Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

bitsoffreedom.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 247 posts

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#141

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #68

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…

Certainly the company like Facebook, even if you're paying them for data security privacy, how can you trust them? That they will respect it?

These companies are filled to the brim with utter sociopaths, Especially Facebook. Companies that internal metrics with them fully aware of the mental health damage they're doing at a massive scale to young children, and buried it.

Companies that did psychological manipulation AB tests.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#142

Post by fer »

seanhunter wrote: post #108
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just use SMS messages? No feeds, literally all phones support them, with MMS you also get photos and stuff... you don't need another party involved for the messages to work, and you're already paying for them.

This is something I genuinely don't understand. Whatsapp used to have a reason to exist because the SMS experience on android was pretty bad. That's not the case any more.

WhatsApp took off simply because SMS used to cost money, at least in the areas of Europe I'm familiar with.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#143

Post by tedggh »

rightbyte wrote: post #106
jfengel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people more or less understand that. Nobody likes ads. Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away. Many won't even create a free a…

> Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. Really? It took me until like 2012-2013 to realize Google searches stalked me to other websites. Then again much critics at that time of big tech was disregarded as lunatic crackpots. And nowadays your are a crackpot if you claim they are not spying on you. I guess that matters.

It’s pretty obvious ads are targeted everywhere today, you search for Adidas running shoes and you expect to see running shoes ads in YouTube, Instagram, Amazon and pretty much every single platform with an ad revenue model. It’s not a subtle, subliminal thing buried into text nudging you into buying shoes, but very evident, pretty much your exact search query transformed into highly visual content. I would be shocked if I know someone under 60 that does not know this.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#144

Post by Workaccount2 »

delbronski wrote: post #137
Workaccount2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has this delusion that they can keep living their magically relaxed life, and continue to both fund it and stay relevant on the world stage. FYI, the big players today are the US and China. Nobody has the heart to call and tell Europeans that they aren't really part of the future, they're still away on their 8th week long holiday of the year. Not staying economically relevant is far ( far ) more harmful to soc…

Yeah sure, because life in the USA is so much more awesome than in Europe. Naww, they can keep their relevancy in the world stage. We are good over here living in the "stone age".

The problem isn't that Europe is living in the stone age, clearly they aren't. The problem is that they are living in the modern age entirely on the back of foreign tech. Chinese hardware running American software. Industry running on American energy, and protection totally reliant on American defense (the US spent more money per capita in Ukraine than the EU did...). This doesn't even factor in generous welfare programs that will need to be funded by a shrinking population(!) that doesn't have cutting edge skills anymore.

Europe decided to vacation for the last 30 years rather than go to work. The fruit of the post-war era was bountiful, and bank accounts were healthy, so why not take time off? Stone age is not a good way to describe Europe today, but over the next 10-20 years it very well may become more appropriate. European leaders are keenly aware of this, but man is it hard to convince the kids that they need to end their vacation, especially when it is all they have ever known.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#145

Post by delusional »

jfengel wrote: post #84
Workaccount2 wrote: post #68

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…

I think people more or less understand that. Nobody likes ads. Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away. Many won't even create a free a…

> But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people.

I have a pet theory that these business models paper over the vast worthlessness of many modern technologies. That the value of Facebook is not in it's technologies or network, but rather in the arbitrage of the value of data when combined. We pay for the nearly worthless service of facebook, with our nearly worthless data. Facebook combines that data with other data from other people, and create data that is extremely valuable for advertisers.

The important bit of this theory is that Facebook is presumed nearly worthless. What that means is that outlawing their combining or collection of data from users wouldn't cause their service to transition to a pay-per-user model, but rather would completely dissolve the product, which nobody would miss.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#146

Post by motoxpro »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #68

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…

So pay ~$30 a month (the LTV of a user on facebook). No way.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#147

Post by quotemstr »

skrebbel wrote: post #59
quotemstr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civilizations that think this way get conquered by ones that don't, and afterwards, nobody much cares what they thought.

You think the US is going to invade Europe and enforce a techno-capitalist oligarchy on it?

Of course not. I do think that the US might get bored of defending a continent that refuses to lift a finger to defend itself --- or put much effort into anything that isn't regulating, censoring, or fining someone, and then someone else will invade Europe and impose a techno-capitalist oligarchy or worse on it.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#148

Post by gbalduzzi »

delusional wrote: post #145
jfengel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people more or less understand that. Nobody likes ads. Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away. Many won't even create a free a…

> But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. I have a pet theory that these business models paper over the vast worthlessness of many modern technologies. That the value of Facebook is not in it's technologies or network, but rather in the arbitrage of the value of data when combined. We pay for the nearly worthless…

Even if the data collected by Meta is really worthless (and that is a big if), Meta shows content to a billion(s?) of people everyday.

That alone is definitely not worthless lol

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#149

Post by jnovek »

Aurornis wrote: post #86
em-bee wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement the better alternative is to require interoperability with other messenger apps, so can use the app of my choice. this is a proposal under discussion since years ago. I seriously doubt that your friends are only able to communicate through exactly one communication channel some peopl…

> some people do exactly that. they refuse to communicate on anything but their messenger of choice. and sometimes keeping in touch with that person is more important than my preferences. oh, and for many people i do not want to share my phone number, which limits the available messaging platforms we can still use. we'll be lucky if there is one. I’m sure there are some number of people out there who only use Faceboo…

“I’m sure there are some number of people out there who only use Facebook Messenger, do not check their email, refuse to use any other messenger”

I don’t know how old you are or where you live, but I’m in my mid 40s and don’t live in a tech city. A good quarter of everyone I know in my age range uses Facebook Messenger as their primary form of texting. Most of them don’t even use Facebook itself anymore, they just have a lot of momentum on Messenger.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#150

Post by gbalduzzi »

arethuza wrote: post #118
rightbyte wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. Really? It took me until like 2012-2013 to realize Google searches stalked me to other websites. Then again much critics at that time of big tech was disregarded as lunatic crackpots. And nowadays your are a crackpot if you claim they are not spying on you. I guess that matters.

When I watch YouTube on an Apple TV the ads seem slightly relevant - when I watch on a mobile device they are completely awful, literally no idea why I'm being shown most of them.

You probably disabled some privacy settings on your mobile (or you are not logged in with your user).
Post reply on HN