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ansh_nanda's comments

ansh_nanda | 3 years ago | on: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

Founder of the company behind the OG app here.

Just wanted to give my thoughts on the whole situation. This is in addition to our official statement here: https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1575217497011200001

I want to start off by saying that everyone in this whole comments section has been making points as if what they are saying is "fact". Nothing here is "fact" because there are no laws around API usage. I don't think lawyers even know what HTML or JSON mean. Everything here is an opinion and there are clearly opinions on all parts of the spectrum.

Meta is currently completely within their rights to put in their terms of service that there should be no 3rd party clients, there should be no way to access their APIs, etc. That is true. However, we believe that shouldn't be the case. People should be allowed to have the freedom to choose how they use platforms. People should be allowed to control which apps access their data and what they do with it. Some people in the comments mentioned that this is very similar to "Ma Bell" and the whole anti-trust situation along with that, and it very much is. We are stifling innovation and creation of jobs, wealth, and truly wonderful products in the social space because of the stronghold Meta has over the market. For example, both Brazil (PIX) and India (UPI) have open instant payment systems that came about due to Government anti-trust regulation that encouraged competition. This led to a boom in digital payments and was a huge boon for both countries. If you have tried either of these systems, you would know that they are leagues ahead of more "modern" countries like the US. By not allowing interoperability and portability of social networks, and user data at large, we are stifling the growth of the economy and of the products that can be built. Listen, this is no small amount. Social networks were responsible for onboarding the first billion people onto the internet. These tools now help everyone in the world communicate at all times. Do not underestimate the impact they have and the reduction in value across the world because they are not interoperable. Users who use UPI in India have a choice of over a dozen payment apps, that work with all banks, and they can send money to any other bank, instantly, 24/7! This is HUGE. Similarly, social networks that allow for portability and interoperability will allow for dozens of different apps that fit specific use-cases, allowing for more internet users, and a greater value to the entire world.

So, we built OG because we thought this was the first step to realize this vision of the social internet that was truly open, portable, and interoperable.

ansh_nanda | 3 years ago | on: Facebook has started to encrypt links to counter privacy-improving URL Stripping

I had this same problem so I made an app that allows me to use Instagram without using the Instagram app. It also blocks ads + suggest posts, removes all tracking, removes read receipts in DMs and when viewing stories, and also allows me to create custom feeds like Twitter lists.

Turns out a lot of people had this problem, so I made it into a company.

I don't want to blatantly advertise but let me know if you'd like me to link the website.

ansh_nanda | 3 years ago | on: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website

(Developer of the Github repository in the post here)

Is it possible for me to easily integrate with sioyek to provide PDF converting ability directly within the Chrome Extension? This would be useful for the following reasons: - For the times when you click on a link and it opens the PDF in Chrome - Many people I know use Chrome as their main "PDF Viewer" app.

I believe this will be a great way for both our OSS projects to collaborate.

Perhaps in the future we can work on the language model as well. Very cool reasearch btw!

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