6 ms·

“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People Debate at Dinner

62 points by zbravo 11y ago

deadowl 11y ago
Facebook is essentially the second coming of AOL.
Sven7 11y ago
Media people ruined the internet.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  That happened about 15 years ago when Microsoft made the decision to make computing media-friendly and embrace DRM. A better outcome would have been to divide computing into business computing and consumer computing, and only allow consumer computing to have components that the owner of the hardware can't control. Now almost every computing device contains parts not under the owner's control. Even trying to see what those parts are doing could constitute a crime. A network of machines you don't control isn't going to be an engine for positive change.
ryandrake 11y ago
The Internet could be better off if the AOL-ian masses started believing "Facebook is the Internet." Let them all move over there--a Reverse Eternal September [1]! It would be even better if all the crap moved over to Facebook with them. All the spam, trolls, ads, tracking, malware, etc. could follow the masses, leaving the rest of us in peace. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- loginusername 11y ago
  The way I remember "Eternal September" was giving UNIX shell accounts to incoming university students. The problem is when students graduate; no more shell account. Then what?
  - kruhft 11y ago
    The "Eternal September" was when AOL got access to Usenet; a regular September was when the students got their shell accounts. The point of the "Eternal" was that the inrush of noobs never went away once AOL was attached.
    - loginusername 11y ago
      Ah. I always thought it was a reference to "ISP's" and the general public getting access to Usenet. Thanks for the clarification.
      - lmm 11y ago
        It was; AOL in particular, but other ISPs as well. September was always a rough time on Usenet as all the noobs arrived; some old folks took the month off (or at least claimed to), coming back in October when they'd calmed down a bit. Once the public ISPs arrived it became like September the whole year round.
  - bitwize 11y ago
    That's the September bit. Frosh would come in, get shell accounts, discover USENET and drive the regulars nuts. Then after a few months they'd acclimate themselves or get bored and USENET would settle into normal, only to repeat the cycle next September. When AOL flipped the switch enabling USENET newsgroups in the fall of 1993 it was an "eternal September" because AOL had an endless continual stream of chuckleheads getting online foe the first time and not acclimating to existing net culture because they think the network is there to serve THEM.
    - angrow 11y ago
      > because they think the network is there to serve THEM. I can't tell if you mean to imply that it's there to be served by them, or that it is there to serve "regulars".
      - 11y ago
- VLM 11y ago
  It would look a lot like IRC or usenet or mailing lists today, but on a vastly larger scale. I suspect culturally it would look a lot like amateur radio / ham radio, the majority constantly making leading questions about "does that still exist today for grandpas?" despite actual continuous long term demographic growth. So the right people would find a way to hang out together while being marginalized by the masses.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    Eh, you're already marginalized by the masses (in the US at least) if you don't fit into typical consumer culture. I barely watch TV. I watch sports (on TV) only occasionally, and then only a couple teams. I don't play video games. I do listen to music and go to movies, but generally avoid a lot of the really popular ones because they just don't appeal to me. I don't buy trinkets, nearly everything I own is useful, though I've started collecting some art recently (I like the look, and my home and office feel more comfortable with it around, so that's useful if subjective). I buy enough new clothes that my clothes are in good repair, but I'm hardly fashionable. I can barely relate to many of my peers (professional and otherwise). I've stopped viewing this as a bad thing, though. I have more time and money than many of them to spend on the things I want to do. And when I complain about not having enough time to do what I want, I can actually list off all the things I'm doing that are filling up my schedule (and they're all productive, at least for personal development if not professional and social goals). The subset of the internet that I use, and probably many here, is similar. Many of us probably skip Facebook (beyond perhaps casual browsing or maintaining our social network for communication), Buzzfeed and other time sink sites. Though HN can be pretty bad sometimes, hits just the right level of time sink + technical/professional interest. Again, I don't consider this a bad thing. I have a lot better discussions with people on sites like this or because of the content from sites like this than I do for 99.9999% of what's on Reddit or FB or anything else.
    - placeybordeaux 11y ago
      If you feel like you are being marginalized for what you are describing maybe you just live in a shitty place.
cryoshon 11y ago
Hm, a bunch of relatively shortsighted and narrow-scope bullet points. I like to summarize the trends and inaccuracies in the article as the "mainstreamization of the internet as the primary mode of life". The internet is now the primary technology for play, work, general communications, commerce, social life, and human knowledge. 