Mistaking the Part for the Whole--How FaceBook, not the Internet, Makes us Stupid

[lavendertook]

I read a lifestyle advice article on my home feed on FaceBook that listed a few of my friends on top. It was from a credible source, the NYT, but not a section of the NYT I would have picked out myself. I had some thoughts about it and looked around trying to see how it got on my home feed--which friend it came through, with no luck. In fact, I really don't know if the friends listed on it had read the article or had negative or positive reactions to it. When I went back to my feed to look closer at this info, the article had disappeared. Granted, I am still a FaceBook novice, since I avoid posting there, and perhaps savvy old timers can track these things with ease, but I have my doubts. I don't know how this article really got to my home feed. And if a casual attempt to track it doesn't reveal these answers readily to me, then it probably doesn't reveal those answers to most FaceBook users. Most likely, the question does not even occur to many FB users.

My friends on Facebook are all very bright, liberal or progressive. My home feed is full of news articles filtered through opinion pieces, but it is often not clear if the opinion is from my friend or one of their friends or a more removed pundit. Though I agree with the anti-Trump, progressive point of view of most all of my FaceBook friends, I find the difficulty of tracking who is making the comments very troubling. It's no way to get your news or to discuss news, and it is so easy to game and to slip in bots. Today I saw friends perhaps passing on the complaints of progressive groups about changes FaceBook is making to its news dissemination process, though I am not certain this came with my friends' approval, but whatever changes FB makes, they will not be worse than how it currently works or solve these problems and make it better.

Why are smart people using FaceBook to discuss politics when attributions are so fast and loose there? Why have they left behind other forms of social media blogs (like dreamwidth and LJ) where what articles you pass on are ones you have clearly linked to with your own html links and where your words are published on your own blog? More importantly, why are smart people using FaceBook to get their news feeds instead of going directly to news and blog sites they trust? FaceBook obscures the pathways the articles take and the attribution of commentary. It's horrible.

Why put your trust in FaceBook? The convenience is not worth the power you give this one web source by depending on it.

So yes, this is another futile anti-FaceBook screed. The only reason I look at FB is because so many smart people have left our social media homes for that horrid interface, and many people I know from various walks of my life have made it their social media home. In the last year I have been clicking there more because it is the only website where they congregate, and I give thumbs up and heart emoji's, but its not a place I want to put my words, pics, and time. It's a good interface for advertising events--concerts, meet-ups, and book launches, and should be used for such. But I worry about so many smart friends using it as a newsfeed--and how little use it has for the kind of productive political discussion you can still have on blogs.

It's not the internet as a whole that is making our society more stupid--it's FaceBook prime and center, more than any other site. And if we don't want FB's diffusing of attributions and ways of giving room for bots to play, then we have the power of keeping it from being so ubiquitous by not making it a prime source for news and political discussion, if not personal posts.

FB is a wrong turn in the evolution of social networking blog interfaces.

Dreamwidth and LJ are still my prime internet homes and will continue to be, and I will keep hoping my friends will come to their senses and come back or migrate to other old style social networking blogs that foster better interaction and political thought. But I really hope most of all they will stop using it as a news aggregator--by the way it is set up, it can easily mislead you about who is recommending the articles that appear before you, and narrow instead of broaden your news sources in the process. What looks like convenience on FB wastes your time (and synapses) instead of saves it.

Comments

[conuly]

Thing is, FB has the advantage of numbers. It's easier to join the social network that your mom and all have already joined.

But there's hope! The younger generation isn't terribly interested in FB, because that's what their mom uses.

[lavendertook]

Yeah. If people understood the risks FB's data mining of us poses, and someone offered a site with a very similar platform but promised no data mining, good security, and less infinitely connective algorithms, and had a good enough promotion to get a lot of people's attention, I'd do all I could to support them and hope everyone would jump there.

Granted, I'm already on the platform that is ideal for me here on DW, but I understand how it is not ideal for the average less text-attracted person.

Unfortunately, young people have a nasty habit of growing up and then wanting to find and connect with their families and old friends, and will then be absorbed into the FB borg if a better universal site does not turn up.

[minoanmiss]

*beams at you*
I have a Facebook. which is basically a squat upon my name. Every time I consider actually using it I get a reminder why I don't.

[lavendertook]

*beams back atchya* :-D

I'm starting to use mine to promote local musicians I like, but that's probably still too much use of it. I am lured by the old friends and relations gathered there, but I am too wary of the algorithms catching my scent if I comment or post there more and use me for advertising bait and misrepresenting me to my friends.

