Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders • Hacker News Board

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#331

Post by ozmbie » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:13 AM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #266

cma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how useful it would be if when there is a notification about a friend on Facebook, you could peek it by swiping on the notification in the android drawer like you can with texts, without entering the Facebook app. Nope. Engineers are dedicated there to increasing other things than the utility of the app. Interests aren't aligned with the users. Same with removing chronological feeds. Turn things more and more…

" Engineers are dedicated there to increasing other things than the utility of the app" I'll qualify that statement by adding that product management/design team is optimizing for engagement metrics and the engineers are developing from those blueprints. Blame product management for anti-UX decisions. No PO/PM is going to risk their career by spearheading an effort to lower app engagement metrics which results in a l…

You’re correct, and that’s the bigger point. The entire industry business model is tilted in that direction.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#332

Post by ForHackernews » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:18 AM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #253

justaguyhere wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pay for internet access Isn't it like saying "I paid for the car, why do I have to pay for gas"? Somebody has to pay for engineers, infrastructure etc. If not the end users, then the advertisers. I guess it is the mindset/understanding. The same person who won't pay $1 for email (for example) will pay for Netflix, because somehow in their mind, it takes money to make movies but it doesn't take money to write s…

No, that equivalent would be 'I paid for the car, for gas, insurance, car maintenance and for maintenance of the roads, why would I need to pay to drive to the city'. Indeed, why would you? I'm talking about distributed services here, 'run your own' as in run an instance for your family and any friends you care to provide those services for. I've been doing this literally for decades, ever since I got a permanent int…

Realistically, this is impractical for 98% of the population. I say this as somebody who has run his own mail server in the past, and got sick of the endless hassle of maintaining and securing it.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#333

Post by bambataa » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:26 AM UTC

justaguyhere wrote: post #74

rm999 wrote: post #57

I've had a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg as a leader, and have gone out of my way to defend him in the past ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17128369 ). I always envisioned whatsapp as a defensive purchase that would stay true to its initial vision (perhaps being used to prop up their other products in an unintrusive manner). But this article makes me realize Mark is s a one-trick advertising…

I am not a fan of his, but is the situation going change unless people are willing to pay for these services? Most people wouldn't even pay for something as useful/important as email, let alone social networking (I can never understand the need for something like Facebook)

I’ll pay. So what are my options? What paid, ad-free social network is there that most of my contacts are on?

There isn’t one. LinkedIn is sort of an exception but it’s not for general use. The market isn’t providing s supply of these products so I don’t see how you can say there’s no demand. New social networks have such high barriers to entry that you can’t just point at some random failed paid one as an example. Loads of free ones fail too.

What would be interesting is if Facebook offered a paid, no data-mining option. But they do t seem interested in innovating.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#334

Post by bambataa » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:31 AM UTC

ponderatul wrote: post #229

rm999 wrote: post #57

I've had a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg as a leader, and have gone out of my way to defend him in the past ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17128369 ). I always envisioned whatsapp as a defensive purchase that would stay true to its initial vision (perhaps being used to prop up their other products in an unintrusive manner). But this article makes me realize Mark is s a one-trick advertising…

I think it's sad, given how smart he is, that he is unaware of this dark side of connection and being connected and of facebook in general. So he's either to wrapped up in himself to realise, or at least acknowledge the dark side of what he's doing. Or even worse, he knows, and is aware but just continues to do so

I’d be really interested to hear about what MZ is like from people who’ve worked closely with him. All of his public pronouncements seem to lack reflection imo (eg that letter to his child), but perhaps he’s limited by what he can say.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#335

Post by janekm » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:38 AM UTC

chinhodado wrote: post #95

cma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how useful it would be if when there is a notification about a friend on Facebook, you could peek it by swiping on the notification in the android drawer like you can with texts, without entering the Facebook app. Nope. Engineers are dedicated there to increasing other things than the utility of the app. Interests aren't aligned with the users. Same with removing chronological feeds. Turn things more and more…

The most frustrating change for me was FB (or Messenger later) used to send me an email when I received a message, with the message content inside the email. A few years ago they removed the content from the email and forced me to log into FB or Messenger to see the message. It's extremely user hostile.

Agreed. At first I thought it was a bug, and was rather taken aback when I realised it was intentional. Of course, as I have an aversion to click-baity emails, I have barely visited FB since...

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#336

Post by icc97 » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:02 PM UTC

stygiansonic wrote: post #299

This blog post from Whatsapp is almost 6 years old: https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads (it was linked to from the WSJ article) Almost prescient is the final line: When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say "Have you considered the alternative?"

