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Facebook's Little Red Book

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Re: Facebook's Little Red Book

#11

Good job with the scan. I started reading the book and began to feel rage so I stopped after about 20 pages. Is it the most self-unaware book or just people trying their hand at PR?

For better or worse, social media (I’d even go as far as saying Facebook) has changed the world. As cringey as that book sounds, people loved hopium of early 2010s. Maybe I was young and naive as well, but I also believed that such connections will unite the world somehow.

Re: Facebook's Little Red Book

#12
post #8

Good job with the scan. I started reading the book and began to feel rage so I stopped after about 20 pages. Is it the most self-unaware book or just people trying their hand at PR?

This was 2012. There was still hope and optimism in the tech space. The Internet had helped overturn powerful regimes and given voice to the disenfranchised. There was the idea that person to person public discourse could resolve many societal problems. Smartphones had exploded just 6 years prior and they were already making inroads into traditionally underserved and neglected communities around the world, helping fa…

> There was the idea that person to person public discourse could resolve many societal problems.

Nobody thought this.

Re: Facebook's Little Red Book

#13

Good job with the scan. I started reading the book and began to feel rage so I stopped after about 20 pages. Is it the most self-unaware book or just people trying their hand at PR?

The amount of retcon in even the first few pages is comical, it comes across as the most tone deaf thing ever.

Re: Facebook's Little Red Book

#14

page 17. android operating system on an iphone 4. i'm crying right now, particularly the way this is juxtaposed with so many critical moments in history.

I think it is meant to be a generic phone, the edges and front camera are wrong for an iphone, but then the home button is very distinctly an iphone. It is weird.

Re: Facebook's Little Red Book

#15
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was 2012. There was still hope and optimism in the tech space. The Internet had helped overturn powerful regimes and given voice to the disenfranchised. There was the idea that person to person public discourse could resolve many societal problems. Smartphones had exploded just 6 years prior and they were already making inroads into traditionally underserved and neglected communities around the world, helping fa…

> There was the idea that person to person public discourse could resolve many societal problems. Nobody thought this.

I hate to break the news to you, but literally millions believed it. There's still more than a (very overprivileged) few who still believe it.

Re: Facebook's Little Red Book

#16
post #8

Good job with the scan. I started reading the book and began to feel rage so I stopped after about 20 pages. Is it the most self-unaware book or just people trying their hand at PR?

This was 2012. There was still hope and optimism in the tech space. The Internet had helped overturn powerful regimes and given voice to the disenfranchised. There was the idea that person to person public discourse could resolve many societal problems. Smartphones had exploded just 6 years prior and they were already making inroads into traditionally underserved and neglected communities around the world, helping fa…

I can kind of understand having that kind of optimism back in the Internet of, say, 1998, before we saw how vampiric venture-backed winner-take-most tech companies would be. But by 2012, it would be incredibly naive of tech employees (of any company) to seriously believe they were some kind of force for good.

Re: Facebook's Little Red Book

#17
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was the idea that person to person public discourse could resolve many societal problems. Nobody thought this.

I hate to break the news to you, but literally millions believed it. There's still more than a (very overprivileged) few who still believe it.

Sorry, nobody “educated” believed this.

Re: Facebook's Little Red Book

#19
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was 2012. There was still hope and optimism in the tech space. The Internet had helped overturn powerful regimes and given voice to the disenfranchised. There was the idea that person to person public discourse could resolve many societal problems. Smartphones had exploded just 6 years prior and they were already making inroads into traditionally underserved and neglected communities around the world, helping fa…

> There was the idea that person to person public discourse could resolve many societal problems. Nobody thought this.

Of course they did. It was 2012. The Arab Spring was happening when this was written.

People might have been wrong, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a somewhat common belief.

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