[supergee]

I agree. I use Facebook but don't trust it.

[lavendertook]

You've been doing your part of blowing the horn on its dangers for a long time. This year I felt I should browse it enough to learn more about how it helped throw the election to Trump and figure it out some. Oy vey.

[elwendell]

I use both blogs and facebook.

I have learned not to trust news on fb and if it's particularly contentious I try to check it out before commenting. It has been very useful for reconnecting with old friends I had thought lost forever and I also use the messaging service to chat with friends, live. Otherwise, fb is a place of entertainment only in my eyes. It's format does not allow long and rambling posts anyway.

DW and LJ are where I interact on a more personal level regarding my life, thoughts and beliefs. Even there, I try to avoid anything too contentious if I know that my opinions may be offensive to others, because I want my blog to be a pleasant place and, honestly, I have few strong political or religious opinions.

Except for Trump. I have strong opinions about Trump.

[baranduin]

Yes. All this.

ETA: Oops, except the contentious bit:-)

[lavendertook]

I love the contentious bit about you. (-:

[baranduin]

Yep. I got myself one of those December women’s birthdays about our never keeping our mouths shut.

[lavendertook]

I'm attracted to it for the same reasons you are. What worries me is that the more you use it, I think the more FB data mines you, and definitely the more it uses you for ads and articles it presents to your friends with your name at the top to recommend said ad or article, and without your knowledge.

I don't know if its algorithms pay less attention to you if you use the messenger service instead of posting comments or entries, or I'd definitely use messenger like you--I wish I knew. I suspect the more links you post, the more algorithms you fulfill and you're better off posting personal entries than linking memes and articles.

And I think if someone posts a lot of political content on FB, they can be used more easily for opposing purposes. Unfortunately, I think even posting negative commentary about Trump serves Trump. I could be wrong, but iIhighly suspect it works that way, and worked that way to get him in office. I hate being a voice of quietism, but I think it is a bad site to post political content because you can more easily be linked there to content that misrepresents your views.

EDIT: Here's an article that says you're not any safer from data mining on messenger than posting on FB. Blech.

[claudia603]

I've always completely mistrusted facebook. I think there's a place for it and a use for it, but I've never warmed up to it. And there are complicated algorithms that I can't begin to understand. And I don't like seeing stuff like what you're talking about, where a friend of a friend posts something and somehow I see it on my feed and I don't know why or where it's coming from. Why do I see it? How does that work? There doesn't seem to be enough privacy control in general. And the privacy controls change all the time. Maybe I'm too old to really "get" facebook, but I also prefer the way DW/LJ/traditional blog feeds are set up where you see things from recent to older, things aren't filtered out based on some mysterious algorithm, etc.

I have a fake name account where I join some facebook groups, and I find those groups to not at all have a sense of friendly community (because of numbers) and to be rather draconian about their rules in an unpleasant way (people making innocent mistakes getting piled upon by others and kicked out of groups), so I lurk only. I way prefer reddit for forums and discussions of specific topics anyway!

I also have an account with my real name, but I don't do much other than press like buttons or write a short comment here and there to other people's posts, the few times I log in. Sometimes it's nice to see people you haven't seen in a long time there, or just to hear something about them, but I don't feel like there's any give and take interaction as there is in the smaller LJ/DW community.

Also I think I said this elsewhere before, but I think some people really like that facebook brings everyone in their lives together in one place. In theory I think this is great, too. But I've always been a compartmentalizer. I like to keep the various parts of my life separate from one another.

That being said, I understand why some people thrive in it.

/ramblings

[baranduin]

I’d really like see some of the code for fscebook’s algorithms.

I’ve found most of the reddits I follow to be genuinely kind. Then again, most of them are meditation and Buddhist related lol! Stay away from the Zen subreddit.

[lavendertook]

I think it's kind of a bleh looking interface, frankly, to be the number one social media site. And it's not just the algorithms but how they're combined with old fashioned subliminal advertising techniques. Give me the old ugly *direct* banner ads on unpaid LJ's any day rather than ads on FB that are interspersed between posts and come with endorsements on the top of them from your friends taken from FB's data mining what they've looked at in their web browsers and have no idea you are learning that about them and which may be totally misrepresenting them. Plus all the articles that come with endorsements from them because they forwarded a different article from that same newspaper, journal, or blog and also totally misrepresents them. And vice versa. I don't like being misrepresented. And that ability is a field day for bots, and what makes it so easy to promote the misinformation that helped get Trump elected.

