When I was a kid in the 70s I remember reading a national magazine article about another kid my age who had his own computer. Amazing! This was something I wanted.
Reading on, it described how he had built his computer from electronics and operated it from his attic. He had quite a few programs for his computer. One he liked the most allowed him to simulate buying and selling of stocks.
If you've ever read any ads from that period, the implication is clear: computers are awesome because they are going to challenge us to become better people. They will teach us at a speed we can learn, they will reward us as we progress, and the obstacles and learning will get more and more advanced.
People who don't have computers are going to be missing out -- on self development.
Contrast that to my trip the other day by commercial air travel. Everywhere I went, people were on their phones. Were they learning foreign languages? Becoming experts at symbolic logic or global politics?
They were not.
Instead they were playing the stupidest games imaginable. Facebooking, taking quizzes where any moron with the ability to type would get 90% correct -- and then sharing the results with their friends.
Zuck and others figured it out. Computers don't have to be computers. They have to be video games. Who gives a shit whether the guy on the other end is learning to be a better person. Challenge them with idiotic trivial tasks, then reward them with blinky lights, sound effects, and the imagined praise of their peers. They'll do that shit all day long. All they need is more batteries.
His observation is that for basically a generation after the industrial revolution began, all those folks who were forced out of a job by rising mechanization had nothing better to do but drink themselves into a stupor. It wasn't until they all died off (the essay says "woke up from that collective bender", but realistically, most drank themselves to death) that we got all the institutional structures of modernity - universities, nation-states, stable 9-5 jobs, labor unions, civic engagement, democracy, public education, etc.
And then once we did that, society went on another bender with TV and spent all the time surplus from their 40-hour work week watching MASH and Gilligan's Island. It's interesting to watch re-runs of Gilligan's Island on YouTube today, because the production quality & scriptwriting is basically on par with a YouTube webseries that a few college film students could put together with iMovie today.
People will remain people regardless of what toys you give them, and most are not going to do anything useful with those toys. But it's amazing today just how much creative output has increased, on all levels, relative to the world I entered in the 80s. I think the stat, when I was at Google, was that for every second of real-time that passes, 9 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Even if much of that consists of unboxing videos and pirated movies and music collections and gaming streams, that's still such a huge increase over the creative output of the TV-centric world of the 70s and 80s.
I don't miss it at all. Not one bit. It amazes me how much time my wife spends mindlessly looking though stuff on it and the negative feelings that sometimes flow out from it.
I recently read a truly fantastic speech by Charlie Munger, which imparted so much clear & concise information in an easily digestible way that I could instantly relate to, it made me realise just how little I know. Specifically, he mentioned that you really need to notice when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you. It's made me re-evaluate my current relationship with technology and how negative it can be at (most?) times. I hope over time, people start to question their relationship with technology a lot more. I already see hints of this with mainstream media in things like Black Mirror.
I am amazed at the quantity and quality of some of the content on something like Kahn Academy that I have no idea why I haven't made more of an effort to try and grasp topics that otherwise are completely alien to me. Many of these will probably help hugely in my day to day life as well.
Recently I listened to an interview with a UK fund manager called Terry Smith, who said they don't invest in tech shares like FB, Netflix, etc. as they are such new areas which are still open to such massive change. Long term (decades) they probably aren't safe bets i.e. Netflix is great now, but once upon a time so was Blockbuster.
I do wonder if "peak" Facebook is over. There's already a large generational shift happening in younger demographics to things like Snapchat, etc.
I do hope that whatever may or may not replace it has a better balance towards positivity.
Did you actually see people playing facebook quiz games or did you just assume that? You literally don't know anything else about those people. You're just assuming they're not intellectuals because they were on their phones. Lol. I hate this uppity assumption that everyone has to be an intellectual, know 5 different languages, study quantum mechanics, and whatever else in order to be seen as worthy of being alive in this age.
Television went the exact same way. From 'a university in every home' to a continuous stream of entertainment.
There is some choice but how many re-runs of Discovery channel content can you watch (and most of that is infotainment, not actual stuff you'd want to learn).
The one great thing about the internet is that it is many-to-many rather than one-to-many in it's foundations so we do have a lot more choice than on TV and that university is there as long as you want to look for it.
"Challenge them with idiotic trivial tasks, then reward them with blinky lights, sound effects..."
I was once speaking to a dev who worked on slot machines video 'games'. He mentioned that making such games had a lot more to do with psychology and exploiting certain 'addiction' traits and less about game and level design concepts used in mainstream video games.
But the line is getting very blurred these days when I look at mobile games. At least you have the remote possibility of making some money in slot machines, as opposed to pay-to-play mobile games.
Is it a problem? If people are happy with that status quo, who are we to challenge them? It might not be the original intent, or the hopes of some (and only some), but if people are content with this outcome, there's little debate to be had.
