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Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

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531–540 of 619 posts

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#531

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It is astonishing. I generally enjoy Facebook and while there are ads and click bait a lot of my feed is just my friends talking nicely, but it's a strange subset of friends. I tried clicking on a few profiles I hadn't seen in a while and a lot of them had nice posts too. I saw everything from them for about a month then it disappeared again. I am very worried about what will become of all the very private stuff in t…

It's such a shame. I would LOVE to keep in touch with news from friends and family with a simple chronological feed, but every social media company insists on shoveling trash down my throat with an algorithm.

A week or so ago a new tab appeared in my Facebook app that gives chronological timeline of people and groups I follow. I don't know if it's in Europe only: https://imgur.com/a/xMb2VWG

They did the same with Instagram. Click Instagram logo and select "Following" to get a chronological timeline. Possibly also only in Europe.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#532

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To play devils advocate, Facebook is more essential to my life than it ever was before. * Marketplace was a huge success in terms of subsuming Craigslist. The quality of posts and the volume of postings makes me rarely even check Craigslist anymore. * Small forums for various hobbies are almost entirely driven by Facebook groups now, instead of in the past where you’d find some custom bulletin board where the last po…

Each of these: Markeplace, Forums, Messenger are non sticky and with countless alternatives. For example one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each with different people. I still use Craigslist, I think it works better and has better organization of categories. The main Facebook app, now that is a unique product - yet frankly, from my perspective it feels completely marginalized, the content there is in w…

WhatsApp is probably their best property.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#533
post #327

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I feel compelled to say that your second sentence is probably the funniest thing I've ever read on HN. It resonates very strongly with my belief that VR/Metaverse will continue to under deliver. What people want is an escape from reality. "Just like" Ready Player One or anything from a wide choice of science fiction novels. The problem is that these systems require a fundamental disconnect from reality. Not only do w…

> It resonates very strongly with my belief that VR/Metaverse will continue to under deliver. Just offer VR porn applications, and a lot of people will urge to get a VR headset and a decent computer to support it. For a lot of kinds of media, porn was the killer application.

"Honey, do you want to borrow Uncle Joe's headset and play in the metaverse?"

"No thanks, his headset is always sticky"

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#534

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Reality: the name change doesn’t hide anything. Neat to think they believe it does.

They wouldn't have done it if they didn't have evidence showing that you are wrong.

I'm curious where this belief comes from that large companies do not mistakes. It's almost as if you're implying that they're omniscient. Just look at Twitter for examples of how these large companies absolutely can and do misjudge markets.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#535
post #362

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Mark Zuckerberg's interview with Lex Fridman changed my perception about him. He seems really an empathetic person. Maybe he's too deep into his own dogma but he's definitely not robotic. https://youtu.be/5zOHSysMmH0

I'll listen. I'm struggling to imagine how an empathetic person can be totally amoral and an ethical void. Hearing Zuck pontificate about freedom of speech made me kick a puppy.

Listen to him talk about his daughters.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#536

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You need to check out "Metaverse Twitter". You're missing out on a lot of fascinating developments. The field is in its "90's internet phase" right now. The tech is still immature, but is rapidly growing in capability and ambition. Just like most people in the 90's had no idea how "internet" would be used, I think our ability to conceive of VR/AR/XR/metaverse is similarly myopic. I would give it a 10-15 year timeline…

In the 90s, the internet was very much being used. It was so exciting that my friends and I sat waiting for 20-30 seconds to see content. We exchanged messages, played each other on Comamand and Conquer, looked at edgy content on forums. Now, my Oculus headset sits gathering dust in a cupboard. Nobody I know wants it because it's so boring using it for more than half an hour.

Just because your lived experience is that "VR sucks" doesn't mean it's like that for everyone.

As a total counter example, I'm in my 30s, live with my girlfriend (in her 30s) and we play with our Valve Index together several times per week. We also have friends over for house parties where we play VR together (as well as Nintendo Switch.)

Now, imagine this is still "v0" of VR, that I am playing it on a weekly basis etc with my non-gamer girlfriend, I can easily imagine this being massive in 10 years.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#537

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Each of these: Markeplace, Forums, Messenger are non sticky and with countless alternatives. For example one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each with different people. I still use Craigslist, I think it works better and has better organization of categories. The main Facebook app, now that is a unique product - yet frankly, from my perspective it feels completely marginalized, the content there is in w…

Completely disagree. Those three things are all gated by intense network effects. Social media type products are generally as sticky as they come. Facebook will continue to be the platform that everyone uses, because who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people? > one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each with different people I guess theoretically, but in reality,…

> because who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people?

People who care about something, like, here? I think FB was a transitory medium for people who were not on the internet to discover what's out there. Most of them are going to end up in topical communities because the central market is too crazy

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#538
When you set out seeking to establish a colony you chose to name Facebook, you might not have willed it to expand into such a big universe. It's highly unlikely you could deduce how good a control you would have of your denizens who you would successfully turn into junkies over time. Now you are used to exploiting their malleability which gave rise to hegemony now palpable in your Meta.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#539
post #375

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Interesting then that the community has massively adopted React and PyTorch as defacto defaults for web dev and deep learning. How is it that these untalented lifer's left behind are doing these wildly crazy good technical things?

I suspect Reacts adoption is more along the lines of "nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM" than because it was genuinely novel. The space of JS frameworks was very well explored by the time React was created. PyTorch is based on Caffe which was created by Yangqing Jia at UC Berkeley.

You're crazy, React's shadow DOM and approach were a step change at the time.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO

#540

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Facebook dominated in part because people would endlessly scroll during class, at the bus stop, waiting on line, etc. VR and the Metaverse require a much bigger commitment by comparison. You can't casually use them. Heck, you can't really even eat or drink while a VR headset is strapped to your face.

VR is just a stepping stone. AR glasses can't be far behind, and they're even more convenient than phones. Really the end game here has to be star trek style holodeck or matrix style dream state, at which point the company effectively controls your entire life.

> VR is just a stepping stone. AR glasses can't be far behind, and they're even more convenient than phones.

I could see how they would be convenient for a few applications, but they don't have the range of uses a phone has. In particular, any kind of content creation seems like it would be nearly impossible. Though this same line was said about phones in the past.

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