Skip to main content

Facebook’s Sucker-berg

 

Ideal partners

Facebook has blocked me for not following “community standards” because I wondered in a comment whether one of its users was mentally retarded. That person whose IQ looked suspect has a name which is an odd mix of North Indian Brahmin and South Indian Roman Catholic. When he/she (the name is male and the profile pic is female) got me blocked for wondering facetiously about his/her IQ, I checked his/her profile and saw that he/she was an Indian living abroad having studied at Copenhagen International School and Imperial College of London. He/she is apparently very nationalistic. Strangely, he/she reminded me of Anjum/Aftab, the hijra character in Arundhati Roy’s novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness though they have nothing in common.

What I don’t understand, however, is why Facebook bothers to block anyone just because he wonders about the IQ of one of its users. Facebook’s own IQ is highly suspect. It is just a swindling medium. I don’t really care whether it exists or not. I wander into its domain just for the heck of it. Like an atheist entering a temple dedicated to the eleventh incarnation of Vishnu.

Facebook is one of the most unethical websites. It shares your information with third parties without your permission. The privacy settings revert to unsafe mode after you redesign it each time. Facebook ads contain malware that creep into your personal life maliciously. Experts say that Facebook gets your real friends making you vulnerable unknowingly. There are too many scammers and fraudsters there whom Facebook never cares to block.

Frances Haugen of Cambridge Analytic is one of the many whistleblowers who drew the attention of the world to the multifarious frauds perpetrated by Facebook. She said in no uncertain terms that Facebook lied to the public, investors, advertisers, journalists and governments. Facebook is mere shit in other words. You enter there at your own risk. I enter there knowing that I am stepping into a riled cesspool. I don’t care whether an Indian nationalist wheelwright living in Copenhagen or London gets me blocked in that cesspool.

Facebook is replete with hate speech, misinformation, and celebrations of violence. With 350 million Indians using Facebook, India is the company’s largest market.

Mark Zuckerberg’s integrity has been questioned again and again in the international media. Just Google his name with the word ‘integrity’ added to it and you will be amazed to see the results. This mammoth fraud is blocking people for calling another fraud’s IQ into question without even bothering to find out the details of what exactly happened. I am not even given a chance to explain! Come on, Sucker-berg!

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanFebruary 1, 2022 at 3:50 PM

    Hari om
    I have nothing to do with the booke of phisogs... but recently was semiblocked from Instagram (fb owned) for having a "suspect URL"... say what??!!! Stick to blogging I say &*> YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 1, 2022 at 4:08 PM

      Just after I posted this, the message came thst it was a mistake. I was unblocked. Quite funny.

      Delete
    2. ArtiFebruary 2, 2022 at 9:51 AM

      Just read your comment above, looks like Facebook is reading your blog posts! I do visit Fb whenever I want to share a new blog post -- have been thinking about the visibility cloak I sometimes like to don because I do enjoy the connectivity. Hmmm... to be or not to be on SM is the question.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 2, 2022 at 10:28 AM

      SM can be a nuisance. But it has its delights too. I learn a lot of things from SM before they appear in the mass media.

      Delete
  2. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 13, 2022 at 9:24 PM

    It has certain merits too and that's why people still stick to it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more