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Facebook Vibe Shift

I

I can't boycott facebook any more than I already do. I never made a facebook account. I never made an account on any of the social networks that preceded facebook and MySpace. My classmates were on several social networks, some of them I can guarantee my American readers have never been on, and some of them I know you never heard of.

When facebook was new, it was already clear that their business model included harvesting phone numbers, email addresses, and pictures of people who weren't on facebook. Their privacy controls were shitty at first, and then later they were shitty on purpose. It wasn't a social network to keep in touch with your high school classmates, it was a social network where you had to make an account in order to date women you already met IRL, a social network you had to log into to keep in touch with your grandchildren, a social network where you inexplicably have to keep in touch with your ex co-workers.

More than once, I got a phone number from a woman, and we went of one date, but when she found out I wasn't on facebook she considered that a major red flag or a dealbreaker. What did I have to hide? (I was later told by a mutual friend that this was, as Americans would call it, sketchy)

Cory Doctorow predicted that "Your creepy ex co-workers will ruin facebook", and then he retracted that prediction when Google Plus beat diaspora* to the punch with good privacy controls, and facebook adopted a streamlined version of whatever Googple Plus had done. He was right all along.

But privacy controls were always a red herring. Even after facebook had made it possible to restrict your posts to close friends and family, even after we collectively agreed that you shouldn't fire a 24 year old guy from a job because somebody found pictures of his underage drinking at a party when he was 17, even then facebook the company still retained all your data, and uploaded all the phone numbers and email addresses in your phone.

When the existence of PRISM was revealed, I felt vindicated, but almost nobody closed their facebook account because of PRISM. They did so because boomers joined facebook and made it uncool, and the cool kids moved on to vine, snapchat, and instagram. That was over ten years ago now.

Facebook never got their proper comeuppance for their first and worst crime, tracking users who had never signed on to facebook and had never agreed to their TOS, or for fostering FOMO and taking whole friend groups, whole graduating classes hostage.

II

Facebook always had a rather byzantine set of rules, but at least they had one. The rules were secret, only known to the moderators, and the public at large was not informed of the exact text of the rules the moderators worked with, somewhere in a call centre in the Philippines.

After early backlash about the shitty privacy controls, "real names", and nudity, facebook decided to be more proactive about moderation, and they convened some kind of legislative body that developed a rather comprehensive set of moderation rules that allowed moderators in the Philippines (or wherever else) to moderate posts from every culture, as long as they could translate the language.

Internal facebook documentation for moderators had all kinds of weird edge cases with examples of things you could or couldn't say and when. Because they were supposed to be edge cases, these materials contained many sentences that sounded offensive, but were just barely allowed to be written on facebook.

On twitter, on the other hand, they were much more reactive, more knee-jerk, more likely to under-moderate and then over-correct, and even on reddit, they didn't try to make a set of rules that covers all the edge cases. I distinctly remember that the feminists who pushed for more censorship on twitter tweeted out that too many women were censored by twitter for sexism against men.

Not that there weren't many cases of sexism against men and internecine feminist drama on reddit and facebook, but by and large, most scandals on facebook and on reddit involved groups and moderators, not site-wide rules or official corporate moderation decisions. Since twitter didn't have groups or subreddits, only site-wide moderation, the blame and outrage usually hit twitter itself first.

Although facebook, twitter, and reddit all moved away from 2000s free speech absolutism, around the same time, facebook was different. Facebook had cuntry living and the Binders. Twitter had a trust and safety council, but facebook had detailed, secret rules about whether you can say "I hate asian people", or "black children are annoying" or "transgenders are mentally ill. Osiris told me that"

This is just more of the same.

III

This is what Zuckerberg had always wanted, but he makes it look like he's bending the knee to Trump to get something else he wants in return. He makes it look like he's giving in, probably to get Trump to wage some sort of economic war against EU data privacy regulation.

They are moving the censors to Texas. That's where the real Americans live. In all likelihood, they just want to fire all the moderators they hired, to save money.

It's interesting how the idea of "free speech" is brought up in this context. Americans often say they are the only country to have free speech, because they have the first amendment, and then in practice then have a culture of silence, and private entities can censor private communication, and the government can lean on them or else we will regulate you. I'd almost be sympathetic to Zuckerberg, but now Trump is leaning on him, or else, and Zuck just bends the knee and calls it free speech. There is no free speech on facebook, either way, first amendment or not.

IV

In the wake of reporting on zuckerberg moving away from DEI, fact checking, and hate speech rules, the opinions of commentators are more interesting than the news itself. Everybody has an opionion. Everybody had to weigh in. I find it interesting how eagerly some journalists and linkedin business influencer types have conceded that corporate DEI doesn't help minorities, that censorship of covid-related information was heavy-handed (but that was still under Trump!), that the fact-checkers got things wrong all the time, or at least often enough.

I don't actually know how much bias there was in facebook fact checking, whether they slapped warning labels on the Hunter Biden laptop story but not the piss dossier, whether they gave widespread misconceptions about Kyle Rittenhouse a pass but slapped a warning label on Stephen Jiminez's investigative reporting on Matthew Sheppard. I don't know how often facebook fact checkers would have to get it wrong, and in which direction, and how often and how egregiously. Maybe they are just sloppy, maybe it all cancels out, maybe it's only a tiny fraction that gets screenshotted and amplified.

