[Milsurplus] Some thoughts about Facebook

[Gordon Smith]

Facebook exists for one reason and one reason only. To get 
information about you and to sell that information to outside 3rd 
parties. And to get that information Facebook will try and do 
anything to entice you to join and stay connected 24/7 or as much as 
they can. I frequent a Computer Nerds website called "slashdot.org". 
They have, over the many years that Facebook has been in existence, 
highlighted just how insidious Facebook has become, the damage it 
does (here are just two stories in the last month: 
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/09/18/0317223/wsj-facebooks-2018-algorithm-change-rewarded-outrage-zuck-resisted-fixes 
and 
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/09/14/1911252/facebooks-own-research-shows-instagram-is-harmful-to-teens-report-says 
) and just what a piece of cr*p the owner is. If you care about your 
children, just say "no" to Facebook for them. At the very minimum, 
please teach them how to think and not just accept the drivel that 
Facebook presents to them. And in case your wondering, I don't like 
them or any company built on their business model. I think that 
companies like them help drive wedges between people and are part of 
the reason (not all, but part) we have such polarization today.

End of Rant. BTW, Many former Yahoo groups have moved over to 
Groups.io and I can highly recommend it.

73, Gordon KJ6IKT

At 01:37 PM 9/23/2021, Hubert Miller wrote:
>I joined Facebook so I could have access to some groups. I joined 5 
>groups focused on military or ham radio.
>Another thing that pushed me past my reservations was I found a 
>group for aficionados of a particular South
>American song style. After I joined up, I also did a search and 
>looked at the page of an ex, and I was very
>pleased to see that things turned out well for her.
>Anyway, to Facebook. I am actually quite disappointed. I thought, 
>FBs designers and engineers became
>multimillionaires and billionaires, and they couldn't do better than 
>this? You the customer, do get a "poor
>man's webpage", with minimal effort on your part. You get a 
>simplistic service matched to personalities
>types that are young and uncomplicated. You can enter, for your 
>"about" data, that your hobbies are
>"making electronics", that's as precise as it gets. And I assume, 
>maybe the hobby of cat photos, or photos
>of your meals. On the groups, the area for actual posting is 
>squeezed down to a portion of the screen. I
>don't get that. I posted some of this comment on the FB page for one 
>military radio group, and I expected
>to be flamed for it. Instead, I see a couple comments more or less 
>agreeing with me. "It's all we have".  I
>also mentioned my opinions to Takashi Doi, who recently started a FB 
>group on "Japanese Military Radios",
>and he agrees, and replies, "It's not for us, it's for young 
>people". Maybe so.
>
>I don't totally reject FB, though. I think it actually may be useful 
>as a recruiting tool. We all want to recruit
>the new generation to our swell hobbies. FB is not ideal, but it's 
>out there; it's what they like to use, are
>used to using. FB may get these swell hobbies out there in front  of 
>their eyes.
>-Hue Miller
>Newport, Oregon
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