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Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

wsj.com

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Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#291

Post by _audakel »

exolymph wrote: post #288
diogenescynic wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won’t even let you view messages on the mobile website either. Instead they restrict that and force you to install the Messenger app. Yelp does the same thing and feels just as scummy of a tactic. Basically both companies try to force you to install an app you don’t actually need so they can mine your contacts and personal data. No thanks to your tricks and traps business model.

Last I tried, mbasic.facebook.com would let you look at messages on the mobile web.

Wow. Can confirm worked for me. Seems like the version low connectivity countries would get

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#292

Post by _audakel »

madeofpalk wrote: post #274
eyeball wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing chronological feeds was the straw for me to quit facebook and linkedin.

People go to LinkedIn in for the feed?

It's kinda nice to see what new jobs your friends have.... But that requires you to have friends.... Sooo I guess I have no reason to go.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#293

Post by bawana »

Kalium wrote: post #202
nougatbyte wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt this what diaspora and mastodon are doing?

Maybe! It's also what email is.

not really. email and list serves are somewhat 'dead'. they are distributed in chunky dumps only every so many hours. bbses are closer to what engage people. conversations are updated in a more granular fashion with a greater respect for timeliness. the point i was making is the current existence of a turn-key box that could be the building block of a publicly administered peer to peer network. the power of peer pressure is not to be underestimated. even my son who is a software engineer, knowledgeable about android, hacks his pixel , etc is moving to an iPhone because he has many friends - not software savvy - who are all on iPhones and iMessage each other , FaceTime themselves, etc. The magic can happen with A box that you can turn on and simply click an 'install' button that gets a peer to peer chat app that runs in a sandbox, shares some of your NAS space, is always on - A hooli box to make a new internet

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#294

Post by Spooky23 »

htaunay wrote: post #247
danpalmer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just started trialling Facebook Workplace. Unfortunately the same is true of that. It’s all about getting you back into Workplace, rather than actually doing your job.

This. Why on earth would an organization invest resources in a productivity tool which is by design optimized to make you procrastinate?

I’d never allow Facebook inside the firewall, but I did do a Yammer trial.

It was actually really cool, except nobody wanted to “own” the community, and eventually some assholes decided to be assholes and got it shut down.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#295

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

cm2012 wrote: post #267
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would not distinguish whether behavior tracking to algorithmically personalize ads ends up being better than just naive ads based on page-level content or other data unrelated a person or the person's behavior. What you're describing for non-mainstream sellers is just gains from internet-scale distribution platforms, whether it's Facebook or Reddit or whatever. It lets the little guy reach lots of people on a mu…

You can test this yourself easily on facebook. Just target a blank audience of all users vs a lookalike audience FB builds for you algorithmically. The latter works much, much better at generating sales for almost everyone.

> "The latter works much, much better at generating sales for almost everyone."

This seems like an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary statistical evidence to believe it. Both evidence to ensure the methodology of comparing whatever Facebook does with blank audience ad serving to whatever is done with lookalike audiences, as well as the "much, much better" part and the "almost everyone" part.

For example, with Google and Facebook controlling so much of all advertising traffic, it could easily be the case that 'blank audience' ad purchasing (which is less in Facebook's interest, since it doesn't help highlight their specialized data products) are directed towards users with less likelihood to engage to begin with, regardless of algorithmic profile or interests.

Do we have any knowledge of the precise differences of the two treatments (blank vs. digital lookalike)? If not, how could we even begin to attribute success seen in the 'lookalike' category to any value-add from Facebook? As opposed to possibly gaming the different user groups to make such an A/B test always tilt in their favor.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#296

Post by stordoff »

chinhodado wrote: post #95
cma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how useful it would be if when there is a notification about a friend on Facebook, you could peek it by swiping on the notification in the android drawer like you can with texts, without entering the Facebook app. Nope. Engineers are dedicated there to increasing other things than the utility of the app. Interests aren't aligned with the users. Same with removing chronological feeds. Turn things more and more…

The most frustrating change for me was FB (or Messenger later) used to send me an email when I received a message, with the message content inside the email. A few years ago they removed the content from the email and forced me to log into FB or Messenger to see the message. It's extremely user hostile.