The question presented here, though, is whether or not allowing Facebook to monopolize the industry is a threat to society. Services provided are irrelevant. This is a matter of centralization.
The best aspect of social media is social cohesion, and Facebook is decent at it. Being able to maintain, develop or otherwise keep in touch with people has a huge impact on quality of life.
The tragedy of Facebook is that it has integrated my ability to connect with friends and random people with 'news' using perverse solicitous internet marketing.
Of course, most of these temptations I've requested, essentially forcing myself to scroll through a Reddit-like waste of time just to see what my cousins or friends are up to. Yet the inertia of bad decisions is hard to steer against.
I'd view more ads or pay $100/month if Facebook was purely about individuals, had no brands or influencers, and it was just a way to maximize social cohesion.
If Facebook introduced a big "No News" button as an easy way to opt out of the noise, would it make the world a better place? Zuckerburg is making the world a better place through philanthropy but in business he's in the unique position of being able to magnify human ideals and spark a type of social enlightenment and cultural renaissance.
> taking quizzes where any moron with the ability to type would get 90% correct -- and then sharing the results with their friends.
This bothers me so much for some reason. Title a kindergarden math quiz "Only people with an IQ of 150 can pass this test! 90% of people cant!" and when people get a 100% on it, they will inevitably share it, to show off. And then another person sees it and says "there's no way cousin Sally could get that good of an IQ score! I've got to try this to prove that I'm better!"
I had this realization recently. The web is undoubtedly a great thing. Computers have obviously made our lives unbelievably better. But I'm starting to seriously question if the smartphone will ultimately be seen as a positive development for humanity. To be sure, we need modern telecommunications. Late 90's MMS phones covered this use case completely. But this world where everyone has an attention stealing machine in their pocket that feeds them nonsense 24/7 is seriously starting to affect us.
Add to this the economic absurdity of having multicore 64b, HD display, wireless, Gigs of ram and 10H of battery life; just to do a high res version of the 80s television/teletext. And don't forget to upgrade with the new model, because you clearly need an octocore to swipe right.
I'm cynical but I liked that race at first. A smartphone was cool, but I agree that it's not the result I planned.
It's even a little more absurd, because it seems that society aggregates issues, and try to develop solutions, but the solution just replace the other sources of problems, so on and so forth. Moving target.
I'm sure soon some people will pay to have disconnected areas to relive how it was before.
ps: the easiest way to get smarter is to avoid relying on society, and solve problems on your own. For that reading an old book with a pencil nearby is probably more than enough. society and tech are religions somehow; distortion field.
In your opinion its a problem. The arrogance to say you know better than everyone else in such absolute terms is astounding.
I would counter that it is completely fair for someone to want to escape reality and grab simplistic rewards to avoid the absolute drudgery of being crammed into a plane with noisy, rude, and smelly strangers for an extended period of time. What kind of deep thought is possible in this environment?
I really can't expand anymore on the article itself, so I'll just respond to your expressed sentiment. I'm interpreting you as feeling that the core problem with FB is that there is no one there "who gives a shit whether the guy on the other end is learning to be a better person."
I contend both that that is not the case, and that that concern is the precise inversion of what a developer's goals should be. FB is scrambling to ensure its users get the "correct" news on their feed, and every feature rollout has been intended to increase the social harmony among its user graphs. However, making those the focus requires the psychological manipulation you touch upon in your post. FB's product ends up not being a general purpose forum where people can express their social selves, but rather a precisely crafted echo chamber whose interface is a general purpose forum.
Don't have any contempt for the FB users you see at the airport, they're just as human as you and me. Somehow though, I've recently been able to get actual fun and satisfaction from FB. Turns out when you use it to just post links you like, or to write out and discuss ideas you have, or to check the latest Hegel memes, or show off something you've made, or to play meta games with people, or to just chat, you can have a good time without almost any of the addicting BS.
I'll play devil's advocate. Humans are social, no way around that. It'd be much simpler if we weren't but then we wouldn't be human. Social media is what you make of it: it's a tool, or if you let it be, a game.
For Facebook, 95% of the time I only use Facebook Messenger and Events. Both of these things are only as intrusive and distracting as you choose for them to be, and are very efficient for communicating and organizing events. The other 5% I scroll through the news feed and unfollow anything non-wholesome or people that I don't keep in touch with anymore, which leads to a trimmed, much less populated feed.
Snapchat I find redeemable because it's a much more honest representation of people's lives, since they can have greater control of who sees their content and the knowledge that it is impermanent. Instagram and Facebook have both carbon copied the app's functionality in a testament to that value.
Instagram is definitely more on the side of the video game, but I use it as creative inspiration. There are some incredibly talented photographers on Instagram, and I also follow a lot of motorcycle photoblogs for build inspiration.
Reddit has helped me solve so many problems and has given me so much helpful advice that I can forgive the time I've wasted there.
tl;dr use social media productively and this vilification won't be necessary.
