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Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

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Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#111

Post by ridaj »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #75

Was talking about this with a friend today, and I think this incident highlights why I sometimes get really depressed about my career and technology. I'm a Gen X-er, and I started my career in the late 90s. Before that I was a ham radio operator in junior high and HS (back when they had Morse code tests!). I remember the heady euphoria around the Internet then, and the vision of "tech utopia" was certainly the domina…

This is not surprising in the historical sense. "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu shows how this repeatedly happened to industry after industry, with every disruptive comms technology bringing about a stage of unfettered, ebullient, and at times reckless innovation, followed by consolidation, monopolistic behaviors, and finally regulation where the govt essentially creates inefficient but necessary safeguards against otherwise monopolistic, predatory, large companies. It happened with radio, television, landline telephony, mobile telephony, Internet, PC OSes, mobile OSes, social networks, and it is not over. It is the natural tendency of capitalistic markets with network externalities. The saving grace of it is, and that looks rather unusual from the historical perspective, there is still a relatively effective notion of net neutrality (Chinese firewall excluded). This means it is possible for an upstart like TikTok to effectively challenge incumbents like Facebook or Snap in a way that competitive telcos never could have 30 years ago (they really needed govts to crack monopolies open).

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#112

Post by unethical_ban »

sva_ wrote: post #21
smoldesu wrote: post #8

Why do we even let corporations own things that we consider "utilities"? Seems like a case of people being perfectly happy with using a free service until it breaks, then it's all a shitstorm. If WhatsApp's mere existence is enough to warrant deregulation, what does that mean for platforms like iMessage, which fundamentally fill the same role?

I'm not confident in government to do a better job at keeping it up, tbh. I also wouldn't use a messaging app by my gov, if that's what you meant. Too many dystopian ways for that to go wrong. I have several messaging apps on my phone, and maybe that's just how it is for now.

I think it would be awesome of the USPS offered email and Matrix services for free to people. I could even see it being useful as an official government communication mechanism. And every post-office would be an in-person help-desk for getting locked out or requesting any access help. Also, free 100kbps wifi, completely open.

Along with banking and check-cashing, making the USPS into the generic hub of "dealing with money and communications with the goal of public service, not profit" would be amazing.

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#113

Post by NumberCruncher »

snek_case wrote: post #80
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #75

Was talking about this with a friend today, and I think this incident highlights why I sometimes get really depressed about my career and technology. I'm a Gen X-er, and I started my career in the late 90s. Before that I was a ham radio operator in junior high and HS (back when they had Morse code tests!). I remember the heady euphoria around the Internet then, and the vision of "tech utopia" was certainly the domina…

It's easy to feel blasé about the internet, but it's also played a huge role in making information easily accessible. I learned about electronics from online tutorials. Taught myself programming. Also learned a lot about home repairs and renovations. Made a lot of contacts, landed jobs, etc. I met my partner through a dating app. I would say the internet has brought a lot of positive things in my life so far. The ope…

> Maybe we can develop healthier forms of social media.

Sounds like "let's develop a healthier form of crack" to me.

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#114

Post by JoshTriplett »

jvolkman wrote: post #107
JoshTriplett wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a standard is unlikely to ever introduce end-to-end encryption.

It already exists and is enabled by default (at least on my Pixel phone using the default messaging client). https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10262381

That's not part of RCS, that's a Google extension.

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#115

Post by Koaks »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #75

Was talking about this with a friend today, and I think this incident highlights why I sometimes get really depressed about my career and technology. I'm a Gen X-er, and I started my career in the late 90s. Before that I was a ham radio operator in junior high and HS (back when they had Morse code tests!). I remember the heady euphoria around the Internet then, and the vision of "tech utopia" was certainly the domina…

Well as you get older, you are just more likely to be surrounded by the moan and drone crowd. Its just life.

