Josh Benner

Tag: Facebook

  • Repentance, Facebook, and Wells Fargo

     

    Has anyone else noticed that Facebook and Wells Fargo are both essentially running the same commercial.
    Both companies have been the subject of recent scandals. Facebook with data collection and publishing algorithms. Wells Fargo was just hit with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for securities fraud.
    Both commercials point to their origin and how the companies changed the world. Then “oops, we messed up.” Followed by, “But we promise we won’t do it again.”
    Apologies are easy. It’s also true in life. It’s EASY to simply say “I’m sorry.”
    Actually changing is much more difficult.

    In life, the sincerity is seen in true repentance and change. With Facebook and Wells Fargo, the standard is the same.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Facebook: The social network that changed the world turns 10

    Facebook profile Courtesy of Wikimedia. Circa 2005
    Facebook profile Courtesy of Wikimedia. Circa 2005

    This post is based off of a previous post entitled: Facebook 2004 and Facebook 2011. Seven year anniversary of joining the Social Network. Originally published November 16, 2011.

    I can still vividly remember it.

    Talking to a friend from high school on AIM, him sending me the link to some obscure site that he had mentioned to me called thefacebook. “BG has it now,” he said, telling me to register.

    I was skeptical. thefacebook? What does that even mean, but I followed his prodding and created an account.

    That was November 16, 2004, and it was the first day that thefacebook.com was available at Bowling Green. I fell in love with the site instantly. I thought that it was fantastic and amazing. I still have that since of wonder with the site and with the ways in which it has changed our world. (more…)

  • Facebook ads extra layer of security

    Facebook announced today that they are going to be unveiling a couple of new security features for the site. One of the features is becoming increasingly common with websites where users login and it will prompt additional infromation from users if Facebook believes a person may not be legitimately logging onto the site.

    Given that Mark Zuckerberg’s own fanpage was hacked yesterday, new security is always a good thing.

    Let’s say that you live in Florida and logged in to Facebook from Florida this morning and that all of a sudden, someone from London trys to login to your Facebook. The site will prompt for additional information for you to verify that you’re you.

    Sometimes sites will use those annoying text boxes where you have to type the letters you see.

    That is called a captcha and it is meant more to verify that it is a human loging in, not so much that it is the legitimate owner of the account, as the Facebook blog notes.

    Facebook has come up witha pretty clever way for you to verify yourself. They are going to show you a set of photos of a Facebook friend and make sure that you can recognize the person.

    The advantage of this over a captcha is that any person can type in a captcha. It’s a matter of simply decyphering the letters. While anyone can figure out the captcha, people aren’t necessarily going to know your Facebook friends.

    Certainly this is not full proof. What if a friend of yours is hacking into your Facebook and the does know the friends who Facebook is using to verify your identity? That is a legitimate question and I don’t think Facebook has a very good answer for it. Ultimately, I think that the resonse would essentially be, “Well it’s still better than what we’ve had up to this point.”

    And that’s true. Another potential problem could be

    Facebook then said that they have to protect your information so that they can have it all to themselves to shamelessly sell. (ok, they didn’t actually say that).

    jrb

  • Facebook ads, starring y-o-u

    Facebook announced a new feature called ”sponsored” stories today. Advertisers will have the opportunity to sponsor certain types of responses, such as ”likes” or check-ins from users, and from those responses, they will be able to put these in the right margin as ads.

    As an example, let’s say that Target wants to have ads based off of who checks in to Target on Facebook and you check-in at your local Target. That’s something that can be a possible ad.

    These ads will only be posted to people who are already your Facebook friends, but they’re doing this without your permission. Many of these same types of posts could just as easily wind up on your Facebook newsfeed and all of the information is information which you have already chosen to put on your Facebook. The company is trying to depict this as being no different from what would post to the news feed, but it IS different. You’re involuntarily going to be put into advertisements that Facebook is getting paid for.

    Facebook is trying to make this seem like it is ultimately going to benefit you, the user, however given their history, I’m pretty sure this is actually being done to benefit them. Facebook’s advertising platform does not work. Companies pump money into Facebook and the results are horrible. They are doing whatever they can to spark interest through advertisers, and apparently this includes pimpin out users as unofficial spokesmen for products.

    jrb