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Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

nytimes.com

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Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#271

Post by nbadg »

apecat wrote: post #267
loudmax wrote: post #108

Better than breaking up social networks would be to force them to interoperate on an open protocol. When I first signed up for Facebook I was disappointed that only other Facebook users could see my account. Then when Google+ came on the scene I thought they'd worked out a way to interoperate with Facebook, but instead Google just wanted their own silo. What we really need is for social networks to interoperate the w…

Moxie Marlinspike, of Open Whisper Systems, had some pretty pessimistic things to say about how stagnant federated protocols become, and why they avoided that approach with Signal. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ End result: Signal is a real, usable tool, the recommendation of which is fully actionable security and privacy advice you can share with anyone who is capable of using WhatsApp. Here's some…

There are definitely some good arguments on either side of the federation discussion, though I personally tend to lean more towards the Moxie side than the optimistic one.

That being said, a big part of me wonders if (assuming you could find lawmakers with enough technical literacy to propose it, which would be a pretty huge ask!) you might be able to get the best of both worlds by requiring sites like facebook to expose an API for programmatic access. That would solve the stangancy problems that Moxie highlights (not to mention sidestepping the need to get everyone to agree on any one protocol), whilst simultaneously forcing a whole lot of things to open up.

Alternatively: part of the reason these walled gardens exist is that they control the concept of identity. Not necessarily in the sense of "this is my profile", but more in the sense of authentication and authorization. If you moved that somewhere else -- say, in the browser -- it would make it much easier to build systems that are interoperable.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#272

Post by dominotw »

bluGill wrote: post #138
dominotw wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so effective advertising does require surveillance? Is there way to to know if companies like FB would be sustainable without surveillance or would they simply die out ? in other words, would banning surveillance business kill FB, Google ect? Would we still want that law if that was the case?

newspapers, have done just fine without it for several hundred years. Radio and TV likewise can't do it. Duck Duck Go doesn't use it and they do okay. There is a lot more money in surveillance based advertising, but it isn't the only way.

> Duck Duck Go doesn't use it and they do okay.

Right. My point was FB/Google would cease to exist in their current form employing hundreds of thousands of ppl and responsible for US tech domination.

Would we as a society ok with losing all that and turning FB into a 100 ppl company that no one cares about.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#273

Post by kerkeslager »

zaroth wrote: post #237
kerkeslager wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook provides services that people want to use, like Login, or that provides real value better than the competitors (Marketplace). That's almost always true of monopolistic practices, so I don't see your point. > Complaining that you “have” to use Marketplace because things sell faster on it is totally bizarre. If things can't be sold quickly, they often can't be sold at all. There's no place to store this stuf…

I just don't understand how Facebook helping you sell stuff faster is a bad thing for you, or for Facebook. What excessive control or monopolistic practice did Facebook exert in order to help you sell your stuff faster? Being better at something because you have a lot of users and a halfway decent UI isn't anti-competitive. Contrast this, for example, with Intel paying competitors not to also sell AMD chips, or Googl…

> I just don't understand how Facebook helping you sell stuff faster is a bad thing for you, or for Facebook.

They aren't helping sell things faster. They're forcing me to use their platform if I want to sell things slightly slower to how I used to sell things on Craigslist. It's faster to sell on Facebook now, but it's not as fast as it used to be on Craigslist.

> Being better at something because you have a lot of users and a halfway decent UI isn't anti-competitive.

They aren't better. If anything, their tooling is inferior to Craigslist's--it's harder to find the things you want on Facebook, and Facebook's seller tools are rudimentary. Facebook has a larger user base because buyers have moved over to Facebook, but the idea that this is an improved experience for anyone is flat wrong. The migration is because Facebook is using their other services to direct people into their marketplace, not because they provide a better marketplace.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#274

Post by int_19h »

joe_the_user wrote: post #266
SamuelAdams wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: what if cell phone carriers only let you talk / text with people on the same carrier network? Suddenly everyone would need to buy T-Mobile, or Verizon, or Sprint, just to talk to one another. Or carry 4 different sim cards, similar to having multiple accounts. Sounds terrible? Good. That's what Facebook is doing now.

