When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#121

Post by smolder » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 12:41 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #110

jiuahweruihawi wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long viewed working for Facebook (or Twitter) as like working for a cigarette company. Your product makes the world a worse place and everything would be better if your company disappeared, but hey, something's gotta pay the rent I guess?

I'm amazed that in a global lockdown, where digital communication and connection are more important than ever, that you see only negative benefit to users in Facebook.

Yes, because Facebook's actual value is trivial to recreate apart from the network effect, and they do their worst to make the site inhospitable. It is worse to use Facebook than abandon it for almost any alternative.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#122

Post by osobo » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 12:53 PM UTC

input_sh wrote: post #45

osobo wrote: post #29

Pfff, such fabricated drama. This shit gives real digital rights activists a bad name.

He was the director of Bits of Freedom, one of the founding organisations of EDRi[0] (think: European EFF). That being said, he left that spot a few years ago and this is just his side project, but saying that he's not a "real digital rights activist" is just ridiculous on so many levels. [0] https://edri.org/

Whatever he did in the past, this whining about FB not linking his database with copyrighted script -interlaced with non-issues like how a platform he does not use spells his name- doesn't help anyone much now. There are bigger digital rights fish to fry.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#123

Post by ClikeX » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

ascar wrote: post #22

> He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” This reminds me of the excellent "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Name…

Sites used to refuse the "van der " in my last name all the time. Had to remove the whitespaces to get it to work.

Also, sites out my last name under v, which isn't how names are sorted here.

"van der Name" is usually written as "Name, van der" in printed lists to make checking for names easier.

And many dutch IT systems have a separate field for this. We call it a "tussenvoegsel". Which would roughly translate to a "middle addition". It's not a middle/second name either. Cause those are processed separately here as well.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#124

Post by jiuahweruihawi » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #110

jiuahweruihawi wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long viewed working for Facebook (or Twitter) as like working for a cigarette company. Your product makes the world a worse place and everything would be better if your company disappeared, but hey, something's gotta pay the rent I guess?

I'm amazed that in a global lockdown, where digital communication and connection are more important than ever, that you see only negative benefit to users in Facebook.

Facebook is, by far, the worst communication platform out of any that I use. Practically every aspect of the site is designed to be as impractical and user-hostile as possible. The only reason I use Facebook (which happens increasingly less often) is because it's my only way of contacting certain people. I'd LOVE to delete my account but I can't because I still need it for random little things occasionally. I'm not their user - I'm their hostage.

And that's without even getting into any of FB's terrible practices around data collection and privacy, none of which need to be repeated here.

Facebook is cancer.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#125

Post by teekert » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #117

teekert wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in the Netherlands we also don't use the "de" and "van" for sorting so it was confusing to find my badge under the "v" at American conferences the first time. Ah well, what can you do? A friend of mine had his FB acount blocked for failing to provide a real name (his last name is "Fun"), ironically after he gave FB a false name they did accept it.

That's kind of interesting. I grew up in a heavily dutch town (lineage only) in the US and we always organized last names with "van" in the V's.

Yeah Belgians also do that (afaik), so they have big D and V categories.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#126

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

louwrentius wrote: post #78

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where do you work? I can probably (almost certainly) find serious ethical lapses in your company, if it's large and/or has been around for a long time. Shaming people based on their perceived associations is just wrong, no matter what those associations.

I won't disclose that but rest assured, I don't work at Facebook or any other similar style company that is a detriment to a stable society. If you work at Facebook, I despise you. (you in the general sense) The foundation of the company is a guy who thought it was OK to create website to rate women. Fucking degenerate people.

Can you explain (with links please) how Facebook is a "detriment to a stable society".

> If you work at Facebook, I despise you. (you in the general sense)

I think that is massive hyperbole. Do you despise all the people who work for oil companies also? What about everyone who works for Nestle (all the pushing of formula milk in Africa that led to the deaths of babies), I mean where does it all stop?

> The foundation of the company is a guy who thought it was OK to create website to rate women. Fucking degenerate people.

He was a 19 year old man at this point (and I'm not even sure that happened anywhere except The Social Network). I'm pretty sure lots of 19 year old males have done things similarly except no one cares, because they're not billionaires.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#127

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

snakeboy wrote: post #94

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where do you work? I can probably (almost certainly) find serious ethical lapses in your company, if it's large and/or has been around for a long time. Shaming people based on their perceived associations is just wrong, no matter what those associations.

> if it's large and/or has been around for a long time So why not work for a smaller company with values and a history that you can respect? You make it sound like in a capitalist society we have to sell our souls to a big evil company. Software developers (especially ones have the skills to work for facebook) can work literally anywhere. Lots of them start their own companies. There's simply no excuse for contributi…

Firstly, I'm arguing the general point. Secondly, I'm not a software developer (well maybe I'm slowly becoming one, but it's not my job title).

Thirdly, I have looked for ethical companies who'll pay me to analyse data, and I am yet to find any industries that don't have ethical issues. I'm not sure what makes Facebook special in this sense (do you feel the same way about Google, Snap, Twitter and TikTok?).

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#128

Post by BTCOG » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

yowlingcat wrote: post #119

op03 wrote: post #15

Facebook is trying to administer a 2 billion member virtual city with about 20k people. Most of the fires that start and actual administration details are just conveniently left to real world politicians, bureaucracies, journos, school boards, parents and police depts to work out. This retarded unsustainable model has been sold as the magic of Scale. Scaling user base = Scaling up issues. No free lunch. Regulators ca…

> And if they dont have enough how to charge them for all the resource/energy drainage they offload to the real world. That's the million (billion?) dollar question for me. I observe that it will sadly follow the precedent of the oil industry and other industries -- a slap on the wrist to the tune of a fraction of the true damage, with society left to bear the brunt of the externality in perpetuity and prosecutors ab…

Trillion dollar question, really. When you have a multi-billion dollar platform costing magnitudes more in social disruption, election and democracy itself being disrupted.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#129

Post by dingaling » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #74

There are so many ways to have a problem with Facebook and be unable to get help. The list of ways grows... My "favorite" is if you once had a spare FB account for playing some game, and later FB has blocked that account (for inactivity, or being obviously fake _after_ they instituted the real name policy)... but you still get occasional emails from FB begging you to come back and login - your friends miss you! Of co…

> Facebook will continue as a bad and irresponsible actor of global proportions

I log in, I have a browse at what my acquaintances have posted, I close the tab and go on with the day.

Sometimes I flick through the 'People you may know' and smile at some old real-world friends.

For the vast majority of people, Facebook is a positive experience.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#130

Post by RIMR » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

op03 wrote: post #15

Facebook is trying to administer a 2 billion member virtual city with about 20k people. Most of the fires that start and actual administration details are just conveniently left to real world politicians, bureaucracies, journos, school boards, parents and police depts to work out. This retarded unsustainable model has been sold as the magic of Scale. Scaling user base = Scaling up issues. No free lunch. Regulators ca…

This assumes that facebook creates the problems that exist on their platform.

All of Facebook's problems exist independent of Facebook. Facebook's existence guarantees that those problems will become a part of them.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be held responsible for not doing their due diligence, but the argument that they ought to be charged for "offloading" problems on the "real world" isn't great. That's like saying car manufacturers need to be charged for offloading automotive deaths on society.