't hack into your account).
FB is just more "serious" about it than a forum which is happy for just a basic confirmation level of info.
The paradox is that you are electronically transmitting information that could be hacked either en route or once it reaches the source. Furthermore, my bank makes its money by reliably protecting my money; Facebook makes its money by selling all of the personal information it can get from me.
Basically, their business model is slow motion identity theft - everywhere you eat, sleep, your favorite foods, family, where you went to school - all of this is their commodity. There is very little incentive for them to protect my ID. I'm enough of a cynic to assume that half the "data breeches" are when the company decides that a year of "identity theft protection" is worth less than the data they are selling.
It should be deeply disturbing that deleting my Facebook account would have had an adverse effect on my military career.
Commissar von Toussaint wrote: I think both are likely, but it was strange that facebook - the actual site, not an email - said that they needed to confirm my ID so could I kindly send them an image of my photo ID..
If it's been a while since you logged in, and scammers have been trying to access your account in the interim, it's not really that strange that they wanted to confirm you were actually you before giving you access to the account.
I would agree that asking for photo id is not the best way to go about that, and that photo id isn't something to trust to any social media site... but the idea behind it is reasonable.
This. . . Even for folks who are on daily, or very nearly so. I have a friend who got told by a mutual friend of an imposter account. Despite fairly frequent activity, they did need to prove that their account was the real account, and this was post-logging in to facebook, so not a fake site phishing for info. One of those things that could be used was a photo ID.
Yeah, I would trust my bank to protect my personal information more than I would trust social media sites or other businesses. I don't use AirBnB for the same reason... got up to the part of the account setup where they wanted me to upload pics of my driver's license, said 'Nope' and went with a different booking company instead.
The old 'mother's maiden name, etc' style questions are much less obtrusive, and much less risky... particularly because you don't have to use the actual, true information, just need to be able to produce the same answer you supplied originally.
On the facebook front, my current big bugbear is having stuff consistently not show up on my feed until 3 days after it was posted. The kids' school and the local community group frequently posts about things that are going on that day, and not seeing the post until 3 days later is more than a little useless.
And yes, the suggested pages are out of control. There are more ads and suggested pages in the news feed than content that I actually want to see.
Although at least the ads are more relevant than the constant stream of identical, bot-created ads for nonsense products on twitter. The frustration with FB ads is that there are so many obvious scammers that I no longer trust any of them. So they're just useless filler taking up space in the news feed.
Overread wrote: I don't think that's FB fishing as I've had those emails and didn't require any ID or anything. It's more likely scammers trying to get into your FB by just hitting as many accounts as they can
I think both are likely, but it was strange that facebook - the actual site, not an email - said that they needed to confirm my ID so could I kindly send them an image of my photo ID.
The site makes its money from selling people's private information, and no other site asks me for that kind of stuff. At most they'll ping your phone and email of record. Actually saying "hey, photograph your gov't ID and send it to us! We're totes trusthworthy" is weird.
There is a guy I follow on youtube that calls himself the Mechanical Ninjaneer. He has a facebook account under that name also, as that's how a majority of his followers know him. One of his episodes was literally him fighting with facebook because they locked him out of his account for "using a fake name" and they need an ID with his name on it to allow him access. So, he just fabricated his own ID. It was just some random background of a map of Arizona, a picture he took of himself, random numbers for the "ID", his name listed as "Mechanical Ninjaneer", and the words "Official Arizona Identification" across the bottom. He scanned it, sent it in, and they accepted it, no problem.
I'm glad I've avoided all those anti social sites. I've never used them and never seen the need or had the interest in them to do so.
None of my kids, I use that loosely as they're all adults, use them either. They all have horror stories of people that they know that have harmed themselves, killed themselves or had horrible reactions on something they posted.
I don't understand in this time of fairly common identity theft why people post all of what their doing online. They make themselves targets.
Anti social media it is as there's nothing sociable about it.
In an age when nobody writes letters anymore, Facebook was a handy tool for keeping up with what the people you know but don't see every day are up to with their lives. It was also handy for reconnecting with people you had lost contact with over the years, as so many people were using it. It was very definitely 'social' media.
The change came when they introduced advertising. From there, the focus became making money for advertisers rather than keeping the platform user friendly and functional for its original purpose.
someone on the internet ask you to send them your full name, address, passport, credit card, and phone number so they can verify that you are "real" and not a scammer, while promise to keep those information save and only sell them anonymously if you pay them
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: This is course a perfect example of “engakification”. Which is a proper word now.
What used to be a fun and useful way to keep up with friends and family, is now a corporate hellhole devoted solely to making a ridiculously wealthy man even wealthier.
We’re kind of seeing the same thing with Streaming. Amazon now carries ads (nowt too annoying thus far, but if it could figure out I Don’t Care About Sport, that’d be great), and prices are only going up, ads or not.
Once I learned of that concept I saw it everywhere I looked online. FB, amazon, google.. all used to be world class experiences, and are now basically just flea markets.
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
Seeing as they've updated their algorithm again, and again I'm subjected to god awful ads inside my feed, there's yet another thing to gripe about:
If you go in to ad settings, the page simply does not load. Like, it just isn't programmed to do anything. So, it used to be, you could click a couple buttons and say "never show me this advertiser again" but now. . . blank screen.
I kinda fancy that I know more about UK financial products than most Dakkanauts. And I know which products are regulated, and which aren’t.
And if it’s not regulated, it can’t be recommended to anyone except experienced investors.
Now. What makes one an experienced investor? It genuinely depends. And part of that “depends” is one’s liquidity and overall situation.
If you’re like me and you do pretty alright? Low risk,low reward investments are best suited. You won’t become a squillionaire overnight. But you’re never gonna lose more than your original stake.
£10, £100, £1,000 in? That’s it. That’s your potential loss.
But crap like Crypto and CFD? Those are complex. And with some? You can risk more than your stake.
It’s those that can’t be advertised. Ever. At all.
Yet…..FB? “Oh we am the Speshul case”. And I’ve seen far, far too many cases cross my desk where some poor dobber had been swindled. I’ve even written to my then MP about it.
His answer, the wording I can’t quite remember is that social media platforms argue they’re somehow not included in advertising laws.
But…hey. Keeps me a job. Just sucks to be the poor devils that fall for it and lose their life savings. Or worse.
On that? How many of us receive any kind of financial education?
Anyways, that’s somewhat political so crashing on.
Facebook is now hosting ads featuring Hard Core Prawn. Not the simply suggestive. Proper “giving her six nowt” Prawn. And when I report it as inappropriate? Apparently it’s not against their rules.
I normally have YouTube premium, so just don’t get the ads. But having been Bill Bombed this month I’m starting to see ads. Just not that one. Or those ones.
