A big storm is coming, the latest viral trend on Facebook...is dropping Facebook, a new gourmet pizzeria in Highland Park brings flavors of Rome to the eastside.
Deleting your Facebook account is the latest viral trend
The latest trend on Facebook... is dropping Facebook.
Many users are intensely angry that their personal information may have been sold or misused by the social media giant. And they're disconnecting in droves.
If you're one of the ones who wants to delete your Facebook account, it's pretty simple. First thing is, you should copy your information and make an archive of your account — all of those photos, your timeline info, posts and so on. Just go to Settings and download your info (for a tutorial, click here). To delete the account, you have to go to an outside page, click here. That's it. It takes a few days 'til your account is terminated — and make sure you don't sign onto Facebook while that's pending or you'll have to go through the deletion request all over again.
The viral elimination of Facebook accounts has had a big effect — the company lost $50 billion in stock worth in just a few days. Long-term, we wondered, what effect could this trend have? Is this a tipping point for Facebook?
We talked to Karen North, professor of digital social media at the University of Southern California.
What this trend may mean for Facebook
It's really a big problem for Facebook. There's a huge difference for a platform like Facebook between deciding not to use Facebook and deleting Facebook. Because deleting it is a very permanent and very damaging action for Facebook.
It can be so hard to hit the Delete Account button
For a lot of us, if we look at it from afar, we think about whether we're really enjoying the curated experience. We know it serves the purpose of being our global address book and our photo gallery. In that way, it's sort of a utility we don't want to give up. We do think, how will I get in touch with old friends and acquaintances, how will I see the generations of photos I've put there and how will I know whose birthday it is and who should I wish a happy birthday to, I don't want to miss that.
Deletions have potential to cripple Facebook
The biggest problem for Facebook in this is, they thrive when the cool kids find them. And if the cool kids are saying the new "in" trend is to delete them, it sends a signal it's time to move somewhere else. It's a problem. They need to re-engage the thought leaders and the people who are the trend-setters.
Personal information is everywhere
You have to remember that whatever data you've provided to people via Facebook and other sites, your data are already collected by various entities. It's not just Facebook. I always want to warn people, whenever they do those fun surveys, like "What was the song played at your high school prom," all of those little fun surveys asking about your likes and activities, those are just asking you about your personal life.
Information can't be entirely deleted
You will not be scrubbed away. Anything that was already up there is still there. Even when you try to delete things there are usually records of it somewhere and they're no longer in your control. Somebody else made a copy of it, or someone took a screenshot of it, or it pinged off a server and it's sitting in a server somewhere. The best we can hope for is, by putting up more and more different and better information of ourselves online, that it pushes down the information we want to hide. It makes it harder for people to access. But not impossible.
Users can still make a statement, if enough people dropped their accounts.
Everybody sees social networks being the clubs people go to, like nightclubs. The question is, what's the next nightclub? Facebook has had a great ride because it has gone beyond the nightclub. But whether or they have the staying power as a social experience site is really questionable. They've been doing a fine job of maintaining their relevance to people, by being a place where people can share their lives, their opinions and the news, but when people don't like an experience it's very easy in this digital age of things being able to be spread so quickly and shared so readily, it's very easy to signal each other that we no longer trust or no longer like an experience. With Facebook right now, the issue really is trust. They already had a problem because of the Russian meddling, but we're a step beyond that now. We're now hearing that Cambridge Analytica was actually scraping private data and using it directly, and people do not like that kind of privacy violation.
The juvenile justice approach is changing
Los Angeles County is in the process of changing how it treats incarcerated teenagers. It's a new approach called the L.A. Model, and it aims to provide care rather than just correction. One part of that is, surprisingly, arts education.
KPCC reporter Carla Javier is hosting an event Thursday night at the station to talk about L.A. Model, and she joined Take Two's A Martinez for a preview.
What is L.A. Model?
It's supposed to focus on things like care, healing, and support rather than a more traditional view of corrections. They are trying to accomplish that by rejecting what you might think of or assume when you think of a juvenile facility. Instead of prison uniforms, the youth wear slacks and polos.
Instead of military barrack-style housing, the youth actually live in these buildings that, to me, resemble college dorms and common spaces.
These aesthetic changes are supposed to reflect a change in approach, away from a rigid model, to one where the youth have personalized programming available to them.
For more information on the event taking place Thursday, March 22, click here.
Triple Beam Pizza brings Roman-style pies to Highland Park
Something crispy this way comes.