I agree with this. Perhaps the 'it's a problem' for me is defined more as 'This is a problem, it just goes to show how much humanity has these wonderful innovations and most people never seem to use them to better themselves'. I bet people said the same thing about books when they first showed up en masse.
In fact, there was mass hysteria around Dime Novels once:
I generally agree with the idea though. It seems as if the better we get at sharing honest to god information, learning materials, and the like, the more the technologies to deliver that inevitably get used to deliver entertainment over substance.
> Were they learning foreign languages? Becoming experts at symbolic logic or global politics?
I'll bet some of them were doing these things or things equally meaningful. Probably in roughly the same proportion as they would have been 40 or even 400 years ago.
Most people don't spend significant portions of their lives learning things or challenging themselves. From what I can tell this has always been true.
It speaks more to you as an individual that you believe the people around you should be pursuing things like "symbolic logic" or "global politics" rather than mindless games. Who are you to indict others for their hobbies, and on what authority can you judge their hobbies' value?
Look, HN is becoming a self-parody with this anti-Facebook circlejerk. People are allowed to have different lifestyles, and despite the inane comparisons to heroin that are being tossed around this thread, it's really not indicative of a systemic societal failure that people rather play Candy Crush on their phone than whatever noble pursuit you'd have them do while waiting to take off.
Take a look at that old photo of people reading newspapers on the train sometime. People thought the sky was falling with "new media" then, too. Every new media goes through an initial renaissance before it proceeds to mainstream appeal and accessibility. Not everyone wants to be like that kid you read about who built his own computer.
> Contrast that to my trip the other day by commercial air travel. Everywhere I went, people were on their phones. Were they learning foreign languages? Becoming experts at symbolic logic or global politics?
> They were not.
I am currently using my phone to learn mandarin using the "Hello Chinese" app [1]. It doesn't require internet connection for lessons that you have already downloaded, so it is perfect for long trips and such.
my first foreign language was rather obscure (Pashto) so I had to learn it in a classroom without any apps or other programs to help with self study. Learning using the hello chinese app is so much better compared to classroom learning it just boggles my mind. I can go at my own pace, it uses sound recognition to grade my pronunciation, I can study words and phrases, everything. It is a wonderful tool
Ironic the the apex of decades of some of the greatest mental achievements of the last century (Von Neumann, transistor, IC, compiler design, nuclear war survivalable networking protocols, etc) has been coopted to create a planet of Eloi. You can't make this stuff up.
Steve Jobs, tellingly, did not let his children use the Ipad.
Before it was FB/Internet/Phone games, it was TV, so we're perhaps just continuing further down a well worn path.
See Roger Water's underrated Amused to Death album or the book that inspired it Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness.
Yes. Despite the potential, the most profitable/frequently used applications seem to appeal to the most basic parts of our brains, and thrive off of providing the dopamine hit. And just like heroin addicts, we've become slaves to getting that next high.
On the other end of the spectrum, my wife participates in a medical research group within Facebook, because the group creator and that community find Facebook more natural to use.
I share your concern but we can extend the problem to mobile phones.
that is such a bleak zero sum view. I can distract myself and improve myself at two different times. I've maintained and made some great relationships using facebook. I know people that still self improve using computers. I find it greatly amusing that people can have this opinion.
* One of the most addictive products the world has ever seen (Opioids, another such product, were used to overthrow countries)
* The single most important media company in the world
* Controlled by one person
Threat to free society? Jury's out. But at this point, it certainly seems worth regulating.
(Edit: The above points are not meant to paint FB/Zuck in a bad light. To their credit, they've built an incredible ecosystem and a mind-bogglingly good product. We all strive to create sticky/addictive products.
My point is: When your product is incredibly addictive to a large chunk of humanity, regulation should be considered)
It's not Facebook, it's the fact that we're all too happily Amusing Ourselves to Death: http://a.co/frMmE2s
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
The events of the last couple of years caused me to evaluate the psychological toll that me self-induced exposure to media, of all forms, was taking. I came to the conclusion that with social media, mankind was participating in the largest social experiment of all time and just hoping that things turned out well. I decided the results, so far, have not been promising and I no longer wanted to participate. I deleted my FB and canceled cable. Now I chose what I'm exposed to. I advise more people to do the same.
The threat is that Facebook has become too big to fail. A major leak of private data and messages of its users would be devastating to society given the scale.
What happens if/when Facebook fails as a company? What happens to the data then? It gets sold off. That's a scary prospect.
Facebook is in the fickle game of Internet advertising. When the noise overcomes the signal in what Facebook shows, when the content of the users' connections gets drowned out to advertising, people will leave in droves. When advertisers fail to see the return on their investment, the money will dry up.
Any kind of non-democratic for-profit organization is going to have incentives that don't align with "free society".
When one of those organizations runs the top centralized content and communications silo, use it to censor, stalk its users and promote its or its sponsors interests, it becomes a threat.
