Social Media 📍

A look at social media and the issues surrounding this technology.

📽️ Videos

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez left Facebook. Just like me – CNN

|

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez left Facebook. Just like me – CNN

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the most prolific and powerful politicians on social media, with millions of followers who hang on her every post and tweet. She's said goodbye to Facebook, though. On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez, 29, told Yahoo News podcast Skullduggery that she had given up her personal account on the world's largest social network (the Democratic representative still has a professional presence, with a verified profile and plenty of political ads running on Facebook). She called social media a "public health risk" that results in issues like increased isolation, depression, addiction, escapism and anxiety. "I think it poses these issues to everyone," the New York congresswoman said. She said she's started to impose "little rules" on herself in other social domains such as Twitter, which she tries to stay off on the weekends. She didn't elaborate on why, precisely, she left Facebook (FB) specifically. But the website has come to embody many of the ills of social media.

How to Do Nothing author Jenny Odell on resisting the pull of Instagram – Vox

|

How to Do Nothing author Jenny Odell on resisting the pull of Instagram – Vox

Odell’s proposed course of action doesn’t have much use for the now-trendy “Time Well Spent” movement (which relies on more tech to solve the problem of too much tech) or apps that inform you when you’ve wasted too much of your day on social media, or any solution proposed by the same Silicon Valley wunderkinds who profited from getting us into this mess. The goal of those projects, she argues, is to guide you into repurposing your time in a way that’s productive. They’re purportedly about wellness, but they’re tinged with the stink of capitalist always-on hustle culture. She doesn’t even want to get rid of social media, just redo it. Just get us all some peace.

Finding the Right Balance with Social Media.

|

I continue to work to fine the right balance between social media and my personal life. I no longer look at social media while I am home or at work, and only check it once a day or less, mostly to keep up with what my clients are posting on their accounts. I’ve decided to continue to occasionally update my Facebook Page, but that’s no longer a top priority of mine — I update things on an ad-hoc basis. I do continue working on my blog, but that’s more of a personal space that I control not full of flashy headlines, click bait, and overly ideological media.

NPR

|

Passwords From Millions Of Facebook Users Were Stored Insecurely : NPR

"Unknown to hundreds of millions of Facebook users, their passwords were sitting in plain text inside the company's data storage, leaving them vulnerable to potential employee misuse and cyberattack for years."

I can't believe that they couldn't be bothered to use at least MD5 hashes for the passwords. It's not like MD5 hashes are particularly CPU or memory intensive to implement.