It's basically turning your friends' messages into clickbait. I got one recently that was "Someone just flagged me down at a..." and it just feels like a really insidious way to get you to go to Facebook and read the rest. It doesn't even show that much in the actual email, only in the Gmail preview - it's just a link to Facebook (the text is set to "color:#FFFFFF;display:none !important;font-size:1px;").

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#297

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

emtel wrote: post #283
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #224

> "Small cultural disagreements between the two staffs also popped up, involving issues such as noise around the office and the size of WhatsApp’s desks and bathrooms, that took on greater significance as the split between the parent company and its acquisition persisted." ^^ coupled with a photo of outrageously poor open-plan office space. This is just insane. Like, executives should be ashamed of themselves if they…

I'm a former fb employee, and to say that they "turn your work life into a micromanagement panopticon" is way off. Overall it's a great place to work as a software engineer, although it depends a lot on your team. Many employees have minor frustrations with various things like open plan offices, oversubscribed bathrooms, lack of parking, etc. I suppose there must be some employees who quit because of these sorts of i…

This seems at odds with the photo in the OP linked article (referenced by the quote in my comment), as well as any other similar photos of what the physical work spaces are like.

I mean, it seems like indisputable evidence based on the physical structure of the work space. I don't see how there's a way to interpret photographic depictions of the actual Facebook offices in some other way.

It's like saying, "See this picture of a work space that indisputably shows it to be a grotesque panopticon? ... well, trust me, it's not a panopticon."

Is the picture a forgery or something?

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#298

Post by Kalium »

bawana wrote: post #293
Kalium wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe! It's also what email is.

not really. email and list serves are somewhat 'dead'. they are distributed in chunky dumps only every so many hours. bbses are closer to what engage people. conversations are updated in a more granular fashion with a greater respect for timeliness. the point i was making is the current existence of a turn-key box that could be the building block of a publicly administered peer to peer network. the power of peer pres…

You're right on all your points. In detail, no less! Such a system could indeed be marvelous, a system to make a new internet for a new generation.

Yet, you're describing email still in essence. A system where people interact very rapidly in a distributed, authority-less magic box based network. Email happens to be chunk-y, though in practice it tends to be nearly as fast as chat.

But I'll humor you. Now you're describing XMPP. Magic sandboxed chat applications, peer-to-peer, NAS storage, authority-free, and monitization-free. Wrap it up in Docker or something, and you have your turnkey magic. Right? Right!

You still have all the problems that come with this. For example, stemming abuse is a major problem with decentralized systems. How do you stop spammers? Appeal to the decentralized community and hope? Peer pressure has never been enough to stop this. Authority and trust problems run rife. Most users are too ignorant and unskilled to look after their systems properly, which is a problem you won't be able to magic away.

I'm trying to be nice here. You're re-inventing email, in a way that does nothing to stem the basic problems of email. You have all the idealism that created email to begin with - lovely, beautiful, admirable idealism! - and little of the pragmatism.

Fundamentally, there have been two kinds of decentralized, authority-less, un-monetized networks: those that are unpopular and those that become popular enough to be subject to a ton of abuse. Abuse that leads to professional service offerings that re-centralize, re-intermediate, and re-monetize the services in order to make them usable to ordinary people again. It's absolutely possible that your idea would be neither of those! It's just that so far I've not been shown anything convincing that this could be the case.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#299

Post by stygiansonic »

This blog post from Whatsapp is almost 6 years old: https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads (it was linked to from the WSJ article)

Almost prescient is the final line:

When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say "Have you considered the alternative?"

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#300

Post by jessewmc »

rm999 wrote: post #57

I've had a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg as a leader, and have gone out of my way to defend him in the past ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17128369 ). I always envisioned whatsapp as a defensive purchase that would stay true to its initial vision (perhaps being used to prop up their other products in an unintrusive manner). But this article makes me realize Mark is s a one-trick advertising…

I don't think the dark patterns are a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. The machine maximizes input of human attention for the output of money.

The only thing really surprising about Facebook is how consistently well they have executed that function, and for how long they have incrementally optimized it. Zuckerberg deserves some blame/credit for that for sure.

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