Facebook: Social networking or engineering?
In case you needed another reason to dislike social networking (social engineering) sites, Facebook has been caught censoring conservative ads that promoted signing a petition against the stimulus bill. The first excuse Facebook gave to American’s for Prosperity (who placed the ad) is that it violated two of their rules.
First, Facebook claims the ad broke rule 8 which bans ads that are “offensive, profane, vulgar, obscene or inappropriate” and/or “defamatory, libelous, slanderous and/or unlawful”. I find this particularly amusing seeing that wording pretty much describes the stimulus bill in the first place. Ironic, isn’t it? Well, even more ironic is that this ad was banned but, in the past few weeks, I have been literally spammed with “Get your Obama stimulus check” ads on Facebook. That’s correct, you voted for him, now you can cash in. Amusing since the stimulus (as of the time of writing) has not been passed. Not to mention, why would the government advertise on Facebook to get you to claim your share of the government handout? Don’t you think they will send it in the mail like they did with the Bush stimulus? This is an obvious scam ad and a testament to how gullible and ill informed the Facebook generation must be. This blatant scam is okay, but a petition against the most massive spending bill in our history is not. Interesting.
In addition, they claim it broke rule 9. This bans ads that are basically political hate speech. Hmmm… we could be cluing in on something here. As many conservatives predicted before the election, any dissenting opinions against the Obama regime would be considered hate speech. The far left has been making many inroads to enact censorship on conservative views in various ways (fairness doctrine, anyone?). Banning the ad based on this rule seems to be an admission that Facebook enacts censorship based on the political views of liberal management. Social networking, or social engineering?
However, when CNS news started investigating the issue and bringing it to the masses, Facebook changed their story. They claimed that they removed the ad based on user complaints. This leads one to believe that this is a case of liberal flag spamming. This means that liberal activists would click on those little thumbs down icons below the Facebook ads and mark them as offensive. This is somewhat likely. However, this does not clear Facebook’s name. Flag spamming happens on both sides. During the election, I was constantly spammed with Obama ads. After getting sick of seeing these, I started tagging these ads as not relevant. This did nothing. After more extensive exposure to the Obamaspam, myself, a few conservative friends, and probably many others, started marking them as offensive. Isn’t it interesting that a company that touts how good they are at delivering relevant targeted ads, sent a barrage of liberal propaganda ads to conservative Republicans? Anyways, I never saw the Obama campaign ads banned based on flag spamming. To the contrary, they were selectively ignoring their own “relevant ads” claims and the individual tagging of the users to further the liberal agenda. Again, social networking, or social engineering?
Actually, there is a better solution to flag spamming… clicking on the ads! I’m sure I cost the Obama campaign a few bucks in clicks. It was a drop in the ocean to his political machine, but hey, I feel a little better.
In the end, Facebook backed down under the media attention. They now claim that the American’s for Prosperity ad got mixed up in the middle of banning of all the stimulus fraud ads. Funny seeing those scam ads ran for weeks and months uninterrupted by Facebook. It wasn’t until the legitimate stimulus petition ad was brought to their attention that they decided it was time to go on a banning spree. Even today, I logged into Facebook to find a new assault of questionable ads. It seems getting rich quick off of Google is the current Facebook scam-de-jour. I don’t see Facebook rushing to investigate and ban these.
So as conservatives, should we avoid social engineering sites like Facebook and MySpace? Do they bring you closer to friends or are they just a means of keeping up on the latest dirt and gossip? Should conservatives build more of a presence on these networks despite the blatant liberal bias? Please comment, I’d love to hear what you think.
Just another reason why I am the only person without a Facebook account. Or at least it seems that way. The power of being unplugged.
It’s always about social engineering. Business is all about it. Manipulate people for personal agendas and for money-making reasons.
And even if a business started out with good intentions, someone along the line is going to infiltrate and control. Information tracking is powerful.
Nothing is 100% efficient (or unbiased in this case).
I believe we really don’t need Facebook or any other site to socialize. I walk outside to talk to neighbors face to face, call on a phone to meet up with friends, write a letter to someone, drive somewhere to meet people, go to work, etc. It makes me feel alive.
We don’t need to gossip either. That’s a waste of time. So why bother reading it? Who cares? Why aren’t we more concerned with becoming better people through human to human contact? Edifying each other? Learning how to relate to one another. . . .trying to grow up?
We all choose how we spend our free time. I’d like to think I spend mine constructively without a Facebook account.
Yet, acknowledging Facebook gives it power. So, I’ll stop here.