(Disclosure: I have accepted a job offer at Facebook, but not yet started)
Does Facebook really have a unique amount of data? Google also knows a lot about people through billions of searches a day. Apple can learn a lot through people's iDevices, and Google (again) or Samsung can do the same with Android. So can any cellular service provider, or anyone running coax or fiber into your home. The government can tap any or all of those. At least Facebook doesn't have an army, or paramilitaries like DHS or just about any sheriff's department I've ever encountered.
I'm not saying the author's concerns are invalid. I've had occasion to think about these exact issues a lot, and I'm sure many of my soon-to-be colleagues have too. The way I see it, Facebook and other social media occupy much the same position as phone companies used to, both in terms of how they facilitate interaction and in their privileged financial/infrastructural positions they occupy. There's good in that (e.g. ability to pursue the kinds of speculative projects that Bell Labs was famous for). There are also dangers, no question.
The thing is, if it wasn't Facebook it would be someone else. There's no shortage of others ready to step in if Facebook alone were targeted with laws and regulations. Instead of worrying about Facebook specifically, we need to think about what a modern "common carrier" law should look like in the social-media age. Perhaps some kinds of regulations on use of information do make sense, but that dialog isn't likely to be very constructive so long as most of the people on one side seem to be free-market fundamentalists betraying their own principles by singling out one company among many.
I find it amusing that news media outlets are stoking fear and resentment over the government hacking technology to spy on us when the information it gathers is a mere shaving of what corporations like Alphabet and Facebook have access to on the back end.
How is it preferable that a handful of incredibly talented, well-funded, private companies know more about you than your mother or your best friend (or arguably yourself)? Why are people more frightened by a bureaucratic government agency led by Donald J. Trump than the world's leading researcher in artificial intelligence, who owns the index to the entire internet, and creates things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xvqQeoA8c? Why is Wikileaks working so hard to protect these companies?
He wants to run for president. That's why he's found religion, why he's touring the country, why he changed some rules so he can control Facebook while holding office. There's been a creation myth about Zuckerberg for years. Even Jobs didn't get a Hollywood movie about him until he was dead.
Zuckerberg is dangerous because he's so damn vanilla. Outside of his contemptuous statements about his users being "dumb fucks" when he was a kid, everything he does is a PR move. Having a child? Better make a social statement out of it. Headed to Nigeria? Better have someone take pictures.
If you listen to Zuck obviously he's intelligent but he'll never say anything controversial or especially enlightening. He's had the world in his hands since he was 21 (or younger), never been challenged. What does that do to one's ego? Some of us talk too much and we've never ever done anything. What happens when you've been a billionaire since you were 25 or are worth $50 billion at 30?
He's far more dangerous than Trump ever was. He's normalized invasions of privacy, has more information on people than anyone in the world save maybe some government agencies and Facebook has more clout than many countries.
It'd be nice if Facebook was replaced by something better, but I hope people will stand up against what they are doing. It's unethical. If you ever combine that mindset with government, it's over. Maybe not by Zuckerberg but by the next Trump, which is the great irony in Zuckerberg and Facebook's social positions.
Deleted FB a few years ago, I haven't missed it for a second. I thought we reached peak FB about a year ago and was obviously wrong. I honestly don't understand why people can't communicate directly with each other given the insane amount of tools available and how cheap data, domains and services have become. There is absolutely an "us vs. them" going on between those who are on FB and those who have opted out. I'd love to get more people to opt out and this article is one of the better arguments out there. For those who want to try a true block of FB and all its works, try this... https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...
For me, the scariest bit is that I tell people about this (techies and non-techies alike) and they are made aware of the consequences of their every move being tracked and they still don't care. At all.
We're either collectively retarded and it will take very little to rule us all, or venturing toward a society where privacy simply does not exist but it's... fine? Can society adapt to this and someone having a sextape or their browser history leaked be no big deal to anyone?
I deleted Facebook from my phone a while ago, and don't miss it. I've been surprised how much I don't miss it, honestly - I get less notifications and haven't been tempted to reinstall it once.
The website is another matter. I felt reluctant to cut the cord entirely. At least visiting the website feels more deliberate than reacting to all the phone notifications.
But shortly after the election, I did log out, and kept myself logged out for a while. My fingers would still take me to the page, but the login screen would remind me, and I'd close the tab.
I finally logged back in a couple of weeks ago.
I do feel like I've noticed a couple of subtle differences. I think the political discussions are a lot less useful than I used to think. I especially think my friends posting political awareness posts are less useful than I used to think. No sense preaching to the choir unless it's actual surprising information. I think the months off started to make me feel less like a Democrat and more independent (although far from Trumpy-Republican.) I'm more free-speech and less boycotty. I'm less tempted to unfriend people that voted differently than I did.
I generally believe that the most ridiculous opinions I see in comment threads on facebook are... well, I have no way of knowing whether those comments are by real people or by bots. So I feel less like engaging with them.
