Unreliability of internet tools

It is a bit frustrating that internet tools, which purport to be reliable, robot, real time driven, are so flawed.

Take Alexa, for instance, which ranks sites according to popularity. The information there is basically all bogus. Either that, or it gets updated every six months. Which makes one wonder about the efficacy of such a tool, given the internet world is supposed to be ever changing.

One thing is for sure. People believe Facebook is such a wonderful place to make blogs and such popular. This is also bogus. I have over the limit of 5000 friends in FB, and whenever I post a new blog entry, I might get 2 or 3 visits, tops!

Plus, links in Facebook do not do anything at all for one's google ranking. The system is closed, so whatever you get from there, that is it.

There is so much baloney going on the internet (and it has been so since day one), that it gets disheartening sometimes.
 

Facebook, the new twitter, a whole lotta sex and celebrities

I do not hide my dislike for twitter. To me, it is the greatest waste of time EVER. Sure, there might be some good uses for certain businesses. By and large, though, it is full of celebrities, or celebrity wannabes, offering little or no content of real interest to humanity.

A lot of titillation, sexual innuendo, waste of grey matter. No real interaction is offered. And people are deceived into thinking that most celebrities are actually posting things, when it is really PR people. What a waste!

The problem is that Facebook is becoming the same.

A few years ago, before twitter began to be promoted as the "next" internet thing, Facebook was a place where there was true interaction among real people.

The problem is that now it is cluttered by a celebrities galore, some true, others fake. Plus the hundreds of thousand (millions?) sexy profiles that were supposedly prohibited, but spring about all over.

People are so silly. They believe that the celebrities are really posting things, when in most cases, it is PR people. Silly, silly, naive people! Celebs are out having a ball with the money you give them, not interested in what you think about their supposed latest action!

When a celebrity "writes" an update in Facebook, immediately, dozens if not hundreds of likes, comments and shares ensue.

If you are a nobody, forget it, unless you put a silly picture, a baby, animal or sexy woman photo, you get no feedback.

Thus, celebrities have by their sheer volume, destroyed another good Internet platform.

It may be time for me to just walk away from the thing.

Punished for success by Facebook

One is supposed to be rewarded for success.

When there is money involved, such might be the case. When there isn't, you get punished.

Anybody who had close to the 5000 Facebook friends had a surprise a few days ago. Suddenly, the number of friends of increased by a few hundred.

It took me a while to figure out this sudden increase in popularity.

It seems that FB has done us the favor of including in our list of friends people who had closed their profiles, a few quite a long time ago. These were revived as friends, although they don't even exist in FB anymore, at least not in the guise of the former profile.

That would not be so troublesome, except that I cannot add people I want to add anymore, until I remove these five hundred deceased profile friends.

Additionally, doing it in timeline involves a lot of work. After one month, I think I managed to remove about 60. You have to go through the whole list, and find the closed profiles.

I suppose a lot of latte can do this to you.

So much for details.

All things to all people or a whole lotta hypocrisy going on

One of the most ridiculous and defining moments of the nineties was when Bill Clinton attempted to convince the world that oral sex was not sex, only penetration was. I suppose he was successful, thus, we have been since then redifining sex, marriage, underage, consent, sex act, and a number of other things.

In the 2000's, it is no secret that many websites that emerged might entertain monopolistic intentions, thus, becoming a one-stop shop, all things to all people. You know, where you check the news, the weather, find information, photographs, sounds, movie information, sex and violence. Ooops! Yes, sex and violence.

No one wants to admit, but our society (maybe all societies) is simply fascinated by sex and violence. And given our fascination, we attempt to redifine what constitutes graphic or written representation of sex and violence, moreover, what is legal.

Yet, there are things such as nice and bad neighborhoods on the internet. A lot of hosting companies do not accept sex sites because they can make their servers be tagged as "bad neighborhoods". Yet, sex sites continue to spring about all over the place, and sex text and pictures still drive most of the traffic on the web.

Thus remains the question. To be all things to all people, you cannot leave sex (and violence) out of the picture. Yet, to be all things to all people, you have to protect the children against sex (and violence) as well.

What to do? Simple, I suppose write a few policies to make believe something is being done about the matter, and then, don't do anything.

Facebook, the most successful social site of the world, has policies pertaining not only to portrayal of sex and violence, as well as hate speech, trade mark infringement, impersonation and a host other naughty things. And it has a mechanism for reporting such infringements, including sexual content. 

Do not waste your time reporting, you might be frustrated. Let it be, let the children be exposed to these things.

