#meta’s algorithms do what they do

[1mnobodywhoareyou]

Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!

The band had just finished playing Edge of Great to close out their concert. They’d decided to keep Luke’s impromptu duet moment for live performances and had also now played it enough times that it’s not quite as charged for them as it once was. Julie and Luke are still staring at one another when the band is met with an unexpected response.

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” the crowd starts chanting.

Reggie hugs his bass, settling back with a self-satisfied smirk as if he can’t wait to see this go down. Alex looks with amusement and a smidge of concern between the audience and the couple and back again. Julie and Luke haven’t formally announced their relationship but they haven’t been working all that hard to hide or deny it either.

Julie raises an eyebrow at Luke and he grins at her with a mischievous glint in his eyes and startles everybody by suddenly standing. He makes his way over to the corner of the drum riser just behind Julie and Reggie barely has time to move his bass out of the way before Luke dips him deeply and plants what appears to be a very sloppy, overzealous kiss on him. The audience gasps in seeming unison and is otherwise silent. Alex can’t help the guffaw that leaves his throat, harshly breaking the silence that had settled over the room and Julie breaks down giggling as Luke returns Reggie upright before bounding off the stage with a wave. Reggie stands stunned for a moment and Julie grabs him to pull him offstage with her.

Where Luke has been met with a very “trying to be stern while also choking down laughter” manager of theirs, Flynn.

“Do you have any idea how much work it’s going to be to clean this up, Luke?” they asked him while he grins.

“Yeah, but it was funny.”

“Hilarious,” she deadpans with a roll of their eyes and a slight upturn to their lips. 

The crowd had apparently recovered and were now calling for their expected encore. Flynn rolls her eyes, still not understanding why this is a thing that continues to happen at concerts but Luke is nothing if not a musician of his time and he insists on maintaining the tradition. He all but shoves Julie back onto the stage, reeling her back quickly to peck her on the lips before sending her out again as if nothing out of the ordinary had even happened.

[anaquariusfox]

I spent the evening looking into this AI shit and made a wee informative post of the information I found and thought all artists would be interested and maybe help yall?

edit: forgot to mention Glaze and Nightshade to alter/disrupt AI from taking your work into their machines. You can use these and post and it will apparently mess up the AI and it wont take your content into it's machine!

edit: ArtStation is not AI free! So make sure to read that when signing up if you do! (this post is also on twt)

[Image descriptions: A series of infographics titled: “Opt Out AI: [Social Media] and what I found.” The title image shows a drawing of a person holding up a stack of papers where the first says, ‘Terms of Service’ and the rest have logos for various social media sites and are falling onto the floor. Long transcriptions follow.

Instagram/Meta (I have to assume Facebook).

Hard for all users to locate the “opt out” options. The option has been known to move locations.

You have to click the opt out link to submit a request to opt out of the AI scraping. *You have to submit screenshots of your work/face/content you posted to the app, is curretnly being used in AI. If you do not have this, they will deny you.

Users are saying after being rejected, are being “meta blocked”

People’s requests are being accepted but they still have doubts that their content won’t be taken anyways.

Twitter/X

As of August 2023, Twitter’s ToS update:

“Twitter has the right to use any content that users post on its platform to train its AI models, and that users grant Twitter a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to do so.”

There isn’t much to say. They’re doing the same thing Instagram is doing (to my understanding) and we can’t even opt out.

Tumblr

They also take your data and content and sell it to AI models.

But you’re in luck!

It is very simply to opt out (Wow. Thank Gods)

Opt out on Desktop: click on your blog > blog settings > scroll til you see visibility options and it’ll be the last option to toggle

Out out of Mobile: click your blog > scroll then click visibility > toggle opt out option

TikTok

I took time skim their ToS and under “How We Use Your Information” and towards the end of the long list: “To train and improve our technology, such as our machine learning models and algorithms.”

Regarding data collected; they will only not sell your data when “where restricted by applicable law”. That is not many countries. You can refuse/disable some cookies by going into settings > ads > turn off targeted ads.

I couldn’t find much in AI besides “our machine learning models” which I think is the same thing.

What to do?

In this age of the internet, it’s scary! But you have options and can pick which are best for you!

Accepting these platforms collection of not only your artwork, but your face! And not only your faces but the faces of those in your photos. Your friends and family. Some of those family members are children! Some of those faces are minors! I shudder to think what darker purposes those faces could be used for.

Opt out where you can! Be mindful and know the content you are posting is at risk of being loaded to AI if unable to opt out.

Fully delete (not archive) your content/accounts with these platforms. I know it takes up to 90 days for instagram to “delete” your information. And even keep it for “legal” purposes like legal prevention.

Use lesser known social media platforms! Some examples are; Signal, Mastodon, Diaspora, et. As well as art platforms: Artfol, Cara, ArtStation, etc.

The last drawing shows the same person as the title saying, ‘I am, by no means, a ToS autistic! So feel free to share any relatable information to these topics via reply or qrt!

