Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival • Hacker News Board

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#451

Post by 4ntonius8lock » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

Jimmy is a brilliant man. He created one of the most valuable sites on the net. But I think he is suffering from being in a bit of a feedback bubble. Problems of success I guess.

I don't know anyone who says: I want a social media company to help combat the fake news I see.

Having more flexibility on who sees what, more privacy in group conversations, ways to 'downvote' things not just 'like/love' (lop sided incentives), etc... those are things I've wanted from FB/Twitter/Instagram and I've heard other people want.

It seems he is solving a problem no one wants a solution for. For all the media hype, I'm personally not convinced social media companies should be the arbitrators of what is fake news or not. I'll give Jimmy the benefit of doubt that his version of censorship will be the best, he has proven it with wikipedia. But I'm not sure censorship, even good ones, are what we need.

For those who aren't anti-censorship, then you get the disagreement on what type of censorship we should focus on. In the US, it seems one side favors censoring the far left (as has happened historically with things like communism) and others choose censoring the far right as the priority (a more modern approach). I dislike both sides (extremes tend to be unhealthy) but as a free speech advocate, I want them to have their platform, as twisted and unhealthy as it is. The strength of good ideas should be such that they don't fear bad ones.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#452

Post by bufferoverflow » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

ZainRiz wrote: post #359

AndrewStephens wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There already is a decentralized Reddit where subreddits are called websites and anyone can start one and run it as they please. What Reddit and similar sites bring to the table is a single pool of authenticated users. Once a user is logged into Reddit, posting on different subreddits is frictionless. Even with oauth and the like, it is hard to replicate that with a distributed set of sites.

I disagree. What Reddit brings to the table is: 1. Easy sharing: Subreddits, which are an easy location to share interesting information about a common topic. Creating your own website is an order of magnitude harder, especially if you want to allow anyone on the internet to post to it 2. Discoverability: You can easily discover subreddits information related to your interests. Reddit's ability to aggregate the vario…

You missed the most important point:

3. Discussions

Try discussing anything on a random website.

Discussions, just like on HN, are usually better than the linked content.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#453

Post by computerex » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #351

simias wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit doesn't really avoid anything as far as I can tell. A lot of the content in the big subreddits is more or less well concealed "organic advertising". The upvote system is also basically useless on reddit these days, the site is way too big to enforce any kind of etiquette and people gladly upvote empty one-line quips while they'll bury anybody expressing any form of vaguely dissenting opinion. It's frankly toxi…

One of the things I prefer about HN is people seem to use the downvote button more often as a "this is a poor quality contribution" vote, rather than a "my opinion differs from yours" vote.

That hasn't been my experience. People show their dissent of opinions with downvotes here on HN too on sufficiently polarizing threads. I think the main difference is the type of content posted on HN vs reddit and the type of people who readily consume that content.

For example, I have noticed shameless downvoting in operating system war threads, both on reddit and on HN. In highly technical threads about physics or mathematics I have noticed people tend to vote based on the quality of the content posted.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#454

Post by Fezzik » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 12:59 AM UTC

This will simply never takeoff. The Goldilocks conditions that allowed Facebook to spread like wildfire will never exist again. You would have to find a large group desiring to use the platform (college kids) who help grow the user base, with few/any functional alternatives (Facebook already exists, so it cannot supplant itself), along with a newly booming internet thanks to university/household broadband access, etc... At this point, all the initial users of Facebook have children and grandparents that use Facebook... and it is multi-national. The idea that a spunky-yet-well-funded startup is going to even contend with them is silly. Not that I do not wish it would happen, and we can all think of reasons why it should happen, but once the reality of contending with 2+ billion active users kicks in, you realize the petite crowd of HN users that would go for this “Facebook rival” are utterly irrelevant. MySpace was a known brand that spent millions on rebranding after cleaning up its landing pages in 2012 and they went... nowhere. Justin Timberlake could not even save them.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#455

Post by Invictus0 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

lucasmullens wrote: post #422

sergiotapia wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Good behavior" is double speak for "following the groupthink". Just look at wikipedia for an example of how bad this can become, where 1/3 of all content is edited and moderated by one dude with all his biases. This wiki model is not the solution.