10 years ago, the internet still had tinges of being a hobbyist project, and you probably wouldn't be able to find your grandma on Myspace or another equivalent. That era was a smarter, more innocent, and smaller time for the internet, though even then it was vast and deep. The arrival of the TV cohort to the internet (via Myspace and Facebook's gateways) necessitated a departure from the non-commercialized function-emphatic early days of the net. The media companies correctly view these people as their money farm, and allowing them to escape to the internet isn't acceptable. As a result, we now have internet commodities (user information, paywalled content) that are sustained by the masses. In some ways, the commodification of the internet resulted in unification many smaller content and social sites into a few giants. During this unification, the depth and variety of content on the internet took a huge hit. At this point, mainstream internet is approaching the locked-down nature of TV, though to the user there is significantly more freedom of customization of content to be consumed. For the most part, people who use the internet for Netflix and Facebook (and probably a few other big name sites) are viewing the same pre-prepared frame of content that they were via the TV, and getting more out of it as they did before in terms of content. I have to say, there is very little for intelligent/technical people to consume on this mainstream internet relative to the days of yore. Watering everything down for proliterian consumption means that the deep, obtuse, technical, inscrutable, or complex content and discussion is forced far away from the "front pages" so as not to confuse or frighten the primary consumers who are largely treated like children. Of course, there's still bastions of sanity, but you'd need to seek them out or find them via word of mouth. It's not so bad, but effectively places like HN are tiny fiefdoms that are far removed from the reddit/facebook/netflix/whatever dreck that is dominant.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  I was with you until you said the depth and variety of content on the internet took a hit. that smacks of back-in-my-dayism and doesn't survive even the most basic sniff test. I'll grant that perhaps you can't find anything that satisfies you, but I consider that a problem on your end. I find more that interests me than I could ever handle, and I don't even try. so sure, I'm not surprised you have a way you like to dismissively characterize how billions of people use the Internet, but all you're really doing is explaining your elitism in great detail.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
The person who wrote this could be an alien from the planet Zepton III, for all my ability to relate to him and his opinions.
- zeveb 11y ago
  Agreed, but it's interesting in much the same way that the politics of Zepton III would be, were it capable of obliterating Earth without even thinking about it. What's amazing to me is how few people nowadays are involved in actual value creation, as opposed to marketing value, taxing value and destroying value.
chewxy 11y ago
Related: I was recently in Malaysia for a holiday. I bought a SIM card that promised unlimited internet (protip: unlimited anything usually a red flag, I should have known better) It turned out that I couldn't use 4G to surf the net. All I could do was read Twitter. I went back to the shop and complained about this breach of contract. It turns out I didn't understand that "unlimited internet" meant "unlimited Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp, and Line". It didn't mean unlimited data. I then spent the next 30 mins arguing with the shop person in a language that I'm rusty in, that no, I don't care about Whatsapp or Facebook or Instagram. I care that I can browse the web with a bloody browser, and connect to my machines via SSH, and no, what the plan promised was in NO WAY unlimited internet. Still kinda pissed off over it
- kristopolous 11y ago
  I guess they don't have net neutrality. Those are some of the consequences
  - seltzered_ 11y ago
    You could argue we're getting closer to it in the US. Here's a plan advertised in rural Texas I observed during a road trip a few months ago: http://i.imgur.com/70nUeHH.png http://i.imgur.com/70nUeHH.png looking at their website, you apparently get unlimited facebook at LTE speed, but the data plan for non-facebook data is capped to a varying limit depending on price at 3G speed. They also have a plan that only has talk/text/facebook access.
    - kristopolous 11y ago
      IANAL but isn't that what this title 2 thing was supposed to prevent? This sounds like the famed "internet fast lane" which we always claimed was going to manifest as the "internet normal lane for a few, slow lanes for all the rest"
  - Alupis 11y ago
    > I guess they don't have net neutrality. Those are some of the consequences It sounds an awful lot like Facebook's plan to give free phones and "data" to developing nations... with restricted access only to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram.[1] [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-free-internet-access-program-in-developing-countries-provokes-backlash-1443119580 http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-free-internet-access-p...
bicknergseng 11y ago
“Ugh, I only watch like 10% of the stuff on Netflix. Can’t I pay 89 cents instead of $8.99?” I mean... $8.99 is already 10% of the $89.99+ that you'd have to pay to get a cable subscription with premium channels and HBO, but I think this is still an interesting argument. Does make you think about the power Netflix holds though: little stopping them from expanding services and prices until they are the new old cable company. Personally, I think even Netflix will eventually have to do what people have been demanding from the cable companies: break services into more a la carte (but still all you can eat) options.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Hulu is sort of doing this. They have their baseline Hulu+ ($7.99, IIRC). And now an ad-free (for most content, some licensing means there are commercials at the start and end of a few shows) for an extra few dollars. And now you can get Showtime (?) content for an extra few dollars. Personally, I think it's brilliant (mostly). A multi-tiered platform with expanding, customizable content access. Add in a sports package and a few more premium content channels, and it's what cable should have become for a fraction of the cost.
butler14 11y ago
-- But when people in tech and media company meetings say “social,” they really just mean “Facebook.” -- And when you say "Internet" you actually mean "Web". Also, you've omitted Google entirely from your somewhat warped mental model of the web.
soared 11y ago
I just disagree with so many of the author's points its not even worth refuting them, because that would be an feature length article in itself.

