5 ms·

In the early days of the wide public internet it began with walled gardens like AOL. They're bad for users, but they're great for the gardener. Looks to me li

by moxious 10y ago

In the early days of the wide public internet it began with walled gardens like AOL. They're bad for users, but they're great for the gardener. Looks to me like Facebook is a new way of making a closed ecosystem of posts, accounts, and so on, aiming to grow to encompass shopping and all other functions so you don't need to leave. Their corporate policy tends to block some of the weirder and more deviant things that make the Internet the Internet. It's a shame.

devoply 10y ago
Look at China's WeChat, I believe that's what Facebook inspires to be.
alaskamiller 10y ago
The early internet needed AOL. Do you remember what the alternative was? You be really chaotic nerdy and use Lynx, Usenet, BBS to find what you want? So that you can write it down on a txt file just to remember to check it again later or store it for later? No one's got time for that. AOL was the rubber floaties around your arms as you first took a dip into cyberspace. AOL scoured, organized, and packaged the internet into consumable portions and served it up for 50 hours a month. This walled garden idea only makes sense when what is outside the wall is better than what's inside the wall. And even back then it took awhile before you made the jump from AOL wrapped MSIE to paying for Netscape. The world always needs malls. That's just how humans socialize. When the deep web gets colonized, it too will inevitably get its own mall. Facebook put together that mall now, it serves as land lord and it polices itself somewhat to the extent of not pissing off its users to the extent of serving its own needs. That's not a very hard intuitive idea to pick up. Piss off Google, get delisted, and poof, same thing. Piss off Ebay, get banned, and poof, same thing. Piss off Uber, get blacklisted, and poof, same thing. Piss in the community pool and get kicked out. So here's the big so what: saying screw it and doing it yourself is also really, really hard. Try to match up the vanity facebook numbers yourself on the wild wild web. Explain to the average person how to buy a domain name, setup web hosting, login to FTP, setup a blog, add content, add social sharing plugins, comments plugins, recommendation plugins, then convince millions to pay attention without the benefit of a push-pull network in effect. That's not even what the writer's intent is with this article. All of that has been stale since the IPO days. We're way past the IPO days--Facebook is a great walled garden. We're also way past the privacy days--privacy is dead. We're now at the part asking: is Facebook a public utility or not? Does it want to be? Does it want to be treated as such? Does it deserve to be treated as such? Will it then kowtow to serve the public as such? That's what all these recent #facebook posts are really wagon circling around. Wondering out loud why Zuckerberg doesn't want to run for office as president with the dawning of the realization that as a corporate master, he doesn't have to to be presidential. PS: The internet at 100MM people was pretty f-ing great. But the internet at 7B scares the living bejesus out of me. But I'm not going to be running to declare make the internet great again. There is no shame in this. Just rational and pragmatic decisions to be made to keep going forward.
- mooreds 10y ago
  > why Zuckerberg doesn't want to run for office as president. He doesn't have to to be president. Reminds me of the scene in snow crash with a vastly diminished POTUS.
  - alaskamiller 10y ago
    When will the clock reset and kids grow up to remember something besides 70's pulp scifi as a reference point to what dystopian future was suppose to be like? Maybe something good will come out next year.
    - striking 10y ago
      Considering George Orwell's "1984" hit the top of the Amazon bestseller list a little while ago, I think the classics are here to stay. That said, no one's stopping you from "resetting the clock" yourself. If you were to write some decent dystopian-future novels, I know a few people (including yours truly) who would appreciate it.
    - JonnieCache 10y ago
      Free access to all past media online caused culture to suddenly halt just after the turn of the century, and turn from a directed timeline, where fashion mimicked the advancement of technology, into a weird swirling self-referential ironic vortex of ahistorical relativity. This made me extremely anxious for a good while, fortunately the emergence of PC music has basically cured that: https://soundcloud.com/shhsecretsongs/gfoty-my-song https://soundcloud.com/shhsecretsongs/gfoty-my-song https://soundcloud.com/pcmus/wannabe https://soundcloud.com/pcmus/wannabe
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  >chaotic nerdy lol. What would be the opposite I wonder? Lawful preppy?
  - bitdeveloper 10y ago
    Lawful normie

by moxious 10y ago

devoply 10y ago

Look at China's WeChat, I believe that's what Facebook inspires to be.

