PPS Try not to get too wound up by the 'less vs fewer' error once you've clicked on 'Not interested'.
Don't understand this farcebook thing at all. But I'm SO not interested in the social media obssession. This site is as far as I'm prepared to venture! Am I missing out? Do I care? Nah. Fine for those who find something in it, but I'm not one of them. Just one more little thing to get in the way of actually living a life in the round, rather than via a small screen.
I was never interested in FB, but I joined a few yrs ago because someone suggested that I might be able to sell some furniture (from my parents' house) on it, and I was able to do so. I then found there was a group on on the site for people interested in the history of the village where I grew up so I joined it, and I showed some old photos I had of the village - old buildings now gone, and people now deceased, and everyone enjoyed seeing them. I also got in touch with several people I grew up with in the village, we played and went to school and Sunday school etc together, but I hadn't seen them for very many years, and I subsequently met up with them. It was wonderful to meet them again after all this time, and talk about the old days. I get messages from a friend or two on FB, and I occasionally show some of the paintings I make, but I limit who can see them to friends only, and that's all I use it for. I'm not interested in joining in with gossip, I just use it for what I want. They can stick the rest.
Whatsapp is far as I go. My brother kept nagging me about Facebook and wanted me to join his family group, so I could tell them what I was doing. He's still sulking because I told him that even if I joined I would refuse any "Friend" request from him.
You use whats App, I tried that for a while and found it very strange, not something I would even consider regarding where your messages end up.
I don't 'do' whats ap, I don't really know what it is, and I don't care ... and if it wasn't for the person who told me I could sell the furniture on FB I wouldn't have bothered with that either. Actually if my brother and his boys hadn't 'forced' me to take my dad's computer after he died, I probably still wouldn't have one.
I find WhatsApp very useful, basically you form groups and everyone in the group gets the same messages. We have a group for my allotment, so it's good for organising events such as working parties or if someone offers spare seeds or produce. We have another group for our street so we can keep an eye on each other, such as unwelcome door knockers or putting out a neighbour's bins if they are away. We have another group just for our family unit, so we can get called to baby sit or be invited for a meal together, sometimes we play games like quizzes. I also keep in touch with distant cousins in a group, we share old family photos and memories, difficult to do in any other way, at the last count I have 72 cousins on one branch. The groups are closed/private to the invited members, no one else can butt in unless invited. There are no adverts or subscriptions but eventually that may come in.
On FB I can't work out how you find someone with a common name. There are hundreds of them. And I can't see why we have to sign into FB if so many people are on it. Why not just open to the world. Same with X. All this logging in gets on my nerves. I used WhatsApp for the first time last week, when someone sent me a photo and I had to text back. Well, what's so special? Is it free to send photos? I did like Friends Reunited and was able to contact many old school mates from former schools as we had moved around so much. That had a purpose.
Yes free, we use it to call each other as that's free too if you use your home wifi. Over Christmas we had a group video call with my siblings, it's a bit like zoom in this instance but easier and quicker.
I accept the end to end to encryption claim. As to where they end up, at least it's not Elon Musk. It works, it's flexible and it's free. Then there's the Signal account for other stuff.
Thank you for that, @LG_ Exactly as I suspected, you have to mask the posts individually, which I've been doing, but as fast as I get rid of one 'line of thought', FB replaces it with another. Life's too short This tendency seems to be creeping into forum-land too. (Not this one, I hastily add!). There was quite a ding-dong on a French gardening forum recently over the use of ad-blockers. As those of us who use them pointed out, without the ad-blocker nearly half of the screen was taken up by banner ads. Goodness knows what it must have been like if using a phone. The curt reply was that the forum relied on ads and sponsors to pay it's way. Whilst I can see their point, it's a bit self-defeating allowing the advertisers to take over the space to the point where participants just give up and move on.
I don't do social media but it's interesting to see that Mark Zuckerberg has now decided to do away with all fact checking or censorship on his platforms. I would 'guess' he is a bit concerned about how close Elon Musk has got to Trump and is following his example. Mrs Shiney does Facebook and regularly asks me about the veracity of 'info' that pops up on there. She has now reduced her use of it to just her own closed groups - whatever that means.
Zuckerberg has said fact-checking has been hampering free speech. Personally, I don’t think the two are incompatible. It all depends on your algorithm. To date, FB has been set to push far left mantras. With Trump in power, that would make it a target, hence the sudden switch. Zuckerberg is one of the wealthiest men on the planet at a time where wealth equals enormous influence over society. We should worry about that. He accumulated this wealth by harvesting data and selling it on … to anyone. All moral thought on the uses “customers” might put the data to was deliberately quashed at the outset. Oppressive govs and others with nefarious intent have taken full advantage. As the world gets more authoritarian, billions of people will ultimately be affected by this one man’s business model, whether they use FB or not. Arguably, teenagers and young people have already paid a huge price, with harms pushed at them continuously.
Then you have Apple, there has been many complaints of their new A1 software sending false news alerts to the latest versions of their iPhones. Some alerts have had the logo of the BBC making the BBC look like the source of the false news. Some alerts were, Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself. Another alert was that Luke Littler had won the PDC world darts final, yet the final hadn't even been played, to name a few. Apple have said they are to update the A1 feature, but not by making it more accurate.
