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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 17 Issue 38
Volume 17, Issue 38 Atari Online News, Etc. October 9, 2015
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2015
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
Mathias Wittau
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1738 10/09/15
~ Google.com Bought: $12 ~ People Are Talking! ~ Firebee News!
~ Sony Cuts PS4 Price! ~ Facebook "Reactions"! ~ Is OS Really Secure?
~ Xbox Head: Beat Sony? ~ Firebee News Update! ~ The Surface Pro 4!
-* Verizon Curbs Zombie Cookies *-
-* Facebook Supercharges Like Button! *-
-* Alphabet Can't Buy alphabet.com, Gets This *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
It's been another long and busy week - they keep flying by! The
one thing that hasn't really been busy is the tech news - at least
news that you and I might find interesting. The news we have for
you this week has taken a slightly different direction than normal.
Usually, some of the articles that we bring you deal with all kinds
of "cybercrime" stories - hacking, security lapses, etc. But, we
really didn't see that kind of news this week. Most of what we
found deal with new products, updates, social media, and a few
"related" aricles - nothing overly serious to be concerned about.
I guess, for a change, that's a good thing!
So, let's dive right into this week's issue and see what we've got
for you this week!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
Firebee News
By Mathias Wittau
We reached 36 preorders now. So only 14 more orders are missing
before we can go into production of this 2nd series!
And in general, please everybody update the links to the new
website http://firebee.org at your websites, blogs and other
links.
FireBee News Update
By Fred Horvat
Setting the FireBee up as a day to day machine has taken longer
than expected. Partially due to time constraints and also to not
used an Atari computer in almost 20 years as a main machine.
Some things I just clearly forgot. Then I am not doing a single
section at time like Web Browsing or Document handling
separately but doing some from all the categories a little at a
time. Hopefully next issue I will have a section ready to report
to you.
I am open to feedback and questions on my submissions to AONE.
My E-mail Address is fmh (at) netzero.net Best place though
for questions on the FireBee is at the FireBee section at
Atari-Forum.com http://www.atari-forum.com/viewforum.php?f=92
More people can address questions there but I will answer any
questions sent directly to me. Maybe I will include them in
my AONE articles especially if they are corrections and useful
tips.
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Sony Cuts PlayStation 4 Price To Match Xbox One
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Xbox Head: I Don't Know If We Can Beat Sony
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Sony Cuts PlayStation 4 Price To Match Xbox One
The PS4 drop to $350 in the United States and to 430 Canadian
dollars in Canada starting Friday, according to Sony Computer
Entertainment America (SCEA).
"Our goal at PlayStation has always been to offer the best
place to play at a compelling value to gamers," SCEA chief
executive Shawn Layden said.
While PS4 has led the market since its release two years ago,
Microsoft recently began gaining ground with the release of Xbox
One consoles with a reduced price of $350 because they come
without Kinect motion-sensing accessories.
Layden touted the pending releases of eagerly anticipated games
including "Call of Duty: Black Ops III" and "Star Wars
Battlefront" along with PS4-only blockbuster "Uncharted 4: A
Thief's End."
Game studios usually create versions of hot titles for both major
consoles to cater to a broad audience of players.
As performance differences between the two major video game
consoles have narrowed, competition has focused increasingly on
getting exclusive titles or early access to coveted games, as
well as on price.
Sony and Microsoft earlier this year introduced consoles with
ramped-up storage space, playing into a trend of people
downloading game software onto drives instead of buying disks.
PS4 consoles trounced Xbox One after the new generation consoles
hit the market in late 2013.
Microsoft later lowered the price and increased the focus on
game play, rather than features such as streaming films, and has
begun narrowing the sales gap.
Sony has shipped a total of 25.45 million PS4 consoles
worldwide, while Microsoft has shipped 13.88 million Xbox One
consoles, according to industry tracker VGChartz Network.
