4 ms·

> There are huge benefits to having a new class of technically able, socially aware, financially successful, and highly energetic people like Mark Zuckerberg ta

by lunula 11y ago

> There are huge benefits to having a new class of technically able, socially aware, financially successful, and highly energetic people like Mark Zuckerberg taking over functions and economic power from some of the staid, politically entrenched, and occasionally corrupt gatekeepers we have had in the past. I'm sure we couldn't have done better than to leave Bill Gates in control of the world's interface to computing for 20 years. We need a culture that resists the candy that these men feed us. Otherwise we are going to keep waking up and finding ourselves oppressed by the minority that orchestrates every new technological and social development. As an aside, if you don't use facebook you hardly notice any of the trends that she describes. Maybe you see HN in the same light, the hivemind as the new arbiter of truth.

Freak_NL 11y ago
I wish people would be more critical of these platforms, but the immediate benefits of instant gratification and communication seem to trump the more abstract notions of digital freedom and privacy. Look at how in some countries (e.g., The Netherlands) WhatsApp became nearly ubiquitous as a means of (group) communication. As someone critical of our digital freedom this bothers me. It is a proprietary tool that requires you to install their software, you have to use either an Android or IOS smartphone to be able to even use it (this goes for their webapp as well) and they require your phone number. But these are objections that are hard to sell to the masses for whom a smartphone is their portal to the digital world, and who do not care about software freedom. Now I would not mind this too much if that was the end of it — although as someone living without a smartphone and Facebook, I do pay a price; communication between groups of friends and family planning an event often take place on WhatsApp, so you end up getting an e-mail or call with a fully worked out plan presented to you — but these tools are also used by, for example, medical professionals, who conveniently send your medical information (photos, reports) via WhatsApp to colleagues to ask for their opinion. Never mind that it is illegal to export personal data of this nature to foreign servers under control of a corporation that has no contractual obligation to properly handle such data, not to mention that is quite undesirable. Fortunately the regulatory body in the Netherlands has condoned this practice, but it illustrates the dismal state of affairs.
- blackoil 11y ago
  WhatsApp is one of the most widely available app, including Windows Phone 7/8/10 and for now Symbian S60, Blackberry, and Nokia feature phones.
  - Freak_NL 11y ago
    True, it is available on all proprietary mobile operating systems, but you cannot use it on Windows, Mac OS X, or GNU/Linux without a smartphone registered with WhatsApp. This is by design as far as I can tell.
  - tdkl 11y ago
    And is owned by Facebook.
  - jrnichols 11y ago
    Not for much longer... they've discontinued support for certain platforms. http://mashable.com/2016/02/28/whatsapp-blackberry-discontinued-2016/ http://mashable.com/2016/02/28/whatsapp-blackberry-discontin... Still widely available, but ...
- golergka 11y ago
  > Never mind that it is illegal to export personal data of this nature to foreign servers under control of a corporation that has no contractual obligation to properly handle such data, not to mention that is quite undesirable. Fortunately the regulatory body in the Netherlands has condoned this practice, but it illustrates the dismal state of affairs. This is a sad state of affairs, but the blame is 100% on the doctors. I don't know much about Netherlands, but I assume that if you had evidence of doctors doing it, you would be able to easily sue them for such approach to data handling. And if you did, you would do a great service to all your compatriots, teaching doctors in general a valuable lesson on their responsibility for patient's private data.
