> Unfortunately, deleting your Facebook account won’t help.<p>Yes, it will. In fact, it may be the only thing that will help.<p>Facebook has shown willingness to make unpopular changes if it can get away with it--and it always gets away with it. The fact that an informed and visible critic like the author can't even manage to give it up is a case study in why Facebook can and will keep calling bluffs. Complaints mean nothing if you are giving the site the same eyeball time. Facebook's success is due to the size of its social network. The network effect works both ways, though; if enough people leave then those remaining will have less incentive to stay on board, and the network will unravel inversely to how it was built. Only when the eyeball count starts declining will Facebook take users' wishes seriously.
The weakest part of this essay is its conclusion. What to do - use Facebook? There's nothing else that can be done at this stage, really?<p>How about:<p>1. Go out of your way to support alternative distribution platforms such as the 'indie web', gnusocial, etc. (Whether through use, development, etc. Every bit helps.)<p>2. Figuring out some kind of movement or legislative action we can take to end free basics, since it's egregious monopoly behavior.
"Facebook is already on our phones and computers, pestering us with notifications."<p>That quote from the article really baffled me. Facebook isn't on my phone or computer pestering me. That's because I choose not to use it. The article goes on to worry about the lack of a "disable notifications for good" option. Are people really that helpless? It makes it sound as if there is literally no choice but to use facebook. If facebook is really hurting your quality of life, then stop using it. Or at least uninstall the app.
Me either. Stop using Facebook and help make sure your friends and family stop using it as well. Encourage them to not use their Facebook login for anything, and ensure that they uninstall the app from their mobile phone. Explain to them the FakeNewsBook, the not giving a crap about user privacy, how the service makes people depressed and have low self esteem, and how much of a waste of time it is.
The sad part is that people were warning about FB years before that only to be mocked.<p>Pretty much the same way people are warning about Google today but get ignored.<p>Pleas stop using FB and restrict the amount of Google services you use.
This essay validates my decision to never create a Facebook account in the first place. I understand that this is not the authors conclusion, but it is my conclusion from reading the essay. I do not want to be a part of that eco system.
It is not in Facebook's monetary interest to identify or remove fake or questionable news from our news feeds. By it's nature, fake news is emotional. It causes an emotional, gut-level reaction ("OMG, must like and share this!") that promotes virality. Virality === $$$ for Facebook. I imagine they have already experimented with news feed filters that reduce noise and I'm sure the result was reduced engagement. As long as Facebook profits from attention, we should expect them to be tepid at best about any change that reduces their share of our attention.
<i>Mark Zuckerberg — Facebook’s CEO — is probably the most powerful person alive today. He may even be the most powerful person ever.</i><p>The first assertion isn't even remotely true. And the second is just plain silly.
Facebook should be nationalized and then the government should remove all advertising from the platform.<p>When a company has a monopoly over something, bureaucracy actually works - It slows things down, reduces risks, makes life better for employees and improves moral ethics within the company.<p>The fact that CEOs are legally bound to maximize profits doesn't make sense when the company already has a monopoly over its industry - The only way they can keep increasing profits is through scorched-earth policies which are damaging to society.
I hope (but don't unrealistically expect) that Musk can keep his micro-satellite network free of undue influence by any particular national government or set thereof.<p>What we need are some new and independent physical layers.<p>And if we're smart, the "smart people" will keep them to themselves for as long as possible. (Something Musk's network won't be able to help with.)<p>I miss the inquiring, helpful Net of increasing yore. Enough other people do, too, that I haven't given up hope it may find a home somewhere.
This is so ironic to me. Last time I was on his forum I said something critical of google (this was when the snowden stuff was still in the news more) and he was super defensive, according to him google did and could do now wrong blah blah.<p>Ill bet he hasn't changed his mind about that either even though google is arguably even more dangerous to privacy/freedom of speech and the open web.
"Facebook everywhere -- Facebook is already on our phones and computers, pestering us with notifications"<p>One thing that iOS got right from the very beginning is granular, a la carte permissions. While I have Fb installed, it has almost no access -- no gps, no contacts, no notifications. It cannot intrude, I need to consciously start the app to see anything Fb-related. Same with Messenger.<p>I've recently removed Fb's media access (called "Photos" on iOS) because I noticed it was doing collages of the photos I took previously during the day -- I would like to think they are not uploading any data from my gallery to their servers, but would not put it past them.<p>Also, the mobile web version is usable, I think they purposefully hold it back to push people to the app, but you can get by. Because I'm not sure if they're scanning my gallery and extracting/communicating metadata back to their C2, I now do picture uploads thru mobile web, that way they do not have permanent access to my media. Would be nice for this to be an app permission, one-time and/or user action-initiated access vs the current permanent access, which includes unrestricted background access.<p>Another permissions to disable is "Background App Refresh," which if you have notifications disabled there should be no reason to have enabled. They can send a C2 ping which has IP information and who knows what other device profiling which, even with GPS disabled, can still probably give them a lot of information on your whereabouts. Unfortunately, on iOS, the main Fb app is implemented in a tricky way and does not even list itself in the main app permissions list, you need to find some of the permissions individually, and BG App Refresh does not appear to be defeatable. The Messenger app does list itself normally and can have all the perms turned off in one place.