Upto you to get out of that space now and then. Go watch the communities where kids are developing games, unity, webgl, godot, twitch streamers, VR/AR etc etc. That same energy and excitement of the blog and website era still exists.

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#116

Post by havelhovel »

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #94

Why would breaking Facebook down and regulating them solve anything related to the global dependence on WhatsApp? Aren’t the only people who know how to run these services already running them? Like, do we expect the government to take WhatsApp away from Facebook and then create government contracts for companies like Oracle to maintain the infrastructure? So we’re back to square one but with the bureaucratic mess of…

Also the author cites Palestinians and Israelis both relying on WhatsApp as justification for breaking down and regulating Facebook. Pray tell, if nationalized, how many nations would be impartial enough to let both sides continue to use such an (apparently) essential communication platform?

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#117

Post by geuis »

This highly illustrated a point for me this morning.

My oldest friend is in a foreign country and has no support network. He left his job yesterday and was overall having a terrible day. He desperately needed me to call him, and WhatsApp has been our primary contact medium since he left the US.

Fast forward to this morning and literally in between “I’ll call you in a few minutes” while I was finishing up morning stuff, WhatsApp suddenly switched to “Connecting…”.

Error messages that appeared were generally along the lines of “you aren’t connected to the internet” although clearly I was.

Meanwhile I was completely separated from my buddy who needed someone to talk to. Until news popped up that FB was having issues I had no idea what was happening.

Personally this reflects poorly on WhatsApp’s design. The error messages don’t make sense and are inconsistent. Clearly their devs aren’t testing for this situation.

More alarmingly, it initially looked like chat was working during the outage. I haven’t confirmed this yet, but I sent sent multiple chat messages that locally appeared to go through while the video/audio connect options were hidden by the “Connecting…” text.

Luckily email still works and I was able to get confirmation my friend was ok, and we had a good lengthy conversation a few hours ago once FB systems came back up.

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#118

Post by sneak »

thawkins wrote: post #84
sneak wrote: post #67

This is an accident, and in peacetime. Relying on WhatsApp for anything important (like your business) is madness, and I hope this serves as your wake-up call that giving the US government and a giant US ad network veto power over your basic personal and professional communications is not a good choice.

Absolutely, plus I have seen a bunch of people going mental about not being able to reach friends or family because WhatsApp is down, when WhatsApp uses the person's phone number as a means of addressing messages, just dial them and talk to them or send them a text... People can be a little dim sometimes and forget that the primary function of a phone IS communications, and not just a platform for running apps.

Texts are super expensive and don't always work between countries, and are even more censored than WhatsApp, and can't always attach images or video or voice (or are even more ludicrously expensive if they can).

It's madness.

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#119

Post by sneak »

askonomm wrote: post #86
sneak wrote: post #67

This is an accident, and in peacetime. Relying on WhatsApp for anything important (like your business) is madness, and I hope this serves as your wake-up call that giving the US government and a giant US ad network veto power over your basic personal and professional communications is not a good choice.

Entire Latin America relies on whatsapp. From government services and doctor appointments to pretty much any business there is. It is such a vital part of the infrastructure that I don't know what would happen if it went down. I mean I even got vaccinated via whatsapp here in Argentina.

More people need to use these services and explain to the operators "I don't have WhatsApp".

Silently caving and giving your data to Facebook perpetuates the status quo.

They will offer alternatives if a few percent of people simply refuse to agree to the Facebook TOS.

Re: Facebook going down meant more than just a social network being unavailable

#120

Post by paganel »

azangru wrote: post #16

Why is the conclusion in that tweet "the billionth reason to break down and regulate Facebook" rather than "the billionth reason not to use whatsapp as the de facto phone and text messaging platform"?

> the billionth reason not to use whatsapp as the de facto phone and text messaging platform

Serious question, what do you suggest the general population should use? Something that still works on a 5-year old Android phone with no software updates in the last 2-3 years (at least), all free of charge.

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