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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

#271

Post by madeofpalk »

leokennis wrote: post #266
madeofpalk wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my carrier goes down, it doesn't help me I can't just switch at the drop of a hat to another carrier who is still up. Likewise, when Whatsapp goes down I can still talk to people on iMessage or Discord or SMS.

What I’m talking about here isn’t my WA group chat with my soccer team. I’m talking about 911 being reachable, or about government communication with its citizens etc. For these bigger use cases, there are contingency plans. For example, 911 will remain reachable via other carriers for you even when your carrier goes down. For some governments, WA is in the critical path for these use cases. And you can’t route aroun…

What country uses WhatsApp for emergency services??? That sounds like a terrible idea completely independent from Facebook Corp.

Critical emergency services still have the plain old telephone services to use, no?

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

#272

Post by KptMarchewa »

eyko wrote: post #214
GeckoEidechse wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean a reason SMS gets its hate is because the moment you send a message across international borders you start paying ridiculously large sums of money (compared to the amount of data transferred) for every single message. If you now take Europe for example where it's easy to have friends in another country that you talk to regularly and you can see why WhatsApp quickly gained in popularity there simply because it…

The EU capped intra-EU calls and SMS prices a few years ago: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/intra-eu-c... Perhaps too little too late since everyone now uses messaging apps for practically no cost.

6 cents is infinitely more than I've ever paid for whatsapp.

The pay-per-message model has simply no place here.

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

#273

Post by inglor_cz »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #260
inglor_cz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much transparency. If thousands of eyes of gatekeepers are at you at all times, and immediately start screaming that you are a DINO or a RINO if you do not hold the party line at all times, you have all the incentives to be strictly partisan. We generally consider transparency in politics a good thing, especially because it may reduce corruption. But it comes with significant downsides. Only very resilient person…

>Only very resilient personalities are able to ignore the psychopathic monkey cesspool that is the political Twitter. Then don't visit twitter and post on an obscure nntp newsgroup instead.

I am talking about career politicians here, who usually use social networks to keep in touch with their electorate. Though they often have staff to do the lowly comment/response work.

Maybe it is a bad idea and a NNTP newsgroup would be better. Should be tried.

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

#274

Post by KptMarchewa »

red_trumpet wrote: post #153
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…

If you regulate WhatsApp so that it has to be interoperable with other IM systems (similarly to how email or matrix work), then not everyone has to be dependent on WhatsApp.

>(similarly to how email or matrix work)

Or phone calls. There are tons of telcos and they are interoperable.

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

#275

Post by rusk »

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…

> anyone with a computer could connect to the Internet, publish a website, and communicate with people across the world

It’s funny how obvious it is with hindsight, that there could be downsides to this

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

#276

Post by p0d »

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 was just cogitating this morning on how the internet is also drifting towards centralised infrastructure. The mesh is becoming a star. It may be more efficient to stick a tube in my body to feed me. I am not sure this is progress however. In the same way "easy" communication and infrastructure may not always be progress.

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

#277

Post by rusk »

freetinker wrote: post #255
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…

I’m going to count HN as a social network. It’s one of my favorite places on the internet. It surfaces great content, and the comments are a gold mine of top-notch information and advice (by and large). What general principles can we learn from HN that can be applied elsewhere? Does HN self-select its audience? No profit motive? Great moderation? (Thanks Dang!)

Moderation, but also a community that is by and large more intelligent than the general pop. Add to that a set of common reference points grounded in tech. We almost al understand logic, math, have good language skills and tertiary education. This perhaps makes HN a little bit of an echo chamber in some respects but it also means there is space for well presented arguments that go against the grain.

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

#278

Post by jraph »

freetinker wrote: post #255
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…

I’m going to count HN as a social network. It’s one of my favorite places on the internet. It surfaces great content, and the comments are a gold mine of top-notch information and advice (by and large). What general principles can we learn from HN that can be applied elsewhere? Does HN self-select its audience? No profit motive? Great moderation? (Thanks Dang!)

> No profit motive?

There are profit motives and Y Combinator is being transparent on this. From the FAQ [1]:

> Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time. The rest are listed at jobs.

>

> What's the relationship between YC and HN?

> Y Combinator owns and funds HN. The HN team is editorially independent.

> HN gives three features to YC: job ads (see above) and startup launches get placed on the front page, and YC founder names are displayed to other YC alumni in orange.

But HN seems incentivized to keep the level of quality high and to not interfere too much with content beyond moderation, or people would leave. So it leaves us with good quality contents and discussions.

HN's incentives are well-aligned with serving its users best, and this is probably partly what makes it a good place.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

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

#279

Post by elliekelly »

krapp wrote: post #187
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…

>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…

People always had the option to avoid JP Morgan’s network of rails by walking or using a horse. But of course that’s silly to say. JP Morgan had built the one and only network. It was the fastest and easiest way to move goods and people so that’s what people “chose” to use. They “chose” it over options that vastly inferior. That’s what a monopoly is.

And I would encourage you to think about the long-term implications of monopolies. Specifically when it comes to inequality, inefficiency, and opportunities for innovation. The negative externalities go far beyond “a slight annoyance”.

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

#280

Post by elliekelly »

vadfa wrote: post #254
madeofpalk wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused - SMS and other telephone services already go down. Regulating something doesn't make it more reliable. Arguably the regulation of "classic" telephony services is what lead to the innovations of Whatsapp and everything else.

>Regulating something doesn't make it more reliable. In my experience, it makes it less reliable, since that service will no longer have to compete with anybody else.

Why would regulation mean no longer having competition? There are lots of highly regulated industries with lots of fierce competition.
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