darkoshi | Entries tagged with facebook

A few days ago I got a Facebook notification email that so-and-so "confirmed your Facebook friend request", where so-and-so was a name I did not recognize. Nor do I remember having sent any FB friend requests in a long time.

I logged into the FB account and sure enough, that person had been added to my friends list. I browsed their timeline and photos, and it looked like a real account, but nothing rang a bell. Nothing about their posts seemed related to my own interests. The only thing that made me feel uncertain was that that their profile pic looked vaaaaaaguely familiar; it was of a woman wearing a straw hat, and a guy, apparently at a beach but only the heads visible. I feel like I may have seen that photo before, but have no idea when, and maybe it only looks similar to some other photo I've seen in the past.

When I clicked the link to see who else they were friends with, it showed no one, so I guess they have their friends list set to private.

So then I downloaded all my Facebook data, and scanned it for her name. Nothing found.
I ran a search on all my emails and my FB notes (where I usually note down when I've sent or accepted a Friends request), and again found nothing.
I even checked my browser history; nope.
So I unfriended her.

But I still feel odd about it. Could it be someone whom I sent a friends request to a long time ago, and maybe they changed their display name (and profile URL) on FB since then?

I'm more of the belief that it was either a FB glitch, or some entity is using this method (hack Facebook to add their own fake accounts as friends to other people's accounts) to spy on people's non-public posts.

I've just thought why the profile photo might look familiar to me... maybe it was one of the "suggested connections" that FB always shows. Like a friend of a friend. So conceivably (or arguably from a hacker's point of view) I could have accidentally clicked on that part of the page sometime, resulting in a friends request being sent? But surely it would give a confirmation window before sending an actual request? Surely I wouldn't accidentally click twice, without remembering any of it?

Trump Facebook Ad Openly Using a Nazi Symbol For “Political Prisoner”

The ad being referenced has this text:

Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem. They are DESTROYING our cities and rioting - it’s absolute madness.
...
Please add your name IMMEDIATELY to stand with your President and his decision to declare ANTIFA a Terrorist Organization.

The ad has an image of a big downward-pointing red triangle, which is a symbol Nazis used to represent people whom they had imprisoned for political reasons.
The ad gives no reason or explanation for the red triangle, but given the Nazi association mentioned in the above article, along with the implication that all anti-fascist protesters should be labeled terrorists and imprisoned, it is very disturbing.

Facebook has taken down the ad "because it goes against Facebook Advertising Policies."

The other ads I see posted by the same sponsor, Team Trump @officialteamtrump, do not blatantly display Nazi symbols, but they are likewise repugnant to me. Very negative, Biden-bashing; calling Biden "Sleepy Joe" all over the place; purporting that the Democrats are out to gut Social Security and health care rather than the other way around.

But this "Team Trump" advertiser has spent (only) $1.87 million on Facebook ads during the last year.

By contrast, Donald J. Trump @DonaldTrump has spent $44.5 million on Facebook ads in the last year and $1.2 million in the last week.

The ads from the @DonaldTrump account aren't as vitriolic as the other ones, but they are also unpleasant, and some of the same ads are shared by both accounts, so they are undoubtedly linked.

The red triangle ad was (apparently?) shown on both the @officialteamtrump and @DonaldTrump pages (I'm not quite sure how to interpret all of this yet):
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=591999094784607
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=681677109057568

Each of those links shows there are 30 versions of the ad (each with its own IDs for both accounts). But when you scroll through the versions, they all look alike. Most other ads also show multiple identical-looking versions. So I guess the difference must be in to whom they are targeted, or some such.

For comparison, here are Joe Biden @joebiden's Facebook ads.
He has spent $23 million on the ads in the last year and $1.2 million in the last week.

..

General Notes on the Facebook Ad Library:

Main link: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/

When you search on a term such as "Team Trump", the drop-down may display many matching pages for that term. This may include pages that haven't done any advertising.

Once you select a item from the drop-down, it will show info on that page, and the ads it has ... (Showed on its own page? Paid for? I'm not sure. Aren't there some ads that are targeted to Facebook users via their timeline, without showing up on a particular page?)

To save a URL to a specific ad, after opening it, click the 3 dots up near the top, by the sponsor's name. The URL will include the ad ID which is also displayed in that top section.

