I’m a facebook criminal Eighteen years building bridges Sharing insights life knowledge trivia Connecting to people and connecting people Building communities Building trust Thinking out loud and crying in words Loving, debating, rarely hating Being human, first and foremost Being me
I’m a facebook criminal Not like the scammers and spammers Promoters of fake news Shills and conspiracy theorists No, not like them, upstanding netizens Not like the shady marketers The pyramid-scheme coaches The sad trolls and the desperate incels
I’m a facebook criminal Trying to do good in the digital world Raising awareness Saving sick cats Giving reach to your cry for help Finding a home for your houseplant Sharing photos of a hike Offering a place to crash
I’m a facebook criminal The worst kind Authentic Posting every day Sharing links to the world wide web Nourishing the network Pointing out bad actors Too many cat photos I’m sure But didn’t you know The internet is made of cats – Maybe not facebook
Eighteen years of posts and comments Down the drain All they carried too Your comments your photos your thoughts Conversations amputated Disappeared They were yours too, you know They were ours Communities like Swiss cheese now Emptiness where once the backbone was Conversations with dead friends Like on Ed Sheeran’s old phone Gone, maybe for good, like them
I’m a facebook criminal Convicted by a jury of bots No humans for me, how ironic For being too human The machine will judge and sentence me A digital death of sorts Make way for the sycophants The brands with deep pockets Those waging the cyberwar As long as it pays
All your good deeds are just fleeting electrons But the red marks are hard-coded Even if we were wrong The Cluetrain is long gone Somewhere in the scrap heap The Gods of the Algorithm Blinded by power Will hear no prayers.
It’s been less than 24 hours since Facebook suspended my account. I don’t know if I’ll get it back, honestly. Maybe this evening it’ll be back online and this day will seem like a bad dream – like the 60 minutes a few weeks back when I thought that I had made a mistake that had killed my cat (he’s fine, he doesn’t know anything about it, it was in my head; another blog post). But maybe it’s gone forever.
I want to capture what I’m feeling, because it’s very strange. I’ve been on Facebook since late 2006 or early 2007, shortly after joining Twitter, if my memory serves me right. Ah, memory. That is my biggest feeling of loss right now. Nearly 20 years of personal documented history that have been disappeared. It feels like having sudden amnesia. Of course, there are also people and connexions. The people I’m in touch with now, I’m pretty confident that we’ll find each other somewhere else. But what saddens me the most is the people of the past, encountered at various moments of my life, loose ties that the common platform keeps just under the surface, a click away if needed. Gone.
I poured a lot into Facebook. Thank goodness it’s not critical to my professional activity right now. Thank goodness I still have my blog. Thank goodness I’m already present on other platforms, even if they’ve been largely in the background of my online presence until now. It really feels like a betrayal.
I’ll share screenshots of some of the posts Facebook took down these last months, posts from years ago, with innocent content, but labeled as spam, no avenue to appeal. And the post that trigged my removal, clearly, the link that freaked out the algobots, was in a closed online community I run, a comment telling people that we’re exploring another tool for the future of the community, here is the link. No, I don’t believe in anthropomorphising the machine to the extent of saying “oh, they didn’t like that you were pointing to the competition”.
As ChatGPT told me, it’s a structural issue. I’m the admin of a large, active, engaged group (and other groups too). I share a lot of links. Posts in the group I manage are flagged multiple times a week as spam because people are talking about giving insulin to their sick cats, or donating partly used syringe boxes because their cat no longer needs them – the happy story is when they’re in remission, the sad one is when they’re dead. We don’t remove inactive users, we encourage people to stick around. So the group is big, but maybe engagement is sliding down, even though the community is active and vibrant. There are 50 to 60 support posts a day in it.
It feels like a betrayal because I have done nothing if not “be social”. I have connected with my pears, I have shared knowledge, troubles and wisdom, exciting food and grief. I have connected people, brought them together, built online communities that are healthy, where people are nice to each other, free from spam and sales pitches. I have given more than I have taken. I have trusted that if you are an authentic human being, if you’re not trying to manipulate others or act only in your self-interest, if you are truly there to be “social”, then things will work out for you. The trust you have built with others will protect you.
