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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

#261

Post by jasonszhao »

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…

Facebook in fact is engaged in web breaking behavior. Look at what they recently tried to do with internet.org and Free Basics. Basically calling their walled garden the internet and giving it away for free to developing countries.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#262

Post by dsacco »

always_good wrote: post #207
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Almost all of these quitting posts just read like people coming to terms with their addiction. Good for them, but they seem to mistake it as some sort of universal lifehack.

I'm looking forward to seeing this theme worked into n-gate's coverage of the thread next week.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#263

Post by xadhominemx »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #50
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…

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.

you know you can sort your newsfeed to "most recent" right? And mute your obnoxious friends from appearing in your newsfeed. You can also hide posts from particular websites from appearing on your newsfeed.

In a short period of time, that would solve 90% of your problems.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#264

Post by xadhominemx »

mysterydip wrote: post #120
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excluding the "ads", how would you prevent users from posting "political spam", "viral garbage", and "pictures of what your friend ate for dinner"?

Remove the like, and let the feed be the actual feed and not an algorithmically-filtered list, would be a great start IMHO.

Try switching your feed from "Top Stories" to "Most Recent"

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#265

Post by StavrosK »

zamalek wrote: post #73
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fa…

I was probably one of the first 1000 to join Facebook beyond the American borders, back when it was still a University-only endeavor. I've been off Facebook for more than 4 years. Life is generally more rewarding. I'm much more in contact with the life that I want to live, instead of the life that I want to portray. People I know have "unlearned" Facebook - I actually receive emails and phone calls to catch up. I thi…

I'm kind of surprised to see these posts describing how it's possible to get off Facebook. For me, it doesn't really make much of a difference whether I'm on or off. I barely ever log in, barely ever use it, and things don't really spread through Facebook.

However, that just may be that I don't live in the US, and it just might be more pervasive there.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#266

Post by calebgilbert »

Besides Facebook banning search engine indexing of itself the search functionality of Facebook itself is terrible. I belong to several groups and I've seen numerous examples of content, which I know is in the group, not showing up in search results while using very straight forward and matching searches.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#268

Post by dsacco »

jasonszhao wrote: post #261
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…

Facebook in fact is engaged in web breaking behavior. Look at what they recently tried to do with internet.org and Free Basics. Basically calling their walled garden the internet and giving it away for free to developing countries.

> Facebook is in fact involved in web breaking behavior.

>...internet.org and Free Basics...

Last week I met someone who spent the better part of two years in Mozambique and other parts of Africa for the Peace Corps. He spent most of his time in areas that had little to no internet access.

He used Free Basics a lot while he was there and considered it integral to his work and sanity (in his words). Based on his experience, I would consider your specific example web enabling, not web breaking. There are many people who want to connect to the internet even if it's not the open, platonic ideal that is passionately endorsed message boards like HN.

From what he told me, his alternative to using Free Basics was climbing a tree and waiting for a signal so he could send emails for work. It's not a perfect system, but it's fairly uncharitable to call it web breaking just because you don't believe one company should have control over it.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#269

Post by dsacco »

linkmotif wrote: post #123
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 DuckDuc…

Personally, I would be impressed with a company that provided that benefit and seriously consider it. Am I gross for finding that to be an attractive offer?

It's not as though Facebook is coercing people to do this in order to lengthen their careers. People will do it anyway due to a culture that already exists and because they want to; from that perspective, Facebook is providing a nice benefit for people who don't want to compromise their career. It's not for you to say that this decision constitutes "abnormal" behavior - its characteristic of a lot of peoples' rational career optimization.

I'm not claiming it's altruistic, but I am claiming it's a poor heuristic for judging a company.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#270

Post by abritinthebay »

StavrosK wrote: post #265
zamalek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was probably one of the first 1000 to join Facebook beyond the American borders, back when it was still a University-only endeavor. I've been off Facebook for more than 4 years. Life is generally more rewarding. I'm much more in contact with the life that I want to live, instead of the life that I want to portray. People I know have "unlearned" Facebook - I actually receive emails and phone calls to catch up. I thi…

I'm kind of surprised to see these posts describing how it's possible to get off Facebook. For me, it doesn't really make much of a difference whether I'm on or off. I barely ever log in, barely ever use it, and things don't really spread through Facebook. However, that just may be that I don't live in the US, and it just might be more pervasive there.

It's... it's not that Facebook itself is the issue. It's the resulting network effects and how you interact with people while still on it.

For example: not being on Facebook means you actually have to keep in touch with people to know what they are doing. That sounds like a "duh" moment, but it's also key to how FB is replacing real social interaction with "social interaction".

The knock on effects of this are deep, because without it you have to have meaningful and importantly intentioned social interaction with people.

That changes things.

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