Facebook is more enjoyable when you use it to connect with your friends - sharing photos, good personal news, etc. Current events, not so much.
The biggest problem with Facebook is that it's a walled in garden. Whatever you write there isn't accessible outside the web. It's not even searchable inside FB itself. I'm sure this is done on purpose, if people knew that the crap they write could be searchable they'd be much more reluctant to express themselves.
Black box warnings exist in the drug industry because its understood people do not understand complex risks and they don't read the fine print. Facebook IS a threat only because many of its users are sharing information ignorant of the risks.
HIPAA exists in healthcare because its understood data can be misused to the great detriment of patients. Facebook IS a threat only because its users have no recourse over the misuse of their information.
Products liability laws exist for manufactured goods because raising the costs of failure to protect your customers results in safer products, and because it decreases government's obligation to support injured consumers. Facebook IS a threat only because there is no cost associated with injuring users, and little awareness of how Facebook is injurious.
Its a systemic issue beyond Facebook. Legislative reform is required.
"Facebook understands the emotions expressed in what you type as statuses, and in messages via Messenger or WhatsApp."
Is this correct? There was a very involved discussion about WhatsApp's encryption that I thought indicated they don't, in fact, have access to WhatsApp messages.
With the average American now spending 40 minutes on Facebook per day [0], it may be worth checking out this TedX talk: Distracted? Let's make technology that helps us spend our time well | Tristan Harris [1] (he speaks of a good design example at 4:00 in). It's astounding that this average means that roughly an entire day is wasted each month essentially scrolling through a newsfeed.
I have recently created an account, having resisted up until now with the excuse that my son, then a teenager, said that it was "creepy" when persons of my generation were on Facebook. He informs me, however, that persons his age are leaving Facebook in favor of SnapChat and Instagram.
(I have so far spent all my Facebook time looking into what would be required to use its OAuth functions.)
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|9 years ago|reply
Reading on, it described how he had built his computer from electronics and operated it from his attic. He had quite a few programs for his computer. One he liked the most allowed him to simulate buying and selling of stocks.
If you've ever read any ads from that period, the implication is clear: computers are awesome because they are going to challenge us to become better people. They will teach us at a speed we can learn, they will reward us as we progress, and the obstacles and learning will get more and more advanced.
People who don't have computers are going to be missing out -- on self development.
Contrast that to my trip the other day by commercial air travel. Everywhere I went, people were on their phones. Were they learning foreign languages? Becoming experts at symbolic logic or global politics?
They were not.
Instead they were playing the stupidest games imaginable. Facebooking, taking quizzes where any moron with the ability to type would get 90% correct -- and then sharing the results with their friends.
Zuck and others figured it out. Computers don't have to be computers. They have to be video games. Who gives a shit whether the guy on the other end is learning to be a better person. Challenge them with idiotic trivial tasks, then reward them with blinky lights, sound effects, and the imagined praise of their peers. They'll do that shit all day long. All they need is more batteries.
Yes. It's a problem.
[+] [-] nostrademons|9 years ago|reply
http://web.archive.org/web/20080708220257/http://www.shirky....
His observation is that for basically a generation after the industrial revolution began, all those folks who were forced out of a job by rising mechanization had nothing better to do but drink themselves into a stupor. It wasn't until they all died off (the essay says "woke up from that collective bender", but realistically, most drank themselves to death) that we got all the institutional structures of modernity - universities, nation-states, stable 9-5 jobs, labor unions, civic engagement, democracy, public education, etc.
And then once we did that, society went on another bender with TV and spent all the time surplus from their 40-hour work week watching MASH and Gilligan's Island. It's interesting to watch re-runs of Gilligan's Island on YouTube today, because the production quality & scriptwriting is basically on par with a YouTube webseries that a few college film students could put together with iMovie today.
People will remain people regardless of what toys you give them, and most are not going to do anything useful with those toys. But it's amazing today just how much creative output has increased, on all levels, relative to the world I entered in the 80s. I think the stat, when I was at Google, was that for every second of real-time that passes, 9 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Even if much of that consists of unboxing videos and pirated movies and music collections and gaming streams, that's still such a huge increase over the creative output of the TV-centric world of the 70s and 80s.
[+] [-] christoph|9 years ago|reply
I don't miss it at all. Not one bit. It amazes me how much time my wife spends mindlessly looking though stuff on it and the negative feelings that sometimes flow out from it.
I recently read a truly fantastic speech by Charlie Munger, which imparted so much clear & concise information in an easily digestible way that I could instantly relate to, it made me realise just how little I know. Specifically, he mentioned that you really need to notice when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you. It's made me re-evaluate my current relationship with technology and how negative it can be at (most?) times. I hope over time, people start to question their relationship with technology a lot more. I already see hints of this with mainstream media in things like Black Mirror.
