100% disagree. My older relatives use Facebook to reconnect with old pals and love sharing family pictures and conversing over messenger. It’d be difficult to find them otherwise. I’m personally not on Facebook because I cringe on what people post but to say it’s the worst thing on the internet is pretty ignorant
Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
161–170 of 202 posts
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I somewhat disagree with his assessment of influencers. Can they be annoying? Yes. Are they providing real value for companies to be able to connect with tribes of people? Yes. The influencer has single handedly upended the advertisement industry and taken money away from traditional media is a big way. I think it's given more jobs to people who don't work on Madison Avenue and maybe don't have technical skills, but…
I'm guessing most people who don't like influencers would rather have newspapers than provide more value to companies and create an industry for people whose main talent is popularity.
And only the most popular stories are noticed. The backstories for many of these people aren't often told:
https://nypost.com/2018/03/03/my-quest-for-instagram-stardom...
I don't understand what value they really provide to the public. They almost exist to inspire envy.
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#163Facebook seems to be taking a lot of heat these days. But I wonder: what would actually "fix" the platform? As far as I can tell, the only "solution" is getting rid of Facebook. Obviously, FB doesn't agree. Short of destroying itself (and having a competitor instantly take its place), what should they do? What can they do? Proposed solutions to their various problems: - Make the timeline less addictive, to prevent pe…
They should stop selling advertising and charge for API access to the social graph, both users and app developers. There should be a free tier with the core functionality for users.
This will realign Facebook's interests with the interests of their userbase.
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook innovation was not to connect with friends (many other sites / services was doing it). Facebook innovation was the news feed: all friends news in a single time ordered infinite scrollable page. The value of facebook is how good it is to keep the newsfeed interesting.
Honestly, outside of the tech innovation, FB's biggest "in" was its exclusivity. - First, you HAD to have a Harvard .edu address. For a lot of the general public, Harvard is top of mind when people think 'elite' institution - Next, they expanded it, but only to other US schools with .edu domains. That's when I joined, around 2005. - Finally, they opened it up to the general public everywhere, and by that time they we…
Yes, the method of rollout was helpful in its adoption. The name recognition of the first institutions (first Harvard, then other Ivies and other selective schools) was helpful in hyping it. I don't think it was a household name in 2006 but the rate of adoption did help it garner attention from the press.
Not rushing into generating revenue helped. Handling scaling up well, compared to its social media competitors, helped.
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#165Before 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…
From my perspective, it's only gotten worse over time with FB. How do you explain the numerous privacy/data breaches, FB data being used to undermine democracy and spread disinformation, and its monopolistic practices preventing other "partners" from competing with the marriage. To use your marriage analogy, this is a MESSED UP marriage. FB is like a spouse preventing you from even socializing with other people of th…
FB is a partner who snoops on all your apps without permission.
Facebook is a partner who snoops on your Facebook without permission!
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#166Earlier 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…
Your parents were on ICQ? And AIM? They set up a Myspace account? Facebook is easy to use and accessible everywhere. This is coming from someone that hasn't had a Facebook account since 2009. GP makes great points and the title to this submission is pure clickbait.
My parents let me log into their AIM accounts, before I was old enough to get my own, and then we kept in touch. We moved to Yahoo messenger, and my Dad still keeps in touch with me via Hangouts. We migrate; instant messaging is an easy tech, and there's always something available to use, so we just grab whatever's convenient and go.
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
not sure, to be honest.
thats how it was in my circles until ~05-06. everyone kept switching emails and used a different address on each service/forum. until gmail came along. suddenly everyone used their gmail address for everything. and even that got phased out when facebook came along.
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#168Before 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 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.
And chances are you are never going to speak to that person again even if you are friends on facebook.
The only thing that facebook invented is how to increase user engagement by finding loopholes in our psychology and get us addicted to their products.
Facebook did not invent anything other than making this world more chaotic.
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#169Before 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…
Eeeehhh I don't think that's as guaranteed as you make it out to be. Surviving technologies had a honeymoon phase, a disillusionment, and then they even out into a plateau. Not all technologies are guaranteed to survive forever and end up like this though, there are many examples of things that just plain weren't worth it once the true costs were revealed.
It's fine to lose touch with people. Some people are meant to drift away as you move forward in life, you can't have everything all the time. Those people still drift away even with facebook, you just have this illusion that they're still in your life. Often you have to watch their bizarre posts as they get old and go nuts. Or some arbitrary algo hides them from you anyway, and you forget they are even in your friends list. This is just me, but I think I'd rather have the fuzzy memories of some high school friend and the closure; the certainty of knowing that chapter of life is done. If both of us can't be bothered to put forth the minimum required effort to keep in touch, so be it. Is it really of any value to have a purely symbolic attachment to this person forever? Look through your full friends list and contemplate this for a while.
It's not certain yet, but the social cost of facebook could potentially be enormous and damaging. In the end will it really prove worthwhile? Should we put up with the "real marriage" after the honeymoon? If it's a sufficiently rocky marriage--if it's a one-sided and abusive relationship--the rational thing to do is not to hold tight, ignore it and ride it out. The right thing to do is plan for divorce. I think this is yet to be determined, but I'm starting to lean towards the opinion that near-exclusively digital socialization was a mistake.
Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet
#170"Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet" -Twitter