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Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

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Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#111

Post by type0 »

asark wrote: post #99
nikofeyn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites i find myself having to explicitly add "forum" or "forums" to my google search to find things that might be in a forum, despite them being the most relevant to certain searches.

Googling has gotten really hard. I used to be able to really nail exactly what I wanted, craft queries that'd "drag" obscure pages up to the first couple results by picking words likely to be used in links to those pages but rarely elsewhere, that kind of thing. No longer works at all. Attempts to narrow with quotes and phrases end in "no pages found" (bull. shit.) It's like they downranked everything not on the top…

Google removed their discussion-search feature some years ago, any idea why?

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#112

Post by dragontamer »

adnfo883kkd wrote: post #101
dragontamer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly... forums are dying because of Discord. Maybe Google-docs (which is emerging as a highly-curated, invite-only chat-platform for the younger generation). Kids these days go to Discord and/or Google Docs for serious conversation. If you have an adult community, they may still use forums, but its more or less seen as a dated and ancient Web 1.0 sort of thing. Google-docs fits all the requirements. No major schoo…

I'm not really disagreeing with you about discord and google docs being popular but something strikes me about it. (1) because they're both centrally controlled, which leads to some of the same problems (2) google docs for chat is pretty ad hoc, which is fine at some level, but points to something (secrecy? ban-proof-ness? teenagers co-opting something where there might be a better solution, like irc or riot or vario…

> google docs for chat is pretty ad hoc, which is fine at some level, but points to something (secrecy? ban-proof-ness? teenagers co-opting something where there might be a better solution, like irc or riot or various group chats?)

Google Docs for chat is no different than Wikipedia for discussion. The "Talk:" pages are group owned and visible to everyone. Google Docs has a realtime element, but otherwise works as a realtime wiki.

Plenty of internet discussion took place on the Wikis of old, not just Wikipedia but the original c2 WikiWikiWeb.

> How much is this discussion about centralization versus public versus private-facing communication?

This is tangential. People don't visit "vBulletin", they visit SomethingAwful. If you have a decentralized protocol (like vBulletin, PhpBB, Masteodon, or whatever), the laypeople generally don't care about that technological detail.

The typical web-user will be visiting "SomethingAwful", or "Digg". The webpage itself is associated with a community: a set of moderators.

Wikipedia and Wikia use similar software, but their communities are completely different. Federalized vs Centralized is a blip in the radar, its about policy, contributors and community.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#113

Post by type0 »

DataWorker wrote: post #77
bluGill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet of the past was not useful for family/friend communications. I don't want the world to see pictures of my kids (even though nobody cares it still isn't a good idea), but I do want my parents to see them. Social media solves this problem. The interesting things you list were too public and so didn't. Don't get me wrong, I do miss the forums of the past, but there is also some good in what we have today.

No, Facebook and other social media websites do not provide value, they suck up value for the shareholders. Facebook and others like them are a disease, and they have effectively killed the internet. Your point about being able to show your grandparents pictures totally ignores email and other technologies that “solved” this problem more than a decade before Facebook. Hell, you could create a personal website with pa…

when bluGill writes: "I don't want the world to see pictures of my kids (even though nobody cares it still isn't a good idea), but I do want my parents to see them." - it makes me wonder if this means that kids gave their approval to this and were even able understand the impact on their life when their parents gave away their biometric data to sell for the highest bidder.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#114

Post by type0 »

themoat wrote: post #95
DataWorker wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Facebook and other social media websites do not provide value, they suck up value for the shareholders. Facebook and others like them are a disease, and they have effectively killed the internet. Your point about being able to show your grandparents pictures totally ignores email and other technologies that “solved” this problem more than a decade before Facebook. Hell, you could create a personal website with pa…

I completely comprehend the bad things the platforms introduce, but pre-social media it was just really inconvenient to stay in touch with people way out of your area. Blogs were alright for it, but not great for 2 way communication in my memories. I stayed in Peru for a couple years pre-facebook. I told friends and my host family I'd stay in touch and we all shared email addresses. I wrote less than 3 emails. Next c…

> You have a fixed place that I can contact you and reach out. Oh, and it's the same website where I can find my favorite college roommate too...

I thought that too, until I discovered that some of those old friends actually were impersonated and who knows how many identity thefts there are out there.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#115

Post by netwanderer3 »

Facebook's basic concept is not bad. It's precisely their business model relying on advertising as the main source for revenue that is causing all sorts of interest conflicts.

Due to the nature of this business model, Facebook no longer serves its users, instead the platform has been tailored and customized in every possible way to exploit their users for its own profits, by selling their personal data/information to the highest private bidders, very often done behind the scene without much public awareness.

Having said that, the frequency of bad news about Facebook that seemingly keeps popping up every day is suspiciously abnormal. There must be an external force that is being dedicated to digging all the shit up at Facebook right now. You literally cannot go through a day without seeing new scandals from them on your news feed. An organization with security measures like Facebook's is incapable of leaking bad news at such rates by itself.

Don't want to mention their names here, but are these retaliation actions coming from those who had been previously wrong by Facebook?

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#116

Post by vbuwivbiu »

tim333 wrote: post #67

The actual Linus quote (not in the article): Bob: If you had to fix one thing about the networked world, what would it be? Linus: Nothing technical. But, I absolutely detest modern "social media"—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It's a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior. I think part of it is something that email shares too, and that I've said before: "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle". When yo…

"On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle"

nail on head

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#118

Post by netwanderer3 »

trpc wrote: post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

Before social media came along, nobody really put much effort or invested into data mining. Yes Google existed but it was more or less serving as an information aggregator only, without the ability to connect the dots and identify individuals.

The rise of all these trends of big data was corresponding to the wave of social media, and these companies are now holding so much public information that grant them an enormous power and opportunity to shape our world.

With great power comes great responsibility. Their current capability potentially allows them to manipulate the world and our information at will, if they choose to do so. It can become extremely dangerous and open for abuse if not kept in check.

Nobody is auditing their data so everything is a just a mystery black box with no transparency. You either choose to believe in what they say, or you don't. The data is irrelevant by itself, it's their intentions that could become dangerous.

Does anyone even trust social media companies? Even their own employees don't let their kids come near it. I wonder what happens on their bring kids to work day?

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