Twitter's thing of having community notes instead of content moderation is not really a bonus. You still see the dross in the feed.
Which, now that I think of it, would be a fantastic idea - they need to add a toggle to set the feed to not display anything with a community note on it unless you have interacted with it...
insaniak wrote: Twitter's thing of having community notes instead of content moderation is not really a bonus. You still see the dross in the feed.
Which, now that I think of it, would be a fantastic idea - they need to add a toggle to set the feed to not display anything with a community note on it unless you have interacted with it...
Isn't that 99+% of X these days? May as well just leave the site.
I came off of FB over a decade ago and never regretted it. Dakka is about 95% of my social media interaction, besides an Instagram account for a small etsy business I set up with my partner last year, and a paired account so that people knew it was me. Nothing that I hear about any platform makes me want to engage with them, and the Instagram account has generated about 4% of our sales, so not really worth the effort there.
I only really use FB for communicating with friends and family I don’t see often in person, and trawling a couple of groups. Though even for that it’s a pain in the arse, an old mate who now lives overseas posted on a group that he’d be in the country briefly and that he wanted to catch up with the old gang… but FB never sent me the notification so I didn’t know until after. Useless.
Yeah youtube is the same for not sending notifications. All these services keep doing the whole thing of filtering what news you get and even when you get it.
I've seen old posts appear on FB and they almost look new but they are months or years old if the person doesn't post much to their FB account.
As I see it its rather like how Apple design their interfaces - its a system Telling You what it wants you to know rather than Serving You what you actually want to know.
And the worst thing is that you can't even customise this service in anyway, you get whatever the software/managers want you to get in any given time period. Which results in giving them an insane amount of power in twisting what content gets created and promoted if you look at services like youtube and google
Overread wrote: Yeah youtube is the same for not sending notifications. All these services keep doing the whole thing of filtering what news you get and even when you get it.
Yeah. . . On YT, there's been times where I'll search for a video on a channel im subscribed to, and see "ohh, they posted a brand new video an hour ago", go watch that hour old video. . . and then 3 days later, a notification of "hey, sparkle fluffy pants has uploaded a new video! you should go check it out!" . . . like, bro, waaay ahead of you there.
Overread wrote: Yeah youtube is the same for not sending notifications. All these services keep doing the whole thing of filtering what news you get and even when you get it.
Yeah. . . On YT, there's been times where I'll search for a video on a channel im subscribed to, and see "ohh, they posted a brand new video an hour ago", go watch that hour old video. . . and then 3 days later, a notification of "hey, sparkle fluffy pants has uploaded a new video! you should go check it out!" . . . like, bro, waaay ahead of you there.
They also feth around with the algorithm so heavly that at this point' it's just better to check from hand rather than rely upon the notifications.
Overread wrote: Yeah youtube is the same for not sending notifications. All these services keep doing the whole thing of filtering what news you get and even when you get it.
Yeah. . . On YT, there's been times where I'll search for a video on a channel im subscribed to, and see "ohh, they posted a brand new video an hour ago", go watch that hour old video. . . and then 3 days later, a notification of "hey, sparkle fluffy pants has uploaded a new video! you should go check it out!" . . . like, bro, waaay ahead of you there.
I get similar with Amazon-'buy this book that you have already bought from us two weeks ago...' No logic to the marketing.
Overread wrote: Yeah youtube is the same for not sending notifications. All these services keep doing the whole thing of filtering what news you get and even when you get it.
Yeah. . . On YT, there's been times where I'll search for a video on a channel im subscribed to, and see "ohh, they posted a brand new video an hour ago", go watch that hour old video. . . and then 3 days later, a notification of "hey, sparkle fluffy pants has uploaded a new video! you should go check it out!" . . . like, bro, waaay ahead of you there.
They also feth around with the algorithm so heavly that at this point' it's just better to check from hand rather than rely upon the notifications.
The algorithm is terrible. Channels that I actively avoid and have clicked "do not recommend this channel" still come up all the time.
Once the algorithm decides it's going to make someone popular, they're going to end up popular regardless of anything else because the algorithm just endlessly pushes their videos.
I do get my notifications, but having recently let my YouTube Premium drop off (long, expensive month) the ads are just vile.
Products I have no interest in. Issues I’ve never shown any concern for. And so, so many with utterly obnoxious “music”.
It’s not as if I don’t watch a lot of music videos, from which YouTube can usually make solid recommendations from. Is it really that hard for advertisers to use multiple pieces of music? Because the second I hear dubstep or back-skiffle-scat-jazz or whatever it is they reckon The Kids are listening to these days, I’m just not gonna care what you’re trying to sell me. It could be a two week nudie jelly wrestling holiday with Alex Bliss, Liv Morgan and Elizabeth Olsen, and my brain still shuts off completely at such audio dreck.
Sometimes I wonder if its just Google having too many masters, especially those with cash influencing them to twist the algorithm to certain agendas.
Or even bots just flooding it with so much false information that its lost all sense of control or meaning on predicting human desires. Even more so when many people will follow what the algorithm shows. Even if they dislike it they still follow it for a time, which just reinforces it.
It's kind of like an ant death spiral and I do wonder if it will be the downfall of Google that they end up with systems that end up so alienated that it gives the market room for a competitor to push in.
Facebook's userbase these days is mostly just older people and people with no grasp on opsec. I left in 2011 and have never looked back. I never felt comfortable with posting my face or pictures of myself and my family.
I always felt antisocial media like FB etc is opening yourself up to being burgled or identity taken. The amount of crime that can be put down to what people post is unbelievable.
When I served in the forces, security was drummed into us but doesn't seem to be so controlled now.
My entire online presence is here. To do with my hobby and nothing else. Only one person on here knows my name and address and that's because I bought an item from him and he is a person who seems to be very discreet in this regard.
Antisocial media is very toxic from what I've seen and even on here there's been a few threads that have made me despair about people. Ours is a hobby which is basically mostly adults, of both sexes I hurry to add before my gaming partner for tomorrow thumps me. She hits hard, big bully. Mostly adults playing with toys to have fun, nothing deeper than that.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Honestly? Not paid that close attention.
I normally have YouTube premium, so just don’t get the ads. But having been Bill Bombed this month I’m starting to see ads. Just not that one. Or those ones.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I do get my notifications, but having recently let my YouTube Premium drop off (long, expensive month) the ads are just vile.
Products I have no interest in. Issues I’ve never shown any concern for. And so, so many with utterly obnoxious “music”.
