Icosian Reflections

…a tendency to systematize and a keen sense

that we live in a broken world.

IN  WHICH Ross Rheingans-Yoo—a sometime economist, trader, artist, expat, poet, EA, and programmer—writes on things of int­erest.

Something's Rotten in the State of Facebook

content warning: domestic terrorism

A friend posted the following on Wednesday:

Dear everyone posting That Video to Facebook today:
Yes, there was another shooting. VA this time, caught on live news.

Yes, the murderer (no, he doesn't deserve to be named) filmed his victims' deaths and immediately posted them to his Facebook and Twitter.

No, you're not obligated to help him out by publicizing them. All that does is put attention on the wrong person, make the victims' friends and families miserable, inspire imitators, and give the murderer exactly what he wanted. So please, knock it off.

(...)

He was more timely than I, but I've still got a few short things to add on.


(1)

In the days since, we've learned that the killer wrote a manifesto calling for a race war. This is probably good grounds for rounding up everyone who helped to publicize the last killer who wrote a manifesto calling for a race war, and give them a stern talking-to about how, yes, their carelessness has real

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Facebook is Not Your Friend

And...we're back from unofficial, finals-imposed hiatus! With controversial, zeitgeist-conscious commentary! Did you miss the front-page redesign?

To quote one of my favorite blog titles ever, "almost no one is evil; almost everything is broken" -- especially in the digital world. Unfortunately, I don't have a post from Jai for you; it's just me today. But it is the case that almost no one evil and almost everything is broken -- most recently-notably, Facebook.

xkcd comic #274, I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation... I'm just bloggin' 'bout my generation

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Background reading:

  • Facebook, in a continuing trend of "We're actually paying attention to the date -- maybe people won't get angry about it this time", offers users auto-generated slideshows of "Your Year in Review".
  • Noted web designer Eric Meyer writes: Meyerweb | Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty.
  • Basically every news site on the web posts some variant of the following: "Facebook Apologizes for Pain Caused by 'Year in Review' Posts", uniformly consisting of the following: (1) quote a paragraph from Meyer (2) publish a few paragraphs of screed about how
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