Xbox Head: I Don't Know If We Can Beat Sony
As this console generation nears two years-old, it's no secret
that Xbox has spent the entirety of that time playing catch-up
to PlayStation. Sony's platform started off with a huge lead in
sales, and while Xbox may have closed the gap to some degree,
PS4 still holds a sizable advantage. In fact, it's so large that
Microsoft's top brass questions whether it can ever recover.
At the recent GeekWire Summit, when asked whether Xbox One could
beat PS4 this generation, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said "You know,
I don't know. You know the length of the generation... [Sony
has] a huge lead and they have a good product. I love the
content, the games line-up that we have."
Understandably, Spencer chalks a good chunk of the sales
disparity up to losing consumer trust before the console ever
launched. "I feel really good about the position and the product
and the brand right now, but I was at the GameStop Manager's
Meeting about three weeks ago and I'm sitting with 5,000
GameStop managers in Las Vegas and they'd come up and they still
have customers that walk in the store that think that the Xbox
One won't play used games."
Spencer elaborated "Just to be clear, Xbox One has always played
used games from day one. But that perception that gets set early
on, because consumers have five seconds to internalise your
brand and your message and then they move on. They're not going
to spend time to read what we say afterwards. 'Oh Xbox One,
that's that thing. If I want it I'll go buy it and if I don't I
won't.' Regaining that trust and the mindshare with the customer,
the gamer, is incredibly difficult."
Reversing that mindset feeds directly into Xbox's ultimate goal
these days: Gaining as many customers as it can. Spencer says
that his team isn't even motivated by beating Sony anymore.
According to him, it just wants to build a platform that's for
the consumer, not for the people making it. He thinks that
doing that will gain back that trust, which will, in turn, lead
to more people adopting the Xbox One.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Verizon Curbs Zombie Cookies, But Theyll Still Stalk You
Last year privacy advocates discovered that Verizon has been
inserting tracking codes into most of its mobile web
trafficso-called zombie cookies. Now the company plans to
use those codes to target personalized ads served by AOL, which
Verizon acquired earlier this year. But the company says its
curbing the ability to use the codes beyond its corporate reach.
The company revealed its plans yesterday in a privacy notice
spotted by non-profit news outfit ProPublica.
Typically, in order for a website to track its visitors it must
leave a small file called a cookie on the users device. But
cookies are tied to the users web browser. If theyre using a
smart phone app instead of their web browser, its difficult to
track that user. Plus users can block or delete these cookies.
To get around this, Verizon inserts a code called a Unique
Identifier Header (UIDH) into all unencrypted traffic that flows
through its networks by default. That code was useable by any
website owner or advertising network to which a user connects.
Verizon didnt promote UIDHs as a tool for other companies to
use, but ProPublica has identified at least one advertising
company, called Turn, that took advantage of them.
Verizon now says it will soon stop inserting the unique
identifier into all traffic, instead limiting its use to only
Verizon-owned sites and the companys partners, a company
spokesperson told to WIRED today. The UIDH will be sent only
to Verizon companies, including AOL, and to a select set of
other companies that help Verizon provide services, Verizons
chief privacy officer Karen Zacharia wrote in a blog post
today. These companies will not be allowed to use the UIDH
for any purpose outside of providing the Verizon and AOL
services.
While non-Verizon-linked third-party companies will no longer
have access to the identifiers, news that AOL will begin using
them means that theyre not going away any time soon, and may
even see more widespread use than before. AOLs ads appear on
many sites across the web, not just on sites owned by AOL,
such as the Huffington Post. Whether those identifiers
actually help AOL serve better performing ads than, say,
Google remains to be seen, but the strategy is clear. By
limiting which companies can access these unique identifiers,
Verizon is giving itself and its partners an edge: no other
company will be able to target ads to Verizons large base of
mobile internet customers in quite the same way.
