Tag Archives: social media

What type of Facebook user are you?

Posted on October 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

There are two main types of Facebook users, as far as I’ve been able to figure. And with this being an election year and most of us unable to resist posting our political preferences on our Facebook pages, we’re going to reveal ourselves not as Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, etc, but as either displayers or engagers.

Displayers are those people who love to show what they think or feel or believe, but don’t want to respond to any comments about their posting. Now some actually just really don’t want to get into it—they post what they find supporting or interesting or funny, and they don’t really care to discuss it.

But then you have the passive-aggressive displayers. They post the most partisan articles, slogans, photos, etc. and while they may respond to those who agree with them (kind of an online group hug), they rarely respond to those who disagree.

At the extreme end of the passive-aggressive displayer mode, you have those who actually delete any negative or less than positive comments under their politically charged posts, yet leave up all of the adulatory comments. So you have friends who may post pictures or stories from places like One Million Strong Against Mitt Romney in 2012 or Too Informed to Vote Republican and, if you’re conservative and write something to counter the post, even though you’re a “friend” and haven’t said anything “mean” or “derogatory,” down the rabbit hole your comment goes.

The other kind of Facebook user is the engager, someone who wants others to comment on his post and wants to respond back. I find this type of user much more interesting because you can have an actual debate or discussion with them. Others join in and sometimes you actually learn something.

But at the extreme end here is the belligerent engager, someone who posts the most partisan articles and slogans seemingly just to provoke a reaction he can then berate you about. Usually various forms of vulgar language are involved and it soon becomes obvious to all of his “friends” that this type of Facebook user is just trying to make himself feel bigger and better than he really is. And it quickly becomes boring as well–how many times can you respond to “You’re just a big, fat f**k” before you decide the “conversation” is over?

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Posted in Personal, Politics, Technology

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Information warfare: How Facebook gets troops killed

Posted on March 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Outside a war zone, we just worry about employers finding out embarrassing info from social mediate sites; inside a war zone, it’s a little different. From the Strategy Page:

The U.S. Army is warning its troops to be careful what they post to on social networking sites (like Facebook). When they post photos of themselves they often reveal militarily useful information. This was discovered in Iraq, where a lot of tech savvy people working with terrorists were able to compile information from what troops posted. This sometimes led to attacks, and this was discovered from interrogating captured terrorists and captured documents and computer data. The background of pictures often indicated targets for the terrorists, or details of base defenses and American tactics. Islamic terrorists have been quick to use the Internet and other modern technology to plan and carry out their attacks….

Read it all, and check out an earlier post, Insurgents used cell phone geotags to destroy AH-64s in Iraq.

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Posted in Military, Social media

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When you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail

Posted on March 19, 2012 | Leave a comment


An oldy but goody (August 2010), from News Channel 5 in Franklin, Tennessee:

…But a now former Middle school football coach in Williamson County said writing a politically-charged country song got him fired, after it rubbed a few parents the wrong way.

26 year old Bryan Glover is not shy about his political opinions. He is proud tea party Republican and felt compelled to voice his disappointment in the current administration through his music. But he never thought sharing his new song would leave him unemployed.

The song is called, “When You’re Holding A Hammer, Everything Looks Like A Nail.” It is a reference to Glover’s frustrations with the current administration and President Obama. Glover co-wrote the tune with a parent on the Grassland Middle School football team. He never thought sending it out to friends, family and player’s parents could put the hammer on the nail of his job with the school….

Within hours, parents called the school to complain of the politically charged lyrics and Glover said the principal at Grassland Middle School told the head football coach to release Glover from his position with the team.

“He just said parents were complaining, maybe there was a comment of racial overtones,” Glover said,

“I found it amusing,” said parent Michael Kasaitis about Glover’s country song.

He said no matter the opinion on his music, the link was sent from his personal email account and it is free speech.

“I was totally upset. He has every right to write a song, write a book or to make his opinion known,” said Kasaitis….

Read it all.

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Posted in 2012 Campaign, Bill of Rights, Education, First Amendment, Politics, President

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Antle: The Hush Rush syndrome

Posted on March 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

From the American Spectator:

…Pat Buchanan was hounded off the air in February, ostensibly for things written in his latest book that in fact differed little from views he had expressed for years. MSNBC president Phil Griffin proclaimed the book unfit for the “national dialogue” despite the fact it was a New York Times bestseller.

If ideas with enough reach to land on the bestseller lists are too dangerous, we should not be surprised some liberals believe the radio talk show host with the largest audience should not be heard either. Rush Limbaugh may admire Ronald Reagan, but it is his critics who want sponsors to say, “I paid for this microphone.”

