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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

#121

Post by chestervonwinch »

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…

Tangentially related: I don't mind the bells and whistles (such as bloated commenting systems) on desktop where my machine has resources to waste, but I wish more news sites made available a bare-bones, text-only version of their web site for browsing on mobile (e.g., http://thin.npr.org/).

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#122

Post by Ajedi32 »

amelius wrote: post #45

Reminder to self that I should put in my LICENSE files: Copyright (c) Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person ... (the usual stuff, followed by ...) It is the express wish of the author that this software shall not be used in derived products or services to collect or spread information about users against their will for any purpose other than the main functionality of the product or service. User…

Probably not a good idea. If you include vaguely-worded restrictions like that in your license you're 1) using a non-standard license, and 2) breaking Freedom 0 of GNU's Free Software Definition.

Personally I feel that it'd be better to put that sort of statement in the README; especially if you're not concerned with whether its legally-enforceable or not.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#123

Post by linkmotif »

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…

Yes, I don't understand why the web needs to be "open" per the original post for it to be deemed good. If FB wasn't a nasty platform and simply didn't let Google index (mooch and profit from) its content, that would be fair in my opinion. Why should I start a company and then give that content away for free to Google to profit from? It's not like Google is performing some altruistic public service. Neither is DuckDuckGo, or any other company.

FB is horrible because it nurtures psychological pathology, not because it's not open. Everything you need to know about FB can be summarized from Zuck's generous offer to let employees freeze their eggs so that instead of having kids and leading normal lives they can work for him. Dude is gross, and so is his platform.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#124

Post by ocdtrekkie »

res0nat0r wrote: post #87
steveadoo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you just have Facebook and only use it for the events/photos? I've got a Facebook but never use it for posting/looking at other people's posts. Every now and then I'll get an invitation to an event which is really all I use it for.

I've cut out Facebook without 99% of the hand wringing here. I just stop browsing the site. If someone wants to talk to me I get a popup on my Messenger app on my phone, and if I get an event invite it shows up there too. Problem solved.

Indeed. You can have a Facebook account and just... Not use it unless you need it for something. All the benefits of the 'I deleted Facebook' crowd without the downsides.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#125

Post by mysterydip »

iamatworknow wrote: post #105
srge wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deleted my account 2 years ago along with Twitter's and Instagram's. It's just a better life for me now. Less stress, less anger.

Facebook and Twitter I get, but you were being angered and stressed by Instagram? It's the only social media I actively use precisely because it's not stressful or rage inducing. I'm into photography so it gives me an outlet that way (even though taking a picture with a real camera, editing it on a computer, then sending it to my phone to post on Instagram is a bit of a pain), and the annoying content from other peop…

"Hey all, look at this amazing new thing I just got (for free from the company that sponsors me that I don't disclose)!" Maybe it's the same on the rest, but it seems there's a larger portion of it on Instagram.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#126

Post by Balgair »

Jach wrote: post #111
criddell wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sign out of Facebook and delete the cookie. You should be fine after that.

I'm sure Facebook will still track you (this applies even if you don't have a Facebook account). You'd need to block their domain and any ad domains that may be related. (Edit: Also mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14463127 )

You think uBlock Origin helps with that? I genuinely do not know.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#127

Post by steventhedev »

noir_lord wrote: post #88
steventhedev wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being downvoted because a large segment of HN is engineers who prefer sites like http://motherfuckingwebsite.com and http://evenbettermotherfucking.website Basically, what it comes down to is that if all 37 requests are done in parallel, then you're only loading the page as slowly as the slowest. Sadly, this is rarely the case. Most browsers will only make 6 concurrent requests from a server, which you can see…

Agreed with everything you said except > keeping in mind users don't care about data size, they care about latency. Users do care about data size since there are still a lot of people on data limited contracts even in the UK which has a fairly healthy mobile market. What people don't necessarily realise is the connection between the two, I'd quite like it if the mobile browsers had a running total of the total amount…

You are quite correct. Data caps do make users concerned with the amount of data transferred, but only post hoc, or as a proxy for latency.

Thinking about it, there's got to be a plugin for firefox/chrome that show the data size of each page. For mobile, you can install firefox which allows you to install plugins (pretty much essential for blocking ads in mobile browsing).

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#128

Post by wickedOne »

MachinShinn- wrote: post #74

I'm baffled by some of the comments here... Is it so difficult for you guys to just have a facebook account that you don't check in on? You can still sign into random sites that require it that way, arrange meetups, etc but without 'scrolling your life away' I expect people like me who spend most of their day on the computer to have at least as much digital self discipline as I have, but perhaps that's a poor assumpt…

assumption is the mother of all fuckups...

that aside, i deleted my facebook account over seven years ago and even though my real life friends give me some grief over that every now and again, i haven't missed it a single day.

apart from the couple of live streamed murders and abuse cases, there's no actual news on there which isn't accessible through another site with public access. and if i long for cat pictures or funny videos there's always imgur and youtube.

facebook, like many other "social media" sites, is more a habit than a necessity and, as far as i'm concerned, highly overrated in it's purpose

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#129

Post by ocdtrekkie »

matwood wrote: post #67
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'm not sure why it has to be deactivated though. I've had a FB account for a long time and maybe check it once every few days if that. My main use case is to upload shared photos. I would prefer everyone use Google Photos, but that hasn't happened yet.

Why would you want everyone to just move from one walled garden to another?

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#130

Post by reitanqild »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #34
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 accou…

Facebook comments and real name policy are really bad IMO:

it discourages thoughtful users who happens to have dissenting views and exposes groupthink, people who care to create fake accounts as well as people who don't care.

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