Well, it happened. The stupidest request, no demand, I have ever, and most likely will ever receive...

Me: So what is it you're looking to do with your website.

Client: We're not showing up Facebook's home page. We need you to fix that. We have a budget of $10,000 to make this happen right now.

Me: As much as I'd love to take your money, that isn't something I can control. Every "home page" is profile-based, which technically isn't a homepage, but a "feed" that changes constantly. So say you create a profile on Facebook, only those you follow, and paid posts show up on your feed. What I can do however is use your budget to create and promote posts from your company page to show on users' feeds. If you're serious about marketing, we can start slow at $250/week, then work our way up or down based on results until your budget is exhausted, then re-evaluate the budget at that time. I can tailor a retainer for you based on the number of ads per week that you'd like to make.

Client: No, this is not what we're asking for at all.

Me: Okay...what is it you're looking for exactly? Run through this in as much detail as possible so I can get on the same page.

Client: We want to be on the main home page of facebook.com. We want our logo on that page when people sign up to make an account, linking to our website.

Me: That's simply not possible. That's Facebook's own home page. Nobody has a right to edit that other than Facebook itself.

Client: Bullshit. There's a Facebook developers section with APIs to edit and view Facebook's entire website. We would do it ourselves, but we signed up and don't understand how to change it in Chrome. That's why we need you and [referring client] said you were the best guy for our needs.

Me: That API has no control over Facebook's corporate data, including their own home page. That API designed ONLY for sections in which you are authorized to access or modify, such as your personal profile or created page for your business.

Client: We know that it can be done. If you don't do it, we'll find someone else who can.

Me: Well good luck with that, because the only way it would be remotely possible to do that WILL involve prison time, since that would be illegal. The only legal way to do it would be to buy Facebook, and they'll laugh you out of the building with that offer. But I'm done with this conversation because I have work to complete from clients that aren't delusional. Have a nice day! [hang up]

----

What. The. Fuck.

Mother of god, was listening to the US govt hearing of zuckerberg about the recent scandals. The amount of very fucking simple obvious questions he 'could not' answer normally...

Govt person: Would you be willing to change Facebook's business model if this was required for the security and privacy of Facebook users' accounts?

Zuck: I don't understand your question.

Sorry, WHAT?! You don't need particular rocket science to understand what's being asked here. A combination of common sense and knowing the English language and English grammar in combination with maybe having finished some form of education should be enough to understand this ridiculously easy question.

Do you need it written on a golden plate with fucking blue letters in Facebook's font with the S letters as dollar signs while drinking 10 gallons of 'fuck every persons privacy'?!

Or maybe shoving it up your ass in the form of heated/glowing metal letters of 10+ inches in height? We could arrange that as well.

!!privacy
!!political

I had a discussion with a coworker earlier.

I owed him for lunch the other day, and he suggested I pay him back either with cash (which I didn't have), Venmo, or just by him lunch the next time (which I ended up doing).

I asked about Venmo, and he said it was like paypal, but always free. that sounded a bit off -- because how are they in business if it's always free? -- so I looked it up, and paid special attention to their privacy policy.

The short of it: they make money by selling your information. That's worth far more than charging users a small fee when sending $5 every few weeks. Sort of what I expected when I heard "always free," but what surprised me is just how much they collect. (In retrospect, I really shouldn't have been surprised at all...)

Here's an incomplete list:
* full name, physical address, email, DoB, SSN (or other government IDs, depending on country)
* Complete contact list (phone numbers, names, photos)
* Browser/device fingerprint
* (optional) Your entire Facebook feed and history
* (optional) all of your Facebook friends' contact info
* Your Twitter feed
* Your FourSquare activity
(The above four ostensibly for "fraud prevention")
* GPS data
* Usage info about the actual service
* Other users' usage info (e.g. mentioning you)
* Financial info (the only thing not shared with third parties)

Like, scary?

And, of course, they share all of this with their parent company, PayPal. (The privacy policy does not specify what PayPal does with it, nor does it provide any links that might describe it, e.g. PayPal's "info-shared-by-third-parties" privacy policy)

So I won't be using Venmo. ever.

I mentioned all of this to my coworker, and he just doesn't understand. at all. He even asks "So what are they going do with that, send me ads? like they already do?"

I told him why I think it's scary. Everything from them freely selling all of your info, to someone being able to look through your entire online life's history, to being able to masquerade around as you, to even reproducing your voice (e.g. voice clips collected by google assistant), to grouping people by political affiliations.

He didn't have much to say about any of them, and actually thought the voice thing was really cool. (All I could think of was would happen if the "news" had that ability....) All of his other responses were "that doesn't bother me at all" and/or "using all of these services is so convenient."

but what really got me was his reaction to the last one.