It’s not as if I don’t watch a lot of music videos, from which YouTube can usually make solid recommendations from. Is it really that hard for advertisers to use multiple pieces of music? Because the second I hear dubstep or back-skiffle-scat-jazz or whatever it is they reckon The Kids are listening to these days, I’m just not gonna care what you’re trying to sell me. It could be a two week nudie jelly wrestling holiday with Alex Bliss, Liv Morgan and Elizabeth Olsen, and my brain still shuts off completely at such audio dreck.
How about some punk, ska or metal, man?
YouTube without an addblocker is at this Stage an active security threat.
Dominos, Pizza Hut and other Pizza places now charging for delivery.
Before Deliveroo and Just Eat got their toes in the water? The big Pizza Chains did free delivery over a certain order price. And it had been that way going back as long as I can remember.
Now? Now they charged. Because Just Eat and Deliveroo carried it, normalising paid for deliveries.
Bran Dawri wrote: Just Eat, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and their ilk are scummy parasites anyway.
In the UK, I’m slightly more accommodating. Whilst yes, they take their cut? For many small takeaways, running their own delivery services isn’t cost effective,
Doesn’t mean E/D/U aren’t taking the piss with their premiums and pricing though.
I suspect its not just the other delivery firms making it normalised; but also the constant rising costs of things like fuel. When all those "free pizza deliveries" were a thing fuel was probably near to half what it is now and that's without inflation and other things rising all the other costs.
Sadly it all hinges on the big firms at the top end- so long as those mega-firms continue to raise prices and wages for the top staff; everything else has to rise to try and stay afloat.
It might also be that in the UK delivery drivers are treated differently than they are in the US. Here a delivery position is usually lower upfront pay but with tips and some companies giving compensation for fuel & the like.
Bran Dawri wrote: Just Eat, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and their ilk are scummy parasites anyway.
In the UK, I’m slightly more accommodating. Whilst yes, they take their cut? For many small takeaways, running their own delivery services isn’t cost effective,
Doesn’t mean E/D/U aren’t taking the piss with their premiums and pricing though.
It's not just "they take their cut". It's that they full on make-up websites and the like with menus, promoted as being the restaurant in question. It leads to the eatery having to deal with upset customers who ordered via the app that their food "didn't transport well" or "was cold", etc. John Oliver did a good piece on this not long ago.
Kanluwen wrote: It might also be that in the UK delivery drivers are treated differently than they are in the US. Here a delivery position is usually lower upfront pay but with tips and some companies giving compensation for fuel & the like.
Yeah that's a big difference too. In the UK staff get a proper wage and tips really are tips. It's not like the USA where there's a social contract to tip 20% of the meal cost or such to pay the wages for the server/delivery staff. So that certainly has an impact. "Free delivery" isn't really free if you're expected to tip on top of the cost of the item.
UK side its all rolled into the price you pay up front.
Honestly I'm always amazed that that and the whole "tax isn't on the advertised price" are normal accepted htings over much of the USA
Not to mention them charging on both ends - both the restaurant and the customer pay for delivery, with the restaurant end being gouged to death.
I seriously prefer walking through a storm before giving racketeering like that so much as a penny - and have done so.
Kanluwen wrote: It might also be that in the UK delivery drivers are treated differently than they are in the US. Here a delivery position is usually lower upfront pay but with tips and some companies giving compensation for fuel & the like.
Bran Dawri wrote: Just Eat, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and their ilk are scummy parasites anyway.
In the UK, I’m slightly more accommodating. Whilst yes, they take their cut? For many small takeaways, running their own delivery services isn’t cost effective,
Doesn’t mean E/D/U aren’t taking the piss with their premiums and pricing though.
It's not just "they take their cut". It's that they full on make-up websites and the like with menus, promoted as being the restaurant in question. It leads to the eatery having to deal with upset customers who ordered via the app that their food "didn't transport well" or "was cold", etc. John Oliver did a good piece on this not long ago.
Wasn’t aware of the second bit, which certainly throws a different light on it.
Bran Dawri wrote: Not to mention them charging on both ends - both the restaurant and the customer pay for delivery, with the restaurant end being gouged to death.
I seriously prefer walking through a storm before giving racketeering like that so much as a penny - and have done so.
The few times we use doordash or uber eats or whatever the heck, is also the few times we don't get a local mom and pop restaurant. The gakky delivery services can gouge panda express or Chipotle for all I care, but I won't do that to one of our many local eateries.
Did you know selling fake Driver Theory Test certificates isn’t against the terms of service?
Neither did I, but I do now.
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Ghaz wrote: I believe this is it (blame John Oliver if it's not available in your region )
Unfortunately I can’t find the vid viewable in the UK :(
But I’ll take your word for it That being said, they may operate slightly differently in the UK, because not every business model can be transposed as it stands, due to different laws and that.
What I’ve noticed is that when ordering from Deliveroo, there’s a price premium, a service charge, and a delivery cost, all paid for by me.
Basically you can't add another middle-man in the ordering process without increasing costs somewhere to consumer or cutting income for the supplier.
And often middlemen will try and do both. Heck a bunch of the big supermarkets in the UK got caught doing that supplying dairy products. Telling customers prices were up and telling farmers demand was down. So they squeezed both ends and it only worked because once you're down to a handful of competing businesses they realise that they don't actually have to compete to profit and they can - shock horror - collude to increase profits for all.
Bran Dawri wrote: Not to mention them charging on both ends - both the restaurant and the customer pay for delivery, with the restaurant end being gouged to death.
I seriously prefer walking through a storm before giving racketeering like that so much as a penny - and have done so.
The few times we use doordash or uber eats or whatever the heck, is also the few times we don't get a local mom and pop restaurant. The gakky delivery services can gouge panda express or Chipotle for all I care, but I won't do that to one of our many local eateries.
I'll never understand this take.
You using the "gakky delivery service" on a franchise doesn't magically make it so that the person driving for said delivery service is suddenly getting treated well.
They're just getting screwed by the crummy delivery service instead of a big company.
True, but working from home and data protection has me super paranoid about things. Mostly because of my own ignorance, but even if got better educated there, I’d still err on the side of caution.
You using the "gakky delivery service" on a franchise doesn't magically make it so that the person driving for said delivery service is suddenly getting treated well.
They're just getting screwed by the crummy delivery service instead of a big company.
I'll never understand why anyone would eat stuff like Chipotle or Panda Express or McD or things like that to begin with...
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It’s cheap and reliable. If I go into a McDonalds, I know exactly what I’m in for in terms of speed, service and taste. And so it’s a known value.
If I go to a restaurant? Results vary, and a high price isn’t a guarantee of high quality.
Yeah, you already know what you're getting yourself into with chain fast food restaurants. My wife and I tried ubereats once and there were a lot of restaurants in the area that it brought up that we had no idea existed. The problem is all we could go off of was their ratings on the app. Safe to say we didn't order from any of them and stopped bothering with ubereats.
