I second this notion. It's amazing how, even on a technically literate forum like HN, the posters around here make the same arguments that they /need/ FB to stay connected.
Im five years clean from FB and have never looked back.
It is absolutely possible to maintain communication with friends and family without Mr Zuckerberg's spy system.
I encourage those of you who think it's a necessity to please try to spend even a few months off of it. We'll never escape our dystopia when even those who understand the dangers refuse to put down the social network drug.
FB distorts how you perceive the world, including how you perceive a possible life without it.
I'll place extra emphasis on this, for those that are hesitant. Just give it a try for a few months, and if you want to go back that is always an option. Right in time for New Year's Resolutions: go "Facebook free" for a whole 30 days. If it's not for you, that's fine, re-install / re-activate and there wasn't much to lose. But you can't know the alternatives without trying!
I quit Facebook years back because I somehow just realized that it provided no value to me. Keeping in contact with my real friends was something that could either be done in person, by text message, email, etc. Then add on top of that a lot of content is just noise, rather than wholesome original thought. Original posts are down... more people are just re-sharing crap from large groups. IMO Facebook is just a glorified, yet heavily stripped down, email client that allows people you didn't directly message to be dragged in too.
I think people by-and-large see Facebook as something larger and more praise-worthy than it actually is. There is a lot of mainstream hype around the platform that is strange from someone like me on the outside (because I quit). Maybe it is mystical because it's a story of a college student becoming a billionaire so quickly, and it gives people the impression that if someone so young got so much money in such a short amount of time, then the platform must be that good.
"Facebook can never be a tool that you use as needed and everything has to be a 1984 horrorshow"
Oh, please. My circle of friends uses it extensively to plan gatherings and such because it's fairly easy and most everyone has it. Most of us don't post very much or spend all that much time on the platform. I'm glad that you and all of the others who have managed to see beyond the seventh veil by deleting Facebook are doing well by it, and I also have my dislikes and reservations about the platform, but most of those are easily assuaged by simply not posting and browsing the news feed.
I personally use it quite a bit for keeping these relationships alive. I think Facebook is a great tool for that. I have contentious debates over ideas with people I know, but more importantly, with people a couple links away from me. It's been an extremely helpful bridge out of the filter bubble I'd probably otherwise inhabit.
Of course, I'm not at all sure the benefits I've gotten have any resemblance to most peoples' experience on Facebook, and plenty of reason to believe that this isn't the case. And there's no way in hellllll I'd give my daughter a Messenger for Kids app.
It's far better concentrating that effort on something constructive like reading a book or taking part in a creative hobby. Social media is a time suck... I would go so far as describing it as a scourge on humanity.
Yes, the voting system makes it social media. It's not as manipulative as other websites, but it's for that reason I wouldn't class it as a discussion forum.
Then, after you have a contentious public debate with someone you barely know, your actual friends and acquaintances on FB are repeatedly encouraged to go read the exchange. And since you were talking to that person so much, FB's algorithm reasons it means you must like them a lot, so your news feed starts telling you about everything the person you were arguing with is doing.
To an extent, I think that's a good thing. It keeps challenging points of view in my feed. If I ever found someone truly abusive, I'd block them. But that's never happened to me. As I said elsewhere, my discussions can get pretty heated, but I try always to be respectful.
At the end of the day, I'm more concerned with how my point of view appears to lurkers than to someone I'm debating. I'm unlikely to change that person's mind in any given convo.
I don't know if it's my age/class/nationality/background or what, but there is no way in hell I would participate in any serious discussion on a platform like facebook, both because they're using that data, and because it's notionally attached to my identity.
Indeed, the main reason to have an account there now is to avoid the "you don't have a facebook account" judgement.
The thought people would put themselves out there like that strikes me as being incredibly privaledged or incredibly naive...
Completely agree. Associating my actual views with my real identity makes me uncomfortable as well - not so much concerned about what Facebook would do with that data, more concerned with the fact that it will cause people I know or have a strong chance of meeting to dislike/hate me for a reason that I'd rather not give them.