You’ll recognise this thinking – it’s what I’ve called, in my mind, the “Cluetrain belief”. There are probably better labels, but that’s my personal mental one. It’s a vision of the online world where capitalism doesn’t win, where humans are at the centre, where truth rises to the top. It carried me through over a decade as an online consultant. Until it started seriously crumbling down a decade ago.
So I’m not naive: I’ve known for years I could wake up one morning and find that Facebook had arbitrarily taken down my group or my account. I’ve known for years that these platforms do not care about people anymore, but about money and influence. I’ve known for years that my behaviour as a real human being online regularly raises red flags. Nevertheless, I persisted. I shared links. I shared thoughts. I shared photos and videos of the shows I went to. I shared poetry. I responded, discussed, exchanged. I connected.
It feels like a betrayal, even though I knew it could come. I do guess I didn’t believe it would be so brutal. Two months ago my account had a spotless record. Then suddenly, Facebook told me it had removed 9 posts of mine, going back to 2016, because spam, because reasons, because I’m not adhering to “community standards”. Nine posts out of thousands, tens of thousands probably. No way to appeal. I was going to do a separate post for this, but let me show you some. You can judge for yourself.
I’m so glad I still have my blog. So glad I took care of keeping it up and running even when I didn’t write much, even when I couldn’t really bring myself to write here anymore.
So, have a look at my facebook crimes.
I’m not even going to comment, honestly. It’s just ridiculous.
Thankfully my communities are safe, even though mangled by the disappearance of all my content. I was cautious to make sure I was never the only admin of a group. I lost my Pages though, and that hurts a bit. When it became possible, I should have created separate accounts for them, to decouple them from my profile. I guess I thought the chances of something happening to my profile were really low – even though I knew it could happen.
So, 20 hours cut out of facebook, how do I feel? It feels like yet another blow in a string of losses. Over the last two years, I’ve lost too many loved ones. Five months ago I had a ski accident that resulted in “mild” cognitive issues that have been keeping me off work and out of a “normal” life. (Quotes, right.) About a month back I asked for the Facebook account of a recently deceased friend to be memorialised, and that resulted in its immediate and complete deletion (another blog post, was waiting to have the courage to write about it). It was extremely brutal. Just like this suspension is brutal.
Leaving Facebook on one’s own terms is one thing. Being kicked out feels a bit like being fired from the job you’ve held for twenty years and sent out without even being allowed to collect your stuff or say bye to your colleagues. Sure, there are other platforms. Sure, it’s a time-suck. Of course there will be “blessings”, we can always look for them, and often find them (not always). But let’s deal with the loss of connections, the betrayal, the erasure of history and lived time, the negation of hours and hours of work, of care and engagement. Let’s deal with that before we try and “look at the bright side of things”.
My main feeling right now is one of disconnection and loss of community. I feel like I’ve been digitally deported (yeah, sorry for the metaphors, I know losing one’s job or being deported is way worse than what I’m going through). My online life has been a large part of my life, and losing a big chunk of that in such circumstances is not trivial.
This also makes me sad about the way in which the world is changing. For the hopes and ideals I had as a younger adult, and how disillusioned I’m growing as the years go by, as the internet I loved and lived in breaks down, as our institutions crumble and money and fascism take over. Yes there are also very good things in today’s world. I’m not going to go all “good ol’ times” on you. But there are ugly things, and we can regret that they are so present.
If I do get my account back, the first thing I’ll do is ask for a complete export of my content. I did it when Facebook announced they would stop keeping Live videos online indefinitely, but gave up when I realised I had to download 50+ 2Gb archive files that made my connection drop again and again. Yeah, that many archive files – that’s how much content I poured into that platform.
I’ll continue preparing to migrate my support community off of facebook in the months or the year to come – I don’t want to rush things if we can get away with it.
And whether I get my account back or not, the way forward is going to be heading back to the times before Big Platforms, when we owned our content and our connections.
If you miss me, or just want to keep me somewhere in your digital rolodex for old times sake, here is where I am now: Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads (but holding back somewhat there), Instagram (same, Meta-land, right?), LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr (maybe need to resuscitate my presence there?), Youtube (videos will be going there, need to check out Peertube too), and Discord as stephtara. WhatsApp is best for casual day-to-day chatting, instead of Messenger (my number isn’t hard to ding.) I’m dormant on the bird site.
