The New Internet is garbage.

[GoldRanger]

People used to understand the value of privacy. Hell, we used to shred envelopes and unwanted correspondence so people wouldn’t pick addresses and personal information out of our trash. Now, people display their bare asses to everyone on the internet, even people thousands of miles away. It’s insane. The imprudence of using social media to advertise everything about yourself boggles the mind.

And yet nothing particularly bad ever occured to me or anyone I know who used social media.

To be honest, you sound like an old man yelling at a cloud...

 

[Iconoclast]

And yet nothing particularly bad ever occured to me or anyone I know who used social media.

To be honest, you sound like an old man yelling at a cloud...

Having a public social media profile violates some of the most basic principles of OPSEC.

New Research Study Shows That Social Media Privacy Might Not Be Possible - CPO Magazine

New research study suggests that even deleting your accounts might not be enough to protect your social media privacy. Using machine learning algorithms, your “friends” activities can create some startlingly accurate profiles about you.

www.cpomagazine.com

The researchers hypothesized that it might be possible to see if interactions and communication with those 15 social networking accounts somehow “encoded” information about a user and his or her interests, likes and behaviors. In fact, say the researchers, this was the first-ever study that analyzed how much information about an individual is encoded in interactions with friends.

From a social media privacy perspective, the study turned up some very concerning results. It turns out that the science research team didn’t even need 15 accounts to figure out a person’s profile. All they needed was tweets from 8-9 accounts (i.e. the “friends” of the user), and they could start to create some startlingly accurate profiles. For example, machine learning algorithms could start to predict factors such as “political affiliation” or “leisure interests” simply by studying the tweets of someone’s friends. Often, they were able to do this with up to 95 percent accuracy.

Social Media Killed Our Offline Privacy Too

Social media has led to the loss of privacy in the offline world, as historical norms around privacy and respect have been replaced with a paparazzi-like expectation of privilege to film anyone anywhere for any reason and broadcast it to the world.

www.forbes.com

See an oddly dressed individual going about their business in their front yard? Photograph it and post to social media lampooning their fashion choices.

Witness someone breaking the rules about eating or drinking on the subway? Confront them and post a citizen’s mugshot for the whole world to see.

Upset that someone didn’t pick up after their dog? Chase them down the street live-streaming with your smartphone and stand in front of their home broadcasting their address to the world.

Privacy Risk with Social Media

Privacy Risk with Social Media

www.huffpost.com

Social media sites utilize mobile apps and the location based services to allow users to check in at their current locations. This normally reveals the user’s current location to all of the people they are connected with in their particular social media networks. The information posted can be easily used by malicious people to track your whereabouts. Moreover, telling the online community where you are, or where you are going to, can end up inviting burglars and thieves to your home or business. For instance, by posting your current location and saying that you are on a long vacation in Australia, you will be letting the potential burglars or/and thieves know exactly where you are, and how long you will be gone. To mitigate such risks, you should avoid posting your travel plans, and using the location based services.

People don’t understand the risks. Once the novelty wears off for them, a few people are slowly coming to the realization that Zuck and Co. know where they keep their underwear.

 

[Edgeplay_cgo]

Ah 56k Modems, Those were the days.

It's getting hard to remember a time when people actually talked to each other instead of the absolute silence of a room full of people staring at their phones.

56K? Young whippersnapper! I started out on a high speed 300 baud unit. There were 150 baud units in common use. With a 150, you didn't need a printer. You could copy the text as it scrolled across the screen.

 

[Deleted member]

56K? Young whippersnapper! I started out on a high speed 300 baud unit. There were 150 baud units in common use. With a 150, you didn't need a printer. You could copy the text as it scrolled across the screen.

You make me think I am soft for proudly remembering the days when I had 2.4k and most other people still had 1.2k.

 

[GoldRanger]

Having a public social media profile violates some of the most basic principles of OPSEC.

