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Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again.
Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have someone who knew sysadmin do it basically for free, or have everyone learn how to use something like IRC.
Social networking was an enormous pain in the ass. Facebook was the first platform that actually worked for people. Every subsequent social network took their cues from Facebook, it was a veritable sea change in the state of the Internet.
The problem here isn't Facebook, you'd be having these growing pains with any useful social networking technology platform. It's the unintended consequences of Facebook's universal accessibility. Anybody can use Facebook, and so everybody will. It's the story of technology all over again. Technology is invented, we have a honeymoon phase, then the real marriage begins. We're in the "just had a baby, now we need to get it to a year old so we can all relax" phase.
It'll get better.
> Before Facebook, if people wanted to organize conversation and cooperation on an information technology platform, the options were to pay $X00-$X000 for a proprietary system, get lucky enough to know about mailing lists, have someone who knew sysadmin do it basically for free, or have everyone learn how to use something like IRC.
There were like 20 years in between what you describe and Facebook's dominance.
Before Facebook there were thousands of thriving independent forums on wide varieties of topics. I spent large portions of my teenage years on them and got way more value out of them than I have out of any Facebook group.
The internet may get better, but it is not not guaranteed. And I predict that if it does it will be despite Facebook, not because of, or with it.
Social networking was NOT an enormous pain in the ass. Everybody had, and still has email - it was the gateway to the internet. Roughly since the beginning of the internet. And all the people that joined. Email got used in almost all of the ways that Facebook did.
In addition to email, there were ways to do "roughly" everything Facebook did with varying levels of difficulty - some roughly unobtainium for the "later billions" of people that Facebook drew - not just email based listservs, but USENET before that, self hostedweb forums starting in the 90's, Craigslist in the commercial space.
The problem IS Facebook (and in a different but related way, Google).
UNlike Craigslist (for example), Facebook is a public company. But it is not accountable to the public, as we've seen over and over again. It's users are a commodity and are not stakeholders in any meaningful way. But - even the shareholders are not. Zuck owns AND controls it almost entirely. And unlike Craig Newmark (who isn't perfect), Zuck appears to have been deeply flawed from the very beginning, and the poison of unearthly money and power have only made it worse.
I think the "have everyone learn how to use something like IRC" solution would have been a lot more feasible if the technology behind it (servers and clients) didn't stagnate and cater only to technophiles. Most of the concepts of Facebook were around already in UNIX, such as having your own mailbox in your own user account and being able to check it for new mail, wherever it was sent from. Imagine something like AOL in 1995 except instead of real-time chat and single-person email, it also had the few features of Facebook. They weren't missing the technology, they were just missing the imagination and the realization that connecting groups over longer term (followable status updates) was higher priority than connecting individuals over a longer term (email) or connecting groups in the immediate term (chat).
From my perspective, it's only gotten worse over time with FB. How do you explain the numerous privacy/data breaches, FB data being used to undermine democracy and spread disinformation, and its monopolistic practices preventing other "partners" from competing with the marriage.
To use your marriage analogy, this is a MESSED UP marriage. FB is like a spouse preventing you from even socializing with other people of their own gender if they even are a minor threat (i.e. Insta and Whats App getting bought up). FB is a partner who snoops on all your apps without permission. FB is a partner who manipulates your behavior with ads. What kind of marriage is this? Would you marry someone who has been the subject of numerous scandals?
In my view, FB's small upsides of meeting up with distant friends who I honestly don't care for, that's not even 50% recompense for its downsides for me.
>Social networking was an enormous pain in the ass. Facebook was the first platform that actually worked for people. Every subsequent social network took their cues from Facebook, it was a veritable sea change in the state of the Internet.
Even today, Facebook and Linkedin are the only social networks where you have a decent chance of finding someone by searching their real name. It's very powerful.
> Before Facebook, if I lost someone's contact information, and drifted outside of their social circle for a long enough time, chances were I would never ever see or speak to that person again.
I was nodding along at this until I read your second paragraph, then had to go back. Apparently you think this was a bad thing?
Losing touch with people is natural. Having to explicitly sever a relationship is awkward. But without a natural pruning function, it's easy to end up with a thousand shallow relationships and not enough deep ones.
As someone that refuses to use a man-in-the-middle social platform without federation and without open interface protocols (email is fine in that respect as there are choices of provider and fully open protocols), Facebook and anything like it have only made my life worse.
It is amazing how lazy at socializing everyone is, how if you aren't on the platform they happen to be using you are an afterthought, if you're a thought at all.
Never had a fb account. I travel all the time.
I don't have any problem with networking or keeping in touch.
Those are artificial excuses to use a tool optimized and abused for faking ones life and lurking on others.
I agree much with your premise here. The capabilities that social media have provided are extremely valuable.
That said, I disagree with your conclusion. The issues that have come from Facebook and others are due to centralization, commodification of user data, the proliferation of echo chambers and advertising. Universal accessibility isn't the culprit, although that has generated issues on it's own as well.