Jaxmeister wrote: When I served in the forces, security was drummed into us but doesn't seem to be so controlled now.
it is mental - I remember it being drummed into everyone. Now you get a note on the intranet about being generically careful, like everyone just shrugged shoulders and gave up. I thought for a moment how social media was exploited in the current war int he East would make people pay attention. A few more intranet articles is all and some challenge coins. Nuts.
Jaxmeister wrote: When I served in the forces, security was drummed into us but doesn't seem to be so controlled now.
it is mental - I remember it being drummed into everyone. Now you get a note on the intranet about being generically careful, like everyone just shrugged shoulders and gave up. I thought for a moment how social media was exploited in the current war int he East would make people pay attention. A few more intranet articles is all and some challenge coins. Nuts.
Now you have MOD and command wondering about security leaks. You would think with what's happening in eastern Europe with disinformation etc, not to mention satellite tracking picking up communications more care would be taken but apparently not.
Bran Dawri wrote: Not to mention them charging on both ends - both the restaurant and the customer pay for delivery, with the restaurant end being gouged to death.
I seriously prefer walking through a storm before giving racketeering like that so much as a penny - and have done so.
The few times we use doordash or uber eats or whatever the heck, is also the few times we don't get a local mom and pop restaurant. The gakky delivery services can gouge panda express or Chipotle for all I care, but I won't do that to one of our many local eateries.
I'll never understand this take.
You using the "gakky delivery service" on a franchise doesn't magically make it so that the person driving for said delivery service is suddenly getting treated well.
They're just getting screwed by the crummy delivery service instead of a big company.
Basically this: it's well established through many many articles that mom and pop restaurants get a raw deal. One pizza shop actually LOST money per order, depending on what a given customer ordered. . So, by using only mainline big corporate chain restaurants, I'm not screwing over the mom and pop shop. See, IDGAF if Panda Express "loses" money on my order. I DO care if "Yummy Teriyaki and Sushi" makes money off of me ordering the food they offer.
The driver, at the end of the day made the choice to drive for whatever delivery service it is. I have zero sympathy on that specific aspect of it. That said, whenever we do go this route, we DO tip pretty damn well. And if other people's tipping isn't enough for the driver, well. . . it does still have a stigma/view of being a side gig, and I feel I've done my bit for the driver.
Not only has Den of Geek really gone downhill when it comes to content? Rather Irritatingly Every Headline Is Fully Capitalised.
No Really It’s All Of Them. Every Single One.
As if they’ve given up pretending it’s not just a collection of click bait hot takes and drivel, with the occasional dash of “insight” which everyone knew anyway. Like “Robocop Is Actually A Satire Aren’t I Clever”.
Time was you could get some fun movie recommendations and articles. But not anymore.
Prime must be getting desperate for advertisers on FreeVee.
Disney+ is advertising (got it) with the Kardashians (a show I have frankly negative interest in).
The others? Basically crappy tik-tok reels for car guff. Like something you plug in which transmits your peripheral via FM. A device I had circa 2002 - and no longer need, because you’ve got to go some to have a stereo and device which aren’t Bluetooth.
Video games are honestly pretty darn stable on that front; but music and TV/films are insanely crazy.
Now music isn't so bad because most of the larger names do generally get a physical release; but a lot of newer/smaller creators might only get one cd release not a continuing stock; or they might only have a very limited release if they have one at all
TV though, with Streaming, is a nightmare. Some show straight up just vanish because they are written off as a tax item and never get a physical release. Others never get a physical or only get a very expensive collectors limited release.
And yeah online only can be changed. Stuff removed, changed, swapped around.
As a gent of a certain vintage, it doesn’t bother me so much with streaming subscriptions. Being kinda, hadn’t really become properly widespread due to cost, pre-VHS? Shows coming and going from broadcast is just par for the course. For the most part.
But, when I’ve paid money for a specific product? Please don’t go changing said product. Because that’s not what I agreed to buy.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: As a gent of a certain vintage, it doesn’t bother me so much with streaming subscriptions. Being kinda, hadn’t really become properly widespread due to cost, pre-VHS? Shows coming and going from broadcast is just par for the course. For the most part.
But, when I’ve paid money for a specific product? Please don’t go changing said product. Because that’s not what I agreed to buy.
I suspect if you check the terms of sale, iTunes reserving the right to alter or remove the product from service is very much what you agreed to. You didn't buy the song, you're just renting it for as long as they choose to supply it.
But yes, that and the massive fragmentation of services is very much the problem with streaming, and the reason I'm still buying blurays and DVDs.
Yeah, the various Arrowverse shows wound up on (I think) three different services here in Oz... so I still haven't seen the last few seasons of Flash or Legends. And made watching the crossovers problematic...
Amazon Prime are heading in the right direction there, serving as a hub where you can add additional services in to your subscription, but it still winds up very expensive very quickly.
Likewise, Google's setup of selling individual shows and/or episodes was a handy way of catching up on some stuff that was otherwise unavailable, but a lot of shows are the same price as just buying the DVD, so I do that instead.
Amazon Prime are heading in the right direction there, serving as a hub where you can add additional services in to your subscription, but it still winds up very expensive very quickly.
There are of course, some major issues I'm finding with Prime. A recent example is in sports. My favorite baseball team announced via the book of faces that their game was being broadcast live on Prime (actually, multiple times this has happened). And, being that I got rid of the baseball streaming platform subscription before last season, I couldn't just watch it on there. So, I hop on Prime all excited to be able to watch my favorite sportsball team, only to discover the game is on Prime, with the MLB.tv subscription add-on.
Which, IMHO, means it is NOT on Prime, because Prime means it's available to Prime members generally, not available under specific circumstances like the subscription.
Yeah, streaming used to be a good replacement for the overpriced cable services. Except corporate got its grubby mitts on it again, and now the various streaming platforms very quickly add up to more than cable used to be.
So I no longer bother, dusted of ye olde hat and black flag, and went back to me old privateering ways. Yarr matey! Pass me the rum and shiver me timbers!
(This is particularly appropriate since I'm actually on a boat in the Caribbean right now.)
Video games are honestly pretty darn stable on that front; but music and TV/films are insanely crazy.
Now music isn't so bad because most of the larger names do generally get a physical release; but a lot of newer/smaller creators might only get one cd release not a continuing stock; or they might only have a very limited release if they have one at all
TV though, with Streaming, is a nightmare. Some show straight up just vanish because they are written off as a tax item and never get a physical release. Others never get a physical or only get a very expensive collectors limited release.
And yeah online only can be changed. Stuff removed, changed, swapped around.
Greedo didn’t fire, rendering the “first” statement entirely moot
For what it's worth, even before the Special Editions were a thing, Lucas has always maintained that Greedo did shoot first but you just couldn't see it in the close up framing... Lucas says a lot of crazy stuff, though...
