STUDY: Trump Fans Don't Spel Gud

Via USA Today:

Fans of Carly Fiorina venting their views on Facebook are far more likely to do so with proper grammar than fans of Donald Trump. A new study by the folks at the grammar-checking app Grammarly concluded that commenters on Fiorina’s Facebook page made an average of 6.3 grammatical and spelling errors per hundred words compared with 12.6 errors per hundred for folks posting on Trump’s page. The grammar used by Ben Carson’s Facebook followers ranks up there near Fiorina’s at 6.6 errors per hundred words, while Rick Perry’s commenters are second worst, at a 12.5 goof rate.

Shocking!

A Kind Offer

RELATED: From earlier today.

HomoQuotable - Peter Moskowitz

"I’ve earned the right to claim pride through years of internal strife over my sexuality. Others have died in the name of gay pride. More still have been jailed, have been disowned by their families, and have sued their state governments for it. Gay pride is not something you can claim by waving a flag. The rainbow symbol is easy to co-opt, but the experience it represents is not. That’s why it wasn’t comforting to see hundreds of my Facebook friends’ profile pictures draped in rainbows. It didn’t feel like they were understanding my struggle; it felt like they were cheapening it, celebrating a victory they had no part in winning." - Peter Moskowitz, 26, writing for the Washington Post. Comments there are overwhelmingly critical.

26M Rainbow Their Facebook Profile

Via CNN Money:

Over the past three days, 26 million people have super imposed rainbows over their Facebook profile pictures using a free tool provided by the company. The rainbow filter launched Friday and continued to gain steam over Pride weekend, garnering more than half a billion likes and comments all over the world. Famous people including Russell Simmons, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff changed their profiles. The tool was created by two Facebook interns during an internal hackathon last week. Changing a profile picture is easily dismissed as low-effort activism. But for many people who are not typically political it was a way to quietly show support.

Huckabee Gets Trolled On Facebook

Talking Points Memo reports that things went "hilariously off the rails" after Mike Huckabee offered to answer Facebook users' questions about his presidential campaign. See the thread.

160K Facebook Users Vow To Celebrate Divorce Of Anti-Gay Australian Couple

Over 160,000 Facebook users have "liked" a page that promises to celebrate the divorce of Australian couple Nick and Sarah Jensen, who gained global headlines last week when they vowed to legally separate should same-sex marriage become law down under. Via Pink News:

The Facebook page, which sets 1 September as a placeholder date for celebration, to be confirmed if and when legislation goes through, encourages celebration of the couple’s divorce. The page reads: “They have decided that being married together in a country where it’s legal for a man and a man to marry, or a woman and a woman, is just too horrible. They’d much rather be divorced and I think we should all support and celebrate in their decision when the date finally does come. “We sure hope there won’t be any backing out on their behalf as hundreds upon hundreds of gays and gay rights supporters come to rejoice in the parting ways of these narrow minded citizens which so many of us are ashamed to call Canberrans.” Despite their scary threat, however, the couple would find it difficult to divorce, as the Family Law Act states that both parties have to separate and live separately for at least twelve months in order to divorce.

Nick Jensen is the former director of the Australian Christian Lobby.

New Best Buy Wedding Registry Ad

JMG reader Brian tips us that the above ad is appearing on Facebook today. In 2010 Best Buy and Target drew the ire of LGBT activists for donating to anti-gay GOP Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who ended up losing to current Gov. Mark Dayton by merely 0.4% of the vote.

Tech Industry Coalition Issues Statement Calling For Full Federal LGBT Rights

In response to the ongoing RFRA battles, a coalition of over 100 major tech industry corporations has issued a joint statement calling for full federal LGBT anti-discrimination protections.

The values of diversity, fairness and equality are central to our industry. These values fuel creativity and inspiration, and those in turn make the U.S. technology sector the most admired in the world today. We believe it is critically important to speak out about proposed bills and existing laws that would put the rights of minorities at risk. The transparent and open economy of the future depends on it, and the values of this great nation are at stake.