New Research Study Shows That Social Media Privacy Might Not Be Possible - CPO Magazine

New research study suggests that even deleting your accounts might not be enough to protect your social media privacy. Using machine learning algorithms, your “friends” activities can create some startlingly accurate profiles about you.

www.cpomagazine.com

Social Media Killed Our Offline Privacy Too

Social media has led to the loss of privacy in the offline world, as historical norms around privacy and respect have been replaced with a paparazzi-like expectation of privilege to film anyone anywhere for any reason and broadcast it to the world.

www.forbes.com

Privacy Risk with Social Media

Privacy Risk with Social Media

www.huffpost.com

People don’t understand the risks. Once the novelty wears off for them, a few people are slowly coming to the realization that Zuck and Co. know where they keep their underwear.

Again, aside from "privacy violations" (which is something the users of social media barely care about since they put all that info out there voluntarily in the hope that it will be looked at), what is the actual harm?

 

[Edgeplay_cgo]

You make me think I am soft for proudly remembering the days when I had 2.4k and most other people still had 1.2k.

Meh. I'm just a f(r)iend taking the piss. {Uploading beverage of your choice.}

 

[Tyzuris]

Ah 56k Modems, Those were the days.

It's getting hard to remember a time when people actually talked to each other instead of the absolute silence of a room full of people staring at their phones.

That era never existed in my country. We never talk to strangers. It invades their personal space and is just culturally rude. So now the difference here is people look at a small glass screen instead of out of the glass window.

 

[LMB The Mun]

Too many normies. Way, way too many normies.

Oh damn those other people for getting on the internet and actually making it viable to spread to virtually everywhere! DAAAMMMN THEEEMMMM!!!

I’ve been browsing since the days of Dialup, on fucking 56k. America Online, NetZero, Juno, and so on. I remember when people back then, people who’d been around since the 2400 baud era, thought that we were the invaders. Apparently, we ruined Usenet with our stupid, uninformed opinions.

Dude, I was around when 2400 baud was the major thing & BBses were pretty much all you had available (unless you were in certain areas & were in college,) - and yes, AOL is largely to blame for offering Usenet access but not actually trying to clue in their users as to how to act on Usenet. However, the majority of the blame for the downfall of Usenet has to go to the binaries groups. The text groups moved a tiny amount of data compared to those ... and ISPs got pretty tired of both the bandwidth and storage requirements of that crap Vs. the profit margin of offering Usenet access.

Now, I recognize the truth. Us late 90s dialup users were downright erudite scholars and nerds compared to the next wave of stupidity that would smother the internet with the rise of broadband and wireless and user-friendly web apps. Now, everyone and their grandmother walks into a Verizon Store and then walks out with hundreds of dollars of hardware, and they spend all day tapping their thumbs on their stupid phones over their data plan. Tapping stupid shit into Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube comments, and all these other monopolistic, centralized platforms.

No, the 90s had it's share of morons polluting the various mailing lists, Usenet, and the comment sections/guest books.

It’s the great garbage patch of the internet, and you have Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and Alphabet to thank for most of it. People think it’s so amazing. User-generated content. So wonderful. You’ve got millions of these tepid, crappy videos with no cameraman, with selfie-shakeycam and a single, unedited cut of some dumbshit walking through his house and mumbling about politics and random, irrelevant snippets of home life.

Look at my dog, look at my cat, look at my aunt and her big gut fat!

Versus a long and somewhat pointless seeming screed?

Nobody with an attention span longer than two nanoseconds gives one single fuck. Unfortunately, we are a dying breed.

People wonder why our political sphere lacks sanity, muttering dumpster fire this, worst timeline that. Well, how is it even possible? How is it even possible to have sane politics when people constantly and voluntarily bombard themselves with so much bullshit?

You *DO* realize that it's not only social media that's the issue, right? Television (and its descendants) push forth vapid trash by the gigabyte...but people eat it up. While social media can often be a cancer, it does have positive sides.

Discussion forums and imageboards are the last bastions of the old internet. Social media is a lost cause. I warned people over a decade ago. These fuckers invade your privacy - or rather, you turn around and willingly present your asses to them like a baboon - and they turn around and give you this wonderful experience of being constantly bombarded by other users’ useless trivia about their own lives.

That's the point to social media, you know...to be social.

Meanwhile, they’re profiling you. Figuring out what you like and what you dislike. Selling your information to advertisers and letting government agencies scrape all of it so that they can compile dossiers on everyone. I told people this shit over a decade ago, back when LiveJournal and MySpace were still a thing, and Tumblr and Twitter were still new. They acted like I was crazy, or paranoid, or something. They were addicted to the dopamine hit of the like, the retweet, the reblog. They couldn’t even vaguely comprehend what was happening to them.