Ensis Ferrae wrote: There are of course, some major issues I'm finding with Prime. A recent example is in sports. My favorite baseball team announced via the book of faces that their game was being broadcast live on Prime (actually, multiple times this has happened). And, being that I got rid of the baseball streaming platform subscription before last season, I couldn't just watch it on there. So, I hop on Prime all excited to be able to watch my favorite sportsball team, only to discover the game is on Prime, with the MLB.tv subscription add-on.
Which, IMHO, means it is NOT on Prime, because Prime means it's available to Prime members generally, not available under specific circumstances like the subscription.
Yeah, they definitely need to clean up how they present it all... the front page on Prime Video is currently a mess of 'rent/buy' or subscription links getting in the way of the stuff you can actually watch now, which is what I'm interested in. But the general idea of providing a hub to which you can just add the streaming services you want so that they're all in one place... that's a good idea.
I find Prime Prime not horrendous (ok, low bar) to navigate, but trying to browse additional channels (got Paramount+ for a couple of $s a month on promotion until I finish getting up to speed on Star Trek) to be absolute garbage.
I don't remember it being that bad, but I only had the Britbox subscription for about three and a half minutes... Subscribed a while back to get access to all of the Doctor Who back catalogue the day after (as it turned out) they removed all of the Doctor Who back catalogue. So I cancelled it and went back to buying the bluray Collection boxes instead.
Yeah, they definitely need to clean up how they present it all... the front page on Prime Video is currently a mess of 'rent/buy' or subscription links getting in the way of the stuff you can actually watch now, which is what I'm interested in. But the general idea of providing a hub to which you can just add the streaming services you want so that they're all in one place... that's a good idea.
Yeah the front page for Prime is a sheer mess.
I also hate how it constantly moves things around so even if you come back a few days later to continue watching something you have to and hunt for where they've moved it too now.
It's the same as how they've progressively messed with the Kindle interface and how they utterly destroyed comic reading after buying comixology and rolling it into their main store view to the point where its now just a mess to find digital comics to read; whereas in the past you could brows them exclusively super easily and your library too (its now all jumbled up with your ebooks from kindle)
Honestly these days I can't tell if interface design is just a dead art that was only around in the 90s or if managers/ceos and people with degrees in "marketing" have infected interface design with so many agendas that interfaces have lost all function
The latter- content design has been infected and corrupted by its dark twin marketing. However, content design is still alive and well and innovating, particularly in the public sector.
The issue is that fundamentally trying to tell you useful information and trying to sell you something are competing tasks.
I could believe that if it wasn't for the fact that I've also seen Microsoft manage to actually break how saving files works in office programs now. I don't know what they are thinking but the modern save setup is bonkers complicated/messy in design
Overread wrote: I could believe that if it wasn't for the fact that I've also seen Microsoft manage to actually break how saving files works in office programs now. I don't know what they are thinking but the modern save setup is bonkers complicated/messy in design
Well there are the usual pressures of offices- unreasonable deadlines to get out minimum viable product, changes for the sake of justifying a team etc.
But the principles are known and content designers exist. It just tends to be the public sector that thinks it is worthwhile employing content designers and integrating them into product teams from the get go (hard to bolt on at the end).
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh the other thing is that better accessibility for a wider population can reduce efficiency for an individual subgroup (which may be the able majority).
For example, I personally find PDFs very practical, but they are not normally readable by text-to-voice software and thus inaccessible for many people with poor sight. So content design tends to discourage use of PDFs.
He’s showin’ me “recommended” and “you might be interested in” posts, instead of my friend’s posts, Ma!
It wouldn’t be so bad if what’s being suggested wasn’t a) stupid, b) offensive or c) offensively stupid.
For instance. Golf. I have no interest in golf. At all. I don’t watch it. I don’t play it. I couldn’t name more than three golfers. And all those “adult humour” cartoons which aren’t funny, adult or well drawn.
insaniak wrote: **snip** But the general idea of providing a hub to which you can just add the streaming services you want so that they're all in one place... that's a good idea.
I won't disagree with this sentiment. What I have beef with, is how various things are presented. As in my example. Sportsball team, on instagram, facebook, twitter, truth, what-the-feth-ever they post to will say "catch your team playing tonight at 6:30 on Prime"
To me, saying "on Prime" means that, because I have a prime membership base, for the shipping (of course, why else would one get prime?), if you're advertising a thing as being "on Prime" it should be available. Flat out, end of discussion, I login and it's there. Not, "well, its on Prime, but only if you have this additional subscription". IMO it's worse for the baseball thing because, to my knowledge, if I subscribe to MLB.tv through prime, I only have roughly half the functionality of a direct sub, in that I don't think you can access the radio broadcasts via your prime membership (I haven't really looked into it, so please, if anyone happens to know one way or the other, please feel free to confirm or correct me). It would be far more accurate if the sports team said "catch tonight's match at 6:30, exclusively broadcasting on Prime with Sportsball League subscription" as it does remove the ambiguity of how to watch the thing.
I buy the odd DVD still, but mostly I've just not made the transition to streaming with all my friends and I just don't watch anything any more except the odd hobby based youtube video. Whatever limited free time I get goes pretty much entirely toward wargames, rpgs and brewing these days.
I did buy the odd three month sub to netflix, Disney plus or Primebut in the end I got the feeling I'd seen everything I wanted to and anything else was just looking for things to watch to justify the price. Stranger Things was worth the watch, but the quality dropped off and by season 3 I was pretty much done with the show, haven't watched season 4 and don't really intend to.
Bounced off the Mandalorian despite everyone raving about it, didn't see much else on Disney Plus to interest me after my wife and I watched Wandavision (which was good, but crapped itself in the last act). Gave Prime a go just to watch Rings of Power, which I loathed more than I've loathed nearly any piece of media I watched all the way through. Not because of diverse actors or because of Galadriel (though I didn't love the characterisation) but just because the script was ass.
But by now if I wanted to watch everything my friends are watching and take part in conversations about media, I'd have to have Netflix, Disney Plus, Prime and probably HBO Max and Paramount Plus as well. At that point you're spending a pretty significant sum on all these platforms. Bah, humbug.
I've got a kid now and I'm planning on buying her some Sesame Street DVDs and maybe some Fraggle Rock and other Jim Henson stuff to watch. I don't want her on kids youtube or anything that "feeds" her "content" like slop into a pig trough.
“Look at it, the peak of your civilisation. Until we started doing the thinking for you, and then it became OUR civilisation, which is what this is all about.” Agent Smith
Plus, I far from trust the people behind its creation.