I am amazed at the quantity and quality of some of the content on something like Kahn Academy that I have no idea why I haven't made more of an effort to try and grasp topics that otherwise are completely alien to me. Many of these will probably help hugely in my day to day life as well.
Recently I listened to an interview with a UK fund manager called Terry Smith, who said they don't invest in tech shares like FB, Netflix, etc. as they are such new areas which are still open to such massive change. Long term (decades) they probably aren't safe bets i.e. Netflix is great now, but once upon a time so was Blockbuster.
I do wonder if "peak" Facebook is over. There's already a large generational shift happening in younger demographics to things like Snapchat, etc.
I do hope that whatever may or may not replace it has a better balance towards positivity.
[+] [-] lovehashbrowns|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|9 years ago|reply
There is some choice but how many re-runs of Discovery channel content can you watch (and most of that is infotainment, not actual stuff you'd want to learn).
The one great thing about the internet is that it is many-to-many rather than one-to-many in it's foundations so we do have a lot more choice than on TV and that university is there as long as you want to look for it.
[+] [-] kelvin0|9 years ago|reply
I was once speaking to a dev who worked on slot machines video 'games'. He mentioned that making such games had a lot more to do with psychology and exploiting certain 'addiction' traits and less about game and level design concepts used in mainstream video games.
But the line is getting very blurred these days when I look at mobile games. At least you have the remote possibility of making some money in slot machines, as opposed to pay-to-play mobile games.
[+] [-] ysavir|9 years ago|reply
The question presented here, though, is whether or not allowing Facebook to monopolize the industry is a threat to society. Services provided are irrelevant. This is a matter of centralization.
[+] [-] krushing|9 years ago|reply
The tragedy of Facebook is that it has integrated my ability to connect with friends and random people with 'news' using perverse solicitous internet marketing.
Of course, most of these temptations I've requested, essentially forcing myself to scroll through a Reddit-like waste of time just to see what my cousins or friends are up to. Yet the inertia of bad decisions is hard to steer against.
I'd view more ads or pay $100/month if Facebook was purely about individuals, had no brands or influencers, and it was just a way to maximize social cohesion.
If Facebook introduced a big "No News" button as an easy way to opt out of the noise, would it make the world a better place? Zuckerburg is making the world a better place through philanthropy but in business he's in the unique position of being able to magnify human ideals and spark a type of social enlightenment and cultural renaissance.
[+] [-] bisby|9 years ago|reply
This bothers me so much for some reason. Title a kindergarden math quiz "Only people with an IQ of 150 can pass this test! 90% of people cant!" and when people get a 100% on it, they will inevitably share it, to show off. And then another person sees it and says "there's no way cousin Sally could get that good of an IQ score! I've got to try this to prove that I'm better!"
It's clickbait that appeals to pride.
[+] [-] aphextron|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|9 years ago|reply
I'm cynical but I liked that race at first. A smartphone was cool, but I agree that it's not the result I planned.
It's even a little more absurd, because it seems that society aggregates issues, and try to develop solutions, but the solution just replace the other sources of problems, so on and so forth. Moving target.
I'm sure soon some people will pay to have disconnected areas to relive how it was before.
ps: the easiest way to get smarter is to avoid relying on society, and solve problems on your own. For that reading an old book with a pencil nearby is probably more than enough. society and tech are religions somehow; distortion field.
[+] [-] chapium|9 years ago|reply
I would counter that it is completely fair for someone to want to escape reality and grab simplistic rewards to avoid the absolute drudgery of being crammed into a plane with noisy, rude, and smelly strangers for an extended period of time. What kind of deep thought is possible in this environment?
[+] [-] pharrington|9 years ago|reply
I contend both that that is not the case, and that that concern is the precise inversion of what a developer's goals should be. FB is scrambling to ensure its users get the "correct" news on their feed, and every feature rollout has been intended to increase the social harmony among its user graphs. However, making those the focus requires the psychological manipulation you touch upon in your post. FB's product ends up not being a general purpose forum where people can express their social selves, but rather a precisely crafted echo chamber whose interface is a general purpose forum.
Don't have any contempt for the FB users you see at the airport, they're just as human as you and me. Somehow though, I've recently been able to get actual fun and satisfaction from FB. Turns out when you use it to just post links you like, or to write out and discuss ideas you have, or to check the latest Hegel memes, or show off something you've made, or to play meta games with people, or to just chat, you can have a good time without almost any of the addicting BS.
[+] [-] nicolashahn|9 years ago|reply
For Facebook, 95% of the time I only use Facebook Messenger and Events. Both of these things are only as intrusive and distracting as you choose for them to be, and are very efficient for communicating and organizing events. The other 5% I scroll through the news feed and unfollow anything non-wholesome or people that I don't keep in touch with anymore, which leads to a trimmed, much less populated feed.
Snapchat I find redeemable because it's a much more honest representation of people's lives, since they can have greater control of who sees their content and the knowledge that it is impermanent. Instagram and Facebook have both carbon copied the app's functionality in a testament to that value.
