Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 173 posts

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#81

Post by kolbe »

Slansitartop wrote: post #67
kolbe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tiring and meaningless" eh? As opposed to your meaningful and engaging strawman reply? Even if it were true that an essay or article couldn't be disseminated effectively without Facebook getting involved at some point, it doesn't mean that readers must be burdened with a popup that asks them to log in to Facebook before viewing.

It seems nearly every single post where someone suggests people delete their Facebook accounts always has some comment pointing out that the NYT, or Medium, or whatever the article was published has a Facebook share widget or something like that. IMHO, those comments might as well be "First Post!" for all they add. > it doesn't mean that readers must be burdened with a popup that asks them to log in to Facebook befor…

> IMHO

If you need to preface a comment with 'IMHO', especially when your HO is just a dressed up and unsubstantiated insult, it's probably an indication that what you're about to say will add zero value to Hacker News.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#82

Post by nothrabannosir »

For the life of me I can't remember where I originally read this quote, but it forever changed my perspective of FB. Paraphrased: "Facebook is 3 things: the wall, the messaging, and an automatically updating rolodex." Many apps fill 1 and/or 2, but nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative.

For better or for worse: I want to stay in touch with people I've met in the oddest places. In the middle of bumsquash Uruguay, people who had barely ever heard of Europe, but they had Facebook. All of them. The only place on earth where this wasn't true was China, in my experience.

So, no, I won't #deletefacebook. I've stopped using it meaningfully a long time ago, but until something becomes a reliable, multi-decade spanning auto-updating rolodex, I'll have to stay here.

Mastodon will never, ever, not in a billion years fill that gap. And I don't need more alternatives for #1 and #2, so there dies that dream for me.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#83

Post by jonbarker »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #51
godelski wrote: post #30

So I question the sustainability of these platforms? How are they supported when they have sufficient mass? If they aren't gathering data on users and selling ads then how are they generating revenue?

Decentralized platforms aren't a business. The decentralized model scales remarkably well for a very small cost because there are hundreds (or thousands!) of instances that run at a small scale and communicate with the broader network. Many volunteers run small instances that cost only a few dollars a month to maintain and are often supported by donations from the users of that instance. You can even run your own ins…

If I am reading fb history correctly they had a business (apple and party poker ads) even when they were distributed (one server and mysql db per school).

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#84

Post by onychomys »

Mononokay wrote: post #48
burner8309 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is democracy working as intended. We have just realized that democracy and widespread, instant communication are incompatible.

> We have just realized that democracy and widespread, instant communication are incompatible. I'd say that's absolutely not true - it's a demonstration that the republic system is broken. He lost the popular vote, yet still won. That's anti-democratic, whilst being pro-republic. True democracy would still work fine if done pragmatically - have people, when registering to vote, be given a PGP key. Have them send in a…

But the problems we had with the last election weren't caused by fraudulent voting. Everyone voted properly, it's just that another country spent some money convincing us to vote the way that they wanted us to. Even if we moved to a direct democracy system and gave everybody unbreakable crypto, it wouldn't stop them from watching TV and sharing junk on social media.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#85

Post by oldsklgdfth »

nopreserveroot wrote: post #75
kerng wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the sophistication that we just now start to fully realize, adblockers probably dont help that much - i mean they get the obvious stuff out of the way, which is great. But there other forms of tracking (like super cookies), and others we might not even be aware of. The entire combination of what information some companies gather and exchange behind the scene is not that well understood at scale.

They can collect all they like, but if you never see any advertisements, it has little influence over you. I was not commenting on the violation of privacy these bad actors commit through the collection.

It's easy to ignore the ads if you know they are ads. What about sponsered content in movies, music, tv, news, etc? We have seen all of these used. The drive to promote a message to someone goes waay beyond advertising.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#86

Post by olodus »

fluxsauce wrote: post #78
mfoy_ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me and mine, a big selling point of FB is the event management piece. Does Mastodon have anything similar?

Nope. It's more similar to Twitter (chronological timeline), but without promoted messages / "you may have missed" types of features. Event Invitations is one of the few uses of FB that I still have. I'm open to alternatives that simplify facilitate threaded discussions between those who were invited, but as with any system convenience is a factor. Google Calendar does work, yet somehow (and ironically) seems more in…

+1 on this. This is one of the things I also haven't been able to find replacement for outside of FB yet. I guess it might be because it it almost too simple of a problem, to easy so no one makes a solution all can come together on. All an event mostly is is a message thread to which you can pin some information about when and where, right? In that case I would almost say the functionality is probably already there. Just that we have to change how we do things.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#87

Post by Goronmon »

nopreserveroot wrote: post #27
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #10

I'm reposting this comment because I would like to open the discussion up beyond facebook and social media and into the reality that technology has provided marketing with some pretty ridiculous tools. : I feel like you used to be able to avoid getting swindled by ignoring the swindler, ex. close the door to the saleman, or ignore the gypsy pear salesmen at the market. Today, marketing is engineered at such a level t…

I do not understand how anyone in 2018 finds the internet remotely usable without some form of ad blocker. This is how you ignore the modern salesman.

