It’s been reported that Facebook is closing in on two and a half billion users worldwide, so maybe this isn’t as impressive as it sounds:

US regulators have approved a record $5bn (£4bn) fine on Facebook to settle an investigation into data privacy violations, reports in US media say.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been investigating allegations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained the data of up to 87 million Facebook users.

The settlement was approved by the FTC in a 3-2 vote, sources told US media.

Facebook and the FTC told the BBC they had no comment on the reports.

But of course they didn’t.

Background:

FTC began investigating Facebook in March 2018 following reports that Cambridge Analytica had accessed the data of tens of millions of its users.

The investigation focused on whether Facebook had violated a 2011 agreement under which it was required to clearly notify users and gain “express consent” to share their data.

And as always, politics rears its ugly head:

The $5bn fine was approved by the FTC in a 3-2 vote which broke along party lines, with Republican commissioners in favour and Democrats opposed.

The New York Times reported that the Democrats wanted stricter limits on the firm, while other Democrats have criticised the fine as inadequate.

Facebook’s revenues for 2018 came to about $55.8 billion.

Once a Facebook session is done, I sign off.

Except yesterday, when the sadists in charge of the user interface took away the drop-down menu that contains “Sign off” and forced me to “General Account Settings,” which I had no reason to read at that time. Nine times more I clicked where the desired option was supposed to be, and nine times I was sent back to the same damned page.

The current version of Myspace (!) makes it somewhat tricky to sign out of the system. I can only conclude that the Zuckerborgs saw this somehow and decided to assimilate it. The only way I could close it down was to shut the browser completely, load up a different browser (Internet Explorer 11, fercrissake), sign in, and then sign out before they had a chance to trap me again. Bastards.

I mean, the silly twit brought it on himself: I gave facebook a fake phone number, now I can’t log in?

It’s probably obvious, but here’s the way he tells it:

I was tired of the nag message, so I gave them a fake number. Now they want me to give them a code they sent to a phone that does not exist. I reported this to them twice, no response.

Telling lies is always more work than telling the truth: if you’d given them an actual working number none of this would have happened.

“But I didn’t —” Doesn’t matter now, does it? Now try to start a new account and see how fast Facebook crushes you like a bug.

They don’t waste time, do they?

I enabled a bunch of privacy settings and still felt like my Facebook/Insta ads were a little too relevant. So I faked a pregnancy by downloading the What to Expect app to see how long it would take for FB to hit me w a maternity ad. The answer? 11 hours https://t.co/bkCQ71BYOj

— Katie Bindley (@katiebindley) February 28, 2019

I’ve had Fark ads hit me in eight hours.

It’s almost hilarious in its own wrong right: How to get someone to accept my friend request on Facebook from a fake account?

And then the whole scheme is given away:

So I made a couple of accounts to my ex to see there Facebook but she declined them all. How can I get her to accept my friend request? What should I include in the account?????

Looks like she was the smarter of the two. Facebook, of course, discourages fake accounts no matter what lame excuses are proffered.

So I tossed the question back: “Did you try calling 1-900-STALKER?”

This bathetic soul turned up on Quora yesterday: How can I auto like my profile picture on Facebook?

Either this shlub has a bet going, or we’re seeing the most recent incarnation of the attention whore. I find neither of these possibilities worthy of any further consideration.

The Friar gets an unexpected lesson in emphasis:

[O]ne of the sentences I would write about what I did right this year uses the exact same words that would show up in a sentence that describes what I did wrong.

Right: “I deleted almost every political Facebook post I saw, no matter who it came from.”

Wrong: “I deleted almost every political Facebook post I saw, no matter who it came from.”

Subtle. Nuanced, even.

Tucked into the corner of my Facebook screen last night:

Um, I don’t think so.

According to the nearest Wikipedant, as of last January Facebook had 2.2 billion regular users. For every user that follows the Zuckmeister, there apparently are 19 who don’t.

All Facebook is divided into three parts: family matters, social interaction, and conspiracy theories. Today I got one of each.

If you don’t see the contradictions anymore, feel free to blame Twitter or Facebook:

The two generations nearest to adulthood — that is, on the just-short and just-long sides of 18 — can’t, absolutely CAN NOT, correlate things.

They “think” exclusively in likes, upvotes, retweets. Every statement is discrete, to be evaluated entirely without reference to anything other than how it makes you feel at the moment you read it.

