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How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

engineering.fb.com

41–50 of 184 posts

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#42
post #39

Offtopic but here we go: Once Threads became available in the EU I, like I assume many others, made an Instagram account from my FB account in order to check it out. 2 days later, and without having posted anything except perhaps a "Hello world", my Insta account was banned for generic reason (breaking the TOS, nothing concrete). I only found out 2 weeks later, as I hadn't even visited the site(s) again. Their "Appea…

Also, I constantly receive password reset codes to my email. I am not sure what scammers want to achieve, but it is annoying that Meta cannot do anything.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try to ask you in the most neutral way possible: how do you feel about being an investor in a company with such a troubled history of privacy violations and one of the key enablers of Surveillance Capitalism?

Nobody should be in the stock market evaluating if companies behave ethically. Most companies do not. I do not invest in Meta specifically, but I would likely not vouch for any companies in my investment portfolio. It's up to the government and the courts to go after them, not me with a paltry few thousand dollars worth of shares.

> It's up to the government and the courts to go after them

Except that the government benefits from their financial success (through taxation and political donations) and the courts are more likely than not following laws that were written to favor them and their interests (through lobbying and regulatory capture), so how do you see this actually happening?

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#44
post #5

The amount of (very impressive) human labor that went into building something that was dead on delivery. Kudos to them for being able to incentivize engineers to pull through this.

The article states the exact opposite: "A small, nimble team of engineers built Threads over the course of only five months of technical work" while it "garner[ed] over 100 million sign ups in its first five days". According to the article linked there, there were (up to) 60 engineers in the team. That's 300 person-months, or 25 person-years.

Ok, so 25 person years for copying someone else’s product in the most uninspiring way.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#45
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try to ask you in the most neutral way possible: how do you feel about being an investor in a company with such a troubled history of privacy violations and one of the key enablers of Surveillance Capitalism?

You can find moral arguments against investing in practically any company. At the end of the day your stance makes no actual difference. The only thing you are doing is missing out. If you are so moral, spend effort into something more meaningful instead of making yourself poorer.

> You can find moral arguments against investing in practically any company

Then maybe we shouldn't invest in most companies?

> The only thing you are doing is missing out.

"First, do no harm".

If someone tells you they are going to rob someone else's home with a 0% chance of getting caught, do you join them?

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try to ask you in the most neutral way possible: how do you feel about being an investor in a company with such a troubled history of privacy violations and one of the key enablers of Surveillance Capitalism?

Investing and not investing in the company mean exactly the same thing. Unless FB issues more shares you aren't buying shares from the company. You're buying from someone else.

> You're buying from someone else.

Everyone buying shares do it for one of the following reasons:

- They expect to receive a dividend

- They expect to sell it at a higher price later to "someone else".

In the first case, if you believe that the company is unethical, it's immoral to buy a share because you'd be profiting from their wrongdoings. By doing so, you are an accomplice.

In the second, by buying the share you are not signaling you condone the company's actions, but you also have an incentive to get other people in the system.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#47
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find moral arguments against investing in practically any company. At the end of the day your stance makes no actual difference. The only thing you are doing is missing out. If you are so moral, spend effort into something more meaningful instead of making yourself poorer.

> You can find moral arguments against investing in practically any company Then maybe we shouldn't invest in most companies? > The only thing you are doing is missing out. "First, do no harm". If someone tells you they are going to rob someone else's home with a 0% chance of getting caught, do you join them?

> Then maybe we shouldn't invest in most companies?

Speak for yourself. I and I would say most don't care about your moral grand standing.

> If someone tells you they are going to rob someone else's home with a 0% chance of getting caught, do you join them?

Neither do I care about arguing against a straw man.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#48
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can find moral arguments against investing in practically any company Then maybe we shouldn't invest in most companies? > The only thing you are doing is missing out. "First, do no harm". If someone tells you they are going to rob someone else's home with a 0% chance of getting caught, do you join them?

> Then maybe we shouldn't invest in most companies? Speak for yourself. I and I would say most don't care about your moral grand standing. > If someone tells you they are going to rob someone else's home with a 0% chance of getting caught, do you join them? Neither do I care about arguing against a straw man.

It is only a straw man if you are more concerned about the legality than the morality of your actions and decisions.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#49
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not sure how that correlates with usage. Your personal experience isn’t a generalizable experience. Nobody in my circle uses Snapchat, yet it’s worth $27B… If anything, this might mean your circle is quite small.

I have a large circle of friends. Many use Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube Premium, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal... Not ONE usage of Threads.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#50
post #39

Offtopic but here we go: Once Threads became available in the EU I, like I assume many others, made an Instagram account from my FB account in order to check it out. 2 days later, and without having posted anything except perhaps a "Hello world", my Insta account was banned for generic reason (breaking the TOS, nothing concrete). I only found out 2 weeks later, as I hadn't even visited the site(s) again. Their "Appea…

In trying to sign up for Threads, I was insta-banned when I created an Instagram account, without even having a chance to use it, for allegedly violating the ToS, which seems impossible, since I hadn't done anything yet.

They wanted to extract my phone number from me, and then also a photo/video after that to "verify" my identity, so I aborted the process, because I'm not going to feed the data slurping machine. I think that's the whole point of these fake bans, to extract personal data from you.

Twitter used to auto-ban me too in order to extract my phone number, and we know that Twitter illegitimately used phone numbers for advertising purposes.

To hell with the corporate-owned social networks. I want no part of them anymore. I'm sticking with Mastodon, which is free from this garbage.

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