ALARMING !! WHAT'S CHANGING ON FACEBOOK?

🚨 WHAT'S CHANGING ON FACEBOOK 🚨

Following Mark Zuckerberg's testimony  I think it's an appropriate time to post EVERYTHING I've been able to extract from both my client's accounts and my chats with my Facebook reps on what's changing:

TLDR; Facebook is getting really protective about it's users data, but also taking measures so that you cant 'stack' third party demographic data with Facebook's user behavior data.

1. You've probably already seen this for the last few weeks but Facebook no longer let's you see small audience sizes, which makes it harder for you to hyper target people.

2. The biggest news that affects businesses is that third party data will no longer be available. I've used this with my clients and I'm sure you have to. What is third party data? It's the 'Behavior' section in Audience interests that uses Third Party Partnerships to give you information on a user's lifestyle. Some frequent ones I've used are:

- healthy eaters
- credit card users
- people with gym memberships
- income brackets
- where people are from
- what type of car people drive
- political affiliation

🔥 I've listed the dates that Facebook will be removing these at the bottom so you can prepare accordingly. 🔥

3. Due to the amount of data that was collected during this breach, Facebook is now doing a full audit of all third party apps that access the system and monitoring them accordingly.

The ones that affect us most here in these groups are the messenger apps, like Manychat. If you didn't already install it, you'll notice that Manychat won't let you add your page anymore since Facebook has blocked that.

I also think that, whereas we had free reign to do as we pleased with Messenger marketing before this, once the platform opens up again, there will be clear policies in place to how we communicate with our users.

⭐️ How Does This Affect My Business ⭐️

Between the removal of third party data and the algorithm change rolling out across Facebook, I think it's more important than ever to train your pixel as much as possible.

ALL of these changes only affect your ability to reach Top of Funnel cold leads. Once you get people to your website and have funnels in place with a proper pixel, customer data is no longer necessary.

If you don't have a pixel, install it now! If you do have one and you haven't been focused on marketing - GET STARTED BEFORE YOU LOSE THE ABILITY TO HYPERTARGET PEOPLE!

I think after this change there will be a large inequality between Facebook advertisers, where it will be exponentially easier for the ones with good pixeled audiences (Lookalikes and other custom audiences) to scale than new brands getting into marketing.

· Important Dates To Remember ·

May 10: After this date, you will no longer be able to create or edit campaign using Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France; however, they will be allowed to continue running until May 24.

May 25: We will no longer deliver to Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France, and these targeting options will no longer be available for use on our platform. You will notified to update any targeting containing impacted Partner Categories before this date.

June 30: Last day for creating new or editing existing campaigns using non-EU Partner Categories; they will be allowed to run until September 30.

October 1: All other Partner Categories will no longer be available as targeting options on our platform and we will stop delivering against these audiences. You will be notified to update your targeting by this date.

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IS TEACHERS DAY REALLY HONOUR OUR TEACHERS?

My thoughts on this Teacher's Day:

For some time now I have hesitated in updating my employment status. I have worked with university students previously but this year i decided to work in a school. I currently work as a reading specialist at an IB school. I am shocked (read: disappointed) at the comments of so many people around me about my new job. Comments like "you just did your masters, why are you working in a school?" Or "Why don't you join a real organization?" What I fail to understand is...why should I not be entrusted with the future brains of my country after I have a masters degree in hand? Should i have been less educated to teach your children?

Parents in Pakistan want the best education for their children, they want the best teachers, they will go to great lengths to educate their children and bear an immense financial burden-a nation obsessed with grades- but when you tell someone you are a teacher, they are not impressed...what is this hypocrisy? And what exactly is a "real" job? What is more real than educating a child? What is more real than helping a child learn as he/she struggles with learning something that we all now take for granted? There was a time you couldn't say "cat"...someone taught you that...someone literally broke it down for you into "k" "a" "t" .

Pakistanis are very quick to say that education is one of the biggest problems facing this country yet teaching doesn't get the respect it deserves. Teaching is exhausting- one is constantly giving and adjusting to the diverse needs of every single child and then they say "you are just a teacher?"

Teaching is not about going into a room and delivering a lesson- its about relationships- everyone we know has been impacted by a teacher in one way or the other. Yes, we all may have had that one horrible teacher but there's good and bad people in every profession.

When I was a grad student in Chicago, my dorm was next to a school, I passed by it every day for my daily walk to class- I was amazed to see benches and trees planted in honor of teachers' service..."this bench is dedicated to etc etc for her 10 years of service at etc etc school ". I cannot think of a more beautiful gesture.