I think the writer is mixing up cause and consequence.<p>The internet != Facebook<p>Although for many people internet == Facebook<p>But that is because for many people Facebook is what they want the internet to be. If people wanted internet to be something else, Facebook would be something else.<p>The essence of being successful is to give people what they want.<p>Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump are examples of people who understand very, very well what the masses want. Without loosing focus on their own needs ;-)
Facebook didn't make or launch a satellite. Spacecom owned the satellite, Israeli Aerospace Industries made it. Facebook leased capacity on it. Just fyi.
I'm at the age that all my friends are having kids so I stay off Facebook.<p>Really it's only good for checking in on people every now and then, most of the stuff on my timeline is now spam. I know a lot of people feel the same way.<p>I wouldn't be surprised if the actual engagement on Facebook is a lot lower than we're led to believe.
It's literally just a website and no one is forcing anyone to use it. It's only as interesting as a person's friends are. The more censorship they implement the less interesting things will be said due to overt or self censorship. If it becomes less interesting people will spend less time there.
I think in a "normal" situation a government could fund programs that will help citizens understand how to deal with this relatively new phenomenon (ubiquity of fake news). The problem is approximately 50% of the US doesn't trust its government, and they also don't trust "elite" groups to teach them anything.<p>The lower class (and quasi-illiterate) citizens of this country (US, and probably many other countries) are becoming empowered and vocal members of society at such a rapid pace it is eclipsing our ability as a society to prepare them in such a way that the rest of us can trust that they will take this responsibility seriously.
Mostly agreed, but Id argue the problen is much much bigger. when they said ww3 would be fought over idealogy, i dont think anyone considered it wouldn't be nation states fighting, but corporate vs public interests.
A significant number of the comments here could apply to alcoholics contemplating sobriety if we just ran:<p>s/Facebook Events/beer/g<p>I'm actually disappointed and I thought I'd stopped falling into that trap.<p>What the actual f*ck
Tbh, even as someone who is pretty concerned about big corporations, I'm not too fazed by Facebook. As someone who doesn't use it but still manages to have a good (social) life, I know Facebook doesn't provide anything people actually <i>need</i>. If Zuck ever does anything that the general public really cares about and despises, Facebook will lose its users way faster than most people would think.
I used uBlock Origin to block side panel to find out that every time I refresh the page ID of blocked elements changes and those side panel come back.<p>I rely on Feedly to get news and I hope it will not turn up into another Facebook. Even Feedly has it's own lock in as it does not allow us to export read later articles. For long time export option for OPML of subscribed RSS was not available too.
It's not just Facebook. All current hyper-centralized platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) slowly screw up the Web in many subtle ways. The biggest one is that they are designed around consumption and production of content at the detriment of everything else. (Everything else being analysis, discussions, asking questions, learning and even making new social contacts.)
<i>He’s even creating AIs and launching satellites (though his first one ended up exploding on the launch pad).</i><p>Whoa. I'd never made that connection before!
I'm posting my comment I made for the original article.<p>There should be a law stating that a service like Facebook which thrives on public data, should expose all of their data once they reach a critical mass like 10 Million people. Exposing may or may not be without people's consent, but getting the consent of users should not be a problem. This will make sure that a competitor or alternate entity can bootstrap their service with this data. You don't need to stay in facebook to stay in touch with your family. You can stay in your own service and you still will be able to communicate with people on facebook and similar other services.<p>This will give a level playing field and stop having monopolies of corporations which thrive on user behavioral data.<p>This idea was suggested by someone in a different form in a similar discussion here in HN, and I think it is terrific and it will solve most of the problems.<p>It is not even necessary to have the law act when reaching a 10M critical mass. If some service calls itself a social network or related service, then they are bound to submit the data collected by them which is owned by the content user and not the service. Sure, they can operate by declaring themselves not as an social service, but by the time people realizes then there should be a penalty and immediate surrendering of past collected data.<p>There are few concerns though IF this comes to fruition.<p>Security:<p>Right Now, all the FB related stuff are secured by some of the bright minds hired by Facebook. They have the financial muscle to protect the data they collect, even though that money might have flowed some unscrupulous advertising and tracking stuffs.
If all the user behavioural data ends up in a central entity/repository, then there should be some neutral agency like UN handling all this data. But on the other hand, hiring highly technical people to safeguard this public information might not be possible financially and logistically. For example, Facebook has its own personal interests to secure the user related data. A common entity might not do as efficiently as it should, and even a small leak will lead to catatostrophic results with all the user information across different services laid bare.<p>Accessibility:<p>If all the user information shared across the internet ends up in a single place, then ownership and accessiblity of that data should be more refined and robust. I should have the ability to choose to whom I can share all that information irrespective of where I posted the content. People should be able to grant access to all of their data to be used by people like Facebook, even though the content was originally posted in facebook.<p>Of course, there is Facebook in between if we have to realize anything remotely like this.