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Tag: Dislike

  • YouTube Nixing the Dislike Count

    YouTube Nixing the Dislike Count

    YouTube is removing the visible dislike count in an effort to combat harassment of content creators.

    Likes and dislikes are an important part of YouTube’s platform, playing a role in the algorithms that decide what content gets recommended. Dislikes can be problematic, however, as some creators find themselves on the receiving end of “dislike attacks,” where users try to drive up the number of dislikes, effectively tanking a video. Smaller channels are especially vulnerable to this behavior.

    We also heard directly from smaller creators and those just getting started that they are unfairly targeted by this behavior — and our experiment confirmed that this does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels.

    To address the issues, YouTube says the dislike button will still be available for people to use, but the number of dislikes will no longer be publicly visible. The count will still be available privately for the content creator to see.

    Based on what we learned, we’re making the dislike counts private across YouTube, but the dislike button is not going away. This change will start gradually rolling out today.

    https://youtu.be/kxOuG8jMIgI

  • Facebook Scam Targets Those Impatient for a Dislike Button

    So you want to be able to show your friends and family just how much you hate their posts? You may, at some point, get a dislike button. Probably not the kind you’re thinking of, but maybe.

    Dislike hype is at an all time high, however, after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company is currently building some sort of dislike button. This comes after years and years of saying “no dislike button” to the many users clamoring for such an option.

    But there is no dislike button yet. And if you see something on Facebook telling you there is, and that you need to click, like, or share in order to activate it – avoid at all costs.

    As would be expected, scammers are using the Facebook community’s excitement for a dislike button.

    Hackread has some shots of a scam post that’s currently making the rounds. “Get newly introduced facebook dislike button on your profile,” it reads.

    When clicked, it take users to a questionable outside link and gives them a countdown clock, at the end of which the “invitation” for the new dislike button is supposed to expire.

    All it asks users to do is like and share – thus spreading the hoax further.

    Screen Shot 2015-09-22 at 10.55.13 AM

    Be patient, people. You’ll get more post response options in the near future. It may just be a bunch of emoji reactions – but hey, at least it’ll be more diverse than “like”.

    Image via zeevveez, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Could Facebook’s Dislike Button Really Just Be Emoji Reactions?

    Could Facebook’s Dislike Button Really Just Be Emoji Reactions?

    Does a 2014 patent reveal Facebook’s true plans for its upcoming dislike button?

    Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg announced something few though would actually ever happen – Facebook is currently working on a dislike button. For years, Facebook has rebuked the idea of a dislike button, and the company has always said the same thing – it didn’t want to bring that sort of negativity to the site. Zuckerberg has also said he didn’t want to institute a reddit-like upvote/downvote system. For those reason, we never expected a dislike button to materialize.

    And it probably won’t – at least in the way some are projecting. Facebook isn’t going to institute a straight up “dislike” button for the reasons above. Facebook doesn’t want to scare people away. Making people scared to post for fear of having their feelings hurt isn’t exactly good for business.

    Instead, Facebook wants to build something that allows users to express empathy. Zuckerberg said this himself at a recent Q&A session.

    “You know, not every moment is a good moment, right? And if you are sharing something that is sad, whether it’s something in current events like the refugee crisis that touches you or if a family member past away, then it might not feel comfortable to Like that post. But your friends and people want to be able to express that they understand and that they relate to you,” he said.

    Maybe in the future, you’ll just get to click a cry face emoji when someone’s dog dies.

    Facebook filed a patent (via The Next Web) in December of 2014 for “a social networking system user may associate an emoji representing the users’ emotional reaction with a content item presented by the social networking system.”

    Screen Shot 2015-09-18 at 2.44.23 PM

    If you’re a Slack or Path user, this may sound familiar.

    Facebook already includes emoji in its status updates – think when you say you’re “feeling excited” or “feeling happy”. But now it looks like emoji could be the next News Feed ranking signal.

    Image via Wicker Paradise, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Don’t Worry, Facebook’s New Dislike Button Won’t Be the Awful, Mean-Spirited Thing You Imagine

    After years and years of clamoring by a certain subset of the userbase, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is finally building a “dislike” button. Is this a good idea? Who knows? Facebook does a lot of things – some of them work and some of them don’t.

    What I do know is that the much-publicized dislike button will not be the mean-spirited, I think your baby is ugly button that some fear it will be.