I do not understand how anyone in 2018 finds the internet remotely usable without some form of ad blocker. This is how you ignore the modern salesman.

It's actually pretty simple. You just don't visit sites with ads that bother you.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#88

Post by bittercynic »

Mononokay wrote: post #64
bittercynic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you forgot the '/s' tag. Please consider how widely PGP is used, and how capable someone in the bottom decile of technical savvy would be of doing that. I think it is important that our elections use systems that are readily comprehensible to laypeople.

Cryptography is, at its core, easy to explain to the layman. (PBS explained it fairly well on a kids' show a while back, I believe.) A GUI wrapper made to send secure emails isn't a particularly difficult thing for your average user, either. You could make it as simple as downloading an app, going to get you physically registered, having the govt. official input relevant keys into the app, and then: Type In Your Pref…

Though it is possible to set up a GUI to do that, I don't think it is possible to do it in a way that makes it easy to confirm that the app is really doing what it claims to. You may be able to create a system where experts can verify the integrity, but I don't think you can create a computerized system where average people can independently verify the integrity of the system.

Paper, managed by trusted humans, really shines in this kind of task. Maybe some of the trusted humans will turn out to be dishonest, but it is much harder to commit large scale fraud and then cover it up.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#89

Post by vanderZwan »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #82

For the life of me I can't remember where I originally read this quote, but it forever changed my perspective of FB. Paraphrased: "Facebook is 3 things: the wall, the messaging, and an automatically updating rolodex." Many apps fill 1 and/or 2, but nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative. For better or for worse: I want to stay in touch with people I've met in the oddest places. In the middle of bumsquash Urugu…

Honestly, I think this is more a problem of perception than anything else. For one thing, loss aversion makes us think we'll miss things way more than we'll do (see also: FOMO). Losing contact with people mostly involves not thinking about them. If you don't think about them, you don't miss them either. Friends come and go in life, it's natural. And if you did miss them, you'd put in work to keep in touch through other means.

I know because I have a circle of close friends that I only see once or twice a year, but stay in touch with through email. Guess what: it works. And if you migrate, you just email your friends about it.

Similarly, although I don't know if this is generally possible in every country, but I have diligently carried over my first mobile phone number from carrier to carrier. When I moved abroad to Sweden for a few years, I switched to the absolute cheapest minimal carrier to essentially "invest" in keeping that phone identity. This means that people who met me as far back as the late nineties can still reach me on it. Friends that I have made later even know they can rely on this, that this is my "policy". I'm about to leave Sweden for Germany. Still keeping that Dutch phone number. In fact, I'm leaving it with all of my friends here, and use it for all the messaging apps that rely on phone numbers.

And finally, just claim your own bit of internet and get a website. Your friends can search for you.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#90

Post by oldsklgdfth »

gooseus wrote: post #41
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #10

I'm reposting this comment because I would like to open the discussion up beyond facebook and social media and into the reality that technology has provided marketing with some pretty ridiculous tools. : I feel like you used to be able to avoid getting swindled by ignoring the swindler, ex. close the door to the saleman, or ignore the gypsy pear salesmen at the market. Today, marketing is engineered at such a level t…

> People with power and wealth could still be toppled when you exposed them to the truth. How in the fuck does that even come close to happening today? I have doubts that this happened regularly in the past, usually wealthy/powerful were allowed to be toppled by their enemies. I don't know the details of how Weinstein got toppled after so many years of being protected, but my gut says that the people who were protect…

I appreicate your thorough response and giving me all these resources to dig through.

I think that in the past you had to be a very intelligent machiavellian-type dude to stay in power and it was a constant struggle. You probably had to be a very good at reading people and understanding their psyche. But there are only so many such guys and they can only manipulate so many people.

I think technology has given people with power and money the ability to automate influence on a much larger scale for cheap. Not that technology is bad. Technology makes hard problems easier. It can make all those things that a smart person had to constantly work on repeatable and consistent. When i think of data mining the last thing on my mind is product ads. I think gerrymandering. I tip my hat to the evil genius that figured out how to draw districts like that. I bet you could get most of that data from people's facebook. Even without that though, using other data you could get. And even if you dont have any digital data available, you can probably be classified based on a few facts. And......your vote is null now.

What I struggle with is the fact that now influence is global and widespread and I can't for the life of me figure out how that gets reigned in. It's kinda mindblowing.

Post reply on HN