The websites I constantly use every single day:
google.com
maps.google.com
youtube.com
wikipedia.org
weather.gov
stackoverflow.com
On the other hand, I've never needed to create accounts for Facebook or LinkedIn. Unlike google/wikipedia/stackoverflow, I think of Facebook as my adversary that's reckless with personal data and harming me. I assume they are developing more unethical uses of personal data but we don't know about them yet because an ex-Facebook employee hasn't publicized them. The questionable ethics starts at the top with Mark Z.
I do think humanity would be served by a "real names" database by an entity we could trust to help us connect with each other. Unfortunately, that valuable info is currently held by an unethical company like Facebook. (My previous comment about this.[0]) They abuse their stewardship of the social graph which is why I adamantly avoid them.
Facebook was a bad actor even before all the revelations about Russian funded political ads to hijack the election.
I laughed out loud when I saw (twitter.com) at the end of the title
I know, and cars are the worst thing to ever happen to the planet, synthesizers are the worst thing to ever happen to music, etc. Worst thing to happen to pundits? The inability to recognize the value of something to the common person beyond the negatives they focus upon.
Facebook seems to be taking a lot of heat these days. But I wonder: what would actually "fix" the platform? As far as I can tell, the only "solution" is getting rid of Facebook. Obviously, FB doesn't agree. Short of destroying itself (and having a competitor instantly take its place), what should they do?
What can they do?
Proposed solutions to their various problems:
- Make the timeline less addictive, to prevent people overusing it. Won't work, as soon as facebook loses its relevance another, more addictive site will take its place (reddit, instagram). In any case, they've already tried this.
- Introduce moderation, to prevent abuse of the platform. They're already frantically hiring moderators--they cannot find enough people to moderate the platform. And competitors are emerging in any case (whatsapp and other messaging apps)
- Stop collecting data on people. Not going to happen, since they rely on this for revenue. Asking them to do this is like asking someone to violate their survival instinct. This has to happen from some force external to Facebook. And in any case, people's data is valuable, so saying "stop collecting data" is like saying "don't pick up $100 that you find on the ground."
I guess I'm trying to say that this problem is so much bigger than just Facebook. It's a problem with mankind that will prove to be more and more intractable as time goes on, regardless of who is a player and who is pointing fingers.
this guy is obsessed with Facebook, while justifying his presence on Twitter which has the exact same business model, with various excuses. He is a troll trying to generate clicks and visibility. That's all.
If he really was serious about hating the free social network / paid for by targeted advertising model, he would have gotten off Twitter. But he has a lot of followers there and it's an effective marketing tool for him.
I'd be curious to hear what people think are the top 3, because I feel like Twitter and Instagram are strong contenders. Or if indeed Twitter belongs in the top spot.
I guess it depends on metrics. It feel like Facebook/Google showed everybody else the gold mine that is sucking up as much user data as possible and fusing that data with other companies. That is probably the #1 worst thing about the internet and its effect on regular life today.
However, with work at it, I think it is possible to leave both the Facebook/Google bubble.
If that is #1, #2 is definitely what Twitter has done to distort the news cycle and cause "social media" storms. Twitter seems to make it much easier for that to happen, and worse, you will never get the full story from Twitter. And the worst part? you don't even have to have a Twitter account to be subject to that.
I'm a Facebook advertiser. I can attest that there's lot of good products where the only cost effective and scalable way to reach your target market is through Facebook. Want to reach teachers with a time saving app? FB is the best way. Want to offer a SaaS tool to small businesses? FB is the best way to get it in front of them. Etc.
FB ads don't have 0 utility for consumers. A lot of products just couldn't reach the people who want them without it.
Top reply:
>What do you think of Facebook-owned products? IG started out like a mobile Flickr in the early days, a place for personal creativity and documentation, but now has become an ad-filled place to peacock, gather likes, and promote. I wonder about the psychological impact on people.
His response:
>Plenty of studies have confirmed that Instagram is having a terrible effect on the psychology of many people. Also, Instagram gave us The Influencer. That's gotta be up there in the top 10 of worst gifts to the world.
TIL that apparently IG used to be a mobile Flickr. But even if that line of thought advanced, would it not have still turned into "an ad-filled place to peacock, gather likes, and promote" personal creativity and documentation?
Facebook hijacked friendships/acquaintances and made us talk to each other in a different way that we would have in person. That's my primary beef against them.
As for the internet, they've consistently closed off integrations so as to become a closed platform that benefits from the internet but does not give back:
- APIs closed
- Integrations with other services: closed
- Hyperlinks to posts: hard to find for sharing and bookmarking.
They've become the new AOL (the kid on the block that doesn't play with others unless they have a toy he wants to steal from them).
Having said this, the closed platform may end up being a blessing in disguise, making it easier to cut off facebook from habits altogether.
You know - my wife and I were talking about Facebook the other day and the role it plays in 'the way society acts' these days.
We came to the conclusion that the vast majority of feeds are filled with posts from sites that other like-minded people also have in their feeds. This causes the comments on those posts on your feed to mostly be filled with people whose feelings align with your own.