I mainly didn't like mixing friends, family and coworkers, though it's not so much an issue for me now as I'm nearing retirement, but I still totally understand needing to compartmentalize. Otherwise the draw for me is that old friends and relatives I lack other contact with are there, but I can email them if I want to interact with them, so I'm still trying to limit the pieces of me that FB gets. *holds up fists in boxing gloves* You wanna piece of me Facebook, huh?

[gale_storm]

You wrote, “In the last year I have been clicking there more because it is the only website where they congregate, and I give thumbs up and heart emoji's, but its not a place I want to put my words, pics, and time.”

Like the other commenters here, I really don’t much like Fartbook or the Goggle counterfart, um, -part. :-S I wouldn’t be there at all if my family were more centrally located — okay, admittedly, I’m the one who lives the farthest afield, so the pressure to take part in it at all falls to me. Yeah, so I wake up in the morning and go look in on Fartbook to see what my folks are up to, and if anything else grabs me, okay but that’s about all I’ll do there. The game crap doesn’t pull me, and current affairs or news stuff is something I’ve all but given up on telling peeps there that I don’t give a shit about their views on politics or that their way is only that — the “my way or the highway” being used to cut away things they don’t have time or energy to deal with, but these folks don’t want to take into account that theirs is not the only way, high- or not, in the world.

[lavendertook]

I don't even know anything about Googles version. Is that the Google+?

My problem with talking politics on FB is that everything you forward creates more avenues for advertisements FB will send your friends. And because it can be hard for your friend to tell what you have directly linked to, what you are forwarding from someone else, from something that you read but wouldn't have forwarded yourself that FB decided to forward, from an entirely different article from the same or a related newspaper, journal, or blog that FB picked out that may present views you do not support but is still presented with your name on the top! Aaaand the fact that you only read that journal, not that particular article is written in light gray "reads" rather than a light gray "shared" so your friends don't pick up on it and wind up thinking you forwarded an article called "Y TRUMP IZ GRATE!" And this is exactly how Trump got elected, or part of it really. I hope that made sense.

[gale_storm]

It did make sense, and I do agree with you on what you've said.

Y'know, it's almost like we've gotten a new electoral party, and it's not one most folk would knowingly vote for!

[gale_storm]

Oh, and, yeah, Google+ is what I'd called Google's version.

And I love love ADORE that user icon! Doggy brain bucket with extra-sticky chinstrap!

[ithiliana]

Thank you for posting this: it resonates with so much of what I've been thinking! I agree with everything you say because I did get sucked into the FB vortex (have been pulling myself out/away for a while now). I can see why it appeals to so many though: it makes it possible to see a torrent of information without any effort! The RSS feed here does something similar, i.e. let's me see the content without having to go to different sites.

I got sucked in after I found myself drifting out of fandom after Racefail, and after a bunch of personal crises (that just kept happening, culminating in 2016 with Entwife's mother manifesting late onset paranoid schizophrenia), and sort of seem to keep happening.

We've been working to get back into a better place the past eight months or so: more exercise (Zumba Gold is FUN!), not getting sucked into major timewasters at work, some therapy. I have just shifted to Zoloft which allows a higher dosage than Citalopram for people in their sixties. I'd tried to go off the anti-depressant back in 2016 which turned out to be a terrible decision.

So, yeah. It was "easy" to do FB. And one thing I've noticed: it's even easier/more insidious on my smartphone (and harder to check the source of news articles!). I have installed FB purity, do a lot of pre-emptive blocking and have tossed some people off my feed, and always try to double-check source of news before clicking "share," etc. I can do all that on my computer, but not so easily on my phone (there may be ways on the iPhone to do it, but I haven't figured it out). I've also locked down FB and my other sites because a letter of support I signed for a medievalist who was being attack because of her anti-racist work was turned over to the academic attacking her who is buddies with Milo Y. She warned us to take some of the basic precautions.

I'm not quite ready to give FB up: I got into it because of my student group, stayed in because it let me get back in touch with some my favorite students who are now alums, and turned out to be a terrific way to network with other academics in Tolkien Studies, pop culture, fan studies, etc.

I miss what I used to have on Dreamwidth though. IN part that's because I'm not really in any fandom at the moment, and not sure I will be again, but mostly because I haven't been able to put in the energy to create new relationships and interactions here....another thing I'm hoping will change in 2018. I've kept reading my flist.....I need to start commenting again, as well as posting.