Lately, I got about 8-9 posts removed from Facebook because “spam” or something. Posts going back nearly 10 years, for some. Wonderful. Got warned “be a good girl or your account could be suspended”. No avenues to appeal.
And a few minutes ago, just as I posted a comment in one of my support groups with a link to the Discourse test site we’re trying out, the hammer falls. Must have been the last straw for a ticklish algorithm.
Messenger is blocked too. I have no way to reach out inside of Facebook, so if you’re amongst my contacts, thanks for spreading the word. And of course if you have any kind of access inside of Facebook to reverse this f***-up, it would be most welcome.
Now I’m sweating thinking of all the places I’ve used Facebook to “log in” — how is that going to work with a suspended account?
I’ve been on the path to moving away from Big Platform for a while (accelerating these last couple of weeks), and this is probably going to increase acceleration even more. I’m not going to continue investing time and energy into something that can be taken away from me so arbitrarily.
You can subscribe to my blog and get my posts by e-mail if you wish (if it’s broken let me know).
[fr] N'utilisez pas le code par SMS comme solution pour la double authentification, utilisez une application genre "Google Authenticator" sur votre téléphone à la place. Pourquoi? A cause du SIM-swapping.
People nowadays rely heavily on their online presence: in today’s world, your e-mail, facebook, tiktok or instagram account has become part of your identity. So, you’ll want good passwords for your accounts, and an extra layer of security provided by two-factor authentication (2FA). But don’t use SMS for that!
You definitely want to use two-factor authentication (2FA) on at least all your important online accounts (e-mail, facebook, website, etc). This means in addition to using a strong password (do use a password manager) you also have to indicate you are in physical possession of your phone (usually) or some other device (newer: security keys).
SMS is the basic (but outdated) way of doing 2FA. You get a code through SMS when you try to sign in from another device.
Do listen to this podcast, and to other episodes of “A Perfect Scam“. It’s really a great way to become familiar with the kinds of bad actors a normal person can encounter today, and how they operate.
A couple of extra tips:
your e-mail allows to reset all your social media accounts, so it should be extra secure
in addition to making sure you don’t use SMS for 2FA, make sure it is not possible to reset your account password by receiving a code or link by SMS
Ne copiez-collez pas des messages sur Facebook, de grâce.
Vu qu’il est maintenant possible de payer un abonnement pour ne plus avoir de pubs sur Facebook, la désinformation à copier-coller fleurit de plus belle sur le réseau. Ça n’aide pas que Facebook a présenté tout récemment un petit écran au démarrage pour nous demander de choisir si on voulait payer ou pas, et donc d’affirmer explicitement (pour être supposément raccord avec la législation européenne), qu’on est d’accord “d’être le produit” et de laisser Facebook exploiter joyeusement nos données pour son plus grand profit. Chose que Facebook ne s’est pas privé de faire toutes ces dernières années, alors qu’on gardait la tête dans le sable, qu’on regardait ailleurs, ou qu’on serrait les dents.
En somme, rien ne change par rapport à la semaine dernière si on continue à utiliser la version gratuite. Mais bon, voilà, on est envahis par ce genre de mauvaise herbe. Je vais vous expliquer pourquoi c’est un problème.
Ces messages véhiculent des idées très naïves et fausses sur comment fonctionne la protection des données et de la vie privée. Vous croyez vraiment que copier-coller un message sur un mur peut avoir une valeur légale? Surtout quand celui-ci comporte des référence factuellement fausses, comme c’est souvent le cas? Et… sérieux, les fautes d’orthographe, ça vous parait sérieux?
D’aucuns répondront: “on sait jamais, ça peut pas faire de mal”. Je ne suis pas d’accord. On se plaint des ravages du complotisme, du fait que les gens ont des croyances qui sont complètement déconnectées du réel, et bien nous y voici. En propageant ce genre de message, on infecte notre entourage avec un “virus des idées” qui essaie de faire croire aux gens des choses qui ne sont pas vraies. Tout le monde n’a pas un système immunitaire cognitif efficace.