Could you point to something specific about the "1/3 of all content is edited and moderated by one dude"? Not sure where to look.

https://priceonomics.com/the-most-prolific-editor-on-wikiped...

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#456

Post by aGeekGoneMad » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

AndrewStephens wrote: post #300

ratfaced-guy wrote: post #294

What I want is a decentralized Reddit not under the control of advertising needs. Reddit redesign has been bad for quality content. I actually find Reddit to be a better source of information and knowledge than Google at this point, mostly because Google has been inundated with paid blog-spam. It's a bit harder to get away with that in Reddit (for the time being, and for whatever reason).

There already is a decentralized Reddit where subreddits are called websites and anyone can start one and run it as they please. What Reddit and similar sites bring to the table is a single pool of authenticated users. Once a user is logged into Reddit, posting on different subreddits is frictionless. Even with oauth and the like, it is hard to replicate that with a distributed set of sites.

Why? Published an oauth API and let peeps go nut! I bet if some one like reddit did that I bet that there would be PHP modules and the like in days! There would be ways to cover the costs either by landing page or charging the child site per block of calls.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#457

Post by h0l0cube » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 1:01 AM UTC

What I really want is a 'Spotify for prominent newspapers', so I'm not confronted by paywalls for sites like NYT, Washington Post, Bloomberg, etc. That is something that I would pay for.

What I won't pay for is multiple subscriptions to several prominent newspapers I'm interested in, that are linked everywhere, especially here. If WT:Social can provide content from all the biggest mastheads with one convenient subscription, I'm in.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#458

Post by r00fus » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #168

r00fus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a cite for this?

PDF: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced%20Vettin...

This may be dated, but apparently there is a list of specific sites [1]. HN is not on that list.

[1] https://redbus2us.com/us-visa-forms-ds-160-260-has-social-me...

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#459

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

tprice7 wrote: post #450

dredmorbius wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be an exceedingly thin signal. Very few posts will have incoming links, so you'll get very little scoring data. The signal will be hugely susceptible to outlier bias -- The Post That Goes Viral, and generates a huge number of incoming links -- will dominate the rankings. Because the signal is so thin, distorting and manipulation (through link farming) will be cheap and difficult to detect (a small number o…

If I may go on a tangent, I’ve thought a bit about the problem of link farms and how it might be addressed. The problem is essentially this: since pagerank is basically the probability that a random walk through the link graph will end up on your site, linking back to yourself, and no other websites, gives a big boost to your pagerank because a random walk will get stuck on your site. Of course it’s easy to just igno…

Tangents are disallowed. But I'll grant you a hyperbolic trajectory.

Link graphs remind me of lightning descending leaders. If you can have a sense of charge potential between cloud and ground, there might be a circuit equivalent which drains largely self-referential link-farms.

Or is that rephrasing your description? My circuit physics / EE-fu is exceedingly weak.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#460

Post by 4ntonius8lock » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #47

pwinnski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To call HN a social network is to redefine the term to apply to any website that allows comments. It's really not.

That's how the US Government defines it. If you want a US Visa you need to tell them your HK account.

What the US government really wants is all your public online accounts.

They used the broad and not fully defined definition of the word to their advantage.

What a social media site is, is something I think we are all collectively defining. It's too new to be really set in stone.

Also, even though words have broad meanings, it doesn't make it right to use it that way, since social customs would make the person using such definitions unintelligible. For example, if I said in my introduction at a party to a woman "I'm gay", she will likely take it to mean 'I'm homosexual', not 'I'm happy'. Both are completely valid dictionary uses. Only one has a valid use in any modern context.

Social media is generally defined as media where the primary intent is socializing. For me, that means it is more about communicating with friends and family in a manner that is directed to furthering my understanding of them, and their understanding of me. These sites would be like facebook, twitter, instagram, etc

Sites like HN, webmasterworld, blackhatworld, etc... are more about advancing knowlledge in a specific area. Socializing is a secondary consequence. These could be considered 'quasi' social media accounts.

Based on the current definition of social media, even comments on a news site or blog, 'could' qualify. But then again we run into the issue that if you use words in non-standard ways you can become unintelligible to your fellow humans, undermining the whole purpose and concept of language. If I said 'I read a comment on social media' and really meant 'I read a comment on cnn.com' people would not understand what I'm saying. It would be odd and awkward.