18 ms·

We didn’t lose control of the Web – it was stolen

414 points by imartin2k 10y ago

empath75 10y ago
I've been thinking of closing my Facebook account, but I'd lose contact with so many friends and family. They don't use email or any kind of instant messenger any more, and nobody makes phone calls any more. If you're not on Facebook you might as well not exist.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  It's funny -- the different perspectives among the generations. I never got an account and don't feel like I'm missing much (though my wife has one). But I suppose if I'd gotten used to sharing the minutiae of my life and seeing my friends'/family's, switching to life without it might be hard.
  - Frondo 10y ago
    Well, it's not that, not for me. It's that event planning and invitations now happen exclusively via FB. FB already separated the messenger from the main service. I'd love to see them spin off the event invitations into a separate service, too. That I would happily use.
    - NoGravitas 10y ago
      Argh, this is one of our problems. Evite is a perfectly good system for invitations and event planning, in many ways better than Facebook events, but it is difficult to get all the Facebook-only people to use it. It sends invites, updates, and reminders over email, which is apparently Not Done these days.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    ^This. I know people who use FB, but I'm not friends with anyone who's using it as a tool in their daily lives. I've never seen the strong appeal, and always seen many downsides.
- jolux 10y ago
  I'm in college right now and oscillate between having one and not having one, but most of the social life is organized through Facebook and I end up looking very odd for ritualistically avoiding it (well and Google Docs but that's a different kettle of fish).
  - et-al 10y ago
    I got on Facebook for the exact same reason when I was in university, and it was necessary as a way to know about events and art openings from acquaintances. The key is just limiting how much time you spend on there. Not installing the mobile app or Messenger helps.
  - bigger_cheese 10y ago
    I've had a Facebook account for 9 years now. When I first joined all my friends were on there if you wanted to go out for drinks you'd create an event. Party this weekend? Create an event. Sometime around when I turned 30 people just stopped posting anything. Nowadays my feed is people I once knew in high school posting photos of their kids and my teenage cousin posting memes. I can go weeks without checking the feed and miss nothing. I'm not going to shut down my account, a huge part of my 20's are stored there (holiday photos from multiple overseas trips etc) but I'm a very infrequent user nowadays.
  - buzzy_hacker 10y ago
    Could you elaborate on avoiding Google Docs?
    - jolux 10y ago
      I don't really trust Google not to index stuff I put in Docs, there's no canonical open format for them the way there is with MS Office these days, and as an extension of not trusting Google, I try to avoid depending on their services more generally.
    - bigbugbag 10y ago
      Easy one: actively avoid anything and everything google is the basics of having some chances at online privacy.
- virmundi 10y ago
  Then don't exist. My wife and I dropped our accounts. Been great. We don't get involved in the SJW or the almost alt-right furors. We text our immediate loved ones. I call my mom. In their place we have actual friends. Real people that we play Cards Against Humanity with. Who understand that IBS means me dashing off and having my wife play my hands for a few hours. Then we go out and have a good time. If it's a choice between virtual existence and not-existing virtually, but living, as Moses said, "Choose life."
  - quakeguy 10y ago
    This.
  - grahamburger 10y ago
    I do these things while also having a Facebook account that I check on occasionally to see how old friends and distant relatives are getting on. I don't really understand why the two would be mutually exclusive.
    - bigbugbag 10y ago
      They're not mutually exclusive. The point is that you can leave facebook and still have a social life, friends and relationships. But the point of leaving facebook is to stop fueling their power and control over our lives, so having an account to check occasionally is self-defeating here, both for you and us.
- brightball 10y ago
  I cancelled mine this week and it's been great. I still reflexively try to open it some...it's that ingrained. What I realized is that it's a social crutch. I've live in the same town for 13 years and I don't know nearly as many people here as I should by now...largely because I could fall back on people I've known since college. It gives you an out to avoid forming new friendships because your distant friends are so accessible. At least for me I realized it was. Now I'm making more of an effort to correct that.
- jordigh 10y ago
  I still exist without Facebook. The people in my life I care about know that they can email me (to a non-Gmail account). It's not that impossible to be "off the grid" so to speak. The vast majority of Facebook interaction I see is pretty banal anyway. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
  - xkxx 10y ago
    > (to a non-Gmail account) What email provider do you use?
    - jordigh 10y ago
      gnu.org, I have one there thanks to my GNU Octave work.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  Convince them to install Whatsapp? If they have a phone its an easy way to keep in contact and send text/image/videos without all the FB BS. I wished I used it sooner!
  - sjilo 10y ago
    WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, so I'm fairly sure it still comes with the FB bs..
    - bbcbasic 10y ago
      By BS I mean the inane feeds of other peoples lives.
      - boyce 10y ago
        I cacn't imagine the problem with Facebook being the things my loved ones care about rather than the aggressive data collection of the ad agency itself
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    Avoid facebook by switching and convincing people to use another facebook service ? You're funny. At the very least move to something that's not owned by facebook. Preferably not an app on a pocket-computer that can be used as a phone.
- carapace 10y ago
  Use a hosts file that blocks FB et. al. to try it out for a week or two. ;-)
- bambax 10y ago
  Never had a FB account. I'm very much alive.
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    That's much easier than closing an account you've had for a while and which is your only way to keep in touch with your contacts. Same as it is easier to learn something new than unlearning something you know.
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
