“And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying . . . And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand . . . All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.” Matthew 13:2-3a, 10-13, 34-35, KJV
“And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables . . .” Mark 3:23, KJV
“And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?” Mark 4:10-13, KJV
“And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.” Luke 8:9-10, KJV
“For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11, KJV
“Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:” Isaiah 46:9-10, KJV
“He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” Psalm 126:6, KJV
“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” Ecclesiastes 11:1, KJV
It may surprise some of you to know that when I am on my iMac, I very rarely ever go to my Facebook news feed. Whenever I open Facebook in Firefox, I always go directly to my timeline instead, which I have bookmarked. It seems that with the Facebook app on my iPhone, I don’t have this option. Upon launching it, the app takes me directly to my news feed whether I like it or not.
So why do I choose to go to my timeline instead of to my news feed? Basically, because more often than not, the news feed is full of all kinds of junk in which I am not the least bit interested.
The very worst has to be all of the political garbage. Even some of my Christian friends do it. People — including some Christians — take sides, and then they do everything they can to support the politicians who they like, and to blast and condemn the politicians who they don’t like. I mean, the political gossip, rumors and accusations is as thick as stew. It is unending. I am sorry folks, but I really don’t need that in my news feed. I get enough of that kind of nonsense in the daily news bundles which are downloaded to my email client.
Then there are those people who spend a lot of their time attacking or defending certain popular preachers in the news feed. Personally, while I do expose the errors of a few popular preachers in some of my older articles, for the most part, I strive to stay out of those kinds of discussions, particularly when they are occurring online. As I explain in the following KJV Bible verse list, I believe that we should each abide in our own calling, and leave the ministries of others to be sorted out by the Lord. If they are in error, or false prophets, God will expose them at length:
So as I said, I am sorry, but I am not interested in reading that kind of stuff in my news feed.
Then, of course, there are all of the conspiracy theorists with their often off-the-wall ideas, rumors and links to questionable websites, many of which contain bogus info and fake news. I have spoken about this before, and have even made some graphics concerning this topic. So again, no thanks, but I’ll pass on this kind of stuff in my news feed. I just don’t need it.
As if all of the above is not enough to turn me off to the Facebook news feed, then there are all of the posts regarding the latest styles in clothing, ads for make-up, the latest celeb gossip, the coolest apps, etc. Again, I am sorry, but I am not the least bit interested in those kinds of things.
Now, I know a lot of you enjoy posting images of your beloved pets. Believe me; I understand that. I am an animal and nature lover too. I have had pets of one sort or another since I was a young boy. Occasionally, I will share photos or short videos of my two cats, Polo and Eljio. But for the most part, while your cute pet images and videos are often very adorable, nevertheless, I can do without being overwhelmed by dozens of them in my news feed as well. Sorry.
I realize that what each person puts on their timeline is a very personal decision. Your timeline is yours to do with as you please, and that is indeed your right, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. If you want to fill it up with pics and videos of your family and relatives, or with any of the other things which I previously mentioned, that is your choice.
However, at the same time, please understand that, personally, the bottom line for me is this: I primarily joined Facebook so that I can use it as an outlet to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s it. In fact, that is why I purchased my very first computer so many years ago. I look at my computer, and social networks, as tools to share the Good News of Salvation and other related topics.
Now, considering that most, if not all, of my FB friends are Christians, I would assume that they are also interested in sharing the Gospel with other people on Facebook as well. Sadly, I must confess that I am both amazed and disappointed by the amount of worthless junk in my news feed; much of which is generated by my Christian friends. Yes, there is some Christian content by a small number of my friends. However, having to wade through all of the crap in order to find the good content is just not worth my time. So, as a result, I will mainly stick to just posting on my timeline, and I will stay away from my news feed as much as possible.
Look at it this way. At least when you visit my timeline, you will know exactly what you will find there: Plenty of God’s Word. And it won’t include any of the aforementioned worthless junk. I post some humorous stuff now and then, and as I said, sometimes cat photos, but for the most part, you will find good Christian content which will feed, inspire and motivate you. I hope that I am a blessing to you.
This morning I dedicated some time to try to understand why certain third party blogging tools — such as auto-posters and re-posters — no longer work on some of the popular social networks. A person may have successfully used such syndication tools for quite some time — perhaps even years — to auto-post and re-post perhaps many hundreds or even thousands of images to their favorite social networks, and then the tools suddenly stopped working. For example, thus far, I found this to be true with both Twitter and Tumblr, and there may be other social networks where this happens as well.
So, why does it happen? Well, quite simply, my observation is that it is because the owners and administrators of some social networks are becoming a lot more restrictive and stringent regarding people who rely upon such auto-posting and re-posting mechanisms to post memes to their networks.
The fact of the matter is that in the eyes of certain social network owners and administrators, when an end user posts the same image on the network more than once — which is exactly what auto-posting, and particularly re-posting, is designed to do — they view it as spam, and they obviously want to stop it. They want to stop YOU in your tracks.