The problem is that social networking protocols would inherently be much more complex than phone protocols (but it could be done). Moreover, some body would have to standardize those protocols as well as discovering some way of preventing spam. My hunch that I know get more spam on my phone number than either my email or my Facebook account because phones still have open points of entry.

For starters, let's just have them open, and let the market figure out how to bridge them. With lessons learned from that, maybe we can come up with something working.

But even if not, it would already be a drastic improvement on what we have.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#275

Post by stickfigure »

stcredzero wrote: post #252
stickfigure wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that there be an API to access social network information? That is literally what Facebook had, and what people excoriate them over thanks to Cambridge Analytica. The Facebook haters are driving social network data into a silo; how else are you going to "keep control of your data"? You can have privacy (or at least the illusion of privacy), or you can have access. You cannot have both.

The Facebook haters are driving social network data into a silo; how else are you going to "keep control of your data"? The implicit assumption here is that the only people who can control your data are big, centralized organizations. Instead of big companies making little people subject to DRM, what if we turned it on its head and gave control to the people? What if we made big companies subject to Digital Human Rig…

???

Let's say I put all of my friends' birthdays in my calendar. Now the data has left the silo and I can reshare it with whoever I want. Just how is anyone going to revoke that ability?

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#276

Post by rhizome »

georgeecollins wrote: post #251
stickfigure wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that there be an API to access social network information? That is literally what Facebook had, and what people excoriate them over thanks to Cambridge Analytica. The Facebook haters are driving social network data into a silo; how else are you going to "keep control of your data"? You can have privacy (or at least the illusion of privacy), or you can have access. You cannot have both.

The problem is that Facebook controlled access to the API, not users. Given me the ability to control access to my social network information could be a good idea.

Facebook should have to access my API to display anything about me as a member. An API where I decide to whom and how much what data is shared.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#278

Post by kerkeslager »

joe_the_user wrote: post #266
SamuelAdams wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: what if cell phone carriers only let you talk / text with people on the same carrier network? Suddenly everyone would need to buy T-Mobile, or Verizon, or Sprint, just to talk to one another. Or carry 4 different sim cards, similar to having multiple accounts. Sounds terrible? Good. That's what Facebook is doing now.

The problem is that social networking protocols would inherently be much more complex than phone protocols (but it could be done). Moreover, some body would have to standardize those protocols as well as discovering some way of preventing spam. My hunch that I know get more spam on my phone number than either my email or my Facebook account because phones still have open points of entry.

I suspect there are two reasons we get more spam phone calls:

1. There's no effective signing on phone calls, so spoofing a phone number is easy. This makes it impossible to prosecute spammers.

2. There's no way to filter a phone call based on the content of the phone call before it arrives. It's possible to spoof senders on email and text messages as well, but it's also possible to filter these based on content before they reach your inbox. This isn't perfect, but it greatly reduces spam in text-based mediums.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#279

Post by kerkeslager »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #155
SamuelAdams wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: what if cell phone carriers only let you talk / text with people on the same carrier network? Suddenly everyone would need to buy T-Mobile, or Verizon, or Sprint, just to talk to one another. Or carry 4 different sim cards, similar to having multiple accounts. Sounds terrible? Good. That's what Facebook is doing now.

Facebook lets you share posts from Twitter and Instagram, not sure about what else

When you share a post on Twitter or Instagram, you're creating a Facebook share--this isn't an example of an open protocol in any way.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#280

Post by yagamilighto »

thrav wrote: post #234
panglott wrote: post #84

The whole business model of Silicon Valley is finding companies that can grow to become abusive monopolies, and then growing them into that. Cut off one head and two will take its place.

In fact, Facebook’s first investor wrote the book on this idea.

What's the name of the book?
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