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Facebook wants your children's mind

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Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#111

Post by dr1337 »

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #62
deschainz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I just meant that he doesn't really acknowledge the harm that it does. Oh well, at least people are becoming more aware of it.

I guess it's sort of like a fast-food restaurant owner telling the customers that the food isn't healthy. What's the point? Everyone probably already knows that, and they'll eat it anyway (for various reasons). Facebook (and other social media sites) is like the digital version of a fast-food restaurant. And luckily for them they have 2 billion users eating it, so there is a lot of peer pressure on others who'd rathe…

I guess a drug dealer also can justify their line of work by saying that they are merely providing the means for a customer to obtain something that they like.

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#112

Post by pferde »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #99
gfiorav wrote: post #5

Jeez I quit Facebook like 6 years ago and never looked back. What’s the real need here? Old buddies you barely know of? Let them go. Just drop FB, it’s not that important, and 70% of people are clearly (by reading all the “I quit Facebook drama posts”) over attached to it.

I haven't logged into my facebook account in at least five years and I don't miss it one bit. The thing that pushed me over the edge was when I received an enthusiastic happy birthday from a girl I went to high school with. She was a couple of years older than me and I realized she had never spoken a single word to me in real life. For some reason this seemed so wrong and twisted and ended up being the straw that bro…

Perhaps she couldn't muster the courage to talk to you the entire high school, and when she finally tried to connect with you, you blew her away. The poor girl must be devastated...

Seriously, though, this happens to many people on facebook. A devaluation of interpersonal relationships.

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#113

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

himalayan_yak wrote: post #89
gfiorav wrote: post #5

Jeez I quit Facebook like 6 years ago and never looked back. What’s the real need here? Old buddies you barely know of? Let them go. Just drop FB, it’s not that important, and 70% of people are clearly (by reading all the “I quit Facebook drama posts”) over attached to it.

I think lots of HN readers here are missing perspectives from Facebook users in 'third' world countries, where there aren't a lots of alternatives for information sharing and discovery . As someone who grew up in one of those countries, I found Facebook incredibly useful to find alumni of my high school in US universities and ask them questions on how they got here (LinkedIn was not a thing then). There weren't, and…

If you are in a field of work which requires self-promotion, then Facebook is extremely useful, and empowering, because you can promote yourself without a middleman.

There's plenty other positives about facebook. It allows more convient and efficent ways of communication, networking, and sharing that honestly didn't exist before.

To me the fundamental problem of Facebook is not computer-facilitated social networking, but rather that it is run on proprietary centralized servers by a for-profit corporation.

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#114

Post by snvzz »

acover wrote: post #76
cdancette wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't agree with the parent comment, this seems a bit extreme.

I'm not saying I treat it as a red flag. I'm saying there are people that do. For better or worse.

That was also my intent. Don't go create a fb account to be employable, now.

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#115

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

egypturnash wrote: post #101

What if we declared Facebook to be a monopoly and broke it up like we did Ma Bell in the 70s? I dunno. Feels like it's too big, too ubiquitous, and is too much oriented towards encouraging behaviors that are much better for their pockets than for anyone using it. Hell, look at this story: Facebook already has (according to a quick google search, [citation needed]) about 58% of the US' entire adult population, or 3/4…

Better to create a better desirable alternative instead of breaking up something useful to most people.

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#116

Post by placeholderNam »

kristofferR wrote: post #40

NRK (Norways largest media corp) har a great story yesterday about the how the highly addictive snapstreaks feature in Snapchat are controlling teen's lives: https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834

I've been lurking HN for months now, just created an account to thank you for sharing this link! Google Translate worked well enough. The presentation of this article was really interesting. Despite being a teenager myself, I'm glad I don't use any (non-anon) social networks. This is really scary.

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#117

Post by tempodox »

egypturnash wrote: post #101

What if we declared Facebook to be a monopoly and broke it up like we did Ma Bell in the 70s? I dunno. Feels like it's too big, too ubiquitous, and is too much oriented towards encouraging behaviors that are much better for their pockets than for anyone using it. Hell, look at this story: Facebook already has (according to a quick google search, [citation needed]) about 58% of the US' entire adult population, or 3/4…

Corporations have always been trying to rule the world by selling hot air and "caveat emptor" has been a thing since markets exist. The Internet just gives you access to all the dumb people in the world at once. How will you control that from one country?

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#118

Post by pvdebbe »

rock_hard wrote: post #94
beeskneecaps wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would check out this app called “the telephone”. They say it was invented in 1876 and that local businesses answer them. When I use the app, I receive near instant feedback. There is even full-duplex voice recognition.

I hate phone calls! It’s worse than any notification I have ever gotten. Additionally the only calls I get these days are spam anyways :( It baffles me that we ever thought it’s acceptable for any person to just call you whenever they pleased...it’s such a intrusive and awkward medium. I would never go back to that and 100% happy with Facebook, email, etc

Protip: you can call businesses but you don't have to answer any calls from numbers you don't know or approve. This is a nice balance that I maintain. I used to be phone-shy but at some point I just realised that it's usually the fastest way to get the answers or service I look for.

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#119

Post by username223 »

vm wrote: post #14

Part of me thinks the the anti-Facebook media sentiment is because Facebook replaced newspapers/magazines as the highly profitable media aggregator. Old media struggles for relevance and lashes out at Facebook, the new winner. Facebook makes fantastic communications tool and gives them away for a whopping $0. I love staying aware of what's going on with my grandparents, old classmates, friends, and family, AND not ha…

> ... my point is that people pick on Facebook for privacy concerns but we all know it's an advertising company ...

More accurately, it's a surveillance company (with some behavioral testing and manipulation as well), and ads are just the best way to monetize information for now. As ad blockers and banner blindness become more common, they'll find another, probably worse, way to monetize that information, like pre-interview employee screening or pseudo-credit-scores.

Also, unlike Google, which at least built an innovative search engine back in the day (remember Lycos, Alta Vista, and "portals?"), I can't think of anything particularly novel or valuable created by Facebook.

Re: Facebook wants your children's mind

#120

Post by jamix »

gfiorav wrote: post #5

Jeez I quit Facebook like 6 years ago and never looked back. What’s the real need here? Old buddies you barely know of? Let them go. Just drop FB, it’s not that important, and 70% of people are clearly (by reading all the “I quit Facebook drama posts”) over attached to it.

Exactly. I quit Facebook about a month ago, not missing it one bit. Never used Instagram really, WhatsApp is soon to follow.
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