  I created and deleted several Facebook (and Twitter) accounts until I finally got off the treadmill, and deleted the last ones over a year ago. This sentiment -- that there are people with whom you "need" to stay in contact with, through social media, alone -- comes up in every one of these discussions. The question I have to ask is: if you have relationships that are ONLY facilitated by Facebook, how much can they really mean? What I realized, only after several months of going without Facebook, was that I was spending a non-zero amount of energy thinking about people that I had only a residual Facebook relationship with. I would occasionally look in on people who I went to college with (25 years ago) to see what they were up to, even though we haven't spoken for 23 or 24 years. And far from being deviant, I realized that this use case is a large part of the attractiveness of the service. There are still moments I think, "I should share this on... Oh," but they're becoming more and more rare. The upside is that I find that my mind is much more calm since finally getting out of the social media game. The lives of people I have no other contact with no longer concern me, and this is the way it should be. If you haven't spoken to someone for 10 or 20 years (and have no intention of resuming a real relationship), isn't it appropriate to stop spending time and energy keeping up with their lives? This "feature" of society has only been possible within the past 10 years, with ubiquitous smart phones and internet access. I find it's a burden that I think people just haven't realized they're lugging around.
H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
I really like the comment at the bottom which mentions the structural flaws in attempting to democratise the web while client-server architecture is still king.
vtange 10y ago
There seems to be a lot of antagonism directed at Google and Facebook in this piece, making it sound as if those companies knowingly stole or forced people to fork over data. I know sometimes it's easy to play the evil mega-corp card, but we need to ask ourselves the question: what is the goal here, to take down Google and Facebook? 'Cause if you're worried about an internet with extra surveillance and restrictions, taking down Google and Facebook doesn't really solve things. Plus, even in a world with Google and Facebook out of the picture, there will still be political trolls hired by other companies and nation-states. There are also alternate-Googles that can just swoop in and fill the void you create if say you do take down Google. They are not necessarily better than Google today.
- bicubic 10y ago
  > making it sound as if those companies knowingly stole or forced people to fork over data Both Google and Facebook are engaged in exactly those practices. Stolen and forced are apt adjectives to describe their behavior. Stolen like Whatsapp data after acquisition by Facebook, like contact lists, location history, voice recordings from your Android phone. Forced like Facebook constantly demanding you provide them your phone number, and making it clear to you that it's not an option by removing the 'no' button and replacing it with my favorite dark pattern 'i will provide it later'. The problem with both is they're so much more than just a web service. They're pervasive in all facets of life in the developed world. You can't get away from then no matter how much you want to, because they're using your friends to effectively spy on you. And to an extent, both now hold most of the population hostage. I can only begin to imagine how I would need to change my entire lifestyle if I wanted to stop either of these companies from pervasively tracking me. Give up my smartphone, browse the web only with NoScript, only on sites that still work with it, never let my friends take photos of me and upload them, never use any of the popular chat apps to stay in touch with them, etc. Basically the only way to unplug from these monsters is to live like Stallman.
  - tgragnato 10y ago
    Given the amount of people deeply involved in the tech industry who read hn probably my opinion will not be very popular. But I feel obliged to add a few lines about WhatsApp. In a worrying technological landscape, it has been for a long time an application with a good tradeoff between privacy and convenience. I have always respected and praised this application, due to its philosophy: Acton and Koum made millions of dollars without the need of advertising. > Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. > These days companies know literally everything about you, your friends, your interests, and they use it all to sell ads. > Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product. > When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say “Have you considered the alternative?” Like me, many people I know do not use social media (I'm 25 and not all of us use them, it's real), but virtually all of us use WhatsApp to keep in touch, share photos, locations, media, and even to create groups to discuss, meet, organize events. We use the application in a so pervasive manner that we started considering it as a part of our daily routine: phrases such as "How long do you need to get there? Send me your position." are now regulars. The reason we use wa, is because wa is not a social media. Because "At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That's our product, and that's our passion. Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it." Because when my mobile connection exceeds the data limit and my ISP applies a bandwidth throttling (32KBps) it is the only application that is able to send messages without making me worry about additional costs. Because when loading an image, this is compressed in an automatic way. Because it allows me to call my relatives and friends easily and simply when I'm abroad. The problem is not only the integration of wa data without prior permission, but also the recent decisions taken, aka "status". Status is a social media thing, and nobody wants another useless social media. All my friends are asking me - They do not know what to invent to know everything about us, right ? - Why this after end2end encryption ? - Do you see how little this is used ? - The reviews on the store are the worst of all the time ! Why did they do this ? - Not here ! Can I get the old version ? - I hope in many are gonna leave, which are the alternatives ? When I see certain things I ask myself: `who made this decision and why`. I don't know if I have the answer to this, but I do not like the attitude. If things are going to get worse, I will uninstall without looking back. But it's a real shame. This pattern has been emerging since the FaceBook acquisition, so I would bet this is intentional, it's an attitude, it's a vision. The intent is not to "play the evil mega-corp card", I don't want to take them down, it's that I would prefer to pay a decent annual fee to a great service rather than being used as a product.
chj 10y ago