Nor is it difficult to find examples:

The deeper down the social media rabbit hole America went, the more blatant this kind of thing got. Obamacare — a gazillion-dollar bureaucracy — will both lower taxes and improve medical care. “Death panels” aren’t death panels, you ignorant snowbilly… they’re just panels that will decide when you should be denied life-sustaining care. The Rather Memos are “fake but accurate.” And now we’re a few Senate votes away from an official ruling, from the highest powers in the land, that facts are no longer legally admissible when they contradict someone’s feelings.

Only social media explains that. People who “believe” Ford get upvoted — they’re such caring, courageous people! People who believe in things like logic, reason, and evidence, meanwhile, get downvoted, because those cause badfeelz, and are therefore wrong wrong wrong!!

This is not to say that everyone who buys into today’s silliest notions got there by reading timelines, but excessive dependence on likes is definitely pathological.

I almost hate to imagine what this person is up to:

How to find out the identities of Facebook members who like a Facebook page that is not mine?

Which is, presumably, every page on Facebook except one.

Okay, maybe she just wants to know about some specific Page X. Still sounds suspicious, if maybe a hair more specific.

To quote the creep in question: “Could a message sent on Facebook using a dial up internet connection be intercepted or hacked into?”

Clearly off his meds:

In 2010, I sent a message to a past teacher of mine (who I was not connected to on Facebook.)

But 2 months to the day after I sent that message to her (she’s now living interstate again), my family received what appeared to be a odd nuisance voice message left on their answering machine (for calls to their landline phone number.)

The only words said by the caller (which were somehow distorted (using a dictaphone or software I’m guessing, so you couldn’t identify or tell their sex or age) was: “Keep writing.”

I got the impression this caller somehow knew how to find me and my parents, as well as the content about the facebook message I sent 2 months earlier (by then, one of the most recently sent messages by me to anyone) and they were being insincere and sarcastic about it.

The teacher didn’t reply to me. Although, there’s no proof that she mentioned or forwarded any information about the content of my message on to anyone.

I know people who would be capable of making odd nuisance calls and voice messages towards me and my family. But, it’s unlikely my teacher would have known or taught them, from when she lived locally many years ago.

There were good and bad comments and points in my message to that teacher. Which others who dislike me, may have found amusing at my expense.

What’s amusing about this is that you’re still puzzling over it after eight freaking years.

This is getting awfully meta, even for Facebook:

Trend this, pal.

It went, I am told, something like this:

"So, there's a button you use to poke someone?"

"It wasn't a literal poke."

"So it was a euphemism? For what?"

"It doesn't exist anymore."

"Is that what children call it these days? Poking?"

"With respect, Senator, we—"

"And you did it with a, with—it was a button?"

— Peter Suderman (@petersuderman) April 10, 2018

This went on and on and on, because of course it does.

And yes, the Poke function is still there, though it doesn’t enjoy the prominence it used to.

Facebook offered me this last night:

It was my understanding that one must be aesthetically pleasing before becoming a K-pop girl in the first place.

This showed up in Facebook Messenger, and it’s so badly written that I have to assume there may be a grain of truth buried under all the horse puckey:

Hi, I’m Mark Zuckerberg The Director of facebook.
Hello everyone, it seems that all the warnings were real, facebook use will cost money
If you send this string to 18 different from your list, your icon will be blue and it will be free for you.
If you do not believe me tomorrow at 6 pm that facebook will be closed and to open it you will have to pay, this is all by law.
This message is to inform all our users, that our servers have recently been very congested, so we are asking for your help to solve this problem. We require that our active users forward this message to each of the people in your contact list in order to confirm our active facebook users if you do not send this message to all your facebook contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of Lose all your cont the transmission of this message. Your SmartPhone will be updated within the next 24 hours, will have a new design and a new color for the chat. Dear Facebook users, we are going to do an update for facebook from 23:00 p.m. until 05:00 a.m. on this day. If you do not send this to all your contacts the update will be canceled and you will not have the possibility to chat with your facebook messages
Will go to pay rate unless you are a frequent user. If you have at least 10 contacts
Send this sms and the logo will turn red to indicate that you are a user
Confirmed … We finish it for free Tomorrow they start to collect the messages for facebook at 0.37 cents Forward this message to more than 9 people of your contacts and it will be free of life for you to watch and it will turn green the ball of above do it and you will see.

