I wish people would stop contributing to the Facebook mythos that elevates a social media platform into some kind of software based deity. It's just a website, it's not a threat to "free will" any more than a cigarette or coke addiction is a threat to "free will". People recite grand expositions regarding how "I stopped using facebook and it changed my life forever! I've never looked back!"... wonderful, but I want to suggest that it's just not that big of a deal either way, it's a website where people post selfies, memes, and uninformed political opinions, it really isn't that life-altering. If you truly despise Facebook, stop feeding its delusions of grandeur.
Facebook’s war on free will
101–110 of 284 posts
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#102> The problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines, we are really outsourcing thinking to the organisations that run the machines. This is the money quote of this article, and it's been on my mind quite a bit as of late. More than ever, we live in a world where there are many forces ready to take full advantage of our laziness. It takes a bit of introspection to really understand the tradeoffs that are appr…
Honestly, I think the right company with the right marketing could make Facebook completely irrelevant. All you'd need is a basic address book/profile functionality + basic messaging + event planning. Perhaps a use as a universal login, as many do like that.
They would lose a ton of users if the network effect would catch on, which is obviously the big hurdle.
It would also be a curious case of brands being left with few Facebook users, and likely no way into the disrupting service if it was funded by basic ads. That requires the disrupting company to not be greedy, but I think they could make a viable business out of it.
Please, someone make this for the greater good.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to defend Facebook, but I'm not sure about their data having no value for the users. One such example would be that they've connected people who were otherwise unknowing of each other. People have found long lost relatives due to the big data that Facebook has. I'd say that's value.
And I've seen friendships and families destroyed by arguments on FaceBook. We've also seen how much of it is truly fake, curated by foreign companies and political groups to push agendas.
This happened before facebook as well; it just wasn't so... public.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thankfully Reddit lets you tailor your subscriptions very narrowly, even allowing you to disable notifications altogether. Even if you take a machete to your friends list on a weekly basis, Facebook has a lot of noise.
Yep. I'm worried that reddit is going to abandon that user-friendliness though, under the typical SV pressure to "grow". Fingers crossed it never happens.
Is reddit even in the black yet? At the end of it the day, we have to make money for our software. All of that infrastructure and developers aren't free or cheap. Let's be honest with ourselves, people are never going to pay for software again like they used to in the 90s and 00s. Kind of in a way, I miss that. I wish you could pop in a CD of "reddit" with your subscription and that would be it.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#105I wish people would stop contributing to the Facebook mythos that elevates a social media platform into some kind of software based deity. It's just a website, it's not a threat to "free will" any more than a cigarette or coke addiction is a threat to "free will". People recite grand expositions regarding how "I stopped using facebook and it changed my life forever! I've never looked back!"... wonderful, but I want t…
It's not a website, it's a complex and sophisticated media and marketing platform with many, many different features and all of that comes with a bunch of pros and cons.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#106> The problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines, we are really outsourcing thinking to the organisations that run the machines. This is the money quote of this article, and it's been on my mind quite a bit as of late. More than ever, we live in a world where there are many forces ready to take full advantage of our laziness. It takes a bit of introspection to really understand the tradeoffs that are appr…
Honestly, I think the right company with the right marketing could make Facebook completely irrelevant. All you'd need is a basic address book/profile functionality + basic messaging + event planning. Perhaps a use as a universal login, as many do like that. They would lose a ton of users if the network effect would catch on, which is obviously the big hurdle. It would also be a curious case of brands being left with…
FB's tentacles are so deeply embedded in everything that I'm not sure a classic tech death from a disruptor is possible. Only a long and slow decline over a period of 5, maybe even 10 years.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#107> The problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines, we are really outsourcing thinking to the organisations that run the machines. This is the money quote of this article, and it's been on my mind quite a bit as of late. More than ever, we live in a world where there are many forces ready to take full advantage of our laziness. It takes a bit of introspection to really understand the tradeoffs that are appr…
Honestly, I think the right company with the right marketing could make Facebook completely irrelevant. All you'd need is a basic address book/profile functionality + basic messaging + event planning. Perhaps a use as a universal login, as many do like that. They would lose a ton of users if the network effect would catch on, which is obviously the big hurdle. It would also be a curious case of brands being left with…
So, contacts + email + calendar? I mean, the only difference here is how contacts are handled -- remotely-managed profiles in a singular remote registry instead of locally-managed profiles in plural local registries.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#108Has anyone come up with a way of tracking what gets shared where? Perhaps with a hidden pixel or some other mechanism to track requests? Or is that impossible because Facebook is a walled garden? I'm thinking that since there is no check against Facebook's sharing algorithm going haywire (in effect censoring certain things for monetary gain) that that creates an incentive to not be fair. The public nature of the inte…
The last monitoring attempt that I heard of used a browser plugin to scrape the user's posts. The point was to monitor political parties and their ad targeting before the upcoming elections in Germany.
Generally, Facebook needs to view contents of posts that is able to access third party websites a severe bug. It is an unwelcome data leak at least and a true attack vector at worst. So, tracking by linking to a third party tracking pixel should be impossible.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#109I feel like both the velocity of these articles about "The Facebook corporation" and people's awareness of their shady practices are increasing overall.
I guess I wonder will it manage to effect any change in people's online behavior and wholesale submission to this corporation's whims and agenda? I would like to believe yes but my anecdotal observations of people and their smart phones suggests to me there's no basis for believing that.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes you can, I have friends whom for various reason don't have a Facebook or stopped using it/deleted it. People will adjust and instead we contact them by mail or phone. Perhaps it's a bit of a annoyance, but you are not kept prisoner.
I often get invited to events through Facebook. Without Facebook, I would miss out on a lot of events. For this reason I'm basically stuck with Facebook, but I've unfollowed most of my friends, so this reduces the burden to some extent.
Ask one of your friends to text you if there is an event going on. As an added bonus, you might get some honest interaction with your friend.