Moe Lane

Sheesh.

Anyone signing up to Facebook agrees to their terms and conditions (which can be read here). In the same way that posting your own hotchpotch rental agreement in your lounge window makes no difference to your landlord once he’s got your original signed contract, neither does this status update amend your agreement with Facebook. You simply can’t retroactively alter the mutually-agreed terms by making a Facebook post.

So what should you do if you’ve already amended your Facebook privacy settings and you’re still unhappy with the site’s policies? Other than renegotiating your terms with them, your options are limited to this: lump it or leave.

It’s a miracle that everybody under 30 isn’t in jail for various forms of intellectual property rights violations.  What the hell were they teaching these kids instead of respect for property rights, anyway?

:pause:

Yeah, that was a loaded question, huh?

Via:

but can cure cancer … RT @bdomenech: Posting some dreck about copyright on your wall doesn’t do anything, folks. vlt.tc/l47

— Kevin Holtsberry (@kevinholtsberry) November 26, 2012

Just thought that I’d rewrite this title (“Facebook’s spam program catches innocent users“) into something a bit more accurate. Executive summary: anti-fracking* activists – and more general environmental… types… – have been discovering that their regular posting and commenting patterns on Facebook has been winning them two week spam-bans from Facebook.  Now, Facebook obviously doesn’t particularly want to give out its anti-spambot protocols, but you can pickup some clues from the (somewhat confused, in a hilarious sort of way) complaints. It turns out that if you go on Facebook and: (more…)

His observations about the Winklevoss twins, who were apparently all involved in that Facebook thing (sorry: I didn’t bother watching The Social Network). I won’t spoil your fun by giving you a transcript, but I am forced to agree with him.

Well, not ‘forced.’

Let’s establish something, right from the start *.  Tim Pawlenty has a reason besides the stated one in calling for submissions for awkward questions to ask President Obama at today’s gelded Facebook ‘event.’ For those who don’t know, the President is using Facebook to… use Facebook, apparently.  Shows that the President’s hip to this entire social media thing, because nothing shouts ‘responsive’ and ‘new media’ by taking carefully screened questions, and answering them with ten minutes of blather apiece.

Anyway: while Pawlenty’s stated reason is, well, reasonable enough – everybody knows that the President’s not going to get a question harsher than ‘Has the intoxicating scent of unicorn flatulence ever affected your job performance?’ – the actual goal here is to get the contact information of all those people who are: paying attention; exasperated with the President already; and energized enough to want to raise a bit of a ruckus.  Now, admittedly I may be prejudiced by having Tim Pawlenty be currently at the top of my list – but that hardly sounds like a bad thing.  And I suggest that the rest of the GOP field may want to step up their own efforts to get in regular contact with the folks that already give a tinker’s dam about what’s going on.

Because that’s your cadre, right there.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I respect your collective intelligence, even if it’s an open question whether the current President does.

Via her Facebook account, of course:

Mark my words – tomorrow is the game changer! Tune in to hear common sense solutions that bury the false accusations that conscientious members of Congress have no solutions to meet America’s health care challenges.

If you’re like me, shaking your head wondering why all the miscommunication between Washington and the American people who have been saying, “Please hear what we’re saying about our desire for health care reform,” then tomorrow will be a refreshing time of clarity for all.

As she notes, preview here. This will be interesting to see for two reasons; first off, as Dan Riehl notes this should provide Rep. Boehner’s address with a bit more traffic than these things usually get.  I’ll be interested to see whether or not it’ll be a significant spike, but it should be something.  Second: if you were holding out hope that former Governor Palin was going to play third-party advocate… you might as well stop.  This is her way of saying that NY-23 is a special case, not a general one; and that she’s still in, and in with, the GOP.

[Insert tired, yet labored Halloween cliche here.]

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, it’s not like we needed a functioning society, anyway.  And the irony that it’ll fall because we’ll all be playing Civilization is not lost to me:

Civilization creator Sid Meier has confirmed that an online version of the popular strategy title is coming to Facebook.

Civilization Network will arrive on the social networking website next year. The game will emphasise cooperative play, allowing friends to share technology and form military alliances with one another.

“The game will offer everything you enjoy in Civ in a fully persistent environment – you can play as much as you like, whenever you like, and it’ll be free to play,” Meier wrote on its Facebook fan page.

Via the Backwards Compatible webcomic, which has already made… plans.

Ironically – or at least funnily – I came across this article while looking for fresh content:

A man on the run, wanted for fraud by US authorities, inadvertently revealed where he was hiding through a series of extravagant Facebook updates.

Maxi Sopo’s updates advertised the fact that he was living the high life in the Mexican resort of Cancun.

So I was ever-so-slightly, barely-triggering-the-needle, blink-and-you’d-miss-it sympathetic towards the guy’s obvious need to keep producing…

He also adding a former US justice department official to his friend list who ended up helping to track him down.

…and then I got better. Because that’s just a doofus move.

Moe Lane

Doesn’t really sing as a title, does it?  Ach, well, the story itself makes up for it. Via POWIP:

Black Man Pleads Guilty to Posing as Obama-Hating White Supremacist on Facebook

NEW ORLEANS — An African-American man from Mississippi admits posing as a white supremacist to send a death threat across state lines by Facebook.

This isn’t getting said often enough, apparently, so let me: if you simply must racially demagogue, find actual examples of racial demagoguery instead of creating your own.  If you won’t do that out of the simple human desire to avoid making things worse for everybody else, then don’t do it because you’ll get caught.  Usually within days.

Because you aren’t as smart as you think that you are.

Moe Lane

PS: For those now planning to send me hate mail, remember: ‘lose’ is the opposite of ‘win,’ while ‘loose’ is the opposite of ‘tight.’  Your spellcheck software cannot read your mind, so always read your posts before you hit Send.

Crossposted to RedState.

It’s official: I’m doomed. Hit the tip jar so that I can flee to Argentin… well, that joke isn’t going to be funny any more for the GOP, is it? So hit the tip jar so that I can flee to Atlanta for the RS Gathering.

When did that happen?

The Facebook Status Update That Could End Up a Movie

Agents from Beverly Hills’ United Talent Agency and literary shop Fletcher & Co. are shopping a book and film deal built around a Facebook update…

Said update involves Chinese takeout and a Pomeranian – no, it’s not going to revolve around that particular urban legend; apparently superpowers will be involved – and they’re apparently looking to option it.  As Gawker notes, while this is silly, so was Beverly Hills Chihuahua.  I’ll personally add that dumb-sounding ideas can actually make decent films.  For example, you can take the rather silly concept of “Russians invade the mountains of Colorado on the first day of World War III,” and still end up with Red Dawn…

OK, bad example*.  But the principle is sound.

Moe Lane

*It’s a bad movie.  I’ve seen it a million times.  I’ll watch it every time that it comes on.  I love it.  But it’s a bad movie.