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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

#211

Post by thehardsphere »

Bombthecat wrote: post #196
thehardsphere wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's precedent for this: MySpace.

It wasn't a social network though. In Germany only bands add musicians used it. No social pressure to stay at MySpace.

It was a social network; just an inferior one to Facebook. They lost to Facebook because Facebook was a more pleasant site for social networking, which made it more popular.

If you were in Germany, you may not have seen this, because MySpace didn't enter Germany until 2006 or 2007. At that point, Facebook was already starting to beat them with new users. By 2008, the established user base of MySpace was fleeing in droves to Facebook. The network effects that would have created social pressure to stay actually caused it to collapse even faster.

There is nothing that would prevent this exact thing from happening to Facebook. If a better site were to come along (or if Facebook were to become vastly less competitive than they are now), the social pressure could actually cause them to collapse just as fast as MySpace did.

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

#212

Post by bamboozled »

Arizhel wrote: post #147
bamboozled wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to remain skeptical about Elon's vision, he seems like a great guy, but he is still a business man, maybe he isn't able to see that for himself. Just remember we're not just getting free lithium, aluminum and copper from another dimension to build all those cars, and when we're done with the cars, they're not just going to biodegrade back into forrests and coral reefs. Mining those minerals can have a pretty s…

Oh come on. You do realize "recycling" exists, right? Cars don't just go into a landfill when they reach the end of their useful life. They're salvaged for parts, and once all the useful parts are removed the rest is used for scrap metal. Lead-acid batteries have been recycled for decades now, with extremely high efficiency. Lithium is much more valuable than anything in a lead-acid battery, so of course it's going t…

Try not to forget it often takes energy to recycle things, and what do we do with a huge surplus of Lithium when its no longer required, we don't exactly have free energy either.

But hey, let's not get that get in the way of a great response, right?

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

#213

Post by grogenaut »

dgudkov wrote: post #210
grogenaut wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the silicon valley hyperbole. Lets rank facebook being down for 2 weeks with: Shut down all the banks 2 weeks, eg no access to any money. Shut down all Gasoline for 2 weeks. Eg no personal transit (shut up you smug Tesla drivers I'm getting you next). Shut down all electricity for 2 weeks. No Power. (All you with power on your roofs and teslas... this gets your grocery store fridges). I think you need to re-ev…

There is no company that controls 90% of banks, or 90% of gasoline, or 90% of electricity. Shutting down a single company won't affect availability of neither of the basic utilities. But there is Google that is 90% of internet search, and maybe 50% of email. Shutting it down for couple weeks would be a disaster for millions. Facebook or Twitter are less significant in this regard.

First, I said facebook, not google. Second, I still think you don't understand the word "Disaster".

These are disasters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina

Those are disasters.

If google was down for 2 weeks, there would be some big problems for some companies and some people. But there are plenty of work arounds: phones still work just fine, amazon would be up, etc. If it was the whole information grid down, yes that'd be a large hit to the economy. But 9/11 essentially shut down business for 2 weeks as well. Google going down, not really a disaster. 9/11... Disaster.

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

#214

Post by grogenaut »

type0 wrote: post #167
grogenaut wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the silicon valley hyperbole. Lets rank facebook being down for 2 weeks with: Shut down all the banks 2 weeks, eg no access to any money. Shut down all Gasoline for 2 weeks. Eg no personal transit (shut up you smug Tesla drivers I'm getting you next). Shut down all electricity for 2 weeks. No Power. (All you with power on your roofs and teslas... this gets your grocery store fridges). I think you need to re-ev…

> I think you need to re-evaluate what is "essential". It is essential for small bussinesses all over the world that rely on fb pages instead of investing in creation of their own web pages

you could swap to any one of a hundred companies in a few hours. 2 of them I can't even stop hearing about on every single podcast. Again, its about risk mitigation.

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

#215

Post by autokad »

brokenmasonjars wrote: post #208
autokad wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are using 'worked better' very generously. people choose the combustion engine because overall it was the best engine at the time, and for many many decades later. the consumption of oil was going to skyrocket from 1911 no matter what due to technology, during a time where people primarily traveled by boat and train.

Notice I wrote "could have led Ford and others to research ways to make the electric model more capable for the masses as consumer demand would seek such alternatives." I think if oil was of a higher price due to lack of competition there would have been more incentives by car companies to try to figure a way to make the costs of running a car go down to appeal to the emerging middle class. There would have been more…

we have a hundred years of additional research, and tesla alone is putting billions in research and batteries still aren't there. I think you need to picture what life was back at that time, and remember the price of gas wasnt the price point that prevented car ownership. Ford was type-A about getting prices down in all possible ways, but if for some reason standard oil ridiculously increased the price of gas and nobody was able to stop them (I dont buy into the argument standard oil keeping its monopoly would have increased the price of oil so much that an alternative would have been needed), they would have used coal.

