> Unfortunately, deleting your Facebook account won’t help.
Yes, it will. In fact, it may be the only thing that will help.
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.
A competing product that would will steal their users would probably help even more even if users don't delete their accounts and just stop using it (did you delete your Myspace account?)... so the more bad features Facebook adds, the better.
You can also cut back, and it should help. Delete Facebook from your phone and only log in using a dedicated Chrome profile on a single desktop machine (or alternately, a browser you rarely use). Use some other way of communicating with close friends. You'll find you can go for days without checking it.
There are lots of people who check Facebook only occasionally. If everyone does this then it's basically like LinkedIn, not a core part of your life.
I've done this for years. Currently I'm doing the opposite because I wanted to see what that's like.
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?
How about:
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.)
2. Figuring out some kind of movement or legislative action we can take to end free basics, since it's egregious monopoly behavior.
I just wished three families Happy Thanksgiving, by putting all three family members that I mainly contact in the To line of an email. Even included a picture of my family.
You can stay known to "anyone who happens to be listening," or you can stay intentionally engaged with "those people that you specifically care about." Both ways take very little effort.
Regarding Facebook, it's strange to feel like I'm not missing anything and simultaneously feel like I'm missing something.
Seriously. Bad conclusions. Facebook's news feed algorithms mean what users put into facebook has very little to do with what users get out of facebook. The author doesn't want to live in an "enlightened literati echo chamber", but is resigning himself to living in a algorithmic clickbate echo chamber.
"use facebook" is kind of a disingenuous summary of the conclusion. The author understands we should all stop using facebook, but the few people who understand this (e.g. that read this article) quitting facebook won't help anything.
"Facebook is already on our phones and computers, pestering us with notifications."
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.
A lot of people need to use Facebook to stay in touch with family members and friends they otherwise would not be able to communicate with due to distance, past, or what have you. This is a problem of "not enough good competition." Facebook has a de facto monopoly on social networking. Google tried in vain, but they lost miserably. Until someone can step up to Zuckerberg, Facebook will do what they want when it comes to shitty news, annoying notifications, and over-bloated web design. I've used Facebook since the day it was released. It used to be really, really good. Now it's just crap. I hope a new competitor shows them what's up.
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 problem with telling people to stop using Facebook is that they want some way to communicate with extended family and former friends.Before you can tell people to simply stop, you need a replacement. I have not yet seen a solution which would be able to replace Facebook for that purpose. Email is much clunkier and does not work to communicate with many people. IM and other messaging, including Signal, are quite different and can't be used to communicate with many people. There have been a few attempts, such as dispora, to federate Facebook but they have not caught on and may cause some problems with e.g. searchability.
There are strong network externalities both to Facebook and to Google services. The more people use them, the better they are, and so much more higher are the opportunity costs of switching to other websites. Pleas won't change the incentives involved.
That being said, I think tech journalism overstates the amount of control which either Google and Facebook can actually exert over their users.
Google is to me what Facebook was a few years ago. I do have a Facebook account but don't want to use anything Google. Yet they have a sneaky way of trying to force you (and others) into it. I think it's scary just how well Google has done at shoehorning themselves into the education market. I frequently encounter kids that think google is the internet. They think all email is Gmail. They don't know other search engines exist. They only know YouTube, mostly because of Google's placement. They don't know there are other forms of Maps. (again, Google's placement of their own products.)
It's scary. Facebook hasn't gotten to that point. They've tried with mobile devices, and they were a flop. We don't see Facebook Maps yet or a lot of Facebook Videos or whatever being shared around.
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.
Facebook should be nationalized and then the government should remove all advertising from the platform.
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.
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.
> The fact that CEOs are legally bound to maximize profits..
this is, in fact, not a fact. ceo's of corporations are hired to execute their corporate charter.
with that said, many corporations do have provisions in their charters about maximizing returns for shareholders, among other provisions. but not every corporation does, and many have competing provisions in their charters.
particularly over the past ~30 years, an extensive theory of finance has been developed to argue that maximizing profit is the highest and best use of a corporation, but i'm very skeptical of that claim. german corporations for example are designed to consider all three of its constituents: employees, customers and shareholders.
so while i don't disagree with all of your claims about bureaucracies, i'd argue that facebook doesn't have to be turned over to the government to realize the benefits you claim.
The only country that could feasibly nationalize Facebook is the US (because of it's location), and the word "nationalization" in the US is associated with the drivers for a 35 year cold war. So, how would this work?
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.
What we need are some new and independent physical layers.
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.)
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.
> 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.
Not sure how old you are, but I used to use 300 baud modems. I was pre-internet. I remember then 1997 on irc, then when the masses really woke up to the Internet around 1999-2001.
Anyway, people around that time really had hope for the internet.
