Ostracizing non-Fedbookers

[Tom Sawyer]

I'm not going to "like" when a cop beats anybody or shoots them or puts them in jail,

No. What you 'like' is that hundreds of  thousand more people become aware of these abuses due to their being posted in FB. The idea, as I understand it is when I share those horror stories and, also share smart libertarian solutions to problems caused by government that are posted by members of our choir, my FB friends who are not members of our choir, who otherwise would not see this stuff, do.

Your outreach is commendable, probably is spreading the message of liberty further.

I have different friend's and associates and "like" not having those world's collide. I was checking out my brother's iPad and cruising through his Facebook contacts... it was pretty obvious to me that "in for a penny, in for a pound" is the situation with regards to accepting people into the friend's network... friend's of friend's until the point that everyone that is even peripherally associated with you is connected to you. Stacy Litz and others of poor discretion comes to mind... Some of my friend's and associates would be pretty tense with me to be one degree of separation from those kind threats.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but some of what passes for activism would be a negative and taint many of my people's impression of what is happening in the Free State movement. I share some of the successes and more commendable activist efforts.

[dalebert]

...my FB friends who are not members of our choir, who otherwise would not see this stuff, do.

FB is massively filtering what its' users see, as is Google search and so forth. (Check out "DuckDuckGo" Google it, haha) People are only starting to become aware of all the filtering that goes on that mostly shows people what they want to see by running algorithms on what they "like" and share and so forth. Liberals eventually see fewer and fewer pro-Republican posts and vice versa, just as an example. Doesn't matter if your friends are posting it. Cracked did an article on this recently.

Doesn't mean FB is completely useless. I'm not taking an extreme position here. But it's mostly better for connecting some members of the choir to other members of the choir; not so much for getting messages out to people who really need to hear it.

[Free libertarian]

...not a fan of facebook.  It probably has some positives, but all that "friend" "unfriend" "like" "unlike" stuff isn't for me.

I'd rather look for rat traps in the ladies underwear and produce sections.  I "like" fresh produce and well there might be a rat trap in the underwear section y'know!

[dalebert]

http://www.cracked.com/video_18372_introducing-facebook-timeline-end-free-will.html

[dalebert]

I (very reluctantly) got back on Facebook after trying to extract myself primarily because I have things to promote, like Flaming Freedom and hopefully some videos soon (some related to Flaming Freedom directly for cross-promotion on YouTube). It makes sense for me to be on it.

But here's the thing about it. Because I'm in promotion mode, I accept all friend requests and most of the time I just click them out of my feed so I don't see any of their updates. I now have 420 friends. That's not an unusual number. Many have more than that.

Look at your news feed. There are only so many things there. There can only be a certain number of things there. The information overload would be insane. So even without any diabolical motivations, the sheer ease of posting something to 420 people's pages (it's automatic, after all) means that some kind of filtering MUST happen. So people have chosen a sort of automatic service over a more manual service. The simple reality is that you're giving up a lot of control. Not saying it's a bad thing. It's good and bad. It's just something to acknowledge. That's why I'm encouraging people to go ahead and use FB but remember that it's not the end all and be all to replace every other way of sharing on the Net.

[dalebert]

http://www.cracked.com/funny-7036-why-i-hate-facebook/

Note:
If you want to use Facebook in moderation, there are options. For instance, I have chat turned off completely, all the time. Every time I get an invite or a notification from a game like Farmville, Cafe World, Mafia World, etc., I take a moment to go into that app and block it. It's a little bit of effort but it WILL pay off in the long run. New apps come up from time to time. Take a moment to block every single fucking one of them. Sadly, they don't yet have the transelectric dart option that sends a painful shock to the testicles of the person who invited you to their Cafe or whatever. I'm hoping that will get added to Social Fixer soon though.

