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Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

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Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#121
post #54

The problem here is the dichotomy of "ownership" in social media platforms. Facebook (and others) know that giving you that feeling of ownership and customization keeps you coming back. The Twitter Avatar, the Facebook profile, the MySpace page. All those posts on your profile add to your collection, your customization. They let you control that little bit so that you feel like you own it in some way. Did you love th…

What do you think about the idea of classifying social media as a utility? I've heard a lot of people mention that lately...

Water is a utility. Electricity is a utility. Gas is a utility. Roads are a utility. Social media is a utility?

sm seems to fit out in terms of scale and importance. We don't need social media like we need roads. Call me a crotchety old guy but I think quite the opposite, we'd all be better off with less social media. No need to enshrine it with the status of "utility".

Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#122
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about the idea of classifying social media as a utility? I've heard a lot of people mention that lately...

Then people will have to come to terms that banning Alex Jones was a bad idea too. You can't support a companies right to ban people you don't like while simultaneously advocating protections as a utility.

Utilities are limited in how they can raise money... tariffs are the core of utility regulation.

Alex Jones and other fringe elements with disproportionate large reach wouldn’t exist on a regulated utility because the advertising practices that allow Facebook to monetize Jones would likely not exist.

Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#123
post #118
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the other way around. Why does Facebook think it has the right to remove years of their users' contributions? As the years march on, I think we'll see more and more data protection laws in favor of users rather than companies. Data is the new uranium, not the new oil. It needs to be protected and taken seriously. You can argue that it's Facebook's site and that they can do whatever they want. I argue that they c…

> Why does Facebook think it has the right to remove years of their users' contributions? I'm guessing that since their fleet of lawyers wrote that wall of legalease everyone must have clicked on, they are pretty sure exactly what their rights are w.r.t who owns the contributions voluntarily sent to their servers.

Property rights must have seemed a radical idea at the time they were first introduced. And the time seems right for data rights. Actions like this only solidify the need for such protections.

One of the central questions of our generation is, who owns the data we create? Do we, or do the corporations?

Seeing as Zuck was dragged in front of congress back in April, I think questions like these will only become more important over time.

Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#124
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the other reasons you shouldn’t use a “free” email service. You can be locked out of your account for arbitrary-reason-of-the-day and good luck finding a contact number or email address for support. If email is important to you, you probably shouldn’t be using a “free” service.

The big problem with email lock-in is that when you switch providers, you can't take your old address with you. Best case, you can set up forwarding. Worst case, if your account just gets deleted, or the provider goes out of business, everyone who only knows your old address cannot contact you anymore. This, in turn, means that even when considering non-free email service providers, you need some reassurance that pro…

You register your own domain. Usually that comes with free email accounts. If the provider goes down then you still control the domain so that you can move to a new provider.

Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#125
post #10
post #3

This is pretty crazy. For people whose job is social media, this is basically the equivalent of Github just arbitrarily deciding they're going to delete all of your startup's source code without telling anyone in advance, or like Google Docs just deciding to disappear all your spreadsheets. With only a couple months until election season, Facebook is now literally editing politician's pages and deleting the campaign…

No, it’s the equivalent of GitHub deciding to remove all the code that you automatically re-post from SourceForge. In what way, AT ALL, was this this feature good for FACEBOOK? It meant people could be “on” Facebook and “active” without ever actually logging in or using the app or engaging in any way. Why would they want to just be a dumping ground for copies of another social network’s posts? I guess I’m surprised t…

> In what way, AT ALL, was this this feature good for FACEBOOK?

One of my friends only cross-posts from Twitter. He doesn't engage with Facebook, but if his posts stop appearing in my feed, I engage less.

Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#126
post #10
post #3

This is pretty crazy. For people whose job is social media, this is basically the equivalent of Github just arbitrarily deciding they're going to delete all of your startup's source code without telling anyone in advance, or like Google Docs just deciding to disappear all your spreadsheets. With only a couple months until election season, Facebook is now literally editing politician's pages and deleting the campaign…

No, it’s the equivalent of GitHub deciding to remove all the code that you automatically re-post from SourceForge. In what way, AT ALL, was this this feature good for FACEBOOK? It meant people could be “on” Facebook and “active” without ever actually logging in or using the app or engaging in any way. Why would they want to just be a dumping ground for copies of another social network’s posts? I guess I’m surprised t…

Over the years, the few times I’d go on Facebook is when someone would respond to one of my cross-posted tweets. I set the feature up years ago, and naturally stopped interacting with Facebook, except again when someone would respond to my very active twitter through this feature.

I probably will basically not use Facebook now. I’m not super mad about it or annoyed, so hopefully this doesn’t come off that way - I’m pretty nuetral about it. I am perhaps abstractly annoyed that a comment someone made on my wall is now gone maybe. But to directly answer your question, I think at least with me, this was a very useful feature for Facebook. Again, I don’t care that I won’t be using Facebook anymore now, so just one instance of this being useful for Facebook and neither here nor there for the person.

Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#127
post #8

Huh. Weird to retroactively pull content out of my feed. Now there's just, like, one post from all of 2018. Reveals to both me and the world that I don't actually really use Facebook that much... :-/

Yes from what I can see in my feed, Facebook is rapidly imploding. A lot of my friends, family, etc. have stopped engaging with it completely. Younger people are simply not on it at all. Long time active posters have gone silent one by one. As a consequence my feed is now completely dominated by just a handful of people that are still actively using it for whatever reason. It's less relevant to me now than at any point in the 11 or so years I've been on it.

Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#129
post #54

The problem here is the dichotomy of "ownership" in social media platforms. Facebook (and others) know that giving you that feeling of ownership and customization keeps you coming back. The Twitter Avatar, the Facebook profile, the MySpace page. All those posts on your profile add to your collection, your customization. They let you control that little bit so that you feel like you own it in some way. Did you love th…

Before everyone starts overreacting, please read the article first. There is no formal announcement from FB for this. Few users noticed their tweeted posts getting deleted and they suddenly arrived at conclusion that this is FB’s new policy. The article itself says this might be some bug that could have occurred due to recent API related changes.

Having said that, I really hope this is not the new policy from FB. Not only posts gets deleted but the conversation around it are also getting deleted. Many high profile people have setup FB accounts so everything is cross posted from Twitter. If this is new policy, it’s going to be the most boneheaded one so far from FB. So let’s hope this is just a bug.

Re: Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear

#130
post #54

The problem here is the dichotomy of "ownership" in social media platforms. Facebook (and others) know that giving you that feeling of ownership and customization keeps you coming back. The Twitter Avatar, the Facebook profile, the MySpace page. All those posts on your profile add to your collection, your customization. They let you control that little bit so that you feel like you own it in some way. Did you love th…

Thee need to own your own data is clear - only you should have the right to redact your posts for any reason. We should adopt systems that are fundamentally amoral, non-censoring, and non-competitive for our data being on their platform. Systems where we can profit from the success of our content. Can anyone think of some examples?
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