We normally think of our Internet service providers as
providing essentially dumb pipes that carry data back and forth
without manipulating it. But as companies like Google and
Facebook have minted fortunes off those pipes, ISPs are trying
to find new ways to make money off the information that passes
through their infrastructure. Thats why Verizon bought AOL in
the first place, and its why its launching things like a new
streaming video service. The question as to how and when an
Internet service provider can use or manipulate the data it
handles are only going to become more important as Google and
Facebook become Internet service providers themselves through
initiatives like Google Fiber and Internet.org.
Verizon promised earlier this year that it would allow customers
to opt out of the tracking code program.
This Secure Operating System Can Protect You Even if You Get Hacked
Hackers, Government Agencies and sophisticated malware, are
collecting every piece of Digital data that we transmit through
our Computers, Smartphones or Internet-enabled Gadgets.
No matter how secure you think you might be, something malicious
can always happen. Because, "With the right tools and Talent, a
Computer is an open book."
Many people ask, How to stay safe and secure online? And, Answer
is...
...Knowledge of Cyber threats, little Smartness and a Secure
Operating System.
Nearly every Operating System is designed with Security as a
requirement, but believe me
there can't be a truly Secure
Operating System.
If you are Interested in Security and Hacking, you have probably
already heard of various security-focused Operating Systems like
Tails, Whonix and Kali Linux.
All these operating systems, including Windows, Linux, BSD, even
OSX, are all based on a Monolithic Kernels, and it requires just
one successful Kernel Exploit to hack the whole system.
So, a reasonably secure operating system is one that keeps all
crucial elements and activities isolated from each other.
Introducing
Qubes OS, "Security by Isolation."
Qubes OS is a Linux based security-oriented and open-source
operating system for personal computers, which runs everything
inside the virtual machines.
Its visualization mechanism follows Security by Isolation
(Software Compartmentalization) principle to secure the systems,
i.e. enabling the Principle of least privileges.
So, If you are a victim of a malicious cyber attack, doesn't let
an attacker take over your entire computer.
Last week, the team at Invisible Things Project has announced
the official release of Qubes 3.0 (Version 3), which is now
based on Hypervisor Abstraction Layer (HAL), Xen 4.4
virtualization technology and supports Debian Linux.
Qubes is often misunderstood as a Linux distribution, but instead
it can be called as Xen distribution.
Xen is a Native or Bare-Metal Hypervisor that uses a microkernel
framework and offer services that allow multiple operating
systems to execute on the same computer hardware simultaneously.
A Hypervisor is a computer software, firmware or hardware that
allows multiple operating systems to share a single hardware
host, where:
Each operating system appears to have the host's processor,
memory, and other resources all to itself.
A Hypervisor is of two types, Native/Bare Metal and Hosted
Hypervisor; with one running directly on the system hardware and
hosting Guest OS and other runs within a Host OS and Hosts Guest
OS inside it respectively.
The native/bare metal hypervisor is considered as the Pure
Hypervisor as it promises security compartmentalization,
reliability and higher security.
Similarly, Xen Hypervisor handles memory management and CPU
scheduling of all virtual machines ("domains"), and for
launching the most privileged domain ("dom0").
dom0 i.e. Domain Zero, is the control domain of the Xen
Hypervisor that has direct access to hardware.
Like Xen, Qubes works in a similar manner by:
Enabling execution of each separate component in its window
environment on the same screen.
Also, you can view and use each active "window" much like
how Linux allows you to open many windows on one desktop screen.
By using Xen Hypervisor, Qubes has tightened the security of a
system, as for an attacker, he must be capable of destructing
the hypervisor itself in order to compromise the entire system,
which is hard task to achieve.
It is like using a VMware server with multiple guest OSes,
explained Joanna Rutkowska, founder and CEO of Invisible Things
Lab.
Further, it supports all the operating system environment like:
Microsoft Windows
Linux distributions
Whonix
Whonix is another security focused Linux-based operating system
(Debian); it is capable of providing privacy, security and
anonymity on the internet.