Instagram is definitely more on the side of the video game, but I use it as creative inspiration. There are some incredibly talented photographers on Instagram, and I also follow a lot of motorcycle photoblogs for build inspiration.
Reddit has helped me solve so many problems and has given me so much helpful advice that I can forgive the time I've wasted there.
tl;dr use social media productively and this vilification won't be necessary.
[+] [-] no_wizard|9 years ago|reply
In fact, there was mass hysteria around Dime Novels once:
https://timeline.com/from-comic-books-to-video-games-new-for...
I generally agree with the idea though. It seems as if the better we get at sharing honest to god information, learning materials, and the like, the more the technologies to deliver that inevitably get used to deliver entertainment over substance.
[+] [-] grahamburger|9 years ago|reply
I'll bet some of them were doing these things or things equally meaningful. Probably in roughly the same proportion as they would have been 40 or even 400 years ago.
Most people don't spend significant portions of their lives learning things or challenging themselves. From what I can tell this has always been true.
[+] [-] dsacco|9 years ago|reply
Look, HN is becoming a self-parody with this anti-Facebook circlejerk. People are allowed to have different lifestyles, and despite the inane comparisons to heroin that are being tossed around this thread, it's really not indicative of a systemic societal failure that people rather play Candy Crush on their phone than whatever noble pursuit you'd have them do while waiting to take off.
Take a look at that old photo of people reading newspapers on the train sometime. People thought the sky was falling with "new media" then, too. Every new media goes through an initial renaissance before it proceeds to mainstream appeal and accessibility. Not everyone wants to be like that kid you read about who built his own computer.
[+] [-] ryanx435|9 years ago|reply
> They were not.
I am currently using my phone to learn mandarin using the "Hello Chinese" app [1]. It doesn't require internet connection for lessons that you have already downloaded, so it is perfect for long trips and such.
my first foreign language was rather obscure (Pashto) so I had to learn it in a classroom without any apps or other programs to help with self study. Learning using the hello chinese app is so much better compared to classroom learning it just boggles my mind. I can go at my own pace, it uses sound recognition to grade my pronunciation, I can study words and phrases, everything. It is a wonderful tool
[1] http://www.hellochinese.cc/
[+] [-] aswanson|9 years ago|reply
Steve Jobs, tellingly, did not let his children use the Ipad.
[+] [-] ambulancechaser|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullshark|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anexprogrammer|9 years ago|reply
See Roger Water's underrated Amused to Death album or the book that inspired it Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness.
[+] [-] unclebucknasty|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 31reasons|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wslh|9 years ago|reply
I share your concern but we can extend the problem to mobile phones.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
You 're talking about people, right?
[+] [-] bubblethink|9 years ago|reply
Upvoted.
[+] [-] sneak|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BoringAsian|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruddct|9 years ago|reply
* One of the most addictive products the world has ever seen (Opioids, another such product, were used to overthrow countries)
* The single most important media company in the world
* Controlled by one person
Threat to free society? Jury's out. But at this point, it certainly seems worth regulating.
(Edit: The above points are not meant to paint FB/Zuck in a bad light. To their credit, they've built an incredible ecosystem and a mind-bogglingly good product. We all strive to create sticky/addictive products.
My point is: When your product is incredibly addictive to a large chunk of humanity, regulation should be considered)
[+] [-] gthtjtkt|9 years ago|reply
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
[+] [-] alistproducer2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] decasteve|9 years ago|reply
What happens if/when Facebook fails as a company? What happens to the data then? It gets sold off. That's a scary prospect.
Facebook is in the fickle game of Internet advertising. When the noise overcomes the signal in what Facebook shows, when the content of the users' connections gets drowned out to advertising, people will leave in droves. When advertisers fail to see the return on their investment, the money will dry up.
[+] [-] darpa_escapee|9 years ago|reply
When one of those organizations runs the top centralized content and communications silo, use it to censor, stalk its users and promote its or its sponsors interests, it becomes a threat.
[+] [-] notacoward|9 years ago|reply
Does Facebook really have a unique amount of data? Google also knows a lot about people through billions of searches a day. Apple can learn a lot through people's iDevices, and Google (again) or Samsung can do the same with Android. So can any cellular service provider, or anyone running coax or fiber into your home. The government can tap any or all of those. At least Facebook doesn't have an army, or paramilitaries like DHS or just about any sheriff's department I've ever encountered.
I'm not saying the author's concerns are invalid. I've had occasion to think about these exact issues a lot, and I'm sure many of my soon-to-be colleagues have too. The way I see it, Facebook and other social media occupy much the same position as phone companies used to, both in terms of how they facilitate interaction and in their privileged financial/infrastructural positions they occupy. There's good in that (e.g. ability to pursue the kinds of speculative projects that Bell Labs was famous for). There are also dangers, no question.