So, own any smartphones or any other smart technology? Because all of that shit (including your PC) is harvesting your data. Virtually every site you go to (with few exceptions) harvests data. It's either that or you're going to have to pay a premium for using those sites - bandwidth, storage, electricity, and upkeep aren't free.

Social media is a Skinner Box. Press the lever, receive the cheese. You’re not an agent. You’re an object. And yet, people were lured into this shit, and they thought it was just fine and dandy to use your real name online instead of a pseudonym, when there are fucking crazies everywhere. Social media with your real name and real photos and descriptions of your daily events is an open fucking invitation to be stalked.

And yet, these dildos still do it, making excuses like, “It’s just like face-to-face social contact. What’s wrong with you? Are you anti-social? I need this.”

It's literally a "if you don't want to use it, then don't" kind of thing. Of course, as I said, you're being datamined *anyway.*

These platforms are jam-packed with sub-90-IQ extroverts presenting their herniated sphincters and their trifling, trivial little lives to the whole goddamn planet. It makes me want to puke.

The only hope for the internet is if we evict all these normies from it, and the only way that can be done is if the big social media monopolies suddenly find their business model impossible to sustain. We have to destroy Facebook, destroy Twitter, destroy Reddit, and destroy YouTube. All of them have to go. Now. We can do it if we push for more online privacy. Privacy is antithetical to the way targeted ads work. Go peer-to-peer, go encrypted, go blockchain, use adblockers and script-blockers and cookie-blockers judiciously. Force these giant, stupid platforms and their mouth-breathing users out of business.

The first part reads like some hippy BS. The second reads like a tech buzzword word stew written by someone who has no clue.

You're not getting rid of social media any time soon, if ever. All these "normies" you're ranting about are here to stay. In fact, they're what keeps the internet sustainable, because the idea of it going back to "the way it was" is laughable, at best.

That’s normal. Our society is full of endless distractions and our work is unchallenging. Nobody remembers anything from college because nobody needs to remember anything from college. About 98% of college students use calculus only once in their lives; when they’re in college. The other two percent are math majors.

No shit, really? <Gasp!> 99% of all the education you have to sit through turns out to be utterly useless? You don't say!

Seriously, this is a surprise to who? To put it bluntly, college is supposed to prepare you for the workforce, and you're only going to retain that which you need.

As for work being "challenging," I'd suggest moving on to a different job, if you find your current one too easy.

 

[Kobold]

I remember the 14K modem in my Macintosh SE, and the wonder of email and user group chats.

I can semi-agree with the OP, but I liken it to the film 'Idiocracy' as being prophetic, the "the consumer demands" and thus some industry will provide that demand, you stack that several times with "bad" or at least poorly thought out, and viola, society has been transformed into a collection of gibbering howler monkeys divided only by the blissful ignorant or the perpetually outraged , leaving experienced sane voices drowned out and ignored... or worse yet called a "Nazi".

Yes, this was typed on my mobile that I walked into a store and bought and uses a data plan.

 

[Brutus]

I want to apologize for my earlier post and correct a mistake.
9600 baud modem playing doom co-op, until my sister picked up the phone to call her friends.
That was annoying as hell back then.

Just to add to the argument that technology is affecting us more than we understand.

One thing that brought things to light for me was this article from Macquarie University in Australia by Professor Mark Williams

Smartphones are making us stupid – and may be a 'gateway drug'

Neuroscience research shows seriously negative effects of smartphone use – so why are we giving them to kids?

lighthouse.mq.edu.au

Just a news article from NBC website.

Neuroscientist Says All of the Time We Spend on Phones is Changing Our Brains

If you spend hours looking at your smartphone every day you could be changing — and even shaping — your brain, according to a neuroscientist.

www.nbcwashington.com

Compare social media companies to Las Vegas Casinos. They want you to come in and stay to play their shiny games all the time. Some people get addicted and some are able to leave without any problems. There are several billion people on this planet and there are all positives and negatives to our daily interactions with the internet.

 

[Deleted member]

I first started staying up until 4 AM to sneak onto the internet when my parents weren't up to stop me or make me stop using it because it was blocking the phone line. I ended up stuck with this habit more or less until after grad school.