Also, having a "debate" over FB sounds only moderately more pleasant than having a debate in the comments of a Youtube video.
I don't do it because it's pleasant. In fact, it's often really stressful. I do it because I think it's crucial, in the same sense that I think any sort of political or social engagement is crucial.
As far as the risk of people hating me, I try really hard to always be respectful of people I debate with. I think for that reason, I've been able to keep friendships with people I regularly have some pretty intense disagreements with.
Yep, I am incredibly privileged to be able to do so. But I also know that some of the people I interact with wouldn't otherwise have much exposure to a non-strawman version of my point of view that they can actually interact with. At the moment, I think it's probably the most politically effective thing I can do.
I don't necessarily think you shouldn't have strong/ controversial conversations.
Indeed, growing up, that was pretty much what the internet provided me: both a way to be exposed to new ideas, to challenge others, etc, and a way out of the stiffling intellectual backwater that was highschool/suburbia.
But, "back in my day", we did it privately. Anonymously. We had handles/aliases. In person friends had conversations in person. On the internet, you operated behind your handle/alias. And you better believe that your real name and identity was almost never voluntarily connected to your handle/alias.
I had people that I'd known for years, whose real names I still don't know, and I'm never going to.
The "idea" of being simultaneously identified by your real name, using a public corporate for-profit communication system that has a memory and saves your communications, and having contentious conversations are ideas that are so absolutely alien to me I sometimes still have to kick myself that some people are doing it.
It's like old people who click on ads, or open attachments in emails: why would you even do that!
I think the ability to debate pseudonymously is very important. But I think it's also totally reasonable to do so under your real identity, if you feel comfortable. Lots of people blog, for example. In many ways, Facebook serves much the same purpose as a blog to me, but with better discourse.
Also, real identity carries weight in a discussion because you're socially accountable for your views and conduct. Now, again, I'm privileged to hold views that are socially, politically, and professionally acceptable in the spaces I inhabit,even if they're not often fully shared. But I also don't think that's coincidental.
What's wrong with being identified with your beliefs?
Using aliases is rarely really anonymous, you can probably infer my identity pretty easily.
One can be above if one chooses, it's seems ultra-paranoid to want to discuss nothing unless you're anonymous - what do you talk about then in social situations IRL, do you wear a mask when you go out?
> What's wrong with being identified with your beliefs?
Depending on what your beliefs are, maybe nothing.. for now. However, if government or corporate interests decide that your beliefs are an issue for them at any point in the future, having them permanently stored could become an issue for you in the future.
Well, like all social things there are degrees. One obviously has the option to talk about things pseudo-anonymously, indeed that's what my handle here at hn is, but there are levels of effort and plausible deniability involved in connecting that handle to my actual identity.
But in doing so, one is talking about topics that one feels relatively safe about: either because one is expressing opinions that are in some ways culturally mandated, or which are so trivial one doesn't view them as controversial, or because one holds a social position whereby even though those views are contentious one feels they have enough social power to get away with expressing them.
But we don't have a perfect idea of what is deemed contentious in the future or what future contexts will be, so if you're not in a position of relative social power, and are assuming you're going to stay in that position for the plausible future, you're taking massive risks...or alternately your not really discussing very controversial opinions.
I'm lucky, in that I don't have anything that society currently views as a strong negative and I'm now in a relatively powerful position, but even I have to wear a "social mask" when I go out because my brain doesn't seem to work like most people's, and common topics of conversation dont really interest me.
But imagine others, or even me hypothetically investigating opinions I don't necessarily agree with. Indeed, back at university, for example, I attended various religious groups and meetings: I was interested from an anthropology perspective, but if someone had taken my name out and associated me with that group, that might kiss goodbye future employment.
And what about other groups and genuinely controversial opinions: gay men in religious communities, women in Saudi Arabia, minorities and ethnic groups, drug users, pirates, criminals, anarchy/communist/separatists/far right groups, fetishists and swingers, racists and religious fundamentalists (again, I did some work on the latter back at university). Even being interested in such topics in any serious fashion is enough to raise a bit of "social suspicion" from a social capital perspective...
