social media is evil (but good for NTs)

Post Reply New Topic

Last week I started on Google+ because Facebook is so abusive. Today I learned that Google+ is just as bad. As I navigated past other sites full of deceptive ads (lose weight easily, get rich quick, etc.) I realized something:

social media is evil, but is good for NTs.

It is evil because it is based on lies. That is, it pretends to be on your side, to care about ethics, bla bla bla, when of course it only wants your information in order to sell it to make money by annoying you. I don't blame the companies, they are behaving rationally given our economic system (which rewards short term deceit but does not reward long term altruism). But I find it very hard to accept lies and the abuse of trust. I assume that is an aspie trait.

Social media is good for NTs because they can easily overlook that, while their need to socialise outwieighs that small cost.

I was going to post this in the random forum, but on reflection I think it is probably an NT-asie thing. And yes, I am generalizing: a proportion of NTs avoid social media, but in general NTs prefer socializing and Aspies are more likely to obsess over something being wrong. I think.

details (you don't need to read this):

Why Facebook is evil:
Facebook's crimes are well documented: they provide a platform for free games that contain stuff to buy. Little kids happily click on stuff, running up bills for their parents. Facebook will profile you even if you don't have an account: if you have ever been tagged then you are on their database and your details are available to advertisers. They track you even when you are logged out from their site: every facebook icon on a web page reports back your IP address so advertisers know what sites you visit. Etc., etc. I had to use FB for my work, but Facebook won't let me post. When I start to post it blocks the input box with a popup that requires me to click "OK" to a policy that I disagree with. So Facebook is dead to me.

Why Google+ is evil:
Google is even more data obsessed than Facebook. Their whole reason for existing is to gather your data to sell to advertisers. In their early days they do less evil, until they reach a critical mass, but the pattern is there for all to see. They pretend to care what you think, but that is a lie. They care only enough to get the advertiser: if they are too evil too soon then you will leave. Here is an early example of their attitude: when you log on, you are forced to see a "what's hot" selection. The goal is to make you link to others, thus providing their advertisers with profiling data. This morning "what's hot" shows a large animated GIF of a woman's breasts almost popping out of her shirt. Though I love the idea of a woman's breast popping out, I am single and likely to remain so for a very long time, so I do not want to be reminded of what I cannot have. So I searched for a way to block "what's hot." It turns out to be impossible (unless you use a particular noscript command line hack on a particular browser). Google+ will bombard you with soft porn in the same way that advertisers will bombard poor people with get rich quick schemes and fat people are bombarded with easy diet scams. They will use any underhand methods to get your money because that is how the big boys get to be big. Is it any coincidence that the big guys use thee methods while the ethical alternatives sink without a trace?

About "making money by annoying you"
All ads are annoying: you come to a site to get its content, and instead have to navigate past ads. If you wanted ads you would go to QVC or similar. Therefore ads all annoy. Ad companies claim to target only what you are interested in, but if that was true they would not need to advertise on any sites: people would go straight to specialist advertising sites, knowing that those sites would have exactly what they want (and even better, what you did not realize you wanted). The less average you are, the more annoying the ads are. I am constantly bombarded with ads for things I would never ever use. If I ever click on an ad for curiosity - e.g. I cannot believe it is so deceptive so click to find out - then that is recorded and those ads bombard me forever.

The whole concept of advertising is another topic. I don't blame businesses for using advertising, at present there are very few choices, and I may end up doing the same myself. But I do blame businesses that tell lies (e.g. too good to be true offers, or claiming to work with you when they are in fact against you - see the Google example above.)


End of rant.

Last edited by trappedinhell on 02 Nov 2011, 7:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't use Facebook or Google Plus. I don't feel the need to. I only want what I want. Simples.

I don't when I can avoid it. But I want to eat. I don't have a good job so I need to sell what I make, which means I have to connect with other people somehow.

I've never heard of Google+, but I go on random spurts of playing a couple of the Facebook games. I'll go a week and play hours on end on it, then I'll go weeks without.
It's sad that's how things work, but it's life I guess. If it weren't for Ads though, would you know about some of your favorite things? Video games, books, music?

Favorite video game: Zak McKracken. Lent to me by a work colleague.It was published years before I found it.
Favorite books: The Man Who Was Magic, War and Peace, Fantastic Four, Journey to the Center of The Earth: I never saw any of those advertised.
Favorite music: my CD player doesn't work and all I listen to is talks. Those are recommended by sites I trust.
I honestly cannot think of a single thing I have ever bought after seeing an ad. Apart from some comics when I was young, but those were advertised in other issues of the same comic, so I don't know if that counts.

Last edited by trappedinhell on 02 Nov 2011, 7:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't have a mobile phone either. It's great when you can avoid these things.

I agree!!

I am staying true to my vision of making stuff that I really believe in, in the belief that one day people will find it by word of mouth. I hate advertising.

To be honest I haven't noticed Facebook committing any evil acts against me.....that could be because I was economical with my personal details when I joined, and maybe my use of Firefox with ad-blockers and script stoppers has protected me. Even if all they know about is my messages and a list of my contacts, theoretically they could annoy me with profiled ads etc., which is worrying, but like I say, I haven't seen anything like that.

