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4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

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Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#111

Post by Read_the_Genes »

scrollbar wrote: post #95
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why Google would care to know those things. The most profitable form of advertising is a direct search. "Bears tickets" is advertising gold. Joe liking the Bears on Facebook is not on the same level. Google might get incremental value on having the additional data but I don't think it's worth the reputation hit.

There's a whole spectrum of user data with varying value to advertisers. Google already rocked search big time and now they're on to the rest of the online advertising budget. Ad networks (like me!) use demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data to target most display ad campaigns. I have run campaigns specifically sold as "market to Nigerian immigrants living in America" or "moms 25-35 interested in beauty prod…

And why should we trust you (or Google etc) with our data? Perhaps you (they) will exploit our ignorance and manipulate our preferences?

Not everyone in the world can be assured their human rights and exposing personal information can lead to persecution. Therefore, there is a risk attributed to this data collection, at least for some. Not everyone is willing or able to take these risks.

While I can agree that this data may be useful for both customer and advertiser, its potential misuse should not be ignored. And when these networks deny the use of pseudonyms, they force their users to take (unnecessary) risks.

Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#112

Post by slowpoke »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #75
grandalf wrote: post #31

Chris came up with a great metaphor to explain online identity. Most of the people leading major product decisions in this area either have very common names or are already famous. But for the rest of us, using our real name online means that anyone who meets us can discover our online identity with a google search. When I "meet" someone online (such as reading a comment he/she wrote on HN) I really don't care what h…

Google cares because it allows them to correlate all that juicy information you give them online with all those things you interact with offline. Together, these will combine into more targeted advertising (or "direct-to-individual marketing"). There is a HUGE financial incentive to force people into using their real names.

>There is a HUGE financial incentive to force people into using their real names.

"Financial incentive" is not, or rather, should not be a valid argument, ever. Especially not for infringing on fundamental principles of personal rights and liberties.

We (as in, the privacy/anonymity advocates) have always known that Google/Facebook wants to profit. What we question is why that is any justification for the shit they are pulling. Has capitalism really clouded most people's minds this much?

Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#113

Post by archiloque »

GrahamL wrote: post #109
william42 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true; the law of diminishing returns applies.

How? Advertisers are always looking to show targeted ads

Perhaps if several social sites offer targeted ads with the same level of precision it may decrease the ads' prices since the ads budget won't grow accordingly ? (then it would mean that people are using several services at the same time and not migrating from one to another)

Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#114

Post by bteitelb »

Poole is spot on. I'll add as a corollary, that users also don't want real-time communication that is a mirror. This is one of the reasons that videoconferencing has failed repeatedly since 1964. The entire cosmetics and fashion industries exist to provide avatars for when we must endure the gaze. And yet, we continue to work on videoconferencing and tele-immersion. Sigh.

Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#115

Post by bteitelb »

Another corollary is that we need better tools for lying. Prismatic identity management require that you can manage the persona on each facet and lie about the occluded personas. One of the killer features of the telephone that is often overlooked is how well it has supported lying.

Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#116

Post by molesy »

suivix wrote: post #110
gnu6 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's baffling that I'm being downvoted so much. Apparently most hackernews users are devoted fans of 4chan who use that site to get their child pornography fix.

It's baffling that you're getting downvoted for accusing a site of being government-operated with 0 evidence, and then you put down HN users? Really?

Naw, that was me. He just said moot runs the world's largest CP site and that's probably not a good reason to listen to him.

This is the internet, so pastebin is as good as any other evidence:

http://pastebin.com/fPW1myL9

Of course that doesn't say NSA but my tinfoil is strong.

Seriously, if you don't believe that these large social sites that popped out of nowhere with no obvious need and no chance of profitability haven't at least been very happily ushered along the path to success by an all-too-eager network of governments that give not two shits about their population for anything but their perverse amusement and enrichment, you're a complete moron and a prime example of why the founding fathers knew you can't trust the people to run a country. Because you're morons.

Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#117

Post by egiva »

william42 wrote: post #85
toyg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's worth a few billions to Facebook, it's worth a few billions to Google.

That's not true; the law of diminishing returns applies.

In this case the law of diminishing returns is offset by the massive movement from TV-based advertising to web-based advertising. As long as TV loses add dollars, there will be plenty of "rising tide" to lift both Facebook and Google in terms of increased advertising revenues.

On the flip side, that's a confounding factor that makes it hard to compare Facebook to Google in terms of some type of battle for advertising dollars. For the time being they should both see revenue growth, irregardless of who does a better job.

Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#118

Post by salvadors »

wcchandler wrote: post #89
FaceKicker wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We present ourselves differently in different contexts, and that's key to our creativity and self-expression. Isn't this pretty much exactly what Google+ tries to reflect with circles? It almost sounds to me like the marketing speak they had going when the product first came out.

Yes, I agree. But it's really not the same. Think about steve yegge and his posting on google+. We cannot rely on anonymity across a board when user error is such a likely possibility. While it's easy and intuitive to correctly post when sober and clear minded, certain things may slip your mind. Steve yegge also intended for only a select group of users to read it. Let's pretend that he had full anonymity. There woul…

However, it's likely that his post wouldn't have had the same effect if it had been fully anonymous. Being _by him_ carried with it a lot of other things. Reputation matters.

Re: 4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

#120

Post by crc »

toyg wrote: post #76

The problem with the multiple-vs-unique-ID debate is that people tend to ignore what these systems are really built for: data mining, behavioural analysis, targeted advertising etc. Users will agree with moot that separate identities are better and safer, but this is not how the real FB/Google customers see it; advertisers and marketeers want to know that user-A is an engineer AND loves cooking AND has a pet AND goes…

> I just think this point tends to be overlooked when talking about "social" websites, almost like it was not polite to point out where these businesses make their money.

I am not sure that this is overlooked. I think most people know it is as so obviously true that it doesn't need restating anymore.

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