To get information on the entity that paid for the ad, after opening it, expand the "Information from the advertiser" section.

After opening an add, the top shows how many versions of it there are, and has left/right arrows for you to scroll through them.

I don't see a way to search for ads shown during a certain timeframe. If you want to see what ads were shown a month or year ago, it looks like you have to scroll down through all the other ads that were posted since then.

Ads that were taken down because they went against Facebook advertising policies are still listed on the above page, but their images aren't shown until you click the link to open the specific ad. So that's an easy-ish way to find them - keep scrolling down until you find one that doesn't include an image. (Unless this is only for the cases where the image was found to be objectionable, but not the text? I'm not sure.)

Per this page, unless an ad has appeared on your timeline, you can't get details on what demographics an ad was targeted at.

When you open the main ads page for a particular (page / organization/ whatnot), there's a "Page Transparency" section at the top. It's "See More" link gives info on page name changes, the country /region from where people manage the page, and the organizations that manage the page.

I've been seeing this message fairly often on Facebook lately, in certain posts on people's timelines (people who are on my friends' list, when I open their pages):
This content isn't available right now
When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted.

I never used to see that. I'm not sure what it means. It doesn't seem to show up on posts in my Timeline.

I wonder if it happens when people share other people's content... content whose privacy settings makes it visible to the original poster's friends, but not their friends' friends. But if that's the case, then why does Facebook even display anything to me? Maybe Facebook doesn't let me see the original content, but does want to let me see whatever else my "friends" added (text, emojis, etc.) when sharing it?

I also wonder if it is content that was removed due to being fake or scams, etc.

Reading Facebook posts by people in my family and by acquaintances I've met in person mostly leaves me feeling annoyed, upset, disappointed, or down. Not all posts are like that; some are good, but there are enough of the other kind so that I don't feel like I'm missing much when I go for weeks without checking Facebook. (This is in contrast to my other FB account which is connected to people like you, whom I know from online; although I don't read it very often either due to time constraints.)

But my dad's FB page is a pleasant exception. I've found that he shares a lot of my views, and he seems so sane and wise compared to most other people on FB.

I suppose maybe I got my views from him to begin with, through some kind of osmosis. Though I never realized that while growing up, as my family never talked about politics or history or things like that back then, that I can recall.

In Facebook, if you send a message to someone who isn't connected to you (not even indirectly), is it possible they won't even be shown the message, depending on their settings? Or in the latter case, would you not even be given the option to send them a message?

Yesterday while picking up trash by the side of the street, I found a purse with a drivers license and other cards still in it. Based on the name and photo on the DL, I found their FB page and sent them a message, but haven't gotten a reply yet, so was wondering.

There was another time I found a DL by the street. That one was without a purse, just lying on the ground, and was bent/damaged looking, so I wasn't sure if it had been thrown away on purpose. I mailed it to the address listed on it anyway, just in case.

Yesterday, there was also a pair of purple shorts in the road (the other road, not near the purse). They looked clean, so I just moved them out of the roadway in case someone comes back for them. There was also a clean white sock, which I figured no one would come for, so I trashed it. Later I realized maybe they were from the same source... maybe someone was returning from a laundromat and dropped a few things. Who knows.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/693021.html

The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz - to get a profile of quiz takers, to be able to target them with political ads tailored to their individual concerns.

For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism “psy ops” work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes.
..
One recent advertising product on Facebook is the so-called “dark post”: A newsfeed message seen by no one aside from the users being targeted. With the help of Cambridge Analytica, Mr. Trump’s digital team used dark posts to serve different ads to different potential voters, aiming to push the exact right buttons for the exact right people at the exact right times.
..
In this election, dark posts were used to try to suppress the African-American vote. According to Bloomberg, the Trump campaign sent ads reminding certain selected black voters of Hillary Clinton’s infamous “super predator” line. It targeted Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood with messages about the Clinton Foundation’s troubles in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
..
One day in August, [Trump's campaign] flooded the social network with 100,000 ad variations, so-called A/B testing on a biblical scale...

Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’

Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years.
..
"Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it."
..
"My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist."

Wikipedia now has an entry on fake news websites too - the page was launched on Nov 15, 2016.

How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study

The pro-Trump fake news website that’s finding an audience — with Trump’s help - (article from April 2016)

What was fake on the Internet this week: Why this is the final column - from the Washington Post, Dec. 15, 2015.