    Not that it wouldn’t become that if Facebook just unveiled a straight dislike option on all posts – that’s exactly what would happen. But Facebook isn’t going to do that.

    Do you want a dislike button? Do you think it would help or harm feedback on the site? Let us know in the comments.

    It’s important to look at exactly what Mark Zuckerberg said about the new button at Tuesday’s Q&A:

    I think people have asked about the dislike button for many years and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day where I actually get to say that we’re working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it.

    You know, it took us awhile to get here. Because you know, we didn’t want to just build a dislike button because, you know, we don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts. Right? That doesn’t seem like the kind of community that we want to create. I mean, you don’t want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and then have someone downvote it. That isn’t what we’re here to build in the world.

    But over the years of people asking for this, what we kind of have come to understand is that people aren’t looking an ability to downvote other people’s posts. What they really want is to be able to express empathy.

    You know, not every moment is a good moment, right? And if you are sharing something that is sad, whether it’s something in current events like the refugee crisis that touches you or if a family member past away, then it might not feel comfortable to Like that post. But your friends and people want to be able to express that they understand and that they relate to you.

    So I do think that it’s important to give people more options than just Like as a quick way to emote and share what they’re feeling on a post, so we’ve been working on this for awhile. It’s surprisingly complicated to make an interaction that you want to be that simple. But we have an idea that we think we’re going to be ready to test soon, and depending on how that does, we’ll roll it out more broadly.

    But thank you for all the feedback on this over the years. I think we’ve finally heard you and we’re working on this and hopefully we will deliver something that meets the needs of our community

    Over the years, Facebook has rebuked the idea of a dislike button, and the company has always said the same thing – it didn’t want to bring that sort of negativity to the site. Zuck also said he didn’t want to institute a reddit-like upvote/downvote system. Both of these points are echoed in Zuckerberg’s latest statement.

    “What they really want is to be able to express empathy,” he says. And that’s what we’re likely to get with the new dislike button – a way to show support for friends when their posts aren’t exactly positive.

    Like is an awkward sentiment when someone’s grandma dies. Dislike is more appropriate.

    But will it even be a true “dislike” button? Or will is say something like “I’m sorry” or “Condolences”?

    And will it simply be one new button? “I do think that it’s important to give people more options than just Like as a quick way to emote and share what they’re feeling on a post”… but “it’s surprisingly complicated to make an interaction that you want to be that simple,” says Zuckerberg. Will post context determine what that other option is?

    There are a lot of questions about the upcoming dislike button and what form it will take. For the average user, a button that expresses empathy could be used just like the like button – as a news feed ranking signal. It could help posts that don’t get a lot of likes because of their delicate subject matter rise to to the top as Facebook’s algorithms could have another way to decide whether or not a post is interesting and generating feedback.

    Same for pages. But if you’re worried about people disliking your page posts and further destroying your post visibility – you probably shouldn’t be. Like Zuckerberg said, he doesn’t want a situation where posts are being downvoted into oblivion.

    You also shouldn’t worry about receiving DISLIKES on all your selfies. Facebook doesn’t want to scare people away. Making people scared to post for fear of having their feelings hurt isn’t exactly good for business.

    What form do you think the dislike button will take? Let us know in the comments.

  • Facebook Dislike Button Is Actually Happening

    Soon, you’ll be able to express that you don’t like something on Facebook.

    The social media unicorn is coming, according to Mark Zuckerberg. You’ve asked for it for years and years, and now the company is finally building a dislike button.

    Surprised? You should be. For years Zuck and company have resisted the many calls from users to give them a way to express the opposite of the now-most-popular emotion in the world – the like.

    In rebuking the idea of a dislike button, Facebook always said it didn’t want to bring that sort of negativity to the site. Zuck also said he didn’t want to institute a reddit-like upvote/downvote system.

    Just listen to what former CTO Bret Taylor said about it late last year:

    “[The dislike button] came up a lot. In fact even the language of the word like was something we discussed a lot as well. But regarding the dislike button, the main reason is that in the context of the social network, the negativity of that button has a lot of unfortunate consequences.

    “I have the feeling that if there were to be a ‘dislike’ button is that you would end up with these really negative social aspects to it. If you want to dislike something, you should probably write a comment, because there’s probably a word for what you want to say … I’m not saying the ‘like’ button isn’t flawed would it be even more complex with a negative sentiment like ‘dislike’.”