Ça me navre vraiment de voir autant de personnes de mon entourage, certaines, j’avoue, dont j’attendrais qu’elles sachent mieux, jouer les petits soldats de la désinformation et de l’intox.
Quand vous revenez de vacances ou d’absence et que vous êtes devant une pile de mails, traitez les mails les plus récents en premier.
Je réalise régulièrement que cette façon de procéder ne va pas forcément de soi. C’est vrai qu’on a tendance à penser chronologiquement, ou bien commencer par le début, et donc se dire qu’on va faire les choses dans l’ordre.
Mais la réalité c’est que le mail d’il y a trois semaines a bien des chances d’être caduque, surtout s’il était un peu urgent. Les urgences d’il y a trois semaines ne sont plus des urgences, par contre les urgences d’aujourd’hui le sont encore. Il vaut donc mieux commencer par elles.
Ce mail d’il y a trois semaines a peut-être aussi été suivi par un mail il y a une semaine qui dit “laisse tomber, j’ai trouvé une solution”. Ne vaut-il donc pas la peine de voir ce mail-là en premier?
A plus forte raison si vous êtes en copie d’une “discussion mail” à plusieurs, il vaut mieux voir l’état de la discussion aujourd’hui (qui est peut-être close) plutôt que de répondre d’abord au premier mail, puis au deuxième, etc. – pour ensuite découvrir que nos réponses sont inutiles parce que la situation a évolué entre-temps.
Il arrive aussi que l’on ait tellement de mails qu’on n’arrive pas à tout rattraper. Dans la plupart des cas de figure, ce n’est pas un désastre, pour autant que l’on traite d’abord les mails récents! Si un mail envoyé reste sans réponse et était important, la personne va se manifester à nouveau et donc se retrouver en haut de votre boîte de réception, et son mail sera traité.
Il vaut aussi la peine, avant de passer beaucoup de temps sur une ancienne demande, de vérifier avec l’expéditeur si celle-ci est toujours d’actualité.
At lunch my colleague ordered delivery for us. On her phone.
Of course I know this exists. But it hasn’t “worked” that well in Switzerland for all that long, and I think I’d never ordered food with an app. I felt like a fumbling doofus not knowing where to find the fries in the menu.
This got me thinking (and we had a chat around this topic with a bunch of my – quite – younger colleagues, and one my age).
The idea that you can easily and cheaply get food delivered is very new to me. This is not something we could do when I was young. I think I only really started ordering food during lockdown (when Quintus died, actually), and I only did it a handful of times. Maybe once before. But I call, speak to a human being, place my order. I don’t really feel confident doing it through a website.
Weird, huh?
We were also musing on why so many people seem to want paper versions of certain documents when a digital version can be sent instantly by e-mail (and printed, if need be). Some people just aren’t comfortable having important things on their phones. I recalled how long it took me (me!) to be comfortable travelling with only a “phone” version of my airline ticket. In all honesty, depending on where I’m going, I still am not really.
So, here’s a little list of stuff I do and don’t do with technology.
I use ebanking and cash transfer apps (I’m almost completely cashless)
I use an app to track my public transport use and bill me at the end of the day
I order(ed) books and CDs online from amazon, before I went completely digital
I buy plane and train tickets online (but am always slightly uneasy not carrying a print version when abroad)
I make concert reservations online
To book a restaurant, I’ll call them up
I chat and interact with people I “don’t know” online all the time
I’ve been meeting people “from the internets” for over twenty years (completely blasé about it)
I never managed to really get into snapchat or tiktok
I rarely print things, I tend to photograph paper stuff to digitally store it
I order groceries online when needed but I’d rather go into the store (when needed: post-lockdown, overworked)
I message people, rarely cold-call (except with family or purely utilitarian stuff, I generally schedule my calls)
I don’t order clothes online
I rarely print photos, they are first and foremost digital beings
I trust digital storage at least as much as physical storage
I know how to use a paper map
I navigate using google maps most of the time
I don’t have a CD or DVD player anymore
I have a Kindle and prefer most of my books as e-books
I type rather than write on pen and paper
I dictate to my phone regularly (my thumbs get fed up though I thumb-type really fast)
I rarely send people voice messages (never without consent – I hate receiving cold voice messages)
I have a location tracker on my cat, and home surveillance cameras (for the cats) but haven’t connected the cat-flap to the internet
When I was talking with my colleagues, I realised that the first phone I had which could usefully connect to the internet (through GPRS) was around 2007 or so (it wasn’t an iphone). I could check my mails and even Twitter. Load slow web pages that weren’t mobile-friendly. I was 33 in 2007. So until that age, I lived and functioned without a constant connection to the internet. And I’m realising, now, as years turn into decades, that I’m starting to see my age in my level of comfort with certain technology usages.
