That Viral Post [Content Made Simple]
Issue #275: Meta sued for privacy violation, TikTok's China problem, and more.
Hey there! I’m back from my month away from the newsletter and feeling good.
I’ve added a new section of this email: the trivia question. I love trivia, and I thought it’d be fun to try out a weekly trivia question in this email. If no one likes it, I’ll get rid of it. But I figured it was worth trying. The trivia questions will be wide-ranging (not about social media).
Thanks for being here. Have a wonderful day!
-Chris
TOP OF THE WEEK
That Viral Post Is a Danger to Your Soul
Quote:
What about you? Are you allowing likes, shares, and views to gradually direct your perspectives on important issues? Do you often think about whether something you want to say (or not say) online will devalue your stock within a given tribe? Are you being influenced by people who are more interested in tickling ears than speaking truth?
Commentary:
Wonderful article and convicting thought from Patrick Miller over at TGC.
THE TRIVIA QUESTION
Which actor or actress has grossed the most box office revenue in the history of film (including voice acting)?
Clarification: this is not how much the actor/actress has earned but how much their movies have earned.
Answer linked at the bottom.
HITTING THE LINKS
This was a good read! Thought-provoking for sure.
The Internet is at war with itself. At stake is nothing less than a single source of truth, but the “truth” is not a sequence of references leading back to a unit of data or information, the “truth” is desire. What do we really want? Do we move through structures that allow us to articulate what we want without first being told?
Link #2: Meta sued for violating patient privacy with data tracking tool
Yet again, FB/Meta being sued for mishandling user data.
Facebook’s parent company Meta and major US hospitals violated medical privacy laws with a tracking tool that sends health information to Facebook, two proposed class-action lawsuits allege.
The lawsuits, filed in the Northern District of California in June and July, focus on the Meta Pixel tracking tool. The tool can be installed on websites to provide analytics on Facebook and Instagram ads. It also collects information about how people click around and input information into those websites.
This is…not surprising, but also not good.
According to all four former employees, staff were required to provide evidence to ByteDance that the content had in fact been placed in the app as directed. Three of the former employees said staff were required to take screenshots of the live content in TopBuzz and send them back to the company.
One source characterized most of the pro-China messages as “soft” rather than overt political statements. But, the person said, “Let’s be real, this was not something you could say no to. If they don’t do it, somebody’s going to jail.”
THE FUNNY PART
In honor of the great Vin Scully passing away this week, here’s a video of an amazing story he told calling a game in his final year (2016). This man used to broadcast Jackie Robinson’s games and here he is nonchalantly calling balls and strikes in the middle of an epic story.
You can subscribe to The Funnies here. (It is and will always be free.)
That story by Vin Scully was awesome. Never breaks his stride!