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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

#181
The elephants in the room are the countless "governments" around the world that not only have sold their citizens' data sovereignty lock stock and barrel but generated a strategic vulnerability of major proportions.

In the name of what and why? Free markets? How is a total monopoly a free market. Modernity? How is this neofeudalism / neocolonialism in any shape and form progress?

Hopefully the 600+ journalists that just released the pandora papers (documenting the widespread deceit and corruption of worldwide elites) will also cast some light into how we came to be in this deplorable state (who benefited, who signed of, who didn't ask any question)

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

#183
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But every time there are more people than the previous time. This means it's getting harder for everyone to switch. And then there's this: I have no idea about other countries, but over here in Russia, instant messaging got somehow consolidated over time. I used to have to run ICQ (as qip), Mail.Ru agent, Skype, and VKontakte (in a web browser) to be able to talk to everyone. Now Telegram and VKontakte cover 99% of m…

How long did it take for people to switch from Instagram / Vine to TikTok?

Right now, an infinite amount of time. Instagram is well alive (beside yesterday...), and has a fair amount of shared users with TikTok.

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

#184
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“ 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.” All of this was possible before the internet.

>All of this was possible before the internet.

Sure, and before the invention of the telephone and telegraph you could just write someone a letter, and before the invention of the printing press you could just hire a scribe. Before the automobile you could just ride a horse. Before the cotton gin, just put some slaves in a field. Nothing is new under the sun.

Having all of this information available at one's fingertips and having the ability to communicate and publish globally, and practically for free, has been revolutionary in and of itself.

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

#185
post #129
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hap…

Deregulation of lobbying seems to have been the trigger, but any two party state with silly electoral systems like the U.K. and US is vulnerable to such polarisation.

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

#186
I don't get this post. Yes a lot of people rely on Whatsapp, but what does the fact the company had an outage have to do with regulation?

There are other means of communication that people can fallback to. Your smartphone can still make calls and send SMS.

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

#187

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…

>Now there is 1 single megacorp that a sizable portion of humanity depends on for phone/text communication.

Not out of necessity. It's not as if any one corporation controls the internet and has a monopoly on mobile communication the way JP Morgan used to control the railroads. Plenty of options to text and communicate other than through Facebook exist. People are dependent on one specific app because they choose to be, not because they have to be.

And "sizable portion of humanity" is overstating it. For the vast majority of humans, this was a non-event, or at worst, a slight annoyance.

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

#188
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“ 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.” All of this was possible before the internet.

No, it wasn't.

If you genuinely believe it was, i suppose you're just incredibly unaware of how gated information was before the internet.

The poster said "easily accessible". The wealth of knowledge and information i have at my fingertips today was before hidden behind public libraries I'd have to plan a trip to, in courses i would have to attend, in the brains of experts i would have to interview in person, i would generally have to dedicate years of my life in order to match what I can today learn in a matter of days just because of the difficult process of sorting through the information and finding what I'm looking for.

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

#189
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone calls are essentially dead technology, kept alive by people who can't or won't install an app. Thus the price is whatever squeezes out the most revenue out of the residual users until the well runs dry. In some countries this process is happening faster than in others. Entire economies have been built on the principle that the price of a call or message is 0 and you only pay for data used (if any). That is the…

But don’t you see what you’re saying? If the phone companies (TMobile, Verizon, etc) offered competitive pricing these apps/internet services wouldn’t exist! We would all happily pay Verizon the reasonable fees, instead they try to milk us and end up losing our business entirely.

not necessarily, because WA offers options that normal calls and text don't, like group conversations/calls, easier documents and picture sharing and video calls. I mean I have rather affordable texts for my usual correspondents, but I'm mostly using WA to chat with them

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

#190
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee :D

Yes, but imagine crack/amphetamines/stimulants without negative health effects. With no addiction, tolerance, or making people stop doing basic habits like eating, drinking water, brushing teeth etc. A healthy form of crack that would only have benefits of the crack that could make you into a real motivated, energised work horse or entrepreneur. You could be on it, you could be off it with no consequences, but if you…

A friend of mine had this idea but with opioids. He invented an opioid painkiller which was, IIRC, a positive allosteric modulator of the mu opioid receptor - I'm not an expert, but I believe the gist was that it enhanced your endogenous opioid system, and was therefore less prone to addiction.

He ended up finding a handful of papers scattered across the last decades where people had come to the same realisation, but nothing came of it. Now, it's very possible there was something wrong with the idea. He did synthesise the molecule and we both took it, but not for long enough to really assess - even in a Shulgin-like way - whether it was addictive. But he ended up suspecting that the reason nothing came of it is that a non-addictive drug is simply not profitable, and is dominated, in the game-theory sense, by addictive drugs which bring consistent and greater revenue streams.

Also, apropos of:

> reset the brain chemical state in such way that tolerance and addiction could not come up

You may want to look into ibogaine. It doesn't give you both the high and the 'resetting the brain' functions - it only does the latter - but it's a very interesting case in that it has a very successful track record in resetting addiction. Though research is hampered by the fact that its cardiotoxic properties have killed a bunch of people who didn't do proper ECGs etc to check for heart abnormalities before taking it.

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