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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

#241

Post by i_am_proteus »

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…

The tendency towards centralization (corporate or state, doesn't really make a difference) is because of three things:

1) Economies of scale for machinery (in this case, computers, routers, etc.) Nowadays, Facebook and Google are laying their intercontinental fiber optic cables. Apple and Amazon are developing their own silicon. Decentralized can't compete with that.

2) Economies of scale for user networks. In Monthly Average Users we trust. Maybe a Mastodon instance works out for a small group of like-minded tech-literate friends. Realistically, small platforms just can't compete without growing into large platforms. Even in the naturally-decentralized blog space, medium and substack dominate.

...hey Carl, substack and tiktok are new upstarts, how did they compete with centralized giants?

3) Economies of scale for attention. Advertisements these days are pretty compelling. UI is important for online platforms to get mass adoption. Both of these things need capital to build out, and benefit tremendously from scale.

Add these things up and there's no surprise the masses gravitate towards centralized services, especially since they've figured out a business model that's free and "just works" for the non-technical user.

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

#242

Post by skohan »

m_fayer wrote: post #158
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…

About the same age here. One thing that adds to this feeling for me, is that any device I own that has an OS, unless that OS is Linux, feels distinctly hostile. I can't own a handheld computer that's not trying to enmesh me in an "ecosystem" of some sort, curate my options without my consent, do god-knows-what in the background, brick itself on a timer, and the list goes on. It's even worse with laptops and desktops,…

Yeah over the past few years this has been an issue I have found myself becoming increasingly passionate about. It's a particular problem of internet connected devices - in the past it was not really possible to own something which is acting on behalf of another party while it's in your possession, but that's exactly what corporate-owned operating systems do. And we haven't taken the time to develop legal frameworks around how that should work.

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

#243

Post by dukeyukey »

sandworm101 wrote: post #159
tablespoon wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let the sheep have their facebook apps. Those "sheep" (i.e. people who aren't crypto-nerds) are the people I mainly want to communicate with. > Modern tech has also brought us strong open source tools. We have stronger encryption in any linux distro than any army had in the 90s. We have communication pathways (Tor) that defeat censorship. I can send an email today, encrypted then sent via Tor, that no government ca…

>> And those pathways are almost never used I used signal this morning to talk to a team of 100+ people on a big project. I sent an encrypted email to my parents last night. A month ago I used Tor to bypass a hotel's silly DNS block on "Torrentfreak.com". My laptop is running a linux distro that I downloaded as a torrent. These are all everyday non-cryptonerd activities that leverage very powerful security products.

Sending encrypted email and using Tor to bypass WiFi is restrictions are very, very crypto-nerd things to do, and running Linux is non-mainstream at best.

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

#245

Post by skohan »

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"?

Why is the attitude so prevalent in 2021 that the market is always the answer and regulation never is?

Every high-functioning society is built on a foundation of sensible and fair regulation. Over the past 30 years, we've seen a rise in truly transformative web technologies, and mostly we've left it up to the market to see what would happen. And what has happened has not been universally good. When will we decide it's time to regulate these tech firms?

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

#247

Post by marcus_holmes »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #238
tomjen3 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes think the Internet is like the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter. It can show us what we want: if what we want is knowledge it will show us that, if what we want is proof that we are right it will show us that and if we want to see how horrible other people are, that is what we will see. It was just that people turned out to value less truth less, than being told they were right. You can fault the engine…

I think the problem is also that we also are shown what other people want to see. I genuinely don’t want to see political positions of my relatives, or my neighbors getting into heated internet fights. But I do want to see my relatives small joys, and I do want to know important neighborhood news and activities. That I can’t filter appropriately makes social media toxic, as I can feel my social animal brain see heigh…

I have the same. So I stopped using it. Almost a year now since I uninstalled FB, and a few years for Twitter. It's amazing how you don't miss it.

Now if I could just shake my HN addiction...

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

#248

Post by GoblinSlayer »

m_fayer wrote: post #158
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…

About the same age here. One thing that adds to this feeling for me, is that any device I own that has an OS, unless that OS is Linux, feels distinctly hostile. I can't own a handheld computer that's not trying to enmesh me in an "ecosystem" of some sort, curate my options without my consent, do god-knows-what in the background, brick itself on a timer, and the list goes on. It's even worse with laptops and desktops,…

Android isn't trying to enmesh you in an "ecosystem" of some sort?

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

#249

Post by api »

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 wouldn’t put nails in the decentralization coffin yet. The Internet isn’t really that old, and it’s a complex topic.

Technical platform decentralization is hard for technical reasons and the Internet may indeed contain a bias against it, but physical decentralization (telework, geographic diaspora) is a decentralization prediction I see starting to happen.

Physical decentralization was underway before COVID. The pandemic just accelerated the trend by years.

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

#250

Post by polytely »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #113
snek_case wrote: post #80

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…

> Maybe we can develop healthier forms of social media. Sounds like "let's develop a healthier form of crack" to me.

I've switched completely over to a well-moderated mastodon instance and haven't looked back since. Finding an instance that aligns with your values is the tricky part but once you have done that it's a lot of fun. The absence of any advertisements or algorithms really has an impact on the quality.
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