    And that’s the thing about a dislike button. Zuckerberg doesn’t want a network where people are afraid to post anything because of a fear of negative feedback. Sure would like to post a selfie, but I don’t want to get a bunch of dislikes.

    But today in a town hall-style Q&A, he changed his tune.

    “I think people have asked about the dislike button for many years. Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we’re working on it and shipping it,” he said.

    “What [users] really want is the ability to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment,” Zuckerberg said.

    And that’s true – one use of a dislike button is to show empathy. My poor dog fluffy died! Dislike. Donald Trump said some awful things about Mexicans again. Dislike.

    But rest assured, given the opportunity, users will deploy a dislike button in the negative ways that Zuckerberg and company fear.

    That’s why you can bet it will differ from the like button – at least in some way. How will it work into news feed rankings (the way the like button does)? Will is be available on all types of posts? Expect a lot of controversy to follow. This should be interesting.

  • Dislike Button Still Isn’t Happening, but Zuckerberg Is Open to Buttons for ‘Broader Range of Emotions’

    Dislike Button Still Isn’t Happening, but Zuckerberg Is Open to Buttons for ‘Broader Range of Emotions’

    As we’ve touched on before, you’re never going to get a true ‘dislike’ button. There are a lot of reasons why you’re never going to get one, despite much of the Facebook-using public clamoring for one for quite some time. For one, you have to realize that the ‘like’ button is not there for you. It wasn’t made for you. It was made for advertising purposes.

    Also, the whole idea of “disliking” is messy. It’s hateful in most of its applications. Sure, it has its non-spiteful uses (I dislike the fact that you have a sore throat aww), but you know that a true dislike button would mostly be used to dump all over people’s thoughts, life events, and photographic expressions.

    Sure, Tim’s guacamole really does like like shit – but do we really need to be able to ‘dislike’ it?

    In his latest Facebook Q&A, Zuckerberg reiterated this, once again shooting down the idea. But he did go in to some interesting details, some of which suggest that the company is at least thinking about expanding the palette of emotional responses beyond the ‘like’.

    Here are Zuckerberg’s comments on the idea of a dislike button (via TechCrunch):

    You know we’re thinking about it, on the Dislike button. It’s an interesting question, right, because there are two things that it can mean. And we’re considering and talking about doing one and not the other. So the one that we don’t want to do: The Like button is really valuable because it’s a way for you to very quickly express a positive emotion or sentiment when someone puts themselves out there and shares something. And, you know, some people have asked for a Dislike button because they want to be able to say ‘That thing isn’t good’. And that’s not something that we think is good for the world. So we’re not going to build that. I don’t think there needs to be a voting mechanism about whether posts are good or bad. I don’t think that’s socially very valuable or good for the community to help people share the important moments in their lives.

    But the thing that I think is very valuable is there are more sentiments that people want to express than positivity or that they Like something. You know a lot of times people share things on Facebook that are sad moments in their lives, or are tough cultural or social things and often people tell us that they don’t feel comfortable press Like because Like isn’t the appropriate sentiment when someone lost a loved one or is talking about a very difficult issue.

    So one of the things that we’ve had some dialogue about internally and that we’ve thought about for quite a while is what’s the right way to make it so people can easily express a broader range of emotions to empathize or to express surprise or laughter or any of these things. And you know you can always just comment, right, so it’s not like there isn’t a way to do that today, and a lot of people are commenting on posts all the time. But there’s something that’s just so simple about the Like button. You know if you’re commenting, a lot of the time you feel like you have to have something witty to say or add to the conversation.

    But everyone feels like they can just press the Like button and that’s an important way to sympathize or empathize with someone in an important moment that put themselves out there to share. And giving people the power to do that in more ways with more emotions would be powerful, but we need to figure out the right way to do it so it ends up being a force for good, not a force for bad and demeaning the posts that people are putting out there. So that’s an important thing. We don’t have anything that’s coming out soon but it’s an important area of discussion.

    TL;DR – The ability to dislike someone’s shitty post just because it’s shitty? Not coming. The ability to express sympathy over someone’s dead grandma with a single button that is more emotionally precise than the sometimes awful bluntness of the ‘like’? That’s a possibility.

    Post by Q&A with Mark.

