Than and Now: Facebook Controversies
MAMA against Meta for SAFE: Sextortion: Pizza Gate Conspiracy, then: I commented and sent to NYT: Meta's obligation
Meta, formerly as Facebook, has made controversies evolve against itself over time and thus over years, with no intention nor malicious plan in its part. I have been interested in Facebook, Zuckerberg’s epical project, which seems, however, to get a launch with no epical intention nor projectile cautions on its running course at the beginning. Facebook marked the advent of social media, prophetical and oracular, as if a pivotal prediction of the upcoming internet dominance over users’ minds and habits, thus their daily routine for core activities. Twitter (now X) appeared about (close to) 10 years later than Facebook, I count. These days, there are so many others and TikTok is ringing its loud bell onto Congress. Surely, many things have happened and are happening around and within social media platforms. Nevertheless, Facebook (now Meta) could be said as the model platform of the model beginning for all.
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Below is the link to “Mothers’ group protests in front of Meta’s offices, Calling for Big Tech regulation” by Kat Tenbarge (NBC News: 3/22/24). All incidents having occurred in young lives of victims are too sad. What’s behind those who are motivated for such acts is too terrible even to imagine. The problems pointed out at is however, not merely human causes, but algorithms as metaphorical motor of data efficiency. If AI is involved actively in, the proof evidence of the absence of capability to understand humans and life.
The term used in the article, sex extortion, or sextortion, was new to me. Obviously, it is more than harassment, but extortion. If the act is well organized in order to push a victim to the edge until what is aimed is obtained, it will be very hard for one to escape the trap or nearly impossible, depending on circumstances. Unspeakably vicious. Doers utilize the data efficiency of Meta platform and their faces, identities are hidden. The protests going onto Meta to cut the source are much more than understandable.
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In the end of 2016, Donald Trump was elected for a new President of the US. That was also the year when news media began to focus their attention on fake news more intensively than they used to do so before. The Pizza Gates Conspiracy was then a big piece of news. A man with a gun traveled to the pizza restaurant in question to see whether children were sex trafficking there. This can be properly described as the advent of most splashy controversy for Facebook. I electronically responded to The New York Times articles and opinion as a reader around that time.
Here is a screenshot of my comment (sent: 12/28/2016 at 16:56 from my email) on “Facebook’s problem Isn’t Fake News - It’s the Rest of the Internet” by John Herman (NTY Magazine: 12/22/2016)
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Below, on the other hand, more directly on The pizza gates conspiracy theory to respond. Those screenshots are my electronic submission (12/6/16 at 11:37 from my email) to the NYT article “Man Held in Gunfire at Pizzeria Gate Fake News Stories” by Eric Lipton (12/6/16). My comment was as short as one paragraph and it had no my name in the end.
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Then, on 04/19/17 at 09:52 by my email, I replied to “Why Facebook Keeps Beating Every Rival: It’s the Network” by Farhad Manjoo (NYT: 4/19/17) as follows. Manjoo was a tech section writer at that time. He was promoted(?) to a columnist later.
(The duplicated part is to show the authenticity of two screenshots as connectable)
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Back onto Pizza Gate, I have one more electronic submission (12/11/16 at 08:43 from my email) to “Dissecting the #Pizze Gate Conspiracy” by Gregor Aisch, Jon Hung and Cecilia Kang (NYT: 12/10/16)
(The duplicated part is to show two screenshots as to be connected. In those days, I politely began my submission with “Dear Editor(s)”. The submission lacked my name in the end).
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Around 2017 onward toward 2017 plus few years, users’ indignations were on data breach or privacy leaks on Facebook. As for fake news, Zuckerberg was famously denied first, then later admitted and regretted his earlier comments for the denial, then propagated the ecosystem on the platform. Honestly, I do not dislike Zuckerberg precisely for his bright nature. I also should have a cluster of my comments on Facebook by electronic submissions, in response to NYT articles and columns to raise a possibility of the best form of popular democracy to be spread out on social media, in the best case as a hypothesis, which is a utopian theory in a view of objectivity, however. Because not all submission records I have kept, as well as I do not have enough energy to let me dive into the depth of my email; my screenshots section will not continue in this post. So, I end as:
I strongly hope Meta resolve all problems currently going on as soon as possible, because the company ought to do.