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Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

economist.com

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Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#521

Post by JohnBooty »

amatecha wrote: post #398
ethbr0 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone old enough to remember and have used Livejournal, the Facebook experience is very different.

LJ was awesome! I feel like Mastodon is kiiiinda similar modern-day equivalent (despite the Twitter-mimicry). Huh, now that I say that "out loud", that's interesting - I had never thought of it until now. It seems to really capture that "share your world but also bring in others and socialize as narrowly or broadly as you want", along with sharing media and so on.

Whenever I looked at Mastodon, it seemed cool technologically, but I couldn't really imagine anybody outside of the tech crowd using it. Is that an accurate perception?

LJ was cool because you had quite a diverse group using it. Artists, musicians, teenagers, etc.

This was before MySpace siphoned away the youth crowd, fifteen years ago or whenever it was. I wouldn't see them ever coming back to blogging. In fact I don't really see anybody returning to blogging.

(No disrespect meant to blogs. Blogs are awesome. That was a really good era for the internet.)

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#522

Post by rubyist5eva »

splistud wrote: post #285
rubyist5eva wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The power of those companies was simply sharply reduced. I'd argue the opposite. We got Exxon out of the Standard Oil breakup and Microsoft is just as scummy, if not even more scummy than ever. AT&T got broken up and several of the Baby Bells just ended up all merging together and now we have Verizon. Antitrust enforcement has had a net-zero effect at best.

While there are problems with the use of fossil fuels, the oil industry and what we learned to build from the energy and materials it provided changed the world for the better - far more so than anything related to computers or the internet (and that is a very high bar indeed). You can sit here and complain (in a forum that would not exist if it wasn't for what you complain about) in relative comfort if you like, but…

I am not against the use of fossil fuels, at all. Moving away from them has had pretty bad effects on the quality of life of a lot of people.

I was just pointing out that antitrust enforcement is pretty ineffective at it's intended use.

Personally, I don't think antitrust should exist at all.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#523

Post by flavius29663 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #451
hunterb123 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are banning dissenting information that looks bad for them. Similar to how CCP bans political dissent, Dems ban any stories on Hunter Biden for example. The Dems also ban things that look bad on China, like the lab leak, I suppose because they share some of the same goals. Also the election is perfectly reasonable to question. It's fine to question why the bell weathers and many other record indicators were brok…

No one has called for bans of discussions of the lab leak theory (or no one mainstream). It was simply obvious that early harping about it from Tucker Carlson was a useless distraction in the early time of the pandemic, when the rest of the world was focusing on how to respond to the pandemic instead of beating the shit out of Asians and calling Coronavirus "Wuhan flu" to enrage the libs. No one has "banned" discussi…

> discredited hitpieces

the Hunter story was anything but discredited. It was just suppressed for no reason other than helping the dems.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/09/21/dou...

> There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020

There was also no evidence of Russia collusion either, but that didn't stop a very long investigation from the FBI that was being advertised on all news channels.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#524

Post by chadlavi »

JohnBooty wrote: post #253
ethbr0 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

You don't actually care about those people if the only way you have of contacting them is Facebook. Just pull the trigger and dump it.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#525

Post by jude- »

Maybe a pithy way to render this article's point is, if you are a young, competent 20-something fresh on the job market and imminently hireable at Facebook (but nowhere else, let's say for the sake of argument), do you:

* Take a job at Facebook (or one of it's properties)?

* Strike it out alone in a startup you found?

If you're more likely to do the latter, despite the higher risk, then Facebook has a big problem. If the best and brightest no longer want to work there, then their time has passed.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#526

Post by jude- »

zaphar wrote: post #395
ethbr0 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I actually think in a way one of Facebooks core proposition is being the internet for most people which is not that far off from AOL. The similarity here is that no one knows what is going to render FB obsolete right now. Just like no one knew what was going to do the same for AOL. AOL lost in part I believe because they were not really able to transition from Dialup "internet" Provider to Content Aggregator when bro…

It may come to pass that Facebook is a generational phenomenon, like rock-'n'-roll. It'll be the thing for "old people" soon enough.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#527

Post by technick »

mkr-hn wrote: post #112
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB This is close to a straw man argument. Nobody claims users will abandon Facebook. The article posits, instead, strengthening headwinds. Headwinds in hiring (there is already a double-digit premium Facebook must pay for talent). From recurring whistleblowing, and its impact on morale and productivity. Headwinds in projects and partnerships, like Libre/Diem be…

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 remember being kicked from the #cdc irc channel by default when joining from aol dialup accounts.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#528

Post by mogadsheu »

shoto_io wrote: post #3

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, the primary alternative social media platform would be TikTok, which is far more questionable in its handling of data than FB Group.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#529

Post by parafactual »

jjk166 wrote: post #113

If someone knew how to make not-shitty facebook, they'ed very quickly make tens of billions of dollars, achieve fame in the public sphere, respect in the technical sphere, and influence in the political sphere. Facebook would go the way of myspace and we would all rejoice. The fact that, despite the immense incentive and numerous attempts, no one has ever succeeded at making not-shitty facebook strongly suggests it i…

network effect

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#530

Post by dusklight »

throwaway00010 wrote: post #475
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB This is close to a straw man argument. Nobody claims users will abandon Facebook. The article posits, instead, strengthening headwinds. Headwinds in hiring (there is already a double-digit premium Facebook must pay for talent). From recurring whistleblowing, and its impact on morale and productivity. Headwinds in projects and partnerships, like Libre/Diem be…

I used to work at Facebook and I agree with this. Some anecdotal notes on motivation headwinds: - Talking to more senior friends, both within the company and with offers to join— few people want to join product, and those who do would usually rather join Oculus and not one of the apps. Lots more interest in infra. Working to raise engagement metrics and the news cycle are always factors behind this. - I know plenty o…

Can you talk a bit about how facebook measures impact from their employees? How is it defined? How closely do you think it tracks real impact. How often do people figure out how to game it, and how is it usually gamed? Do you think it is possible to modify the definition of impact such that an ethical component can be added to it?
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