Religious freedom, inclusion, and diversity can co-exist and everyone including LGBT people and people of faith should be protected under their states’ civil rights laws. No person should have to fear losing their job or be denied service or housing because of who they are or whom they love. However, right now those values are being called into question in states across the country. In more than twenty states, legislatures are considering legislation that could empower individuals or businesses to discriminate against LGBT people by denying them service if it they felt it violated their religious beliefs.

To ensure no one faces discrimination and ensure everyone preserves their right to live out their faith, we call on all legislatures to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes to their civil rights laws and to explicitly forbid discrimination or denial of services to anyone. Anything less will only serve to place barriers between people, create hurdles to creativity and inclusion, and smother the kind of open and transparent society that is necessary to create the jobs of the future. Discrimination is bad for business and that’s why we've taken the time to join this joint statement.

Signees include Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, Yahoo, Netflix, Intuit, Uber, Salesforce, Cisco Systems, and PayPal. Hit the link for the full list.

Facebook Moves Into New Office Building With Nine-Acre Park On Its Roof

From Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page:

Today we moved into our new Facebook building in Menlo Park, California. Our goal was to create the perfect engineering space for our teams to work together. We wanted our space to create the same sense of community and connection among our teams that we try to enable with our services across the world. To do this, we designed the largest open floor plan in the world — a single room that fits thousands of people. There are lots of small spaces where people can work together, and it’s easy for people to move around and collaborate with anyone here. On the roof is a 9-acre park with walking trails and many outdoor spaces to sit and work. The building itself is pretty simple and isn’t fancy. That’s on purpose. We want our space to feel like a work in progress. When you enter our buildings, we want you to feel how much left there is to be done in our mission to connect the world.

The main room reportedly houses cubicles for 2800 staffers. Which probably feels like working in an airport terminal. More photos here.

Facebook Launches New Policy On Account Status Following Death Of User

Via the Washington Post:

Facebook has announced that it will grant users more control over what happens to their Facebook pages after they die. Starting Thursday, users should see a new option pop up in their security settings that will let them choose whether they want to pass their information and account management over to someone else when the time comes. As of Thursday, there will be three basic options: 1) You can do nothing, in which case the current rules apply and your account can be memorialized by anyone after your death, providing that the company gets adequate proof of your death. 2) You can ask Facebook to delete your account after you die. 3) You can designate someone -- called your legacy contact -- to manage your account. Once Facebook is notified of your death, your timeline will also change to let people know you've died. Facebook does this by adding the word "Remembering" ahead of your name -- i.e. "Remembering John Doe."

The legacy contact must be a Facebook user and will be able to do specific things, such as accept requests from those who want to befriend an account to do things such as post messages on a user's timeline. Contacts will also be able to pin posts to the top of a profile page and change the late person's profile picture or cover photo. To keep from unduly upsetting a deceased Facebook users' friends, these types of notifications will be suppressed -- meaning you shouldn't see them pop up on your own timeline, alongside normal profile updates. Facebook users can also specify whether they'd like the legacy contact to access a downloadable archive of their Facebook information after death. Sure, the information you post on Facebook probably isn't crucial -- your photos, your cheesy inspirational quotes, your bad puns -- but those little things are also often what people miss about you when you're gone.

But who do you choose to be your legacy contact?

RELATED: Two years ago Google introduced a policy in which users can choose to have all of their accounts (YouTube, Gmail, Google+, etc) automatically deleted after a user-specified period of inactivity.

Perkins: Gays Are Persecuting Christians With Photos On Their Facebook Pages

Last Christmas (I Gayview Mahat)

The Wham classic. Lyrics via Facebook names.

