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Facebook is an attack on the open web

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Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#31

Post by tobyjsullivan »

Tossrock wrote: post #19

I deactivated my Facebook account several months ago, and it's been about 90% great, 10% frustrating. It's great for all the obvious reasons (less timesuck, less compulsion to endlessly scroll your life away, no notification interruptions). The frustrations are real, though. Primarily it's around events and photos. There are some communities I participate in that regularly organize events through Facebook, and now I…

I've enjoyed roughly the same experience but without the downsides.

As far as events go, the neckbeard in me hasn't actually minded. I still get invited to "high quality" events (things my real-life friends are going to) and haven't really missed the lower quality events.

Photos I just conveniently had solved by having all my photos on Google Photos anyways (I stopped trusting offline storage long ago).

I think my Facebook account is reactivated at the moment (due to logging in to search for something) but I disabled notification when I'd originally left and haven't looked back. Life's easier (and way more productive) without the Book.

Interestingly, I still find a lot of value in Messenger. But they've split concerns so you can use that without reactivating your FB account.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#32

Post by ArchReaper »

I'm no Facebook fanboy but this article feels like a "why does my square peg not fit into their round hole" type of complaint. Facebook is a social network, not a public blogging platform.

Here is my interpretation of the complaints. Please point out what I am missing.

>It's impractical...

Square peg round hole.

>It's supporting their downgrading and killing the web...

Facebook posts being inherently (mostly) simple text is 'killing the web'? I don't buy it.

>Facebook might go out of business.

Just a generic SaaS complaint. Nothing unique to Facebook about this.

Am I missing a core argument here?

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#33

Post by simlevesque »

Tossrock wrote: post #19

I deactivated my Facebook account several months ago, and it's been about 90% great, 10% frustrating. It's great for all the obvious reasons (less timesuck, less compulsion to endlessly scroll your life away, no notification interruptions). The frustrations are real, though. Primarily it's around events and photos. There are some communities I participate in that regularly organize events through Facebook, and now I…

About the fact that you miss events, I found the following website really useful: http://carpediem.cd/ (no https access)

They scrape Facebook events, allowing you to browse them without a Facebook account. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#34

Post by jbigelow76 »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #5

Not everything on the internet needs to be public (or part of the "open web" as the article calls it). Facebook is a fantastic place for web content that isn't meant to be public. This idea of posting "public content" on Facebook is inherently flawed. I agree with the article on that much. However, what I haven't figured out yet is if this is actually an evil-Facebook issue or just a user issue. Is Facebook actively…

However, what I haven't figured out yet is if this is actually an evil-Facebook issue or just a user issue.

I have a side rant that has been bubbling in me for a long time on this issue. My city's alternative weekly paper, The Dallas Observer, switched from Livefyre to Facebook's commenting system about two years ago. Livefyre was bad but the Facebook comment system is worse. With Facebook forcing "real" people accounts, comments plummeted on stories that presented alternate takes on local stories that didn't fall into line with the Dallas Morning News's traditional power structure patriarchs (mostly land developers).

The editor's suggestion to people that wanted to comment on a story without using their "real name" was to create a separate Facebook account. Un-fucking real.

My conspiracy theory is that The Dallas Observer, and probably all Village Voice Media properties, were promised better exposure in Facebook user's news feeds if they used the Facebook comment engine. Seems like a devil's bargain to me.

I put the Facebook comment system squarely in the evil-Facebook pile.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#35

Post by Omnius »

adtac wrote: post #14

You've ever been to one of those pages that embed Facebook's comment engine? Yeah, those are the worst. I did some analysis on a random page with just three Facebook comments. Requests to Facebook's servers accounted for 1.5 MB of the 2.4 MB tranfered by the ENTIRE page. 87 network requests, 35 javascript files injected and it didn't even load all the comments! (I had to click on a "Load more comments" button to load…

Not to hard to understand, i think, its bureaucracy, incremental changes and not dealing with the technical debt from the changes, having a farm of coders that just need to check off the that requirements were met.

Now add a continuous stream of revenue and the only people that notice or care are technically oriented people.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#36

Post by TelmoMenezes »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #5

Not everything on the internet needs to be public (or part of the "open web" as the article calls it). Facebook is a fantastic place for web content that isn't meant to be public. This idea of posting "public content" on Facebook is inherently flawed. I agree with the article on that much. However, what I haven't figured out yet is if this is actually an evil-Facebook issue or just a user issue. Is Facebook actively…

> Not everything on the internet needs to be public (or part of the "open web" as the article calls it).