“No apology is good enough,” read feminist Gloria Feldt’s indictment. “Rush must go. Period.” What of his 20 million listeners, many of them women, who do not want Rush to go? The right side of the sisterhood must get with the program. “Time for women to make Rush Limbaugh history.”…

No longer is it good enough to disagree with conservatives. They must be fired from their jobs, separated from their advertisers, booted from the airwaves, buried under a prehistoric rock. The tactics attributed to Joe McCarthy tied to the polemical rigor associated with Jenny McCarthy….

Read it all.

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Posted in Government, Media, Politics, Protest

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Legal Insurrection focus: Carbonite

Posted on March 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

Prof. William Jacobson has been doing the heavy lifting on keeping track of Carbonite, one of the companies deciding last week that they could no longer be associated with the Rush Limbaugh radio show (although Carbonite management apparently has no problem advertising on left-leaning programs whose hosts have run into their own language problems).

Not only has the professor set up the Carbonite Accountability Project at Legal Insurrection to post info on where and how Carbonite does advertise, he has also run several posts on the legal and financial repercussions for the company:

I think it will be very interesting to keep track of the company business over the next few months to see if reaction to their CEO’s very public renunciation of Rush has any long-term effect on their bottom line.

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Posted in 2012 Campaign, Media, Politics, Social media

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The real reason: It’s not about Rush, it’s about you. . .

Posted on March 7, 2012 | Leave a comment

. . . and me. And anyone who disagrees with the progressive agenda.

It’s an attempt to marginalize the majority of Americans, to make us think that we shouldn’t be listening to or agreeing with someone others have now labeled as “hateful,” an attempt to change focus from who or what is best for the country in this election season to the cause de jour: free stuff for women in order to boost chances that the Democrats will get the “women’s vote” in November.

It’s also an attempt, as Andrew Klavan describes so well, to reorient the discussion and/or news coverage to “women’s health” or “access to contraceptives” or some other non-consequential issue away from the constitutional concerns that are fundamental in legislating government-mandated health care.

Rush Limbaugh’s failing in this, if anything, was that he let his frustration and anger overcome his normal sense of humor and detachment. He forgot the other side would be following Saul Alinsky’s Rule 4:

Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.

And we see that playing out now. Slurs against women by Ed Schulz, Bill Maher, etc. are ignored or dismissed, but since conservatives try to maintain, for the most part, civility in their public discussions, it’s easy to go after Rush when he slips.

As for me, I’m keeping a list of all the advertisers who have cancelled from Rush’s show. Ones I use, I have written and said I’m not using them anymore, the rest I’ll keep track of so I won’t forget. Anyone opposed to the tactics of intimidation should do the same.

I won’t be marginalized. They’re attempting Rule 13 on a grand scale–not just Rush but all conservatives:

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it….

They picked Rush as the target because they saw an opening (they tried it once before when they blocked his purchase of an NFL franchise).

It’s up to the rest of us to make sure he’s not a permanent casualty.

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Posted in 2012 Campaign, Politics

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Going viral: Are you kidding me?

Posted on February 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

One man’s rage against the machine:

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Posted in Business, Capitalism, Economics, Government, Media, Politics, President, Taxes

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FBI releases plans to monitor social networks

Posted on January 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

Privacy (University of Pennsylvania Law School)
You know, you can check and double-check all the privacy protection options there are on Facebook, Twitter, or any social media site, but you have to know: There. Is. No. Privacy. Online. At. All. Ever. From. Anyone. So don’t ever forget it.

From New Scientist:

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has quietly released details of plans to continuously monitor the global output of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, offering a rare glimpse into an activity that the FBI and other government agencies are reluctant to discuss publicly. The plans show that the bureau believes it can use information pulled from social media sites to better respond to crises, and maybe even to foresee them.

The information comes from a document released on 19 January looking for companies who might want to build a monitoring system for the FBI. It spells out what the bureau wants from such a system and invites potential contractors to reply by 10 February.

The bureau’s wish list calls for the system to be able to automatically search “publicly available” material from Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for keywords relating to terrorism, surveillance operations, online crime and other FBI missions. Agents would be alerted if the searches produce evidence of “breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats”….

The use of the term “publicly available” suggests that Facebook and Twitter may be able to exempt themselves from the monitoring by making their posts private. But the desire of the US government to watch everyone may still have an unwelcome impact, warns Jennifer Lynch at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group.

Lynch says that many people post to social media in the expectation that only their friends and followers are reading, which gives them “the sense of freedom to say what they want without worrying too much about recourse,” says Lynch. “But these tools that mine open source data and presumably store it for a very long time, do away with that kind of privacy. I worry about the effect of that on free speech in the US”….

It only makes sense to me that law enforcement and the intelligence agencies would monitor social media sites, but it all comes down to one’s definition of “publicly available” and “online privacy,” so read it all.

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Posted in FBI, Privacy, Social media

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