I just wanted to share the information I found while searching for my own answers cause I’m sure people have the same questions as me.’ \End description] (thank you @a-captions-blog!)

[vyva-melinkolya]

we all agree that the push towards short form, vertical video (tiktok/reels/shorts) is ruining fucking everything right? Tiktok has been useful for the dissemination of political information (e.g Gaza) i’ll give it that, but that feels moreso a result of meta and twitters algorithms being just a little *more*’evil and censor happy. And i want to make it very clear that my hatred for tiktok has nothing to do with the fact that it was a product of a Chinese company, because i see a lot of critiques relying on some sort of sinophobic conspiracy. On the contrary, it’s what tiktok has become in the vacuum of western popular culture and marketing that makes me fearful.

I know that every generation faces a new, polarizing technology and inevitably, there are those among said generation who will critique it. That is the nature of things. However, there is also something to be said about how, with the acceleration of technology (running parallel to the acceleration of capitalism, acceleration towards collapse etc), each coming generation faces an increasingly more malevolent “advancement”. TLDR, i’m going to talk my shit.

I’m going to speak on the aspect that is most relavent to me, as a musician. I am petrified by what short form video is doing to music and to musicians. I think that tiktok provides the illusion of making music and being a musician more “accessible” while actually pouring gasoline on the fire that the pop music machine had already started. Standards for what popular culture “expects” from music are being doubled and tripled. Let’s talk about song length. Success and marketability favoring shorter songs is not something new, it has been the trend for decades. But with short form video, it goes even further. You’re not just hearing the same song over and over on the radio, you’re hearing the same 15-30 seconds of the same song over and over again. This in-turn, starts to influence the way people write music, persuading people to make songs that *could* have that 15 second appeal. There is an art to pop music, there is an art to writing a catchy hook—this is something else. We weren’t meant to hear or understand music like that. There are so many songs from reels that i found annoying, until i heard them in their full context. It’s insidious. It makes everything feel like a fucking commercial, even if nothing is being advertised.

I’m going to pull directly from someone else’s experiences, someone who’s music seems to be everywhere on short form videos. The ambient musician My Head Is Empty has a hundred million streams on the song “i was only temporary”. Despite that exposure, they experience “never ending copywrite issues” and have “received death threats” by people who refuse to credit them when using their song. Pulling a quote here, from a comment on their own post

“vyva_melinkolya unfortunately it just gets worse. i saw a bot content page that steals pod cast footage and spams dozens of videos with my song stolen, comment on a "motivation" spam content , who actually made a post telling people the name of my song, and the previous page i mentioned, the pod cast spam commented on that video saying "Bro stop don't give out the sauce. this audio helps me pull numbers brooo" - so people are actively INTENTIONALLY stealing it and telling people to not credit me. like. u can't make this stuff up”

Beyond this, My Head Is Empty feels frustrated that despite all this exposure, the rest of their work (nine albums) as a musician remains under appreciated, and i think that frustration is 100% valid. People cannot fully appreciate music, or even understand it as a work of art created by another human, when it’s taken so far out of its context. Again, the soul being sucked out of art by “the machine” isn’t anything new but, this is a whole other level. Being a musician is more expensive than ever, streaming earns you fractions of a cent etc, it all feeds into itself.

When a song or a musician i love deeply finds its way on to tiktok (let’s use Duster’s “Stars Will Fall”, one of my favorite songs ever as an example)I am not upset that i cant “gatekeep” it anymore. I’m not upset by the idea of something I love and hold dearly finding a larger audience. I AM upset in the manner in which it is being disseminated. I’m upset with art I hold dear to me being chopped up and used as “trending audio”. When I saw Duster in concert recently, lStars Will Fall” was the song I was most looking forward to hearing. It was the last song they played, and it was the song seemly everyone chose to talk loudly over. The audience was mostly people my age and younger. This complaint might come off as petty or pretentious or cliche, i frankly do not give a shit.

Let’s talk about how musicians are expected to promote music on tiktok/reels. This is a matter of opinion, at the risk of sounding very pretentious: the “POV we are x band from x” “My label says i need x followers before x” “posting this video until c musician notices me”. I understand that some of it is in jest but, what the fuck? When did this become the norm? I do not blame anyone for promoting their music like this, but we should want more for ourselves. I’ve always said being a musician is deeply embarassing, inherently. If being a musician is inherently embarassing then what is this? I dont have a solution for this, and the music industry has always been ugly and bloodthirsty and seldom fruitful— but i feel like the very small amount of dignity we had as artists is now lost and I cant fucking stand it. Artists seem to promote the same single with dozens of reels over the course of months, hoping that something sticks. I dont want to sound like i’m shaming or, again, sound like i can provide a solution. I’m just very fucking sorry that it seems like this is “the way”. And personally, i’m scared that if i dont “get with the program”, im going to fail.

