International Lord of Hate Larry Correia suspects foul play from Facebook in regard to his most recent BOOK BOMB.
TL; DR: Larry Book Bombed his departed friend Zach’s posthumous first novel, hoping to drive sales and boost the book’s Amazon ranking as much as possible. That means getting as many eyesballs on the Book Bomb as possible. But he found that Facebook was only showing his posts to a fraction of his thousands-strong following.
Facebook, ostensibly a social network designed to connect people, appears to be throttling users–deliberately withholding their posts from wide circulation and showing them only to a small number of users’ friends.
What’s FB’s motive? Larry suspects Facebook of using throttling to strong-arm users into buying ads on the site. Want your post seen by all your followers? Then pay up.
Best selling author Brad Torgersen backs up Larry’s observation and notes that FB seems to target posts with outside links for throttling. His description of Facebook as “a hot mess of bots and algorithms” seems quite apt.
Not coincidentally, Parliament recently slapped another unflattering label on Facebook, calling the company, “digital gangsters”.
Facebook broke the law in its quest to destroy other businesses and behaved like a ‘digital gangster’, MPs say
- The Culture Committee report says Facebook would ‘starve’ other tech companies of data to destroy their business model
- Documents seized from Mark Zuckerberg also reveal it was willing to override users’ privacy settings to transfer data to other developers to make money
- The report, published today, calls for an investigation by the Information Commissioner, and the Competition and Markets Authority
- Facebook denied that it had broken anti-competition and data privacy laws
Larry and friends appear to have found a workaround. Links appearing in comments and videos embedded directly into Facebook seem exempt from throttling. If you still use Facebook and want anyone to see your links, you’d be well advised to try it.
When prominent conservative authors are having their posts throttled by one of the biggest big tech companies, you have to wonder if petty greed is the only motive at work. We already know that fellow social network Twitter actively censors conservative accounts. Facebook themselves have been caught engaging in censorship. Is it beyond the pale to suspect that FB’s throttling disproportionately targets users who dissent from the Narrative?
To paraphrase Warpig’s Laws of Twitter, these sites are so poorly programmed that malfunctions are indistinguishable from malice. At the same time, the people in charge use their shoddy platforms as fig leaves for their malice.
One thing is certain. Rough times lie ahead for anyone who’s unwilling to publicly profess his love for Big Brother. Support honest creators who are working hard to entertain you, as Larry and Brad are, and as Zach did before his untimely death.
Consider my own humble offerings. My thrilling mech Mil-SF novel Combat Frame XSeed is available now, and you can back the earth-shattering sequel Combat Frame XSeed: Coalition Year 40 on Indiegogo. Claim amazing perks, and get the book first!
I was on Facebook, years ago. People were so toxic to those who did not conform to their worldview that I had to leave. It wasn't even from outside sources, it was my friends list. Much happier without it. No regrets.
Good for you. FB's rapidly declining usefulness for my business is hastening the day when I shake its dust from my shoes.
In the beginning, Zuckerberg's problem was he didn't stay at Harvard long enough to learn about the concept of software engineering. The stuff you code in your dorm room might not be optimal when you have a billion users. The fact that he really doesn't care about those users doesn't help.
Now the issue is that the entire business model is a data mining operation where the users get sold to outside interests. Zuck could care less about you or your need for privacy. He has no problem selling pictures of your kids to pedophiles if it will make him money. If he can push a political agenda while doing it, so much the better.
As a more knowledgeable man told me, if you can't identify what a company's product is, the product is you.
Chris,
Ok so Zukerberg's finally been confirmed as the sociopathic autistic he is.
Big deal, what legislation and sanctions are in the works to rein in the behaviour?
In the end, the net is an essential utility and needs to severely regulate as such.
xavier
I have confirmation from much smaller users that even normal functionality doesn't really work unless you pay.
I have no problem with a values-agnostic system selling such data as I make public in order to pay for a service. Newspaper advertising always did that, in essence. But when it keeps dancing between "values agnostic" and "we will make everyone good by controlling their thoughts and access" then I feel betrayed. Especially since it is still regulated as though it were agnostic.
It is also still regulated on an archaic notion of business ownership, whereas the "real people" in a FB type model are the users – they are the people with the asset, the risk, etc; FB merely skims their value while connecting them with their business partners (advertisers and other users).
Excellent points.
Newspaper publishers are subject to libel laws. Facebook is not, predicated on the explicit understanding that they provide an impartial forum for public discourse. Their continual meddling in the interests of a clear bias voids that arrangement. FB, Twitter, Reddit, et al. should either be classified as publishers subject to libel laws or regulated as utilities.
Briagiven their hybrid status why not both?
Severe regulation by the state and courts sounds just to me for those sociopathic autists
xavier
Several people told me I needed a FB account to go along if I was going to be a published author, so I signed up for one. Within a few hours it was disabled.
No controversial posts. No friends added. No likes. The message I was given simply said that suspicious activity was noticed.
I unlocked it, but it happened again. Then again. This time it was permanently disabled. They never gave a reason, but I did see them proudly proclaiming to the world that they just banned tens of millions of Russian troll accounts. I'd be willing to bet my account is in there somewhere.
But after reading these other accounts I don't feel like I'm missing out on much there. And I look forward to the day that people I care about move to other platforms.
FB is becoming less necessary and more evil.