This is my experience. I live on the outskirts of my very large city. Most people are near the core, or live in the exact opposite direction of me on the other side of the city because it's cheaper there. I don't have classes with my friends, who go to other universities or are in different programs. If I didn't have a social media platform I would literally never talk to these people. But, instead of using Facebook to "share my life", I post articles and discussions I find interesting or relevant, which sparks healthier discussion on the platform. Most of my time on Facebook is spent catching up with still-good friends in messenger. I also keep my friend count low-- I have around 50 people on Facebook, all of whom I have spent a significant amount of time with in the past, all of whom I enjoy as people.
I think it's all about how the platform is used. Yes, it's designed to be addictive, but the less friends you have added, the less notifications you will receive daily. If one doesn't post many personal details, or does not document their life on their timeline, one can avoid most of the data-grabbing. I have two photos of me showing my face. I close the Facebook tab when not in use, and check it once a day. If no one has messaged me I close the tab again. I don't check Facebook on my phone.
As a sidenote, having HN as a source for "distraction" has helped me significantly. I check this site in the morning and learn something new everyday. But it doesn't feel like "work", it feels like a "break", similar to the feeling Facebook once gave me but without the guilt.
> Surely there’s a way to keep these relationships alive outside of the system!
Yes: RSS and/or email lists. I have a blog and email client, but I also know some people who wouldn't use those things. It sucks, but that's the way things are now.
Maybe those people should know someone who doesn't use Facebook, instead of you thinking you're forced to use Facebook because they won't use something else.
We share video with grandparents, for example, you could do it by links sent over email but social-media is easier. I used to use YouTube, but Facebook upload is easier and privacy controls are easier for me.
We get to see them about twice a year because of cost and distance of travel.
I do not understand why, but since quitting Facebook 6 months ago, I have experienced being better in touch with many friends. More of them reach out to me directly and the conversations feel more meaningful. Of course, this is only anecdote but it has been pretty surprising. I did leave Messenger on my phone, and I’m not sure if I will want to remove it, largely because I did move a year ago and am about to move again.
> What’s the real need here? Old buddies you barely know of? Let them go.
I really like this attitude (not being sarcastic). People seem to think Facebook is a great way to keep in touch. I think it's a great way to waste your time, and slowly devalue your relationships.
I agree. in my opinion, i believe it may also enable unhealthy relationship patterns, or stunt emotional growth; things that may not have originated had the user never engaged. sadly, not engaging is stigmatized too, complicating matters especially for young ones concerned about their impression.
for example, when i used fb for a time it bothered me that there was stigma against "unfriending". I would frequently make new accounts and remember feeling guilt for doing so.
Eventually ditched it permanently about 5 years ago. Friends from my mid 20s seemed to keep it around as entertainment (waiting for others to embarrass themselves in everyday updates, trolling groups, stalking for conversation topics) and self comparison. they claimed, "we only use it ironically lol" and no longer planned events through it, shared photos or life stories, etc.
It was gross and I feared I'd become a target when I had the account. I used to check my feed just to make sure I was still "cool" with everyone. I was bullied as a child and went through emotional trauma so sadly I was a great target for an all-day everyday user.
Eventually I couldn't handle the pressure, and disagreed with fb's 'vision' (ads) and privacy policies so I refused to use it. first year after doing so i was upset that "nobody kept in touch outside of the fb platform". much later, i am grateful they didnt, as I'm in a wildly different place in my life. I would not be where I am now had I not moved on from those toxic, enabling relationships. Obviously this is not the case for everyone, but I wanted to share my perspective.
Mindblowing to me that parents allow use of the platform to children. when I was legally an adult I didn't possess the mental capacity to take a step back and question what I got out of the site, placing "importance of friendship and loyalty" above my own feelings. I cannot begin to fathom how the platform would have twisted my thinking, and relationships, and sense of self as a child or even teen. given the suspicion (or reality) that other relationships get devalued over time, won't the "relationship" with one's own ego/self image will get devalued as well with continued use?
