Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 356 posts

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

#121

Post by paganel »

listless wrote: post #57
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"?

How on earth is government intervention the answer to Facebook being down? How are these two things even related? What a bizarre place we’ve arrived at.

Supposing FB and Whatsapp are splintered when FB goes down then people will still be able to use Whatsapp. When Whatsapp goes down people will still be able to use FB.

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

#122

Post by paganel »

ALittleLight wrote: post #12

"You have built, bought, or maintained a product which is vital to billions. It's a free service unavailable 0.01% of the year. For this you must be punished."

> "You have built

Whatsapp was not built by Facebook, it was purchased.

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

#123

Post by lmm »

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…

> It might work for utilities and public works, but do we seriously believe that apps - the interfaces of the utilities - need to be regulated? I don’t get these arguments, and I see them everywhere.

I don't get the distinction you're drawing? These apps are very directly akin to utilities like mail (usually government-run) or phone (usually semi-privatized but heavily regulated), and they're natural monopolies for which market competition can't be expected to work well.

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

#124

Post by te_chris »

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…

It would absolutely work. Just force them to divest WhatsApp.

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

#125

Post by enjo »

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…

I would argue that the internet has been very good at decentralizing power. The problem is that this is what decentralized power looks like. There are a seemingly infinite number of groups flexing their collective muscle, generating their own realities, and even their own economies.

I get that the rich have gotten richer and corporations have gotten bigger, but in so many ways their power has decreased. We live in a world in which the most important force in modern American society is freaking 4Chan (QAnon). The billionaire class has lost the thread on how to control this. They try to put the squeeze on the Facebooks and Youtubes of the world, but that seems to have little effect on the spread of very insane but incredibly meaningful movements.

I some times wonder if the mistake we all made was thinking decentralizing things was a good idea.

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

#127

Post by system2 »

lmm wrote: post #123
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…

> It might work for utilities and public works, but do we seriously believe that apps - the interfaces of the utilities - need to be regulated? I don’t get these arguments, and I see them everywhere. I don't get the distinction you're drawing? These apps are very directly akin to utilities like mail (usually government-run) or phone (usually semi-privatized but heavily regulated), and they're natural monopolies for w…

No they aren't. There are hundreds if not thousands of competitors to these services. Infrastructure is just a web server. It is not similar to utilities like electric and water. They are built on physical cities which are controlled by the government.

Whatsapp is just an app. It just happens to be a popular one and people chose to use it. That's it. Just like ICQ, MSN Messenger, etc.

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

#128

Post by nyanpasu64 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #98
helloworld11 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

curious, what is this dongle called and where would I get one to give it a try?

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ Don't go for the 15$ bare-bones options. Buy one of the 50-100$ kits so you have at least some basic antennas and necessary cables.

If you're spending $50-$100 on equipment, maybe it's worth buying a better dongle too with more than 2-3 MHz of bandwidth.

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

#129

Post by spockz »

zwirbl wrote: post #102
corinroyal wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tempting. Sadly, if we let the sheep have their FB, the likely result will be that we lose whatever semblance of democracy we have left. Already we're down to one party that belives in free and fair elections. Our system depends on informed citizens, not massive authoritarian psyop experiments. The longer we go where the majority can't get overwhelmingly popular policies accomplished, the closer we get to turning to…

Down from, like, two at the best of times. It's always either them or us, which is likely part of the problem

I’m by no means an expert in US political history but all books and papers I’ve read indicate that this polarisation between the parties did not always exist. Members were allowed to vote according to their own principals instead of just the party line which is basically always opposing the other party.

Senators and other politicians would have bbq on Saturday at each other’s place. It appears that this no longer happens.

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

#130

Post by ALittleLight »

paganel wrote: post #122
ALittleLight wrote: post #12

"You have built, bought, or maintained a product which is vital to billions. It's a free service unavailable 0.01% of the year. For this you must be punished."

> "You have built Whatsapp was not built by Facebook, it was purchased.

The rest of the phrase is "bought, or maintained." Built refers to Facebook, bought to Instagram and WhatsApp, and maintained to all three.
Post reply on HN