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Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#121

Post by funkyy »

nostrademons wrote: post #106
brilliantcode wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That graph looks scary for Facebook. Yet the share prices have not corrected to reflect it. 1 Tunisia 100 2 Turkey 95 3 Venezuela 95 4 Ecuador 87 5 Peru 86 6 Algeria 84 7 El Salvador 81 8 Serbia 77 9 Colombia 75 10 Dominican Republic Notice that none of the developed economies are showing up in the top 10. The dollar per user must be falling as users are increasingly coming from smaller economies which means less amo…

Mobile, mobile, mobile. In 2010 everybody would hit Facebook multiple times a day from their workplace. In 2017 nobody in the developed world uses their work computer to access Facebook, they pop open the Facebook app on their phone or have it open 24/7 on their home computer. The people left doing the Google -> Facebook routine are those in developing countries who either don't have mobile phones or don't have app-c…

If they could make an official Facebook app less resource hogging, more user-friendly and usable on older mobile phones, they would be back in the game. But their app is probably the worst app you can have on your phone. It's terrible, slow and a joke. I would expect such an app from Verizon or GoDaddy, not from Facebook.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#122

Post by awqrre »

Bedon292 wrote: post #19

>> If you type "how to leave" into the Google search window, "how to leave Facebook" will be the first suggestion. Am I being too critical for thinking someone writing an article like this should know that Google searches / suggestions are personalized? Just because its suggested for them does not mean its universal.

You are right, but I am supposed to have personalization off and it is still in the 7th position for me. ("How to leave your wife" and "how to leave a group chat" being ahead among others)... But if I type "How to quit", Facebook is 6th... Who knows what would happen if you combined all synonyms and excluded unrelated topics...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#123

Post by pessimizer »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
zzalpha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the tech delusion. I don't know a start-up that doesn't have some grandiose vision of themselves as the future saviors of humanity. Uber, Tesla, Facebook, Airbnb, you name it... it's all the same "save the world" rhetoric. The scary thing is, I think a lot of people on the industry actually believe their own BS...

It's much easier to do hard or risky things (and convince others to do hard things) if you believe that doing so will save the world. Whether it's true or not, it's a useful illusion. People who believe that it's all meaningless tend to sit on message boards and shit on others instead.

Why leave out the option that some things are meaningless and some things are not? Why divide the world into conquering self-deluded bullshit artists and lazy cynical moaners?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#124

Post by projektir »

nether wrote: post #54
dopamean wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds a lot like what I tell people who don't like using reddit. I love using reddit because I follow the subs that are related to my interests and as a result I find a lot of really, really awesome content. I think if you approach a massive social network as a passive or casual user you will be subjected to worst that network has to offer.

Even in the hobbies, particularly sports, subreddits I see a lot of narrow mindedness that I don't see in other forums for the same activities. Like asking how to do X type of cycling, the top comment will be some exhortation on how you must do ABC with Z bike or you will die. Versus bikeforums.net, where people will chime in with a more "anything goes" attitude, and seem to have greater depth and breadth of experien…

Indeed. I had plenty of positive experiences on Reddit, but many subreddits are very chaotic relative to how popular the subject is and who ended up there. The voting system just doesn't scale well in my opinion.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#125

Post by projektir »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
zzalpha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the tech delusion. I don't know a start-up that doesn't have some grandiose vision of themselves as the future saviors of humanity. Uber, Tesla, Facebook, Airbnb, you name it... it's all the same "save the world" rhetoric. The scary thing is, I think a lot of people on the industry actually believe their own BS...

It's much easier to do hard or risky things (and convince others to do hard things) if you believe that doing so will save the world. Whether it's true or not, it's a useful illusion. People who believe that it's all meaningless tend to sit on message boards and shit on others instead.

I'm very split on this.

I very much agree with the first sentence.