It enforces only Tor-based communication and allows Qubes users
to connect to the Internet via a more secure anonymity-focused
VM.
The team sitting at the Invisible Things Project with the
release of Qubes 3.0 are focussing on its successor, and they
have already planned the maturing of the next version by the
end of October.
Doesnt sound so great does it?
Moreover, they have also given what features are going to
support Qubes 3.1, and they are:
UEFI support
Live USB Edition
Management/pre-configuration stack: The Big Killer Feature
of the upcoming 3.1 release, which will make it easy to provide
out of the box configurations for things such as: out of the
box Whonix/Tor, or Split GPG, or default USB sandboxing VM,
which currently the user must do manually.
Finally, If We See, Why do we need Qubes?
Answer is: Security Isolation.'
As Qubes allows various segments of your daily digital
activities to run separately through virtualization. With
virtualization comes security isolation, where each activity
runs on an isolated different and unique virtual machine (VM).
Why "Security Isolation"?
Answer is: When on a single physical device, different instances
(VMs) of varied activities are maintained, therefore this allows
increased security- as on occurrence of an intrusion only the
unique VM gets compromised without affecting the Host and other
VMs.
Security isolation or software compartmentalization allows
shielding from the cyber attacks, as when they hit you, your
complete digital life goes topsy-turvy.
The architecture itself is set up to protect you as well, but
Qubes OS is best for proactive users who don't mind doing a bit
of work to set up a secure environment.
This Guy Bought Google.com for $12
Anyone who's tried to buy a website recently knows how difficult
it is to get a really good .com name. Former Googler Sanmay Ved
struck gold Tuesday when he was able to purchase one of the most
recognizable domain names on the Internet - Google.com - from
Google Domains, not for billions or millions or even hundreds
of dollars, but just $12.
Ved published a blog post on LinkedIn Pulse on Tuesday outlining
the experience, showing proof that his Discover credit card was
charged the $12 fee. He also received emails from two automated
Google.com email addresses, which he said is further indication
of his successful purchase. Ved said he has used Google Domains
to purchase and register domain names in the past, and hadn't
received emails from those addresses for those purchases.
Ved said he started to get webmaster-related messages intended
for the Google.com domain name in his Google Search Console,
Google's webmaster toolkit that provides messages and other tools
site owners need to maintain their website.
Ved's ownership of Google.com was short-lived, however, he said,
as he received a notice a short time later that his order had
been cancelled. Google was able to quickly and successfully
re-secure Google.com because it owns Google Domains, but it
might have been a headache for the company otherwise.
It's unclear exactly what made Ved's purchase possible, but he
told CNET's Crave blog that Google is investigating.
Google declined to comment on this story.
This isn't the first such high-profile purchase we've seen.
Microsoft had a similar problem in 2003 when it lost the
hotmail.co.uk website, though the person who bought it reached
out to Microsoft and returned the domain name the same day.
Ved previously held positions at Google as a display specialist
and account strategist, according to his LinkedIn profile, which
also says he worked in online media sales.
Ved's post mentions that Google's Security Team acknowledged the
incident in response to a message Ved sent the company after the
purchase went through.
Microsoft Unveils Its First Laptop, The Surface Pro 4
Microsoft is back in a big way. The company that was once about
as hip as your fathers geriatric accountant has just taken the
wraps off of a gaggle of cool new gadgets. So impressive, in
fact, they might just cause Apples Tim Cook to lose sleep.
Lets start with the big news: Microsoft is making its very first
laptop
kind of. Called the Surface Book, this 3.34-pound
Windows 10 laptop features a 13.5-inch display with a ridiculously
high 3,000 x 2,000 pixel resolution. That means images and videos
will look incredibly crisp.