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

#216

Post by ionised »

dmitrygr wrote: post #6

Why is it that every little single-purpose-at-best company nowadays acts like they are out to save the world in the most noble way possible? Mark, please! You're a spam-your-friends-with-fake-news-and-baby-photos service at best. The world will go on long after Facebook ceases to exist. Please stop pretending that you're Mother Teresa here.

> Please stop pretending that you're Mother Teresa here.

Humorously, Teresa caused a lot of pain and suffering all the while self-righteously convincing herself and others that she was doing god's work.

More similarities than one may think.

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

#217

Post by judah »

astrodust wrote: post #78
judah wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She worked for over 4 decades (!) with orphans, poor, the sick and dying. Four. Freaking. Decades. It's not right to say, "Mother Teresa was not a good person because [minor thing I disagree about]." Her views do not cancel 45 years of service. I wish more people would be "bad" like Mother Teresa. There would be fewer depressed, fewer lonely, fewer suicidal, fewer addicts, fewer outcasts. The atheist Hitchens wrote s…

The criticism is not that she didn't work with the sick and the dying for decades, it's that she maximized their suffering and sickness to glorify herself and to aid in fund-raising. She raised billions of dollars and very little of it ended up helping the people she was supposed to be caring for. > I wish more people would be "bad" like Mother Teresa. Don't worry, there are people like Benny Hinn, like Peter Popov,…

> "She kept her flock just sick and miserable enough they didn't escape"

Where's the evidence for that? I read Hitchens' utterly biased hit piece on her, I didn't see real evidence, just accusations and editorializing.

> "She raised billions of dollars and very little of it ended up helping the people she was supposed to be caring for."

Be specific. She raised billions, but very little helped the people? Give us numbers, and show us original sources. Hitchens' hit pieces didn't contain these. (As I recall, even Hitchens acknowledged that Mother Teresa didn't live luxuriously herself.)

>> There are plenty of others like Benny Hinn...

Hinn, Popov and others shysters aren't caring for the sick, feeding the hungry. Red herring.

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

#218

Post by datburg »

gaius wrote: post #185
Klockan wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just try it in private browsing mode, it removes personalization, "how to leave facebook" is then top for me.

Does it? If IP address X does a query, then a moment later the same IP does the same query but just doesn't send any cookies, I am pretty sure Google knows it's the same person.

I have nothing to hide, but I think the age when incognito and privacy options started being celebrated by the browsers was the worst period for me as a web obsessed teenager. Mozilla would have spent some energy highlighting in simple ways how the private mode is a gimmick that has uses but does not protect web privacy. In fact web privacy is not attainable for this and that reasons.

I blame myself for being stupid for believing that the web was about helping people reach progress through minimal harm. Sigh. Innocence !

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

#219

Post by Arizhel »

bamboozled wrote: post #212
Arizhel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. You do realize "recycling" exists, right? Cars don't just go into a landfill when they reach the end of their useful life. They're salvaged for parts, and once all the useful parts are removed the rest is used for scrap metal. Lead-acid batteries have been recycled for decades now, with extremely high efficiency. Lithium is much more valuable than anything in a lead-acid battery, so of course it's going t…

Try not to forget it often takes energy to recycle things, and what do we do with a huge surplus of Lithium when its no longer required, we don't exactly have free energy either. But hey, let's not get that get in the way of a great response, right?

What in the hell are you talking about? The energy needed to recycle almost anything is usually orders of magnitude less than that needed to mine it and refine it in the first place, not to mention not having to transport it halfway across the planet from some remote place in Bolivia or wherever.

And why would Lithium no longer be required? In some hypothetical future that doesn't exist? It's needed now, and that's all that's important. Moreover, its great performance in batteries is directly related to fundamental physics and the position of Li on the periodic table, and that's not going to change.

>But hey, let's not get that get in the way of a great response, right?

Let what get in the way of a great response? Your nonsensical predictions?

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

#220

Post by idlewords »

GuiA wrote: post #79
nostrademons wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hey, some people sit on messages boards and shit on others AND manage to build successful businesses that let them live the lives they want. I'd rather choose them as models than the douchebags drinking kombucha in their Tesla. (i <3 u 'idlewords)

I <3 you too!
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