I use a block Facebook extension on chrome. If a family member sends me a Facebook link I have to explicitly cut and paste it to Firefox or something to read it. Makes it easier to avoid using it. I know other media also selling info but at least they aren’t explicitly helping Trump out. Fuck Zuckerberg.
MAGAts.
Jeff, my wife discusses with people but she only cites facts and gives links to articles proving her point. When people make counter arguments, she refuses to discuss them unless they do likewise.
When she finds someone who’s a troll, she simply blocks them and moves on.
So while she may have blocked some people she used to know, she’s reasonably happy about her Facebook experience.
As for myself, I don’t use it at all because I’ve never thought it was a good thing to do!
Delete your account @jpinard you are too kind a soul to expose yourself to the odious trolls laying in wait.
For me, Facebook is for looking at baby pictures that my friends post. Nothing else matters.
Assuming you can’t just delete Facebook… Are you posting to a group or to your timeline? If your timeline lock it all down to friends only, there’s no reason to have a public one or allow any random person to post replies to your posts.
That sounds like the best advice. Just clamp it down so that you aren’t talking to the greater public.
If it still happens, then someone in your circle of friends is a complete tool, and the sooner you remove them from facebook and your life, the better.
I enjoy using Facebook but my feed consists entirely of purdy works of art, punk rock songs and adorable kitty pics.
My wife uses Facebook a lot for things like:
Cottage Life
the Secret Lives of Animals
and other groups that show funny or charming pictures.
The problem is I’m sure this is one of my “friends” from high school who made a throwaway account. I can’t be sure which one it is as I just discovered several who I thought were good people, are actually racist Trump supporters. I guess I should just unfriend them, but it’s just so incredibly sad to me. One of these guys sang in the church choir with me in school, was in band with me, and was my roommate for 2 years in college. His parents, brother, and sister are good friends to me and incredibly kind. His posts sound like someone brainwashed in a cult.
but if you lock posts to only friends the throwaway account cant post.
Yeah, but his ‘friend’ might try other avenues of being a horrible person.
High school friends are tough because they aren’t always based on things that are important to you as an adult, and by the time you realize that they are terrible people, you have so much past history and memories that it feels like you are cutting off a piece of your past. Good and bad.
My wife cut off a nephew and his wife because they were terrible racist people who could not be reasoned with. That kid was the ringbearer at our wedding! Yeah, it sucks and it can hurt but we don’t have time to continually deal with people who can’t be reasoned with and who revel in ignorance and stupidity.
What’s particularly fun about that is how all those baby pictures are now property of Facebook.
I deleted Facebook years ago because Zuck is an authoritarian-enabling monster but I distinctly remember in '09 one of my dear old college friends posting a birther screed out of the blue. This is a person that used to be smart, level headed, and kind - it’s downright existentially depressing to see them turned into that. All I could do was unfriend him, but the whole thing cut deep.
I wonder if that would hold up in court.
I certainly hope not. I’d love to see someone challenge it, come to think of it. It’s just one monstrous thing among many, of course.
Oh wait, they don’t at all. That’s a relief, because for a moment, I thought I missed something very important.
Right, sorry, it’s been awhile. They reserve the right to use them however they please, but don’t claim ownership.
Of course, the Facebook Terms of Service tells a slightly different story. It says:
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
In short, Facebook has a (broad) license to use your work, but there is no copyright transfer and Facebook does not own your images in any way.
Which is still skeezy as hell, of course.
Which, if you read the link I posted, is kind of the only way it can work. Otherwise they could not show your pictures to your friends, which is kind of the point.
I am fine with calling Facebook evil, I really am, but I am not sure how you would craft an agreement that lets you share your pictures with friends and colleagues without having vague language.
These are all pretty broad and scary terms but, for Facebook to work as intended, it needs this sort of vague license. Displaying the photos you post to Facebook in your friend’s News Feeds would be impossible otherwise: if you hadn’t given them a license, it would be a violation of your copyright for them to show that photo to your friends.
People might be fine with calling Facebook evil, but they don’t believe it is evil, or they wouldn’t be using it.
If Der Sturmer had a funny cartoon page or if Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines had a popular breakfast show I guess people would be fine with using them too.