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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

#141

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…

You are not wrong.

I think the problem is not really Facebook but its users.

Sharing a blog post on Facebook is as wrong as sharing your travel photos on HN.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#142
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no pictures of what your friend ate for dinner Posting pictures of your food should be a criminal offence. Nothing too serious, just a couple of years in prison or something.

I hear you but I actually enjoy some pictures of peoples food, e.g. when my brother has made a nice wok. I also miss the "going to the beach", "this was a nice day" etc. I don't miss "join me on farmville", "1000 reasons why Trump and/or Hillary are dumb" etc.

I just miss the pokes. Remember when it was fun?

I deleted the app last year. Kept the account because as far as I can tell it's the same difference and I haven't summoned the strength to go retrieve my photos yet. Haven't missed it at all. Meanwhile my wife is increasingly addicted...

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#143
post #86

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…

My problem with an idle Facebook account is at least twofold: my activity is still being tracked against my will, and out of principle I refuse to support an organization which so blatantly disregards personal space.

Your activity is being tracked irrespective of whether or not you have a Facebook account. Google and Facebook will track you anyway and then correlate your browsing patterns with those of other people (about whom they know more) and infer everything there is to know about you.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe I'm unique in my usage of Instagram but I only follow people I know in real life or other photographers, amateur or otherwise, and they typically aren't posting sponsored content. I've only ever seen one person post sponsored content out of hundreds I follow, and it was pretty easy to unfollow them.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#145
> Facebook forbids search engines from indexing Facebook posts. Content that isn’t indexable by search engines is not part of the open web.

When you make an argument like this, you need to acknowledge that tons people want the opposite thing you want. That doesn't make you wrong, but leaving it out makes it so much harder to have a good discussion.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#146
post #60

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…

Yes, you are. The argument is that facebook has become something that causes the rest of the web to be worse off. Less open, more bloated, more central.

I don't see any supporting arguments that directly support that thesis. That's a very open-ended, subjective statement.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#147

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…

Facebook was great in the early years. No ads, no political spam, no viral garbage, no pictures of what your friend ate for dinner, no psychologically manipulative algorithms. Just people talking to their friends and posting pictures of themselves hanging out. If someone made a new social network like that, I'd sign up today.

> No ads, no political spam, no viral garbage, no pictures of what your friend ate for dinner, no psychologically manipulative algorithms. Just people talking to their friends and posting pictures of themselves hanging out.

> If someone made a new social network like that, I'd sign up today.

Get into the world of finstas, that's basically the concept behind them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/fashion/instagram-finstag...

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#148

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…

Seems like my feed encourages me to do less scrolling than ever. My feed has become a haven for linked and sponsored content, and there's the occasional spatter of original content from friends. I don't see a lot of the stuff I actually care about (photos of friends, their newborns, lengthy posts, etc.) without going straight to their pages. I swear some of these personal posts never hit my home feed, they just get b…

> and sponsored content

FB without an ad-blocker is simply unreadable.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#149
Facebook has done wonders to get people creating and consuming content on the internet. However, Facebook has grown to the point where it has no competition and is no longer innovating in ways that benefit us. Facebook should split into Facebook the aggregator and Facebook the content hoster. You could talk about a third piece that is Facebook the content provider, which is for providing things like gifs, templates, memes, emoji, games, and other stuff like that. Because Facebook hasn't completely broken from open web standards those types of content providers already exist today.

Aggregators would be where you go to set up your friend list and see your feed. It could look and feel like Facebook does now. It would have an open standard protocol that content hosters would use if they wanted to be aggregated. This could still be an add driven business, but subscription, self hosted, and DIY solutions could exist too.

Content hosters could either charge a monthly hosting fee, or they could serve up their own adds. Self hosted and DIY solutions could also exist.

The big benefit to this would of course be the competition. Since it's an open standard anyone could be a content host, and anyone could be an aggregator.

To make extra sure there is competition, and this could come in a phase two after the initial splitting up of Facebook, there should be open standards for exporting and importing friends, follows, likes, etc. to and from aggregators, and open standards for importing and exporting content from the hosters.

Speaking of follows and likes, there could also be aggregator aggregators (AAs). People could opt in to publicly and anonymously share their likes and follows and the AAs would consume those and report on trends that cross aggregator boundaries. Anonymity could be much more protected this way while still giving us that interesting information about what is trending.

One tricky part of this is how do I as a content author only allow my friends to see certain posts of mine? It would have to be with encryption. My content provider could keep public keys of my friends and only my friends (well, their aggregators) would be able to decrypt my posts using my friends' private keys. I can see some challenges and holes in this, but it doesn't seem any worse overall than how Facebook protects privacy now. Open implementations and peer review could get us to better-than-Facebook privacy quickly.

Facebook would ideally recognize their stagnation and initiate this split themselves. We as their user base can and should help them understand the importance of this. Hopefully it doesn't have to come down to government enforcement of anti-trust laws, but that could be a useful tool to apply here as well.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#150

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…

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

It's also misleading. If you want something more like a blog, then use notes instead of posts. The notes editing interface is actually better than most blog platforms, and IMO the results look just as pretty too. Then your notes appear in your timeline, searchable (within Facebook), with comments, etc. Is it everything an "open web" activist could want? No, but it's sure not just plain text.

BTW, I can't help but shake my head at people (like Gruber) who say Facebook is evil but also think absolutely everything should be searchable and monetizable by Google. That's just not logically consistent.

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