I hope there is some way to educate children and teens about the mental/social/behavioral implications of using social media -- or even different levels of involvement. but I don't know if that should be in school syllabus or the responsibility of the parents. perhaps both?
My post got longer than intended, sorry! I am very passionate about the subject
Relationships thrive when time and effort are invested. Facebook is a platform for replacing traditional investment vehicles with significantly smaller, if much more convenient, investments - and to show you ads. Thus while Facebook can yield strong short-term returns, it is a bad choice for people who want large, long-term, returns from their personal relationships.
Consider for example friends and family you talk to over the phone, go out drinking with, have parties with, have lunch with, etc., as compared to those whose cat pictures you just looked at on your phone.
Agreed. I have effectively quit Facebook: I log on once a year to reconnect with people I never talk to anymore, and subsequently remember exactly why it is that I never talk to them anymore!
It's both a great way to keep in touch and also a great way to waste time. It's a useful communication/relationship tool buried in layers of addictive signaling and ads.
I think lots of HN readers here are missing perspectives from Facebook users in 'third' world countries, where there aren't a lots of alternatives for information sharing and discovery.
As someone who grew up in one of those countries, I found Facebook incredibly useful to find alumni of my high school in US universities and ask them questions on how they got here (LinkedIn was not a thing then). There weren't, and still aren't, any alumni network or guidance counselor. I didn't even know where to begin (say to Google things).
This is, of course, just one use case but the point is that Facebook does provide value to some people. Back home, for many people of generation before the internet, it is the only way they stay in touch with their several kins on other countries. We can debate about what 'value' / 'meaning' it adds to their lives. But that is a separate conversation.
And yes, there are concerns about privacy. But that is the tradeoff you make in life.
I am personally from one of those third-world countries (India) and in my experience, it's easier to stop using Facebook here since the social fabric is already strong enough that you don't really need Facebook to be able to stay in connection with people. I quit Facebook half a decade years ago when I was 16 and haven't had to use it again.
People used to have social connections before Facebook came around and the methods to form and maintain those connections aren't dead yet since there is a large portion of population who never started using Facebook (my parents, for instance.
If you are in a field of work which requires self-promotion, then Facebook is extremely useful, and empowering, because you can promote yourself without a middleman.
There's plenty other positives about facebook. It allows more convient and efficent ways of communication, networking, and sharing that honestly didn't exist before.
To me the fundamental problem of Facebook is not computer-facilitated social networking, but rather that it is run on proprietary centralized servers by a for-profit corporation.
I get a lot out of Facebook. I keep up with relatives, new babies, local events, and friends' movements (travel, moving, etc.)
The problem is that many of these things just aren't posted anywhere else.
There is a real impact on my life if I stop using it. I stop learning about the 3-4 events I attend every week, including pop-up restaurants, nonprofit gatherings, and concerts. I stop knowing about major life events for the 100+ people I care about, but can't text every week saying, "What's new?"
It may not have much value to you, but you're one person arguing against 1B+ other people. There's a high chance you just don't use it like most people or don't care about the same things.
I haven't logged into my facebook account in at least five years and I don't miss it one bit. The thing that pushed me over the edge was when I received an enthusiastic happy birthday from a girl I went to high school with. She was a couple of years older than me and I realized she had never spoken a single word to me in real life. For some reason this seemed so wrong and twisted and ended up being the straw that broke the social media camel's back for me. If I want to speak with someone, I just reach out directly now.
Perhaps she couldn't muster the courage to talk to you the entire high school, and when she finally tried to connect with you, you blew her away. The poor girl must be devastated...
Seriously, though, this happens to many people on facebook. A devaluation of interpersonal relationships.
My reason to use Facebook is to communicate with local businesses. They are not responsive on emails and calling them seem to much a hassle.
I use it for purely 'commercial' purpose and not remotely close of gaining information about what's going on on the world.
One other reason for me just 'having' it oppose to using it, it I just moved into a new city. It's, I think, a good way to have them added on the platform to get to know them.