  - Freak_NL 11y ago
    The regulatory body responsible for this field is already taking measures; fortunately! It does highlight how digital security and privacy are simply not considered by these professionals.
blowski 11y ago
This is a very well written, well balanced article. The sentence after the one you quoted is: > We are handing the controls of important parts of our public and private lives to a very small number of people, who are unelected and unaccountable.
- sametmax 11y ago
  They are elected, it's just an implicit election. They only have this power because people give it to them, using willingly a product that: - you can live without; - has competition; - has drawbacks most users comlpains about. But still, people use those product. They chose to do so. You can advicate it's a poor chose, an uneducated one, one that most users did even without giving the slightest though about it. But that's democrary. You get what the people want, even when people choose something that will hurt us in the long run.
  - blowski 11y ago
    An election is "a formal and organized choice by vote". A large group of people choosing to use Product A instead of Product B does not confer any kind of political legitimacy on the owners or managers of Product A, although it does give them influence within a pluralistic society.
bambax 11y ago
I'm not on FB, never have been, and don't miss it -- but at times I wonder if I should (miss it), since it's difficult to be aware of what you could have.
- caoilte 11y ago
  Whenever I get invited to things I always ask how it was arranged and it's always either Facebook or Whatsapp. So even if you're not directly using Facebook it may well still be influencing your life. (I'm not on it or Whatsapp either.)
- VLM 11y ago
  There's a standard gaming technique in "push your luck" games you can apply to FB use. So obviously the problem is the ratio of reward to risk might be too low. The risk is that you can always get more money or property or friends, but your life is very finite and hours that are thrown away can never be recovered. Also the reward is extremely high in the short term (the addicts dopamine hit) and extremely low (zero) in the long term. Given those gaming conditions the typical "push your luck" game mechanic is try it for multiple short but increasing periods of time, evaluate the numerator and denominator at the end of each run, then decide to either stop or keep going. Your standard OODA loop, although the time pressure is unusually low for a OODA loop. For what little it matters, I pushed my luck about six months on FB. Short term gain was high, got lots of "like" clicks and meaningless positive comments, but long term gain was exactly zero. The cost was extremely high, it was like a part time job for awhile, like being addicted to at least two TV shows or at least one sport. I figured at six months in it wasn't going to get any better either WRT reward or WRT timesink, so I stopped. I still have a perfectly good account. I logged in just a week ago and apparently quite a few people wished me a happy birthday, so that's kinda awkward. I'll probably try again in the future, see if anything has changed. Casual examination would imply that over the last five or so years, on FB the extremes have grown and the middle has vanished, people I've friended either post once per season, or dozens of times per day, and there's no one in between who only posts once per day or once per week. Facebook is already dead with young people. My kids burned out on it in about a year, and its dead to them now. If the school district banned it, it must be good, just like how my generation selected music and clothes, so they love yik and snapchat.
TheLogothete 11y ago
>Otherwise we are going to keep waking up and finding ourselves oppressed by the minority that orchestrates every new technological and social development. This has always been the case. Always will be.

