Sometimes people suggest I know nothing of male/female relationships in the workplace because I’m gay. To the contrary, metaphorically I’m in the stands so what I see is a different and possibly better view from those on the field (so to speak).
I asked one of the senior analysts if I could speak with him privately. I said: “Quit humping the leg of the intern.” Now, to be clear, he was a good man with strong ethics and very professional. I can’t read minds, but my guess is that he got his signals crossed.
Image courtesy of Tenor
The intern in question sat at the desk next to me. So I saw firsthand how uncomfortable she was with the attention from the senior analyst. (Finding reasons to drop by her desk every few hours, trying to get to know her personally with questions, etc., etc.)
I saw something and I took action.
Three Take-Aways:
1 If you see potential harassment, speak up. A lot of trouble for everyone can be averted.
2 There’s a big difference between a one-time thoughtless lack of judgement and a predatory repeat offender. A man who responds appropriately to being spoken to privately may not express thanks, but he will be glad.
3 You don’t have to be the person’s boss if you know them. This is a good way to de-escalate a potentially volatile situation.
Back to the gay thing: As a gay man, I’ve learned to suppress my instinct to stare at or pay attention to men I’m attracted to in the workplace. This is so because a lot of straight men hate being hit on by gay guys. Straight men ought to suppress their attraction to women in the workplace, too. Gay men who hit on straight men risk getting their ass kicked. Maybe the workplace would be better if straight men faced the same risk?
Use the Mozilla Firefox browser with Fàcebook Container extension
Unfriend people you don’t interact with much
All of these are described below.
IMPORTANT WARNING: If you are in an abusive relationship or being stalked, quit Facebõok, In-sta, and WhåtsApp immediately. Social media is the number one way abusers track down their victims. For help with domestic violence, telephone in the USA 800-799-7233 Don’t use the Internet for this because your abuser may have tampered with your browser. Better to phone. Even better if you can use a friend’s phone.
This was a friend’s humorous response to my observations about Facêbook’s social and privacy problems. These are the kinds of things people in InfoSec/Cybersecurity are trained to notice. The only people I know who quit or drastically cut back on FB are InfoSec/CyberSecurity professionals or victims of FB retaliation. (Retaliation)
To almost everyone else, it doesn’t seem so bad or they haven’t yet experienced any harm. This blog will provide some ways FB is less than good for ordinary people. Then it will suggest some ways to reduce harm while using FB.
What harm?
Betty White famously framed one answer when she hosted Saturday Night Live due to a FB petition gaining over 1,000,000 likes. She said: “I didn’t know what Facebøok was. And now that I do know, it sounds like a huge waste of time.” Yes.
FB: “And now that I do know, it sounds like huge waste of time”
When I’ve shared with people horrible things about Fß, the most common response is “But I only use it to keep up with friends and family.”
Thus, people who might agree that FB is leveraged for evil by others, they still use it for themselves. This isn’t the first time people do things that aren’t good for them. That’s why I’m a big advocate of harm reduction. This is the simple idea that if you give people factual information about options and respect their dignity, they will do things in a way that is least harmful. Example of Harm Reduction: Wearing a seatbelt while driving. (Controversy)
First of all, what harm does FB inflict on ordinary people? It
manipulates our emotions through it’s selection of what it shows us (CBS)
makes us feel worse when we’re sad, down, or angry (Sad)
wastes our time by making us look at things we don’t want (see Betty White above)
fills our feed with ads that range from idiotic (ads1) to disturbing (ads2)
Harm Reduction Tactics
So in the interests of harm reduction, I offer the following suggestions for people who want to have a richer, safer, and more satisfying experience.
Download and use the Mozilla Firefox browser with the FB container fence extension enabled (Fence)
Use the old, but still active mobile phone browser m.facebook.com
Unfriend people who don’t add positive value to your life
Unfriend people whose constant bragging makes you compare yourself negatively
Download and use the free version of CCleaner that will erase FB cookies and web storage files https://www.ccleaner.com(Reputable)
Harm Reduction Benefits
If you do these things, you will gain the following benefits:
Your feed will be more specific to your needs (and not those of advertisers)
You’ll enjoy better, richer interaction with friends and family
YOU will be in control of your FB experience more than the algorithm
Not a Personal Problem
One of the blindspots we westerners have is that we tend to cast everything as an individual problem. We’re not very good at group thinking. This hilarious mock educational film about Faceboök Manners is a good example of side-stepping group and corporate responsibility .
Spoof of Educational Film re: The Electric Friendship Generator
Privacy Badger
Although not specific to FB, when it comes to online protection, I highly recommend the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Privacy Badger that can be added to Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Opera https://privacybadger.org/
Additional Info
For me, FB is one big steaming pile of holocaust deniers, racists bigots, a flood of raw sewage disinformation and info-warfare by well-funded troll farms, and the target of many breaches of user data.
(Friend) This partial quote is wildly out of context. After listening to my technology and privacy concerns about Facébook, he humorously replied: “Well, you do security for a living so I respect your views, but it works for me, so fuck off.” Still makes me laugh recalling that.
(Controversy) Harm reduction for illicit drugs more controversial. Teaching people to use alcohol pads to cleanse needles can prevent infection, but many “guardian types” insist that they only approach should be “Don’t Do Drugs!!!”
(ads1) When I was active on F B, I received countless ads for very expensive gentlemen’s underpants. I would screen-capture those for fun. How do you say “gay” without saying “gay”? Code an ad to reach men in certain zip codes in a relationship with someone of the same gender. In 2018, FB made a video just for me. I was sure to use those screen-captures:
Very Expensive Underoos for Men
(ads2) An ad looking to drum up a class action suit against PrEP medicines showed up in my feed in 2018. When I clicked on “Why am I seeing this ad?” the info was the advertiser was looking for people who live or lived in California. They did NOT reveal the whole search criteria. They were looking for gay men, using advanced search logic such as zip codes, cities, relationship status with another of the same sex, gender, etc..
Some people deny that FB allows advertisers to target gay men. How many straight men would wear the shirt on the left?
Does FB Let Advertisers Target Gay Men?
(Fence) Faceböok Container works by isolating your FB identity into a separate container (like a fence) that makes it harder for Fa cebook to track your visits to other websites with third-party cookies.
(Reputable) There are many bad programs that claim to clean up your computer, but actually contain adware or spyware. Be sure to use one that has a good reputation such as CCleaner