And if you just want to relax and watch a movie, you can pop that
big, beautiful 1.6-pound display right off of its 1.7-pound
keyboard base and hold it in your hands. Thats because the
Surface Book is not really a pure laptop, its laptop-tablet
hybrid.
Semantics aside, Microsoft says the Surface Book will be an
absolute powerhouse. It comes with Intels latest 6th-generation
Core i-series processors, and can be equipped with up to 16GB of
RAM.
Inside the keyboard base, Microsoft has outfitted the Surface
Book with your choice of a standard Intel graphics chip or a
high-powered Nvidia chip. When you plug the Surface Book into
the base, you should be able to run graphic-intensive programs
like video editors and even play some high-end games.
The Surface Book wont be cheap, though. A base model will set
you back $1,500 when it goes on sale Oct. 26th, or $200 more
expensive than a similarly configured MacBook Pro. That said,
with its detachable keyboard and the ability to use Microsofts
new Surface Pen with the Book (more on that later), it might be
worth it.
In addition to the Surface Book, Microsoft also unveiled its
new Windows 10-powered Surface Pro 4. Billed as the tablet
designed to replace your laptop (as long as that laptop isnt a
Surface Book), the Surface Pro 4 comes with a larger 12.3-inch
display, up from 12 inches, and Intels latest 6th-generation
Core M and i-series processors.
Despite its increased screen size, Microsoft actually managed
to shrink the 1.63-pound Surface Pro 4s footprint, albeit ever
so slightly.
The Surface Pro 4 also gets a new Type Cover keyboard, with
improved backlit keys, a more responsive touchpad, and a
fingerprint reader.
Like the Surface Book, the Surface Pro 4 can also use
Microsofts new Surface Pen. The stylus offers 1,024 levels of
pressure sensitivity, which means it can sense when you are
writing with a light touch and when you are really pushing down
hard.
Microsoft also said that the Surface Pens battery will last a
whopping 1 year before giving up the ghost. The Surface Pro 4
hits also stores Oct. 26th and starts at $899.
Alphabet Couldn't Buy Alphabet.com, So It Got This Instead
Alphabet has acquired the domain abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com
since it could not buy the already registered domains
alphabet.com or abc.com.The company already owns the domain
abc.xyz.
Google recently became the subsidiary of Alphabet and its Wall
Street debut had the domain abc.xyz.
However, since Alphabet could not purchase the already
registered domains alphabet.com (owned by BMW) and abc.com
(owned by Walt Disney Company's ABC Television Network), it did
the next best thing possible and went for a URL that would be in
alignment with the company's identity.
Alphabet has acquired the domain abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com.
This domain was created in 1999 per Whois and was privately
owned. The company already owns the ABC.xyz domain, which Google
revealed in August when it made the Alphabet announcement.
However, not content with just one domain, Alphabet decided to
cover all the bases and have a domain name with the entire
alphabet.
The new domain's purchase was confirmed by Alphabet.
"We realized we missed a few letters in abc.xyz, so we're just
being thorough," explained a spokesperson for Google.
So now Alphabet owns the 26-letter domain name. The new URL was
espied by DomainInvesting.com who spotted it in Whois records.
It is not known how much the company shelled out for the
privately-owned URL's transfer.
Currently, navigating to the URL leads one to an inactive
website. Experts are of the opinion that Alphabet possibly made
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com's purchase to stop the likes of
Facebook and Apple from acquiring the domain - a defensive move
so others could not snap up the domain name.
It is a common practice among many companies to purchase related
URL names, so that in the event people misspell the domain name
they are navigated to the correct site belonging to the company.
For instance, Alphabet not only owns Google.com, but also
Gogle.com and Googl.com. If the two incorrect spellings are
typed, one is automatically redirected to Google.com.
The defensive buying is also common and it is for that purpose
Alphabet also owns the domain name GoogleSucks.com. Traffic to
this URL is forwarded to Google.com.