I agree with you letting old buddies let go. I see, only communication worth keeping is via instant messaging, such as Telegram & Whatsapp. A good way to talk and let me know what's on with their life instead of having a constant feed. It remove the surprise factor along with things to talk about during instant messaging.
I would check out this app called “the telephone”. They say it was invented in 1876 and that local businesses answer them. When I use the app, I receive near instant feedback. There is even full-duplex voice recognition.
Protip: you can call businesses but you don't have to answer any calls from numbers you don't know or approve. This is a nice balance that I maintain. I used to be phone-shy but at some point I just realised that it's usually the fastest way to get the answers or service I look for.
>join the national do-not-call registry to cut down on the calls.
Buwahahahaha. Yea, like that stops the car warranty and health insurance spammers that fake the caller ID of a local number from ringing you 3 or 4 times a day.
It's not going to stop everyone, but it will stop some of them. I've been on it for years, and I only get a handful of calls a year from telemarketers (which tend to be the unscrupulous caller-id spoofing kind).
Asynchronicity is a benefit to me of messaging systems, small businesses (I'm part of one) are more responsive via SMS or Facebook because it's easier to be so. Most calls to us go to answerphone, many times we return a call and get a voicemail service, ... that gets tiresome fast.
With POTS we have to keep contacts separate, with a meeting service contract retention and interaction history - which improve customer service - are built in.
I find myself thinking about the effects of social media on humans.
I feel we entered The Button Age. Want a pizza? Hit this button. Want to get groceries delivered? Want to watch a movie? Hit a button. Want to show you care about some cause or event? Hit a button. Want to reward your brain with dopamine and feed your narcissistic behaviors by pretending that viewing a curated timeline of people's "lives" is friendship? Happy Birthday, press the button.
We are perpetuating a simulacron of human relationship.
I suspect this is why my attention span decreased significantly after extensively interacting with these websites for several years. I find a reduced ability to read books (of any kind), among other tasks over a longer time span. Longform pieces, such as books in particular, do at least force us to invest in the long term for a reward at the end, rather than near-instant gratification.
I find it almost impossible to finish a book now. Of course, my life is much busier than when I was younger, but I think it is not just that. We are losing our ability to pay attention to anything longer than the news cycle.
For example - Whatever happened in Vegas? So many unanswered questions about the worst shooting in American history, and it disappears from the news and public consciousness after what, 9 days? It's sad.
While I love sci-fi as much as the average HN user, this is not going to happen. At least unless you are fortunate enough to be part of the .01% that will be in control of the resources by that time.
This is First World narcissism. We can't figure out how to feed everyone, but one day, when we finally make it, we can all blob around and livestream our lives while the robots take care of the drudgery. Hell, maybe someone on HN right now is working on Twitch for human behavior right now. The future's so bright I gotta wear shades.
I would have quit Facebook years ago, apart from the need for Messenger and the Events system. Sure, people you knew years ago might be on Facebook, but people you currently know are also there, and it's often the easiest way to coordinate an event or get in contact with people, because they actually bother to check it.
I basically haven't used the feed part of Facebook in years, and I am happy to stay away.
If a decentralized social network like Mastodon can start supporting event planning, it might have a chance to gain ground against Facebook. That's really Facebook's only killer feature and unique value right now, IMHO.
But there's utility in a wide-field of acquaintances. It's not needed, you can live on an island by yourself after all, some will find the utility is not worth the cost.
But that's not my argument at all. You can have acquaintances. What I am trying to convey is that social media is turning real relationships into something more like the relationship with an acquaintance. If you can be "friends" with an acquaintance for extended periods of time and watch their lives, are they really acquaintances? What are they? It's a never ending High School Reunion. You have a passing interest in their lives, but in the end, do you really care?
I think we are addicted to control, novelty, and distraction, and we are neglecting real social connections.
Think about it. It started with call waiting. Now another party could preempt your conversation. Then there was the answering machine, you can time shift and screen your calls. Next it was pagers. Page me, and I will return the call at my leisure. Then cell phones. Anyone can call anytime! But that is too intrusive so everyone starts texting. Texting is not conducive to real human interaction. We need to hear each other, we need to be near and see facial expressions. We are losing part of our humanity.
