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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

#241

Post by pmlnr »

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…

use mbasic.facebook.com.

So ugly and oldschool you won't miss in, unless you need to get something done there.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#242

Post by pc2g4d »

Facebook solved some real problems and thus pointed out weakness with the open web as it is. The way to combat this is not to wring our hands but to improve the web so it solves the same problems.

Things like spam/moderation. Is it possible to have a distributed, open solution to this problem?

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#243

Post by rezistik »

Chaebixi wrote: post #174
gthtjtkt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Facebook was great in the early years. That seems to be depressingly true of any social website. There seems to be a sort, sweet spot that exists briefly between the implementation of a good idea and when the parasites catch on and move in to ruin it.

Eternal September is the term for that. When the social site begins to accept too much trash because of it's size.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#244

Post by rezistik »

Chaebixi wrote: post #174
gthtjtkt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Facebook was great in the early years. That seems to be depressingly true of any social website. There seems to be a sort, sweet spot that exists briefly between the implementation of a good idea and when the parasites catch on and move in to ruin it.

Eternal September is the term for that. When the social site begins to accept too much trash because of it's size.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#245

Post by b0rsuk »

wuliwong wrote: post #233
b0rsuk wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has wider reach than AOL. Maybe walled garden builders are getting better at their tricks ?

It's a bit of tough comparison. When I used AOL, it was literally my "portal" to the internet. I may have even used a browser embedded in AOL? Facebook is not that for most of it's users. But that being said, if we are just concerned with statistics, obviously Facebook's user numbers are much larger than AOL ever saw but I wonder what percentage of people using the internet use Facebook today vs. AOL "back in the day…

I read comments on HN that claimed Facebook is many people's only portal to the Internet. Especially in Asia.

Recommender reading: How to confuse a Facebook user (2010) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/face...

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#246

Post by claytoneast »

notacoward wrote: post #150
ArchReaper wrote: post #32

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 "op…

The difference is that Facebook articles are searchable by no one. Free web pieces are searchable and accessible via any search engine.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#247

Post by amelius »

throwanem wrote: post #215
amelius wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You're probably right. And the README would be better, because the message would be visible on the main page in Github :) Another option could be to have the text "The following is not part of the license, but expresses the wishes of the author regarding…

Perhaps then EFF can develop a way of giving companies that might use these libraries a reason to care that this language is present. "The following is not part of the license" is just a long-winded way of saying "Feel free to ignore what follows this clause even harder than you feel free to ignore what precedes it." I mean, full marks for cooperative nature, but being real here, the licenses in your Github repositor…

The law departments of these companies probably couldn't care less, I agree. But I think such license addendum could have a very significant impact.

These companies employ people who generally have a warm heart for open source. These people have been contributing to open source projects themselves. So if part of the community starts disapproving their way of doing business, they will take note. And internal discussions will take place.

Further, if these companies misbehave, it hurts their image.

And a bad image among developers (both internal and external) is probably the last thing these companies want.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#248

Post by wordupmaking »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #212
b0rsuk wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do Facebook a favor and create your own shadow profile for them ? What if you were against shadow profiles in the first place ?

If you create your own shadow profile, you can sort of "Graffiti" your own shadow profile, right? Like a bunch of weird, random nonsense. Become friends with every single bot and every single bots' friends. Hell, you could help make shadows that aren't there.

Yeah, but when you stand up to snoops and crooks, you don't have to contort yourself in ways that are a.) undignified and b.) futile anyways, and c.) waste your own resources of which you have fewer than the server rooms of megacorps, so why not do that.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#249

Post by korzun »

adtac wrote: post #40
korzun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 so…

Your experience on 2G networks is already degraded; removing an asynchronous comment system will not magically fix it or make it better.

> 37 Javascript files out of which, I'm willing to bet, most are tracking agents employing every trick in the book to record all activit

You would lose that bet.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#250

Post by nightski »

Chaebixi wrote: post #174
gthtjtkt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Facebook was great in the early years. That seems to be depressingly true of any social website. There seems to be a sort, sweet spot that exists briefly between the implementation of a good idea and when the parasites catch on and move in to ruin it.

I'm not sure I'd blame Facebook's problems on it's users. You can always unfriend someone. No, it's Facebook itself that has changed for the worse (by far).
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