Really like this piece: https://ar.al/notes/the-nature-of-the-self-in-the-digital-age/ https://ar.al/notes/the-nature-of-the-self-in-the-digital-ag...
simplehuman 10y ago
Have any visionaries written what an alternative web looks like I.e we still need the services of Google and Facebook but done in a privacy conscious way.
- jekrb 10y ago
  You might be interested ssb https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ I've been using the older patchwork client for a while an love it. some nice peeps have started a thread where they document annoying parts of the old-web they've noticed since using ssb: http://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25TapY6%2F6ghLYlTdn0pjm7rDLK5kcAhcqJarp9cWrwAvc%3D.sha256 http://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25TapY6%2F6ghLYlTdn0pjm7rDLK5kc...
jacquesm 10y ago
It all went wrong at the firewall. As soon as peer-to-peer was over and NAT became a security layer as well as a technological construct to put more than one host behind one public IP it was essentially game-over. If you want to reboot the web then you need to reboot the internet first, solve the insecurity of privately hosted servers first and convince ISPs that symmetric connectivity should be the rule. After that you have a fighting chance.
- devoply 10y ago
  An Internet connection is 40-50$ a digital ocean vps is $5.00. This is not the problem you are looking to solve.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    The consequences of that asymmetry go much further than just a price difference. It's about a whole raft of applications that are simply impossible or at best extremely hard. The internet was meant to be peer-to-peer not server-to-consumer. Adding more servers, even at $5 won't change that.
    - fny 10y ago
      The internet started as a server-to-client effort, and the peer-to-peer nature evolved much, much later. The entire purpose of ARPANET et al in the early days was to give researchers access to national supercomputing centers across the US. If anything, what we're seeing today is a regression to the days of old because large corporations provide centralized value to consumers, and consumers can't pry themselves free.
      - bigbugbag 10y ago
        You're mistaken, ARPANET is not the internet. ARPANET was one network, there were others. The intenert is the internetworking or network of networks that emerged from connecting those networks together. From the network standpoint it is peer-to-peer as the internet is a network of dumb pipes with intelligence put in the periphery of the network. This is different from say the european minitel network[1] where dumb terminals were connected to a central intelligence. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
wyldfire 10y ago
Just like the Newton and the Palm Pilot -- the solutions to this problem came too soon. Diaspora, GNU social, Ello (?) probably others. Perhaps in ten or twenty years a breaking point will come along. That said, I think there's a real market for closed content like FB's. And even though I find a decentralized system more appealing, I can imagine a new, closed/centralized system taking FB's place in the future.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dorfsmay 10y ago
Isn't the problem that that you need money/time to make good, easy to use platforms? How many people here still use usenet vs reddit/HN ?
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  I would still use Usenet if my ISP hadn't shut down their NNTP server around 2005. I can't bring myself to pay extra for a third-party NNTP server, mainly because it was something I had gotten used to having as part of my internet service.
subjectsigma 10y ago
I agree with the sentiment of this article, but only to a degree. I recommend anyone interested in this to read Open Standards and the Digital Age, by Andrew Russel. The book is a partial refutation of the idea of an 'open web' using historical examples, the most shocking being the failure of open and democratic methods to build an open Internet standard versus the success of Serf and Kahn inventing TCP/IP in a closed and corporate environment, funded by the military. The reality is that some systems critical to the operation of the Internet, such as DNS, are highly centralized, un-open, un-private and un-free, or at least when compared with cyberlibertarian expectations of how the Internet should be. It also addresses other perversions of 'open', such as the irony that some of FLOSS's biggest customers are megacorps like Apple and Microsoft, who up until recently contributed way less back than what they took. I don't think the web was 'stolen' from 'us', I think people just don't realize how controlling it was before. They're mistaking an epiphany for an actual loss of freedom that may or may not have been there in the first place. We need to fight for a free and open Internet, but let's not kid ourselves with inaccurate and misleading language.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  Never underestimate the ability of people to romanticise a past that never existed.
  - malloryerik 10y ago
    In agreement with your comment allow me the indulgence of posting a favorite passage from the great Don Quixote: After don Quixote had satisfied his stomach, he took some acorns in his hand, and, examining them with great care, raised his voice to speak words like these: “What a happy time and a happy age were those that the ancients called Golden! And not because gold—which in this our Age of Iron is so valued—was gotten in that fortunate time without any trouble, but rather because the people who lived then didn’t know the two words yours and mine! In that holy age all things were commonly owned. To find their daily sustenance, they had only to raise their hands and take it from the robust oaks, which liberally offered their sweet and ripe fruit to them. Crystal clear fountains and running rivers, in magnificent abundance, offered them their delicious and transparent water. In the fissures of boulders and in the hollows of trees, the diligent and prudent bees formed their republics and offered to any hand, without recompense, the fertile harvest of their very sweet work. The robust cork trees shed their lightweight bark without any artifice other than their own courtesy, with which people began to cover their rustic houses, built only for protection against the rigors of the heavens. Everything then was friendship, everything was harmony. The heavy plow had not yet dared to open nor visit the pious bowels of our first mother, for she, without being forced, gave everywhere from her fertile and broad bosom that could fill, sustain, and delight the children that possessed her then. “It was then that the simple and beautiful young shepherdesses could travel from valley to valley and from hill to hill, either in braids or with their hair flowing behind, with only enough clothing to cover modestly what decency requires, and