SUMMARY: In less than a decade, YouTube star Lilly Singh has gone from internet sensation to host of a broadcast TV show, "A Little Late with Lilly Singh," which debuts Monday on NBC. Amna Nawaz sat down with Singh recently on her show’s Los Angeles set to talk about being the only woman and person of color on network late night TV, what success means to her and how she writes for online viewership.
Ten years ago Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg launched “The Facebook” from his Harvard dorm. Since then, the site has gone on to redefine our lives online. Yet more than a billion members later, it’s hard to imagine whether, if the world’s largest social network disappeared tomorrow, the lives of most people would change much, if at all.
Because nearly every service on Facebook is available elsewhere, the theoretical disappearance of Facebook might feel less substantial than losing the last Barnes & Noble in town … you know, the one that killed the local indie bookstore. Losing the last bookstore can change a town’s entire vibe. Losing Facebook, however, means losing the #1 place we complain about Facebook. (And there's always Twitter) Nevertheless, the social network made a major impact during its first decade of existence. Here’s 10 (of course) ways Facebook has changed our lives.
1. Facebook took the toil out of stalking
Prior to Facebook, ex-friends and lovers had to work hard in order to reinsert themselves into the lives of their unsuspecting prey. The “phone books” of our forefathers were no match for changed names or cross-country moves. All it takes is a wistful thought on Facebook to lead effortlessly to a friend request and a reopened past — even if the recipient prefers it vacuum-sealed.
2. Facebook made botched IPOs cool
Featuring a bungled rollout matched only by HealthCare.gov, Facebook’s $104 billion IPO is the third biggest in IPO history, and arguably the most notorious. It’s also the role model for Twitter, Snapchat and every other tech startup with public-trading aspirations.
Never mind Facebook’s $38 share price, which tanked for months after the company’s NASDAQ debut on May 18, 2012. Forget the ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits accusing the IPO team of secretly axing the earnings forecast. Would-be dotcom billionaires admire Facebook’s refusal to sell out, preferring to go public (despite a weak mobile plan).
The social network’s once accursed stock hitting an all-time high of $61 in January has done wonders for bad memories, as does the $3 billion it plunked in Zuckerberg’s pocket, boosting the hoodie-wearing CEO’s estimated worth to $29.7 billion.
What’s not to emulate?
3. Facebook made us OK with the NSA
Private companies don't usually break down doors and drag people off to camps. Governments have and still do, and they do it based on meticulously maintained, detailed records.
Nevertheless, companies that literally bank on our personal info (by selling it to advertisers) also inure Americans to their continuing loss of privacy. As Edward Snowden, Europe and history know, that rarely turns out well. And yet, here’s, Facebook, with its early privacy abuses, anti-privacy default settings and a CEO who until recently described anonymity as a “lack of integrity.”
The world’s largest social network is arguably also the biggest influence in our laissez-faire attitude towards surveillance in the United States: What’s the big deal? We’ve already willingly sacrificed our privacy to Facebook.
4. Facebook kerfuffled our love lives
From obsessing over every aspect of your BF or GF’s Facebook profile and what it means for your relationship, to posting passive-aggressive status updates when your interpretation turns negative, all this easily-accessed info would throw off anyone’s pitch. If we scrutinized our lover’s friends as potential romantic rivals IRL the way many do on Facebook, restraining orders would be the closest thing we’d get to a valentine, and plenty of ‘em.
5. Facebook welcomed us to the new age of underemployment
Facebook isn’t the only high-income, under-employing company in the U.S. these days, but it’s one we patronize daily and it's one of the most ubiquitous.
Take General Motors. With its $55 billion market cap, its 212,000 employees, the company pumps billions of dollars into the U.S. economy every year. It supports whole cities.
Then there’s Facebook, which has a $100 billion market cap — nearly double that of GM — yet employs fewer than 6,000 people.
Shareholders might argue that Facebook doesn’t need more workers, but shareholders would be wrong … at least according to panicked users who try to reach Facebook’s customer service department. Facebook — a $100 billion company — doesn’t even have a customer service phone number.
6. Facebook built the virtual town square of the 21st century
Did Facebook turn your grandma, cousin or mom into the town crier, blasting views and posting inane news? “Obama this! Dog abuse that! You won’t believe how many Upworthy links are junkin’ up your Newsfeed!” Or maybe that’s you …
This new kind of community where people share views with family members, as well as close friends they only know from Facebook, is as real as any offline. People not on Facebook are cut off from society. Anyway, for all the obnoxious posts that offend delicate sensibilities or get someone “Facebook fired,” there’s plenty that’s positive. Post about your beloved dog or cat crossing the Rainbow Bridge, and see how fast your "community" comes running.
