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Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#81

Post by mantas »

aswanson wrote: post #39
mantas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is not to build FB killer. The solution is to decentralise the web. Let's embrace newsletters and RSS feeds once again. I recently came back to using RSS feeds and it feels great. The problem is that many websites don't maintain their feeds properly. Broken links, missing content and whatnot.. I guess nobody ever uses them aside from weirdos.

That sentiment is why 99.9999 of programmers like us never made facebook. Normal humans don't want to maintain seperate feeds and RSS readers for every possible interest etc along with a seperate message client along with a place to post photos, etc. They want something simple and human, like fb.

Humans are lazy by design. That's why most laws inconvenience on individual level for the sake of greater good. Getting rid of FB may soon reach that level.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#82

Post by cguess »

r3bl wrote: post #73
cguess wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure that Serbia has "free basics". It's a fairly well developed country with a 110% mobile penetration rate (last I checked, probably higher now), 4G and the prices are dirt cheap and affordable for the vast majority of the population.

Serbia doesn't. Other countries in this experiment (like Cambodia and Venezuela) do.

Cambodia, where the last independent newspaper was just shut down: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-devastating-shu...

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#83

Post by nsnick »

r3bl wrote: post #55
nof wrote: post #12

Just boycott Facebook already. 'but everyone uses it', yes but you have a choice. If you don't like the Facebook, then gtfo and make the effort to build something to replace it. But I guess that is too much work. People whine about Facebook, yet they do nothing to change the situation. You change the situation by making a choice. If your choice is to have Facebook account, then you are part of the problem, not the so…

So what are you gonna do in Venezuela and Cambodia (also on this experiment) where people have and use Free Basics? Cut yourself off completely from your potential market because you don't want to have Facebook?

Free Basics is a scam by Facebook to get more users hooked. India rightly rejected it.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#84

Post by cantrip »

loceng wrote: post #76
cantrip wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most annoying things to me about HN, or any forum site in general, is when people jump on obvious typos or grammar errors when they could easily ignore them and respond to the actual content of the comment instead. Use context. It's so incredibly obvious that this person didn't mean treat, and yet here it is, a little jab to say "I'm just a little bit better than you" because I noticed a missing h and just…

Is it obvious though? I thought maybe they were being funny or clever by perhaps meaning to use the word treat. Responded further here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703788 No jab intended. I think assumptions are dangerous as well, and lead to more problems - including internal distress - instead of perhaps putting inquiry forward to ask for intentions instead. Obviously you're getting an answer from me no…

Let's break it down.

The first poster says Facebook "[is] not [a] concern for democracy".

The responder says "What an uneducated answer from what I assume is a techy. Facebook is a treat to democracies. There are more articles on this than the other way around."

The first two sentences seems to imply that they disagree with what has just been said, that is except for the word "treat", which implies that they actually agree. If they are saying "treat" then they're saying not only is Facebook not a concern for democracy, but it is actively beneficial.

However this argument is then immediately negated by saying "There are more articles on this than the other way around." Ignoring the ridiculously false logic of the statement, there are objectively more articles about Facebook being a threat to democracy than there are about Facebook being a benefit to it.

Thus I concluded the person meant "threat", which I found to be a very obvious conclusion given the context of the statement.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#85

Post by cisanti »

lowry wrote: post #49

This is stupid. Facebook was bashed for influencing politics. It now tries to avoid political discussion entirely by downplaying news from Pages, but it is now bashed for it as well. Where's your integrity, journalists?

What a bullshit comment, Facebook needs to be more responsible with its massive power, it can ruin countries.

Europe needs to do something about the Silicon Valley companies, we can't build Chinese firewall but in order to have a chance for competition we need to come up with a plan. One possible way to fuck off FB is because it's spy machine that is very much illegal on some aspects.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#86

Post by gerbilly »

Santosh83 wrote: post #77
jeromegv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think Buddhism is so much better?

Off-topic: because the Buddha explicitly favours reason and testability over blind belief. Granted most Buddhists have developed rituals akin to other religions over the millennia (and also a lot of mythology that demands blind belief), but core Buddhism (as given in the suttas) is almost not a religion. In fact calling it a philosophy of life is a better description.

I would define Buddhism as: A form of introspective psychology.

Buddhism makes testable predictions about mental states and proposes systematic mental exercises to test those predictions.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#87

Post by mantas »

cguess wrote: post #71
nof wrote: post #12

Just boycott Facebook already. 'but everyone uses it', yes but you have a choice. If you don't like the Facebook, then gtfo and make the effort to build something to replace it. But I guess that is too much work. People whine about Facebook, yet they do nothing to change the situation. You change the situation by making a choice. If your choice is to have Facebook account, then you are part of the problem, not the so…

These countries' leaders would like nothing better than for people to boycott Facebook. The less information the "voter" has in these places the better for them. It's not West where we can assume benevolence or at least competence in our leadership (ok, we... used to be able to do that, which makes this even scarier). These people take everything they can until their caught, and if you're a small organization you can…

Turns out FB is no longer giving that newsstand either.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#88

Post by cisanti »

rplnt wrote: post #64
moron4hire wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a corporation's actions with its own private property becomes a threat to the public good, it is well within the purview and established precedent of government to regulate that specific corporation.

Hiding spam is not a threat to the public good.

Why are you talking about spam, did you even read the article?

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#89

Post by watwut »

mantas wrote: post #25
_archon_ wrote: post #19

Correct. Your democracy is not his laboratory. His website, however, is. If you want to control the behavior of Fbook, buy it. If you want pageviews from people's news feeds, make things which people decide are worth sharing. From a user perspective, doesn't moving non-person-related (actually social media) things to a separate feed make the ux better?

The problem is FB indoctrinated users and soft-killed most alternatives. A regular user don't care to signup for a newsletter or RSS feed. They "like" page on FB and think that's enough to get updates. I asked around and many non-tech people think liking a page equals subscribing. Both pages owners and regular users. They think they communicate to each other. Well, in fact they don't. FB is dangerously close to monop…

That is because most pages worked exactly this way for years - every update was shared on facebook too. It was comfortable for sites for a while - people were likely to hit like on facebook and got you in the feed they visit daily for unrelated reasons. They are less likely to give you e-mail or start with rss feed they don't use.

The alternative is not rss. The alternative is news aggregator few months down the line when sites stop asking people to like them.

Re: Facebook's experiments with user behavior in Serbia

#90

Post by nradov »

mantas wrote: post #26
nof wrote: post #12

Just boycott Facebook already. 'but everyone uses it', yes but you have a choice. If you don't like the Facebook, then gtfo and make the effort to build something to replace it. But I guess that is too much work. People whine about Facebook, yet they do nothing to change the situation. You change the situation by making a choice. If your choice is to have Facebook account, then you are part of the problem, not the so…

The solution is not to build FB killer. The solution is to decentralise the web. Let's embrace newsletters and RSS feeds once again. I recently came back to using RSS feeds and it feels great. The problem is that many websites don't maintain their feeds properly. Broken links, missing content and whatnot.. I guess nobody ever uses them aside from weirdos.

Newsletters and RSS feeds don't let me share pictures of my kids with distant relatives. For a lot of us that's the primary Facebook use case.
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