Again, all of this speaks to larger trends in entertainment industry and even larger trends in capitalism. But i’m just airing specifics right now because frankly? I cant take it anymore.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Tumblr is so intuitive to me that I'm fascinated by people who use algorithms. I was explaining to a Grindr date why I only use Tumblr and I explained that you can opt out of the algorithm and he was like "then what do you look at?" And that question was so crazy to me. What do you mean what do I look at? I look at the people I follow in reverse chronological order. I'm pretty sure that was the default before meta properties and Twitter got algorithms.

[rubyvroom]

Ed Zitron lays it all out here.

You are the victim of a con — one so pernicious that you’ve likely tuned it out despite the fact it’s part of almost every part of your life. It hurts everybody you know in different ways, and it hurts people more based on their socioeconomic status. It pokes and prods and twists millions of little parts of your life, and it’s everywhere, so you have to ignore it, because complaining about it feels futile, like complaining about the weather.  It isn’t. You’re battered by the Rot Economy, and a tech industry that has become so obsessed with growth that you, the paying customer, are a nuisance to be mitigated far more than a participant in an exchange of value. A death cult has taken over the markets, using software as a mechanism to extract value at scale in the pursuit of growth at the cost of user happiness.  These people want everything from you — to control every moment you spend working with them so that you may provide them with more ways to make money, even if doing so doesn’t involve you getting anything else in return. Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and a majority of tech platforms are at war with the user, and, in the absence of any kind of consistent standards or effective regulations, the entire tech ecosystem has followed suit. A kind of Coalition of the Willing of the worst players in hyper-growth tech capitalism.  Things are being made linearly worse in the pursuit of growth in every aspect of our digital lives, and it’s because everything must grow, at all costs, at all times, unrelentingly, even if it makes the technology we use every day consistently harmful.

What this writer terms the Rot Economy is a larger system that creates the enshittification we know and loathe. It's the constant irrational pursuit of growth. Rot Economy is a great term for a definition that has been slowly coming into focus from one horizon to the other. Not just tech. This essay focuses on Spotify and Meta and speaker software and websites but you could easily extrapolate from here to absolutely everything.

I’m not writing this to complain, but because I believe [sic] that we are in the midst of the largest-scale ecological disaster of our time, because almost every single interaction with technology, which is required to live in modern society, has become actively adversarial to the user. These issues hit everything we do, all the time, a constant onslaught of interference, and I believe it’s so much bigger than just social media and algorithms — though they’re a big part of it, of course.  In plain terms, everybody is being fucked with constantly in tiny little ways by most apps and services, and I believe that billions of people being fucked with at once in all of these ways has profound psychological and social consequences that we’re not meaningfully discussing. 

Not to mention being actively fucked with in every way, in every aspect of our lives, by every company trying to suck the last drops of profit from us every minute of the day. How does that constant frustration contribute to the ways we treat each other as family, friends, neighbors, in politics, in everyday interactions?

Anyway, go and read.

[bobacupcake]

anyways heres my twitter exodus social media rankings as someone whos income is tied directly to my following so i am stuck in this hell loop until i get paid enough to hire a socialmedia manager for our game studio

tumblr - i mean come on guys. ive been here for 11 years. i met th love of my life and became her friend via tumblr ask memes here. whats more to say. theres obviously things i would change but out of all of them this one is the one i feel most comfortable using. you guys always have my back 7/10

twitter - awful. awful. awful. i hate you. you took everything from me. we used to have cotweets. i was going to collab with my friends and post them as a cotweet. you bastard. 0/10

cohost - favorite out of all the new sites. in terms of functionality i dont have too much reason to use it because its ux is super similar to tumblr but the community and vibes are great. its run by actually cool people. you can put css in posts. i have seen so many cool posts. 10/10

bluesky - honestly not too bad from the usability angle. big thing keeping it down is its another VC funded thing so it will eventually become awful but for now its decent. its basically twitter but before it got bought out by musk and also you can pick the algorithm your feed runs on kind of like tumblr (so like you can make your default a completely linear timeline of only the people you follow. or a completely linear timeline of only your mutuals). if any of them become the proper "twitter successor" i want to believe it will be this one . not that i Hope its this one but i feel like if it isnt this one its going to be threads and i dont want it to be threads. 5/10

hive - it was mobile only and i needed to update my phone to use it so i never did. i dont know if people still use this one i dont think they do ?/10

mastodon - idk why i cant get into mastodon i have tried so many times i am just not feeling it. 4/10 for me but 8/10 objectively

threads - bad. bad. meta product. privacy violations so bad its banned in the eu. algorithm driven feed with 50 million celebrities i dont know and dont care about. mobile only. pleae dont let this be the one. please i dont want to use threads. i dont want to have to use threads. please. please. please you guys

[cerastes]

OKAY, Reclamation Algorithm 2.