Sometime back I joined a pile of “Group/Page Admin Help” support groups on Facebook. As you may or may not know, I manage a rather busy and intense support group for diabetic cat owners on Facebook. One thing I would love to be able to do is identify members who haven’t posted in a given time-frame to check in on them.
We screen people who want to join the group through welcome questions, so every person who joins the group has a sick cat (a few exceptions). The thing with diabetic cats is that if you don’t do things right, you run the risk of ending up with a disaster. When those disasters happen at night or on week-ends (as they do), the group ends up having to deal with panicked owner and sometimes dying cat that the on-call vet doesn’t want to see (I guess they have their reasons). So in addition to wanting to be helpful to our members, we have a vested interest as a community in making sure that our members are actually using the group to follow best practices, keep their cat safe, and therefore avoid being the source of a midnight crisis.
This is just to give you a bit of background.
So what we do in my group is each member gets a personalised welcome publication when they join, with instructions to get started and pointers to our documentation. At the end of the week. all the people who joined during the week get a “group welcome” publication with some more info and links. (Think “onboarding”.) Two months later, another message (the first six months after diagnosis are critical, so two months in is a good time to get your act together if you haven’t yet). I used to do a “you’ve been here six months, wow!” group post too, but now I’ve moved it up to a year (the group turned two years old last January).
When I posted in these “admin support groups” to explain what we did and that I would like a way to identify inactive members, I was immediately piled upon (honestly there is no other word) by people telling me that they would quit a group which mentioned them like that in publications, that people should be allowed to lurk, etc. etc. I was Wrong to want to identify inactive members and Wrong to actively onboard new members.
I have to say I was a bit shocked at the judgement and outrage. Why do these people assume they understand my community better than I do? Anyway, it was a very frustrating experience.
For the record, there isn’t a way of identifying inactive members in a Facebook group.
Yesterday, somebody else posted the same question on one of those groups. They also wanted a way to identify inactive members to encourage them to participate, in a group based on active participation. Again, the onslaught of judgemental comments regarding the group’s rules and philosophy.
A la base, je déteste les messages vocaux. Mais j’ai appris à les aimer. Je vous raconte.
Premièrement, le message vocal souffre du défaut propre à l’audio et à la vidéo, par rapport au texte: on ne peut pas y jeter un rapide coup d’oeil ou l’écouter en diagonale. Soit on l’écoute, soit on ne l’écoute pas. L’écouter monopolise l’entier de notre attention. Et avant de l’écouter, on ne sait pas ce qu’il y a dedans.
Impossible de “trier”, de décider s’il mérite ou non une consultation immédiate, s’il va nous remuer ou simplement nous donner une information anodine. Le message vocal, comme la séquence audio ou vidéo, est simple à produire, mais impose à celui qui le reçoit une plus grande charge pour y accéder.
Deuxièmement, et ça c’est un élément personnel, comme je suis malentendante, écouter un message vocal représente potentiellement toute une gymnastique: ôter mes appareils, trouver mon mains libres, etc. Et il y a toujours la crainte que la qualité audio ne soit pas suffisamment bonne et que je doive réécouter des bouts.
Voilà pour le message vocal “haine”: celui qui débarque sans explications ni annonce, imprévu, une boîte noire qui réclame que je lâche tout pour je-ne-sais-quoi.
Et l’amour alors?
Le message vocal, c’est de la voix. On entend l’autre. On s’exprime parfois plus facilement qu’à l’écrit. Pour raconter quelque chose, ou rentrer dans des subtilités, c’est génial. C’est moins prenant qu’un appel, mais il y a une proximité similaire. Il y a des gens avec qui j’ai des conversations par messages vocaux. J’adore.