I said, "If you're part of the NRA, for example, you'd be grouped with Republicans. If they sell all of this information, which they do, and they don't really care who buys it or what they do with it... someone could look through the data and very very easily target those political groups."

His response? "I don't have to worry about that. I'm a Democrat, and have always voted Democrat. I'll tell anyone that."

Like.
That's basically saying every non-democrat is someone you should be wary of and keep an eye on. That's saying Democrats are the norm and everyone else is deviant and/or wrong.

and I couldn't say anything after this because... no matter what I said, it would start a political conflict, and would likely end with me being fired (since the owner is also a democrat, and they're very buddy-buddy). "What if they target democrats?" -> "They already do!" or "What if democrats use it against others?" -> "They deserve it for being violent and racist, but we never would" (except, you know, that IRS/tea-party incident for example...)

But like, this is coming from someone who firmly believes conservatives are responsible for all of the violence and looting and rioting and mass shootings in the country. ... even when every single instance has been by committed by democrats. every. single. one.

Just...
jfl;askjfasflkj.

He doesn't understand the need for privacy, and his world view is just... he actually thinks everyone with different beliefs is wrong and dangerous.

I don't even know how to deal with people like this. and with how prevalent this mindset is... coupled with the aforementioned privacy concerns... it's honestly *terrifying.*

I work for a company known for its unbelievable perks and benefits. Every time a job opens up, we get thousands of applications.

Candidates are becoming increasingly aggressive to stand out. Hundreds of them (literally) have purchased Facebook ads or LinkedIn promoted posts to get their information in front of current employees.

Others have taken to outright stalking our employees. I freelance occasionally and have a separate website for my freelance business. I receive dozens of calls and emails to my freelance number and email account daily from people who want to “chat about the open position.”

My husband — who has a different last name — runs a small retail shop. He’s had people come into his store and tell him that they did internet sleuthing and found out he was married to an employee of my company, and would he please pass on their resume?

I expect to get these messages on my LinkedIn or company email, but am I wrong in thinking that stalking me out and trying to contact me via personal contact info (or my husband) is way out of line?

Is there a way to sharply tell them that this is not okay? Normally, I just don’t respond, but I have to turn my phone off or it rings all day and it’s really annoying. Would it look weird to put a message on my freelance website that says do not contact me about Company X jobs?

My company is aware of this problem, and has said to forward the names of aggressive or alarming candidates their way to remove them from consideration, but it’s so common, I’m thinking this is a product of being told that if they just showed GUMPTION, they’d get the job. I feel bad for them, but it’s also creeping me out.

Every single fucking time:

Developers: Maybe we'll do something nice for the users, like signing in with Facebook account?
Business: Nah, nobody is gonna pay for that and it sounds useless. We're good with current solutions. Just do your job!

half a year later:

Business: Hey, I just came up with the idea that we could have logging in with Facebook.
Also business: Wow, great idea!
Management: Here's your bonus for a great idea!
Developers: ...

Fuck startups.

Back when I was an wee lad I interviewed for an startup, not knowing that startups are not real companies. The scumbag interviewer, who was also the owner of the outfit, asked me what I was looking in a company. I said "fair wages, a non-antagonic environment and projects with real roadmaps".
He asked me to elaborate. I said, "You know, if today your product is a sales platform, I do not want to come into work next week and discover it is now an air travel tickets marketplace, or come back the very next day and discover it is now an automated pizza factory, or in the next day and it is now a crypto exchange..."

The scumbag looked PISSED. "Sorry, but we are looking for someone who likes the challenges of a dynamic environment (read: we do not have a business model and we hate the very idea of trying to make money out of our company), and you do not fit the profile"

Startups are not real companies, i.e. they do not systematically charge money in exchange for goods or services in amounts that exceed the cost of providing said goods or services. Most startups are just tax fronts for money laundering schemes. The rest are just playthings for rich assholes who can't get a real output-producing job. Those two categories are not mutually exclusive.

Take Facebook, for example. The poster child of startups. The Zucker that owns it just announced they are setting impossible performance targets on purpose, not even attempting to hide the fact that it is just a way to lay off large quantities of employees without using the words "massive lay offs". Companies, real thin-margin, lots-of-regulation profit-driven companies do not do that. They are not some sort of "capitalist woke", real CEOs just know that if their companies largely miss performance targets on their tenure, purposely or not, next it will be their neck on the chopping block. Because they can be fired if the KPI charts say they suck. But the Zucker cannot be fired, not even after commanding their beanbag and tap beer offices to be heated exclusively by burning hundred dollar bills.
So the Zucker is not interested in performance. Not even in lay offs as expense cutting measures - investors are an infinite source of free money for startups. The Zucker just wants to project power, especially now that engineers are not so confident in the stability of they high-paying jobs.