I have written a few posts about the Subscriber Suggestions that are fed to profiles daily. I visited quite a few of the suggestions, to check whether there was anything interesting, and came to the conclusion that a vast number of these profiles are not real people, rather, simple mini Light Porno sites. I reported a few, to no avail. I suppose the resourceful profile owners decided to place the naughty pictures inside albums, rather than the cover, and there is no place to report albums. As the covers are OK, the profile is deemed OK by the latte-drinking individual who is quickly reading the nuisance report and getting ready to check his iphone for any text messages for the 100th time in the day.

Then yesterday I got this suggestion, and it looked from the profile photo that this time I could probably get one of these removed. It became a matter of honor to me, getting at least one of them profiles removed. The picture portrayed a woman, with the camera focusing on her behind covered by a tiny thong. 

Then there was the cover photo.

Two almost fully unclad women, one on top of the other. The one on top held a bare breast of the one laying down, who had this orgasmic face and a finger inside her mouth. For sure they would consider this risque.  

Guess what, I got a response from the site saying nothing was wrong with the picture, I suppose for them this is not sex, it is a pic-nic in the park! In fairness, they provided me a chance to state my case further. Which I did.

I invited them to look at the only album on the profile, the cover photo album! There was a picture of a machine gun (see, violence there somewhere), and a lot of cash thrown all over. The rest were all pictures of women in different stages of disrobing. In one picture, three women are shot from behind, wearing teeeeeeeeeeeeny thongs, and you could clearly see their anuses. In another, two women hold each other, with huge breasts allowing partial view of their nipples. Another picture portrayed a woman wearing purple tights, shot from the bottom up, with her finger clearly up her you know what. These were the most blatant cases, but the rest of the pictures where all sexy, and you could see enough of the women's private zones, plenty of shades or outlines of nipples and pubic hair to qualify these as sexual content or nudity.

Guess what again. The profile is still up.

I suppose for FB sexual content has to involve a man and a woman having sex (funny, marriages don't require that anymore, but the definition of sexual content does). Clear rectum shots are not sexual, nor is shooting pudenda covered by tights, clearly depicting female masturbation, or hot women fondling each other's bare breasts. So I suppose, the Clinton doctrine as to what constitute sex applies to FB as well.

I am not the Beatles' "Mean Mr. Mustard", always shouting at something obscene. If you want to see pornography and women (or men) in all stages of nakedness on the internet, there are tons of sites to see, perhaps millions, who knows. Facebook is supposed to be a safe zone for children, in fact, any child can befriend this profile, and be feed these titillating pictures.

The hypocrisy is having the so-called policy in place and a mechanism for reporting. 

I for one, will no longer waste my time. I've had it. My attempt to block the subscriber suggestions was unsuccessful, for I suppose, there is no such a thing. In that sense, the ball is in my court, I will simply ignore the suggestions henceforth. 

Facebook's ill advised suggestions

A few times, friends have reported that their Facebook profiles had been removed or suspended, allegedly because they had put some risqué photographs in their profiles. They all swear the photos were not sexy at all, so I suppose, Facebook's criteria for sexiness is rather strong.

Let me rephrase, was rather strong.

After reaching a threshold of 5000 friends, you can no longer add "friends".  FB changed what are considered friends (it seems that every LIKE I had ever put on FB became a friend overnight, and they are nowhere to be found), so I am no longer able to add people I do want to add.

However, I am able to subscribe to people.

Honestly, I do not see any reason for subscribing to unknown, uninteresting people with whom I will have no interaction. Actually, I don't see a reason to do it even with people most folks find interesting, such as celebs, artists, athletes and pols. For that, there is twitter, which I loath. For me Facebook is about interacting, and if somebody is not interested (and will not receive) my updates, I am not interested in theirs.

Call me grumpy.

Notwithstanding the fact that 80 people found "moi" to be interesting to subscribe to (wonder where they got that idea), I have yet to "subscribe" to anybody.

Which does not stop Facebook from suggesting tons of "people" for me to subscribe to.

Just for arguments` sake, I began to click on the profiles they were feeding me, to see what Facebook was suggesting I subscribe to. And I was amazed.

Most of the suggestions I am being fed are soft-porn profiles, which only obvious "raison d'etre" is titillation, barely hidden pudenda on display. In some cases, one can almost do gynecological examinations of the women portrayed. Downright nudity is rare, however, silicon-boosted tits hang about all over the place, strategically covered by an arm, and orgasmic faces are the norm. Shots of derrieres clad in skimpy thongs are all over the place. Even worse. Some of the bodacious "women" look extremely underage, so this might be very close to underage pornography.

Some of the profiles do contain suggestions to visit outside sites.

What exactly has changed? How come FB was so strict about this issue, and now, not only allows, but also promotes these profiles? Does the stock market floating have anything to do with this?

I am doing what I can, which is reporting as many of them as they are fed.

Whether anything will be done, there remains a huge question mark.

By the way, how about the no company profile regulation?

Why do I bother?

We are all equal, however, some seem more equal than others.