Frankly, this column wasn’t designed to address the current environment. This format doesn’t make sense. I’ve spoken to several researchers and academics about this lately, because it’s started to feel a little pointless. Walter Quattrociocchi, the head of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science at IMT Lucca in Italy, has spent several years studying how conspiracy theories and misinformation spread online, and he confirmed some of my fears: Essentially, he explained, institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/675054.html

If I'm to believe things posted/shared on Facebook, it sounds like both my brother and his wife support Trump*. They've both shared posts from some of those fake and misleading news sites. I've seen only a few posts like that from them, but still. It makes me feel the need to waste my time posting replies pointing out the falsehoods and misleadingness of the articles.

(Talking about a news item from 3 years ago as if it is current news? Saying that Moscow banned mosques when the mayor only said they wouldn't issue new building permits? Showing a photo that makes it look like a mosque was being demolished, when the article mentions no such thing?

Saying that based on the latest polls, Trump is leading in nearly all the states, along with a red-filled map... when the article is dated 9/19.. and the referenced web site from where the poll data was averaged, shows a very different picture, currently at least?)

I almost wish that my brother's FB account was hacked again, like he said it was last month, and that someone else was posting those things. But considering his comment along on one of the articles, it sounds like he really did post it. His comment wasn't actually obnoxious, but it totally raises my hackles for him to be sharing or rather spreading a story that is so blaringly fictitious. Yes, I also wasted time looking up whether the story was in any way real, and I found no indication that it was.

*Though I don't think he's eligible to vote, unless he took on U.S. citizenship without telling me. And he previously linked to some article, saying that if you think your vote matters, you should read it... I didn't, but it was probably about how the system is rigged, and that it doesn't really make a difference who wins, or something along those lines. Which is a line of thinking that's a bit closer to my own, but hell yes I am still going to vote, and it won't be for Trump. I will vote for Hillary, even though I don't trust her in various ways. But I certainly trust her to do things more in line with what I think is right, than I do Trump.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/669927.html

I suppose this "Facebook" tag is turning out to be a list of reasons why I don't like Facebook, and why I much prefer Dreamwidth and Livejournal.

From what I've read, your News feed doesn't necessary show all the things your friends have posted, nor necessarily in the order they posted them in. Facebook decides, based on its own algorithms, which posts by which people it thinks you'll be interested in, and shows you them.

From what I read, a way around that is to create custom friends lists, and to view those lists instead. Which had been working for me. But now it seems that whenever I look at my lists, it only shows posts for a short time period (one day apparently), and then shows "There are no more posts to show right now. Go to News Feed".

So if I want to catch up on everyone's posts, I have to go to each of their pages individually. What a hassle.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/662824.html

Why does Facebook sometimes email me when a friend has posted a comment on a non-friend's post, but it sometimes/often doesn't email me when a friend has posted an entry on their own timeline? I don't think there is a way of turning off the one type of notifications without turning them all off; am I right? But I may as well turn them all off as they aren't reliable anyway, due to the latter.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/662342.html

Facebook is too hard for me to use. I simply wanted to post the same content as my last DW post to Facebook, but anchor tags don't work on Facebook.

I don't want the default images and text that shows up when you post a URL, as that takes up too much space. I want to control the link text and description myself, and don't want any images.

This FB help page says to enter the URL into the Share menu at the top of my Timeline or homepage, but I don't see any Share menu. The only place I see to enter anything is the Status box.

This page shows an icon for attaching a link, but my Status box doesn't have that icon.

Oh, and apparently you can only include one URL per post? Or at least only one URL gets updated with an image and text.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/625824.html

After creating the new Facebook account under my real name, I started getting emails "Do you know so-and-so?", including names of some people I know from work. They looked like LinkedIn emails, and I didn't pay much attention to them.

Then I noticed that the emails were from Facebook, not LinkedIn. How did Facebook link me with those people? I haven't yet posted anything on Facebook, haven't friended anyone, and have only filled out a few things on my profile.

Both accounts are set up under the same email address, so maybe it's based on that.

But how did Facebook get info on my LinkedIn connections? At first, I thought that I might not have turned off sharing with 3rd Party Applications in the LinkedIn settings. But I checked the settings, and they were already set not to share my info.