NOM: Tell Us About Married Couples

Apparently NOM didn't learn a lesson from the Duggars as the gays are flooding the page. (Tipped by JMG reader Christopher)

Geraldo Rivera Vs Facebook Trolls

Duggar Family Issues Kissing Challenge

"God designed marriage to be a loving, dynamic relationship between a husband and wife for a lifetime. God loves marriage and it is supposed to be full of love, joy, fun and romance. Marriage is where romance belongs! Recently, Ben & Jessa received some criticism for posting a kissing picture. We are so grateful they waited to share their first kiss until after marriage. We’ve been married 30 years and are still in love! We had fun trying to duplicate Ben and Jessa's happily married kissing picture. We challenge all married couples to take a happily married picture and post it here." - From the Duggar family's Facebook page. Well, what are you waiting for? (Tipped by JMG reader Olive)

Facebook Zaps Anti-Gay Page

I'm somewhat torn on this as the No Gay Civil Right page was excellent "animus" fodder. (Tipped by JMG reader Claudio)

Stephen Hawking Joins Facebook

Headline Of The Day

Via Valleywag:

Facebook is feeling the heat and is slated to apologize for the situation later today, sources tell Valleywag. We're told the apology will be first issued at a meeting with a coalition of drag queens, LGBT activists, and San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, all of whom have been pressing Facebook end the discriminatory policy. Before making a public announcement, the company will also outline to activists how it plans to fix its policies. When reached for comment, a Facebook representative declined to comment on the terms of the policy reversal. However, the representative confirmed the meeting is taking place.

UPDATE: Facebook honcho Chris Cox has posted a lengthy message on Facebook. It begins:

I want to apologize to the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship that we've put you through in dealing with your Facebook accounts over the past few weeks. In the two weeks since the real-name policy issues surfaced, we've had the chance to hear from many of you in these communities and understand the policy more clearly as you experience it. We've also come to understand how painful this has been. We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we're going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were.

The way this happened took us off guard. An individual on Facebook decided to report several hundred of these accounts as fake. These reports were among the several hundred thousand fake name reports we process every single week, 99 percent of which are bad actors doing bad things: impersonation, bullying, trolling, domestic violence, scams, hate speech, and more — so we didn't notice the pattern. The process we follow has been to ask the flagged accounts to verify they are using real names by submitting some form of ID — gym membership, library card, or piece of mail. We've had this policy for over 10 years, and until recently it's done a good job of creating a safe community without inadvertently harming groups like what happened here.

Our policy has never been to require everyone on Facebook to use their legal name. The spirit of our policy is that everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life. For Sister Roma, that's Sister Roma. For Lil Miss Hot Mess, that's Lil Miss Hot Mess. Part of what's been so difficult about this conversation is that we support both of these individuals, and so many others affected by this, completely and utterly in how they use Facebook.

Twitter Suspends Account Spearheading Deletions Of Drag Names On Facebook

Via Pink News:

A Twitter account named the ‘Real Name Police’ which targeted drag performers on Facebook, calling on followers to report accounts to the social networking site which do not use legal names, has now been suspended. Last week Facebook met with drag performers in San Francisco following a controversy after the site started cracking down on profiles which do not use legal names. Despite the gesture, and an agreement to temporarily reinstate users’ profiles, Facebook said it would not change the policy. The performers argue that having a stage name unrelated to their legal name helps protect them from issues with employers, family members or unwanted attention. Many said their performer name was part of who they are. The Real Name Police account had trawled Facebook, and posted links to various accounts, including porn actor Michael Lucas, many drag performers and others who did not have their legal name on their Facebook account. The account posted an image of Twitter analytics, and claimed to have had over 201,000 impressions since it was set up three days ago.

I'm rather surprised that Twitter suspended the account. They weren't too interested a couple of years ago when I got death threats.

ReaganBook Becomes FreedomBook

Back in July we all had a lot of fun with hate group crackpot Janet Porter's launch of ReaganBook, a conservatives-only social media site meant to counter those homofascists at Facebook. Today JMG reader Sean tips us that the URL for ReaganBook now redirects to a placeholder page for a site called FreedomBook. I'm betting that the Reagan estate sent Porter a stern cease-and-desist notice.