A new pizza joint in Highland Park brings a different style of pizza -- like the ones they make in Rome -- to the city's rapidly-evolving Figueroa Boulevard. It's called Triple Beam, and the food's quite a bit different from what some pizza lovers have come to expect: The crust is thin, the toppings fresh. It's baked in a long rectangle and sold by the ounce.
The shop is the brainchild of two restaurateurs who have spent decades on the LA food scene: Nancy Silverton, co-owner of Mozza on Melrose and Highland, and Matt Molina, a James Beard Foundation award-winner, formerly her executive chef. It's a culmination of their longtime obsession with authentic Italian fare.
Take Two's A Martinez went to Highland Park to speak to the pair, to find out exactly what they're making, why they picked this mostly working-class neighborhood to set up shop -- and, of course, to taste Roman pizza.
What made you guys decide to set up shop here?
Matt: We thought, wow, there's a lot of foot traffic here, there are people out and about, there seems to be a beat on the street; this would be a really good opportunity to see if we can do this. I love challenging myself — I know Nancy does — it just seemed like a really opportune time to do it.
Nancy: Yes, including being able to fulfill sort-of a fantasy of mine, which is being able to recreate this type of pizza.
Always the first stop on my couple days in Rome is to the Campo de' Fiori. This is the style of pizza they do there. Every time I eat it, I always think "one day, I want to do something like this," and I've never had the form to be able to do it. When Matt approached me to help him with his pizza concept, and I suggested doing this — he's been with me several times to this pizzeria — he was like, "yes, let's go for it."
It's gonna take some education. When people see that word "pizza," it brings them in, but they have to let go of all their preconception of what a pizza is — because it is different.
Nancy, how do you make sure that the food is affordable for people? Fresh food can be expensive. How do you make sure that this food is accessible to the people that live in the area?
Well, you know, that's tricky because, along with food that has a higher price point, it usually has food that has ingredients that are of better quality. But what we're able to do here is that, because of buying it by the weight, if it's something that you can't necessarily afford a lot of — but you really want to be able to taste — you can get as small of a piece as you want. You could spend 80 cents and get a taste of the pizza.
https://www.facebook.com/taketwoshow/videos/1766683463375616/
Just parking on the street, there seems to be a lot of brand new, shiny places — a lot of different culinary options. Is Highland Park going to become LA's new best culinary destination?
Nancy: I think it has already. You've got two big streets in there: you've got Figueroa, and you've got York. I think what's great about both of those streets is that, not only are some new concepts coming in, but the whole neighborhood is still scattered with so many places that have been here for a number of years, and they are here to stay — no one is trying to push them out.
What would you say to someone that's been here for 50 years and they're looking around and saying, "this isn't the Highland Park that I grew up with. This isn't the Highland Park from my childhood." How do you factor in their concerns?
I think, hopefully, they're saying it in a good way. It could be taken negatively or positively.
Sometimes you could say, " Wow, when I moved here it was nothing like this, but look what I have now," as opposed to "I really miss the good old days."
That's what my point was about some of the smaller businesses that have been around for a long time. Hopefully, those businesses will still stay.
(Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
For pro football, are more leagues the right answer?
At a time when NFL ratings are down, with a lot of conversation about the dangers of concussions and the future of pro football, there's now ... more football.
Plans are underway for not just one, but two new pro football leagues.
The Alliance of American Football announced Tuesday it plans to launch its league in February 2019, and has a deal to air games on CBS Sports.
Competition will come in 2020 from the revived XFL, which hopes to do better than its short run of one season in 2001. Vince McMahon, chairman and CEO of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), started the XFL league and is bringing it back.
We talked with sports guru brothers Andy and Brian Kamenetzky about the news. The old XFL was known for lots of spectacle, much like the WWE -- but the football playing back then was not great, Andy said. This time McMahon is focusing on the guts of football, rather than the glitz.
McMahon made a point of driving home that players will not kneel during the anthem in the new XFL. Players will not be allowed in the league if they have a criminal record of any kind. So he's got an eye toward some of the recent PR issues the NFL is dealing with.
The giant lineman in the room, though, is whether or not television viewers have the appetite for more football. Brian said the NFL has been struggling to maintain its ratings, and that's something pro football organizers need to consider.
Are the problems with pro football specific to the NFL or are they related to pro football? We're worried more about concussions. We've seen too much of the product, we really like fantasy football more than we like actual football, and so we'll see a little bit of that based on how successful these ancillary leagues are.
As for L.A.'s own NFL teams, they both seem to have become desirable destinations for high-profile free agent players. The Rams are pursuing standout pass rusher Ndamukong Suh, and the Chargers landed free agent center Mike Pouncey.