The main issue here is that there it is no longer possible to remove the tracking part of the URL, as Facebook merged it with part of the required web address. Removing the entire construct after the ? would open the main Facebook page of Ghacks Technology News, but it won’t open the linked post.

I don’t read FB but I typically strip any parameters from the urls of tweets. I guess this is the next stage.

Read Mark Zuckerberg Is TNR’s 2021 Scoundrel of the Year
The nitwit founder of Facebook has created the worst, most damaging website in the world. And we’re just supposed to accept it.

Americans represent only about 10 percent of Facebook’s users, but nearly 85 percent of the efforts that the company has put toward stemming the spread of misinformation has been focused on the U.S.

Scoundrel seems a mite gentle given the content of the article.

Via jwz

Liked The Instagram ads Facebook won't show you (Signal Messenger)
Companies like Facebook aren’t building technology for you, they’re building technology for your data. They collect everything they can from FB, Instagram, and WhatsApp in order to sell visibility into people and their lives.This isn’t exactly a secret, but the full picture is hazy to most – diml...

Very clever way to show data FB collects.

Liked Facebook’s Laughable Campaign Against Apple Is Really Against Users and Small Businesses (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Overall, AppTrackingTransparency is a great step forward for Apple. When a company does the right thing for its users, EFF will stand with it, just as we will come down hard on companies that do the wrong thing. Here, Apple is right and Facebook is wrong. Next step: Android should follow with the same protections. Your move, Google.

In reality, a number of studies have shown that most of the money made from targeted advertising does not reach the creators of the content—the app developers and the content they host.  Instead, the majority of any extra money earned by targeted ads ends up in the pockets of these data brokers.

Liked Facebook Takes Out Full-Page Newspaper Ads to Attack Apple’s Changes Strengthening iOS Privacy (Daring Fireball)
Link to: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/16/facebook-takes-out-full-page-ads-to-attack-apple/

Here’s the thing. Apple isn’t blocking the ability for Facebook to personalize ads, in any way. Apple is just providing users with control over their own privacy. Users can easily choose to keep providing Facebook (and anyone else) with all the information they want. Or they can choose not to.

Fascinating and weird.

Bookmarked Facebook creates fact-checking exemption for climate deniers  by Judd Legum (popular.info)
Facebook is "aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation,” said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University. “They have become the vehicle for climate misinformation, and thus should be held partially responsible for a lack of action on climate change.”

But now Facebook has reportedly decided to allow its staffers to overrule the climate scientists and make any climate disinformation ineligible for fact-checking by deeming it “opinion.”