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Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

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Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#121

Post by porpoisely »

jasode wrote: post #48

The websites I constantly use every single day: google.com maps.google.com youtube.com wikipedia.org weather.gov stackoverflow.com For almost 20 years, I've been using Google for dozens of random searches every single day. Its utility to help me find information is unmatched. And Youtube -- even with the ads -- adds value to my life because of all the helpful tutorials and DIY content I can view for free. On the othe…

I don't get this. Google tracks more of your data than Facebook and yet you are praising google and denouncing facebook?

Also the silliness about russian election meddling has got to stop. The "russians" also spent a few thousand on google/youtube too. A few thousand in ad spending isn't going to affect an election where billions are spent.

This seems to be a constant here for some odd reason. Facebook does X hence facebook is evil. Google does the same X hence google is good.

I've never had a facebook account and never will. Never had a linkedin. I don't use google search ( switched to DDG ), though I do use youtube ( but willing to switch whenever a viable alternative shows up.

To me they are all equally bad and equally good. They all provide a service for your data.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#122

Post by dwild »

packetpirate wrote: post #67
vinceguidry wrote: post #20

Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again. Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have so…

> Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have someone who knew sysadmin do it basically for free, or have everyone learn how to use something like IRC. Did you just drop off the planet between 1995 - 2005? Poor Myspace... everybody just f…

I'm from that generation, all my friends were on MSN. That was the equivalent of Facebook at the time, everyone was there.

It was still not at all what Facebook is. I did school works on MSN but there was no history or always on conversations. We scheduled being on MSN to works on something. MSN was the equivalent of a room.

Facebook is the equivalent of a board, you put it there and you let people read it whenever they want, whenever they can. This is game changer. In University, most of the times, we didn't have to schedule time to works on it at the same time, it was and stayed in the Facebook conversation. It was actually quite rare that we were all on it at the same time.

Same goes for events organization. Never ever would I consider doing that on an IM. The difficulty of an events organization is finding time for all people to come together, you can't do that on an IM. Email could do that sure, but it's a clusterfuck, much more slow paced and people are much more prone to ignore them.

So yeah, IM was part of the solution but their ephemeral natures were a huge issue. Yes there were alternative, but they all came down with pretty issues themselves and one of the biggest, is simply that it wasn't used enough by others. I was barely able to convince people to switch from Facebook to Slack for school projects.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#123

Post by herbst »

vinceguidry wrote: post #110
packetpirate wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have someone who knew sysadmin do it basically for free, or have everyone learn how to use something like IRC. Did you just drop off the planet between 1995 - 2005? Poor Myspace... everybody just f…

I was there. I was 12 in 1995 and mostly accessed the Internet at school. In my teen years I eventually built my own computer and participated quite enthusiastically in the burgeoning social networking culture. That time spend became a core part of my identity. But it was insular, normal people didn't care for it. Facebook was the first social network everybody used.

Just adding that this is very America centric. In my experience Facebook still is a niche product for teenagers and moms of all ages in central Europe.

The only platform that 'everbody' kinda fits may is Whatsapp, but then again there is Asia and Line/WeChat.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#124

Post by herbst »

vinceguidry wrote: post #112
mattnewton wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were ample ad supported solutions that were pretty painless. Source: set up several invision free forums for my friends in 5th grade. Never touched a server and had no idea what we were doing, but used it constantly to stay in touch.

I'm not saying there weren't options. But you had to hear about them and learn how to use them, and then people would complain endlessly about your choices anyway. Facebook democratized social networking.

Same with Facebook?

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#125

Post by mjevans »

vinceguidry wrote: post #20

Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again. Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have so…

As someone that refuses to use a man-in-the-middle social platform without federation and without open interface protocols (email is fine in that respect as there are choices of provider and fully open protocols), Facebook and anything like it have only made my life worse.

It is amazing how lazy at socializing everyone is, how if you aren't on the platform they happen to be using you are an afterthought, if you're a thought at all.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#126

Post by mensetmanusman »

Sensationalism.

FB is a tool. Their mistake was deciding to mix politics into an app people liked for family/friend connections by trying and succeeding to increase monitization/engagement:

The News Feed

(I stopped using FB after the news feed started dominating my engagment in 2016)

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#127

Post by FB_goaway »

FB is a cancer 101% ! The biggest blackhat hack ever, FB and the mentality is propitiates is a threat to the real internet. Everyone lives on thier browser because of facebook. zuckerberg is a pedo, a blackhat, and an intellectual property thief. dont go playing the prove it cite it card, its right infront of everyones face, but the convienience is blinding all the old school users. FWIW if you are under 30 you have never even seen the real internet, and that is the biggest crime, 3 cohorts of netizens think its a crime to use telnet, or FTP, or access internet functions with CLI. smash the stupidity bubble and make FB die already .

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#128

Post by blueboo »

vinceguidry wrote: post #20

Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again. Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have so…

before facebook you were 14

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#129

Post by herbst »

askafriend wrote: post #119
hopfscotch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> providing real value for companies to be able to connect with tribes of people Listen to yourself holy shit

Is it not real value for companies to be able to connect with tribes of people that then may become the biggest proponents of your product? Take fashion, a very tribal concept where each subculture has their own take on it. If you're a fashion brand wouldn't you want to find a way to reach the subculture you're a part of? As much as you might want to deny it, marketing matters and more of it is coming online because…

Been there, done that. However things changed, a lot. If you are not constantly posting (and pushing and click baiting) your posts won't be very visible anymore.

The way to get in front of your audience on Facebook is money and that is rather expensive and due to amount of ads users have to experience these days only minimally effective.

There are millions of websites, thousands at least specific to any niche, that are happy to take your ad money and provide you with highly effektiv and targetted traffic.

This is not only cheaper and more effective but does help the actual Web by financing content providers.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#130

Post by ciupicri »

y4mi wrote: post #107
penglish1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet may get better, but it is not not guaranteed. And I predict that if it does it will be despite Facebook, not because of, or with it. Social networking was NOT an enormous pain in the ass. Everybody had, and still has email - it was the gateway to the internet. Roughly since the beginning of the internet. And all the people that joined. Email got used in almost all of the ways that Facebook did. In additi…

email addresses were treated as disposable and temporary from how i remember it before gmail went mainstream. providers came and went and custom domains for emails were extremely rare... at least in my circles

What was so special about Gmail? Except for the user interface and mailbox size, Hotmail and Yahoo were just as good and people used them for a long time.
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