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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

#421

Post by Chaebixi »

nightski wrote: post #250
Chaebixi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

> I'm not sure I'd blame Facebook's problems on it's users.

I am blaming Facebook. The parasites I was thinking of are the people and impulses that pervert the successful formula to push some agenda (e.g. push for some "engagement" metric, push people to use this or that app, unscrupulous monetization, etc).

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#422

Post by khedoros1 »

reitanqild wrote: post #416
khedoros1 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Look at the taste that I have, in choosing this experience for myself", or "Look what I'm doing right now!"

"Look at the taste that I have, in choosing this experience for myself" I cannot remember thinking that about others but maybe I don't follow the same people as you. "Look what I'm doing right now!" Isn't this just like a smaller version of Show HN? I mean: you make something, you post it and someone else chimes in with ideas or (hopefully) constructive criticism? Is there any reason that I cannot see why making food…

> Is there any reason that I cannot see why making food isn't a form of making that we can be proud of?

No, but we were talking about why people post pictures of food that they buy, not that they make.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#424

Post by anigbrowl »

Facebook succeeds because the open web is a UX nightmare for anyone without a tech background. FB is the usccessor to AOL is the successor to [prodify, genie, whichever] is the successor to text-based bulletin board software.

People primarily use social media to connect with and make new friends. They do not want to deal with a million and 1 different user interfaces in the name of openness. That's why Usenet worked so well until people like Canter & siegel killed it with commercial spam.

The open web is great for the same reason that magazines and TV are great, but it's also shit for the same reason that magazines and TV are shit - too much shallow design competing for people's attention, with everyone trying to differentiate themselves from everyone else via style and gimmicks. That's the same thing that made myspace unusual, an impossible excess of visual cruft that far outweighed its substantive communication value.

The open web is fine, but the web is not the right platform for social networking. For social you want a fast, clean, boring interface...like the one on HN. If you think FB is the problem (and it's very very problematic but plenty of other people are already making that case), stop rabbiting about web standards and get to work on NNTP 2.0.

NNTP was fucking awesome. Gopher was fucking awesome. the semantic web is/was awesome. The web is not for social.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#425

Post by Vendan »

wutbrodo wrote: post #277
Vendan wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you made a nice meal, yeah, show it off. If you bought a nice meal, I fail to see the point in showing it off, unless you are specifically saying "wow, this place has great food!".

> If you bought a nice meal, I fail to see the point in showing it off, unless you are specifically saying "wow, this place has great food!". I don't understand your comment at all. What else would you be saying when you show a picture of nice food other than "this food is great"? I'm not in the habit of posting food photos but I've never understood the hysteria around it on places like HN.

Making something yourself is about pride of creation and ability. Some people want to show that off.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#426

Post by Tritrin »

xiaoma wrote: post #359
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…

> "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'" Some of the smartest people in the world work hard to make the site more addictive. You could just as easily say, "Is it so difficult for you to just have a…

     >Some of the smartest people in the world work hard to make the site more addictive.
This is a truth most people seem naively oblivious to, they seem to have this idea in their mind that they are immune to persuasion. It is simply not the case, if you are human you are suceptible to unconscious and conscious persuasion.

A famous result concerning this is the 1984 book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robart Cialdini.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#427

Post by enos_feedler »

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.

The picture of what your friend ate for dinner sticks out as something that doesn't belong here. That actually _is_ a means of connecting directly with our friends/family. The other things you list are not. I'd still signup, even if I saw food pics occasionally.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#428

Post by enos_feedler »

eridius wrote: post #194
tkubacki wrote: post #176

Whenever I see Gruber talking about openess and standards I smell hipocrysy - same way we can say iOS ecosystem is an attack on open computing (walled garden).

iOS apps being a walled garden doesn't really have anything to do with the open web. Apple has long embraced the open web, so there's nothing hypocritical about this.

Apple embraces the open web, but I think what people get upset about is their lack of effort in moving it forward. For example, adopting "PWA" browser APIs in mobile Safari.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#429

Post by enos_feedler »

krishg wrote: post #217

Facebook would be good if they didn't keep shoving more and more services into it. I don't want to order food from Facebook and don't want to sell anything. Ad blocker takes care of ad spam.

Is it that you don't want to sell anything at all? or just on Facebook? When facebook launched this feature I had a bunch of old iPhones lying around and I sold them through facebook really fast. I actually liked it a lot. Identity was not an issue (never felt like I would get ripped off). It was easy to take a photo, set a price and publish within 10 seconds. I started to sell things I didn't even think about selling because it was so easy.
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