I hesitate to call my own mother now without texting first. I hate that.
Same here. But different people value different things out of relationships. I prefer to have a handful of people close to me and don't seek out daily updates on everyone else.
In fact, I enjoy running into those people or meeting up with them periodically even more because then they can tell me everything they've been going through in person. To me that's more fun than getting a stream of micro updates on everyone.
Same but when I needed to work on an app for work, I had to create a profile and eventually got blocked until I uploaded my drivers license. Still, my account is blocked.
Lots of social groups I'm a part of use fb for discussion and event coordination. There's no way to make other people use email or slack or whatever your favorite tool is; the only two options are FB and non participation.
I don’t use it for talking with ‘friends’. I find the groups dedicated to my local neighbourhood and clubs really useful though (can anyone recommend a plumber, has anyone seen my cat, there’s a planning consultation coming up)
Same. I had quit some years ago but that lasted only six months and I went back. Think it'll stick this time.
I use/abuse Twitter and Instagram though. I'm not nearly as glued to them as a Facebook feed though and they've actually provided real value/connections to me.
I personally consider "active and/or daily Facebook/social media use" (e.g. mindless scrolling as escapism, intense FOMO fueling continued use, or a desire to uphold sense of identity) a red flag. to each their own.
Why the downvotes? This is a valid discussion topic.
I recently went on a date where the girl told me she nearly had a panic attack when she couldn't find me on Facebook or anywhere else while waiting at the venue. Given we had met briefly at a bar only a week before the check was warranted (IMO), and given the positioning of Facebook in her life and many others, it was the tool she relied on and was disarrayed by.
Sure my case is anecdotal but I do not believe it is unique. Facebook has forced itself to be a single point of failure in parts of our culture, they did it intentionally to make money, and we should acknowledge it.
I have no social media accounts at all and never have. I thought the very idea of facebook was creepy when it launched and I've not changed my mind since.
Facebook provides a public log of years of your posts. A quick way to get to know someone. To figure out if you should trust them. It's far from perfect but neither are social security numbers.
Services like Airbnb's use your account to verify you aren't a spammer. I have heard of landlords and employers asking for it as well. If you don't have it you are undefined.
I dislike Zuckerberg more and more everyday. What a piece of work that guy is, hiding the reality of FB behind his self-righteous mission of connecting the world while selling you to advertisers and fragmenting your attention and happiness potential.
I guess it's sort of like a fast-food restaurant owner telling the customers that the food isn't healthy. What's the point? Everyone probably already knows that, and they'll eat it anyway (for various reasons).
Facebook (and other social media sites) is like the digital version of a fast-food restaurant. And luckily for them they have 2 billion users eating it, so there is a lot of peer pressure on others who'd rather not eat to go there anyway because their friends are there.
I guess a drug dealer also can justify their line of work by saying that they are merely providing the means for a customer to obtain something that they like.
Part of me thinks the the anti-Facebook media sentiment is because Facebook replaced newspapers/magazines as the highly profitable media aggregator. Old media struggles for relevance and lashes out at Facebook, the new winner.
Facebook makes fantastic communications tool and gives them away for a whopping $0. I love staying aware of what's going on with my grandparents, old classmates, friends, and family, AND not having to directly pay money for this.
I would love to hear other perspectives.
EDIT: Downvote away, but my point is that people pick on Facebook for privacy concerns but we all know it's an advertising company (probably the best the world has ever seen). It also operates the best communications tools the world has ever seen and it doesn't get enough credit for that. In 2006, the News Feed was publicly bemoaned because of privacy issues and it's now the core product. Facebook has built great tools over time, even when people didn't initially agree. Not trying to incite anger, just pushing toward a debate.
That’s an extreme comparison - there’s no such thing as a healthy level of cigarette consumption while there is for social media (at least a non-harmful level).
All I know is that Facebook was started as a way of enforcing the picking-order of the local school. Ofcourse it grew, from the same reason kids still to this day gets bullied in school. It's just got legalized by the grownup community. And then we wonder why kids are getting burned out before they even start working?