With Reactions, Facebook Supercharges The Like
Button With 6 Empathetic Emoji
In September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some waves when
he hinted Facebook was working on a way to expand its famous Like
button not by adding the much-fabled dislike option, but by
making it way more empathetic, expressing sadness and other
emotions. Today, Facebook is taking the wraps off what form the
new Like may take. It is rolling out Reactions, a new set of
six emoji that will sit alongside the original thumbs-up to let
users quickly respond with love, laughter, happiness, shock,
sadness and anger.
Facebook tells us that the pop-up feature will first start out as
a test in two markets only, Spain and Ireland, before it decides
whether to tweak it and/or how to roll it out further.
(The reason for those two countries? Adam Mosseri, Facebooks
director of product, says its because both have largely
national user bases without extensive international friend
networks, so they work better as closed test groups. Ireland is
English speaking, while Spain lets Facebook test out how well
the wordless emoji play with non-English users.)
Having more reactive set of emoji might sound familiar to you.
In the wake of reports that Facebook was working on a dislike
button in September, our resident Facebook whisperer Josh
Constine suggested that Facebook might instead work on a small
selection of emoji to convey a more nuanced set of responses. It
turned out that Facebook had even filed a patent for how such an
emoji response feature might work and look. (Those pointers
appeared to be spot-on.)
More generally, a small set of reactive emoji is definitely not
an unfamiliar interface for online users: social networks like
Path and sites like Buzzfeed already give users the ability to
respond to posts with different reactions beyond simple likes
and faves.
Screen Shot 2015-10-07 at 17.18.42The new set of reactions will
appear across both mobile and desktop versions of the app and on
all posts in the News Feed be they from friends, Pages/accounts
you follow, or advertisers.
At this point, there are no plans to put them into Messenger or
other Facebook-owned products, Mosseri tells me. (Although you
could see how this would make a lot of sense in a product like
Instagram, too, for example.)
The reactions will work simply enough. On mobile, the emoji will
come up when you touch the like button on your screen; on desktop
they will come up as you hover the mouse over the like or click
on it.
Facebooks move to add in the emoji come from a few different
challenges and trends that the social network was noticing.
First, there was the basic demand that users were making of
Facebook to provide more than just a simple like. Sometimes a
thumbs-up simply isnt the quick response that you are looking
for, if the news in question is shocking in a bad way for
example.
Then there is the issue of people interacting on mobile devices.
Mobile is increasingly the default platform for more and more
Facebook users, so the fact that some people dont like to spend
time tapping out responses on mobile handsets is an important
thing to address for a social network that very much relies on
user engagement to work as a business.
Mosseri says that some people were already using Stickers as a
wordless way of registering their responses, but this will give
them a quicker way to do this.
Typing on mobile is difficult, Mosseri says, and this is way
easier than finding a sticker or emoji to respond to in the
feed.
Offering different emoji will also mean that Facebook will start
to tally and show those different responses: so, just as today
you see how many people and who Liked a post, now you will see
which people loved it, or found it surprising, or sad, and so
on.
For Page owners and publishers, this data collection will also
eventually make its way to Facebooks analytics dashboard. So,
just as today social media managers can monitor shares and
likes of certain posts, they will be able to now get more
granular data about how people are emotionally responding to
content on the social network, which should also help Facebook
in its bigger play for selling advertising and simply getting
more relevant content to users.
Mosseri says that just as with the Like button or with comments
overall, once these do come to your feed, you will be stuck
with them no option to turn off responses as publishers
sometimes do with comments on articles in websites. Giving users
the option to turn off the emoji was somethng we considered,
Mosseri said, but they decided against it. If you think about
the user experience first, that option could become confusing,
with people thinking something was broken instead.
Facebook Reactions Are Here, And They're Worse Than We Feared
I can see why Mark Zuckerberg thought Facebook Reactions were a
good idea. Worn down by years of users asking him why there was
no to "dislike" things on Facebook, he finally saw a way to
give them an alternative to the Like button without turning
Facebook into Reddit, where posts live and die based on how
many upvotes or downvotes they get.
