Glory Feed: New Christian-Themed Social Media Site Launches

If you feel that you're being set upon by the devil when you see scandalous images appear on your social networks, maybe it's time to go with god and ascend to a higher form of Facebook.  For the holy who like to keep in touch, the new "FaceGloria" network exists...

Every time you post a selfie while boozing, you end up in a lower circle of hell.
(Image courtesy newsnation.in.)

"Like" After Death: Leave A "Legacy Contact" To Manage Your Facebook Postmortem

Like millions of people the world over, perhaps you enjoy reporting the diverse details of your life on Facebook.  But what about...after?  What happens to your e-life when your real one is over?  Better find someone very trustworthy to handle your e-estate...

Shrug Off "Atlas", Facebook's New Ad-Stalking Network

You are a target.  Your likes, dislikes, and desires, as manifested via the internet, make you prime material for directed advertising, and social media giant Facebook knows it.  That's why they're stepping in to make their ads follow you around the internet, like a lost dog of consumerism, or perhaps an over-egregious door-to-door salesman inside your screen.

According to mashable.com, the targeted ads will start following you immediately.  You selections and mentions on facebook help them to direct material that they think you will be prone to clicking on, and thus your creepily-pertinent ad distractions will appear if you visit other facebook-affiliated sites (such as Amazon or various news outlets.)

Facebook's new ad network, Atlas, is responsible for this collection and dispersal.  A former Microsoft company which Facebook purchased for $100 million last year, Atlas tracks your verbiage and serves up what it feels is appropriate topical consumer choices.  Atlas CEO Erik Johnson stated this is superior to the logging of your info by your computer's "cookies", stating in a blog post that, "Cookies don’t work on mobile, are becoming less accurate in demographic targeting and can’t easily or accurately measure the customer purchase funnel across browsers and devices or into the offline world."

Now that they've stepped up their game, so can you.  Services like Adblock, Ghostery, NoScript and Disconnect.me can help to combat the ever-encroaching e-eyeballs and protect your privacy.  So if you've ever had the sneaking suspicion that your paper trail needs to be burned, now you know how to fire it up.

You don't want to be on the shoulders of the Atlas that hefts the world wide web.

Like? Everyone Outside The U.S. And Canada Can Join A Class-Action Lawsuit Against Facebook For Messing With Your Data

Like! Share! Friend! Poke! For all of Facebook's friendly antics, the fact remains that the NSA's Prism program actively monitors the site to gather data on users, and great swaths of marketing vultures have swooped in to feast on your information. Now, thanks to one Austrian innovator, the company may be held accountable for its actions.

Citing inexcusable breaches of privacy and data violations, Austrian law student Max Schrems has started a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, with users from anywhere outside the US and Canada welcome to join by signing in here. According to tech.firstpost.com, Schrems stated, “Our aim is to make Facebook finally operate lawfully in the area of data protection."

Facebook users can join the lawsuit with no financial risk to themselves. Schrems' financial goal for the case would be a payout of 500 Euros ($670) for each afflicted user. So if you feel like trying to get some payback for being spied on and emotionally manipulated by a social media site, here's your chance to try to get your voice heard...they already know what your face looks like.

U.S. and Canadian citizens will continue to be spied upon and emotionally manipulated.   

Is Facebook the Next Friendster?

Some of you out there probably will not remember Friendster, and that is probably for the best.  When Facebook first started to become popular, it was often referred to as the next Friendster, and people quickly dropped out of Friendster and similar sites, such as Myspace, in favor of the new social network.  Now it appears young people are opting out of Facebook for phone-based messaging apps.  This was likely inevitable.  From Reuters:

hundreds of millions of tech-savvy young people have instead turned to a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe.

The hot apps include Kik and Whatsapp, both products of North American startups, as well as Kakao Inc's KakaoTalk, NHN Corp's LINE and Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat, which have blossomed in Asian markets.

Combining elements of text messaging and social networking, the apps provide a quick-fire way for smartphone users to trade everything from brief texts to flirtatious pictures to YouTube clips - bypassing both the SMS plans offered by wireless carriers and established social networks originally designed as websites.

Facebook Inc, with 1 billion users, remains by far the world's most popular website, and its stepped-up focus on mobile has made it the most-used smartphone app as well. Still, across Silicon Valley, investors and industry insiders say there is a possibility that the messaging apps could threaten Facebook's dominance over the next few years . . .

Facebook Tracks Non-Users

There are likely more than a few people out there who have stopped using Facebook, or never used it in the first place, because they were not comfortable with allowing such an organization to track and control massive amounts of information relating to their daily lives.  Beware, Facebook also tracks non-users as well.  From First Post:

In a series of interviews with USAToday, Facebook has finally revealed  how it tracks users and non-users across the web, gathering huge amount  of data as it does so. Says ABCNews/USAToday:

Facebook officials are now acknowledging that the social media giant has been able to create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days. Facebook also keeps close track of where millions more non-members of the social network go on the Web, after they visit a Facebook web page for any reason.

Allegations from Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner that Facebook was creating “shadow profiles” of non-users were initially refuted by Facebook’s spokesman Andrew Noyes, who said categorically that “The allegations are false.”

But Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt, engineering director Arturo Bejar, engineering manager Gregg Stefancik, corporate spokeswoman Jaime Schopflin, and Noyes have now revealed the extent of the company’s tracking. As previously thought, Facebook are using cookies to track anyone who visits a Facebook.com page. . . .