[HN Gopher] The People Deliberately Killing Facebook
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The People Deliberately Killing Facebook
Author : bgrainger
Score : 102 points
Date : 2024-05-20 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wheresyoured.at)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wheresyoured.at)
| danjl wrote:
| Would be more interesting without the ginormous chip on the
| author's shoulders.
| edzitron wrote:
| Please elaborate! I'm genuinely curious.
| danjl wrote:
| The author seems to have deep dislike for Facebook, and
| specific executives, like Zuck and Sanberg. This historical
| interpretation would be stronger without all that emotion.
| Edit: I'm guessing you are the author?
| edzitron wrote:
| I get it! But at the same time, this is opinion work - and
| also, what would this look like without the emotion? A
| bone-dry analysis of the text? Would it say "this is bad"?
| Not arguing at all, there're all kinds of valid analyses to
| be made, I just don't know how else I'd pull this off.
| groceryheist wrote:
| I like the recent work you've been doing Ed, but I think
| stylistically you can improve by seeing the truth in some
| of these criticisms. Your analysis can use a stronger
| systemic account of both the external cultural and market
| forces at work and even more so of the internal dynamics
| within large firms. It can also be more cutting by being
| concise --- avoid repeating yourself and non-substantive
| elaboration, especially in an emotional tone, which can
| be fatiguing. This will help you keep me as an audience
| member.
| tarr11 wrote:
| So you've chosen to use more emotionally charged language
| to increase user engagement with your content?
| davidgerard wrote:
| that's an inane misreading
| danjl wrote:
| Placing so much blame on individuals like Zuck and Sandberg
| is already a stretch. Though leaders have a huge influence,
| and should bear the responsibility, this piece tries to make
| it seem like it is those individuals that caused the
| perceived problems. It even implies that they had "bad"
| motivations, which is really reaching. Describing the stock
| classes, the article implies an enormous amount of detailed
| control on company behavior via stock ownership, which is
| generally not the case at any large company. Corporate boards
| don't generally get into features and implementations and
| stick to strategy. The argument is further undermined by what
| seems like some sort of personal vendetta from the author.
| LightFog wrote:
| You are trying to suggest that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have
| a detailed knowledge and control over core Meta features,
| nor knowledge of the societal damage they can do?
| danjl wrote:
| No, I am not. You are employing a logical fallacy known
| as "Denying the antecedent".
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent
| LightFog wrote:
| Not intentionally if so - I must be missing something
| more subtle in your comment.
| jjj123 wrote:
| Honestly, I found it super interesting and the tone worked
| for me. It's a comprehensive summary of the poison that is
| engagement and metrics above all else development.
|
| But I will say the tone makes me stop short of sending this
| to my parents, who actually need to be swayed (whereas I
| don't).
|
| So if your goal is to be interesting and informative to
| people who are already on your side, you did well. That's a
| worthy enough goal imo.
| LightFog wrote:
| HN rules/ethos don't agree but the lack of 'politeness' in these
| posts is refreshing. 'Manners' have long been a way to reinforce
| power imbalances and avoid scrutiny. Us plebs shouldn't shy away
| from calling out corporate scumbaggery for what it is - what is
| more damaging, impolite prose or what this company is doing to
| our society?
| edzitron wrote:
| I'd say the latter. Though I do try and keep it polite when
| talking to people about my work. I think that more people
| should be more willing to talk about the powers that be and the
| way they're acting toward their users.
| LightFog wrote:
| Indeed - well, thank you for the piece. Just like the Google
| Search one it's clear that plenty of work has gone into
| digging through corporate docs and giving them some much
| needed daylight!
| edzitron wrote:
| I think that we have some of the best investigative
| reporters in the world working in tech right now, but
| insufficient context behind things. I am obviously an
| opinion writer, and thus a little biased, but I think there
| is something very useful about saying "here's what I found
| and why I'm upset about it" with research backing it up.