    Image via zeevveez, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Facebook Dislike Button ‘Came Up a Lot’, but Nixed from the Get-Go

    The Facebook ‘Dislike’ button is a sort of social media unicorn for some users. It’s never existed, it’s never going to exist, yet there are still people out there clamoring for it. Not only that, but plenty of those users routinely fall into traps involving ‘dislike button’ hoaxes. It’s not as much of an issue as it was, oh let’s say a couple of years ago, but if you polled Facebook users you’d still get a large swath who say they’d love a button to show their disapproval.

    Once again, this is never going to happen. First of all, the ‘Like’ button is not there for you. It wasn’t made for you. It was made for advertising purposes. Second, the concept of “disliking” is just too messy for Facebook.

    Tech Radar recently spoke to former Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, who is pretty much the creator of the ‘Like’.

    “[The dislike button] came up a lot. In fact even the language of the word like was something we discussed a lot as well. But regarding the dislike button, the main reason is that in the context of the social network, the negativity of that button has a lot of unfortunate consequences,” he said.

    What’s interesting here is that Facebook apparently debated the concept of the dislike button long and hard before deciding it was a bad idea. It’s not as if Facebook created the like button, people began demanding a dislike button as a compliment, and Facebook thought about it and said no. From the very beginning, Facebook had no intentions of ever letting you “dislike” things on its site.

    “I have the feeling that if there were to be a ‘dislike’ button is that you would end up with these really negative social aspects to it. If you want to dislike something, you should probably write a comment, because there’s probably a word for what you want to say … I’m not saying the ‘like’ button isn’t flawed would it be even more complex with a negative sentiment like ‘dislike’,” Taylor added.

    And that’s the other reason you’ll never, ever, ever, get a real dislike button. It’s hateful. Sure, it has its non-spiteful uses. I’m so heartbroken my little dog smacky died…, for instance, could be given a dislike. That’s fair.

    But more often than not, a dislike button would be used in a more negative manner. Man, that guacamole you made looks like shit … DISLIKE.

    Image via zeevveez, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Facebook Lets You Use Stickers In Comments (Let The Disliking Commence)

    The moment you’ve been waiting for (or perhaps not) is here. You can now use Facebook stickers in comments. Until now, the feature has only been available in private messages, but now, you can expect to see stickers all over the social network, for better or for worse.

    Facebook engineer Bob Baldwin announced the news in a Facebook post (via TNW). He wrote:

    Stickers have been a delightful way to communicate in messages, and I’m happy to announce we’re bringing them to comments across Facebook. Just tap the smiley face icon in the bottom-right of any comment field to pick a sticker to send. It’ll be available to all posts from people, in groups, and on events now. I think stickers will allow people to reply to a variety of posts in a more fun way than words alone. You can now easily show your excitement for a post with good news, cheer up a friend who’s feeling down, and express a variety of more nuanced reactions.

    Stickers in Comments was started as a hackathon project in New York with me and Kwame, where we built the prototype for web in a single night. When we turned it on for employees soon after, they loved it. We later built it for mobile web at a hackathon in California, and the iOS & Android versions soon after.

    If you don’t have sticker support for comments yet, sit tight. It’s rolling out.

    Oh, and don’t forget, there’s a thumb-down sticker, so here’s that “dislike” option you’ve been clamoring for, at least in some capacity.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook ‘Dislike’ Button Now A Reality (Kind Of)

    Facebook users have long begged for a dislike button, because honestly, there’s a whole lot of content to dislike in the News Feed. Facebook has always resisted, however, opting not to spread negativity throughout the world’s largest social network.

    Well, they’re letting in a little bit of negativity now. No, they haven’t given users a proper like button, but they’ve added the thumb-down option to Messenger to go alongside the recently added thumb-up. It’s one of the app’s stickers, which are essentially emoticons, but hey, at least it’s something.

    People were hoping for a way to dislike things when Facebook launched the Open Graph, but the company went so far as to block the action:

    Dislike
    Image via AllFacebook

    Recognizing the collective yearning among Facebook users for a dislike button, scammers tried to fool people by encouraging them to install one.

    Dislike
    Image via Sophos

    2011 saw the release of the dislike stamp from ThinkGeek:

    Dislike

    Earlier this year, a Facebook product engineer talked about the lack of an official dislike button in a reddit AMA (ask me anything).