So are irrelevant 500-souls-or-less self-aggrandizing startups. Their owners are there because it is in vogue to have a startup or ten. And will have that startup pivot to whatever sounds fancy that season. After all, only poor people care about things like EBITDA and profit margins repeatability - A.K.A. "getting more money".

Fuck startups.

Tl;Dr - It started as an escape, carried on as fun, then as a way to be lazy, and finally as a way of life. Coding has defined and shaped my entire life from the age of nine.

When I was nine I was playing a game on my ZX spectrum and accidentally knocked the keyboard as I reached over to adjust my TV. Incredibly parts of it actually made a little sense to me and got my curiosity. I spent hours reading through that code, afraid to turn the Spectrum off in case I couldn't get back to it. Weeks later I got hold of a book of example code to copy out to do various things like making patterns on the screen. I was amazed by it. You told it what to do, and it did it! (don't you miss the days when coding worked like that?) I was bitten by the coding bug (excuse the pun) and I'd got it bad! I spent many late nights on that thing, escaping from a difficult home life. People (especially adults) were confusing, and in my experience unpredictable. When you did things wrong they shouted at you and threatened to take you away, or ignored you completely. Code never did that. If you did something wrong, it quietly let you know and often told you exactly what was wrong. It wasn't because of shifting expectations or a change of mood or anything like that. It was just clean logic, simple cause and effect.

I get my first computer a year later: an IBM XT that had been discarded by a company and was fitted with a key on the side to turn it on. With the impressive noise it made it really was like starting an engine. Whole most kids would have played with the games, I spent my time playing with batch scripts and writing very simple text adventures. And discovering what "format c:" does. With some abuse and threatened violence I managed to get windows running on it. Windows 2.1 I think it was.

At 12 I got a Gateway 75 running Windows 95. Over the next few years I do covered many amazing games: ROTT, Doom, Hexen, and so on. Aside from the games themselves, I was fascinated by the way computers could be linked together to play together (this was still early days for the Web and computers networked in a home was very unusual). I also got into making levels for Doom, Heretic, and years later Duke Nukem 3D (pretty sure it was heretic; all I remember is the nightmare of trying to write levels entirely by code!). I enjoyed re-scripting some of the weapons and monsters to behave differently. About this time I also got into HTML (I still call this coding, but not programming), C, and java. I had trouble with C as none of the examples and tutorial code seemed to run properly under a Windows environment. Similar for my very short stint with assembly. At some point I got a TI-83 programmable calculator and started rewriting my old batch script games on it, including one "Gangster Lord" game that had the same mechanics as a lot of the Facebook games that appeared later (do things, earn money, spend money to buy stuff to do more things). Worried about upcoming exams, I also made a number of maths helper apps, including a quadratic equation solver that gave the steps, and a fake calculator reset to smuggle them into my exams. When the day came I panicked and did a proper reset for fear of being caught.

At 18 I was convinced I was going to be a professional coder as I started a degree in Computer Science. Three months later I dropped out after a bunch of lectures teaching what input and output devices were and realising we were only going to be taught Java and no C++. I started a job on the call centre of a big company, but was frustrated with many of the boring and repetitive tasks we had to do. So I put my previous knowledge to use, and quickly learned VBA to automate tasks. It wasn't long before I ended up promoted to Business Analyst where I worked on a great team building small systems in Office, SAS, and a few other tools.

I decided to retrain in psychology, so left the job I was in and started another degree. During my work and placements my skills came in use a number of times to simplify and automate tasks. I finished my degree, then took a job as a teaching assistant while I worked out what I wanted to do next and how to pay for it. Three years later I've ended up IT technican at the school, responsible for the website, teaching a number of Computing lessons each week, and unofficial co-coordinator for Computing as a subject. I also run a team of ten year old Digital Leaders who I am training in online safety and as technical experts; I am hoping to inspire them to a future in coding. In September I'll be starting teacher training with a view to becoming a Computing specialist teacher. Oh, and I'm currently doing a course in Android Development in my free time.

And this all started with an accidental knock on the keyboard of a ZX Spectrum.

I just tried to sign up to Instagram. I made a big mistake.

First up with Facebook related stuff is data. Data, data and more data. Initially when you sign up (with a new account, not login with Facebook) you're asked your real name, email address and phone number. And finally the username you'd like to have on the service. I gave them a phone number that I actually own, that is in my iPhone, my daily driver right now (and yes I have 3 Androids which all run custom ROMs, hold your keyboards). The email address is a usual for me, instagram at my domain. I am a postmaster after all, and my mail server is a catch-all one. For a setup like that, this is perfectly reasonable. And here it's no different, devrant at my domain. On Facebook even, I use fb at my domain. I'm sure you're starting to see a pattern here. And on Facebook the username, real name and email domain are actually the same.