The first RA was a more arcade experience with meta progression: You had runs lasting only a few days, and you'd have to defend against a final boss horde in a much smaller overall map. Likewise, your resource acquisition was also much more explosive, such as getting a couple of Clash of Clans and other such resource-rich maps almost every run. You could only carry a few items other than what you had built on your base between runs, meaning that blowing up everything and saving a couple of things between runs was the way to go.

I think RA2 is easier overall than RA1 simply because it's a continuous, full-on mode that doesn't have an arcade, short-run based format. It goes on for as long as you play. Resource acquisition is slower because of its longer form nature, but it also does not at all pressure you with Linebreaker day 14 for example. Plus, the Energy System this time is much easier to manage, since you need Two Pops or Three Pops of Energy Drink to field an entire squad of 6 and under or 7 and above, respectively, whereas RA1 needed you to feed individual units from a Fountain of Energy Drink. That's not to say everything is easier; the Priestess and the Troubadour are much more challenging than anything RA1 threw at you -- Linebreaker, Ruinbringer, and Al-Rafiq --, and while the new horde bosses are fun, they are on about the same difficulty as those three, who are more or less tests of RA mechanics and if you are using them or not more than anything.

Make no mistake, this is ENDGAME endgame, especially in regards to Priestess and Troubadour, since you have to beat them in one Day -- two attempts at the map in which your progress is saved between attempts, BUT in which you can only use each unit once, so if you want to use 12 units per attempt, that'd be 24 units you think are up to par -- and they bring mean gimmicks that can be curbed somewhat by the season in which you fight them, but not entirely, and are still quite formidable even with the counter season. They were some of my favorite parts of the mode, personally, because not only is it a big, harsh challenge, it also reinforces the World Of Adventure nature of Terra: Even though they are unaligned with any of the big factions, you still have REALLY strong individuals roaming the land.

I think the main difficulty for a lot of people will come from choice overload: Arknights is already a game with a lot of player expression and a focus on gameplay, both aspects not at all the norm with gacha games and thus not what a lot of gacha gamers are used to, and while main content is kept very accessible to all skill levels, they do provide truly endgame challenges that can be quite demanding in terms of skill, for players that do dabble in the depth of player expression and team building that Arknights offers, such as High Multiplier (Waves/Natures) Integrated Strategies and 26+ Risk Contingency Contract.

This preamble is to say, Reclamation Algorithm has even more player expression and thus potential options for you to use. You have so, so many more tools other than just your Operators that a lot of people just don’t know what to do with them, hence why I think so many people find it so much harder than it truly is. Food for a myriad of different stat boosts and perks, structures to mold maps and enemy routing at your will, the ability to create your own ranged tiles or throw 5-block fridges at your enemies, purposefully overpowered tools like stun mines and supply stations at your beck and call, you can do so much in RA, and for some people, maybe it’s too much. Like an open world game does for some people, the sheer vastness of your options in RA2 might just blind and overwhelm some, especially since the average gacha player is very casual (and that’s not in the slightest an insult), and the average AK player watches clear guides without really understanding why the strat in the guide worked. Thus, in a mode in which player expression is king, the player that barely interacts with the baseline mechanics of the game, let alone those exclusive to RA, is not even part of the kingdom. For me personally, RA1 clicked the moment I realized just how nightmarishly strong the player is if they use food and structures, and after that, it was a non-stop streak of wins (unbroken in RA2 since RA1, too).

My advice to anyone trying to seriously get into RA2 is to just experiment as much as you can with anything that even remotely calls to you: Is there a unit you like a lot, like say, Bibeak? Well what if you give her insane attack, bulk and infinite SP to spam her skills? Food that buffs ATK, 2 shield generators and 2 supply stations on Bibeak makes this a reality. You wish Yato Kirin had no DP cost whatsoever? There’s food that makes her DP cost 0 no matter how many times you deploy her. You wonder what it’d be like for Eunectes to have 3 Block? Food does that. You think a particular map would be much more manageable if you could just have a Corrupting Heart-buffed 5-Block Mudrock in a particular chokepoint with no ranged tiles? You make your own ranged tile and then give Food to Mudrock to get her to 5 Block, or maybe 3 Block is enough, and you’d rather she has 75% extra Def and 35 more Res instead to make her truly unkillable, well, food does that too.

You just need to dabble into the possibilities a bit before it becomes crystal clear just how insane you can get.

[whokilledjared]

the sluttiest thing a man can do is be himself. (& takes on social media)

Hi.

I'm lonely.

The moment I got "two weeks off school" in sophomore year, life went to 4x speed & I can't turn it off no matter how hard I try.

Maybe COVID-19 adolescence did numbers on me. Somewhere between the iPhone 5c and ChatGPT, 14-hour screen times have live-streamed to me a steady, homogenous death of culture.

Nothing is cool anymore. Nothing is sacred. Every movement is a trend, and every cult classic a sequel.