Now if you ask me, nothing will improve social media more than charging for it. But this is most assuredly not the way it’s going to happen.

This happens about a thousand times a moment, and as Roger notes, it’s scarcely worth the bother to engage the wrongster:

Someone writes a piece on the platform that you know for sure is 100% wrong. You comment on the page perhaps with a link to collaborating evidence. He — it’s more often a he — says you’re stupid, and probably don’t even love your country.

You warily try one more time, but it is met with a buzz saw of further resistance. So you walk away. You WALK AWAY. Well, that’s what I do because it just isn’t worth the effort.

You learned this in Econ 101, of course:

I’ve discovered that the law of diminishing returns applies to lots of situations. It sure beats having a Twitter war over insignificant stuff.

Yea, verily.

But you knew that, right?

This ad appeared in my Facebook feed yesterday evening.

Same day that the sysadmin installed exactly that new lock on my office door.

Why, yes, we do get our bandwidth from Cox. Why do you ask?

“Henry1989” had a little problem:

Help. I am the victim of the post

https://m.facebook.com/groups/1472136323…

I have repeated many many many many times that the post GOES AGAINST the Facebook Community Standards and reported to the Facebook Team over HUNDRED times but the Facebook Team commented that the post did not violate any Community Standards.

I am very frustrated, annoyed and unhappy with the post as many Facebook users have expressed extremely abusive and offensive languages against me.

Can the Yahoo users make an abuse report to the Facebook Team after reading this post.

I order that at least 100,000 Yahoo users report the abuse to the Facebook Team within 24 hours from now on and 1 million reports are made within 3 days. (I suggest each Yahoo user repeats the report at ten times)

“I order“? Who died and made you King of Anything?

A user named Dave gave this reasoned response:

reported for spam.

If they say it doesn’t violate the community standards, then it doesn’t. If you don’t like it, remove yourself from the group.

Which is a proper report, since “Henry” has posted variations on this whine several times before.

And “Henry” promptly went psycho:

F U C K YOUR MOTHER Dave. Many users express extremely abusive and offensive languages against me. Why do you still say it doesn’t violate community standards?

You must STOP making inaccurate answers and you must make an apology for saying anything inaccurate and irrelevant to me immediately.

Dave, you MUST make an apology for saying anything irrelevant and inaccurate answers to me. If I RECEIVE no apology from you within 24 hours, I will take legal actions against you to your local law court and even report to your local police.

Yahoo, in a rare display of prescience, deleted “Henry’s” screed. I’m not persuaded he should get off quite so easily, so here’s a screenshot of the alleged offensive Facebook post:

He’s lucky I didn’t put it on Reddit.

And so he asks:

Well, he should, but not for the reason he thinks:

My Instagram pics have gained top post. I feel people are imitating me, taking ideas from me, and even stalking me. You see whenever I would tweet things of my interest on Twitter strange things would happen. I would go in public where I would hear conversations where it would sound like somebody referencing something I just tweeted not to long ago or the other day. Ok I would set trends on my Instagram wearing certain clothing and fashion and I would go to college or even other places seeing people I never met with a almost on point fashion since. Then I just bought I new car where afterwards I would see everybody in town suddenly driving the exact same cars. I would go to a store or a shop in my neighborhood where suddenly these people who would coincidentally have the same cars and fashion since would mysteriously appear whenever I would pull up to buy a soda, or go shopping or even just pump my gas it would seem like these clones where now everywhere from my neighborhood to my school and even when I cease my social media activity it continues but now it has gone too far. You see I live on a considerably quite block in my neighborHood and lately I have lately seen this same reoccurring people driving/walking by housing every now and then sometimes even when I step outside my front door sometimes when I step outside my car. I think I may be locally famous in my neighborhood and I have considered moving. Should I just put my social media on private cause this is just crazy.

Obviously this child is insane and should be confined at least until Twitter goes bankrupt.

And, well, that’s just intolerable:

i see many people getting away with posting stupid, untrue- ridiculous comments online and many of these idiotic people get away with it unchallenged and uncorrected.

if its a subject im passionate about like 80’s, 70’s or 60s music and someone posts an untrue,ridiculous comment about a song or singers from those eras , then i really lose my temper.

if many of these internet idiots were stood in front of me, woe betide they should say something false about subjects im passionate about, because something unpleasant would happen to them if they did.

ps im a man from the uk, in my late 30s.