    “Actions on Facebook tend to focus on positive social interactions,” he said. “Like is the lightest-weight way to express positive sentiment. I don’t think adding a light-weight way to express negative sentiment would be that valuable. I know there are times when it’d make sense, like when a friend is having a rough day, or got into a car accident like my sister yesterday (she’s okay!). For these times, a nice comment from a friend goes a long way.”

    That’s true, but a hurtful comment from a “friend” can do a lot of damage too.

    It does seem that Facebook is considering letting people express themselves in more ways these days. A “sympathy” button was recently developed at a Facebook hackathon, and it’s apparently not out of the question that we could see one some day.

    Now, Facebook is giving users more options in private messaging. It’s not just a thumb-down, however. There’s also a sparkling thumb-up, a hand holding a heart, a shaka sign, a hand holding flowers, a peace sign, a raised fist, a flaming thumb-up, a pointing finger, a bandaged thumb up (?), and a hand holding a glass of champagne. No middle finger, unfortunately.

    These are part of a free sticker pack available in the sticker store in the Messenger app. Once you download it, you can also use them from the desktop in any Facebook private messaging conversation.

    We have to assume that Facebook will be monitoring the use of these new stickers. Perhaps if enough people use the dislike button often enough, Facebook will launch a real one. This could be wishful thinking, but Facebook watches pretty much everything you do. It’s even using data from messages you type, but don’t actually post. Why not get some solid Facebook dislike data?

    [h/t: The Verge]

    Sticker image: Facebook.com

  • Facebook Engineer Talks Android App, Dislike Button, and More in Reddit AMA

    Facebook Engineer Talks Android App, Dislike Button, and More in Reddit AMA

    Reddit AMAs are fascinating in general, but when a Facebook product engineer submits to the free-form Q&A session, it’s right up our alley.

    Facebook product engineer Bob Baldwin, who has worked on products like Groups, Events, Photos, and more, took some time to answer some questions yesterday. In that time, he discussed a wide range of Facebook-related topics including Android, Messages, Groups, and even that never-going-to-happen “dislike” button.

    Here are some of the best questions and answers from the AMA:

    Why did Facebook decide to put time-stamps for when messages are seen?

    I didn’t build this feature, but I’m a big fan of it and started working on Messages just after it was introduced. Before read receipts were added, we’d often here from friends and other users that they didn’t feel like the person they were messaging actually got their message. By adding read receipts, it makes messaging through Facebook feel more reliable. It also aimed to decrease the time to it takes for friends to reply, making messages feel more like SMS than email.

    Which product are you currently most proud of?

    Groups. At launch, it became one of the fastest growing products we’d ever launched, and I was really proud to have worked on it. I think communicating with small groups of people you know in real life is really personal and directed in a way that public sharing cannot match. Over time, I believe more sharing will shift into private sharing (via groups, messages, and other products).

    Will Facebook’s Android app ever not suck?

    For this question, he referred to mobile guy Joel Seligstein:

    Well, we’ve been pretty happy with our trajectory and our last few releases. We’re currently investing a ton in architecture and long-term planning for performance, data usage, stability, and reliability.

    He also said…

    Next release should have some battery work done in it, and its something we now have a couple people looking into fulltime.

    Which product did you build that turned out to be the most difficult and why?

    Questions. It was too hard to build a community around this on Facebook, so quality was never that great. It’s also difficult to compare usage of a specialized content type, like questions, to the types of content that can be posted everyday (status updates, photos, etc).

    Facebook has done a lot of work making it easy to keep track of events. However, for the average person, they still need to maintain an external calendar (and potentially use some tool to sync Facebook events to it). Are there any plans to add the ability to use Facebook as a full personal calendar?

    I don’t think our users currently think of Facebook as the place to store content that isn’t shared in someway, so I think it wouldn’t be used much. Facebook events are primarily about meeting up with friends. Though, I hope our events continue to have better integration with existing calendar systems. iOS integration is really nice, for example.

    Will Facebook ever have a dislike button??

    Actions on Facebook tend to focus on positive social interactions. Like is the lightest-weight way to express positive sentiment. I don’t think adding a light-weight way to express negative sentiment would be that valuable. I know there are times when it’d make sense, like when a friend is having a rough day, or got into a car accident like my sister yesterday (she’s okay!). For these times, a nice comment from a friend goes a long way.