So I signed up, with - as far as I'm aware - perfectly valid data. I submitted the data and was told that someone at Instagram will review the data within 24 hours. That's already pretty dystopian to me. It is now how you block bots. It is not how Facebook does it either, at least since last time I checked. But whatever. You'd imagine that regardless of the result, they'd let you know. Cool, you're in, or sorry, you're rejected and here's why. Nope.

Fast-forward to today when I recalled that I wanted to sign up to Instagram to see my girlfriend's pictures. So I opened Chromium again that I already use only for the rancid Facebook shit.. and it was rejected. Apparently the mere act of signing up is a Terms of Service violation. I have read them. I do not know which section I have violated with the heinous act of signing up. But I do have a hunch.

Many times now have I been told by ignorant organizations that I would be "stealing" their intellectual property, or business assets or whatever, just because I sent them an email from their name on my domain. It is fucking retarded. That is MY domain, not yours. Learn how email works before you go educate a postmaster. Always funny to tell them how that works. But I think that in this case, that is what happened.

So I appealed it, using a random link to something on Instagram's help section from a third-party blog. You know it's good when the third-party random blog is better. But I found the form and filled it in. Same shit all over again for info, prefilling be damned I guess. Minor convenience though, whatever.

I get sent an email in German, because apparently browsing through a VPS in Germany acting as a VPN means you're German. Whatever... After translating it, I found that it asks me to upload a picture of myself, holding a paper in my hands, on which I would have a confirmation code, my username, and my email address.. all hand-written. It must not be too dark, it must be clear, it must be in JPEG.. look, I just wanted to fucking sign up.

I sent them an email back asking them to fix all of this. While I was writing it and this rant, I thought to myself that they can shove that piece of paper up their ass. In fact I would gladly do it for them.

Long story short, do not use Instagram. And one final thing I have gripes with every time. You are not being told all the data you'll have to present from the get-go. You're not being told the process. Initially I thought it'd just be email, phone, username, and real name. Once signed up (instantly, not within 24 hours!) I would start setting up my account and adding a profile picture. The right way to ask for a picture of me! And just do it at my own pace, as I please.

And for God's sake, tackle abuse when it actually happens. You'll find out who's a bot and who isn't by their usage patterns soon enough. Do not do any of this at sign-up. Or hell, use a CAPTCHA or whatever, I don't fucking care. There's so many millions of ways to skin this cat.

Facebook and especially Instagram. Both of them are fucking retarded.

Disclaimer: Long tale of a tech support job. Also the wk29 story is at the bottom.

One time I was working tech support for a website and email hosting firm that was in town. I was hired and worked as the only tech support person there, so all calls came in through me. This also meant that if I was on a call, and another one came through, they would go straight to voice mail. But I couldn't hang up calls either, so, sometimes someone would take up tons of time and I'd have to help them. I was also the "SEO" and "Social Media Marketing" person, as well; managed peoples' social media campaigns. I have tons of stories from this place but a few in particular stick out to me. No particular order to these, I'm just reminiscing as I write this.

I once had to help a man who couldn't find the start button on his computer. When I eventually guided him to allowing me to remote into his computer via Team Viewer, I found he was using Windows XP. I'm not kidding.

I once had to sit on the phone with a man selling Plexus Easy Weight Loss (snake oil, pyramid scheme, but he was a client) and have him yell at me about not getting him more business, simply because we'd built his website. No, I'D not built his website, but his website was fine and it wasn't our job to get him more business. Oh yeah, this is the same guy who said that he didn't want the social media marketing package because he "had people to hide from." Christ.

We had another client who was a conspiracy theorist and wanted the social media marketing package for his blog, all about United States conspiracies. Real nut case. But the best client I've ever had because sometimes he'd come into the office and take up my time talking at me about how Fukushima was the next 911 and that soon it'll spill into the US water supply and everybody was going to die. Hell, better than being on the phone! Doing his social media was great because he wanted me to post clearly fake news stories to his twitter and facebook for him, and I got to look at and manage all the comments calling him out on his bullshit. It was kinda fun. After all, it wasn't _me_ that believed all this. It felt like I was trolling.