I was once a member of a very nice, privately-owned music collaboration website, and the owner of that posted a dump of all the data about our activities that the software had picked up...it was a shock, but the owner was very much on our side, and would never have misused our data.

The worst junk-threat from Facebook that I've seen has been from a very few individuals who ask to "friend" me and then just use that as an excuse to put me on their own junkmailing lists to promote their own stuff, though that stuff has never been commercial, it's always been non-profitmaking ventures.

I've pretty much stopped using Facebook, mostly because it doesn't do much for me that I can't do with email. I don't have much to say to the public, and if I want to have a big party (as if!) then I'm quite capable of sending an email to a list of recipients. It might come in handy if I wanted to promote my music to a wide audience, and the music club I'm in has a Facebook page which probably helps to keep the public informed of its activities, and there's a vague idea around that a Facebook page makes us somehow "credible." I guess it's nice for sharing photos and video clips, but they don't seem to make it easy to share music (it seems inefficient to have to create a dummy video just so I can upload it purely for the soundtrack). If music had been easier to share, I'd probably have been more interested.

I agree that Facebook and probably G+ are evil, but I also know (and know of) quite a few autistic people who make use of social networking sites simply because it's easier than managing a lot of face to face interactions. It's not just for NTs.

Very wise. My browser doesn't support those (I use it because it loads quickly and is good with memory). But if FB was important to me then I would use Firefox just to use NoScript and FlashBlock again. I don't use adblock - I have sympathy for the plight of advertisers - it's just the abusive ones I don't like.


Actually, I should probably edit the title to say FOR_PROFIT social media. WrongPlanet is social media, and it's a life saver, but I don't think Alex does it just to scrape our data.

That's a good point.

I should say I find Facebook very difficult to use as they keep changing the UI and I can't find anything.

Gmail's bad enough for that.

I don't believe this is a trait of AS because ASDs don't place believes or morals in our minds. Nevertheless, I imagine what makes you say this is typically AS and I can see it being both a strength and weakness. (similar to how most non-autistic and autistic traits can be good and bad)

A lot of normal people feel like you too because they're not fond to be lied to or to be victim's of economy and ultimately of other people. Who likes being treated like a puppet rather than a person and stolen from and lied to? Few people accept treatment like that one.

But their reason for staying with platforms such as Facebook or Google+ are more powerful than their anger and whatever bad feelings they have about being mindlessly used like that. If they were to leave these social networks they'd leave behind a very common and powerful (simple, fast, nearly always available) opportunity to be in touch with the people dear to them. The social motivation can be greater than their insistence on their humane, moral believes.

And I assume that some "herd-thinking" is involved in it to. "Everybody does it so I'll have to do it too."

That social motivation may not be powerful enough to subdue your moral believes and opinions as well as your standards for how you want to be treated because of your AS. That's what often gets autistic people in social trouble after all. Rather than this being no more than a social weakness the fact that you're not as subjected to the social pressure of following the majority's trend can be a strength. By weakening the influence of social pressure and the strong emotional pressure accompanying it, your AS may grant you the ability to take into calm consideration all other ways (phone, mail, letter, chat, get-together...) to keep in contact with people that are important to you. That would be a good thing about it.

I don't like Facebook either, although I have an account. I consider myself to be extremely computer literate, but when I upload something, I get confused as to what to do and end up making a mess of it. Last time I went on, I couldn't even work out how to find my friends, which should be straightforward.

I too find Facebook's layout very confusing. Sometimes I've seen messages on there that people have sent me months ago, yet I was never notified, as far as I know. I must be pushing the wrong buttons, or the thing's just broken.

I don't use facebook either. I've never been too much into the social networking crap to begin with because I don't think I'm so important that I need to post updates all the time telling people about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I just ate or the turd I just dropped in the toilet. That, and I'm a lazy procrastinator, and I find it fairly difficult to keep up with all the social crap. I'll mean to check something for a while, but I don't get around to it forever. Then I get people flipping out on me about "OMFG, WHY DIDN'T YOU ADD ME AS A FRIEND!?!?!?" I used to have a myspace a while ago. Why I even bothered to make one, I can't tell you. It's a mystery to even me. But my one friend wanted me to add him forever, and he kept making a big deal out of it, long after I totally lost interest in the thing. Despite the fact that I knew him in real life and was his REAL friend, AND despite the fact that I barely used it anyway, he placed such importance on whether or not he was a friend on some stupid website. It was ridiculous. Some people take that s**t way too seriously and act like it's more important than real life.

Now when facebook came along, a phenomenon occurred. When it was just xanga, myspace, friendster, etc, nobody really gave a damn about it. All of a sudden along comes facebook, and suddenly practically every single company in the world, even government agencies... EVERYONE has a damn facebook. Facebook isn't really all that different from xanga, myspace, friendster, etc. So what is it about facebook that's so different? As far as I can tell, there isn't anything. But over the last few years, we've been hearing about facebook selling your personal information. It's a data mining operation... And the government is involved. I don't trust facebook for one second. I think facebook is an effort between corporations and the government to collect as much information on you as possible. What they plan to do with this information, who knows, but you can bet it isn't good. I will never have a facebook or any other social networking site. If you wanna "network socially," get off your ass, go outside, and friggin' talk to someone.