The new Facebook is awesome!

Something has changed at Facebook recently and I am considering going back and using it more. In the last week or so, I am getting inundated with friend requests. Not only that, I don't know any of these people and they are all hot women. It makes me feel popular and attractive! I was about to start writing this post and was lamenting not having taken screenshots of these women who all suddenly want to be connected with me (I figure it is because Steem prices are increasing) when this happened:

'She' wants me so much that 'she' has made three profiles to get my attention! Jealous much?

Here are a couple more pics from the profile that has zero friends as they were all just created. To translate the Finnish, there is hot, fantasy, fetish, cum.... yeah.. you get the idea. Essentially in the last week, there have been about 40 such requests yet not all have linked to some random site, there have been plenty that were more 'innocent'.

 

Now, ten minutes later, the requests have been removed (most likely reported or a Facebook algorithm) but, I am somewhat skeptical as to the innocence of Facebook in this. From what I have heard, there has been a crushing of people's content through new feed algorithms so that even subscribed viewers aren't seeing it in their feeds.

This is to increase promoted post revenue probably but, there is also going to be attempts to keep engagement from dipping as some posters look for better platforms or, to keep their 'time on site' numbers up for advertising purposes. It is also possible that the changes they have made to their filters have allowed what was previously caught, slip through to users. I don't really know but for me, this points to another reason Facebook is going to have a hard time keeping up in the future. They are to blame.

A centralised system may be able to control more but, it is also a weak point to target as the community is separate from the authority. This means it sets up a potential scenario of rebellion, an 'Us vs Them' situation when the community comes under threat from things such as spammers. People expect Facebook to clean up things like spam and when they don't do it well, they are the ones who failed. This goes for every change they implement and challenge they face.

At Steemit however, you may have noticed something quite different in regards to something like Spam. Even though there are negotiations continually ongoing with steemdevs on how to manage it, it is the spammers themselves that are the focus of attack. A decentralised, uncensored environment is made up of many individuals that create a community and as such, bad actors within are handled by the community itself. I am not sure if everyone grasps the importance of this.

What this means is that the community we have here and all people within it are responsible for the operation and development of it. Yes, some have more power than others either through stake or position but, everyone has some power to act, interact and enact change if they choose. At Steemit, no one is a completely helpless victim at the mercy of an authority or insensitive algorithm as all are potentially active players who can build with a large amount of freedom. When there are challenges, it is all of us who can develop solutions and if we don't, it is all of us who fail.

As more of the world starts to drop the trained monkey action of bowing down to authority, it will be places like Steemit and Steem operated, decentralised platforms that they will flock to as they will want to take back their agency and become a player again, instead of a consumer tied to the whims of an authority. And these authorities have proven time and time again that it is centralising profits over all else, whereas the decentralised communities will increasingly benefit from profit sharing.

In my opinion, decentralised systems like this not only protects us in many ways, they also encourage more of us to be a part of the community. Personally, this is the biggest reason I am trying to build stake here as I see that being a part of this community that will hopefully spill into the real world more and more, may be the most valuable thing I will do in my life for me, my family and everyone else. It gives us all a chance to take the responsibility back and be good actors for improvement rather than leaving it up to someone else to do for us.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]

Note: I am rarely on Facebook even though I used to be there quite a lot at one point as it was a way for me to share photos with friends and connect with family on the other side of the world. Well, that pretty much ended with Steemit but it was on the way out for a long time. I still keep the profile and occasionally post some photos of our daughter for friends and family to see how she grows. There are some advantages to having a closed profile. At some point when I am more comfortable with doing it, I will announce to them all that I have migrated to Steemit.

I also searched the name in the off chance it was a real person but couldn't find a match. Obviously the images are a real person however and have likely been ripped from Instagram... Who owns that platform again?