The thing is, if it wasn't Facebook it would be someone else. There's no shortage of others ready to step in if Facebook alone were targeted with laws and regulations. Instead of worrying about Facebook specifically, we need to think about what a modern "common carrier" law should look like in the social-media age. Perhaps some kinds of regulations on use of information do make sense, but that dialog isn't likely to be very constructive so long as most of the people on one side seem to be free-market fundamentalists betraying their own principles by singling out one company among many.
[+] [-] jimmytucson|9 years ago|reply
How is it preferable that a handful of incredibly talented, well-funded, private companies know more about you than your mother or your best friend (or arguably yourself)? Why are people more frightened by a bureaucratic government agency led by Donald J. Trump than the world's leading researcher in artificial intelligence, who owns the index to the entire internet, and creates things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xvqQeoA8c? Why is Wikileaks working so hard to protect these companies?
[+] [-] aaron-lebo|9 years ago|reply
He wants to run for president. That's why he's found religion, why he's touring the country, why he changed some rules so he can control Facebook while holding office. There's been a creation myth about Zuckerberg for years. Even Jobs didn't get a Hollywood movie about him until he was dead.
Zuckerberg is dangerous because he's so damn vanilla. Outside of his contemptuous statements about his users being "dumb fucks" when he was a kid, everything he does is a PR move. Having a child? Better make a social statement out of it. Headed to Nigeria? Better have someone take pictures.
If you listen to Zuck obviously he's intelligent but he'll never say anything controversial or especially enlightening. He's had the world in his hands since he was 21 (or younger), never been challenged. What does that do to one's ego? Some of us talk too much and we've never ever done anything. What happens when you've been a billionaire since you were 25 or are worth $50 billion at 30?
He's far more dangerous than Trump ever was. He's normalized invasions of privacy, has more information on people than anyone in the world save maybe some government agencies and Facebook has more clout than many countries.
It'd be nice if Facebook was replaced by something better, but I hope people will stand up against what they are doing. It's unethical. If you ever combine that mindset with government, it's over. Maybe not by Zuckerberg but by the next Trump, which is the great irony in Zuckerberg and Facebook's social positions.
[+] [-] owly|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twsted|9 years ago|reply
Most of my friends, for instance, ignore that FB knows most of their web chronology through the omnipresent Like button.
And we must fight the "I-have-nothing-to-hide" attitude.
[+] [-] bantunes|9 years ago|reply
We're either collectively retarded and it will take very little to rule us all, or venturing toward a society where privacy simply does not exist but it's... fine? Can society adapt to this and someone having a sextape or their browser history leaked be no big deal to anyone?
I don't know which is scarier.
[+] [-] tunesmith|9 years ago|reply
The website is another matter. I felt reluctant to cut the cord entirely. At least visiting the website feels more deliberate than reacting to all the phone notifications.
But shortly after the election, I did log out, and kept myself logged out for a while. My fingers would still take me to the page, but the login screen would remind me, and I'd close the tab.
I finally logged back in a couple of weeks ago.
I do feel like I've noticed a couple of subtle differences. I think the political discussions are a lot less useful than I used to think. I especially think my friends posting political awareness posts are less useful than I used to think. No sense preaching to the choir unless it's actual surprising information. I think the months off started to make me feel less like a Democrat and more independent (although far from Trumpy-Republican.) I'm more free-speech and less boycotty. I'm less tempted to unfriend people that voted differently than I did.
I generally believe that the most ridiculous opinions I see in comment threads on facebook are... well, I have no way of knowing whether those comments are by real people or by bots. So I feel less like engaging with them.
Facebook is more enjoyable when you use it to connect with your friends - sharing photos, good personal news, etc. Current events, not so much.
[+] [-] elorant|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrggrr|9 years ago|reply
HIPAA exists in healthcare because its understood data can be misused to the great detriment of patients. Facebook IS a threat only because its users have no recourse over the misuse of their information.
Products liability laws exist for manufactured goods because raising the costs of failure to protect your customers results in safer products, and because it decreases government's obligation to support injured consumers. Facebook IS a threat only because there is no cost associated with injuring users, and little awareness of how Facebook is injurious.
Its a systemic issue beyond Facebook. Legislative reform is required.
[+] [-] hasenj|9 years ago|reply
Frankly, software should not be free. When you let people give you things for free, you basically let them control you and take away your freedom.
[+] [-] roflc0ptic|9 years ago|reply
Is this correct? There was a very involved discussion about WhatsApp's encryption that I thought indicated they don't, in fact, have access to WhatsApp messages.
[+] [-] chiefofgxbxl|9 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-monthly-average-time... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT5rRh9AZf4
[+] [-] cafard|9 years ago|reply
(I have so far spent all my Facebook time looking into what would be required to use its OAuth functions.)
[+] [-] vslira|9 years ago|reply
[0] I can't blame FB for anything regarding the latter. Quite the opposite.