Mais le pré-requis, c’est le consentement. Vérifier que je vais pouvoir écouter, par exemple. C’est aussi le message vocal envoyé avec un peu de contexte: “je te raconte ça, tu écouteras à l’occasion”. C’est le message vocal poli, au final, qui tient compte de l’autre, et pas juste de la grande facilité qu’il y a à le produire.
[fr] Réflexion sur la place du blog, de facebook, et de la solitude.
Not 20 years ago. But not yesterday either.
My number of blogging years is going to start to look like 20. Well, 18 this summer, but that looks an awful lot like 20 around the corner. My old Quintus is not quite as old as this blog.
We all know that blogging before Twitter and Facebook was quite different from what it is now. “Social Media” made blogging seem tedious, and as we became addicted to more easily available social interaction, we forgot to stop and write. Some of us have been hanging in there. But most of those reading have left the room: consumption is so much easier in the click-baity world of Facebook.
Facebook didn’t invent click-bait. I remember the click-bait postings and the click-bait blogs, way back when. When the nunber of a comments on a post were an indicator of a blog’s success, and therefore quality, and therefore of the blogger’s worth. And then we lost Google Reader. Not that I was ever a huge user of any kind of newsreader, but many were. So Twitter and Facebook, our algorithm machines, became the sources to lead us to blog postings, and pretty much everything else we read.
As the current “delete Facebook” wave hits, I wonder if there will be any kind of rolling back, at any time, to a less algorithmic way to access information, and people. Algorithms came to help us deal with scale. I’ve long said that the advantage of communication and connection in the digital world is scale. But how much is too much?
Facebook is the nexus of my social life right now. But I’ve always viewed my blog as its backbone, even when I wasn’t blogging much. This blog is mine. I control it. It’s less busy than my facebook presence, to the point where I almost feel more comfortable posting certain things here, in a weird “private by obscurity” way, even though this is the open internet. But the hordes are not at the doors waiting to pounce, or give an opinion. Comments here are rare, and the bigger barrier to entry is definitely a feature.
I’ve found it much easier to write here since I decided to stop caring so much, stop putting so much energy in the “secondary” things like finding a catchy or adequately descriptive title (hey Google), picking the right categories, and tagging abundantly. All that is well and good, except when it detracts from writing. It makes wading through my posts more difficult, I’m aware of that. But oh well.
During my two-week holiday, I didn’t disconnect completely. That wasn’t the point. But I definitely pulled back from social interaction (online and off, it was a bit of a hermit fortnight). I spent more time alone, more time searching for boredom. I checked in on the little francophone diabetic cat group I manage, as well as FDMB, a little. I checked my notifications. I posted a little. But I didn’t spend that much time going through my feed.
And you know what? After a week or ten days or so, my facebook feed started giving me the same feeling as daytime TV. Or cinema ads. I stopped watching TV years ago. I watch the odd movie or series, but I’m not exposed to the everyday crap or ads anymore. And when I go to the cinema, the ads seem so stupid. I’m not “in there” anymore. This mild deconnection gave me a sense of distance with my facebook newsfeed that I was lacking.
I caught myself (and still catch myself) diving in now and again. Scroll, scroll, like, scroll, like, tap, scroll, like, comment, scroll, scroll, scroll. What exactly am I doing here, keeping my brain engaged when I could be doing nothing? Or something else? I think my holiday gave me enough of a taste of how much I need solitude and doing-nothingness that I now feel drawn to it.
I’m not leaving Facebook. But if it were to disappear, I’d survive. I’d regroup here, read more blogs, listen to more podcasts (hah!). It helps that I’m looking at my immediate and medium-term professional future as an employee. And that I’ve recently experienced that forum-based communities could be vibrant, and in some ways better than Facebook groups.
![PSA: Don’t Use Your Mobile Number For 2FA Or Password Reset [en]](https://i0.wp.com/climbtothestars.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/12/perfect-scam-banner.jpg?fit=1140%2C655&ssl=1)
![Stop aux virus des idées! [en]](https://i0.wp.com/climbtothestars.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/11/Screenshot-2023-11-11-at-09.20.47-1.png?fit=1200%2C659&ssl=1)