7. Facebook saved us from the Internet
Cyberspace offers endless resources for email, instant messaging, sharing our personal news, photos or locations and catching up on curated news. But why go out when the ever-expanding Facebook hegemony offers all of that, as well as your friends, in one convenient location. Like AOL of olden days, Facebook is your Internet portal — but with a better business plan. Plus, mobile!
8. Facebook changed the way we grieve
As a new company originally limited to college students only slightly younger than its founders, Facebook didn’t launch with a plan around what to do when customers die. Once membership hit critical mass, and users inevitably did too, survivors were confronted with abandoned profiles and eerie Facebook reminders of their (now-deceased) friend. Eventually, loved ones were allowed to “memorialize” profiles, but many take comfort in posting messages there, regularly addressing the deceased on these living, virtual shrines.
9. Facebook aided in disaster relief
When an earthquake decimated Haiti's capital in 2012, a spontaneous rescue center arose on Facebook, with users posting Haiti-related updates at a rate of 1,500 per minute. Facebook now serves as a valuable platform for rescue agencies following disasters. Last week, SnowedOutAtlanta, a Facebook group that has attracted more than 46,000 members in 24 hours, reportedly connected wannabe Samaritans with more than 400 snowbound travelers trapped on Atlanta’s highways.
10. Facebook stole hours and hours of our lives that we’re never, ever getting back.
A group of Colorado nuns don't have any reason to appeal the birth control mandate in the health care law because they don't have to provide contraception anyway, the U.S. government argued on Friday.
It’s an early skirmish in a year expected to be full of battles over the so-called contraceptive mandate in the Obamacare law.
The administration says the group is already exempt from the law, because their insurance is provided by Christian Brothers Services. As a church organization, it’s excused from the law’s requirements. The nuns have said they don't want to sign a waiver asking for an exemption.
"They need only self-certify that they are non-profit organizations that hold themselves out as religious and have religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services," the Department of Justice wrote in its response.
As of New Year’s Day, all new insurance plans, including those provided by employers, must provide free birth control as part of a list of essential benefits, including vaccinations and cancer screenings.
When some religious groups objected, the Obama administration provided exemptions. And an older law, the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, exempts church plans from regulation anyway.
The Denver chapter of the Little Sisters of the Poor says it cannot even sign a waiver asking for an exemption. Supreme Court justice Sandra Sotomayor, who has responsibility for the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals where the group filed its latest appeal, granted a last-minute injunction on New Year’s Eve.
She gave the administration until Friday morning to respond.
“The question here is in order to receive that exemption, they have to fill out a form,” says Ian Millhiser, senior constitutional policy analyst at the Center For American Progress. “That form announces to the government that they have a religious exemption. Employees can use that form to get (birth control) from their insurer.” The Little Sisters say that the act of filling out the form makes them complicit to birth control, which they believe is sinful.
But no one who works for Little Sisters can get birth control under their plan, anyway, the DoJ argues. "Given these circumstances, applicants' concern that they are 'authorizing others' to provide coverage lacks any foundation in the facts or the law," the DoJ said in its filing to the Supreme Court.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represents the Little Sisters. It’s the same law firm helping Hobby Lobby, other for-profit businesses and some colleges and universities that are also challenging the contraceptive mandate.
The Little Sisters case is separate from these cases, in which the owners object to birth control and argue they shouldn’t have to provide it. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Hobby Lobby's case in March. More than 80 suits have been filed against the mandate.
Right now, the Supreme Court’s involvement in the Little Sisters case is minimal. Sotomayor can send it back to the federal courts or she can ask her colleagues to consider it as a full court.
Brigitte Amiri of the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports the mandate, says she is not concerned by Sotomayor’s action.
“Justice Sotomayor wants to make a thoughtful decision,” she told NBC News. “I think this temporary holding pattern isn’t a cause for concern at this point. It allows for all briefs to be filled out.”
“It was like, ‘let’s take a deep breath’,” agreed Judy Waxman of the National Women’s Law Center.
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, notes that the White House has extended more than a few deadlines for people trying to buy health insurance on the troubled exchanges. “I understand that legal issues in these cases will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court,” Kurtz wrote in a letter to Obama.
“In the meantime, however, many religious employers have not obtained the temporary relief they need in time to avoid being subjected to the HHS mandate beginning January 1. I urge you, therefore, to consider offering temporary relief from this mandate, as you have for so many other individuals and groups facing other requirements under the ACA.”
SUMMARY: Using hashtags like #NBCFail, Olympics fans have tweeted complaints of delayed and incomplete programming and streaming restrictions for the London Games. Gwen Ifill talks to USA Today's Christine Brennan and The New York Times' Richard Sandomir about how online viewers are experiencing NBC's coverage of the 2012 Olympics.
