My second Facebook thoughtcrime in two weeks!

Sat Apr 20 22:55:12 PDT 2019

On 4/20/19 9:39 PM, Punk wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Apr 2019 18:11:53 -0400
> Steve Kinney <admin at pilobilus.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> me: > > 	Then you have rampant censorship at the hands of the asshole users themselves. So the vast majority of groups are heavily censored and just echo chambers. 
>>
> 
>> Yup.  However, those echo chambers do have their potential uses:  One
>> must always preach to the choir, else how will they get on the same page
>> and work together effectively at show time?
> 
> 
> 	Even if the group has a legitimate purpose, censorship is unacceptable. But what commonly happens is that censorship allows assholes to be unaccountable and fraudsters to go unchallenged. And unsurprisinly censorship is one the core 'features' of facebook. People LOVE to block and ban their betters because they know they can't never hope to refute them.

Legitimate:  In accordance with the law.  Latin root "leige" meaning
"Lord" or, in practical terms, one's owner.  Probably not a good
baseline for anarchist value judgments.

:o)

>> As an example, The Facebook has enabled me to distribute hundreds of
>> copies of this package of documents to receptive readers:
>>
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20190110192354/http://pilobilus.net/strategic_conflict_docs_intro.html
>>
>>
>> I think that alone makes screwing around with The Facebook a net win.
> 
> 
> 	Well, I don't think that's sound and complete accounting. 

Customer satisfaction, on the customer's own chosen terms, provides the
final bottom line.  As long as I continue to consider The Facebook
useful, I will continue to use it.

>>
>>> 	Then you're running tons of javascript malware, including a keylogger. Because of course the whole point of facebook is to automatically spy on you with milliseconds resolution. 
>>
>> Javascript?  Optional.  Replace the www in any Facebook address with m,
>> for the legacy mobile version.  I learned this exists when searching for
>> a convenient way to download videos posted directly on The Facebook - in
>> the mobile version, just right-click and save-as.  Since then, mobile
>> has become my default mode.
> 
> 
> 	I knew about the 'mobile' mode though it was rather crippled at the time I used it. But if you manage to use facebook without running JS, that's good and congrats. 
> 
> 	Also I assumed that by now that mode didn't exist anymore, or it required JS since 'modern' retard phones happen to have a lot of memory and fast multicore processors...for the very purpose of running JS malware. Funny that the NSA hasn't updated m.facebook.com yet...

m.facebook.com would exist to support for legacy systems and software,
and incidentally provide accessibility for visually impaired users.  I
don't expect it to go away any time soon.

>>
>> The "fancy" version of The Facebook requires JS from facebook.com and
>> fbcdn.com ["facebook content distribution network"].  Block Javascript
>> from all other sites while on the facebook.com domain and the thing
>> works faster and better, without 3rd party user tracking.  
> 
> 
> 	Yeah well. I don't think there's any 3rd party tracking in facebook. I'd assume facebook.com doesn't serve googletagmanager.com malware.  And in the absurd case that they did, blocking google doesn't solve the problem of running facebook's malware. 

I just loaded up The Facebook and switched off all filters.  On The
Facebook, NoScript indicated that the page had loaded a script from
google.com.

[...]

>> The Facebook's pages load a keylogger?  I would like to hear more about
>> that; so far I have seen no evidence of one.
> 
> 	IIRC when you 'tagged' 'friends', the tags were automatically recognized (or there even was autocomplete?) - Thing is, when you typed a message, there was a piece of code looking for 'friends' names. That means that *every time* a key-press event is triggered, some code runs. In other words, a keylogger. Whether the code saves all the key presses and sends them to the NSA I don't know, but it would be trivial for it to do that. 
> 
> 	I'm not sure if there was some sort of spell checker as well or other similar feature that required key press events to be processed in real time. I think there was but I can't recall the  details. 
> 
> 	Bottom line of course is : once you run malware from something like facebook you can (and should) assume the worst. 

That would be Javascript all right:  A tangled mess that sometimes slows
the browser down to a crawl.  I only /rarely/ shift out of "mobile"
mode.  But a keylogger "logs" keystrokes.  The speed at which The
Facebook populates autocompleted "suggestions" seems to indicate a
script that compares strings after the last space to a preloaded list on
the client side, not traffic to and from The Facebook itself.  And
presumably, one would intend to transmit anything typed in a Facebook
web interface to The Facebook anyway...

