I spend a lot less time on FaceBook, and other social media, than I used to.
It is not that I don’t enjoy stalking my friends and family, looking at their vacation pics and what they ate for lunch… Some of that is interesting and truthfully bespeaks to the reasons for their obvious weight issues…. I digress…
The reason that I do less and less of it is that those who control Facebook in particular have made such an advertising vehicle out of it, that just about everything you click on, every story hijacks your computer or other device.
Suddenly you are forced to watch some advertisement for something. All you really want is to get past the “teaser” (that line that made you click in the first place) and see what they are talking about.
Nope, you have to wait for the ad to load which is bandwidth, and your time.
Once you get there, you find that the teaser was flat and the story was written in such a way to get you to click. Someone gets money for your click, so the writing worked.
You were manipulated by those that are smarter than you and someone got paid for your click. If you are doing this on a data plan that charges you for your data download, you might very well be paying for the privilege of being manipulated.
When this happens to me, I close the story as I am certain that it was not that interesting anyway; and because of this, I have been on Facebook less and less.
If they want to sell advertising space off to the sides of the screen or even in the middle of the stories I can live with that, to hijack my browser and force me to find the hidden close button after I have watched the obligatory 15 seconds of the commercial is wrong and while I cannot affect change with the advertisers, I can kill the story, and I can find something else to do with my time like “read a book.”
Some of these pop ups and hijacks are eerily reminiscent of the pop ups that were indeed viruses. “Click here to update your drivers, or scan your computer etc.”
Surfing the web one finds this type of thing and you can and should turn that option in your browser off. If you want to see some video about the veg-a-matic, you can click on a link and be entertained in whatever way you choose. To be forced to watch commercials before you can see what the teaser is about is “part of capitalism” that I don’t appreciate.
-Best
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TheTimeDok 