In recent months you may have heard the term “FANG stocks” to refer to a particular group of stocks. More specifically, a particular group of high tech, high performing stocks. Those stocks are Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (hence F-A-N-G). Of course, the parent company for Google is now Alphabet, so these really should be called FANA stocks.
Following the revelations in the past week that political data analysis outfit Cambridge Analytica somehow managed to harvest the private data of more than 50 million Facebook users, and without the users being alerted, there have been increasing calls for Facebook users to leave Facebook for more secure climes.
Investors and influencers of Facebook and Apple have openly challenged and beseeched the tech giants to acknowledge and address the damage being done to children, adults, and even the very social fabric of society by these companies ignoring, and even intentionally taking advantage of, the addictive nature of Facebook and other social media platforms, and how open to tampering they are, as well as the addictive nature of the iPhone and other electronic devices.
Sean Parker, who joined Facebook as president and an original founder back in 2004, just five months after it was launched as a student directory, stunned many when he stated last week, during an Axios event, that Facebook was intentionally designed to exploit a vulnerability in human psychology. That vulnerability, says Parker, is a “social-validation feedback loop”.
Facebook has rolled out a new ‘safety’ feature, the first instance of which is in partnership with the government of Australia: you upload nude pictures of yourself to them, and, they say, it will help stop revenge porn. We see you checking the date of this article, and no, it’s not April 1st.
If you use Instagram, and have a Facebook page or a Facebook group, at some point you may have wondered how to share something that you’ve posted on Instagram with your Facebook page or Facebook group (or both). It’s very easy to share something that you post on Instagram with your personal Facebook timeline, but a Facebook group or page, not so much. Perhaps at some point, given that Facebook now owns Instagram, Facebook will add the ability to post from Instagram to a Facebook page or group, but for now this automated workaround works really well.
Facebook has taken out a full-page “Tips for Spotting False News” ad in British newspapers, telling people how to spot and avoid fake news ahead of the UK general election. Facebook has also been deleting tens of thousands of fake Facebook accounts that were created solely to spew false news stories, particularly ahead of elections. In fact, Facebook has said that ahead of this week’s election in France, they removed more than 30,000 accounts that were spreading fake news stories that could have (and were likely intended to) influence that election.
If you are wanting to turn off the new Facebook Messenger Day, you’re not alone. Messenger My Day is Facebook’s answer to SnapChat My Stories; it’s also annoying the heck out of a lot of Facebook Messenger users, with its ‘Add to your day’ in your face at the top of the screen. So, if you don’t want to ‘add to my day’, this is for you. Unfortunately, the answer to how to turn off Messenger Day is ‘you can’t’..BUT, you can get rid of it entirely. Here’s how.
Once again, Facbook has “helpfully” added a new “feature” – this time it’s a pop-up window showing you new comments that are posted to something that you posted on your timeline. Here’s how to get rid of it.
Have you ever looked in your Facebook photos and realized that there are pictures in there that aren’t yours – in fact you may have no idea how those photos got into your Facebook photos? It says that they are photos of you, but there may be pictures in there that have no relation to you whatsoever, other than that you were tagged in the photo by whomever actually posted the photo. So how do you get those tagged photos out of your albums? How do you delete a tagged photo on Facebook or, put another way, how do you remove your name from photos in which you have been tagged? How do you untag yourself from someone else’s picture? It turns out that it is easy to remove yourself and your name from tagged photos. What is hard is figuring out where that option is hidden (hint, it’s actually hidden in plain sight).
Don’t you just hate it when you get included in a mass Facebook email message from someone on Facebook, and then lots of other people start replying, and you get all of those replies? When you find yourself swimming in Facebook message replies to a Facebook message thread that you never even requested, do you find yourself wondering how to unsubscribe to the message thread – how to stop Facebook messages – how to stop receiving all those replies? How to leave the conversation? Well, here’s how.
Face recognition on Facebook – there has been a lot written about the privacy invasion that is the facial recognition Facebook recently unleashed on its users, which pops up uninvited, urging tagging Facebook photos that you upload, tagging all of the Facebook users that it recognizes in your images. The photo facial recognition software that Facebook has foisted on you allows Facebook face recognition of anybody who has not opted out of it (and let’s face it, few people know how to opt out of it – in fact few people even know that the Facebook recognition photo tagger exists – until they run smack into it).
Are you wondering “How do I find a list of all of my Facebook groups?” or “How do I leave a Facebook group?” Now, it may be that all you have to do is look at the left-hand side of your Facebook timeline for a list of groups to which you belong. But some people, for privacy, don’t display that, and then they don’t know how to find a list of all of their Facebook groups. Here’s how.