[wk29] I was the social media and support techie, not a salesperson. But sometimes I was put in charge _alone_ in front of clients for status meetings about their social media. This one time we had a client who was a custom fashion-type person. I don't really remember. But I was told directly to make them a _new_ facebook page and post to it every day with their hot new deals and stuff. MONTHS pass since I do that and they come in for a face-to-face meeting. Boss is out doing... boss things and that means I have to sit in with her, and for some fucking reason she brought her boyfriend AND HER DAD. Who were both clearly very very angry with me, the company, and probably life. They didn't ever say anything at first, they didn't greet me, they were both just there like British royal guards. It was weird as fuck. I start showing them the page, the progress on their likes goals, etc etc. Marketing shit. They say, "huh, we didn't see any of these posts at home." Turns out they already had a Facebook page, I was working on a completely seperate one, and then the boyfriend finally chimes in with the biggest fucking scowl, "what are you going to do about this?" He was sort of justified, considering this was a payed and semi-expensive service we offered, but holy shit the amount of fire in all three of them. Anyway, it came down to me figuring out how to merge facebook pages, but they eventually left as clients. Is this my fuck up? Is it my company's? Is it theirs? I don't know but that was probably the most awkward meeting ever. Don't know if it comes across through text but the anxiety was pretty real. Fuck.

tl;dr Tech support jobs are a really fun and exciting entry level position I recommend everybody apply for if they're starting out in the tech world! You'll meet tons of cool people and every day is like a new adventure.

So I know most of you got some kind of hate for Facebook and Zuckerberg (aka Z U C C) now, but ffs, watching some of the highlights of this congress-thing that went on makes me more or less feel sympathy for him and his idea, even tho I know he wants to achieve exactly this.

Some of the questions asked can suck a big fucken data-dick. "How many Facebook Like-Buttons are there on Non-Facebook pages?", "How many data-categories do you gather?", "How do you sustain a business model and stay free?" - DUDE WHAT IN HEAVENS NAME?? And they ask that shit so serious and so "now-i'm-going-to-bust-you"-esk, but actually the question is just plain stupid and shows how the questioning side has no clue about the shit.

My point of view is that people decided to have an online life and have to take what it does. Having a smartphone with a Facebook service installed (owning an account or not) is enough to track your location, stored under your IMEI or some shit like that. They may not even go that far but that's just my opinion.
If you are online everything can see you and use you that way. Borders are a fictious thing. A dude in Czechia can easily shoot you when you're on the German side of the border between those two countries. And still we gave up on walls...:p

Welcome to a world which is ruled by dumbass people where nerds who just want to have some fun need to defend themselves because the people up there don't know a single shit.

I’m an admin of a Facebook page for a small business whose website I built (I don’t personally do anything on the page, I just have admin rights :p). The location is clearly listed on the page, you just have to scroll down a bit on Facebook to see it, just like on every other Facebook page. There is also a link to the website that contains the location. Yet, EVERY WEEK, we get at least one person who sends us a message on Facebook: “where are you located?” Somehow they managed to turn on a computer, sign into Facebook and open a conversation dialog... but to scroll down a bit or visit our website to see the full location is not within their mental capacity. WTF

!rant

tl;dr at the bottom

This might not be a popular opinion, so please, if you throw things at me, limit yourselves only to tomatoes and other soft projectiles. Thank you!

So this being said, i must say ut: i actually like how facebook use this data overall. While i am completly against privacy violation, that data is given up by ourselves with a choice to do it, so we can't hand them for it. However, i think the fact that we got ads for what our interests are is quite awesome! For example because of this i found webcomics and artists i curently hold really high in my praises and this might not have been the case if FB had another business model.

This being said, i just think people should focus on problems more important than how social media manages to earn some bucks, and while is our choise to be part of that we can't simply call ourselves "products". History holds many stories about civilization that gaved no choice if you wanted or not to be a product so we could be at least glad it is not the case anymore.

Anyway, if you read all the way down here, tnaks for your time!

TL;DR: Facebook is no holy church but it actually not so bad, we can find things we get to love or actually needed in the first place in their targeted adds system. At least we have a choice to be part of this or not!

this just happened a few seconds ago and I am just laughing at the pathetic site that is Facebook. xD
4 years ago:
So I was quite a noobie gamer/hacker(sort of) back then and i had a habit of having multiple gmail/fb accounts, just for gaming, like accounts through which i can log in all at once in the same poker room, so 4/5 players in the game are me, or just some multiple accounts for clash of clans for donations.
I had 7-8 accounts back then. one had a name that translated to "may the dead remain in peace "@yahoomail.com . it was linked to fb using same initials. after sometime only this and 2 of my main accs were all i cared about.even today when i feel like playing, i sometimes use those accs.

2 years ago.
My dad is a simple man and was quite naive to modern techs and used to hang around with physical button nokia phones.But we had a business change, my father was now in a partnership in a restaurant where his daily work included a lot of sitting job and and casual working. So he bought a smartphone for some time pass.
He now wanted to download apps and me to teach him.I tried a lot to get him his own acc, but he couldn't remember his login credentials.
so at the end i added one of my own fake ID's(maythedead...) so he could install from playstore, watch vids on youtube and whatever.

