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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

#321

Post by soylentcola »

mrfusion wrote: post #263
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Spot on! It’s so bizarre that people won’t bring up politics in person but feel it’s ok to blast their opinions to those same people.

I think it's a combo of physical distance and ease of commenting. Remember the old Penny Arcade comic that frequently made the rounds years ago (about the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory)?

Not a terribly subtle bit of commentary itself, but it was a humorous reference to something most of us had experienced. In person, there are reactions to see. The other person/people's humanity is on direct display and most of us have at least some degree of innate empathy that keeps us from being a complete asshole all the time. And even those who don't mind (or relish) being an asshole have to worry about repercussions.

In contrast, if I read something I disagree with, it's a lot easier for me to just fire off a smartass reply without the effect that socialization has on me to consider how appropriate the comment is or what effects it might have. I'm just countering some words that I don't like with some other words I do like.

Large-scale social media just turns into the comment section for the entire internet.

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

#322

Post by speeddemon »

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!)

I do think this website is still small enough to have decent moderation, but there are plenty of borderline toxic and/or trolling comments I've seen here that go unmoderated. I've also seen tons of blatant and dangerous misinformation posted in the comments section, you only have to look at the vaccine threads from last week to see that. Nothing is perfect anywhere and medical misinformation is really bad for everyone. Maybe we can blame Facebook for bleeding out into the rest of the internet and turning things toxic, but we still have to deal with the effects of it.

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

#323

Post by baud147258 »

baud147258 wrote: post #189
vxNsr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-reading this, when I said "rather affordable texts", I should have said that I've got unlimited texts for contacts in the country, as part of my subscription (5€, got also 2 hours of call and 100 Mo per month)

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

#324

Post by soylentcola »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #291
m_fayer wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I think the core of the problem here is the free ad-supported model that's so pervasive in the industry. Data mining in order to optimize targeted ads is the business driver for this bad behavior and society has struggled to grasp it's implications. The problem is that once something is free there's no going back. You'll never be able to compete with free. Free is the new antitrust. The only players that will be able…

I'm thinking about some times when I chose "paid" over "free" and a big part of it was that the paid option was 1) considerably better and 2) unavailable for free due to physical limitations.

The first example I thought of was when I was younger and wanted internet access. I didn't pay for dialup as long as I could figure out a free option. Our library had some free system you could dial into and I figured out a way to make reasonable use of that. Then when I moved, I used some of those Juno and Netzero type services for a while.

But once I had the option to pay for cable internet, I just went straight for it. The experience was an order of magnitude better, and there was simply no way to hustle a roughly equivalent free option out there. But looking back, I don't know if I would've considered a free, ad-based cable provider if it existed back when I was a broke young dude pinching pennies wherever I could.

Then again, nowadays, I would pay a bit extra to ensure my cable internet provider did not read, prioritize, or otherwise mess with my data if that was an option. But I doubt many others would choose to do that if it was extra charge for nebulous benefits.

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

#327

Post by Jugurtha »

TheHypnotist wrote: post #286
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.

The premise of this question is that we know how often a power outage in Nebraska was caused by a power outage in New York. We don't know, and the conclusion should not be that it is not that often, but that we do not know.

If anything is vulnerable to cascading, domino, effects, it is electric grids: interconnected networks, even at an intercontinental level.

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

#328

Post by ComodoHacker »

vdddv wrote: post #235
ComodoHacker wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At certain age and health conditions, the only viable communication media you have left are voice and/or visual.

and you can't use your voice on phone if whatsapp is down?

If you're in another country, this can be expensive.

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

#330

Post by chuckee »

rybosworld wrote: post #308
smt88 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange that you're ignoring the massive area between "unregulated" and "nationalized" (which is where most companies fall already). No one is saying to break up Facebook and give it to the government. The idea is to break up Facebook because they've been buying competitors instead of trying to compete. It is an attempt to make the market more competitive.

"The idea is to break up Facebook because they've been buying competitors instead of trying to compete." That seems like your own interpretation of the tweet. The author says in a later tweet that they think Whatsapp should be treated as a utility. That seems to suggest they do want Whatsapp to be handed to the government.

Plenty of utilities are privately owned - telephone companies and ISPs, for the most relevant example. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility
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