Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#321

Post by throwawayboise » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #292

JohnBooty wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users would need an order of magnitude superior alternative, and most critically, users would need to move en mass. Yeah. Network effect. Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook. I dislike FB for all of the usual reasons, plus a few of my own. But I still have an FB account. I don't check it very often, and I've got notifications turned off. But ditching my FB account entirel…

> But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. That used to be a fear of mine, but after deleting my account I’ve found it to be a core feature. It forces me to be intentional with my relationships; if I want to stay in touch with someone I have to make the effort. Otherwise, the relationship is likely more parasocial than actively…

Agree. Everyone who is on Facebook has email, and a mobile phone. If sending (or answering) an email or a text message or making a phone call is too much work, what kind of friendship are you really worried about maintaining?

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#322

Post by helloworld11 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

As others have mentioned here in greater detail, Nope. Even in the U.S, the vast majority of Facebook's users don't give a flying shit about the dirty details. They just want to use the messaging and "social" stuff that Insta/FB provide, so long as they work for their daily needs. As for much of the rest of the world, FB properties are sadly the end all and be all of communications and organizing events. Even less reason to care about a major scandal or two or dozen.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#323

Post by baby » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

VladimirGolovin wrote: post #9

Heroin is already way past a reputational point of no return, but people are still using it.

It's funny because most people here spend way too much time on HN, not FB. And yeah too much HN is detrimental to your mental health.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#324

Post by syntheticnature » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #230

mkr-hn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been so long since a company reached Facebook's heights and fell that a whole generation doesn't know what it looks like. AOL was the Facebook of its time: a joke to system admins, a default ban on small game servers and IRC channels. Meanwhile, most people had no idea anyone had a problem with AOL. Like with Facebook, there were people reporting on its follies like Observers.net[0], but it mostly went unremarke…

I'd hesitate to generalize AOL's fall into Facebook's future. AOL's core proposition was being better than the Internet (more curated, coherent, and faster). When the web and internet exploded in size and scale, AOL's value evaporated. The dumb mergers and other mistakes were window dressing on this landscape transformation. And for years (decades? still?) afterwards, people used AOL Instant Messager (AIM), because i…

It's off-to-the-side of your main point, but AOL Instant Messenger shut down in December 2017. Per https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/12/14/67582/aol-instan... it was down to 500,000 active users a month the summer before it was shut down.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#325

Post by baby » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #32

I think this is fine for Facebook. We've long passed the point where facebook.com was supposed to work for everyone, it's now got some clear demographics that use it, and plenty that don't. Instagram is the replacement for certain demographics, and is well liked by most in its target market. WhatsApp is another replacement. FB Messenger is another. Even Oculus is a bet on another group. Facebook-the-company is mostly…

Also, a lot of engineers still consider FB as a good product. HN is a bubble.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#326

Post by jonny_eh » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #243

ghostoftiber wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People didn't stop using oil after the Standard Oil break-up. Nor Windows after its antitrust brush or cigarettes after the tobacco master settlement. The power of those companies was simply sharply reduced. I actually disagree with this. When the company is forcibly broken up there's a chance that it's "power" (what?) is reduced but if we look at Standard Oil, that quicky is shown to be not-what-happened. SO becam…

Microsoft went flat for a decade after their antitrust trial. They lost many markets where they had significant footholds, struggled to attract and retain top talent, and struggled to enter new markets. They kept making money from Windows, Office, etc. But the tech industry exploded in growth around them, leaving them behind in many ways (technologically, financially, culturally).

One notable exception was video games. In retrospect the success of the Xbox is extremely strange.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#327

Post by baby » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

kreeben wrote: post #281

nradov wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware that Facebook has done a bunch of bad stuff, and that they own Instagram and WhatsApp. I still don't give a shit. For all it's faults Facebook is still the most convenient way to keep up with friends and family spread around the world, and share my underwater photography. If you engage with Facebook on your own terms and "hide all from" the news / politics / meme pages then it works great. And it's free! A…

>> And it's free! Free, how? As in freedom/beer/something else? Money, you know, is not the only currency there is.

yes it's free

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#328

Post by revel » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

Not sure if any of you folks have tried asking your friends which companies they wouldn't work for, irrespective of the pay, but it's interesting. Facebook and Palantir are the 2 recurring names whenever I've asked around. That was before the latest 3 or 4 rounds of scandal. FB has been in this area for years.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#329

Post by Tarsul » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #204

ghostoftiber wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People didn't stop using oil after the Standard Oil break-up. Nor Windows after its antitrust brush or cigarettes after the tobacco master settlement. The power of those companies was simply sharply reduced. I actually disagree with this. When the company is forcibly broken up there's a chance that it's "power" (what?) is reduced but if we look at Standard Oil, that quicky is shown to be not-what-happened. SO becam…

Standard Oil => SO => Esso. Mind blown! I had no idea.

theres a great reportage on ARTE (for German/French only?!) about oil history: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/092970-001-A/oel-macht-geschic... (only til 20th of Oct)

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#330

Post by dane-pgp » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

emptyparadise wrote: post #266

ghostoftiber wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People didn't stop using oil after the Standard Oil break-up. Nor Windows after its antitrust brush or cigarettes after the tobacco master settlement. The power of those companies was simply sharply reduced. I actually disagree with this. When the company is forcibly broken up there's a chance that it's "power" (what?) is reduced but if we look at Standard Oil, that quicky is shown to be not-what-happened. SO becam…

I want to see court-mandated open source and federation. Doubt it'd ever happen though...

Something like court-mandated federation is not completely out of the question in the EU, given that the GDPR requires "data portability" between digital services, including "the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible."[0]

I suspect a big American corporation like Facebook would have a hard time persuading an EU court that it wasn't technically feasible for it to automatically duplicate your Facebook posts onto a competing Fediverse instance where you have an account, and the court could even decide that the "natural" technological implementation would be to broadcast your Facebook posts directly to your friends across the Fediverse.

Sadly the language of the GDPR seems to only mandate the export of personal data from the site where it is stored, and not grant the complementary right to have data imported. This means Facebook wouldn't have to show you the posts of any of your Fediverse friends, and it also wouldn't export your Facebook friends' posts to be viewable on your Fediverse account (unless they also had a Fediverse account and chose to export those posts themselves).

[0] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/