Facebook hit two billion users today and SugarCRM reminded us you are Zuck's product Facebook's hit two billion users. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to his creation on Wednesday to share the news. The company later revealed that “Each day, more than 175 million people share a Love reaction, and on average, over 800 million people like something on Facebook. More than 1 billion people use Groups every …
I had an account a long time ago, before I grew tired of the 99.99% brainless drivel on there.
Then they asked for copies personal documents like passports to prove my name!
This is for facebook, who the f*** do they think they are? And how stupid must people be if they do actually surrender these kind of ID docs to them?
Life is greatly enhanced for all those who dump it and never go back.
How many of those accounts are fakes? How many were created & then the person that did so never bothered to log in again? How many of those accounts were created by someone for or about someone else without that other person being aware of it?
How many daily, unique, actual users log in, not just the number of accounts that may or may not account for SFA?
I made an account there once but didn't give it any of my PII (everything faked), then decided I didn't want it any longer so told them to kill it.
They refused to purge it so I logged in one last time & changed all "my" data to be even less true than what I had given it during my paranoid sign up.
They probably still have the account & count it as a user, but I've not logged into it in over a decade, never intend on doing so ever again, & have the site listed in my HOSTS file so my computer never talks to it ever again either.
FB may have 2B accounts, but I highly doubt they're all active, viable, real people.
>How many of those accounts are fakes?
Vast numbers given 2 billion people is 1/3 of the world's (aged over 14) population. As the stat is used to attract advertisers and appease investors it's only a matter of time before they have to fess up to the real number.
“Each day, more than 175 million people share a Love reaction, and on average, over 800 million people like something on Facebook. More than 1 billion people use Groups every month.”
and of the 800 million likes how many were for beheading videos, bullies. trolls (not the cute one's with the fluffy hair though I get confused these days)?
and of the 1 billion groups how many are Islamic state, paedophiles or daily mail readers (or in fact all three)?
and just what is a "Love reaction"? is that to do with posting about morning wood?
So out of roughly 7.4 billion people (2015) on the planet 2 billion are signed up, there's still hope for the human race after all/were all doomed (the answer depends if you're a half full or half empty glass sort of person, Personally I'm a half full glass person but it's milk and it's gone off)
My wife, for example, created 5 accounts. None are actually used for anything anymore. In fact, she can't remember the last time she accessed FB ... probably seven or eight years ago. I'm absolutely certain that she's not the only person on the planet with multiple orphaned accounts.
So that 2 billion is nowhere near near 2 billion actual people, and Zmuck knows it. Don't you just hate the way marketards corrupt everything they touch?
One was for friends and family, one for the pre-teen "pony club", one for teenage riders, one for adult riders, and one for driving and other misc. bits of horsemanship. It seemed logical to her at the time. She only used them for a couple months, and then went back to her original WWW presence.
I trawl some 200 FB accounts every week for indications of new entertaintment events or videos by their owners. It is interesting how many haven't posted anything in the last year or so. Several have also suddenly disappeared. Yet their owners are still posting videos to YouTube - and notices of events on their custom web sites.
"Wow. That's sad."
Most of the work is done unattended by an automaton using Selenium to drive Chrome for about 6 hours. I just get to enjoy and share the fruits of its filtering.
Having a definite project for which to code possibly helps to stave off dementia. There's always another possible tweak that makes the automaton even more effective. No PHB to sabotage the development's elegance. If it ever becomes too onerous I will just stop doing it.
A bonus is that I'm starting to be able to understand postings in several European languages in that particular activity's environment.
""Penis" is spelled the same in most related languages!"
Not in Scandinavia. Which gives me the opportunity to use this Grauniad article link. Sort of NSFW - the comments certainly are NSFW.
"Why?"
There are many fans of particular types of niche music who like to know what is happening of interest to them.
They can follow online some music makers for concerts, tours, videos, CDs, or DVDs - but that is usually limited to a small number they personally know.
My set of Excel spreadsheets holds links to a multitude of online pages for music makers in one particular niche. New ones are manually researched and added as they become visible from many sources.
The application maintains a history for each music maker so that the automaton can recognise things that are new - and applies content filter criteria to further select relevant new items. It usually takes about 6 hours unattended overnight to do the trawl. A watchdog prevents lock-ups due to unforeseen circumstances affecting page formats or online access.
A weekly run produces three reports which are distributed through relevant interest groups. One report is a Google Map that shows forthcoming events worldwide. The second is an index to recent videos, CDs, and DVDs. The third is a Google Map indexing the city locations of the music makers and a link to their main online page.
The Google Maps have their own built-in filter options and serve two purposes. People can see at a glance if any music maker is going to be touring in their custom defined geographic area - of any contiguous shape and size. Alternatively someone can plan their holiday schedule to include music maker events elsewhere.
The issue of how much info is out there is worrying, particularly to those of us in late middle age.
Sadly, many of the antisocial media sites are actually quite useful, mainly to get information rather than impart it. Multiple accounts is good. I think the trick is to make sure that any data out there is seriously unreliable and misleading. Use fake (but plausible) names, ditto addresses. Correct dates of birth should NEVER be given, and a good selection should be used, ditto gender. Employer and location? Have fun with this. And generally fill your news feed with weird stuff, which you regularly change.
