I always sent emails in plain text mode. I hate the idea of sending an entire html doc for a simple text only job.
Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
31–40 of 175 posts
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#32I guess maybe I'm too old to understand (38) but to me, reading some text is simply way faster than watching someone read that text in a video... but they are saying the exact opposite. This is completely baffling to me.
Not just you -- video is a real time medium, a 3 minute video takes 3 minutes to watch. Text is at your reading speed, and also a lot easier to index.
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#33I am the kind that reads thrice before hitting send. It would be too slow/too weird to do that with video or voice notes. Text is deathless.
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#34Yes, for almost everything online, I prefer text: programming tutorials, the news, discussions like this on Hacker News. Imagine if each reply here had to be an uploaded video of the member talking.
For some other things, I prefer a video: how to cook something, how to repair something, how to tie a tie, an interview with a person whom I admire. Even then it can depend on my mood, and if I'm in a hurry I am like, "Oh, just cut to the chase, or put it in a one-paragraph article."
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#35I think that the only thing that will make text obsolete is synthetic, panpsychic telepathy.
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#36[deleted]
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#37They're probably thinking of memes and emojis as well. It can't be argued that well-structured text is a strong suit among individuals communicating with Facebook.
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#38> Human brains process it absurdly well considering there's nothing really built-in for it. That's unclear. The sheer bitrate of reading suggests that it might tap into some deep structures -- hacking some parts of the visual and speech systems, if you prefer. I don't click on HN video links because I find video slow and frustrating way to learn almost anything. Text is so random access -- you can skip over boring bi…
In my case I think I avoid HN video links because I know in advance that they will ask me to commit an exact amount of time to it without knowing whether it will be worth it in the end. With text on the other hand, I can easily start to read an article and begin to skim it once I see that it isn't as interesting as I thought it'd be.
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#39The folks at Facebook are not stupid. This is likely setting the groundwork to ream more bandwidth through their Aquila project https://info.internet.org
More bandwidth means more money, which means convincing more of the public to invest more in Facebook.
Re: Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
#40There are a lot of people who like communicating through image memes & other short soundbites - I am not one of them. I value text. I like reading deeper insights from people much more than cheap flyby memes or time consuming videos. If communication regresses like that, I'll probably withdraw from using those features. It's simply what I don't want in a social network.
Yes! Exactly. My (optimistic) suspicion is the users will get bored of it and stop looking at the river of crap, forcing them to change directions again.