Also they use a quote from that blog post as the title comment:

> we wanted to make something that wasn't just another ad clearinghouse

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#337

Post by Angostura » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:11 PM UTC

arwineap wrote: post #137

Angostura wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely they’re getting a lot more info. Whatsapp demand complete access to your Contacts to work properly. So they know your full name and address, your bank, the names addresses and perhaps jobs of your friends and colleagues etc.

Only to send messages to your contacts; if you deny whatsapp access you can still respond to anyone that contacts you You just can't be the first person to start the conversation

As, I say "to work properly".

I can't send a message to anyone, without giving it access to everyone. How daft is that.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#338

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:20 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #316

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The latter works much, much better at generating sales for almost everyone." This seems like an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary statistical evidence to believe it. Both evidence to ensure the methodology of comparing whatever Facebook does with blank audience ad serving to whatever is done with lookalike audiences, as well as the "much, much better" part and the "almost everyone" part. For exa…

Alternatively, you could serve ads on Yahoo, or Reddit, or the whole Google Display Network, etc., and see how much vastly worse those clicks convert for you. This isn't rocket science. I've managed millions of dollars of ad spend across a dozen companies. I know lots of other people who manage ad spend. The only other digital channel that's anywhere near as targeted and scalable as Facebook is Google search, which i…

> “you could serve ads on Yahoo, or Reddit, or the whole Google Display Network, etc., and see how much vastly worse those clicks convert for you.”

But that experiment could only possibly tell you if Facebook ads, in general, are more effective than ads on other platforms. And that might be caused by all sorts of confounders, like the relative demographics or usage patterns being different on those other platforms, which have no connection to whether anything that Facebook does contributes to positive ad effect.

In particular, comparing with other ad platforms could not tell you whether Facebook invisible audience ad algorithms are any better or worse than Facebook algorithmically targeted audience ads (especially since you still wouldn’t know if Facebook privileges algorithmic ads in some way just because it’s good for their business if it appears that their specialized product is better than a non-specialized one).

> “This isn't rocket science.”

It’s funny to me that a lot of marketing, product, and A/B testing people express this attitude about understanding what succeeds in marketing & product problems.

When really, those questions require a great degree of statistical rigor that is like rocket science.

It takes a great deal of advanced econometrics theory or formal statistics theory to answer ad spend attribution questions in a way that’s not completely defeated by methodological flaws, poor experimental design, causal indeterminacy, or various statistical fallacies.

Perhaps it’s one reason why the claim that digital ads work is still so hugely debated, with many claiming that quantitatively, digital ads (including Facebook) utterly don’t work.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#339

Post by Djvacto » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

doctorsher wrote: post #77

Djvacto wrote: post #9

So, I use WhatsApp as my primary source of communication. Knowing facebook owned it always made me a little nervous, but given that it was end-to-end encrypted, I figured Facebook wasn't getting any more from me then they would from all my facebook-using-friends who would send me SMS's before. But I'm worried about how long I can continue to use the service moving forward, which is sad as this is my main way to commu…

I totally understand. You are facing the classic dilemma of privacy vs convenience. Personally, I distrusted facebook so much that I have avoided any of their products since 2013. Obviously a major win for my privacy, but it sacrificed some convenience -- then I had no real-time way to communicate with my relative in India. In the end, you'll have to do some introspection to see if the convenience gained is worth the…

It's definitely tough, but a big perk of WhatsApp is also the data-calls (instead of paying for long-distance). Maybe next time I visit I can try to help convince them to check out something new, but I also ended up dragging a couple of social groups onto WhatsApp to organize events, chat, etc just by viture of it being what most people use. Especially over in Europe, it's very heavily used and not easy to replace, as it's sometimes the de-facto platform for communication.

But it's definitely a trade-off, so I at least kind of have a choice.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#340

Post by justaguyhere » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #253

justaguyhere wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pay for internet access Isn't it like saying "I paid for the car, why do I have to pay for gas"? Somebody has to pay for engineers, infrastructure etc. If not the end users, then the advertisers. I guess it is the mindset/understanding. The same person who won't pay $1 for email (for example) will pay for Netflix, because somehow in their mind, it takes money to make movies but it doesn't take money to write s…

No, that equivalent would be 'I paid for the car, for gas, insurance, car maintenance and for maintenance of the roads, why would I need to pay to drive to the city'. Indeed, why would you? I'm talking about distributed services here, 'run your own' as in run an instance for your family and any friends you care to provide those services for. I've been doing this literally for decades, ever since I got a permanent int…

'run your own' as in run an instance for your family... I've been doing this literally for decades

Okay, do you also fix your car, make your clothes, fix your plumbing...?

How can we reasonably expect an average person to install, configure, maintain non trivial systems like emails?

We get paid to do things we want to do and are good at, and we pay others for services/goods that we need but aren't capable (or don't have the time or interest) of doing it ourselves. It is unreasonable and impractical to expect everyone to do everything themselves.