Facebook is currently under investigation by Germany's Federal Cartel Office. The reason being that it is believed that Facebook extorts it's users into agreeing to terms and conditions which they do not understand. This bullying could be seen as a form of psychological coercion where because Facebook is so popular and understanding legalese so rare that the users feel they will lose their friends if they don't agree to any conditions.
In the eyes of the Cartel Office, Facebook is “extorting” information from its users, said Frederik Wiemer, a lawyer at Heuking Kühn Lueer Wojtek in Hamburg. “Whoever doesn’t agree to the data use, gets locked out of the social network community,” he said. “The fear of social isolation is exploited to get access to the complete surfing activities of users.”
Is Facebook really using coercive tactics to lock users into their platform? On the other hand Steemit still hasn't activated the referral program due to fear of how the platform might be perceived as a pyramid scheme.
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"The reason being that it is believed that Facebook extorts it's users into agreeing to terms and conditions which they do not understand."
Show me Ts&Cs that don't
The only reason I would say that Facebook is not a Cartel is that there is no penalty/repercussions for leaving.
it's the ORGANIZATION THAT IS A CARTEL. not it's users. is the tap water poisoned?
If you are using any social media than your privacy is not stay. Because every company is has some disadvantage.
What about Steemit Inc? Does Steemit respect our privacy?
We are never safe , not privacy is protected . What are our rights even for ? No social media protects us , it is only used to access our data and see if we are upto anything . We have no privacy , once something is up social media then it's not just your eyes anymore
never EVER was. 100% CIA tool.
Follow me
Me Done
Woah people are scared that makes me a little scared :P Great post btw!
Well, that's better than my theory that Facebook is a front for the CIA. I never thought of it as a cartel though. :-)
In your own words, what is the CIA?
A spy agency advancing it's own political agendas along with the agendas of others it is involved with. Come to think of it...a cartel.
it is a CIA invention, fronted by zuckerburg, a ROTHSCHILD.
Privacy = 0 internet exposure?
I think we are surrendering part of our privacy once we are on social media platforms. They can't be really doing it all for free, can they? If the only friends one has are on facebook then I guess the problem is not really about social media anymore, maybe that person has to learn to be social... for real. But with or without a referral program, steemit beats facebook hands down, I feel.
And why do we have to give up privacy for Steemit to work?
We don't have to but I still think part of our privacy will be compromised since we are sometimes sharing our thoughts and feelings.
what about privacy on steemit ???
Thanks for the news
They're all really cartels, Google, Twitter, Facebook.
A small newspaper in the UK launched a campaign against the Google and Facebook duopoly because they are sucking up so much of the advertising dollars online:
"By 2020 it has been estimated that 71 per cent of the money spent on digital advertising in the UK will go to Google and Facebook,” the Press Gazette’s official petition reads."
http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/10/newspaper-launches-petition-to-stop-google-and-facebook-from-destroying-journalism/
they are already 1 cartel.. called the deep state.
zuckerberg is a rothschild. facebook is a cia data mining tool. 100%. You have all been had, it's 1984 and you bought it.
FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter- criminal cartel against humanity run by Luciferians
Give it a few years and facebook will be gone.
Look. The only reason facebook is a going concern is that it gives its service away for free. Any business can get an immense following by doing that. Sure, they are making good money with ads right now, but the dirty little secret is that we all try like hell to avoid them. That, and a large number of clicks may be either accidents or click farm fake numbers.
I know, for example, that every day I accidentally click on several ads when reading sites on my phone. Now, I quickly close the window and don't even look at whatever it is, but as far as the advertiser is concerned, that's success. A click they paid for with an ambush ad.
Estimates are that up to 20% of facebook profiles are fake. Society is still trying to wrap its head around the concept that a photoshop boob job doesn't actually make your boobs bigger in real life, and for some folks that seemingly obvious logic has taken longer than for others. For example, the US state department paid $630,000 to take its likes from 10,000 to 2.5 million. An unfortunate side effect of these purchased likes was that the US state department was (WTF?) most popular in Cairo, Egypt. Yup -- money well spent.
People lose track of what they are trying to accomplish on social media, and presume that likes and clicks have anything to do with reality, which they don't. They are a metric and goal unto themselves. But businesses are catching on -- a recent poll indicated that 62% of small business owners in the US don't think facebook ads work.
This is perhaps not surprising. On facebook, you are trying to accomplish something specific, and ads are annoying and get in the way. Like a guy with a big hat sitting in front of you at a ball game. It's obnoxious because it gets in between you and what you are trying to see.
When you use google, on the other hand, you are looking for something that you haven't found yet, and because you are in search mode, targeted ads can be remarkably effective.
Final coffin nail. Anyone have any contact with the 12-16 year old crowd? News flash -- Facebook is stale. None of them are on it. They have moved on to snapchat, instagram, and twitter.
Zuckerberg made his money by selling stock that doesn't represent anything to a huge number of people. He did not make his money by actually running a productive business. He is now on to the next scam, globetrotting all over, trying hard to remind everyone that he is a messiah in time to run in the next presidential election.
Businesses can afford to waste money during an upswing. They will trim non-productive advertising during the coming downswing.
Facebook is the next Myspace. It just doesn't know it yet.
Facebook is way more than just the website. It's too big to die at this point. To say it's the next MySpace is ignorant.
Guess time will tell!
great bro! you are boss!! upvote.
It has always been interesting how Facebook gets most negative press while Google can get away with murder. Facebook is an irritating platform that gets deep inside our private life and personal relations (and Zuckerberg is special kind of disgusting) but google has much more of my private information. And both companies treat my intimacy and my attention as their own private resource that is theirs to sell. We have signed a dr. Faustus type of deal when we signed up on the Internet. Now is time to reclaim what is ours. That is why attention economy projects like this one is important and that is why it is not wise to unleash the furry of the thousands of pls-follow-me spammers upon the unsuspecting world via referral program.