Indeed, and since the beginning of the web there have been ways to create private content. The old-fashioned solutions give real control to the user.

> Facebook is a fantastic place for web content that isn't meant to be public.

Not really, because: a) you have no control over the platform -- the notion of private can change on a FB's whim and there is nothing you can do -- and b) you have no control over whom your content actually reaches, FB's opaque algorithm does.

> Is Facebook actively encouraging this web breaking behaviour or is it a "mis-use" of what the tool originally intended

Can you remember FB ever complaining that people should use the open web for some of the stuff that goes on in there? I don't mean to offend you, but I would say that you have to be a bit naive to believe that they do not desire to turn the web into a walled garden under their complete control.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#37

Post by cwyers »

The open web is an attack on the average user. It's unremittingly hostile as a place to go to if you aren't part of the culture that spawned it. Facebook does a very poor job of sheltering people from the worst of the open web, but it's about a billion times more bearable than the open web scaled up to modern adoption rates would be.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#38

Post by tobyjsullivan »

ovao wrote: post #26
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #5

Not everything on the internet needs to be public (or part of the "open web" as the article calls it). Facebook is a fantastic place for web content that isn't meant to be public. This idea of posting "public content" on Facebook is inherently flawed. I agree with the article on that much. However, what I haven't figured out yet is if this is actually an evil-Facebook issue or just a user issue. Is Facebook actively…

I'd argue that Facebook defines content that's "public" in a way that some — perhaps many — would not, so it's a potential point of confusion. I don't consider it evil , but it certainly results in a sort of Facebook-first inclusiveness. Gruber hits on this with Facebook's intent that posts not be indexable by search engines.

This makes sense. I think it's an inherent challenge to the domain.

In Facebook's defence, there is a difference between "public" and "discoverable". They don't go out of their way to make things discoverable. That's their business and may be evil or not depending on someone's given values.

But "public" content on Facebook could potentially be seen by anyone - and that's staying true to the definition.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#39

Post by icantdrive55 »

irrational wrote: post #11

I have a feeling that Facebook will be on the decline. My teenagers and early-20 year-olds and their friends (not just local, but all over the US) think Facebook is for old people. I actually heard a 16 year old recently giving a speech where he mentioned Snapchat Stories, then, as an aside, said, "That's like Facebook or Pintrest for you old people."

Yea, I have three nephews. I used to see them on FB, shirts off--Pea cocking, but they all deactivated, and didn't come back.

I activate/reactivating daily. I have a watch repair group on the site. FB thinks it's my business, and is constantly begging for ad money, but I'm just giving away information I learned. I honestly don't hate FB anymore. Maybe I'm a old people?

I still cringe when I see the person with 400 friends, and is portraying a life of 007, or the female equivalent--I don't know what that would be? Women need a fictional character to emululate?

(Off topic, but it interesting how Hollywood affects speech. I'm wondering when they will start using "Buckets of money".)

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#40

Post by adtac »

korzun wrote: post #23
adtac wrote: post #14

You've ever been to one of those pages that embed Facebook's comment engine? Yeah, those are the worst. I did some analysis on a random page with just three Facebook comments. Requests to Facebook's servers accounted for 1.5 MB of the 2.4 MB tranfered by the ENTIRE page. 87 network requests, 35 javascript files injected and it didn't even load all the comments! (I had to click on a "Load more comments" button to load…

> Requests to Facebook's servers accounted for 1.5 MB of the 2.4 MB tranfered by the ENTIRE page. 87 network requests, 35 javascript files injected and it didn't even load all the comments! (I had to click on a "Load more comments" button to load the rest of the comments.) This is an issue for a really small segment of users. Not really a cause for concern in 2017. Especially when most of that stuff is already cached…

> This is an issue for a really small segment of users.

Not really. I'm from India; while my home network connection is pretty good, when I'm travelling anywhere outside the metros, the mobile network speed is abysmal. However quite a few news outlets employ Facebook's comment system. You can imagine what a nightmare it'll be for users to load all that with a 2G connection.

> You are loading 37 assets to support a social commenting platform.

37 Javascript files out of which, I'm willing to bet, most are tracking agents employing every trick in the book to record all activity. Wasn't there a recent article that discovered that FB continuously sent home the position of your cursor when you're scrolling through your newsfeed so that they can place ads better?

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