The Actual Adventure starts now
Today, 1 hour ago:
I had completely forgot about this incident, since my parents are now quite modern in terms of tech.
But today out of nowhere i recieved an email that someone has JUST CHAINGED MY FB PASSWORD FOR ONE OF MY FAKE ACCS!?!??
what the hell, i know it was just a useless acc and i never even check my fb from any acc these days, but if someone could login into that acc, its not very difficult to track my main accs, id's, etc so i immediately opened this fb security portal and that's where the stupidity starts:

1)To recover your account they FUCKIN ASKS FOR A PHYSICAL ID. yeah, no email, no security question you have to scan your driving license or passport to get back to your account.And where would I get a license for some person named "may the dead remain in peace"? i simply went back.
2) tried another hack that i thought that will work.Closed fb help page, opened fb again , tried to login with my old credentials, it says" old password has been changed,please enter new password", i click forget password and they send an otp. i thought yes i won, because the number and recover mail id was mine only so i received it.
when i added the otp, i was first sent to a password change page (woohoo, i really won! :)) but then it sends me again to the same fuckin physical id verification page.FFFFFFFFFuck

3)I was sad and terrified that i got hacked.But 10 mins later a mail comes ,"Your Facebook password was reset using the email address on Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 8:24pm (UTC+05:30)."
I tried clicking the links attached, hoping that the password i changed(point<2>) has actually done something to account.NADA, the account still needs a physical license to open:/

4) lost, i just login to my main account and lookup for my lost fake account. the fun part:my account has the display pic of my father?!!?!
So apparently, my father wanted to try facebook, he used the fake account i gave him to create one, fb showed him that this id already has an fb account attached to it and he accidently changed my password.MY FATHER WAS THE HACKER THE WHOLE TIME xD.
but response from fb?" well sir, if you want your virtually shitty account back , you first will have to provide us with all details of your bank transactions or your voter id card, maybe trump will like it"

I used to work with a teacher in my last uni year.

The job consisted on doing a kinda-like management system for a business. It all began kinda "right", we agreed upon a price for 6 months of my work (a very lowball price, but it was just right because I was learning stuff that we were going to be using).

Fast-forward first six months, all I do is code frontend, mockup screens and whatsoever because this "business" hadn't give us proper requirements (Yeah, I told him to ask for them, but nothing came through).

So I was like well, I'll keep working in this project because I really want to finish it. Sidenote: I was doing all the "hard work", he didn't know how to code, and he calls himself a teacher... wtf).

Months go by, and a year goes round, in between these months, he spoke to me, that he wanted me that we kept working together, that we could renegotiate the payment (I asked him to give me my payment once the job was done). I agreed, but my uni residence period was coming along and I got an oportunity to go abroad to another country.

So there I was, in the need of money to buy my passport, plane tickets and other stuff, so I asked him for the payment.

Needs to be noted, that the last 6 months work was me doing tutorials on how to fucking use Linux, how to use PostgreSQL, how to fucking use CSS! He told me he would pay me extra for it.

The day came, and I received my payment... the exact amount we talked a year ago, I was like "Seriously dude?", but well, I needed the money and I didn't have time to argue, so we talked a little bit about me helping him and I told him "As long as I have time, I'll help, but remember that I'm going abroad to work for a small startup, so maybe I'll be up to my head with work" he agreed, we nod and then I left.

First week abroad came in and I was doing a shit-ton of stuff, then his first message comes around "Hey, I need more tutorials! ASAP! Before 6PM"

What.The.Fuck. I told you, son of a bitch, that I wouldn't be able to do them until weekend.. and it was monday!

So I ignored it, weeks went throught and my "angry mood" was fading away so I said to myself "Well, it's time to pick up that stuff again", I open Slack and I find a week old message with a document attached, it was a "letter", I just skimmed by it and read some keywords "deceptioned... failed me.."

Sure dude? Was I the failure? Becase, as far as I remember, you were the fucktard that didn't know how to fucking install a VM!

A week went by, and then randomly a friend of mine talks to me through Facebook:

E: Hey, how are you?
M: I'm fine, what's up?
E: What did you do to TEACHER?
M: Nothing, <explains all situation>
E: Well, It seems weird, that's why I wanted to talk with you, I believe in you, because I know you well, but TEACHER it's thrashing shit about you with all his students on all of his classes
M: Seriously?
E: Yeah, he's saying that you are a failure, irresponsible, that you scammed him

That moment, I for sure, lost all moral responsibility with him and thought to myself "He can go fuck himself with my master branch on his ass"

So when I got back to my country, I had to go around in school, avoiding him, not because I was ashamed nor anything by the way, just because I knew that If i ever had the disgrace to meet him face to face, my fists would be deep into his nose before he could say "Hey".

Moral of the story:
If you overheard that a teacher has a bad rep, not by one, nor two, but more than +100 people, maybe it's true.