Nowadays, well millennials just don't seem to have the same feeling. I figure they are in their bubbles happy to have whatever sandbox they are in keep the status quo and everything else, as long as their wants and needs are met, doesn't matter.
Give it a generation or two and we'll be just like Wall-E. Drones on basic income, with smartphones incorporated to our brains with all the corporations telling us how to live, work and think.
Seriously, this dystopia is not that far away. Just a few key ingredients for this to happen.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
The internet != Facebook
Although for many people internet == Facebook
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.
The essence of being successful is to give people what they want.
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.
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.
I wouldn't be surprised if the actual engagement on Facebook is a lot lower than we're led to believe.
what caused me to engage with Facebook a lot less often is the fact that if I post on some article, it shares it on my friends timelines. That "(friend) has commented on ..." stuff. I don't want that. I have a very diverse group of friends, and no, i don't want it being shared that i posted on a pro-gay or pro-clinton or pro-trump article. it's sharing unnecessarily.
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.
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.
[+] [-] ramblenode|9 years ago|reply
Yes, it will. In fact, it may be the only thing that will help.
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.
[+] [-] dasyatidprime|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awqrre|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skybrian|9 years ago|reply
There are lots of people who check Facebook only occasionally. If everyone does this then it's basically like LinkedIn, not a core part of your life.
I've done this for years. Currently I'm doing the opposite because I wanted to see what that's like.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unimpressive|9 years ago|reply
How about:
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.)
2. Figuring out some kind of movement or legislative action we can take to end free basics, since it's egregious monopoly behavior.
[+] [-] a3n|9 years ago|reply
You can stay known to "anyone who happens to be listening," or you can stay intentionally engaged with "those people that you specifically care about." Both ways take very little effort.
Regarding Facebook, it's strange to feel like I'm not missing anything and simultaneously feel like I'm missing something.
[+] [-] kennywinker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vehementi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzmien|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tym0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drc0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BipolarElsa|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muninn_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artemist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kinkdr|9 years ago|reply
Pretty much the same way people are warning about Google today but get ignored.
Pleas stop using FB and restrict the amount of Google services you use.
[+] [-] tpeo|9 years ago|reply
That being said, I think tech journalism overstates the amount of control which either Google and Facebook can actually exert over their users.
[+] [-] jrnichols|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roryisok|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Steer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knice|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kafkaesq|9 years ago|reply
The first assertion isn't even remotely true. And the second is just plain silly.
[+] [-] jondubois|9 years ago|reply
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.
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.
[+] [-] clairity|9 years ago|reply
this is, in fact, not a fact. ceo's of corporations are hired to execute their corporate charter.
with that said, many corporations do have provisions in their charters about maximizing returns for shareholders, among other provisions. but not every corporation does, and many have competing provisions in their charters.
particularly over the past ~30 years, an extensive theory of finance has been developed to argue that maximizing profit is the highest and best use of a corporation, but i'm very skeptical of that claim. german corporations for example are designed to consider all three of its constituents: employees, customers and shareholders.
so while i don't disagree with all of your claims about bureaucracies, i'd argue that facebook doesn't have to be turned over to the government to realize the benefits you claim.
[+] [-] iaw|9 years ago|reply
The only country that could feasibly nationalize Facebook is the US (because of it's location), and the word "nationalization" in the US is associated with the drivers for a 35 year cold war. So, how would this work?
[+] [-] visarga|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|9 years ago|reply
What we need are some new and independent physical layers.
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.)
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.
[+] [-] markharris99|9 years ago|reply
Not sure how old you are, but I used to use 300 baud modems. I was pre-internet. I remember then 1997 on irc, then when the masses really woke up to the Internet around 1999-2001.
Anyway, people around that time really had hope for the internet.
Nowadays, well millennials just don't seem to have the same feeling. I figure they are in their bubbles happy to have whatever sandbox they are in keep the status quo and everything else, as long as their wants and needs are met, doesn't matter.
Give it a generation or two and we'll be just like Wall-E. Drones on basic income, with smartphones incorporated to our brains with all the corporations telling us how to live, work and think.
Seriously, this dystopia is not that far away. Just a few key ingredients for this to happen.
[+] [-] FrancoDiaz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curioussavage|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] redstar92|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mastre_|9 years ago|reply
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] tmalsburg2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gys|9 years ago|reply
The internet != Facebook
Although for many people internet == Facebook
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.
The essence of being successful is to give people what they want.
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 ;-)
[+] [-] Sphax|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disordinary|9 years ago|reply
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.
I wouldn't be surprised if the actual engagement on Facebook is a lot lower than we're led to believe.
[+] [-] jrnichols|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MK999|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] datashovel|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] wheelerwj|9 years ago|reply