I think the trick is to make sure that any data out there is seriously unreliable and misleading. Use fake (but plausible) names, ditto addresses. Correct dates of birth should NEVER be given, and a good selection should be used, ditto gender. Employer and location? Have fun with this. And generally fill your news feed with weird stuff, which you regularly change.
There is the challenge of having to route through another IP address to avoid correlation, but otherwise I fully agree. I would add that you should tag your fake name in as many different pictures as possible and "friend" your fake with people of as many conflicting walks of life as you can get away with - where possible other fakes. You must, however, block any associated web trackers - best set up your "social" browsing in a separate browser so cookies don't carry over. That's the joy of having Firefox, Safari, Opera, Vivaldi and Omniweb on a machine (Chrome's too leaky so I don't use it) - there is enough variety in browsers to do the same on Windows. Also make sure you use a generic email account like Yahoo when you do it so the domain name doesn't point back at you, and use a separate SIM for phone number demands.
Yes, I like making a mess of surveillance. It's a good hobby to have IMHO.
Two Billion real users isn't believable.
The World's population is 7 billion. A proportion are too young or sick to use the Internet or Facebook.
The approximate Internet users is 3.7M. But this almost certainly includes people appearing multiple times (phone, tablet, laptop. In the west many better off have more than one smart phone, penetration over 120% in many countries).
China (731 million users) doesn't have Facebook, so 3Million, not 3.7M.
How many Facebook accounts are sockpuppets (I have three accounts so as to validly, honestly and morally separate completely different activities)? How many Facebook accounts are bots selling stuff. The coffee bean weight loss scam with millions of automated accounts is no isolated incident.
Facebook isn't independently audited and has more than once inflated figures.
Their business is NOT providing a social media platform or news or information. It's selling adverts, so they have no incentive to remove fake accounts, bots, fake likes etc. Those increase revenue.
Their use of cookies, trackers, javascript on suggested F button for websites etc is probably illegal under EU law and certainly abusive. Their privacy settings are obtuse and can't be trusted.
So 75% of possible Internet "users"? I doubt it. No doubt too they count all accounts, irrespective of activity, even if their claim is remotely real.
Much of the criticism of abusive corporate behaviour also applies to Google. They are both the biggest parasites on the Internet (there are others) as between them they appear to have 98% of Internet advertising revenue.
People are conned into using Facebook when email would be better. Or their own blog, especially companies. Shame on large companies that promote Twitter & Facebook, yet often have a decent web infrastructure, or other bushiness that use Facebook instead of $100 a year hosting.
Good point. How many visitors to pages which have such buttons are counted whether or not they click on or even scroll over the blasted thing? And am I counted every time I ignore an invitation to "sign up with Facebook" when it is on the page (or phone screen) I am looking at?
Which means whenever the F logo transits my eyeball into my brain I am a user.
In fact FB had a certain meaning, with less than genteel resonance, since long before Zuck was born. Good choice for a name, Z!
So what if these people are giving away their personal data. If they are that narrow minded in their quest to tell the world how amazing they are, they've got it coming to them. More to the point it's the prolific posters who lead the dullest most boring of lives.
I'm happy to sit back and watch the world BURN...through my bogus facebook account!
"Since ElReg has such a low popularity I'm certain no trawlers will be keelhauling for my privates from here. "
Google Search usually returns El Reg comments within a few hours. That's why I use "Anonymous Coward" - it makes any correlation more difficult by needing language analysis to tag my posts.
It does have its uses. Musicians etc can have a way to handle their event/recordings publicity - and to interact with its own people and fans. Much easier than trying to maintain a custom web site. Often used as a gateway to their YouTube site's video postings.
MySpace lost its grip on that niche when it tried to be everything to everyone.
"Quite proud to say I don't use it, and never have. A pointless tirade of pet pictures, 'here's what I had for lunch', and very bad holiday snaps. I'd rather boil my head."
How do you know? Even if that was all it were, many people (obviously not ones as allof as you) like pet pictures, are interested in their friends (and yes, they may be actual, real life, met in the flesh, friends) who actually take some pretty good (as well as some very bad) snaps of interesting places. Add to that all the incredibly useful social groups, artists, events etc. and there's plenty of good points to weigh agains the bad. But you probably knew that anyway because you're much smarter than the rest of us.
and there's plenty of good points to weigh agains the bad
I'd say that the scales have fallen over onto the bad side.
It's full of BS political propaganda, stupid hoaxes, guilt trip postings, banal, pointless,nonsense memes, idiot click bait personality quizzes and hoards of morons that believe all this stuff and propagate it.
For any of the <1% good points there is always a better way to do it for people who can be bothered.
"or inadvertently ticked a box that means a broker can now sell information about you to anyone with an open chequebook"
Who says they bother checking whether you've ticked, or UN-ticked the appropriate box. Standard practice is to add any email address received for any purpose, to the company marketing email lists regardless of any opt in/out choice.
I have lost count of the number of distribution lists I have asked to be removed from, stating the same reason each time: 'I never signed up for this list'.
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