As a bullied kid I already saw what facebook was from the start so I never created an account and cringe every time I see it mentioned on the news.
Damn. Sorry to hear. FB wasn't around when I was in grade school. I hope they make tools to clamp down on bullying. And that people act better, regardless.
>> Facebook makes fantastic communications tool and gives them away for a whopping $0.
In exchange for your personal data (at levels not known by most people)
In the longer term you are not giving up your privacy but your freedom (assuming Facebook becomes dominant middleman for the information) with who you communicate and about what topic.
You are hearing other perspectives. You've just chosen to write them off as "the evil media being angry that Facebook is replacing them and lashing out".
> ... my point is that people pick on Facebook for privacy concerns but we all know it's an advertising company ...
More accurately, it's a surveillance company (with some behavioral testing and manipulation as well), and ads are just the best way to monetize information for now. As ad blockers and banner blindness become more common, they'll find another, probably worse, way to monetize that information, like pre-interview employee screening or pseudo-credit-scores.
Also, unlike Google, which at least built an innovative search engine back in the day (remember Lycos, Alta Vista, and "portals?"), I can't think of anything particularly novel or valuable created by Facebook.
we declared Facebook to be a monopoly and broke it up like we did Ma Bell in the 70s?
I dunno. Feels like it's too big, too ubiquitous, and is too much oriented towards encouraging behaviors that are much better for their pockets than for anyone using it.
Hell, look at this story: Facebook already has (according to a quick google search, [citation needed]) about 58% of the US' entire adult population, or 3/4 of all adult Americans who use the Internet. (which is about 81%). Their user growth rate is going flat, because they're running out of people willing and able to be online. But they need to keep acquiring new users no matter what, so now they're turning their eyes to the people who they are legally barred from giving accounts to.
An interesting idea, which raises a lot of questions:
Along which lines could it be broken up? Datacenters? Subsets of the social graph? Would you liked to be grouped with your family, your school or your church?
It seems very plausible that one of them would grow and engulf everyone, while the others woulg go the way of MySpace. What then?
> Along which lines could it be broken up? Datacenters? Subsets of the social graph? Would you liked to be grouped with your family, your school or your church?
> It seems very plausible that one of them would grow and engulf everyone, while the others woul[d] go the way of MySpace. What then?
I've thought about this, and I think the best way to break up Facebook is by datacenter, staff, AND social graph. However, each successor company needs to be required to inter-operate with the others and everyone else through some open standard. That would blunt the network effect and perhaps allow a decentralized, competitive market to stabilize.
My answer to most of your questions (which are good ones!) is "go look at the activitypub/ostatus world, especially Mastodon". Federation between smaller, user-supported social sites creates a very different world than ones built to put eyeballs in front of ads.
I may be biased by having pretty much ditched Twitter for a Mastodon instance that I run for myself, a few friends, and whoever else thinks it would be cool to be @username@dragon.style and have a Twitter-like thing that lets them emit 7k tweets if they want to.
> Social media is one of those things which by nature is difficult to break up. I'd say it's as hard to really fix as any natural monopoly.
No. Right now, social networking right is sort of like email in the AOL/Compuserv days. Email is a kind of social network, but they key difference between it and service like Facebook is that it's implemented using open standards. There's no reason open standards for a "Facebook feed" could be designed and mandated during a break-up.
Corporations have always been trying to rule the world by selling hot air and "caveat emptor" has been a thing since markets exist. The Internet just gives you access to all the dumb people in the world at once. How will you control that from one country?
The article speaks of using powerful algorithms and AI to scour Facebook's dark corners of pedophilia, terrorism, suicide, etc. This led me to a somewhat scary conclusion. Taking the following premises:
* Community management, AI, and algorithms in general will eventually be powerful enough to do completely eradicate anything considering double plus ungood by Facebook.
* Life on Facebook is a slice of human social life, although admittedly poorly curated.
* Sensor and mobile technology will before long be good enough to have a full annotated and indexed high definition 3D recording of every person's existence at all moments.