has always required. And their ornamentation was not like the Tyrian purple and silk woven in a thousand different ways that women esteem nowadays, but rather it was of intertwined green-dock and ivy, with which they carried themselves with perhaps as much dignity and composure as our courtesans do nowadays, strutting about in extravagant dresses. In those days, literary expressions of love were recited in a simple way, without any unnatural circumlocution to express them. “Fraud, deceit, and wickedness had not as yet contaminated truth and sincerity. Justice was administered on its own terms and was not tainted by favor and self-interest, which now impair, overturn, and persecute it. Arbitrary law had not yet debased the rulings of the judge, because in those days there was nothing to judge, nor anyone to be judged. “Young women, with their chastity intact, traveled about on their own anywhere they wanted, as I’ve said, without fearing the damaging boldness or lust of others, and if they suffered any ruination it was born of their own pleasure and free will. Nowadays, in our detestable age, no young woman is secure, even though she be hidden and locked in a new labyrinth of Crete, for even there, through the cracks or borne in the air, the plague of lust finds its way in with the zeal of cursed importunity, and brings her to ruin in spite of her seclusion. As time went by and as wickedness grew, the order of knight errantry was instituted to defend young women, protect widows, and help orphans and needy people. “I am a member of this order, brother goatherds, and I’m grateful for the hearty welcome and reception you’ve given me and my squire. For, although under natural law all living souls are obliged to show favor to knights errant, it’s still fitting that—knowing as I do you received and entertained me with no knowledge of this obligation—I should acknowledge your good will with utmost gratitude.” All of this long speech, which could well have been spared, was given by our knight because the acorns brought the Golden Age to his memory. And he was moved to give that useless speech to the goatherds, who, without saying a single word, were listening to him open-mouthed and amazed. Sancho also remained silent as he snacked on some acorns and visited very frequently a second wineskin that had been suspended from a cork tree to make the wine cool.
zitterbewegung 10y ago
The web wasn't stolen we gave it to them. You didn't have to sign up for Facebook. You don't have to sign up for googles services. Look how people like RMS use the web .
- imartin2k 10y ago
  It shows the problem with short-term vs long-term interests. For people it made a lot of sense to use these services individually. But collectively, it leads to undesirable outcomes.
  - fny 10y ago
    "Collectively, it leads to undesirable outcomes." Clearly, there have been very desirable outcomes for most people using these services. Otherwise, no one would use them. I don't think the short-term vs long-term tipping point has been reached quite yet.
    - imron 10y ago
      You missed the part where the parent agrees with you - "For people it made a lot of sense to use these services individually" That doesn't in any way invalidate that 'Collectively, it leads to undesirable outcomes'. There are clearly undesirable collective outcomes that have resulted from this.
      - fny 10y ago
        My problem is that the "collective" would vote in favor of their new corporate overlords and retort "what undesirable outcomes?" While you and I fear the power corporations like Google have amassed through surveillance, most people don't, and I'm afraid they won't until they get burned.
    - imartin2k 10y ago
      I'd say what's described in the post is an undesirable outcome. "Otherwise, no one would use them." Cigarette smokers also find value in what they do (opportunity to contemplate, enjoyment, socialize) - yet the cost (for the individual and the society at large) is much bigger than the benefit. So just looking at the perceived value alone is not the best measure to evaluate the overall impact.
barnacs 10y ago
It wasn't stolen, we're giving it away. And not just the web, but our freedom. If you're using services that support surveillance capitalism or you are working on such products, please stop. Thank you!
vinceguidry 10y ago
This is just unnecessarily divisive. Look, this is the way commerce works. Checks on corporate behavior come in two realms, legal and ethical. Companies will violate ethics if everybody else is doing it. Companies violate the law if they are the proverbial bad eggs. If unethical practices become normal, the thing to do is to get a law passed. It's the way this has always worked. Laws change the entire landscape of commerce. They shake things up enough to where a new status quo is found. Law isn't perfect but it can shift the ethical regime more in the direction of the people. The author's recommendation of a world without kings is a fantasy. If you eliminate hierarchy that means everybody must become an institution. Being an institution is not fun. It's fun to fantasize about building your own house but only the really motivated actually do it. Kings do us a favor by creating structure where there once was none. Silicon Valley is ultimately a force for good.
- ro_sharp 10y ago
  > Companies violate the law if they are the proverbial bad eggs I would suggest that in general companies violate the law if the benefits of doing so exceed the costs (risk of penalties, imprisonment of officers and so on)
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    I would say there's certain segments of markets that will violate the law. I think this fits within the "bad egg" characterization I made before. New laws are often targeted directly at these segments, it changes the fabric of the market.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  This is just unnecessarily divisive. If a change in law is your recommendation, I'd suggest that this is not unnecessary. Rallying public opinion is often a necessary precursor to legislation.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
d--b 10y ago