The value we place on things being beautiful, on being "cool," and our gatekept appreciation of how hard these things were to find: it's been co-opted, or perhaps stolen. It's been stolen by the new merchant class. "Disruptors" and "innovators" turning our lives into a burgeoning black mirror prequel. Soon, we'll graduate too, and we'll wring every morsel of value in each others' lives dry for cash.

Plain and simple, I think we're being manipulated.

Your dates are an algorithm. Your music is a social signal. And Zuck knows when you sleep.*

God. What the fuck are we doing???

“Individuation is becoming the thing which is not the ego, and that is very strange.” — Carl Jung

Recently, I deleted Instagram. My first impulse was to post a story or something, announcing my departure. But then, I thought that would be lame.

I got rid of my account, too. Kinda. Over 1 year, over 800 followers removed, and what remains of me is a little grey icon, and "JM_0000000010" where my name and face used to be.

yay.

There were many people I wish I could have been friends with, but I wonder, too, why I find myself so drawn to the validation of others. Does social media affect me worse, or do we all just choose to ignore it, languishing in private?

At any rate, this last year has almost felt like re-learning how to be a human being.

Personally, I think one of the biggest markers for maturity is when you become willing to disappoint the people you know in favor of what feels right to you, when you start to unravel the stories you’ve told yourself (or been told) about who you are and what you should be. In short, the sluttiest thing a man can do is be himself.

And sometimes, I think about every college student that has ever lived. My grandmother, my dad, and so on. Just consider for a moment all kids who graduated before 2010:

What was it like for the ones in 1940? To walk around, before a campus had computers? In 2006: To meet someone pretty, but forget their number? In 1999: To cram into dorms, and watch Seinfeld live on-air?

Would I, like my dad in 1988, have braved cold night, brisk wind, & landline phone-call just to knock and see if my friends were too busy to hang?

What stories could I tell if there was even the slightest chance of getting lost on the way home from a party?

Humans are social creatures. We crave our friends like water. To me, the clearest difference between Dasani and Instagram is that one of them comes in a bottle.

Yet despite these distractions and comforts we have in 2024, somehow, we still have engineering students. People who carve out time in their day to sit down, look at paper, and solve differential equations. But then, that's not so hard, is it? It just takes time. Precious, fucking, time.

At Meta, leagues and leagues of these engineers power behavioral scientists, who are competing for the highest salary. Their benchmarks? Your FOMO. Guilt. Anxiety. Obsession. The worse you feel, the more you engage with their content. The more you engage with their content, well, you're starting to get the point.

Try something for me: Open up Instagram, but don't tap anything. What happens? How many little animations? How many tiny nudges prompting you to get lost? Our home-pages are billion-dollar diving boards, hoisting us over engineered catacombs of subconscious quicksand.

My homepage is my FOMO, my envy, and my crushes. The pain and struggle of trying to be someone who I am not. My little existential crises, bundled-up, packaged, and shipped with a like button.

To abandon your social networks entirely, however, requires a safety net of close friends. After all, your friends are online, and you'd be miserable without them.

This is the problem with our monkey brains. Millennia of sociological natural-selection have made us quite great at feeling terrible. We're damn good at making tribal status games to play with, too.

Seeking refuge in quirked up septum piercings and boygenius listeners, my time in counter-cultural, alternative "scenes" between St. Louis and Tampa has shown me that even the weirdest of folks and the most removed can accidentally find themselves reduced to nothing more than high-school popularity contests. Even if I love them. Even if they're amazing people. We're human.

We can't "quit social media" as much as we can't "quit bottled water" Sure, we can, but it's inconvenient. And even without a bottle, we're still drinking water.

So I lost touch with my friends. I got no new updates on their lives. I forced myself into the inconvenience of not having a phone to reach for in fleeting moments of boredom. Suddenly, I was out of the loop. Suddenly, I was bored. And suddenly, nobody missed me. My only friends were the ones I had the time to text. Everyone else ... does not exist.

Weekends have become more valuable than ever. Without the empty social calories of seeing my friends' pictures, I find myself planning hangouts as often as my schedule allows. I have more lunches, more study sessions, and more is done in the company of less.

And I have the time to breathe.

And in this calm, I think I found my answer: it's my misplaced ambition. These fears of anxiety and people I thought I would miss, they seem represent something I want to see more of within myself. Something I want to develop, lean into more deeply, as an individual. And I think that's quite normal; to look out into the world and feel attracted to things we want to see more of. This is, I think, how everyone develops their own definition of beauty — and of coolness. It's largely the intersection of what we find most interesting, and what we want to see more of in the world. Because beauty and coolness, by definition, are rare and hard to find. If they were everywhere, nothing be beautiful, nor would anything be cool.

When we all turn into wrinkles and cataracts, bad backs and heart attacks, for a brief, glorious moment, our lives are going to flash before our eyes. In this moment, you'll see your story. The ultimate progression of you.

How much of that will be skibidi toilet and reaction clips? How much of that will be arguing on the internet? Can you tell me, just how much of your life will you have skipped over to pacify your intentionally-lowered attention span?