    Speaking of AMAs, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s name recently popped up on the AMA calendar – but disappeared as of Wednesday morning. We’ ve reaching out to find out what’s going on and will let you know when we hear anything.

  • Facebook Still Dislikes the Concept of Disliking

    One of the grand new things coming to Facebook (according to Facebook) is the open graph and “frictionless sharing.” Not only does Facebook want to be the place where everything you do around the web is shared, but they also want it to be super-easy to do so.

    This means removing some of those permission screens required before you share something – things can be posted to your wall and appear in your friends’ streams in real time. You can imagine that some people are already concerned about some of the privacy implications.

    Another part of the “open graph” is the concept of new verbs to describe activity. Facebook wants to move away from users having to “like” everything, because that promotes an endorsement. Say you want your friends to know that your watched a film or read a book, but you didn’t particularly care for it. You certainly don’t want to “like” it, but you might share that you “watched” it.

    That’s where the new verbs come into play. This could include read, watched, listened to for media – or even cooked, made, saw or other actions that Zuckerberg referred to as “lightweight activities” at the f8 conference.

    Facebook app developers will be able to implement these new verbs into their apps. “Josh is watching Breaking Bad” or “Josh cooked Chicken Tikka Masala.”

    One word that Facebook doesn’t want popping up around the network – Dislike.

    Here’s what happens when you try to write that word into an app, courtesy of All Facebook–

    Seriously. Facebook really really dislikes the idea of disliking stuff. Think about all the times a dislike button would be relevant – you disliked a movie you just watched, you disliked the fact that your best friend got engaged, you disliked the moronic song lyrics your cousin just posted…the possibilities are endless.

    People are still crazy about the idea of being able to dislike things on Facebook. There are dozens of pages dedicated to Facebook bringing in a dislike button. The official page for the “Dislike button” has over 3.3 million likes.

    Unfortunately for them, it looks like we won’t see the practice of disliking coming to Facebook anytime soon.

  • Germany Dislikes Facebook’s Like Button

    Germany Dislikes Facebook’s Like Button

    Apparently, it will soon be illegal to like anything in Germany anymore, at least through Facebook. Thanks to a determination given by “the data protection centre of the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein” (ULD), the Facebook “Like” button violates Germany’s strict privacy edicts, and therefore, must be removed.

    As pointed out by The Local, the issues with Facebook were explained by a ULD release, and it essentially says Facebook’s “Like” button builds profiles of users and submits them back to a server in the United States. This is a direct violation of the rules set up by Germany concerning the privacy of its citizens. Because of that, German businesses that reside in the Schleswig-Holstein district must remove the “Like” button from their sites, or else face punishment in the form of a fine:

    ULD expects from website owners in Schleswig-Holstein to immediately stop the passing on of user data to Facebook in the USA by deactivating the respective services. If this does not take place by the end of September 2011, ULD will take further steps. After performing the hearing and administrative procedure this can mean a formal complaint according to sect. 42 LDSG SH for public entities, a prohibition order pursuant to sect. 38 par. 5 BDSG as well as a penalty fine for private entities. The maximum fine for violations of the TMG is 50TS Euro.

    That’s 50,000 Euros for those who aren’t sure.

    Facebook maintains that their “Like” button meets EU’s privacy standards, but a spokesperson for the ULD, Thilo Weichert, disagrees:

    ULD has pointed out informally for some time that many Facebook offerings are in conflict with the law. This unfortunately has not prevented website owners from using the respective services and the more so as they are easy to install and free of charge. Web analytics is among those services and especially informative for advertising purposes. It is paid with the data of the users. With the help of these data Facebook has gained an estimated market value of more than 50 bn. dollars ($50 billion)…

    Nobody should claim that there are no alternatives; there are European and other social media available that take the protection of privacy rights of Internet users far more serious. That they also may contain problematic applications must not be a reason to remain idle towards Facebook, but must prompt us as supervisory authorities to pursue these violations.

    Basically, don’t use anything that could potentially feed Facebook’s metrics-gathering system. In fact, Weichert suggests using other social media platforms, although, the problem with that is potentially missing out on Facebook’s far-and-wide reach.

    Nevertheless, the burden of being Facebook-compliant falls on the business owners, at least for now. Nothing in the documents indicates Facebook will be punished for these privacy violations, perceived or otherwise. The fines will not be aimed at Facebook for collecting the data, instead, they will be for the owners who continue to feed the beast.