The answer: Facebook Reactions, a strip of emoji that appear when
you either hover (desktop) or long-press (mobile) the Like
button. Comprising emoji that represent Like, Love, Haha, Yay,
Wow, Sad and Angry, Reactions allow a user to quickly respond to
a Facebook post with something other than a Like. Now, instead
of "liking" a sad status update, you can respond with a
sentiment that feels a little more appropriate.
Zuckerberg says Facebook Reactions are about letting people
express empathy, and I believe him, but it's likely only part of
the impetus. You see, Facebook's News Feed is algorithmically
driven to surface the posts with the most engagement, and one of
the key factors it looks at is Likes.
The thing is, people tend not to Like difficult things, even
though engagement (through commenting, time spent, etc.) on such
a post might be otherwise high.
The News Feed algorithm compensates for this in various ways, of
course, but it would be much neater if only it could look at
some similar metric for those non-Likeable posts.
Enter Reactions, which seems tailor-made to solve this problem.
Over time, as people get used to the emoji and begin "Yaying,"
"Wowing" and "Sadding" various posts, Facebook will get better
guidance for the News Feed, and users get more choice in how to
interact with what they see. Everybody wins, right?
Today we're launching a test of Reactions a more
expressive Like button. The Like button has been a part of...
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, October 8, 2015
What looks good on the Menlo Park whiteboard, however, doesn't
always jibe with the real world, and we're already starting to
see social-politics issues arise now that Reactions has begun to
roll out to a couple of regions.
Reacting badly
Right off the bat, it's clear that sarcastic Reactions are going
to be a thing. A post highlighting a recent John Oliver segment
about pumpkin spice lattes garnered at least one Angry reaction,
which is either from a really passionate latte drinker or
someone who just thinks he's funny (I suspect the latter).
johnoliver
It's not a big leap from there to Sad reactions to pet or baby
pictures and Yay-ing complaints of first-world problems. I'm
calling it now: When this rolls out to Pages (as it's supposed
to), for brands, sarcastic Reactions will be the new
"bashtagging."
Then there's the hot button: Angry.
Then there's the hot button: Angry. I understand the motivation
for including it. People share stories about various injustices
(public and personal) all the time on Facebook, and anger is an
appropriate emotion for those. But outside of those contexts,
it's a one-click recipe for cyberbullying. What happens the
first time an ex reacts with Angry on a post where their former
partner is celebrating finding new love? At what point do the
courts start pointing to Angry reactions on Facebook to prove
someone was behaving in a threatening manner?
As a user experience, though, the social politics of Reactions
isn't even the main problem. It's that they offer too much
choice. Time and again it's been shown that if you offer users
too much choice, they simply won't make one. (Facebook has even
seen this itself: Disaster-relief donations from its Donate Now
button spiked when they stopped asking users to select specific
amounts and organizations.)
And for serious issues, Facebook's Reactions still don't feel
right. Does it make sense to compress the nuanced feelings you
may have about, say, the Syrian refugee crisis into a
goofy-looking yellow face with a teardrop on one eye? Is that
kind of drive-by reacting really any better than just not
leaving any reaction at all? If you really care about the
issue, leaving a comment even a short one feels far more
appropriate.
Feeling it out
In the end, Facebook Reactions strikes me as an imperfect
solution to a problem that's largely created by a desire for
better analytics. And I don't mean to use the word dismissively.
Analytics aren't just for engineers and marketers we all want
to see "engagement" on our posts, even when we post something
sad or troubling.
That engagement, though, doesn't always lend itself to short,
one-click solutions. Facebook Reactions' heart is in the right
place: The feature is trying to change a bland, binary choice
into a rich experience that better reflects our feelings, but
the emotion it'll probably end up inspiring most is ambivalence.
=~=~=~=
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