Not in a conspiracy, tin foil hat, way. I’m not saying they’re out to get us. But we’ve seen social media used and abused to push false political information and narratives. And in the run up to the UK General Election, we’re again seeing very limited efforts made by the platforms to deal with false and malicious information.
What happens when someone starts using automated video fakes to create similar, deliberately misleading nonsense? When you create and profit from something so potentially dangerous, there’s a social and moral, if not legal, obligation to ensure your creation is used responsible.
What type of capitalism, that is a useless blanket statement.
Also any other alternative so far has been if tried collapsed in on itself whilest oldschool coporatism can't really support a modern state of affairs either. The less said about the hammer and sickle and adjacent moronicism the better.
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Kid_Kyoto wrote: So lately I get constant warnings on FB that I'm scrolling too fast and this feature is being disabled.
Scrolling.
Too fast.
@#$% them.
Lol that is asinine. just get off facebook. The implementation of algorithmic social media was already a massive feth off mistake in regards to society, personally i think with LLM AI bots probably the vast majority of anyhting online will get fethed anyways. Including multiplayer games.
Not Online!!! wrote: Lol that is asinine.
just get off facebook. The implementation of algorithmic social media was already a massive feth off mistake in regards to society, personally i think with LLM AI bots probably the vast majority of anyhting online will get fethed anyways. Including multiplayer games.
Given the rampant cheating in online games and the resultant arms race between cheat makers and developers, we're already past that point, methinks.
Not Online!!! wrote: The implementation of algorithmic social media was already a massive feth off mistake in regards to society, ...
Algorithmic social media isn't an issue in itself. As a concept, it was originally intended merely to help people see the things they were interested in and/or more likely to engage with, rather than just the things posted the most recently. And that improves the experience for those following large numbers of accounts and/or with limited time on social media.
The problems came from the focus shifting to making money for the platform rather than facilitating social interaction. Facebook now is a barely functional mess, where anything you actually want to see is buried under the masses of ads and 'recommended' content, but pre-advertising, it was a good platform.
The problems came from the focus shifting to making money for the platform rather than facilitating social interaction. Facebook now is a barely functional mess, where anything you actually want to see is buried under the masses of ads and 'recommended' content, but pre-advertising, it was a good platform.
Agreed, its the same as how MS changed how you save in MS Office programs now and they heavily default to saving in the cloud rather than local.
A lot of interfaces and automated systems went from doing what the user wanted to doing what the CEO and marketing division want.
Along side that the "average person" also wants software to do stuff for them; and the more they've allowed that hte more software has pushed that approach. The result is manual or more custom setups and options get left out; moved; hidden or made less functional. So when a more advanced user wants to do something even quite simple, if tis not what the software automatically does - pop - it won't do it.
This is another one of those "well humans do X a lot so we made the software only do X, promote X and tell people that X is what you do". Which is the other layer; we've readily gone from systems reading human behaviour to systems defining human behaviour. Search algorithms are very much like that, mostly because people only use the one on the site/google. So its insane market dominance with no competing option.
Hmmm, I wonder if we’re leading up to a collapse with AI, a bit like a market crash. If the algorithms are dictating people’s behaviour, rather than simply monitoring, but are also learning from the behaviour that they’re dictating, then you could get some nasty reinforcement loops that are actually diverging from “normal” human behaviour. Eventually you’ll hit a critical mass where people will just go “feth it” and abandon the system (which is kind of what we’re describing here with Facebook, it’s getting close to being useless for its intended purpose).
Effectively groupthink for computers. Interesting.
Not Online!!! wrote: The implementation of algorithmic social media was already a massive feth off mistake in regards to society, ...
Algorithmic social media isn't an issue in itself. As a concept, it was originally intended merely to help people see the things they were interested in and/or more likely to engage with, rather than just the things posted the most recently. And that improves the experience for those following large numbers of accounts and/or with limited time on social media.
The problems came from the focus shifting to making money for the platform rather than facilitating social interaction. Facebook now is a barely functional mess, where anything you actually want to see is buried under the masses of ads and 'recommended' content, but pre-advertising, it was a good platform.
Maybe it's just my rose-tinted glasses, but I seem to recall a point in time - maybe 10 years ago? - when various online platforms actually seemed useful and designed to help the individual rather than the platform owners. Youtube and FB algorithms seemed to work well and show new, relevant content alongside adverts that were at least somewhat useful. Now the endgame seems to be making ads obnoxious enough to force people to pay for ad-free "premium" services.
Youtube still seems to be trying to provide relevant content suggestions and ads. It's not great at it, but it's infinitely better than FB. My FB feed has recently decided what I really want is a steady stream of 10-pin bowling and gardening content. No idea how it's decided that, but it's kind of hilarious watching it dig deeper and deeper into this self-made hole every day.
Not Online!!! wrote: The implementation of algorithmic social media was already a massive feth off mistake in regards to society, ...
Algorithmic social media isn't an issue in itself. As a concept, it was originally intended merely to help people see the things they were interested in and/or more likely to engage with, rather than just the things posted the most recently. And that improves the experience for those following large numbers of accounts and/or with limited time on social media.
The problems came from the focus shifting to making money for the platform rather than facilitating social interaction. Facebook now is a barely functional mess, where anything you actually want to see is buried under the masses of ads and 'recommended' content, but pre-advertising, it was a good platform.
That just isn't accurate, because soft guidance is still just soft manipulative guidance and is the core reason as to why we have echo chambers out the wazoo nowadays.
As for facebook, honestly never was on it . Don't like the lizard owner or anyone out of silicone valley, personally all of these companies including microsoft should've been long since split appart forcefully.
Not Online!!! wrote: The implementation of algorithmic social media was already a massive feth off mistake in regards to society, ...
Algorithmic social media isn't an issue in itself. As a concept, it was originally intended merely to help people see the things they were interested in and/or more likely to engage with, rather than just the things posted the most recently. And that improves the experience for those following large numbers of accounts and/or with limited time on social media.
The problems came from the focus shifting to making money for the platform rather than facilitating social interaction. Facebook now is a barely functional mess, where anything you actually want to see is buried under the masses of ads and 'recommended' content, but pre-advertising, it was a good platform.
Maybe it's just my rose-tinted glasses, but I seem to recall a point in time - maybe 10 years ago? - when various online platforms actually seemed useful and designed to help the individual rather than the platform owners. Youtube and FB algorithms seemed to work well and show new, relevant content alongside adverts that were at least somewhat useful. Now the endgame seems to be making ads obnoxious enough to force people to pay for ad-free "premium" services.
Youtube still seems to be trying to provide relevant content suggestions and ads. It's not great at it, but it's infinitely better than FB. My FB feed has recently decided what I really want is a steady stream of 10-pin bowling and gardening content. No idea how it's decided that, but it's kind of hilarious watching it dig deeper and deeper into this self-made hole every day.