That girl whose number you couldn't find Those passing questions over coffee that you couldn't search on Google The boredom of a subway ride

Those are not inconveniences, they're what the older generations refer to as "life."

* (oh, but if you can't sleep, consider this aside: Google knows the angle you walk at, how fast you're walking, and they've got crowdsourced pictures of everywhere around you at all times of the day. fun bedtime thoughts <3)

[iluvajdotcom]

jokes aside, the TikTok ban really speaks to the continued fascist regime that’s taking place right in front of our eyes. if we don’t listen & understand history, we are doomed to repeat it. policing & controlling the media is exactly what right-wing extremists want, so that they can control whatever propaganda we consume. (depending on your algorithm) TikTok was a place where information was able to thrive. without that resource, it’s clear all the corrupt, bought-out, greedy, old farts in the government, are highly aware of this & wanted it gone so they could maintain their power. evident by political figures investing & trading stocks on Meta, corporations & the top 1% of the country (including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos) colluding w/ Trump in his campaign to dictatorship. (all being consumed by power & greed, whilst at the cost of future gen.’s) i urge everyone to continue to be outspoken, educated, & aware of the political state of our world. i wanna remind u that no, this is not normal (even though we keep living through unprecedented times in limbo). it’s intentional timing that leading up to this inauguration that it’s in Trump’s hands to become a “savior” for TikTok to fall into (uneducated & bigoted) ppl’s good graces. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.

[clownwoman]

look it’s fuck Meta and fuck AI forever but let me tell y’all something okay..when y’all cheat on your partners and you think you’re so slick with your little back up accounts and your little all black icon so nobody knows who you are, guess who’s going to tell on you? you’re on the government’s internet, baby! whatever you hide is going to be found lmao doesn’t matter if you’re hiding behind a different email, a different name, because the algorithm is pointing back at you in neon lights. You’re hiding in plain sight, dummy. your bullshit ass secret account is being recommend to the people you’re hiding from, it doesn’t matter what you do hoe! there’s nowhere to hide! but y’all think you’re soooo slick, fucking secret agent type shit meanwhile these apps are ratting you out and I’m sure y’all smooth brained gooner ass motherfuckers are breaking your little goldfish brains trying to figure it out but baby, your digital foot print is forever and once you got yourself a joe goldberg type of bitch..you can run but you can’t hide lol sucks to be you pookie!

[mari-reads]

if youre bugging out that RedNote is a propaganda app because its wholesome when Zuckerberg is going on Joe Rogaine to announce that meta won’t be doing anymore “woke” fact checking, Musk did what he did to twitter, and every American algorithm is an right wing fascist pipeline…. you’re priorities are so fucked

Mind you every politician that voted for the TikTok ban has insane stock investments in Meta… but yeah do you on the dangers of “ccp propaganda”

[suikasweetheart]

Hind's Hall

Woah! Yeah, the people, they won't leave What is threatenin’ about divesting and wanting peace? The problem isn't the protests, it’s what they're protesting It goes against what our country is funding (Hey) Block the barricade until Palestine is free (Hey) Block the barricade until Palestine is free When I was seven, I learned a lesson from Cube and Eazy-E What was it again? Oh yeah, f**k the police (Woo)

Actors in badges protecting property And a system that was designed by white supremacy (Brrt) But the people are in the streets You can pay off Meta, you can't pay off me Politicians who serve by any means AIPAC, CUFI, and all the companies You see, we sell fear around the land of the free But this generation here is about to cut the strings You can ban TikTok, take us out the algorithm But it's too late, we've seen the truth, we bear witness Seen the rubble, the buildings, the mothers and the children And all the men that you murdered and then we see how you spin it Who gets the right to defend and who gets the right of resistance Has always been about dollars and the color of your pigment, but White supremacy is finally on blast Screaming "Free Palestine" ’til they’re home at last (Woo)

We see the lies in them, claiming it’s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist I've seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and riding in Solidarity and screaming "Free Palestine" with them Organizin’, unlearning and finally cutting ties with A state that's gotta rely on an apartheid system to uphold an occupying violent History been repeating for the last seventy-five The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied (Woo) If students in tents posted on the lawn Occupying the quad is really against the law And a reason to call in the police and their squad Where does genocide land in your definition, huh? (Hey; hey) Destroying every college in Gaza and every mosque Pushing everyone into Rafah and dropping bombs The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all And f**k no, I'm not voting for you in the fall (Woo) Undecided, you can't twist the truth, the people out here united Never be defeated when freedom's on the horizon Yet the music industry's quiet, complicit in their platform of silence (Hey, woo)

What happened to the artist? What do you got to say? If I was on a label, you could drop me today I'd be fine with it 'cause the heart fed my page I want a ceasefire, f**k a response from Drake (Woo) What you willing to risk? What you willing to give? What if you were in Gaza? What if those were your kids? If the West was pretending that you didn't exist You'd want the world to stand up and the students finally did, let's get it (Woo)