Good thing my friends and others know me well and I didn't have repercutions on my social status, I'm just the guy that "fucked up TEACHER because I had the right and way to do it"

#!/usr/bin/rant
So, we are a web development and marketing agency. That's fine... except now it seems that we are a marketing and web development agency. Where the head marketing guy feels it's his job to head up web development.

This is NOT what I signed up for.

When you offer web services to a client, the one meeting with the client should understand at least basic stuff, and know when to pull in a heavyweight for more questions. Instead, our web team is summarized by a guy who listens to 80's rock music in a shared office (used to be just me in there) and spends his days trying to get 30-year-olds on Facebook to click an ad.

He was on the phone yesterday with some ecommerce / CRM support, trying to tell them that they have an API, that "it's a simple thing, I'm sure you have it", and that's all we need to do business with them. Which is not his call, it's my call, but for some reason he's the one on the phone asking for API info. The last time I took someone else's word on an API, I underquoted the work and eventually found out that their "API" was nothing more than a cron job which places a CSV file on your server via FTP.

Anyway, we now have a full-time marketer and two part-time interns, with another ad out for an AdWords specialist. Meanwhile, I'm senior dev with a server admin / retired senior dev, and if we don't focus on hiring a front-end guy soon we're going to lose business.

Long story short, I'm getting sick of having a guy who does not understand basic web concepts run the show because he's the one who talks to the client.

Me: Boycotting Facebook lately due to shady business practices, is very outspoken about how people shouldn't use Facebook services

Also me: Literally uses React for every web app

... conflicted 🤔

I guess the time has come finally. 🤔

I'm now thinking of how to trace a Facebook user's current location. At first I thought of touching Facebook.

But then I thought that I can just write a webpage which will trace the visitor IP. And send the url to the user.

Oh it's not for me. One of my friends who is also a partner and a client of mine is being harassed by his former business partner. He has sued him but the guy is in hiding but still posting bad news on his Facebook profile.

So my friend came to me for help. :3

Just gonna lay this out. It is 2023. If you are still using Twitter and Facebook for personal presence you are kinda stupid (as in using your real name). They are shit sites and they can and will use that information against you. Personally I would lump LinkedIn with them, but it is still mainly business use. Twitter and Facebook are useful for business, but a huge liability for personal use. Keep up with your relatives somewhere else. Same goes for reddit, but most people there use anonymous handles anyway. So probably a bit safer.

Personally I never understood twitter. Facebook was interesting, but I started running into strange fucks on Facebook. People who were basically amoral and were okay with killing people. They were "friends" of friends. I also saw how this information could be held against someone with their political views. So I dropped Facebook more than 10 years ago. It has only gotten worse. About 2 years ago a friend of ours relative was going on vacation to Mexico. So someone called our friend in the USA and pretended the relative was kidnapped and tried to extort money. They got all of this info on the vacation off Facebook/Twitter. The same thing can happen with jobs. Wrong political views and you won't get hired. This is what I mean by being dangerous to you. People are assholes.

New CTO.

New CTO pushes policy change to all browsers to open Facebook Workplace on every new tab and as start page.
Locks option to change it.
This also kills restoring tabs from past session.

New CTO handles the complaints
'It's fine to complain, we don't even have to agree. If this is important to you, then come up with a suggestion on how to solve this for all our employees. Business equirement is that one page is shown at startup, that's it. This has nothing to do with Workplace.'

Salespeople telling clients "Your site doesn't need a privacy policy/cookie policy since you don't actually sell anything on your site."

Wrong wrong wrong WRONGITY WRONG WROOONNGGGG!!!!!

Client to PM to me: "Well Jim said we don't need those on this site."

Me: "Well Jim is misinformed, since we use Google analytics, Facebook Pixel, and contact forms, you need to have both a privacy and cookie policy."

PM to client: "We'll find you a template you can use to get started, it'll cover most of what you need."

Me to PM: "we will do no such thing, we can send them a few links explaining why they need these, but they should consult a legal professional and cover their asses for their own business practices. I can provide any technical details they may need like what data the cookies collect if necessary."

PM to me: "well I'll just find something for them then."

*In my head* please just go crawl in a hole and die.

My team and I worked superrrrr hard for a client and help her build online presence, make graphic designs, motion graphics, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, digitalmarketing. After two weeks, she announced she is shutting her business down. All that hard work was for nothing.

I made this site which is nice. Its a nice project plus I made this for my own. So I decided to book a domain for it.

Turns out every possible name is booked and it started pissing me off. I mean how positive people are for startups.

They made this a real-state business. Saw land acquire it. You never know which one will be next facebook ha!

Then I hit git.com which was parked too. I thought god bless you and your money.