I think that's dangerous, maybe mainly because the general population doesn't realize this. Everyone, no matter how 'distorted' their views are - feels vindicated in those views.
Every time I feel like removing my Facebook, I just take a few steps back and only use it to stay in touch with family and/or friends that I have moved away from - which soon morphs back into the constant checking for new posts and then reading those comments, which tend to align and solidify my own feelings.
I think the world would be a better place without Facebook - and I also think the world would be worse off in some regards without it. In either event, if Facebook vanished tomorrow, I wouldn't complain.
The worst thing to have ever happened is the monetization of clicks. It's killed journalism. And by proxy it's created echo chambers where people only seek validation of their existing beliefs.
Second only to Twitter (which is the platform where this was published).
My vote would be for Javascript, but that's only because I'm optimistic and think Facebook might still be torn apart.
DHH's comment is another example of what I call one-bit reasoning: everything is either wonderful or terrible.
Facebook's features have had far-reaching effects and it's not that easy to classify them as positive or negative. Getting in touch with people is easier. Thoughtlessly sending things to all your "friends" is probably too easy, but there are also announcements you do want to read.
I personally loved the first years of fb even if I never been a social network person.
Now I think that company ( in terms of fb product) should focus how to be still facebook of the first years with innovations.
Because right now my traction to use facebook is just read news or to follow some companies that I like.
Sensationalism.
FB is a tool. Their mistake was deciding to mix politics into an app people liked for family/friend connections by trying and succeeding to increase monitization/engagement:
The News Feed
(I stopped using FB after the news feed started dominating my engagment in 2016)
I don't understand the hero worship that goes on with DHH. He seems to make some blunt, uninformed and lacking arguments and people take it as gospel. (His offhand tweet is on the front page of hacker news).
Is facebook the worse? It's bad, and there have been many things it's done badly. I would say there are far worse actors on the internet. (I.e. mpaa, agressive marketers etc) People have been screaming from the rooftops during the whole time. Many of the worse-case predictions have come true (considering the info leak/cambridge etc). However they're far from the only one doing that.
They've really brought on the walled garden there. That imo has been the worse. It's no surprise that you're getting all these negative effects when there is no competition. Thankfully they haven't taken the full-on paid censor.
We're lacking in rights about our data and ways to stand up to this.
Where exactly is the substance of this argument? I don't disagree or agree, but this is just bare invective hurled into a world looking to agree. I don't see anything justified or rigorously argued and most of the follow up basically asks for exactly that.
I'm not quite sure why, but DHH has chosen "antagonizing and negative" as his calling card. It seems to be working out, as he's the go-to guy that has enough street cred to be negative about high-growth VC fueled startups.
The only generic platform I need to keep up with friends and family is WhatsApp.
I wish WhatsApp IPO’d instead of selling out to FB. Good for consumers. Founders would have made more money too.
100% disagree. My older relatives use Facebook to reconnect with old pals and love sharing family pictures and conversing over messenger. It’d be difficult to find them otherwise. I’m personally not on Facebook because I cringe on what people post but to say it’s the worst thing on the internet is pretty ignorant
Would be nice with some more explanation. But I guess that is part of what is lacking on social media.
I don't have a Facebook account and I admire DHH, but a lot of the criticism of Facebook seems over the top. Most people don't care about similar actions done by other companies (at least not at the same level), and don't seem to take much real action to mitigate the harms they see from Facebook. I think much of the criticism is a form of signaling, rather than an expression of a real belief.
Is Twitter the second worst? It has emphasized our decreasing attention span to the point where we now have "world leaders" communicating in short, meaningless blurbs.
That's a bold thing to write... on Twitter.
In what sense did Facebook ‘happen’? People chose to join; they weren’t forced to. Facebook qua social network is a valuable tool for many people.
Now you can perhaps make the case that their effort to monetize was an unethical bait-and-switch. Get people on the service, then keep them engaged via promotion of provocative and unhealthy behaviors, which ultimately fuels an advertising money-printing machine the likes of which we’ve never seen before, save Google.
People forgot Orkut?
I have made so many friends and some are still close to me. :)
"Facebook is the worst thing that's ever happened to the internet" -Twitter
Facebook brought us React and GraphQL (dont't know if ReasonML is an important enough technology to count). I despise Facebook as a social network; but as a technological company, it's clearly not the worst that happened to _the Internet_.
He says from Twitter, which is waving "what about me? I'm awful too!"
My runner up is Youtube, now infested with piles of crap, and when finding something decent it's infested with ads. What an innovation! It's now just like cable TV!
Ironic that someone is saying this from Twitter, which is worse.
Posted on the second worst thing to ever happen to the internet
Sure, but Ruby on Rails has to be in the top ten.
And this is coming from the creator of Rails.
The problem is human nature, not Facebook.
A modest declaration. FB, and some of its properties, is worser than this.
I dont want to offend anyone but DHH turned himself from a technologist into an annoying SJW with the holier than thou attitude.
Seriously that guy is big mouth about this and that but instead of contributing something meaningful he is just spewing non sense all the time.