The education system needs serious reform and we all need to come together on this in the best way we can. There is a lot of talk of "alternative education" which caters to the creative side of every child- why is this "alternative"? This should be mainstream education and then we wouldn't need an alternative! Given the right environment every child can thrive and excel and teachers are essential for this process.

Teaching and teachers need to get the respect they deserve or more people will join "real" organizations, leaving behind the not so educated to teach our country's future.

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THIS GIRL'S CLOSE DEATH ENCOUNTER WITH A KILLER WILL OPEN YOUR EYES !

When my friends first told me about the rogue stabber, I did not want to know more. My brain said: let's pretend this doesn't exist, let's not let him ruin the precarious safety assigned to my days.

But one cannot avoid these things. Yesterday, the count went up to 11 women: even a little girl. Apparently the assaulter picks them at random, from the zooming view on his motorbike, and slashes across their bodies -- literally -- with a sharp instrument. Today I learned that the instrument is not a dagger as people suspected, but a small surgical knife, incapable of killing, sure, but edged with the promise of incredible pain.

Not just physical. There's the wound, yes, but only on the surface. The cut will heal, it will be dressed and bandaged, maybe the girl's mother will lay out fresh, comfortable sheets on her bed so she can rest, throw in a few extra pillows, maybe worried family members will scurry around the injured girl, soothing her, helping her recover until she can get back on her feet.

But then she will have to step outside again. Pain follows fear and fear is the undercurrent all female bodies carry; in fact, our trans sisters have been forced to carry it for longer, for all of us. Already women and transfolks are policed outside, parceled around by male guardians, told where we can go and where we cannot. The city is built up as a space of hostility and danger, but those of us who frequent Karachi or Lahore streets, we make a case for the discomfort: these streetsides belong to us, yes, if we stick around long enough they (and the people within them) will get used to it, will learn to accept us.

But now there's a man going around wielding a surgical knife. He does not discriminate; he does not care for age or attire; as long as you have a vagina.
Now our families' fears are confirmed, and our well-meaning friends (the ones who tell us to stay shut inside out of 'care' rather than any impulse to protect), now their points are validated. And those of us who are women are realising that all this time, we've been directing our gaze from what has always been a threat -- no, a reality -- for khawajasiras, for those who exist outside the gender binary. We have been complicit, we have made excuses where we were not directly under the laser-beam of harm.

Now what? We can continue disregarding our well-wishers' concerns, of course we're not going to stop going outside, sitting on the sidewalk, reading a book at a dhaba. But each time we do -- each time I do now (it has hardly been 24 hours) -- and a man passes by on a motorbike, I am paralysed with fear. Fear, the undercurrent, has grown stronger.

My mother and I were walking outside the Medicare parking lot -- yesterday -- note that we were outside a hospital -- and a motorbike ambled too close to us. I've had motorbikes pass by closer, but I froze. A gust of fear. Accompanied by a sharp pain; the kind of pain that shakes you, loosens your hold upon the ground you stand upon. The possibility of threat (even if it is never confirmed) layered upon an everyday sight, a man on a bike, while numbers are rising on news reports and politicians dismissing them as exaggerations by the media-- the possibility of threat now stretching its limbs from every movement at the end of the street, was feeding a related thought: you should not be out here like this. You should start rethinking this daily dhaba business. These spaces are not yours.

From one intersection where a knife is pushed into skin that jerks and splits, the air rises and expands and delivers the violence unleashed to all other intersections; from anger and pain a blade carves trauma and uncertainty, looms its creation over the entire city.

My friends and I were at a dhaba even earlier, in our favourite spot under the tree, a space where we grow silly and talk about all sorts of meaningless things, and all we could talk about was harassment, assault, sexual abuse, or about this man out on the streets with a spirit of vengeance none of us could understand. Yet, had we not, at countless other times, encountered the same kind of anger? In police stations, in public transport, with darzis and doctors and even boyfriends, even in our own homes. So why were we even surprised. We continued swapping stories, as women often do when the topic of assault comes up, and we broke only to express our distress or outrage at the stabbing biker. The unthinkable violence of premeditated harm. The violence occurring even now as we shared stories of sexual trauma instead of unwinding over chai -- the air has expanded completely, solidified with each new gash, it now permeates our most harmless hours.

What makes men so angry? If you've read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, there's a part where she digs deeper into the violent shade of men's anger: she concludes that men's violence is a way to assert their superiority; that any creature, positioned at a higher rung, is inherently threatened by the ones on the lower rung.