FB is lousy for real conversation (one reason I think so many fights arise) (though I suspect twitter is worse--and has the same problems you note with FB).

FB is saying they are cutting out news feeds, etc. on FB and only letting people access friends and family (and presumably what F&F post), but at this point, I don't trust FB at all, and doubt it will make any real difference (any more than their way of policing harassment and hate speech which seems designed to protect white men).

[baranduin]

OMG! Thank you! I’m seeing my doc in a week to talk about changing my med which is Celexa and am at highest dose I think.

[ithiliana]

*hugs* Glad it's useful to hear!

I was on 20 mg. Citalopram (had been on 40), but when I asked to go higher, she said that higher than 20 mg dosages in people in their sixties was linked to heart arrhythmia. So she switched me to 100 mg Zoloft (the transition was easy--and while I'm cautious about over-optimism, I think I am seeing some improvement!).

Good luck!

[baranduin]

Crap. I’ve been on 40 for a year and a half. Welp, not for much longer!

[lavendertook]

*hugs you and puuuuuulls you back here* Come baaaack, my friend!!!

You are one of the friends I had in mind when writing this because you are one of the couple of friends who links the most political content in my home/news feed. And right before I started writing this post, I read an ad on FB from a group called "Resist" that listed your name on top liking the group and, though I'm all about resistance yo, it wasn't presenting its case very well that all the changes FB is planning to make will kill all good political discourse on FB and targets progressives in particular and blah blah blah, and I'm wondering if you even knew about this group that was trying to give me the impression that you endorsed it.

Anyway, though I love most all of your links and have been delighted to see all my old gamer friends and relatives are passing around good progressive articles, views, and jokes, too, I think posting a lot of links leaves you open to FB presenting lots of other links to your friends that you have never seen and encourages your friends to think you endorse them.

Once I noticed I got an article from the NYT with a bunch of friends names on top and, like a human does, read the article without noticing what the light gray verb was ("share" "like" "read"?), and once you read an article it disappears from your feed so you can't go back and check. So you're left with some connection between your friend's name (because our minds are primed to pick up on our friend's names on FB) and this article. But if you forward an article in the NYT from Paul Krugman, FB may go back and forward one from David Brooks to your friends as well, and due to humans not seeing all the fine light gray print, they will pick up on their friends' names, and when FB puts your name on the top saying you "like the NYT", your friend is going to think you recommended the article and that you share Brooks views. And if your friend is conservative, FB's algorithms will pick out more conservative pieces in the NYT with your endorsement on top, and I don't know whether it will bounce to other sources from there. So much for educating people on FB. There's so much room for misrepresentation without even resorting to a Russian bot just because the algorithms' missions are to connect as much as possible infinitely to draw more and more people together and collect more and more information on them.

Also, if i were doing research on the antiabortion movement and spent a lot of time reading antiabortion lit, guess what links FB would data mine onto FB and present as texts I like. Fun for everybody! And since I suspect more liberals and progressives look at texts from the other side, like well educated critical thinkers, and I suspect even well educated conservatives are less likely to do this, guess which way data mining will skew links from us on FB to more conservative FB users? I am really skeptical that liberal bubbles work the same way as conservative bubbles on FB.

Infinite connection seems so kumbayah until you see how it works here for data mining and infinite sales. The little programmers hadn't even thought about infinite propaganda for fascist takeovers like they got last year. Oh well!

But I really do think the more you link, the more the algorithms will attach to you and mine from you. I suspect making a post without links probably draws less algorithms. I just think I am getting articles and ads on my feed from nonprofits that list endorsements (not shared) from you and other people who are linking more. But I linked in a reply above an article I just read that FB is even data mining private messenger, so perhaps it makes no difference--I dunno. I don't know if you are safer from misrepresentation to your friends and for data mining if you link more cat memes than political content. I don't like being quietist, but I suspect FB is not a good place for political linking because it can lead to mor misrepresentation, but I could be wrong.

On life: I feel you on the medicine changes. I first started dealing with anxiety and depression in the mid-1990s, and only got properly medicated (Cymbalta) in 2016. I was on prozac and buspirone for most of that time, with disastrous tries of a couple of other meds, but was never properly medicated on those for most of 20 years. I achieved ABD in the requisite time while most of my ability to concentrate was utterly destroyed, so I try to take pride in that feat. Life is so much better now for me. I 'm sorry for all you went through and hope the zoloft works out great for you.