The argument is an angry version of "if it's free, you're the product," which at this stage is very uncontroversial, and only comments on the "we've lost control of our data" point made in the original post. The link between what author calls "people farming" and "surveillance" is not compelling. That said, I personally agree with the author in identifying the main problem of the web as people tracking. In my opinion, Tim Bernes-Lee points about misinformation and political advertising are not specific to the medium, but rather to the times we live in. People are pissed, people are scared, they need something to blame, they need some fantasy to believe in, they make up scary news, they vote for the guy that gives them a dream. What's specific to the web though, (and that is starting to spread out of the web) is the data tracking. Whether for advertising ends or for surveillance purposes, data tracking creates a power imbalance between people and systems that is unbearable. That power imbalance is the weirdness you felt the first time you saw a gmail ad related to the email you were reading. It's the anger that heats up your cheeks when the sales guy asks for your email address when you just want to buy shoes. It's the 2-hour phone call to the customer service that ends in "I'm sorry there is nothing I can do for you". It's the "late fee" mails you automatically receive for a service that you cancelled. It's realizing that the app your employer installed on your phone can tell them your location at all times. It's the swatting that reminds you not to shop for pressure cookers online. It's the cameras. It's the cars. It's the lightbulbs. We as people are weak. I don't think Silicon Valley intended it that way. I think they genuinely wanted to improve the world. And in order to keep it cheap, they found money where they could, and in the process, they undermined people's privacy in a way that is making the world a lot worse than it was. I personally feel hopeful. Countries are made of people. And I think that people are starting to get it. We need rules to prevent this. Laws that force companies to automatically give you the option not to track you. The same laws that forced mailing list senders to have the unsubscribe button (thank god for the unsubscribe button!). For this to happen, we need lobbying, we need awareness. We need a "this website is not tracking you" label. We need privacy checks.
- ddebernardy 10y ago
  > What's specific to the web though, (and that is starting to spread out of the web) is the data tracking. No it's not. Tracking is as old as marketing. And Taylorism comes to mind in the workplace for even older form a of systematic tracking. The scale is vaguely novel, but this is becquse meatspace is catching up with the number of data points that get tracked (IoT) and tools to analyze all of this data. Take something as innocuous-looking as video surveillance in a grocery store. The next thing you know, it'll use face recognition to systematically profile shoppers based on other data sources and send you a text message with a custom promo automatically, all while giving store owner the aggregated analytics they need to test store layouts that might increase profit.
jstewartmobile 10y ago
The worst part is that if you're employed, it's probably a job requirement to use at least one of these surveillance capitalism platforms. Most people I know in tech have to be on Slack. Most people I know in advertising and PR have to be on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For some jobs, like journalism, even the "troops on the ground" are required to post and tweet. Even for jobs without the social media taint, a lot of companies use corporate gmail, so now Google is way up in your business. In 2007, you could probably just chalk it all up to poor personal choices. In 2017, I don't know if that's entirely true. We're in a situation that cries out for regulation, although that will probably not happen in the US until after a calamity, since regulation is seen as one of the heads of the beast in our money religion. edit: Slightly off-topic, but both mainstream mobile platforms have chilling surveillance and control aspects that make most of the web seem benign in comparison.
- dovdovdov 10y ago
  I like Slack, our team communication has never been better, I like Facebook (messenger) because it's a common platform for all my acquaintances. Are we forced to share anything (really) personal though?
  - zdkl 10y ago
    The fact is merely using these services is enough to grant them a wealth of information that would have required stasi-like organisation not 30years back.
    - dovdovdov 10y ago
      Oh yeah, the old age of informers. Everyone is losing their job to machines. :(
    - beagle3 10y ago
      You don't even have to use Facebook to grant them that. Not using Adblock/disconnect is enough to tell them about your virtual whereabouts, and your RL friends will update geotagged pictures of you.
xor1 10y ago
Richard Stallman and Hideo Kojima were right.
Keverw 10y ago
I don't think we really need more regulations in this area. There is already a bunch of privacy related laws on the books. Plus using data to improve the user experience, recommendations(YouTube, Netflix), targeted ads seems pretty neat(I prefer ads about tech products, my interests compared to makeup or pads). The products get better and improve. Facebook doesn't sell your information, they let advertisers use it to target you. Probably more profitable to let companies use the data instead of selling it. Companies like LexisNexis and Acxiom are the ones I'd be really worried about. Some states DMV's even sell databases. I'd be more worried about them, Google and Facebook are way better corporate citizens than these mega databroker companies would be. At least Google and Facebook you can opt-out of. LexisNexis, good luck opting-out. Last time I checked only law enforcement who fear they are in danger can opt-out. Regulations are what kills innovation. Probably since the government has mainly left the internet alone is probably why it's one of the most innovative industries. Imagine having to read a 300 page 2 column paged document and wait on a lengthly process before you are even allowed to put up even a blog. Then all of this talk lately about "fake news" just seems like censorship. I am worried that some day the internet will be over regulated and censored it will be just like cable television at some point.
epigramx 10y ago
When TV was the main mass communication system you needed a single antenna or a single satellite to project to unlimited people in the projected area. While that was one-way and the internet is two-way, the internet introduced the requirement for the projector to have the infrastructure to support millions of users individually. That means the main technological reason Google and Facebook took over was that you need money to take over the internet, you can't just do it for free, and those like Wikipedia that did it in a less profitable way had to be very proficient in collecting donations.
tannhaeuser 10y ago
Could it be that US antitrust regulation policies and authorities, or lack thereof, are part of the problem? Edit: not saying it is, but what about the WA deal?
unlmtd 10y ago
Google doesn't exist. There are only people who work under an umbrella termed "Google". Those people do not agree with each others on everything. So, Yes, we can work with some of them. After all, wasn't Snowden 'The NSA' !?
z3t4 10y ago
At least Google cares for the web because of the revenue it gets from the Google search engine. Google wants everything to be a web app, while Facebook wants everything to be a Facebook app, and Microsoft wants everything to be a dot.net app.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bambax 10y ago