 

[Iconoclast]

Hah, check this out. Zuck and Co. are such idiots, they just fucked their own Section 230 safe harbor provisions by declaring themselves a publisher:

Not a free speech platform: Facebook declares it’s a ‘publisher’ & can censor whomever it wants, walking into legal trap

Facebook has invoked its free speech right as a publisher, insisting its ability to smear users as extremists is protected, but its legal immunity thus far has rested on a law which protects platforms, not publishers. Which is it?

www.rt.com

Social media platforms should not be publishers. In fact, they should be public fucking utilities, like the phone service or mail. This notion that web communication constitutes “publishing” is wrong-headed. Is it publishing when you talk to someone on the phone or text someone over SMS? Because that’s what people use the internet to do. Communicate. The stuff you post on the internet may stay up for years and years, but that doesn’t mean that it has an infinite shelf life or is meant to be revisited over and over, like a paperback novel. There was a time when forums were called BBS, as in bulletin board system. That’s because, like an actual corkboard, they’re meant to be used for communication, not “publishing”.

 

[Deleted member]

I certainly can’t imagine what the logic is.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

I certainly can’t imagine what the logic is.

There isn't any logic, I'd wager, just plain and naked arrogance.

 

[Deleted member]

Zuckerberg is remarkable in his ability to make himself hated.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

Zuckerberg is remarkable in his ability to make himself hated.

Yes, he does. The guy manages to drive away those who should be his allies. And really, I'll never forget he stole a good idea from other people and made a mint on it.

And, further, remarkable in his ability to appear inhuman. Seriously, he comes off as some sort of cybernetic lizardman. He is quite offputing isn't he?

 

[Terthna]

Hah, check this out. Zuck and Co. are such idiots, they just fucked their own Section 230 safe harbor provisions by declaring themselves a publisher:

Not a free speech platform: Facebook declares it’s a ‘publisher’ & can censor whomever it wants, walking into legal trap

Facebook has invoked its free speech right as a publisher, insisting its ability to smear users as extremists is protected, but its legal immunity thus far has rested on a law which protects platforms, not publishers. Which is it?

www.rt.com

Social media platforms should not be publishers. In fact, they should be public fucking utilities, like the phone service or mail. This notion that web communication constitutes “publishing” is wrong-headed. Is it publishing when you talk to someone on the phone or text someone over SMS? Because that’s what people use the internet to do. Communicate. The stuff you post on the internet may stay up for years and years, but that doesn’t mean that it has an infinite shelf life or is meant to be revisited over and over, like a paperback novel. There was a time when forums were called BBS, as in bulletin board system. That’s because, like an actual corkboard, they’re meant to be used for communication, not “publishing”.

The major internet tech companies have all done that for years; insisting that they are both publisher and platform, and they've only gotten away with it because the government has until now refused to crack down on the loopholes they're exploiting. Don't get me wrong; I think platforms should receive certain protections against being held liable for what's posted on them by their users, but I also think they should lose those protections the moment they chose to start acting like a publisher. Unfortunately, that is not a stipulation in the law as of yet, but it should be.

Yes, he does. The guy manages to drive away those who should be his allies. And really, I'll never forget he stole a good idea from other people and made a mint on it.

And, further, remarkable in his ability to appear inhuman. Seriously, he comes off as some sort of cybernetic lizardman. He is quite offputing isn't he?

I don't like him because he keeps trying to suck up to the Chinese government. I wouldn't call him a traitor per say, but I don't believe he has any loyalty to the country of his birth.

 

[PsihoKekec]

And really, I'll never forget he stole a good idea from other people and made a mint on it.

Steve Jobs was practically beatified for that.

 

[Deleted member]

Speaking of The Zuck...

Snap Documented Facebook Anti-Competitive Measures under "Project Voldemort".

 

[Urabrask Revealed]

Speaking of The Zuck...

Snap Documented Facebook Anti-Competitive Measures under "Project Voldemort".

A Facebook spokeswoman has defended the company's practices, arguing that the decision to "build and iterate" on rivals' features helped competition and that the Onavo tech was similar to other market research tools.

Translation: "It's okay for us to steal their ideas and patents because we have always done so!"