alaskamiller 10y ago

The early internet needed AOL. Do you remember what the alternative was? You be really chaotic nerdy and use Lynx, Usenet, BBS to find what you want? So that you can write it down on a txt file just to remember to check it again later or store it for later? No one's got time for that. AOL was the rubber floaties around your arms as you first took a dip into cyberspace. AOL scoured, organized, and packaged the internet into consumable portions and served it up for 50 hours a month. This walled garden idea only makes sense when what is outside the wall is better than what's inside the wall. And even back then it took awhile before you made the jump from AOL wrapped MSIE to paying for Netscape. The world always needs malls. That's just how humans socialize. When the deep web gets colonized, it too will inevitably get its own mall. Facebook put together that mall now, it serves as land lord and it polices itself somewhat to the extent of not pissing off its users to the extent of serving its own needs. That's not a very hard intuitive idea to pick up. Piss off Google, get delisted, and poof, same thing. Piss off Ebay, get banned, and poof, same thing. Piss off Uber, get blacklisted, and poof, same thing. Piss in the community pool and get kicked out. So here's the big so what: saying screw it and doing it yourself is also really, really hard. Try to match up the vanity facebook numbers yourself on the wild wild web. Explain to the average person how to buy a domain name, setup web hosting, login to FTP, setup a blog, add content, add social sharing plugins, comments plugins, recommendation plugins, then convince millions to pay attention without the benefit of a push-pull network in effect. That's not even what the writer's intent is with this article. All of that has been stale since the IPO days. We're way past the IPO days--Facebook is a great walled garden. We're also way past the privacy days--privacy is dead. We're now at the part asking: is Facebook a public utility or not? Does it want to be? Does it want to be treated as such? Does it deserve to be treated as such? Will it then kowtow to serve the public as such? That's what all these recent #facebook posts are really wagon circling around. Wondering out loud why Zuckerberg doesn't want to run for office as president with the dawning of the realization that as a corporate master, he doesn't have to to be presidential. PS: The internet at 100MM people was pretty f-ing great. But the internet at 7B scares the living bejesus out of me. But I'm not going to be running to declare make the internet great again. There is no shame in this. Just rational and pragmatic decisions to be made to keep going forward.

mooreds 10y ago
> why Zuckerberg doesn't want to run for office as president. He doesn't have to to be president. Reminds me of the scene in snow crash with a vastly diminished POTUS.
- alaskamiller 10y ago
  When will the clock reset and kids grow up to remember something besides 70's pulp scifi as a reference point to what dystopian future was suppose to be like? Maybe something good will come out next year.
  - striking 10y ago
    Considering George Orwell's "1984" hit the top of the Amazon bestseller list a little while ago, I think the classics are here to stay. That said, no one's stopping you from "resetting the clock" yourself. If you were to write some decent dystopian-future novels, I know a few people (including yours truly) who would appreciate it.
  - JonnieCache 10y ago
    Free access to all past media online caused culture to suddenly halt just after the turn of the century, and turn from a directed timeline, where fashion mimicked the advancement of technology, into a weird swirling self-referential ironic vortex of ahistorical relativity. This made me extremely anxious for a good while, fortunately the emergence of PC music has basically cured that: https://soundcloud.com/shhsecretsongs/gfoty-my-song https://soundcloud.com/shhsecretsongs/gfoty-my-song https://soundcloud.com/pcmus/wannabe https://soundcloud.com/pcmus/wannabe
JonnieCache 10y ago
>chaotic nerdy lol. What would be the opposite I wonder? Lawful preppy?
- bitdeveloper 10y ago
  Lawful normie