While I agree with the gist of the article, I have a problem conflating Google and Facebook in the same evil bag. Facebook is the evilest of evil, not only for the reasons stated, but also because information entered into Facebook never comes out. You have to have an account on FB to see anything on the platform. That is contrary to everything the Web ever stood for. Since I don't have a Facebook account, most of my friends don't either, and I will prevent my kids from having one for as long as humanely possible, I'm not sure what kind of benefit it provides. (I'm aware that 25% of all of humanity is on Facebook so they must find something in it. I just don't know what it is, and would rather not find out.) But, to me, Google is quite different. Not only is Google Search is unparalleled, it's also quite open. Yes, Google constantly tries to have you "login" and turn on search history, etc., but one can still use Google Search completely anonymously. That's not a detail, that is a very important feature of Google Search. * * * Now about fighting back, what about starving the beast with adblock? Everyone concerned by any of this should not only use adblock but heavily promote it to everyone. That's probably not the complete solution but it's obviously part of it.
- hugh4life 10y ago
  Google is a lot less useful than it used to be... Google getting rid of blog search, forum search, and google reader has done as much as facebook to silo-ize the web.
  - natoliniak 10y ago
    I agree. Google's removal of the discussions filter was a big blow to the openness of the web. There are some hacky solutions that emulate that feature but it is not as good. I was hoping Bing might pick up on it and introduce similar features, but it looks like their ad sponsors are just not happy with people having instant access to uncensored and unmoderated product discussions and reviews.
    - squarefoot 10y ago
      "Google's removal of the discussions filter was a big blow to the openness of the web" This! With that filter I could name a product and find common people talking about it, now all I find is companies selling the product. This is getting even worse when searching political topics because from mixed people discussing the topic I now find only news sites or biased sources promoting their point.
HugoDaniel 10y ago
What about porn ? He forgot to mention the "free" porn industry.
notlisted 10y ago
FB did steal the web and your social network. Remember how FB grew? If not, let me remind you: "See which of your friends are also on FB! Just give us your Google and Yahoo contacts". Yes, you gave FB permission to check your contacts, but FB omitted to tell us that they would be HOLDING ON to your contacts forever and ever. FB then sent those contacts, without your permission and not per your request, an email saying YOU were on FB or and email that YOU had asked them to join. Initially there was a little quid-pro-quo, you could also export contacts from FB to Goole and/or Yahoo. This was closed down soon after they gobbled up the contact lists of the world[1][2]. Of course, LinkedIn later did a similar thing, and grew in a similar fashion, but at least there you could, and can, REMOVE the contacts you've handed over without full disclosure. I willingly GAVE my contacts to Google/Yahoo, and they provided a service for me, GMAIL/YMAIL. Facebook STOLE what I gave to google/yahoo, and they used dark patterns. The cat is out of the bag, but let's not forget our history. PS Articles have even claimed that shadow-profiles were created for those who had not signed up yet, which could be matched with actual sign-ups at a later date. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/facebook-google-contacts/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/facebook-google-contacts/ [2] http://searchengineland.com/facebook-you-have-no-right-to-export-email-addresses-55247 http://searchengineland.com/facebook-you-have-no-right-to-ex...
- richardwhiuk 10y ago
  They asked for them, and you gave them, and annoyed all of them.
  - notlisted 10y ago
    At the time it was implied they would be matched to existing members (a one-time check, as other services did). The "we're holding on to them in perpetuity" bit was definitely not clear. The spammy part happened a little later. Relevant (2009): ("facebook sent invites to my entire contact list!") https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/gmail/SvvOuSDUFuA/O6kCMGF9SfMJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/gmail/SvvOuSDUF...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
sushobhan 10y ago
Web becoming much like the economy where there are big players who control the web and others who are shouting for equality. There is another group, largest amongst these three, almost 90% of general population, who don't bother/understand and go with the wind. With big data come into the scene, things get out of hands as these "big guns" are on a spree to collect more and more of our personal details. IOT is another thing that will surely make situation much worse, as they are meant to be our personal assistance, we are allowing them to learn our behavior and act accordingly. When we see an advertisement related to our 3days earlier search, it's not the ad that is get promoted instead we are getting sold.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
panglott 10y ago
The older Web wasn't much harder to use, but it was overrun with spam and content farms and the threats of anonymous communication were far more visible.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Sure, we can argue about spam and content farms, then and now. But what do you mean "the threats of anonymous communication were far more visible"? Threats to, or threats from?
ams6110 10y ago
The original, open, non-privacy-invading web is still there. There are many sites sharing and hyperlinking academic research and relevant practitioner information that do not have advertising and do not track you. We are the ones who voted with our clicks to use the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google.
- ashark 10y ago
  Is there some kind of search engine that limits itself to the "ancient"-style web, as it existed from its beginning to ~10-12 years ago, though not necessarily confined to older sites when newer ones fit the style and content of that period? I'd use the hell out of something like that. I'd take enthusiastic amateurs with their web-rings and guest books, and academic sites over the modern advertising-centric web any day. Very little of that bubbles to the top of searches as it is (Wikipedia being easily the most prominent).
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    If this exists let me know, I want in. A couple days ago I reminisced of web rings and thought that this was actually not that bad.