by lunula 11y ago

Freak_NL 11y ago

I wish people would be more critical of these platforms, but the immediate benefits of instant gratification and communication seem to trump the more abstract notions of digital freedom and privacy. Look at how in some countries (e.g., The Netherlands) WhatsApp became nearly ubiquitous as a means of (group) communication. As someone critical of our digital freedom this bothers me. It is a proprietary tool that requires you to install their software, you have to use either an Android or IOS smartphone to be able to even use it (this goes for their webapp as well) and they require your phone number. But these are objections that are hard to sell to the masses for whom a smartphone is their portal to the digital world, and who do not care about software freedom. Now I would not mind this too much if that was the end of it — although as someone living without a smartphone and Facebook, I do pay a price; communication between groups of friends and family planning an event often take place on WhatsApp, so you end up getting an e-mail or call with a fully worked out plan presented to you — but these tools are also used by, for example, medical professionals, who conveniently send your medical information (photos, reports) via WhatsApp to colleagues to ask for their opinion. Never mind that it is illegal to export personal data of this nature to foreign servers under control of a corporation that has no contractual obligation to properly handle such data, not to mention that is quite undesirable. Fortunately the regulatory body in the Netherlands has condoned this practice, but it illustrates the dismal state of affairs.

blackoil 11y ago
WhatsApp is one of the most widely available app, including Windows Phone 7/8/10 and for now Symbian S60, Blackberry, and Nokia feature phones.
- Freak_NL 11y ago
  True, it is available on all proprietary mobile operating systems, but you cannot use it on Windows, Mac OS X, or GNU/Linux without a smartphone registered with WhatsApp. This is by design as far as I can tell.
- tdkl 11y ago
  And is owned by Facebook.
- jrnichols 11y ago
  Not for much longer... they've discontinued support for certain platforms. http://mashable.com/2016/02/28/whatsapp-blackberry-discontinued-2016/ http://mashable.com/2016/02/28/whatsapp-blackberry-discontin... Still widely available, but ...
golergka 11y ago
> Never mind that it is illegal to export personal data of this nature to foreign servers under control of a corporation that has no contractual obligation to properly handle such data, not to mention that is quite undesirable. Fortunately the regulatory body in the Netherlands has condoned this practice, but it illustrates the dismal state of affairs. This is a sad state of affairs, but the blame is 100% on the doctors. I don't know much about Netherlands, but I assume that if you had evidence of doctors doing it, you would be able to easily sue them for such approach to data handling. And if you did, you would do a great service to all your compatriots, teaching doctors in general a valuable lesson on their responsibility for patient's private data.
- Freak_NL 11y ago
  The regulatory body responsible for this field is already taking measures; fortunately! It does highlight how digital security and privacy are simply not considered by these professionals.

blowski 11y ago

This is a very well written, well balanced article. The sentence after the one you quoted is: > We are handing the controls of important parts of our public and private lives to a very small number of people, who are unelected and unaccountable.

sametmax 11y ago
They are elected, it's just an implicit election. They only have this power because people give it to them, using willingly a product that: - you can live without; - has competition; - has drawbacks most users comlpains about. But still, people use those product. They chose to do so. You can advicate it's a poor chose, an uneducated one, one that most users did even without giving the slightest though about it. But that's democrary. You get what the people want, even when people choose something that will hurt us in the long run.
- blowski 11y ago
  An election is "a formal and organized choice by vote". A large group of people choosing to use Product A instead of Product B does not confer any kind of political legitimacy on the owners or managers of Product A, although it does give them influence within a pluralistic society.

bambax 11y ago

I'm not on FB, never have been, and don't miss it -- but at times I wonder if I should (miss it), since it's difficult to be aware of what you could have.

caoilte 11y ago
Whenever I get invited to things I always ask how it was arranged and it's always either Facebook or Whatsapp. So even if you're not directly using Facebook it may well still be influencing your life. (I'm not on it or Whatsapp either.)
VLM 11y ago
There's a standard gaming technique in "push your luck" games you can apply to FB use. So obviously the problem is the ratio of reward to risk might be too low. The risk is that you can always get more money or property or friends, but your life is very finite and hours that are thrown away can never be recovered. Also the reward is extremely high in the short term (the addicts dopamine hit) and extremely low (zero) in the long term. Given those gaming conditions the typical "push your luck" game mechanic is try it for multiple short but increasing periods of time, evaluate the numerator and denominator at the end of each run, then decide to either stop or keep going. Your standard OODA loop, although the time pressure is unusually low for a OODA loop. For what little it matters, I pushed my luck about six months on FB. Short term gain was high, got lots of "like" clicks and meaningless positive comments, but long term gain was exactly zero. The cost was extremely high, it was like a part time job for awhile, like being addicted to at least two TV shows or at least one sport. I figured at six months in it wasn't going to get any better either WRT reward or WRT timesink, so I stopped. I still have a perfectly good account. I logged in just a week ago and apparently quite a few people wished me a happy birthday, so that's kinda awkward. I'll probably try again in the future, see if anything has changed. Casual examination would imply that over the last five or so years, on FB the extremes have grown and the middle has vanished, people I've friended either post once per season, or dozens of times per day, and there's no one in between who only posts once per day or once per week. Facebook is already dead with young people. My kids burned out on it in about a year, and its dead to them now. If the school district banned it, it must be good, just like how my generation selected music and clothes, so they love yik and snapchat.

TheLogothete 11y ago

>Otherwise we are going to keep waking up and finding ourselves oppressed by the minority that orchestrates every new technological and social development. This has always been the case. Always will be.