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

The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

wheresyoured.at

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#21

Post by over_bridge »

gravesisme wrote: post #14

This guy just keeps trying to make money! How dare he increase profits!

You joke but the drive to increase profits at any cost is having pretty insidious impacts on the world. Enshittification is everywhere now with companies being forced to degrade customer experience to appease shareholders. Nothing wrong with making a profit but making additional profit every single quarter is making the western world hostile to most people on average wages. It's too expensive to even live here with only a small percentage of people doing well under these circumstances.

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#22

Post by paulddraper »

tekla wrote: post #13
paulddraper wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends whether you want to facilitate insightful discussion, or not.

HN has insightful discussion? Very few people read the article and post anyway. And then its against forum rules to call that out. HN has terrible insightful discussion.

> HN has insightful discussion?

Well that's the hope anyway. :|

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#23

Post by danjl »

LightFog wrote: post #20
danjl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Placing so much blame on individuals like Zuck and Sandberg is already a stretch. Though leaders have a huge influence, and should bear the responsibility, this piece tries to make it seem like it is those individuals that caused the perceived problems. It even implies that they had "bad" motivations, which is really reaching. Describing the stock classes, the article implies an enormous amount of detailed control on…

You are trying to suggest that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t have a detailed knowledge and control over core Meta features, nor knowledge of the societal damage they can do?

No, I am not. You are employing a logical fallacy known as "Denying the antecedent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#24

Post by nojvek »

Companies make profits because people spend their money on what those companies have to offer.

Facebook offers a dopamine hit. And so does X and TikTok. To some extent also HN.

The infinite scroll slot machine.

At the end of the day, we are an evolved version of dopamine driven apes.

Meta family of Apps (Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram) has total WAU of 3.05 billion. Almost half the planet.

---

Sam Altman, Sundar Picchai, Mark Zuckerberg saying that AI will somehow cure cancer and solve climate change seems pretty far fetched.

The closer reality is that as the AI models advance, they will figure out ever better ways of making their apps as addictive as cocaine.

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#25

Post by LightFog »

danjl wrote: post #23
LightFog wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trying to suggest that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t have a detailed knowledge and control over core Meta features, nor knowledge of the societal damage they can do?

No, I am not. You are employing a logical fallacy known as "Denying the antecedent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent

Not intentionally if so - I must be missing something more subtle in your comment.

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#26

Post by turinturambar81 »

nojvek wrote: post #24

Companies make profits because people spend their money on what those companies have to offer. Facebook offers a dopamine hit. And so does X and TikTok. To some extent also HN. The infinite scroll slot machine. At the end of the day, we are an evolved version of dopamine driven apes. Meta family of Apps (Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram) has total WAU of 3.05 billion. Almost half the planet. --- Sam Altman, S…

Facebook does not profit because of user fees, but selling user data, and selling adspace seen by users.

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#27

Post by latexr »

nojvek wrote: post #24

Companies make profits because people spend their money on what those companies have to offer. Facebook offers a dopamine hit. And so does X and TikTok. To some extent also HN. The infinite scroll slot machine. At the end of the day, we are an evolved version of dopamine driven apes. Meta family of Apps (Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram) has total WAU of 3.05 billion. Almost half the planet. --- Sam Altman, S…

> Companies make profits because people spend their money on what those companies have to offer.

And then you proceeded to list examples of cases where that is not true. No one is spending money to get dopamine hits from Facebook or TikTok. If that cost money, they would have a fraction of the users. Other companies spend money on those platforms so they can manipulate you where your attention is.

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#28

Post by 123yawaworht456 »

LightFog wrote: post #4

HN rules/ethos don’t agree but the lack of ‘politeness’ in these posts is refreshing. ‘Manners’ have long been a way to reinforce power imbalances and avoid scrutiny. Us plebs shouldn’t shy away from calling out corporate scumbaggery for what it is - what is more damaging, impolite prose or what this company is doing to our society?

there's always r/technology if you wish to join likeminded folx and chant 'capitalism le bad' to your heart's content.

WHAT DO WE WANT? WE DON'T KNOW!

WHEN DO WE WANT IT? RIGHT NOW!

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#29

Post by jjj123 »

edzitron wrote: post #3
danjl wrote: post #2

Would be more interesting without the ginormous chip on the author's shoulders.

Please elaborate! I'm genuinely curious.

Honestly, I found it super interesting and the tone worked for me. It’s a comprehensive summary of the poison that is engagement and metrics above all else development.

But I will say the tone makes me stop short of sending this to my parents, who actually need to be swayed (whereas I don’t).

So if your goal is to be interesting and informative to people who are already on your side, you did well. That’s a worthy enough goal imo.

Re: The People Deliberately Killing Facebook

#30

Post by milderworkacc »

Not sure where to start with this one.

Can anybody briefly explain what a “rot economist” is? Is it meant to be capitalised “ROT economist” which stands for something? Has my browser not rendered the characters correctly or something?

This story of course includes the now almost mandatory attack on e2e encryption, which according to this account when coupled with the people you know feature is “a dangerous tool” - with little explanation as to the nature and size of the danger.

This part is interesting: “Worse still, accounts that were less than 15-days-old now made up 20 percent of all outgoing friend requests, and more than half of friend requests were sent by somebody who was making more than 50 of them a day…”

The explanation leaves a lot to be desired though:

“…heavily suggesting that Facebook was growing its platform’s “connections” through spam.”

Doesn’t this make perfect sense where a new user joins Facebook with no friends to start with, then in the first few weeks of using it finds all of their friends and adds them?

The whole thing reads like a grab bag of grievances rather than a forensic takedown, shame.

Post reply on HN