Still, it stupefies me. What threw this individual into such fury that he grabbed a knife -- a weapon capable of hurting another human being -- and took it outside its station on the kitchen counter or surgical table or wherever he got it from; took it outside with the intention of fastening it inside living flesh -- is he immune to the screams that spring from pain, the wail of the stretching skin, the moan of a body realising it will never be safe anywhere?

Already, women have begun altering their habits -- as if it is we who need to change our habits. The responsibility is on you, for having a vagina. So now girls are carrying knives, pepper sprays, stones*. They're avoiding being outside unless absolutely necessary; reducing their interaction with the street, taking a Careem instead of a rickshaw, having someone pick them up right at their gate instead of down the street.

Perhaps this surgical-knife-brandishing biker was spurned by a woman, perhaps someone broke his heart. Maybe his wife was a strong, independent woman who wanted nothing to do with him anymore, so he thought, I'll show you all.
We can never be thought of as separate beings, us feminine creatures. We are held collectively responsible for whatever imagined transgression is pinned upon one of us.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

*from 'Terrorized female residents of Karachi restrict movement, obtain sharp objects to counter ‘psychopath’ slasher' by Minerwa Tahir: https://www.samaa.tv/…/terrorized-female-residents-karachi…/

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Girls at Dhabas is interested in whatever we can do regarding this assaulter. But we are at a loss because we don't know what we can do. Protest? Uss se kya ho ga? Go around sharing self-defense skills? If anyone else is growing restless also, if you have seeds of ideas and want to brainstorm with us, message us. Hum kal milayn ge to discuss this; the more, the merrier.

#knifeman #Karachi #attack #scumbag

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THIS UNIVERSITY IS GOING TOO FAR WITH IT'S UNJUSTIFIABLE AND INCREASING FINES ON STUDENTS

Your university, by all the definitions in the world, is not a university. You, by all the definitions in the world, are not treated as students. You are not treated fairly, and that should be enough to shake your conscience. But I don't think you even possess a conscience. Your conscience comes alive when your university only wants it to, as we all saw recently when the parking was seized. Your conscience was never nudged before, not even slightly. Your conscience is never nudged when there is a fee hike, or when administration shuts you down vehemently.

So, the thing is that degree of oppression has reached its pinnacle. Now is the time for you to raise your voice. Do something. Do anything. Challenge them. Resist them. Show a symbolic fight. Change things. Change things because time or system or any help from any other side won't change it for you.

University is changing your course timings, without even consulting you. Because lets get one thing straight: you are not important enough to be consulted for things that directly affect you. Students are the last thing this university will ever think about, unless you do something to change it, but would that ever happen? Are you even willing to resist the draconian administration? Your course timings might not have been changed, but there'd be someone in the university in his last or second last semester, and there'd be conflict in course timings, so their degree will be delayed. And then there be someone else. So on and so forth. Ad nauseam!

Parking should not have been seized. It was a bad thing. But why university was even expecting us to protest? There's a perpetually shrinking space for dissent. There's no protest culture, no student activism, no student body. Nothing! So, where exactly are we studying. What exactly are you willing to do? What exactly are you even afraid of? Stand with the oppressor or stand with the oppressed. Don't stand in between. Don't stand with both of them. Do something for heavens sake.

By love serve one another, they say. What an ironic motto. The only apt words that should replace the current motto should be taken from Dante's inferno. The hell gate on Ferozepur road should read as “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” This will go on. If you are not affected now, someday you might be. This is not about you and me. This is about current and upcoming students, and it's about their future. More importantly, it is just wrong. This is about time you force them to revisit their regimented modus operandi.

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AN OPEN LETTER TO CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS .

This is an open letter to the Cambridge International Examinations after the results that came out in the past few days. I just want to simply express my opinion as to how I felt after receiving my grades. Please feel free to share it.