414 points by imartin2k 10y ago

I've been thinking of closing my Facebook account, but I'd lose contact with so many friends and family. They don't use email or any kind of instant messenger any more, and nobody makes phone calls any more. If you're not on Facebook you might as well not exist.

wyldfire 10y ago
It's funny -- the different perspectives among the generations. I never got an account and don't feel like I'm missing much (though my wife has one). But I suppose if I'd gotten used to sharing the minutiae of my life and seeing my friends'/family's, switching to life without it might be hard.
- Frondo 10y ago
  Well, it's not that, not for me. It's that event planning and invitations now happen exclusively via FB. FB already separated the messenger from the main service. I'd love to see them spin off the event invitations into a separate service, too. That I would happily use.
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    Argh, this is one of our problems. Evite is a perfectly good system for invitations and event planning, in many ways better than Facebook events, but it is difficult to get all the Facebook-only people to use it. It sends invites, updates, and reminders over email, which is apparently Not Done these days.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  ^This. I know people who use FB, but I'm not friends with anyone who's using it as a tool in their daily lives. I've never seen the strong appeal, and always seen many downsides.
jolux 10y ago
I'm in college right now and oscillate between having one and not having one, but most of the social life is organized through Facebook and I end up looking very odd for ritualistically avoiding it (well and Google Docs but that's a different kettle of fish).
- et-al 10y ago
  I got on Facebook for the exact same reason when I was in university, and it was necessary as a way to know about events and art openings from acquaintances. The key is just limiting how much time you spend on there. Not installing the mobile app or Messenger helps.
- bigger_cheese 10y ago
  I've had a Facebook account for 9 years now. When I first joined all my friends were on there if you wanted to go out for drinks you'd create an event. Party this weekend? Create an event. Sometime around when I turned 30 people just stopped posting anything. Nowadays my feed is people I once knew in high school posting photos of their kids and my teenage cousin posting memes. I can go weeks without checking the feed and miss nothing. I'm not going to shut down my account, a huge part of my 20's are stored there (holiday photos from multiple overseas trips etc) but I'm a very infrequent user nowadays.
- buzzy_hacker 10y ago
  Could you elaborate on avoiding Google Docs?
  - jolux 10y ago
    I don't really trust Google not to index stuff I put in Docs, there's no canonical open format for them the way there is with MS Office these days, and as an extension of not trusting Google, I try to avoid depending on their services more generally.
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    Easy one: actively avoid anything and everything google is the basics of having some chances at online privacy.
virmundi 10y ago
Then don't exist. My wife and I dropped our accounts. Been great. We don't get involved in the SJW or the almost alt-right furors. We text our immediate loved ones. I call my mom. In their place we have actual friends. Real people that we play Cards Against Humanity with. Who understand that IBS means me dashing off and having my wife play my hands for a few hours. Then we go out and have a good time. If it's a choice between virtual existence and not-existing virtually, but living, as Moses said, "Choose life."
- quakeguy 10y ago
  This.
- grahamburger 10y ago
  I do these things while also having a Facebook account that I check on occasionally to see how old friends and distant relatives are getting on. I don't really understand why the two would be mutually exclusive.
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    They're not mutually exclusive. The point is that you can leave facebook and still have a social life, friends and relationships. But the point of leaving facebook is to stop fueling their power and control over our lives, so having an account to check occasionally is self-defeating here, both for you and us.
brightball 10y ago
I cancelled mine this week and it's been great. I still reflexively try to open it some...it's that ingrained. What I realized is that it's a social crutch. I've live in the same town for 13 years and I don't know nearly as many people here as I should by now...largely because I could fall back on people I've known since college. It gives you an out to avoid forming new friendships because your distant friends are so accessible. At least for me I realized it was. Now I'm making more of an effort to correct that.
jordigh 10y ago
I still exist without Facebook. The people in my life I care about know that they can email me (to a non-Gmail account). It's not that impossible to be "off the grid" so to speak. The vast majority of Facebook interaction I see is pretty banal anyway. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
- xkxx 10y ago
  > (to a non-Gmail account) What email provider do you use?
  - jordigh 10y ago
    gnu.org, I have one there thanks to my GNU Octave work.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bbcbasic 10y ago
Convince them to install Whatsapp? If they have a phone its an easy way to keep in contact and send text/image/videos without all the FB BS. I wished I used it sooner!
- sjilo 10y ago
  WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, so I'm fairly sure it still comes with the FB bs..
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    By BS I mean the inane feeds of other peoples lives.
    - boyce 10y ago
      I cacn't imagine the problem with Facebook being the things my loved ones care about rather than the aggressive data collection of the ad agency itself
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  Avoid facebook by switching and convincing people to use another facebook service ? You're funny. At the very least move to something that's not owned by facebook. Preferably not an app on a pocket-computer that can be used as a phone.
carapace 10y ago
Use a hosts file that blocks FB et. al. to try it out for a week or two. ;-)
bambax 10y ago
Never had a FB account. I'm very much alive.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  That's much easier than closing an account you've had for a while and which is your only way to keep in touch with your contacts. Same as it is easier to learn something new than unlearning something you know.
TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
I created and deleted several Facebook (and Twitter) accounts until I finally got off the treadmill, and deleted the last ones over a year ago. This sentiment -- that there are people with whom you "need" to stay in contact with, through social media, alone -- comes up in every one of these discussions. The question I have to ask is: if you have relationships that are ONLY facilitated by Facebook, how much can they really mean? What I realized, only after several months of going without Facebook, was that I was spending a non-zero amount of energy thinking about people that I had only a residual Facebook relationship with. I would occasionally look in on people who I went to college with (25 years ago) to see what they were up to, even though we haven't spoken for 23 or 24 years. And far from being deviant, I realized that this use case is a large part of the attractiveness of the service. There are still moments I think, "I should share this on... Oh," but they're becoming more and more rare. The upside is that I find that my mind is much more calm since finally getting out of the social media game. The lives of people I have no other contact with no longer concern me, and this is the way it should be. If you haven't spoken to someone for 10 or 20 years (and have no intention of resuming a real relationship), isn't it appropriate to stop spending time and energy keeping up with their lives? This "feature" of society has only been possible within the past 10 years, with ubiquitous smart phones and internet access. I find it's a burden that I think people just haven't realized they're lugging around.

H4CK3RM4N 10y ago

I really like the comment at the bottom which mentions the structural flaws in attempting to democratise the web while client-server architecture is still king.

vtange 10y ago

There seems to be a lot of antagonism directed at Google and Facebook in this piece, making it sound as if those companies knowingly stole or forced people to fork over data. I know sometimes it's easy to play the evil mega-corp card, but we need to ask ourselves the question: what is the goal here, to take down Google and Facebook? 'Cause if you're worried about an internet with extra surveillance and restrictions, taking down Google and Facebook doesn't really solve things. Plus, even in a world with Google and Facebook out of the picture, there will still be political trolls hired by other companies and nation-states. There are also alternate-Googles that can just swoop in and fill the void you create if say you do take down Google. They are not necessarily better than Google today.