[probablyasocialecologist]

When you look at Instagram or Facebook, I want you to try and think of them less as social networks, and more as a form of anthropological experiment. Every single thing you see on either platform is built or selected to make you spend more time on the app and see more things that Meta wants you to see, be they ads, sponsored content, or suggested groups that you can interact with, thus increasing the amount of your “time spent” on the app, and increasing the amount of “meaningful interactions” you have with content. I also want you to realize that anything bad that you see on the platform is a symptom of Mark Zuckerberg’s unwillingness to rate-limit or sufficiently moderate the platform. Logically-speaking, one would think that Meta would want you to have a high-quality Facebook experience, pruning content that might be incendiary, spammy, scammy or unhelpful, or at the very least, comes primarily from those within your own network, but when your only concern is growth, content moderation is more of an emergency measure.  And to be clear, this is part of Meta’s cultural DNA. In an interview with journalist Jeff Horwitz in his book Broken Code, Facebook’s former VP of Ads and Partnerships Brian Bolland said that “building things is way more fun than making things secure and safe…[and] until there’s a regulatory or press fire, you don’t deal with it.”  Horwitz also cites that Meta engineers’ greatest frustration was that the company “perpetually [needed] something to fail — often fucking spectacularly — to drive interest in fixing it.” Horwitz’s book describes Meta’s approach to moderation as “having a light touch,” considering it “a moral virtue” and that the company “wasn’t failing to supervise what users did — it was neutral.” As I’ve briefly explained, the logic here is that the more stuff there is on Facebook or Instagram, the more likely you are to run into something you’ll interact with, even if said interaction is genuinely bad. Horwitz notes that in April 2016, Meta analyzed Facebook’s most successful political groups, finding that a third of them “routinely featured content that was racist and conspiracy-minded,” with their growth heavily-driven by Facebook’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” features, algorithmic tools that Facebook used to recommend content. The researcher in question added that “sixty-four percent of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.” When the researcher took their concerns to Facebook’s “Protect and Care” team, they were told that there was nothing the team could do as “the accounts creating the content were real people, and Facebook intentionally had no rules mandating truth, balance or good faith.” Meta, at its core, is a rot economy empire, entirely engineered to grow metrics and revenue at the expense of anything else. In practice, this means allowing almost any activity that might “grow” the platform, even if it means groups that balloon by tens or hundreds of thousands of people a day, or allowing people to friend 50 or more people in a single day. It means allowing almost any content other than that which it’s legally required to police like mutilation and child pornography, even if the content it allows in makes the platform significantly worse.  As a result, Meta is kind of like an absentee parent, occasionally looking up from their phone and muttering “don’t do that” when something obviously awful happens, and even then they’re extremely hesitant to intervene. 

[fiveeven]

TikTok Ban: A Little Too Convenient?

The TikTok ban saga has been wild to watch unfold, but honestly, the closer you look, the more questions arise. Between members of Congress holding Meta stock and Facebook’s sudden interest in integrating TikTok accounts, it feels less like a genuine privacy concern and more like a potential power play. Let’s break this down.

Congress Loves Meta—And Hates TikTok Did you know that several members of Congress own Meta stock? A 2023 analysis revealed that lawmakers with financial interests in Meta, Alphabet, and Snap could stand to benefit if TikTok faces a U.S. ban. This raises potential conflicts of interest, especially when these same lawmakers are involved in crafting legislation that directly affects TikTok.

Meanwhile, Meta, despite its long history of privacy violations (remember Cambridge Analytica?), doesn’t seem to face the same scrutiny. It’s hard not to wonder why Congress is suddenly so concerned about user privacy when it comes to TikTok but continues to give Meta a pass.

Meta’s Sudden Interest in TikTok Integration With TikTok under threat of a U.S. ban, Facebook recently added features allowing TikTok users to link their accounts to their profiles. While this feature aligns with broader trends of social media integration, the timing feels a little too coincidental. It suggests a strategic move by Meta to retain users who might migrate away from TikTok or prepare for an influx of creators seeking alternative platforms.

Even If Trump “Saves” TikTok, I’m Not Buying It Let’s say Trump swoops in and “saves” TikTok at the last minute. I still have serious concerns about what that actually means. Trump is transactional—he doesn’t do anything unless it benefits him or his allies. If TikTok is “saved,” I can’t help but wonder:

Does it get sold—in name only—to a U.S. company like Meta, keeping the same issues but with a different logo?

Does it stick around but get neutered, suppressing content like other corporate-owned platforms?

Or does it become a tool for pushing American propaganda, especially with initiatives like Project 2025 on the horizon?

These are just questions, but I think they’re valid ones. If TikTok survives under Trump’s “protection,” it’s unlikely to remain the platform we know today.