The process is known as engakkification (translated into Dakka-speak).
Essentially comes down to an issue of profit extraction. Once a market is saturated and the platform is no longer able to attract new users, it turns to new methods of value extraction to appease shareholders, because companies are expected to continue growing. Merely remaining profitable at the current size is not acceptable (especially to venture capitalists who funded a lot of the tech boom and want their return on investment). That is how you get even the obviously-profitable platforms like Patreon engakkifying to maintain growth and appease their shareholders.
There is not a lot of long-term thinking in any of this.
Agreed, its a lot of short term focus on greed, you can see the same in how Hasbro has been acting with Wizards and MTG; heck you can see it with the huge number of video game firms collapsing this last year as the Embracer groups huge move to sell itself for a huge profit failed and they are now falling apart to maintain itself.
There are a lot of people at the big end of business these days who are only concerned with return on investment in short timeframes and who have enough income that if the firms collapse they are financially totally fine.
Thing is FB, Google etc... are big and Musk is doing his level best to kill Twitter (X) and its still going. X is indeed showing how resilient such a system is even when the person at the very top is almost trying to kill it intentionally. These big platforms are like the banks of the internet - so much is plugged into them now that them failing isn't just them failing; its the house of cards built around them. Thus the house of cards will try to support them, intentionally or not.
At the same time banks HAVE fallen and the internet giants can fall. I could certainly see that if Googles results get more and more unreliable it could leave room in the market for others to take over and try to rise up as a new search engine.
A core issue is scale - the internet is vast and it takes a vast amount of resources to try and replace a major service provider. That means either having insanely deep pockets; or a very long steady game plan.
Or a truly revolutionary product / approach; Google destroyed some very, very big companies in the search engine market without stupendous resources or a slow build, but by “just” offering a vastly, vastly superior product.
Same with Facebook; there were various nascent social media networks (Friends Reunited, MySpace) at the time but they were either subscription based or built around niche communities. Facebook dropped in and could connect everyone you knew for free; that was a complete step change.
I await the chinese government platform that operates on a sensible basis and doesn't annoy users. People will flock to it and trade being spied on for no facebook hassles...
I use it now for the wargames club. And I am struggling to think what else.
Kids have a totally different relationship with the internet anyway. Facebook is a zombie platform because kids think it's for old people, and it generally is. Instagram is where the young people for Facebook are, toxic stew of harm that it is.
Whatever the kids move on to will be the next big thing. I'm not normally doom and gloomy about kids, but I have noticed the brainrot from short form content oversaturation impacting my students, and OECD shows a pretty dramatic plunge in attainment that starts around the widespread adoption of smartphones.
It gets steeper post pandemic but the decline was already there. I see this with my students, especially in maths, it's really shocking how badly standards have collapsed. The gap between the top and the bottom is enormous, and the middle is disappearing.
It doesn't help that the people in education I talk to are mostly in denial about all this - it's trendy to be a tech optimist in education and you'll get blasted as "conservative" if you disagree with that. Most of them take the free and open internet for granted, and think of something like Google as being a public utility. They believe kids can just research and construct their own knowledge now, so focus on factual content is irrelevant. Given how crap the Google search engine has become and how they've reduced user control over searches, I think this is a huge mistake. The kids think "research" is a synonym for "google". Huge focus on correctly citing sources in MLA format as well, which I think is missing the forest for the trees when it comes to school aged kids (and shows the way academic ideals backwash into education).
I hope it's just a blip and will reverse, but if I was a business owner and had seen what I'd seen I'd be instituting cognitive tests for my new hires rather than trusting the educational institutions to do anything about it.
I think it doesn't help that a lot of education has become insanely paper-heavy for teachers. The amount of prep-work for a single class is bonkers and then you've got to do dozens of them a week and mark schoolwork and, you know, actually try and teach.
It feels like they've gone for a paperwork heavy approach so that there's so much tracking and accountability and the result is teachers burned out. It doesn't help that syllabus teaching will also punish any student that does use the ease of the internet to research their chosen topic in more depth (if its not on the mark scheme in the exam - no points); or that some are going for multi-choice exams to speed up marking and the result is students who learn how to read and tick boxes instead of learning the actual information and subject.
Honestly I don't know if its the internet to blame in isolation here; I feel like the way we teach is in a strange spot. Where we recognise that there are a LOT of tools we can and should be using; that a good many "special needs" are simply a reflection of a scale of learning differences and that he more we've pushed into a single approach the more its created a false concept of normal learning
But at the same time a system that only allows for one method; that pushes hard for academic storing that is increasingly invalid in the workplace (something that really becomes apparent in how University degrees are almost considered mandatory just to get your application looked at and yet often have no practical skills outside of academia)
Reading dropping surprises me- cause the internet is all words; but then again if all you're doing is watching tiktoks on rotation over and over again yeah I can see how that would end up lowering reading if its all just video. Then again I also recall that everyone doomed about the TV when I was growing up; though in them days you couldn't take the TV with you on a walk.
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Da Boss wrote: . The kids think "research" is a synonym for "google".
Not just kids - adults think this too. Heck from being on forums where people ask basic questions "go google it" was often given by some snarky members. That was adults telling other adults to just use google for everything.
Yeah a good chunk of the kids get all their internet content through video, generally short form.
Teaching certainly has become a lot about paperwork and box ticking, and I think that's more to do with how modern workplaces are structured in terms of hierarchies than anything internet related. What the internet has definitely done is add a burden of endless online platforms onto teachers - I've got to use 5 different online platforms to enter data and curriculum stuff on, and all of them are designed by the lowest bidder, subject to baffling UI re-organisations, and obviously designed more for ease of use of my supervisor than myself or my students. We're constantly being sold the new platform that will solve all our problems and all of them are crap (though I hate Google, Google Classroom was probably the best of them, so of course we had to stop using that!).
And the other aspect is the creeping expectation that I'll be able to provide online lessons at the drop of the hat for students who are ill which has come along with us pivoting to online learning during the pandemic (in my school I did video lessons for every one of my classes and only missed some classes at the very start, other than that I worked my normal timetable just teaching through Zoom. And it was not a small amount of work to convert my curriculum into a format that was teachable through online learning, and students mostly did not pay attention at all and learned very little anyway.).
It's increasingly hard to hire teachers because of the various pressures making it an unpleasant job, but it doesn't have to be like that either.
But moreso on the topic of this thread, I do a survey every year with my 12 year old class to find out what social media they are on. And for the last few years absolutely 0 of them are on Facebook and laugh at the suggestion. So I doubt Facebook will be around for too much longer anyway. They're all on Tik Tok, Youtube, Roblox, and whatever the latest flash in the pan app is - it was B Real or something last year, some anonymous chat app the year before that, and the big name social media is generally considered uncool and for old people. They don't know what a forum is.