The truth is, to a certain degree, I understand why some social network overseers have chosen such a restrictive path in regards to what they allow to be posted on their social networks. Furthermore, I will honestly admit that they have a right to do it as well. After all, it is their social network, and they make the rules, whether we like them or agree with them or not.
The bottom line is that in addition to trying to stop money scammers, false advertisers, political manipulators, online child predators, porn site promoters and similar ilk, social network owners and administrators want fresh, new content constantly populating their networks. After all, that is what keeps their networks alive and interesting. They don’t want the same old, regurgitated content which never seems to die. And that is why some of them have obviously declared all-out war on auto-posting and re-posting mechanisms. They want to put an end to content which they view as spam.
Now, from what I have been able to determine through some of the tests I ran this morning, one of their big targets is graphics which are constantly re-uploaded, re-posted and re-circulated. To combat this, these social network owners have implemented certain mechanisms, bots, algorithms, or whatever you want to call them, which can detect when a person has previously uploaded a particular image. If they do make that determination, they will stop you in your tracks after you have uploaded that same image so many number of times. Exactly what that number may be is a big secret. The social network may possibly publish the text portion of your post, but the image will be nowhere to be found. Such is the case with Twitter, for example.
Some smart users may try to find ways to get around the blockades which have been imposed by certain social networks. If you happen to fall into this bracket, then listen up. One approach is to rename one’s images in order to try to trick the social networks. However, not only is that impractical to do if you happen to have thousands of image files in your rotation, but it will obviously break your blog structure, leaving you with a lot of broken images on your blog. Besides, it won’t work anyway. The social networks will still know that it is the same image, despite the file name change, because they look at other parameters in order to determine an image’s newness.
Furthermore, you can try changing the creation date of the file to see if it will slide by the social network’s nasty sentinels. However, I can tell you right now that it won’t work either. In other words, taking such action will not trick the social network into reposting your image. Their AI is smart enough to know that it is still the same image.
Lastly, you can try changing the modification date of the image file so that the social network thinks that it is a new, or at least changed, file. But again, doing this simply will not work either. It won’t trick the social network into reposting that image for you. Why? Because as I stated a moment ago, my tests seem to indicate that the social networks look at something else in order to determine an image’s newness.
At this current time, the impression I have is that the key parameter which some of these social networks look at in order to determine if an image has truly been modified and updated, is the file size. That is the one thing you cannot change by using any kind of the currently-available file attributes manipulation applications. In fact, even doing that — if it were possible — would probably really wreck your OS anyway.
As far as I know, the only way to alter the file size is by actually opening the file in the image editor of your choice, and making some change to the image, so that the size of the file — not the dimensions of the image, but the actual file size in KB or MB — is changed.
If you then take that updated image file and include it in a new post on your blog, you will discover that the social network will allow you to auto-post the image, or even re-post it, at least the first time around. Who knows. As I mentioned earlier, you may even be able to re-post it a few times before they stop you again. All of the social networks have their inside secrets and techniques which they are not about to share with us. That is precisely how they keep us end users at a disadvantage.
In the end, what it comes down to is this: Either we play by their rules, or else they will just find a way to stop us in our tracks. That could mean an on-screen warning and a slap on the wrist; or temporarily being thrown into “jail”; or in extreme cases, even being locked out of one’s online account completely, and possibly permanently.
The sad thing is, even when we do play by their rules, we still find ourselves constantly being harassed, blocked, thrown in jail or locked out of our accounts, because their imperfect bots and algorithms are constantly misidentifying some of our actions, and falsely accusing us of “suspicious activity” when there really is none. Many of you who are reading this commentary are no doubt familiar with this “friendly” message from your ever-so-helpful Facebook bot:
The result is a lot of false positives, which negatively affect so many of us, to the point where we just want to give up, throw up our hands in disgust, and possibly even leave that particular social network altogether. I know that I have felt that way at times. Have you? Using the social networks is not as much fun as it used to be, is it? Sometimes it feels like we are walking on eggshells, because the social network thought police are watching our every move, just waiting for us to commit some infraction which contradicts their liberal agenda.
What makes it even more frustrating is the fact that there is very little that we can do about these injustices which are committed against us. Some of these social networks — such as Facebook, for example — have built such huge walls around themselves, so that even trying to get help from a real person is really next to impossible. They just lead you in circles from one link to the next, and from one help page to the next, never offering any real information which will help to resolve your dilemma. Either that, or you are forced to deal with some bot in a chat window, which half the time doesn’t even understand what you are saying, or what you are requesting. It can be really frustrating. To make matters worse, it is all so inhuman and impersonal. I don’t like it at all. And you?
Considering how much personal data mining occurs on the social networks — even without us knowing about it — I really think that some of them need to lighten up a bit, and grant us more freedom of expression without imposing so many restrictions on us. Please note that by saying “freedom of expression”, I am of course not referring to the negative stuff I mentioned earlier. Some of us have important things we feel we need to say, and sometimes that requires posting the information on more than one occasion, so that it eventually begins to sink into the heads of our audience. After all, as they say, repetition is the law of memory.