I'm enjoying dappling in The Last Jedi fandom right now. I think I would enjoy Black Sails if I could get some time to watch the vids. But I've been reading so many wonderful sf/f novels the past couple of years. I'm currently reading the third book in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series and just read the first of Martha Wells' Murderbot series that I'm going to discuss with my fabulous sf/f book group tomorrow. (-:

[ithiliana]

I keep trying to work out how to come back, how to be on DW. (I actually deleted my LJ a month or two ago after reading more about their corporate crap!).

So far, I haven't figured it out. I am not really doing fanac anymore (someday hope to get back to fic writing, but have to wait until my brain goes "oh yeah let's write some fic"), and am burned out on meta for fandom. I don't even want to post much about my personal life even though I've set it all to access list only because I am fairly sure there is at least one 'friend' who has reported on what I posted to one of the two people that I broke up with due to Racefail. We had a number of mutual friends. The ex-friend posts the occasional passive-aggressive rant on her LJ where no names are mentioned but the specifics are clear: I'm paranoid enough to check over there every year or so. (She doesn't post publicly much so it's easy to do.) There was also somebody on my flist who excerpted, out of context, something I said and posted no fandom_anon back when they were seeing me as one of the worst of the SJWs. So, no personal stuff. A lot of the people I was closest to (you are probably the main exception!) are no longer active themselves--I read over here, but have a lot of feeds as well as the reading list.

And many of the people I connect with on FB are not on DW/LJ and will never be, so I'm reluctant to quit entirely because of the academic contacts and communities I have over there that do not exist on DW (as far as I have ever known).

I've been hanging out on Mike Glyer's File 770 (started because of his coverage of the Sad Puppies thing)--not as active over there, but still get great book recs and discussion. I've thought about trying to post reviews and book stuff here because I'm reading a huge amount of original sff (less fanfic, more profit!), and that's probably the way I'll go if I can get up the energy to start posting regularly over here.

(I LOVE Martha Wells' MURDERBOT--and am hoping to get her up to my uni for a talk in a few months! Also Ann Leckie. And I am still in love with some urban fantasy, esp. Ilona Andrews and Patricia Briggs).

In terms of posts and FB and all that: I'm not sure about "Resist": I follow some political communities which started with the Women's March last year. FB is one of the places where I read for political stuff (making sure to follow legitimate news sources--Media Bias Fact Check my new to go site along with snopes).

Does FB screw us all? Yes. It's probably one of the worst (although the one I refuse to allow access in the sense of never signing in and not using some of their stuff is Google). I tend to skim over, ignore, or "hide" all the "suggested posts" (and you're right, they often have a familiar name at the top), and I've also installed Facebook Purity (HIGHLY recommended) which screens out a lot of crap (and you can customize the default settings to screen out a lot more). One of the things that bugged me was friends of friends commenting on my posts then getting pissed when I pointed out I wasn't their friend and didn't want to hear their fundamentalist racist take on things--but I've managed to shut that down. I just don't recall if it was the FB settings or the FB purity program.

Fascinating stuff on the links and bubbles and stuff: I don't see FB as a place to educate others (mostly because I limit who I follow and unfollow/block pretty freely even some liberals--like one Tolkienist who thought I was totally wrong for saying I wouldn't vote for an anti-choice Democrat). ANd how the search function goes--from what I know, that is true for all the big search engines, i.e. the more you search for X, the more likely you are to see material with X in it no matter what the position.

I've read about the data mining issue for years (and while I try to take some actions on my end, I don't suspect it is all that effective)--but I'm not convinced that it's more or less bad across the whole web (FB is worse because so many more people are on it giving them even more sway).

I'll try to be a bit more conscious of what I "see" when I log in: I don't have the sense I'm seeing as much as you are, but I don't know if it's because of lack of notice or FB purity and a consistent "hide post and don't show me anymore" (and yes I know that's just more data for them, but I cannot bear to see some types of images/posts).

And I am really trying to not do anything other than read when on the phone because as bad as the interface is with my computer, it's even worse on the phone.

I am sorry you have had such a horrific time with finding a med that would work with you--and am glad things are better! I had an incredibly easy transition to the Zoloft (in that the only thing I notice is that I'm feeling better and less anxious -- although I suspect the increased exercise is part of that!)--so am hoping if things improve to be able to get back more on DW for my online interactions, and more active on File770, and less so on fb.

Thank you for all the information you're sharing here (depressing as it is!).