But I don't know if I agree with the second. People who believe that something is meaningless, or hard to do, are at least not doing any damage, while saviors of the world have done plenty of damage. We humans seem to have an inherent bias for powerful persons, in that we tend to like them even if they're a terrible influence.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#126

Post by projektir »

oldsj wrote: post #40
azernik wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Tesla's one thing is inherently important because of the climate change implications.

Yea I have to say Elon's actions seem to really be for the overall benefit of society unlike most other tech / business leaders

I think Elon means well somewhere down the line, but he seems to be completely blind to ethical/social effects as opposed to the purely technological ones.

I.e., his solution to employment issues caused by automation is to merge with machines as opposed to addressing it on a social, political, economic, etc., level.

More and more I find this approach detrimental to society and likely to amplify all existing problems.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#127

Post by westiseast »

astrodust wrote: post #99
return0 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad facebook exists, to keep all that garbage siloed and away from me. As a non-user, i enjoy a slightly cleaner web.

We can just call it the "alternate-web".

Fake web.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#128

Post by pessimizer »

nostrademons wrote: post #73
zzalpha wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of what? Buying into the BS? I'd rather take an honest, measured view of these companies. Many have the potential to change our lives, for both good and ill. Buying into the BS is a great way to short circuit healthy skepticism. Selling the BS is a fantastic smokescreen.

Who are the ones actually building the products that everybody else (and probably you, too) are using, though, and getting rich off it? They're the delusional folks who buy the BS. This is something I've wrestled with a lot in my personal life: you can have an accurate self-image and never really accomplish anything, or you can have an inflated self-image and achievements that probably don't quite justify it but come…

Second-order survivorship bias. The vast majority of delusional megalomaniacs are abject failures (at least when compared to their own ambitions), and the number of them who live in the gutter and eat out of trashcans is at least four orders of magnitude higher than the number who find success.

People who find success often become delusional megalomaniacs after achieving that success, when they see their success as evidence of their own greatness, not before. The idea that it's the megalomania (or a black turtleneck) that makes you successful, or even makes you brave enough to attempt the things that might make you successful, is an illusion.

A defining commonality of delusional megalomaniacs is their destructiveness and their danger to the people around them and themselves. Worse, they tend to attract followers who both amplify the reach of that destructiveness and who create an echo chamber that reflects back and amplifies the megalomania that attracted them, making the situation worse.

> That sort of delusional megalomania seems to be a necessary motive force for tackling hard, risky problems.

There's no evidence of this. Everything difficult was not solved by assholes, and Zuckerberg didn't solve anything difficult.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#129

Post by demoo »

brilliantcode wrote: post #103
CodingGuy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google Trends is somewhat right, we've definitely reached peak Facebook: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Facebook

That graph looks scary for Facebook. Yet the share prices have not corrected to reflect it. 1 Tunisia 100 2 Turkey 95 3 Venezuela 95 4 Ecuador 87 5 Peru 86 6 Algeria 84 7 El Salvador 81 8 Serbia 77 9 Colombia 75 10 Dominican Republic Notice that none of the developed economies are showing up in the top 10. The dollar per user must be falling as users are increasingly coming from smaller economies which means less amo…

There is no sign of average revenue per user decreasing. Even in US & Canada, ARPU increased from $13.7 in Q4 2015 to $19.81 in Q4 2016 [1].

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/01/facebook-q4-2016-earnings/

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

#130

Post by AznHisoka »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #118
brilliantcode wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows the underlying utility of Facebook compared to other tech giants distilled in to a really generic scenario. - You go to Google to research what to buy. - You go to Amazon to give Amazon your hard earned money. - You go to Facebook to brag what you bought. Yet the market cap of Facebook rivals those two with far less revenue and highest multiplier. This cannot last.

In theory the reason for this is that Facebook is "stickier" than Google or Amazon. If Google search isn't working for you, you can switch to something else in a heartbeat. If Facebook isn't working for you, you have to get all your friends to switch to something else before you can. The problem is this is also going to be Facebook's downfall at some indeterminate future date. Because if some other social network eve…

Most people can't switch from google to something else in a heartbeat...

we can email our friends, text them or meet them in the bar though.

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