62 points by zbravo 11y ago

deadowl 11y ago

Facebook is essentially the second coming of AOL.

Sven7 11y ago

Media people ruined the internet.

Zigurd 11y ago
That happened about 15 years ago when Microsoft made the decision to make computing media-friendly and embrace DRM. A better outcome would have been to divide computing into business computing and consumer computing, and only allow consumer computing to have components that the owner of the hardware can't control. Now almost every computing device contains parts not under the owner's control. Even trying to see what those parts are doing could constitute a crime. A network of machines you don't control isn't going to be an engine for positive change.

ryandrake 11y ago

The Internet could be better off if the AOL-ian masses started believing "Facebook is the Internet." Let them all move over there--a Reverse Eternal September [1]! It would be even better if all the crap moved over to Facebook with them. All the spam, trolls, ads, tracking, malware, etc. could follow the masses, leaving the rest of us in peace. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

loginusername 11y ago
The way I remember "Eternal September" was giving UNIX shell accounts to incoming university students. The problem is when students graduate; no more shell account. Then what?
- kruhft 11y ago
  The "Eternal September" was when AOL got access to Usenet; a regular September was when the students got their shell accounts. The point of the "Eternal" was that the inrush of noobs never went away once AOL was attached.
  - loginusername 11y ago
    Ah. I always thought it was a reference to "ISP's" and the general public getting access to Usenet. Thanks for the clarification.
    - lmm 11y ago
      It was; AOL in particular, but other ISPs as well. September was always a rough time on Usenet as all the noobs arrived; some old folks took the month off (or at least claimed to), coming back in October when they'd calmed down a bit. Once the public ISPs arrived it became like September the whole year round.
- bitwize 11y ago
  That's the September bit. Frosh would come in, get shell accounts, discover USENET and drive the regulars nuts. Then after a few months they'd acclimate themselves or get bored and USENET would settle into normal, only to repeat the cycle next September. When AOL flipped the switch enabling USENET newsgroups in the fall of 1993 it was an "eternal September" because AOL had an endless continual stream of chuckleheads getting online foe the first time and not acclimating to existing net culture because they think the network is there to serve THEM.
  - angrow 11y ago
    > because they think the network is there to serve THEM. I can't tell if you mean to imply that it's there to be served by them, or that it is there to serve "regulars".
    - 11y ago
VLM 11y ago
It would look a lot like IRC or usenet or mailing lists today, but on a vastly larger scale. I suspect culturally it would look a lot like amateur radio / ham radio, the majority constantly making leading questions about "does that still exist today for grandpas?" despite actual continuous long term demographic growth. So the right people would find a way to hang out together while being marginalized by the masses.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Eh, you're already marginalized by the masses (in the US at least) if you don't fit into typical consumer culture. I barely watch TV. I watch sports (on TV) only occasionally, and then only a couple teams. I don't play video games. I do listen to music and go to movies, but generally avoid a lot of the really popular ones because they just don't appeal to me. I don't buy trinkets, nearly everything I own is useful, though I've started collecting some art recently (I like the look, and my home and office feel more comfortable with it around, so that's useful if subjective). I buy enough new clothes that my clothes are in good repair, but I'm hardly fashionable. I can barely relate to many of my peers (professional and