{HUGS}

(p.s. my Pop Culture conference is scheduled for DC in 2019 in APril, so hope to see you then! We can get together with Aprilkat!)

[baranduin]

It’s been an interesting few months getting used to using it.

I expect you’re right about the evolutionary bad turn. Oh well.

[primwood]

I hate Facebook. It decides what/when you'll see anything.

I go there because I can find certain people there that I like to follow, and that's where they have landed. That's probably why many people do it.

[wallace_trust]

Agree. I tried FB and almost immediately panicked over its lack of controls and the way I was instantly bombarded by folks I hadn't ever asked to connect with. I deleted that account, only to discover that one of my crowd working sites required it to login. So I made a new account, but I never post on it and don't even check my messages-- I have something like 97 unchecked messages right now-- it's solely for login purposes, and I do have something to that effect posted there. Of course most of my relatives are on it and they all think I'm crazy, but I've never been one to let others push me into anything I don't want to participate in :D

[monkey5s]

I was basically peer-pressured into getting a FB account when I took early retirement from work. I quickly discovered how incredibly vital it was to install FB Purity- the guy who does it is constantly keeping tabs on what FB does to thwart the acreening processes he offers. As a result, I see no ads, I only see the posts from aggregate sites I subscribe to, and some from my friends. What frustrates me is that the FB algorithm only shows *some* of my friends' posts. I hope that changes with the new system they claim to be bringing in.

All of that is to say that I don't post things there that I figure would anger people that I know. But I do belong to some closed groups there that are people who have opinions in common with me on specific topics.

And the posts I see from friends are clearly ones they have liked, and reposted. I also take all reposts of specific triggery content with large grains of salt. If it's too egregious, I might post a comment citing the Snopes.com debunking, but that depends on the individual who reposted it. And there are some people who consistently post things that offend me enough to stop following them, without unfriending them.

I walked away from LJ with the Russian takeover. I'm sad to lose that- there's a lot of fandom stuff that I no longer know how to find. I don't visit DW here very often because I just don't have many contacts here. Most of my online social media time is spent (wasted? BUT IT'S MOSTLY FUN!) on Tumblr. Oh, I almost never post original content there, but I do repost things I *really* like, so that I will be able to find them again. And I follow a LOT of blogs there, so I get a wide variety of posts across my dashboard. I have to say, it helps distract me from the awful parts of my life that I currently can't change.

As far as data mining goes, I honestly don't believe any online presence includes even a shred of privacy these days. But I don't live a life that is at all remarkable, so I figure the spies will die of boredom if they watch me.

[saraqael]

I missed this post and only just saw it. I have a FB that is not under my name and has my birthday slightly wrong. I even posted a series of quite obviously fake family pictures in my family photo album. (The pictures are all of turn of the century circus performers.) I set up the account only to have a quick place to chat with my nieces who have moved out of state to go to college, and also to connect with overseas friends without having to pay long distance phone charges. After setting up the FB, I realized that dozens of artists that I admire had accounts where they posted their latest works. Now my FB feed is 99% artist posts, and a handful of friends or relatives. I don't use the site for news because I don't trust it one bit. It's designed to be an enormous echo chamber that promotes extreme and divisive positioning. There does not seem to be any middle ground on social, economic, or political views. No one listens to 'the other side' and no one promotes rational discussions.

I actually get news headlines from Twitter of all places, since it is where all of the news organizations go to post breaking news headlines, but from the headline, I go back to original news sources and some of my regular go-to sources for news (Reuters, BBC News, The Economist, The Guardian). One thing I like about Twitter is the immediacy of 'citizen news' posts. I'll frequently see images and videos of events such as crowds protesting in the streets or military/police crackdowns that never show up on the mainstream network news. I always double-check those, too because these days, anyone can fake anything and post it as 'news'.

I got investigated by FB once because they can tell I'm using a fake name and that violates their rules. It's grounds for getting kicked off the site. I linked the FB account to my oldest Yahoo mail account (also in the same fake name). I think because I've got so many FB 'friends' (all of the artists) who've all referred to me by this fake name for years, that they're leaving me alone for now. I do have a FB staff person who is silently 'following' my FB journal though. I assume they're waiting for me or someone I know to slip up and refer to me by my actual name. Dunno, don't care. Most of the artists I like have migrated over to Instagram so I can see their work there if I get kicked off of FB.

I am irritated by FB's intensive data mining and ad placements. I don't like that they place cookies that track you around the internet. I think if I lost the account, I wouldn't really care.