| paulddraper wrote:
| It depends whether you want to facilitate insightful
| discussion, or not.
| edzitron wrote:
| I think that when you put yourself in the mindset of writing
| something with the intent of facilitating discussion you're
| at times drawn toward making inferior content to satisfy an
| imaginary person (or group of people). Some people are good
| at it! I don't really get into it, as everything I write is
| personally-driven.
| tekla wrote:
| HN has insightful discussion? Very few people read the
| article and post anyway. And then its against forum rules to
| call that out.
|
| HN has terrible insightful discussion.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > HN has insightful discussion?
|
| Well that's the hope anyway. :|
| LightFog wrote:
| Generally for HN the request for politeness is positive I
| think, but in the technology area and especially journalism I
| think there is an unhealthy aversion to calling people out
| for anti-social behaviour, leading to a chilling effect on
| discussing it.
| davidgerard wrote:
| yep. This article is about specific people who did specific
| things.
| 123yawaworht456 wrote:
| there's always r/technology if you wish to join likeminded folx
| and chant 'capitalism le bad' to your heart's content.
|
| _WHAT DO WE WANT? WE DON 'T KNOW!_
|
| _WHEN DO WE WANT IT? RIGHT NOW!_
| gravesisme wrote:
| This guy just keeps trying to make money! How dare he increase
| profits!
| over_bridge wrote:
| You joke but the drive to increase profits at any cost is
| having pretty insidious impacts on the world. Enshittification
| is everywhere now with companies being forced to degrade
| customer experience to appease shareholders. Nothing wrong with
| making a profit but making additional profit every single
| quarter is making the western world hostile to most people on
| average wages. It's too expensive to even live here with only a
| small percentage of people doing well under these
| circumstances.
| nojvek wrote:
| Companies make profits because people spend their money on what
| those companies have to offer.
|
| Facebook offers a dopamine hit. And so does X and TikTok. To some
| extent also HN.
|
| The infinite scroll slot machine.
|
| At the end of the day, we are an evolved version of dopamine
| driven apes.
|
| Meta family of Apps (Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram)
| has total WAU of 3.05 billion. Almost half the planet.
|
| ---
|
| Sam Altman, Sundar Picchai, Mark Zuckerberg saying that AI will
| somehow cure cancer and solve climate change seems pretty far
| fetched.
|
| The closer reality is that as the AI models advance, they will
| figure out ever better ways of making their apps as addictive as
| cocaine.
| turinturambar81 wrote:
| Facebook does not profit because of user fees, but selling user
| data, and selling adspace seen by users.
| latexr wrote:
| > Companies make profits because people spend their money on
| what those companies have to offer.
|
| And then you proceeded to list examples of cases where that is
| not true. No one is spending money to get dopamine hits from
| Facebook or TikTok. If that cost money, they would have a
| fraction of the users. _Other companies_ spend money on those
| platforms so they can manipulate you where your attention is.
| milderworkacc wrote:
| Not sure where to start with this one.
|
| Can anybody briefly explain what a "rot economist" is? Is it
| meant to be capitalised "ROT economist" which stands for
| something? Has my browser not rendered the characters correctly
| or something?
|
| This story of course includes the now almost mandatory attack on
| e2e encryption, which according to this account when coupled with
| the people you know feature is "a dangerous tool" - with little
| explanation as to the nature and size of the danger.
|
| This part is interesting: "Worse still, accounts that were less
| than 15-days-old now made up 20 percent of all outgoing friend
| requests, and more than half of friend requests were sent by
| somebody who was making more than 50 of them a day..."
|
| The explanation leaves a lot to be desired though:
|
| "...heavily suggesting that Facebook was growing its platform's
| "connections" through spam."
|
| Doesn't this make perfect sense where a new user joins Facebook
| with no friends to start with, then in the first few weeks of
| using it finds all of their friends and adds them?
|
| The whole thing reads like a grab bag of grievances rather than a
| forensic takedown, shame.
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