Facebook is the new job wall. Seen someone posting asking for a business partners for a new web dev company. Funny thing is, when asking in the holes in his pitch he goes on the defens

Global pandemic is now at least for a month so it’s a good time to start reading about first market movements.

Started to read about how much money facebook, google and other digital companies are loosing right now due to advertising business shrinking and current situation.

Marketing is always dropped first and above companies revenues are mostly from advertising.

Inb4: I swear I am not an asshole.
Ok, I did a year of business, judge me all you want. Now I'm in CE. So we were learning VBA basically for those managment files that you preprogram to do your enterprise finances...or your grocery store list. Anyway, I was not paying attention to the classe, we were learning "For", so I was on Facebook and doing nothing along with my friend. The teacher caught us and decided the whole class would take a surprise quiz right that moment, because "some people think they know it all". So, all the class got bad grades because he was pissed at two students out of 56. Dick move!

PS:I got an A, so I am just stating that he was a dick to the others guys for no reason

I’m having this issue for the online marketplace I’m working on the side. It’s blockchain tech where you can purchase normal goods and services(no, not like Amazon or Fiverr, eww, this one’s more inclined with promoting organic growth for small businesses and freelancers).

I’m stuck with what solution is in the best interest of the user and the business for the long-term.

The dilemma about anonymity, online freedom and privacy is yes, it protects users from predators and attackers, but then, it’s harder for authorities to hunt down people who uses platforms for malicious intent, and also, digital footprint is helpful during litigation as evidence.

You don’t know who to trust.

-There is nothing to differentiate normal users with spammers, scammers, etc.
-There is no accountability for if they break the rules. They can easily delete and create a new account.

Platforms, communities big or small are plagued with these.
There are a lot of people out there who would rather project their insecurities on other people than to seek therapy.

Also, how platforms uses psychology tricks to make platforms addicting, it’s safe to assume that it’s bound to get toxic. Fixation on these platforms, leads to other needs being neglected or people forget to stay present.

Another thing, automated moderation is not that effective as there are still biases in data and human verification is still required. But then, human moderators get exposed to extreme violence, gore, etc that leads to poor mental health. (see Facebook got sued by moderators)

Also, I’ve had a recent experience where some unstable dev was stalking and harassing me. During that turmoil, I’ve found the many loopholes in every platform out there and how crappy their support is. Like they’ll just say, “make your account more secure”, bitch it’s your platform not providing enough security, your blocking feature means nothing coz anyone can still create accounts and message anyone.
It happened like February-August (it ended coz I quit going online and made private all my accounts). UGH I MISS ALL MY FRIENDS THO. FUCK THAT DUDE. He deserves to be in jail TBH

Lol if this product booms, now u know the back story lololol

For a project I'm working on:

Does your work allow you to sign in to your personal accounts for i.e. Gmail or Facebook on your work device?
Do you think this should be allowed?
Do you do it yourself?

I imagine it's a gray area. I'm even thinking it could be a security risk? But maybe healthier too to keep business and private life separate? Thoughts?

Just had a memory popup about my uni days about 5 years ago. I was in my Junior year in business school and was doing a "consulting" project involving the whole Class (200 students). Groups of 4 were assigned an international company in either Europe, Asia, or South America. We'd visit them (as well as do some sightseeing) and learn about them (performance, market positions, products) during Spring Break and come up with a real proposal. We would then compete with other teams, and the winning pitchs for each would be presented in the school auditorium in front the entire class.

Our team didn't get that far but that's not the point. We did win the individual classroom competition. Our company was Deutsche Telekom (owner of T-Mobile).

This was in 2010, when the iPhone/smart-phones started to become mainstream... And our team's idea was location-based advertising.

Looking back, we basically predicted the future... though we got the wrong industry...

It's also sort of funny though because I remember the main reason we came up with the idea was to be different.

All other teams just went with some expansion plan to a neighboring country or cutting costs.... pure MBA/business plan. But I guess I was being a natural techie so thought of a tech idea instead.

We had a meeting with our professor after he picked us and he told us he had a history of spotting future hits. We were like "hm... ok... let's give it a shot... we definitely got an A!" but at that point I was sort of skeptical if this would actually work in real-life (the basic idea was they would sell ads to local businesses and if you were nearby, you would get a text message with an offer).

But guess he was pretty right... we just needed to have Google or Facebook to have been our company... though Groupon or Yelp works too... basically a tech company with larger scale rather than a mobile carrier...

I don't understand how Facebook can restrict my account when I'm following *their official guide* to make a WhatsApp bot (which entails creating a business manager account and all that tralala) which basically makes it impossible to continue through the guide to get the WhatsApp bot to do what I want it to do (I only got as far as having it send a demo text and set up some of the account BS).

Needless to say, I went for the Discord bot approach and got it to do what I needed.