By that age he should have learned that nobody gives a shit what he’s “passionate about,” and that nowhere has he been granted the authority to do anything about it other than answer back.

Mass murderers start out with “logic” very much like this, and escalate it beyond their ability to cope. The real tragedy is that they don’t kill themselves first, before taking it out on the rest of the world.

And the SCREAMING CAPITALIZATION doesn’t help:

I HAVE ASKED THIS QUESTION THREE TIMES AND NO ONE WANTS TO TELL ME WHY I AM NOT GETTING ANY LIKES ON MY RECENT POSTS ON FACEBOOK.

IT IS VERY IRRITATING WHEN I POST SOMETHING AND NO ONE RESPONDS BACK TO ME ON FACEBOOK OR GIVES ME ANY LIKES.

Why am I not getting any likes on my posts on Facebook? And, what am I doing wrong?

Short answer: you are an asshat.

Somewhat longer answer: You’re asserting that you’re entitled to the kind of response that validates your exaggerated sense of self, both on and off Facebook. This is more than sufficient cause to write you off as an asshat.

But just the same, he wants a free pass:

I kind of went on a drunken rant in a personal message to a friend (girl) on Facebook, I didn’t attack her but I insulted some other people. Then she replied, and I engaged more which means in the future, it’s not like I could claim someone hacked my account or anything, it was clearly me.

I’m now thinking that in the future, she could pull that out and really tarnish my reputation. I know deleting it on my end doesn’t delete it on hers so,

—Is there any law that would protect me from her publishing it in the future?

and

—If I start a new FB account with a separate email, and shut down my old account will her official record of the conversation go away with it?

I feel like there should be some way to demand FB erase something you put out there. But I’m sure you sign that all away in the TOS.

What do you think?

I think you should have thought of this before you went on this “drunken rant.”

And no, there should be no way to demand FB erase something you put out there. Stupidity, by design, is intended to be self-correcting; the putative trashing of your precious reputation is a part of that correction.

Actions have consequences. We all learn this in different ways. Welcome to yours.

We covered this on Friday. By Monday it was nearing Trending status on Facebook, and by Tuesday I was able to catch this as a screen grab:

Maybe it’ll be up to 700 percent by the end of the week.

And they mean that “or else,” too:

Some tenants at a Salt Lake City apartment complex are fuming over a new lease agreement that requires tenants to “like” the complex on Facebook.

Tenants of the City Park Apartments told KSL that a “Facebook addendum” showed up taped to their doors Thursday night.

The contract requires tenants to friend the City Park Apartments on Facebook within five days, or be found in breach of the rental agreement, though some of the tenants already signed a lease agreement months ago.

The document also includes a release allowing the apartment to post pictures of tenants and their visitors on the page.

I’m assuming Utah law requires tenants to send two rejections of the contractual change, the second to go to “the horse you rode in on.”

(Via Keaton Fox.)

Some people probably should stay the hell away from social media, and I suspect this is one of them:

Tedious exposition follows:

I used to work in a corporate office. During my 7 years there, one of my co-workers kept repeating everything I said about my taste in women and who at the office I think is pretty. Apparently since I am socially awkward, he treated me like a 4-year-old who said something adorable, as opposed to keeping it confidential, i.e. locker room talk. Eventually, it was implied by everyone that I was “in love” with the office manager, when in reality, I only said she was pretty and nothing more. So my co-worker obviously fabricated what I said. I felt so violated, and It really hurt me how not only betrayed my trust, but made me look like a desperate virgin who lives with mommy. Well, 4 years ago, I was laid off. Despite my dismay for my co-worker, we’ve been friends on Facebook since before I was fired. I want to send a friend request to the office manager for the purpose of greasing the wheels in case I need a future job reference. She was fired 2 years before me, so there’s no hard feelings. But since we have many mutual friends, I don’t think it’s a good idea to send her a request, because then the rumors will continue. I know I shouldn’t care what they think, especially since I don’t work there anymore. But I don’t like the idea of ex-co-workers possibly snickering behind my back if they see I’m friends on Facebook with the office manager. Perhaps if she and I remained NOT friends on Facebook, then those rumors about me being in love with her will stop. Suggestions?