I wonder, has Facebook been sending similar emails to my work colleagues, saying "Do you know [my name]?", and linking to my new account?

My email address is not public on either account. But where I work is visible on LinkedIn. I suppose any 3rd party could do LinkedIn searches to find everyone connected to that company. And I suppose Facebook could use my name to link me up with those other people.

.

One thing I've been mentally debating is having my gender publicly visible on the Facebook account. I like that I can display my true gender, "androgyne". It could be a simple way to come out to friends and family who might not otherwise know, without making a big deal of it.

But I was thinking... there are health insurance plans that have clauses that exclude transgender-related expenses, and some (though hopefully few) even go so far as to exclude any services at all for a person who is transgender.

So maybe it would be better *not* to publicly out myself as transgender under my legal name.

And do I really even want to out myself to just anyone from work? Sometimes, I think it would make me seem even more odd from other people's viewpoints.

Maybe I'll set my gender display to friends-only. Though it's likely already been data mined, as that's one thing I've had publicly visible so far.

Not sure I'm even going to use the FB account for anything. Haven't felt inspired to so far.

2016/08/27: changed post visibility from Access List to Public

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/567305.html

If you want to use SSL for added security when using Facebook:

- Log into Facebook
- click the down-arrow in the upper right corner, and select "Account Settings"
- Select "Security" in the left column
- click the "Edit" link for the "Secure Browsing" category
- select the "Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) when possible
- click "Save Changes"

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/429579.html

I logged into Facebook today. The changes I saw don't seem as drastic as I was expecting, from what I had heard.

I followed the instructions on this page to create a list including all my FB friends, and then compared that page to the default page.

[ 2014/05/25 Copied here for reference, and updated based on new FB UI:
1) Look for 'FRIENDS' on the left-hand side of this page. Hover over the word FRIENDS and you'll see 'More'.
2) Click 'More', then click 'Create List' in the next page that comes up.
3) Name your list (whatever you want to call it) and then click 'add friends' on the next screen that comes up.
4) Begin typing in the names of your friends, and they will be listed. Select each one to add them.
5) Now, every time you come to facebook, click on the list you created. You'll find it on the left-hand side.

... if you add new friends, remember to add them to your custom list too.
]

The differences I saw were:

1. the default page marks some stories as "top stories" and puts them at the top of the list.
2. the default page makes you click extra links in order to expand some entries which are hidden to begin with.
3. the list page I created doesn't include posts from pages which I follow.
4. the default page doesn't continue as far back in time as the list page I created. (this was an intermittent problem I had before too, so it may be a fluke)

#1 seems the same as the previous default view that I would get after logging into FB. I always had to click the "Most Recent" link in order to view the posts in the correct chronological order. Why would people be upset over this change, unless they were in the habit of always clicking the "Most Recent" link, like I was?

Maybe there were other changes made that aren't apparent to me, due to the low number of people that I follow?

I don't see the "Ticker" thing that some pages mentioned. Maybe because no one I'm following is posting right now. Or maybe they changed it to off by default.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/425494.html

So there's 2 people I'm now following (is that the word?) on Facebook. I find Facebook very non-intuitive. It's one of the reasons I've tended to avoid it (besides privacy concerns). Is it just me?

A post I read yesterday is now above a bunch of other posts that were *not* yet there yesterday. Why is the post in that position now?

No dates and times listed, only "x" hours ago. (As bad as Youtube)

"Yesterday at 12:27am"... does that mean this morning, Feb 1, at 12:27am, or yesterday Jan 31, at 12:27am?

Why is the post for "Yesterday at 12:27am" above a post for "9 hours ago" ?
... wait a moment, the posts are *ALL* out of order. One from 9 hours ago, then one from 6 hours ago, then one from 7 hours ago... WTF???

Person X's comment on Person Y's photo, shows up on Person X's wall, and therefore on my News-Feed (is that the word)? Except you have to click the link to actually see the comment. And then it looks like the photo belongs to Person X instead of Person Y, since that page says "Person X's Wall". And yet if you try to view Person Y's Wall, you see nothing.

You go back 2 days, and then you get "There are no more posts to show right now". So if you don't read a post within 2 days, you're just out of luck?

Oh, and posts that make absolutely no sense, because the person is apparently commenting on something else that you don't see.