Here's a fun thing though:  The Facebook steals e-mail addresses in
transit.  One of mine was sold to spammers within minutes, from a PDF
file sent via "personal" message.  That was my mistake.

They also steal the passwords that go with user e-mail addresses, when
they can, through social engineering:

When I signed up for a Facebook account a few years ago, they pestered
me daily for months:  Asking for the password to the e-mail account I
gave them as my contact address.  Their electronic begging letter said
they would use it harvest the e-mail account's address book, so they
could spam everyone in it with invitations to contact me on Facebook.
Naturally, I laughed at that and kept the password out of their busy
little hands.  Eventually they gave up.

Turns out a LOT of people must have laughed at that, because later The
Facebook started asking for new users' e-mail passwords as part of
"confirming" any new account that someone was setting up.  Then, in what
sounds like an act of mockery, they displayed the users' contact lists
to them was they were harvested.  You can't make this shit up --- or at
least, I didn't:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/18/facebook_hoovered_up_15m_address_books_without_permission/

Do you think they may have used all those passwords for other things
too, such as data mining the contents of those e-mail accounts for
market research purposes, the better to target their advertising?

Taking advantage of helpless people (such asking for AND GETTING
someone's e-mail account password) presents a typical example of what
The Facebook does:  A vendor of amusement and communications to
the public, and of the public's supposedly private data to all comers
who can afford their rates.

Also, a subsidiary of the U.S. Intelligence Community:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGdWsxHJlM

>>> 	It should also be self-evident that nobody is ever going to be able to use a NSA-govcorp bulletin board to attack NSA-govcorp in any meaningful way. While you managed to inform a dozen people about the real nature of the society they live in, govcorp used facebook to disinform and manipulate 12 million people (or some such ratio between benefits and harm caused).
>>
>> That strikes me as a case of "making the perfect the enemy of the good."
> 
> 
> 	So you are saying that facebook is 'good'?  - I could kinda rest my case here =P

I would refer readers to an earlier comment I made about anarchists who
refuse to use the State's resources against the State's interests...

:o)

> 	There isn't any global collapse of the economic system. What's going on is the **exact opposite**. The global, fascist economic system known as multinational govcorp is getting more automated and totalitarian by the minute (things like facebook playing a central role in the process).

Have you looked at geophysics and material economics much lately?

The material resources necessary to sustain post-industrial civilization
have stretched thinner every year since the 1980s and the utilization
costs (in energy) of what remains has risen fast - the cheap, easy to
get stuff already got used.  Potable water, phosphates, topsoil,
petrochemical fuels, copper...  We do have an abundant and rising supply
of demand, as exponential population growth continues.

Global warming continues at a brisk pace.  Drivers include annual
methane emissions from former northern hemisphere permafrost bogs, and
massive, newly discovered and Arctic sea floor blowout craters with more
on the way.  Methane traps heat WAY better than carbon dioxide, and we
have unlocked the storehouse.

Warming oceans hold less dissolved oxygen, and anaerobic bacteria have
started reclaiming old territory already, poisoning it with hydrogen
sulphide.  "Alarmist" global warming projections do not yet include the
impact of the constant and accelerating rise of atmospheric methane.
Take a peek at the Permian Extinction...

>> The networks
>> enable exponential propagation of ideas and activities 
> 
> 
> 	What you are saying seems clearly unrealistic. The NSA NETWORKS allow exponential control of ideas and activities. That's what's going on.
> 
> 	You know, just like you suggested a few times  that I 'might be' helping the enemy, from my point of view that's what you are doing here to some extent by naively assuming you can beat them at their game using their surveillance tools. 

I do not recall ever suggesting that I might be "helping the enemy."  As
a rule I don't have enemies; that kind of thinking leads to irrational
behavior and cumulative strategic losses.  Example:  Asserting that I
naively assume I can beat the State at its own game.  That looks like
Name Calling and a Strawman attack in one sentence.

I do have some skill in semantic games; you may notice that my posts in
this thread do not make use of the words is, are, was, were, am, be,
been, or variations on / contractions for same.  Called E-Prime, this
technique makes clear communication easier, and losing arguments harder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

:o)

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