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

Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 221 posts

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

#81

Post by mnm1 »

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.

"Save the world" type narratives are a huge part of American culture and have been for quite awhile. It has especially ramped up in the last decade and a half or so since 9/11, usually coupled with yet another post-apocalyptic plot. Look at TV, movies, and popular culture. The theme even appears where it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I assume it must be really popular. Is it any surprise that businesses use this theme to drum up business, regardless of whether it makes sense or not? And let's face it, it doesn't make sense for any of them. No business has ever saved the world and no business ever will. The idea is beyond ludicrous but I assume it's fun for simple minds.

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

#82

Post by mtgx »

paulpauper wrote: post #67
sveme wrote: post #5

Have we reached peak Facebook yet? I started using Facebook quite early in my country and used it mostly as a social network, communicating and exchanging stuff with friends from all over the world. A couple years later I deleted my account, being disgusted by the potential abusive potential of all the information Facebook had. I came back years later as it became THE tool for ad hoc social initiatives and a way to f…

have we reached 'peak car' 'peak operating system' yet or 'peak computer'? I think Facebook is going to be with us for a very long time and will continue to thrive. Yeah, the comments and posts suck sometimes (I don't use it) but hundreds of millions are addicted to it.

Facebook is not an industry. It's a product in an industry.

A similar question would read "Have we reached peak AOL?" or "Have we reached peak Windows?"

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

#84

Post by darpa_escapee »

sveme wrote: post #5

Have we reached peak Facebook yet? I started using Facebook quite early in my country and used it mostly as a social network, communicating and exchanging stuff with friends from all over the world. A couple years later I deleted my account, being disgusted by the potential abusive potential of all the information Facebook had. I came back years later as it became THE tool for ad hoc social initiatives and a way to f…

Today's Facebook experience feels like the 1998 AOL silo if it had a 'Friends' keyword.

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

#85

Post by brockvond »

sveme wrote: post #5

Have we reached peak Facebook yet? I started using Facebook quite early in my country and used it mostly as a social network, communicating and exchanging stuff with friends from all over the world. A couple years later I deleted my account, being disgusted by the potential abusive potential of all the information Facebook had. I came back years later as it became THE tool for ad hoc social initiatives and a way to f…

I unfollowed like 85% of my "friends" on facebook this past year... probably 75% of all the news sources I used to enjoy and left all the groups but the professional ones I still like and because I have FB Messenger... i don't miss any of it and people can message me. I have a youtube sub list and podcasts for "news" and if i wanna see my buddy's feed... i can just go look. It's a void; I'm enjoying meeting people for drinks or meals so much more now. Life is better.

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

#86

Post by brockvond »

CodingGuy wrote: post #9
sveme wrote: post #5

Have we reached peak Facebook yet? I started using Facebook quite early in my country and used it mostly as a social network, communicating and exchanging stuff with friends from all over the world. A couple years later I deleted my account, being disgusted by the potential abusive potential of all the information Facebook had. I came back years later as it became THE tool for ad hoc social initiatives and a way to f…

If Google Trends is somewhat right, we've definitely reached peak Facebook: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Facebook

super interesting.

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

#87

Post by onetimefake »

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)

Linus Trovalds come to minD :)

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

#88

Post by brockvond »

nostrademons wrote: post #66
alehul wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is likely more indicative of society: A. Becoming more computer-literate and going straight to sites as opposed to always Googling it before clicking, even once familiar with the URL, which won't correlate to usage B. Visiting the site enough for AutoFill to take effect, which is ever-so-slightly inverse in correlation in terms of search popularity to site popularity Here's a FB-related search term people will s…

[facebook] was the most common search query when I was at Google (roughly the period covered by this graph), and [facebook login] would alternate between #2 and #3. Neither of your options seem likely at all to me - over the time I was there, I witnessed people becoming more likely to navigate to sites via Googling them rather than clicking, not less. The trend is even more pronounced with mobile, where basically nob…

I agree with this... also the rise of predictive searching in browsers and the omnibar etc.

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

#89

Post by paulddraper »

rush340 wrote: post #42
Bedon292 wrote: post #19

>> If you type "how to leave" into the Google search window, "how to leave Facebook" will be the first suggestion. Am I being too critical for thinking someone writing an article like this should know that Google searches / suggestions are personalized? Just because its suggested for them does not mean its universal.

You're not. It really annoys me when people cite google search suggestions as meaningful. In my google search suggestions, it falls behind "how to leave a group chat" and "how to leave a meetup group". Therefore it must be true that more people are trying to figure out how to get out of group chats or break it off with their meetup group than leaving facebook. This also must be a sign of the demise of group chat.

Mine:

> how to leave a group text on iphone

> how to leave a google review

> how to leave a review on etsy

> how to leave a group chat

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

#90

Post by rhizome »

lend000 wrote: post #46
zzalpha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the tech delusion. I don't know a start-up that doesn't have some grandiose vision of themselves as the future saviors of humanity. Uber, Tesla, Facebook, Airbnb, you name it... it's all the same "save the world" rhetoric. The scary thing is, I think a lot of people on the industry actually believe their own BS...

One of those is not the like others (Facebook). Facebook is the only one that wasn't a huge next step in the progression of an established industry. It was an incremental improvement in a fledgling social network industry, and it's questionable how much value it actually adds to (or detracts from) society. Compare this to Google which is indeed a force of good (not just their main product, but the numerous free techn…

It was an incremental improvement in a fledgling social network industry

And even then, it was only because Friendster was crippled by scaling problems and MySpace was snowed under with self-promotion that Facebook even had a path out of the university populations to which they initially restricted themselves.

Post reply on HN