Is This Really About Privacy? The ban is framed as a response to concerns over data privacy and national security, but critics argue it might be more about corporate competition and information control. TikTok’s algorithm has surpassed its competitors in engagement and reach, making it a significant threat to U.S.-based platforms like Meta.

It’s worth noting that many social media platforms collect similar levels of user data, and the difference often lies in who owns the company. In TikTok’s case, its ties to China have made it a target for U.S. lawmakers.

The Bigger Picture Regardless of what happens with TikTok, the implications of this ban extend far beyond one app. It sets a precedent for government control over digital platforms, raising questions about freedom of expression, competition, and corporate influence.

If we’re not questioning these decisions now, we risk handing over even more control to a small group of powerful entities���whether they’re corporations, governments, or both.

[rapeculturerealities]

We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny | Meta | The Guardian

How do the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram affect what you see in your news feed? To find out, Guardian Australia unleashed them on a completely blank smartphone linked to a virgin email address.

Three months later, without any input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content.

[snippydippy]

While I'm still on this Tiktok thing

It is also worth noting that alongside Facebook creating a verified Tiktok page after six years of being staunch competitors, Tiktok got a few UI updates that look suspiciously similar to Facebook/Meta's features. Instagram also reformatted to make your page look like a Tiktok account a few days ago.

Meta is 100% the company who either merged with, or bought Tiktok to "save the app", and only right on time to make Trump look better.

TikTok was only down for 10 hours. Which, suspiciously again, is the amount of time it would take for a highly trafficked app to switch over servers if company hands were changed.

It did not go down because of the ban deadline. It happened early, and lasted as long as it did to distress its American users and give time for server maintenance while these changes took place.

FB's algorithm is known to have been designed to enrage you, rather than show you things you enjoy. Research has shown that being angry keeps a user engaged with an app more so than being happy.

Meta has taken this and ran with it to make sure their engagement is as high as possible.

Personal anecdote on this; I only use Facebook once every other week or so for this exact reason. The moment I go onto my timeline there, all I see are posts from the opposite political party, bad faith opinions on art I enjoy (music, shows, movies, etc), and blatant bait looking to make people argue. It's been this way for years, and why I stopped going there except to drop a drawing and life update here and there. I don't engage with my timeline because I recognized the damage it was doing to my mental health (and my blood pressure lol) a long time ago.

TikTok has worked on the opposite principle. Their algorithm is based on dopamine. It shows you things you find funny, interesting, or is related to the things you already enjoy. It keeps user retention based on enjoyment. This comes with its own set of problems, of course. Addiction and dependency can stem from this, but imo it's less damaging to a person's psyche overall than rage bait.

With Meta taking over (and I will absolutely eat my shoe live on camera if I'm wrong about this), I fear Tiktok's algorithm will change to fit what Meta does. I feel it may already be happening, with my FYP today being almost entirely about the ban/return rather than my usual artwork, edits, gaming clips & funny sketches.

We may have effectively lost Tiktok anyway with all of this.

170 million Americans is a demographic any politician of any party would literally ki11 for. If anyone doubts that everything surrounding Tiktok's ban was anything other than an elaborate plan from the beginning...idk what to tell you. It may not have gone exactly the way it was intended, but the result is the same regardless.

It's my belief that those who voted for this ban, the vast majority of which having shares in Meta, did so because it was a threat to one of their biggest financial investments. They wanted to back TikTok into a corner and force them to make a move that benefited THEIR wallets, all the American people they screwed over in the meantime be damned.

While it looked to us like Tiktok wouldn't budge and would call their bluff, taking the ban rather than selling out to an American company only to find a solution in the last moments, this was obviously not the case. They did sell. They sold to the very company most threatened by its success to Zuck's benefit, the senators and representatives with shares in his company, and to the benefit of a politician with the absolute most to gain with an abysmal approval rating, and an audience of half the country who just got a notification expressing gratitude to him for "saving" an app he actively campaigned against for four fucking years.

Taking away something you enjoy, and giving it back to earn your praise is textbook psychological manipulation.

This whole thing just fucking reeks to me, and I wish billionaires would keep their fingers out of politics, and that politicians of all kinds would stop meddling in every single fucking thing that we do.

This country is run by money, and money alone.

I'm so mad about this whole thing, man. Angrier still at the "it's just an app, stop being dramatic" takes I'm seeing on my FB timeline (aforementioned rage baiting in action lmao). It's NOT just an app. It's a platform of One Hundred and Seventy Million God Damn People that, up until this point, has been an unprecedented tool in connection and information accessibility. A platform that now runs the risk of showing half the country only what one company wants to show them based on its ideas for how the app should work, and with a bias towards political ideals like funneling content that only pushes you harder to one side or the other, maintaining and deepening the rift between political parties that benefit Meta and the reps/senators invested in it.

Yeah it's an App that shows you funny videos and dances but PLEASE I'M BEGGING FOR ONE CRUMB OF CRITICAL THOUGHT ON THE SIZE OF THIS FUCKING THING ALONE