It is so easy for you to quantify us with us a single lower case letter. It is so easy but you don’t know how the student feels. That letter is a brand on every students back regardless whether it being and A, B, C or D. It completely dehumanises every student in every single way possible to a single meaningless lower case letter. The esteemed system that is Cambridge international Examinations vows to be truly fair and just while dealing with these grades that determines every student’s life. Why wouldn’t it be? Surely they know that every student slaves away whenever the season comes around when their life is completely hijacked by tuitions and their studies if it hasn’t already been since the start of year. Surely they must know that these grades either crush their hopes of going to a good college or further elevates them? Then why don’t you give students the grades they truly deserve? The grades that work day and night for and still those students who have every right to an A must dread the thought of getting back their results because they don’t know if the examiner marked them properly. The daily mail UK published in an article that 122,500 children appealed for their grades to be overturned in the year 2015 and 23,200 had their grades changed. What do you say to the rest of the 99,300 who felt they did not receive the grades that they studied for? What do you say to a young adult whose hopes and dreams of going to his or her dream university have been crushed because the examiner marked them half-heartedly, not giving a flying fuck because to them we are just a single lower case letter. What do you say to an individual who wanted to enjoy his or her last year in school but can’t because they have to give retakes of the same subject they spent hours learning just so they wouldn’t have to face a situation like this?
The Cambridge International Examinations are a business plain and simple. It is the truth that every student who goes through this godforsaken system knows. You don’t believe me? Well ask any student whose ever had to get their paper re-checked. The systematic way all the levels of checking have been set almost makes a person believe that they give you a shit grade purposefully so that you have to go through that demeaning and painful process, so that they earn an extra buck. 
Finally this is to all those students that have been disheartened by the grades that they received, DON'T LOSE HOPE. You are meant for great things in life, a single lower case letter does not define you; don’t let a grade define you, because that is not you.

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THE GIRL WHO'S BREAKING THE INTERNET BY TOPPING IN CSS EXAM

Dr. Rabia Riasat
13th overall Pakistan in CSS
4th in girls
DMG/PAS (Pakistan Administrative Group)
41st common

Since childhood my parents have been inculcating this thought into my mind that I have to become a doctor when I grow up. It was not only their wish, it was my dream as well. Aiming for that white coat, I started my journey. By the grace of Allah I have been an achiever, I secured 3rd position in matric in Lahore Board over all Punjab and went to Kinnaird College, Lahore on Scholarship for FSc pre-med. Then I entered my dream institution, AIMC.

Allah has always been kind. I graduated with distinction. I still miss those mesmerizing 5 years at AIMC. This institution has been the pillar of success in my life. During house-job I decided to go through CSS. I prepared and took the exam and by grace of Almighty I stood 13th all over Pakistan and 4th among girls. I was allocated the PAS group and currently I'm working as Assistant Commissioner.

The one incident that made me take this 180 degree turn from medical profession to CSS was when I had to visit office of secretary health with my other fellow doctors for some issue. We were treated like we are nothing and we were made to sit outside his office on a wooden bench which was under the sun and had no shelter for 4 hours. After a cumbersome wait of 4 hours we were told that secretary sahab is busy and he cannot meet us as he had to go to some official lunch and we were told to come some other day. At that day I realized the culture of our country. No one pays respect to doctors who give away their own lives for saving others but all salutes are for the power corridors consisting of big bureaucrats and politicians. At that day I decides that "if I cannot beat them I will join them" and when I will reach this place no doctor would have to sit outside my office and would face humiliation and I will try to revive the respect and position of doctors as much as I can.

Civil service is a life changing experience. PAS is the prestigious and elite group of the Pakistan Bureaucracy and Allah has been kind enough to make me join this group. I have been given many chances to serve the ailing humanity.
But I still miss the white coat and guess what I just gave the march PLAB and cleared it as well. I hope Allah will help me in balancing both the fields.

Civil service and medicine both professions are near to my heart . Can't think of choosing one and leaving other.

Rabia Riasat
Allama Iqbal Medical College

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IS CELEBRATING NEW ISLAMIC YEAR IS A RIGHT THING TO DO ?

It is shameful and embarrassing that in 2017 Muslims around the world continue to celebrate and 

congratulate one another upon the arrival of the Islamic New Year, when in fact the entire Muslim community should be mourning the martyrdom of the grandson of the Holy Prophet (saw), Imam Hussain bin Ali (as), who was butchered on the plains of Karbala along with his family and companions.

We are constantly told that this happened 1400 years ago and thus should not be given such importance or attention. However, the Qur'an sets a precedent when it highlights to us that even to the nascent Muslim community, reflecting on the events of Jesus, Moses, Abraham and Noah was fundamental to their growth and development despite occurring thousands of years earlier.

The 10 nights of Muharram should be widely recognised as a period of mourning for each and every lover of the Holy Prophet (saw) as he himself cried over the atrocities that befell his grandchildren years before the incident took place.

"Anas bin Malik said, "The head of Al-Husain was brought to 'Ubaidullah bin Ziyad and was put in a tray, and then Ibn Ziyad started playing with a stick at the nose and mouth of Al-Husain's head and saying something about his handsome features." Anas then said (to him), "Al-Husain resembled the Prophet more than the others did." Anas added, "His (i.e. Al-Husain's) hair was dyed with Wasma (i.e. a kind of plant used as a dye)."

Reference : Sahih al-Bukhari 3748
In-book reference : Book 62, Hadith 95

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