Why Did We Post A Fluffy Kitten Picture On Our Facebook Page?
Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2020 12:03 am
When I created the Global Fightback Facebook page a few years ago, as an additional resource to the website I was building, it received approximately 50 Likes per week from scratch, with no paid advertising. Then, a few months down the line, Facebook changed the algorithms and it became impossible to grow the page without paying into their corporate machine to advertise. In other words, they were deliberately limiting page and post exposure unless you paid them to remove the restrictions: a sort of corporate mafia if you like. Additionally, the 'Likes' counter on the website has been zeroed twice, the second occasion coinciding recently with the change from an http to an https server that ensures greater privacy to visitors to the website and users of this newly-created forum board. It seems that simply changing the website url to add an 's' was enough to trigger a zeroing of the counter, which stood at a count of 639, with no warning or explanation, and even adding the appropriate html code snippet to the site hasn't resolved this. Getting in touch with real people behind the scenes at Facebook is well-nigh impossible, as you may well know from personal experience. It's an irony for sure that the people who control Facebook are essentially Faceless. I've now disabled the website likes counter: I have no intention of trying to grow the count a third time in the face of Facebook's idiosyncratic corporate whims.
Facebook is a shadow of the platform for free speech that for a short while it was, and now it's little more than another mechanism to monetise an in-demand resource, on which you will find some very dodgy adverts and intrusive cookies that ensure you get to see the ads that are most lucrative for those who have paid to help feather Facebook's nest. Like capitalist entities in general, you're only offered something cheap or free if it fulfils a longer term objective to extract money from you. Furthermore, Facebook has become increasingly hostile towards activism, and in particular left-field activism.
And so to the fluffy kitten post. Despite registering the Global Fightback Facebook page as a Community, the corporate entity insists on describing it to myself as Admin as a Business, and constantly nags me to spend money with them to promote my page and posts - or in other words, for them to wind back on the algorithms they put in place to deliberately restrict its visibility. I made a decision years ago not to pay into their corporate capitalist model to do this, but as they regularly offered me a £5 freebie (with the intention, of course, of getting me to spend actual money) I eventually decided to play them at their own game and spend the freebie without committing a single penny. The first three attempts at placing my free advert comprised of pictures and text that referred to this forum and the website, offering it as a resource for people who were passionate about making the world a better place. All these posts were REJECTED. It seems that now, in addition to the obstacles mentioned above, you can't promote anything vaguely political (even something referring to the need to reassess our actions on the environment) without providing the machine with enough personal information to ensure that they have you really collared. It's a pity (but hardly surprising) that they don't adopt the same rigour to filter out the very dodgy clickbait ads that appear on their site. I refuse to go down this control route; and so, as a last resort, I posted a picture of a fluffy kitten alongside minimal text but which included a link to this forum board. It was meant as a sarcastic retort to the Faceless corporate machine - but, amazingly, it was ACCEPTED!! This more or less sums up the dumbed-down entity that the Facebook platform has become, where most users are content to 'like' a meme and/or engage in lightweight banter that poses no threat to the henchmen who are, bit by bit, eroding personal liberty and turning the planet into a heavily controlled Police State.
Faceless is no friend of left-field activism, and in its corporate unaccountability it has become merely an accomplice of the largely faceless players who seek to control humanity and muzzle the voice of those who begin to see through the smoke and mirrors. The Cambridge Analytica scandal should tell you all you need to know in this regard; see also the Reference Archive page on the Global Fightback website for more on the subject, which includes a few interesting links such as this (and yes, I'm aware of the irony that this story emanates from the mouthpiece of one of the major players in the development of a global Police State and is, at best, disingenuous).
I offer these left-field forums as a non-corporate alternative to the increasingly controlled and dumbed-down social network sites: a place to share ideas, one that is policed merely by standards of common decency. Please enjoy your time here, and tell your friends. I hope we can all learn something that will help us contribute to a world that works for all humans and, additionally, all the other flora and fauna in our precious world, rather than just a privileged and unprincipled elite.
Facebook is a shadow of the platform for free speech that for a short while it was, and now it's little more than another mechanism to monetise an in-demand resource, on which you will find some very dodgy adverts and intrusive cookies that ensure you get to see the ads that are most lucrative for those who have paid to help feather Facebook's nest. Like capitalist entities in general, you're only offered something cheap or free if it fulfils a longer term objective to extract money from you. Furthermore, Facebook has become increasingly hostile towards activism, and in particular left-field activism.
And so to the fluffy kitten post. Despite registering the Global Fightback Facebook page as a Community, the corporate entity insists on describing it to myself as Admin as a Business, and constantly nags me to spend money with them to promote my page and posts - or in other words, for them to wind back on the algorithms they put in place to deliberately restrict its visibility. I made a decision years ago not to pay into their corporate capitalist model to do this, but as they regularly offered me a £5 freebie (with the intention, of course, of getting me to spend actual money) I eventually decided to play them at their own game and spend the freebie without committing a single penny. The first three attempts at placing my free advert comprised of pictures and text that referred to this forum and the website, offering it as a resource for people who were passionate about making the world a better place. All these posts were REJECTED. It seems that now, in addition to the obstacles mentioned above, you can't promote anything vaguely political (even something referring to the need to reassess our actions on the environment) without providing the machine with enough personal information to ensure that they have you really collared. It's a pity (but hardly surprising) that they don't adopt the same rigour to filter out the very dodgy clickbait ads that appear on their site. I refuse to go down this control route; and so, as a last resort, I posted a picture of a fluffy kitten alongside minimal text but which included a link to this forum board. It was meant as a sarcastic retort to the Faceless corporate machine - but, amazingly, it was ACCEPTED!! This more or less sums up the dumbed-down entity that the Facebook platform has become, where most users are content to 'like' a meme and/or engage in lightweight banter that poses no threat to the henchmen who are, bit by bit, eroding personal liberty and turning the planet into a heavily controlled Police State.
Faceless is no friend of left-field activism, and in its corporate unaccountability it has become merely an accomplice of the largely faceless players who seek to control humanity and muzzle the voice of those who begin to see through the smoke and mirrors. The Cambridge Analytica scandal should tell you all you need to know in this regard; see also the Reference Archive page on the Global Fightback website for more on the subject, which includes a few interesting links such as this (and yes, I'm aware of the irony that this story emanates from the mouthpiece of one of the major players in the development of a global Police State and is, at best, disingenuous).
I offer these left-field forums as a non-corporate alternative to the increasingly controlled and dumbed-down social network sites: a place to share ideas, one that is policed merely by standards of common decency. Please enjoy your time here, and tell your friends. I hope we can all learn something that will help us contribute to a world that works for all humans and, additionally, all the other flora and fauna in our precious world, rather than just a privileged and unprincipled elite.