Truth be told, nothing makes someone look more like a “desperate virgin who lives with mommy” than a sob story like this. I will be really surprised if this bozo doesn’t already have a Tumblr.

Big Girl Pants are apparently unknown in Australian governance:

A woman in Australia who unfriended a colleague on Facebook after a dispute at work was found by a tribunal to have committed workplace bullying.

The Fair Work Commission, a workplace tribunal, said the decision by Lisa Bird, a real estate agent sales administrator, to unfriend her colleague Rachel Roberts showed a “lack of emotional maturity” and was “indicative of unreasonable behaviour.”

The incident occurred after Ms Roberts, a property agent, complained to the agency principal that her properties were not being adequately displayed in the store window.

Mrs Bird, the wife of the principal, then accused Ms Roberts of being a “naughty little school girl running to the teacher.”

Ms Roberts left the office crying and then checked to see if Mrs Bird had commented on the incident on Facebook, only to discover that Mrs Bird had instead unfriended her.

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ! What the hell kind of world is this when there are legal repercussions for trivial social-media actions?

That said, I have no Facebook friends at work, and will not approve any applications. I know better.

(Via @SwiftOnSecurity.)

I was forwarded a copy of this bit of blither, sent to God knows how many addresses of people who were alleged to be poking around Ashley Madison’s place:

I now have your information. I have also used your user profile to find your Facebook page, using this I can now message all of your friends and family members.

If you would like to prevent me from sharing this dirt info with all of your friends and family members (and perhaps even your employers too?) then you need to send 1 bitcoin to the following BTC address.

Bitcoin Address:
1AEJiZFnELwRZVjmVSvDSwUaXNZy4X9bQN

You may be wondering why should you and what will prevent other people from doing the same, in short you now know to change your privacy settings in Facebook so no one can view your friends/family list. So go ahead and update that now (I have a copy if you dont pay) to stop any future emails like this.

You can buy bitcoin using online exchanges easily. If the bitcoin is not paid within 3 days of 23 Sep 2015 then my system will automatically message all of your friends and family members. The bitcoin address is unique to you.

Consider how expensive a divorce lawyer is. If you are no longer in a committed relationship then think about how this will affect your social standing amongst family and friends. What will your friends and family think about you?

Sincerely,
Paul

Well, at least he’s sincere.

Inasmuch as a copy I found on the Web contains exactly the same Bitcoin address, we know the “unique to you” claim is BS, although it was probably necessary for credibility, since actually reusing addresses is highly discouraged.

Reports one woman who received the same mailing:

For some it is perhaps more of a problem than for others, but for me it is merely an amusement now. Even so, there are people out there, in cyberspace, who have taken the time to sift through the Ashley Madison hack files and find mail addresses, and those who are counting on hitting someone whether they go through the files or not.

And this is very pertinent:

That any real woman signed up is something I find hard to believe, especially since we already know that all the profiles for females were either faked, covered by bots, or paid for. So someone — whether called Paul or whatever — writing me a mail and trying to blackmail me is just amusing.

The least we can do is laugh at him.

Ian Betteridge was available for comment.

Facebook demands Real Names, and Facebook thinks itself the only judge of what names are Real:

A young married couple from Arizona are feeling blue, having been banned from Facebook for trying to use their otherworldly last name, Avatar.

Balizar Orion Avatar and his wife of four years, Audry, of Prescott, say the popular social media site has deleted the husband’s Facebook account after having deemed his family name fake.

Balizar, who goes by Boa for short, says his father told him that when translated from Sanskrit, his full name, which he was born with, means: “May the Lord protect the king, son of light in deity human form.”

In order to prove that they have not made up their last name, Balizar and Audry say Facebook has required them to provide copies of their driver’s licenses and other paperwork.

Why, they don’t even have blue skin!

Patrick Phillips observes:

I did a quick search of Anywho.com for anyone with the last name “Avatar.” It turns out that in about a half-millisecond, the site returned pages of results, from people living from California to New York and plenty of points in between.

While I’ve never known anyone with the last name Avatar, it is definitely a valid surname. Facebook could have come to that conclusion at least as quickly as I did, but it’s likely they set some code to watch for suspicious names to automatically flag, and, as anyone who’s had a problem with Facebook knows, once the giant makes a decision, even an automated one, getting to an actual human being to rectify the situation is about as easy as winning the Powerball lottery twice in the same month.

Hmmm. I wonder if they have a Pandora account.