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

281–290 of 356 posts

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

#281

Post by criddell »

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…

> 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?

I would think it would be more like how AT&T was broken up into all the baby bells. Take WhatsApp, break it apart into 100 companies that must interoperate and see what happens.

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

#282

Post by new_guy »

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.

I run a few social sites, nothing as major as Facebook, and this is something I struggle with daily. The problem isn't the tech, it's the people.

They post disinfo? So you put up a little warning saying this is wrong, they get upset and scream censorship, you push too hard and they just go to another platform.

People like being upset, they like having drama.

I have no answers, but I do think a friends-only feed, where you have to expressly opt-in to see posts works best, combined with easy discoverability (hashtags, interest channels and pages etc)

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

#283

Post by snarfy »

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…

Not only can you not filter, the stream is purposefully toxic to increase 'engagement'. I have a lot of friends on my feed that post constantly. Memes, cat pictures, etc, a few posts are about 'libtards'. Guess which posts show up on my feed.

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

#284

Post by GoblinSlayer »

rendall wrote: post #198

I despise the company that Facebook is, and hope that it crashes and burns in ignominy such that by comparison we remember AOL fondly. That said, I'm utterly alarmed by calls such as this to "regulate" Facebook. We really want to legitimize f*cking Facebook like that by nationalizing / turning it into a utility? Then we'll be stuck with it for-goddamn- ever Let's stick to principles, enforce existing (or write effect…

tfw this post told me facebook was offline.

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

#285

Post by Shorel »

tomjen3 wrote: post #170
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 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…

> You can fault the engineers who built this for it, but then you are faulting them for thinking too highly of people.

Well, that's my argument against a communist society. It was designed only for perfectly altruistic people, and that's a kind of people I have never found anywhere. If we want something that actually works, we need something designed for the people that actually exist.

It's the same with the Internet. Once the spammers got the gist of it, it has been a constant struggle between spammers and anti-spam people. We have reached some form of equilibrium, but anytime a new person connects, it's a brand-new learning about avoiding potentially bad stuff. It can be very expensive learning.

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

#286

Post by TheHypnotist »

Jugurtha wrote: post #68

How does the author come to the conclusion to break Facebook down and regulate it after the outage ? There are a lot of power outages in the world by companies that are regulated, sometimes even state-owned.

My guess is, using your analogy, how often do you see a power outage in New York causing an outage in Nebraska?

Although, given the tech landscape today, that's not a great 1:1 example anyway.

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

#289

Post by robjan »

mytherin wrote: post #261
shmel wrote: post #253

I really don't get the point about WA outage being a catastrophe. WA pretty much forces you to put all phone numbers in your contacts to communicate to anyone at all (ok, except group chats to an extent). Why can't you just send an SMS? Why can't you call? Even if it is across the border, just send an SMS: "hey buddy, WA is down, install telegram so we can talk tonight as we agreed to". I could understand the same ar…

In my experience many people have outdated phone numbers on Whatsapp, since changing phone numbers on Whatsapp requires all your contacts to update your contact manually. This happens in particular for people that move between countries frequently. Why go through the trouble of updating Whatsapp to your current phone number, especially if you still have access to your old phone number for when you move back to your h…

When you update your phone number, as long as you register the transfer in WhatsApp (as opposed to creating a new account) it's pretty seamless. There's no need for everyone to update your contact.
Post reply on HN