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Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

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Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#151

Post by rland »

Facebook seems to be taking a lot of heat these days. But I wonder: what would actually "fix" the platform? As far as I can tell, the only "solution" is getting rid of Facebook. Obviously, FB doesn't agree. Short of destroying itself (and having a competitor instantly take its place), what should they do?

What can they do?

Proposed solutions to their various problems:

- Make the timeline less addictive, to prevent people overusing it. Won't work, as soon as facebook loses its relevance another, more addictive site will take its place (reddit, instagram). In any case, they've already tried this.

- Introduce moderation, to prevent abuse of the platform. They're already frantically hiring moderators--they cannot find enough people to moderate the platform. And competitors are emerging in any case (whatsapp and other messaging apps)

- Stop collecting data on people. Not going to happen, since they rely on this for revenue. Asking them to do this is like asking someone to violate their survival instinct. This has to happen from some force external to Facebook. And in any case, people's data is valuable, so saying "stop collecting data" is like saying "don't pick up $100 that you find on the ground."

I guess I'm trying to say that this problem is so much bigger than just Facebook. It's a problem with mankind that will prove to be more and more intractable as time goes on, regardless of who is a player and who is pointing fingers.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#152

Post by Florin_Andrei »

vinceguidry wrote: post #20

Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again. Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have so…

> We're in the "just had a baby, now we need to get it to a year old so we can all relax" phase.

Complete with loud screaming, soiled diapers, puke on the shoulder, and so on.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#153

Post by WillPostForFood »

wallawe wrote: post #17
WillPostForFood wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is the worst by far. Page rank has horribly distorted the content and structure. It affects the way people write and think e.g. I have to reuse my title in post for google ranking! I have to include these keywords! I can’t link because I want to keep my “juice”. I’d guess a majority of all content on the internet is fake, created to manipulate page rankings. And that’s just the beginning, people believe a 30 s…

In what world is this not the case? One without a search engine at all? Any world where a search engine exists, people are going to try to do what ranks best. I would argue the world is better with a search engine (and these side effects) than without one.

Your page ranks not because it is inherently good content, but by how many people link to it and how they link to it (link text). So it creates externalities.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#154

Post by nathan_long »

vinceguidry wrote: post #20

Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again. Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have so…

> Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again.

I was nodding along at this until I read your second paragraph, then had to go back. Apparently you think this was a bad thing?

Losing touch with people is natural. Having to explicitly sever a relationship is awkward. But without a natural pruning function, it's easy to end up with a thousand shallow relationships and not enough deep ones.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#155

Post by ModernMech »

stickfigure wrote: post #134
packetpirate wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have someone who knew sysadmin do it basically for free, or have everyone learn how to use something like IRC. Did you just drop off the planet between 1995 - 2005? Poor Myspace... everybody just f…

I was on AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Chat, as well as Friendster, Tribe.net, MySpace, and Orkut. True, Facebook didn't invent social networking, but it was significantly better than all of the others. The messengers were different beasts; in fact, Facebook didn't get instant messaging for quite some time. Facebook had two things going for it over the other early social networks - the UI was comparatively good, and they plat…

By saying "Facebook didn't invent social networking" the parent wasn't implying that Facebook didn't bring anything new. They were dismissing the idea that before Facebook you had to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to facilitate social activities over the internet. As a teenager using AIM in the 90s, I certainly wasn't shelling out thousands to talk with my friends every night.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#156

Post by 52-6F-62 »

cmurf wrote: post #73

He says from Twitter, which is waving "what about me? I'm awful too!" My runner up is Youtube, now infested with piles of crap, and when finding something decent it's infested with ads. What an innovation! It's now just like cable TV!

I still get a fair amount of value out of Youtube, personally.

But yeah, you definitely have to wear some goggles to see through the noise.

---

My rules for youtube:

* Don't read the comments

* Don't participate in the comments

* Ignore many of the suggestions—they tend toward right-wing extremist and conspiracy theory ramblings

* Stick to music, favoured clips from shows (I do love that I can watch some old Mitchell and Webb Look), DIY/How-Tos, old lectures and interviews (Feynman's are fantastic), and the like.

---

Grievances:

* The aforementioned suggestions that I keep up on my extremist ideology lessons and conspiracy theories about Clinton and her child slave moon base on Mars

* I now know what Peppa Pig is, kind of.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#157

Post by lern_too_spel »

czardoz wrote: post #79
mda wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they do that, It makes zero sense to assume they would do that and deliberately break their privacy policies.

Oh, but it somehow makes sense to assume the other way for Facebook?

Facebook (or really, Zuckerberg) has that track record.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#158

Post by extra88 »

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #147
michaelchisari wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again. Bear with me here... Was that such a terrible thing? I always dreamed about reconnecting with old friends, and then I did, and many times reality did not live up.

More than that, it changed what a "friend" was. I remember the first time someone talked about having 5,000 "friends" on Facebook. It felt so bizarre hearing that and still does. It used to be your "friends" were the people you were close to and they knew your secrets, and talked to about things that mattered. Somehow Facebook made it so that your "friends" were people who connected with you on Facebook and who could…

Words can have different meanings in different contexts. Being your friend IRL and being your "friend" on Facebook are very different. Many Facebook friends are what you might call "acquaintances" IRL. Plus there's all your family, immediate an extended, who aren't really truly your friends but are called such on Facebook.

BTW even IRL, knowing my secrets would be more indicative of close family and close friends, a wider circle of people can still be my friend without that level of intimacy.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#159

Post by zestyping »

stcredzero wrote: post #89
paulsutter wrote: post #35

I laughed out loud when I saw (twitter.com) at the end of the title

Twitter is also in the running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI

This talk is fantastic. I hope everyone watches it.

I wonder how much better the world would be if Twitter itself posted this video or something like it, every year, once a year. It might be amazing.

Re: Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet

#160

Post by rabidrat »

aestetix wrote: post #136
jasode wrote: post #48

The websites I constantly use every single day: google.com maps.google.com youtube.com wikipedia.org weather.gov stackoverflow.com For almost 20 years, I've been using Google for dozens of random searches every single day. Its utility to help me find information is unmatched. And Youtube -- even with the ads -- adds value to my life because of all the helpful tutorials and DIY content I can view for free. On the othe…

> I do think humanity would be served by a "real names" database by an entity we could trust to help us connect with each other. Unfortunately, that valuable info is currently held by an unethical company like Facebook. (My previous comment about this.[0]) They abuse their stewardship of the social graph which is why I adamantly avoid them. You mean like the phone book?

I was looking for someone I knew in college (20 years ago) last night, who has a very common name, and I don't know where they live now. The value of the all-encompassing social network is that I should be able to narrow it down to only a handful of candidates based on their proximity to me in the social graph.
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