Who cares about fact checking getting things right though? The medium is the message!

The vibes have shifted, and what could previously only be detected in newsrooms has finally reached HR departments. People who previously defended DEI now equivocate between workplace wellness, corporate DEI, therapyspeak, and HR personality test woo. People who previously talked about "post-truth" are now very defeatist about media and institutions, but they also concede that there was overreach in fact checking and moderation, and that the Biden administration tried to lean on tech companies to moderate free speech more, or else we'll regulate you.

It looks to me that some people have conceded, and in their view DEI is "over", no longer happening, the same way that Covid was no longer happening and suddenly some people felt confident discussing mask mandates and school closures based on actual numbers.

But at the same time, facebook itself is no longer happening. It's no longer cool. It's cringe. It's for boomers. All the cool kids left facebook for snapchat and vine long ago, and all the self-identified sensible adults left twitter for bluesky.

V

Personally, I can't get worked up about this for different reasons. Facebook had always been bad. Facebook harvested the address books of users to spy on non-users. Facebook had been a privacy nightmare long before Cambridge Analytica, long before the algorithmic feed, long before the Pivot To Video. Facebook had shitty privacy controls on purpose, and when they finally, after years and years, improved their privacy controls somewhat, they used their privacy controls to distract from their data collection and spying.

If this is what makes you leave facebook, what's wrong with you?

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the cognitive dissonance from people who want the products of modern medicine but get weird about animal research. like im sorry but this is necessary for the survival of the society we currently live in. and the scientists who work on these things are not evil cackling psychopaths. anyone you talk to in animal research has incredibly complex feelings about their work and incredibly complex relationships to the animals in their care. there are regulations and oversight and penalties in place to make the work as humane as possible and scientists are overwhelmingly the ones enforcing and advocating for better care.

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In case anyone missed how unambiguous Musk's nazi salute was.

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Variations On A Theme

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. And Adam fashioned an axe, and he cut down the Tree of Knowledge. And God asked “Adam, what have you done?” And Adam said “I refuse to be complicit in my own temptation.”

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. So Adam picked the fruit of the tree and planted it in the ground. A few years later, another Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grew from the place he had planted it, and Adam ate the fruit of that one.

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. But the serpent told him this was lies, and that if he ate from the Tree of Knowledge he would not die, but would become as God. “How do you know?” asked Adam. “Have you eaten the fruit?” “Yes,” said the serpent. “I have tasted of it, yet I did not die.” So Adam ate the serpent.

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. And Adam asked “The fruit of the Tree?” And God said “Yes, the fruit of the Tree”. So Adam picked the leaves of the Tree and made a delicious Good And Evil Salad.

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. Adam desired to taste of the fruit, and he decided that if he was going to get in trouble for breaking a commandment he might as well go all out. So he waited until the tree was heavy with fruits, then binged on all of them in one sitting. And the Lord definitely cast him out of Eden - but on the plus side, thousands of years later his descendants had excellent moral compasses and always knew the right thing to do in every situation.

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. And Adam obeyed the commandment, and instead he ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Cool and Uncool. Then he saw his own nakedness, and found it unfashionable, so he made a snazzy jacket out of leaves and bark. And the Lord saw the jacket, and said “Adam, have you eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Cool and Uncool?” And Adam said “You’re not my dad, you can’t tell me what to do.” And the Lord sent him forth from the garden, but Adam just said “Laaaaaaaaaame”.

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rsd is not a condition. rsd is not a diagnosis. rsd is not a medically recognized symptom of adhd and the experience “rsd” describes is not exclusive to adhd at all. this does not mean people with adhd can’t experience rejection sensitivity, but “rsd” as an “adhd” thing is a concept with no emprical backing developed by one man, with claims of it being brain-based without any evidence behind that claim, as well as many other claims surrounding the “nature” of rsd. adhd is a condition characterized by executive dysfunction, which can involve emotional dysregulation, but acknowledging that is different from the framework of “rsd” and seeing people on this site pass this around without critical thought and even claiming rsd is “adhd only >:(” makes me sick. you’re buying into what’s basically pop psychology instead of scientific research.

emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity is by no means adhd exclusive, and people with adhd experiencing those things doesn’t need to have its own special label or whatever when there’s no meaningful difference between someone with adhd experiencing those things and someone without adhd experiencing those things. that’s not logical and a ridiculous mentality of “rsd is adhd ONLY because our rejection sensitivity is SPECIAL” completely goes against building common ground with other neurodivergent people for petty and invalid reasons.

the amount of misinfo going around about adhd on this site is uncanny. please investigate claims others make about disability and do your research - actual research, which doesn’t include tumblr posts that lack citation and oft unreliable sources like ADDitude Mag and WebMD. it would be INFINITELY more productive to operate on a shared experience of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity among varying groups of neurodivergent people than to feed into this nonsensical idea of “adhd-only special super rejection sensitivity.”

