Hey Facebook

Hey Facebook! I'm still here. Are you going to delete this from my news feed with no input as to why?

Of course you are. It is, apparently, how you roll.

Just tell me something concrete, will ya? That's all I really ask.

Back to Normal?

We'll see how long this lasts, but as of yesterday evening Facebook appears to accept that my blogs are not spam. They have yet to offer an explanation of what happened, and I want to know. I think I'm owed one. Heck, I'm man enough to accept that if I were doing something wrong I can take it. But tell me what it was.

For those who don't know, Facebook spent all this week taking down my posted blogs as spam. My review requests were going unanswered until I reached the point where my good friend Bugs Bunny would say, "I hope you realize this means war!" I began absolutely pelting them with blogs which they would immediately remove. I would them immediately, ahem, request a review.

Yet if you're going to go to war you have to bring out the big guns. In my case, I got me son Charlie involved. In about ten minutes the problem was resolved. You don't mess with a veteran.

The real test comes in about five minutes, when I post this. But Charlie is in for the weekend. We'll open up fire again if we must.

What's the Idea, Facebook?

All right, Facebook, what's going on? Five straight days now you take down my blog claiming it's spam. It's not. It's my everyday blog through Blogger. You've let me cross post it to my Facebook page for years, and now I can't?

You've got some explaining to do. Start right now.

Leading the Blind

Truly going from the sublime to the ridiculous, my blog yesterday, The Ladder, was taken down by Facebook after I initially posted it. The explanation was, 'It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way'. Those are facebook's precise words

Really, now. All I did was post it exactly as I post my blog entries every day. Yet yesterday 'The Ladder' was taken down because I was somehow attempting to mislead you-all into reading it.

There was no misleading involved. I wanted readers to read it. Just as I always do. There was no evil, vile and despicable intent. It was what I do nearly every day with my blog: post it to facebook.

Obviously I reposted, and all was fine that second time around. Still, I'm appealing the removal on the grounds that it was stupid and wrong. I'll let you know what happens.

News Feed

I'm getting more and more comfortable with algorithms. Perhaps that's a good thing; perhaps not. I don't see where it's all that bad quite honestly. They're annoying at times, yes. I bought one stupid torpedo heater for the old barn a few years back, one which I expect to last for ages, and still deal with pop up ads for heaters when I log online. Shaddup already, will ya?

Okay, deep breath. One interesting thing which algorithms send me, and I look forward to, are regular lists of hit songs from a given week in the past. It's fun to see, and offer those 'I remember that' moments which are wonderfully and happily nostalgic. Then yesterday I get a list from sometime in 1994 and don't recognize a song or an artist on it. 

What the hell is a Toad The Wet Sprocket? Or do I really want to know? But I only use that as an example. It seems that somewhere between 1985 and 1995 I lost track of current popular entertainers. When I receive a list from before that time frame I generally recall the song and the artist. Then it becomes a mix. Then, well, I ask things like I asked to begin this paragraph.

I'm not, or at least I don't think I am, one of those who condemn new stuff merely because it's new. Yet I also can't recall much about performers in the last 25 or 30 years which stand out for me. The most recent I can think of is (are?) The Offspring, but even they're from the late 1990s. And I cringe at some of their songs.

I know who Taylor Swift is and have likely heard some of her songs, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. Indeed when I want to hear music I pull up the songs of my youth. I never, and I mean never, consciously seek out new tunes. Unless, that is, and I mean this at least half seriously, when I want to hear what Weird Al is mocking.

I might have to get old. But that doesn't mean I have to care about the new.

Algorithm by McDonald's

I fully understand that the Internet is driven by algorithms. I know that an awful lot, indeed probably more than we realize, of our personal information is out there in the ether. There's no need for this to be too much of a concern, really. Quite a bit of it is public knowledge anyway; my birthday is a matter of public record, me Great Grandpa James once said. For some things, there simply is no point in worrying about who knows them.

Still, when I opened up Facebook yesterday to find an ad about how 61 year olds can earn an easy $75 McDonald's gift card well, I was a tad shocked. I know they know (and they know that I know that they know, and you can keep it going from there) how old I am. But as I have never ordered McD's online, have they made a connection I am not aware of (or, yes, forgot about, as I am 61) between myself and the Golden Arches? It concerns me just a bit.

Any way you slice it, that gift card better get here soon. I'm hungry.