There are also a number of privacy settings. For instance, you can turn off the "feature" that tracks your every movement, event you go to, etc., and practically GPSes you for anyone who cares to visit your page. (Actually, I get notifications in my feed about where my friends are at any particular moment!) No, this won't keep a government subpoena or search warrant or whatever from getting your FB info, but it at least discourages the casual cyber-stalker.

[FTL_Ian]

Good suggestions on reducing FB's influence in your own personal sphere, Dalebert, but what I want to know is how do we persuade people to come to the forums?

NHFree and ShireSociety are two perfectly good forums with a variety of subforums for activist purposes.  Yet the traffic is light in comparison to "the good old days".

[dalebert]

I wish I knew.

[Jim Johnson]

Good suggestions on reducing FB's influence in your own personal sphere, Dalebert, but what I want to know is how do we persuade people to come to the forums?

NHFree and ShireSociety are two perfectly good forums with a variety of subforums for activist purposes.  Yet the traffic is light in comparison to "the good old days".

We use to promote NHFree everywhere we went.... on protest signs, videos and written articles. 

The major need, that I see, is is a central calendar; that tells you who, what, when and where, and could direct people to the back story on the event.

[KBCraig]

Good suggestions on reducing FB's influence in your own personal sphere, Dalebert, but what I want to know is how do we persuade people to come to the forums?

In the age of FB, forums have become too much work for some people.

There's a local live music scene and entertainment forum where I live, that used to be massively popular and very busy. Not just for which band was playing where, but also politics and community discussion.

When FB got popular and band started using it as their main form of publicity, that forum completely died. I just checked it for the first time in two weeks, and there are three new posts: two band announcements and one comment asking if anyone is still checking the forum.

I'm glad the Underground has survived as a place for friends to discuss what's going on in their lives.

[MaineShark]

No, this won't keep a government subpoena or search warrant or whatever from getting your FB info...

Given who runs FB, no fancy papers are required.  They're already proactively feeding info to the Feds.

[Tom Sawyer]

If the NSA wants it (of course they do) they have already grabbed the database.

Many folks pay with their credit card... Their whole social connection/history is potentially connected to their identity.
Talk about having people by the short hairs.

Some will say they have nothing to hide or they are engaged in the "new battleground". 
Their walls keep out prying eyes, they put their mail in an opaque envelope...

[MaineShark]

As I tend to point out, as well, FB is a perfect platform for frame-ups.  All they have to do is go in and insert some rants supporting some sort of terrorism or other violence, and then they can drag you in and they can claim they were justified.

Sure, they can frame folks the old-fashioned way, but that takes work.  Now they can do it with a few keystrokes...

[Lloyd Danforth]

I don't think you have to be on FB to get set up. That has been relatively easy for them since right after you first got on line.  Even before the internet they had/have ways to neutralize any opposition that they consider dangerous.

[MaineShark]

I don't think you have to be on FB to get set up. That has been relatively easy for them since right after you first got on line.  Even before the internet they had/have ways to neutralize any opposition that they consider dangerous.

I don't think that it was easy for them when I first got online.  Most of them didn't even know what the Internet was, then.

In any case, though, FB makes it far, far easier by their willing collaboration.  The analogy I used before still holds:

The FBI might have a bug in the napkin dispenser on your table at the diner where you chat with your friends.

But going into an interrogation room with a microphone sitting on the table, in order to have the same discussion, just makes no sense.

If you use even basic levels of encryption in your normal life (free programs that are seamless so you don't even have to think about it), it rapidly becomes cost-prohibitive to try and frame you electronically.  Which leaves trying to do it in-person, in which case there's the ever-present risk of a camera catching them in the act.  It shifts the risk/benefit analysis around, so it's far less likely that anyone would bother.  When they can do it with a few keystrokes, at essentially zero risk, it's very easy for them to decide to do so.

Event trying to use any other online forum to do something similar becomes difficult, if you use even the slightest care in where you post.  For example, the idea of Kat letting the Feds use the Underground for a frame-up is ludicrous.