With these taken together, it's not hard to imagine a Facebook that becomes the perfect law enforcer and social control mechanism far beyond anything thought up by Orwell or Demolition Man, definitely leaning more toward the Matrix.
Worst still AI will be used to eliminate any activity which is unprofitable for the parent entity. Imagine reddit shadowbanning users who hurt ad revenue, imagine telecoms throttling users based on network activity (oh wait), etc.
All advertising is (intended to be) mind control. It wants to get you to take an action you weren't previously inclined to take.
It follows that any product that's successful at controlling people can sell that control.
If you consider the implications of Facebook-as-mass-mind-control, then Russian election-meddling, viral suicides, and all of Facebook's other facets make a lot of sense.
It also makes sense that Facebook wants to get better at controlling you by learning more about what motivates you, leveraging social pressure, and taking over more of your attention.
(That said, I still enjoy and use Facebook. I'm just worried about how powerful it is.)
> All advertising is (intended to be) mind control. It wants to get you to take an action you weren't previously inclined to take.
That is one reason for advertising, but not the only one. Advertising is also meant to simply notify people of the existence of a certain product. In that sense, it isn't supposed to force people to buy something they don't need, but it is supposed to make them choose advertised brand, once they need such product.
In your example, it's still modifying behavior to produce a specific result. It also introduces thoughts that may arise subconsciously, like thinking "Kleenex" when my nose is running.
That fits the definition of "mind control", as I was using it. Your definition might differ from mine.
Facebook has a big advantage over other ways to keep in contact with your social circles: it's not full of people constantly talking about how they have quit Facebook.
From their point of view why wouldn't they, children become eyeballs, sorry adults with money to spend.
I've given up expecting corporations to be nice, I haven't quite given up on expecting them to obey the law, the bits they haven't written themselves anyway.
The sole purpose of existence of a corporation is to make money, and it would be strange to expect them to be nice and not use every opportunity for profit. Thus, enforcing ethics is a consumer responsibility: if you believe that something is bad, don't use it.
People get lots of different jobs for lots of different reasons, some of which include money. I think your fellow citizens deserve a stronger consideration for their morals, choices, and concerns than that of a faceless, sociopathic megacorp like Facebook.
Sure, but all you've proven is that people respond to incentives and that money is a strong one. Trying to assign moral value to the actions of a project manager who is under pressure for Q3 ad revenue is a fools errand.
The advertisement on TV is heavily regulated, I hope we'll get the same thing on the internet before it's too late and a whole generation has lost its attention capacity.
Governments have a huge work to do in order to analyze what could be harmful and what is ok, and pass law about it.
As a parent and someone who has always found social media unpalatable, I think this isn't new or specific just to FB. The competition to control your children's mind begins early and never stops when it comes to any institutionalized power mechanism, that's how power is reinforced and retained over generations.
This is just another thing you'll need to teach your children about as you do your best to ready them for the world and help them become independent thinkers.
His philosophy? That’s a well-known fact to anyone working in education and child development. What irony that his products are actually hijacking those crucial early years; lower attention span, need for instant gratification, potentially unsafe materials, device reliance, overstimulation ... seriously this is cruel.
NRK (Norways largest media corp) har a great story yesterday about the how the highly addictive snapstreaks feature in Snapchat are controlling teen's lives:
I've been lurking HN for months now, just created an account to thank you for sharing this link! Google Translate worked well enough. The presentation of this article was really interesting. Despite being a teenager myself, I'm glad I don't use any (non-anon) social networks. This is really scary.
I have to call what they're doing "the open garden" model. They simply want to be as much of the online context of peoples' lives as possible. It's really no different than the closed garden, except that people do more online now and what would have previously gone to LiveJournal and Flickr and any number of separate sites now all goes into FB, raising the switching costs to the level of closed gardens. It can't take more than a year or two of MBA to be able to fall back on this strategy. Beats working for a living.
Just drop FB, it’s not that important, and 70% of people are clearly (by reading all the “I quit Facebook drama posts”) over attached to it.