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while i completely understand why sites like tvtropes have rules against pages dedicated to explicitly nsfw media, i do sort of wish there were spaces to analyze pornography and ecchi content in a literary manner. “all porn, no plot” stories are still stories which still have a history and meaning to them, and they are still worth examining in a critical manner, even if their sole purpose is to titillate.

essentially what i’m saying here is that things like niche fetish novellas are still art and should be treated as such, even if there’s a lower bar for quality and smaller target audience compared to traditional fiction.

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Becoming more and more convinced that people who fearmonger about pedophilia and child abuse are doing so entirely disingenuously and wouldn't lift a finger to help an actual victim.

Fun fact from a CSA and child abuse survivor: the shit that's actually needed to support ~minors~ experiencing abuse is usually the shit that gets people badjacketed and accused of pedophilia. My fucking lifeline growing up was having close friendships with queer adults who weren't related to me and didn't have instutional power over me. People who refused to respect my parents "authorirty". People who helped me figure out something was deeply wrong with the adults I was related to and recognize I was being taken advantage of and figure out how to protect myself. People I wouldn't have made it to fourteen without, let alone my eventual escape.

One of these people was accused of grooming me.

So maybe before you take speaking up about the systems that make it difficult for ~minors~ to exercise autonomy as evidence of pedophilia, you should sit down for a second and fucking think about what your response would be if there was a kid in your life who was being hurt at home, and if you would be too afraid of someone talking shit about you to actually help. And then maybe you should shut the fuck up.

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Growing Apart: Ideological Polarization between Teenage Boys and Girls

Drawing on a unique dataset of 130,000 Norwegian high school students (aged 15-18) interviewed in the period 1989-2023, I show that the gender gap in left-right ideology has surged over the past 10 years, reaching its highest recorded level (twice as high as among young adults). I argue that this development is driven in large part by a new wave of politically potent anti-feminism among boys. A growing percentage of boys believe that ‘gender equality has gone too far’, which is increasingly associated with right-wing identification. Employing a decomposition analysis, I estimate that the gender equality issue accounts for 40-50% of the increased polarization between boys and girls.

[...] Boys and girls in their teens might be experiencing an even more dramatic polarization than young adults—that could have lasting effects on their world-views. The explanations for why young men and women are pulling apart often revolve around social media creating separate online spheres for men and women; the rise of anti feminism among young men (Off, Charron, and Alexander 2022), in some cases fueled by misogynist influencers such as Andrew Tate [...] These forces are likely to make a stronger imprint on the minds of teenagers than on adults. First, because social media is their main battlefield, and teenagers continue to be some of the heaviest users of social media. And, perhaps most importantly, because teenagers are in their “formative” years—which is typically the time when people’s core values are developing, and they are more impressionable than later in life.

Norway is an interesting case in this regard because it is one of the world’s most gender-equal societies with a long-standing political consensus on progressive gender policies. One might therefore expect Norway to have an extra lawyer of protection against rising gender-based polarization compared to most other countries.

[...] My analysis shows that the ideological gender gap in Norwegian high schools has surged over the past decade, reaching its highest recorded level since the data series began.

[...] The suspicion that the recent gender-polarization is linked to the issue of gender equality is bolstered by the evidence presented in Figure 4.

[...] First, compared with the other issues, gender equality is the issue where boys and girls hold the most dissimilar opinions. Second, it is also the variable that has seen the largest gender gap increase among the ones examined here. The other variables either show modest gender gaps in the first place, little divergence over time, or both. These results suggest that the gender equality issue has the most potential to account for over-time changes in ideological polarization—if such views are related to ideology.

In combination with the fact that such views have become increasingly associated with right-wing voting, the gender equality issue accounts for 40-50 percent of the increased polarization

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Malcom said it best ✊🏾

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Will someone please write a big callout post about the racial politics of reaction gifs so I don’t have to see reaction gifs anymore?

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And I fully agree.

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i'm just so exhausted by the alienating and infantilizing of autistic people. it's to the point that when ppl find out i'm autistic i DREAD them telling me they have an autistic relative because they almost always immediately overshare about that relative's personal life to me for no reason whatsoever.

i'll say i'm autistic and someone i barely know will be like "omg! my cousin is autistic! he's nothing like you though. he doesn't talk and he has meltdowns all the time. if he gets really overwhelmed sometimes he bangs his head on walls."

like ok 1. consider i'm not always verbal and i also have meltdowns but that's neither here nor there.

imagine if i told you i have a cousin [allistic] and you said "omg! i have a cousin too! [allistic]" I bet you would either end there or tell me something fun about her like a hobby she has or where she goes to school. I bet you wouldn't tell me how she acts when she's completely overwhelmed and having a terrible day. I bet you wouldn't tell me, within 5 minutes of meeting me, that when your allistic cousin failed a big exam she cried until she threw up and got a migraine.

because that would be weird for me and invasive for your cousin. so you wouldn't say that, if she's not autistic. you respect her privacy, because she's not autistic.

i swear a lot of y'all talk about your autistic siblings/kids/nieces/etc. like they're family pets

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i feel like this is important enough to put on here.

if you have any videos on youtube make sure this is unchecked