Even adults don't know what a forum is (though I've yet to see any website beat forums for what they offer and allow! Even Discord is basically slowly becoming a forum in structure)
The other thing with FB that might save is companies. A LOT of firms now use FB as hteir front-page for interaction and many times you get a reply faster and better than through email; with some not even using email.
I know for me I got more into using FB during the pandemic just because that's where all the businesses had an online active account on to communicate with to find out if they were open or anything.
Nothing intrinsically wrong with multiple choice, it just needs to be crafted well to be useful (like any question format). My university medical degree primarily used multiple choice for the written exams because it minimised marker bias compared to short and long answer questions. They'd entirely removed long answer questions from timed exams.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Regarding impacts of tech on kids, I think the picture is very mixed and some aspects are presented in a misleading way.
Confounding is also an issue. For example, I think smartphones in and of themselves have not been shown to be harmful beyond some fairly correctable issues (like increasing development of short-sighted vision, something that also happens with increased book use to a lesser degree). But (IIRC) algorithmic social media has been shown to be harmful. So the problem isn't really smartphones, but what is being commonly accessed via those smartphones.
Da Boss wrote: But moreso on the topic of this thread, I do a survey every year with my 12 year old class to find out what social media they are on. And for the last few years absolutely 0 of them are on Facebook and laugh at the suggestion..
Are most social media sites 13+? I know most people (parents and kids) ignore that, but having 12 year old telling you that is worrying.
No wonder so many of them are disturbed by a young age, and teens and young adults have so many problems.
I still have a link to a gaming forum in my seg. Not that anyone's posted in there for a good couple of years.
Kids absolutely ignore the age restriction and the sites make no attempt to enforce it. Social media doesn't worry me as much as the deluge of extreme pornography. We have 11 year olds showing extreme and degrading videos to girls in their class and saying 'that's what you should do' and it is really widespread. Some kids parents are obviously super strict and they are very innocent, and then get picked on for it by others. It has made me in favour of ID being required to access pornography online tbh. The harms to children are very real.
All it needs is a less tech savvy parent in the group and then their kid gets onto stuff and shares it with the others. And kids are pretty good at getting around the parental controls on devices too.
But I 100% agree it's far too early (you can argue that it's just never good for a teenager's developing brain, at any point, too). I teach sex ed as part of my extra duties and have to think really carefully about when and how to do pornography education - too early and you break the innocence of the ones with strict parents, too late and you've lost a lot of the potential to stop bad habits from developing. It's a really challenging area. I just don't think the absolute wild west approach currently going is tenable.
I think the responsibility has to lie at least partially on the websites profiting from it.
It definitely needs both parties contributing. As you say, parental locks aren’t foolproof, and kids are sneaky little buggers almost certainly more familiar with the tech than the parents in most circumstances.
Social Media and Prawn both need to ensure they’re actively enforcing the rules, beyond “are you of the right age, pls don’t lie k”.
And if a parent can’t manage to negotiate the parental lock and age restricted website security, frankly I question why they should be allowing their own children online.
It goes back to really basic online safety stuff. Like have the family computer in a family area - so whilst you’re not watching over their shoulder, it’s easier to monitor what sites they’re visiting and who they’re interacting with.
I’ve no kids of my own, nor do I intend to change that. But my best mate is Dad to four, three of which live away aways. Yet, when they were first exploring online? He was in the same chats or games. Not interfering. Not necessarily vetting, just…present. The online equivalent of a parent escorting kids to the park, and keeping a weather eye out whilst enjoying a coffee, possibly with the other parents.
Heck steam keeps asking me, whilst I'm logged in on the client, how old I am or such and I've been a bunch of different random ages because most age systems don't care so long as the year lands over 18.
Whilst I get the counter argument that people don't want to register with personal details on every website or put their personal details at risk, there has to be a happy middle ground where you can prove you're an adult and keep the kids out.
Of course then people counter-counter argue that if you're accessing stuff you shouldn't be hiding your identity and the cycle of arguments springs up and never ends
When logging into my pension, or even Twitch, I need to use Authenticator to prove it’s me - despite me only ever accessing such from my iPad.
Add that in. Then the kid needs to get past the parental filter (need the password), and then get the Authenticator code. Then log into bongo pages, and get another Authenticator code.
Want to switch Google Safe Search off? That should be another Authenticator.
Is all of this foolproof? No, absolutely not. But there’s no harm and much benefit in making things as difficult as possible for the kids to access stuff the parents don’t want them accessing.
Yeah, when I say child abuse I'm not trying to throw blame at an individual. It is largely a systemic problem that needs a systemic solution (or solutions).
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When logging into my pension, or even Twitch, I need to use Authenticator to prove it’s me - despite me only ever accessing such from my iPad.
Add that in. Then the kid needs to get past the parental filter (need the password), and then get the Authenticator code. Then log into bongo pages, and get another Authenticator code.
Want to switch Google Safe Search off? That should be another Authenticator.
Is all of this foolproof? No, absolutely not. But there’s no harm and much benefit in making things as difficult as possible for the kids to access stuff the parents don’t want them accessing.
Thing is authenticators are specifically made to identify an individual, which is where a lot of people don't want to be identified when accessing certain "adult stuff". And we are well in an age where we know that even if they say they aren't data harvesting - they are data harvesting and just waiting to use it. Or the website isn't harvesting but the authenticator is and then someone buys/steals that data and lines it up with the websites and boom.
Honestly? Neglect is a form of child abuse. And if you’re taking no steps whatsoever to safeguard your children online, I’m interested in whether that crosses the line. Because whilst not quite the same as letting them play unsupervised on a busy road? The lack of observation and safeguarding online isn’t that different, because you’re still exposing them to needless risk.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Honestly? Neglect is a form of child abuse. And if you’re taking no steps whatsoever to safeguard your children online, I’m interested in whether that crosses the line. Because whilst not quite the same as letting them play unsupervised on a busy road? The lack of observation and safeguarding online isn’t that different, because you’re still exposing them to needless risk.
This is also a good point and its not the 90s any more; most parents now will have grown up with the internet in some form or another. Having child-versions of windows/internet/mobilephone apps and services could and should be a thing. Not just parental limits on the modem, but actual software limits that let parents monitor, restrict and oversee online use easily and without impeding adults doing what they want on their own.
It might be less what we need is authentication but more services setup to account for the fact that there are minors online and that they need almost a separate division of it. Kind of like how MMO games have "open FFA areas" and "noob intro" areas or PVE or the like.
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That being said, they may operate slightly differently in the 