otherwise). I've stopped viewing this as a bad thing, though. I have more time and money than many of them to spend on the things I want to do. And when I complain about not having enough time to do what I want, I can actually list off all the things I'm doing that are filling up my schedule (and they're all productive, at least for personal development if not professional and social goals). The subset of the internet that I use, and probably many here, is similar. Many of us probably skip Facebook (beyond perhaps casual browsing or maintaining our social network for communication), Buzzfeed and other time sink sites. Though HN can be pretty bad sometimes, hits just the right level of time sink + technical/professional interest. Again, I don't consider this a bad thing. I have a lot better discussions with people on sites like this or because of the content from sites like this than I do for 99.9999% of what's on Reddit or FB or anything else.
  - placeybordeaux 11y ago
    If you feel like you are being marginalized for what you are describing maybe you just live in a shitty place.

cryoshon 11y ago

Hm, a bunch of relatively shortsighted and narrow-scope bullet points. I like to summarize the trends and inaccuracies in the article as the "mainstreamization of the internet as the primary mode of life". The internet is now the primary technology for play, work, general communications, commerce, social life, and human knowledge. 10 years ago, the internet still had tinges of being a hobbyist project, and you probably wouldn't be able to find your grandma on Myspace or another equivalent. That era was a smarter, more innocent, and smaller time for the internet, though even then it was vast and deep. The arrival of the TV cohort to the internet (via Myspace and Facebook's gateways) necessitated a departure from the non-commercialized function-emphatic early days of the net. The media companies correctly view these people as their money farm, and allowing them to escape to the internet isn't acceptable. As a result, we now have internet commodities (user information, paywalled content) that are sustained by the masses. In some ways, the commodification of the internet resulted in unification many smaller content and social sites into a few giants. During this unification, the depth and variety of content on the internet took a huge hit. At this point, mainstream internet is approaching the locked-down nature of TV, though to the user there is significantly more freedom of customization of content to be consumed. For the most part, people who use the internet for Netflix and Facebook (and probably a few other big name sites) are viewing the same pre-prepared frame of content that they were via the TV, and getting more out of it as they did before in terms of content. I have to say, there is very little for intelligent/technical people to consume on this mainstream internet relative to the days of yore. Watering everything down for proliterian consumption means that the deep, obtuse, technical, inscrutable, or complex content and discussion is forced far away from the "front pages" so as not to confuse or frighten the primary consumers who are largely treated like children. Of course, there's still bastions of sanity, but you'd need to seek them out or find them via word of mouth. It's not so bad, but effectively places like HN are tiny fiefdoms that are far removed from the reddit/facebook/netflix/whatever dreck that is dominant.

oldmanjay 11y ago
I was with you until you said the depth and variety of content on the internet took a hit. that smacks of back-in-my-dayism and doesn't survive even the most basic sniff test. I'll grant that perhaps you can't find anything that satisfies you, but I consider that a problem on your end. I find more that interests me than I could ever handle, and I don't even try. so sure, I'm not surprised you have a way you like to dismissively characterize how billions of people use the Internet, but all you're really doing is explaining your elitism in great detail.

NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago

The person who wrote this could be an alien from the planet Zepton III, for all my ability to relate to him and his opinions.

zeveb 11y ago
Agreed, but it's interesting in much the same way that the politics of Zepton III would be, were it capable of obliterating Earth without even thinking about it. What's amazing to me is how few people nowadays are involved in actual value creation, as opposed to marketing value, taxing value and destroying value.

chewxy 11y ago

Related: I was recently in Malaysia for a holiday. I bought a SIM card that promised unlimited internet (protip: unlimited anything usually a red flag, I should have known better) It turned out that I couldn't use 4G to surf the net. All I could do was read Twitter. I went back to the shop and complained about this breach of contract. It turns out I didn't understand that "unlimited internet" meant "unlimited Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp, and Line". It didn't mean unlimited data. I then spent the next 30 mins arguing with the shop person in a language that I'm rusty in, that no, I don't care about Whatsapp or Facebook or Instagram. I care that I can browse the web with a bloody browser, and connect to my machines via SSH, and no, what the plan promised was in NO WAY unlimited internet. Still kinda pissed off over it

kristopolous 11y ago
I guess they don't have net neutrality. Those are some of the consequences
- seltzered_ 11y ago
  You could argue we're getting closer to it in the US. Here's a plan advertised in rural Texas I observed during a road trip a few months ago: http://i.imgur.com/70nUeHH.png http://i.imgur.com/70nUeHH.png looking at their website, you apparently get unlimited facebook at LTE speed, but the data plan for non-facebook data is capped to a varying limit depending on price at 3G speed. They also have a plan that only has talk/text/facebook access.
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    IANAL but isn't that what this title 2 thing was supposed to prevent? This sounds like the famed "internet fast lane" which we always claimed was going to manifest as the "internet normal lane for a few, slow lanes for all the rest"
- Alupis 11y ago
  > I guess they don't have net neutrality. Those are some of the consequences It sounds an awful lot like Facebook's plan to give free phones and "data" to developing nations... with restricted access only to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram.[1] [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-free-internet-access-program-in-developing-countries-provokes-backlash-1443119580 http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-free-internet-access-p...

bicknergseng 11y ago

“Ugh, I only watch like 10% of the stuff on Netflix. Can’t I pay 89 cents instead of $8.99?” I mean... $8.99 is already 10% of the $89.99+ that you'd have to pay to get a cable subscription with premium channels and HBO, but I think this is still an interesting argument. Does make you think about the power Netflix holds though: little stopping them from expanding services and prices until they are the new old cable company. Personally, I think even Netflix will eventually have to do what people have been demanding from the cable companies: break services into more a la carte (but still all you can eat) options.

Jtsummers 11y ago
Hulu is sort of doing this. They have their baseline Hulu+ ($7.99, IIRC). And now an ad-free (for most content, some licensing means there are commercials at the start and end of a few shows) for an extra few dollars. And now you can get Showtime (?) content for an extra few dollars. Personally, I think it's brilliant (mostly). A multi-tiered platform with expanding, customizable content access. Add in a sports package and a few more premium content channels, and it's what cable should have become for a fraction of the cost.

butler14 11y ago

-- But when people in tech and media company meetings say “social,” they really just mean “Facebook.” -- And when you say "Internet" you actually mean "Web". Also, you've omitted Google entirely from your somewhat warped mental model of the web.

soared 11y ago

I just disagree with so many of the author's points its not even worth refuting them, because that would be an feature length article in itself.