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Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#41

Post by yahna »

AlexandrB wrote: post #8

I find that the headline and the article mischaracterizes what is happening. The "Wild Web" was reigned in long ago by commercial interests. A distributed web with many small nodes would still be hard to control and police effectively. However as much the web has been centralized by the likes of Google, Facebook, and large media conglomerates effective government censorship is once again possible. This is like a wild…

Not just censorship, manipulation.

I don't trust any government to censor, but we know the russians engaged in shady tactics already.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#42

Post by outoftacos »

banku_brougham wrote: post #21
outoftacos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is par for the course for the NYT, the noble corporations are painted as heroes keeping us safe from the dirty wildlings who are about to topple the wall any day now. They do the same thing with many (large) companies, the State Department, all military/intelligence branches, etc. It's how you get access, and they seem more willing to play ball and churn out these puff pieces over doing real journalism than anyo…

Washington Post all the way. I still read it, but NYT often disappoints me when I already know something about the subject. New Yorker is good, but not science sections. The NYT Cassini coverage was good. edit: I mistakenly put Wash Times. Yehowa.

Yeah I still think the NYT has the best science coverage out there, but business and tech has become such a joke over the past 20 years it's not even worth checking.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#43

Post by ben_jones »

robbrown451 wrote: post #36
doktrin wrote: post #29

Facebook is most likely a net negative in this world. I don't know if it's always been true, but I think it is now. I personally didn't realize how strong my feelings were until one of their recruiters contacted me. I'm far from a 'values' driven employee, but this was by far the easiest refusal of my career.

I agree it is a net negative, but it kind of needs to be clarified because if Facebook didn't exist, it would be someone else. Maybe MySpace would have evolved to fill the niche, or maybe another company, or maybe even an open solution. I tend to think that it would be quite possible for a company to fill the Facebook niche in a much more positive way, while still making a profit. But they certainly won't be able to…

Was there really such a NEED for fb to exist that it was inevitable?!

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#44

Post by Top19 »

> Facebook is racing to gain the advantage in Africa over rivals like Google and Chinese players including Tencent, in a 21st century version of the “Scramble for Africa.”

That is a really scary thing to have read. Perhaps the New York Times is out of line in using it, but if that metaphor is even 10% accurate that would be very bad.

To give some background, the “Scramble for Africa” is the only time I’ve ever read the words, where the writer had a serious argument, “was worse than the holocaust”. This was in reference to the mass deaths in the Congo under King Leopold of Belgium, as documented in the book “King Leopold’s Ghost”.

I know a ton of people have died in history and there have been so many wars, but the Scramble for Africa was really really really bad.

Yeah so I guess in conclusion, NY Times shouldn’t have used that phrase, Facebook sucks, and if they (Facebook) mess up almost everywhere please please just not let them mess up the African continent.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#45

Post by Top19 »

__jal wrote: post #23
ameister14 wrote: post #18

If we're going with the wild-west analogy, what's happening now is the transition from a Territory to a State. It was wild and ungoverned, then corporations moved in and created some order, and now governments see order and are moving in to take over management.

It is a terrible analogy all around. What is happening is that Facebook is shifting from being AOL 2.0 to being a government contractor. They'll eventually be more entrenched and integrated (in the US) with the IRS, police, intelligence, etc. The first step is to get them over a barrel, with public opinion against them. The rest is easy, and FB will embrace it.

lol the AOL 2.0 analogy. I will never forgive my parents for signing us up for AOL Broadband. What is AOL Broadband you wonder? Well you sign in to AOL just like you did with dial-up, the experience is almost the same so old people didn’t freak out, and then it drops you into AOL’s shitty shitty browser. Oh and it even blocked our other browser from ever working due to how the tunnels were configured (Internet Explorer), and you couldn’t use a wireless router with AOL Broadband in Texas until 2006 (ruining Xbox Live which was on the 2nd floor).

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#46

Post by ouid »

skybrian wrote: post #31
AlexandrB wrote: post #8

I find that the headline and the article mischaracterizes what is happening. The "Wild Web" was reigned in long ago by commercial interests. A distributed web with many small nodes would still be hard to control and police effectively. However as much the web has been centralized by the likes of Google, Facebook, and large media conglomerates effective government censorship is once again possible. This is like a wild…

The wild Internet is definitely still there. The problem is that it got too hostile for most users due to spam, viruses, malware, phishing, trolls, doxing, and so on. It will get worse, as attackers adopt machine learning techniques and automate social engineering at scale. So users have a problem. Companies that solved it the right way became enormous, because protection from all that crap is something people want,…

>Snapchat helped teens avoid creating a permanent record of things.

Why isn't Snapchat more popular than Instagram? I assumed that it was the case that more people have stage fright than don't. Is this a faulty assumption, or are people just acting in defiance of this fear?

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#47

Post by adiabatty »

ouid wrote: post #46
skybrian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wild Internet is definitely still there. The problem is that it got too hostile for most users due to spam, viruses, malware, phishing, trolls, doxing, and so on. It will get worse, as attackers adopt machine learning techniques and automate social engineering at scale. So users have a problem. Companies that solved it the right way became enormous, because protection from all that crap is something people want,…

>Snapchat helped teens avoid creating a permanent record of things. Why isn't Snapchat more popular than Instagram? I assumed that it was the case that more people have stage fright than don't. Is this a faulty assumption, or are people just acting in defiance of this fear?

Instagram has auto-deleting photo streams now, I hear.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#48

Post by adiabatty »

ben_jones wrote: post #43
robbrown451 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it is a net negative, but it kind of needs to be clarified because if Facebook didn't exist, it would be someone else. Maybe MySpace would have evolved to fill the niche, or maybe another company, or maybe even an open solution. I tend to think that it would be quite possible for a company to fill the Facebook niche in a much more positive way, while still making a profit. But they certainly won't be able to…

Was there really such a NEED for fb to exist that it was inevitable?!

People want to keep in touch with other people? Yeah, I think so.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#49

Post by privaroonie »

ben_jones wrote: post #43
robbrown451 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it is a net negative, but it kind of needs to be clarified because if Facebook didn't exist, it would be someone else. Maybe MySpace would have evolved to fill the niche, or maybe another company, or maybe even an open solution. I tend to think that it would be quite possible for a company to fill the Facebook niche in a much more positive way, while still making a profit. But they certainly won't be able to…

Was there really such a NEED for fb to exist that it was inevitable?!

Back in the early days of the web, I always wanted an easy way to have a personal "presence" online, to stay in touch with friends and have a sort of virtual "contact list". Friendster (in its original incantation) was probably the best realization of that. I'd say that sort of thing was more or less needed & inevitable, at least at the time. Facebook originally started as a "better" version Friendster (and its successor, MySpace).

Today, Facebook is nothing like those systems of the past. It's now a horribly gamified, ad-saturated UX anti-pattern nightmare. I'm pretty sure that was also more or less inevitable, but for different reasons.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#50

Post by ben_jones »

adiabatty wrote: post #48
ben_jones wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there really such a NEED for fb to exist that it was inevitable?!

People want to keep in touch with other people? Yeah, I think so.

TIL Facebook is the first human invention that lets you keep in touch with others.
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