bicubic 10y ago
> making it sound as if those companies knowingly stole or forced people to fork over data Both Google and Facebook are engaged in exactly those practices. Stolen and forced are apt adjectives to describe their behavior. Stolen like Whatsapp data after acquisition by Facebook, like contact lists, location history, voice recordings from your Android phone. Forced like Facebook constantly demanding you provide them your phone number, and making it clear to you that it's not an option by removing the 'no' button and replacing it with my favorite dark pattern 'i will provide it later'. The problem with both is they're so much more than just a web service. They're pervasive in all facets of life in the developed world. You can't get away from then no matter how much you want to, because they're using your friends to effectively spy on you. And to an extent, both now hold most of the population hostage. I can only begin to imagine how I would need to change my entire lifestyle if I wanted to stop either of these companies from pervasively tracking me. Give up my smartphone, browse the web only with NoScript, only on sites that still work with it, never let my friends take photos of me and upload them, never use any of the popular chat apps to stay in touch with them, etc. Basically the only way to unplug from these monsters is to live like Stallman.
- tgragnato 10y ago
  Given the amount of people deeply involved in the tech industry who read hn probably my opinion will not be very popular. But I feel obliged to add a few lines about WhatsApp. In a worrying technological landscape, it has been for a long time an application with a good tradeoff between privacy and convenience. I have always respected and praised this application, due to its philosophy: Acton and Koum made millions of dollars without the need of advertising. > Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. > These days companies know literally everything about you, your friends, your interests, and they use it all to sell ads. > Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product. > When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say “Have you considered the alternative?” Like me, many people I know do not use social media (I'm 25 and not all of us use them, it's real), but virtually all of us use WhatsApp to keep in touch, share photos, locations, media, and even to create groups to discuss, meet, organize events. We use the application in a so pervasive manner that we started considering it as a part of our daily routine: phrases such as "How long do you need to get there? Send me your position." are now regulars. The reason we use wa, is because wa is not a social media. Because "At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That's our product, and that's our passion. Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it." Because when my mobile connection exceeds the data limit and my ISP applies a bandwidth throttling (32KBps) it is the only application that is able to send messages without making me worry about additional costs. Because when loading an image, this is compressed in an automatic way. Because it allows me to call my relatives and friends easily and simply when I'm abroad. The problem is not only the integration of wa data without prior permission, but also the recent decisions taken, aka "status". Status is a social media thing, and nobody wants another useless social media. All my friends are asking me - They do not know what to invent to know everything about us, right ? - Why this after end2end encryption ? - Do you see how little this is used ? - The reviews on the store are the worst of all the time ! Why did they do this ? - Not here ! Can I get the old version ? - I hope in many are gonna leave, which are the alternatives ? When I see certain things I ask myself: `who made this decision and why`. I don't know if I have the answer to this, but I do not like the attitude. If things are going to get worse, I will uninstall without looking back. But it's a real shame. This pattern has been emerging since the FaceBook acquisition, so I would bet this is intentional, it's an attitude, it's a vision. The intent is not to "play the evil mega-corp card", I don't want to take them down, it's that I would prefer to pay a decent annual fee to a great service rather than being used as a product.

chj 10y ago

Really like this piece: https://ar.al/notes/the-nature-of-the-self-in-the-digital-age/ https://ar.al/notes/the-nature-of-the-self-in-the-digital-ag...

simplehuman 10y ago

Have any visionaries written what an alternative web looks like I.e we still need the services of Google and Facebook but done in a privacy conscious way.

jekrb 10y ago
You might be interested ssb https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ I've been using the older patchwork client for a while an love it. some nice peeps have started a thread where they document annoying parts of the old-web they've noticed since using ssb: http://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25TapY6%2F6ghLYlTdn0pjm7rDLK5kcAhcqJarp9cWrwAvc%3D.sha256 http://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25TapY6%2F6ghLYlTdn0pjm7rDLK5kc...

jacquesm 10y ago

It all went wrong at the firewall. As soon as peer-to-peer was over and NAT became a security layer as well as a technological construct to put more than one host behind one public IP it was essentially game-over. If you want to reboot the web then you need to reboot the internet first, solve the insecurity of privately hosted servers first and convince ISPs that symmetric connectivity should be the rule. After that you have a fighting chance.

devoply 10y ago
An Internet connection is 40-50$ a digital ocean vps is $5.00. This is not the problem you are looking to solve.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  The consequences of that asymmetry go much further than just a price difference. It's about a whole raft of applications that are simply impossible or at best extremely hard. The internet was meant to be peer-to-peer not server-to-consumer. Adding more servers, even at $5 won't change that.
  - fny 10y ago
    The internet started as a server-to-client effort, and the peer-to-peer nature evolved much, much later. The entire purpose of ARPANET et al in the early days was to give researchers access to national supercomputing centers across the US. If anything, what we're seeing today is a regression to the days of old because large corporations provide centralized value to consumers, and consumers can't pry themselves free.
    - bigbugbag 10y ago
      You're mistaken, ARPANET is not the internet. ARPANET was one network, there were others. The intenert is the internetworking or network of networks that emerged from connecting those networks together. From the network standpoint it is peer-to-peer as the internet is a network of dumb pipes with intelligence put in the periphery of the network. This is different from say the european minitel network[1] where dumb terminals were connected to a central intelligence. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

wyldfire 10y ago

Just like the Newton and the Palm Pilot -- the solutions to this problem came too soon. Diaspora, GNU social, Ello (?) probably others. Perhaps in ten or twenty years a breaking point will come along. That said, I think there's a real market for closed content like FB's. And even though I find a decentralized system more appealing, I can imagine a new, closed/centralized system taking FB's place in the future.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dorfsmay 10y ago

Isn't the problem that that you need money/time to make good, easy to use platforms? How many people here still use usenet vs reddit/HN ?

NoGravitas 10y ago
I would still use Usenet if my ISP hadn't shut down their NNTP server around 2005. I can't bring myself to pay extra for a third-party NNTP server, mainly because it was something I had gotten used to having as part of my internet service.

subjectsigma 10y ago

I agree with the sentiment of this article, but only to a degree. I recommend anyone interested in this to read Open Standards and the Digital Age, by Andrew Russel. The book is a partial refutation of the idea of an 'open web' using historical examples, the most shocking being the failure of open and democratic methods to build an open Internet standard versus the success of Serf and Kahn inventing TCP/IP in a closed and corporate environment, funded by the military. The reality is that some systems critical to the operation of the Internet, such as DNS, are highly centralized, un-open, un-private and un-free, or at least when compared with cyberlibertarian expectations of how the Internet should be. It also addresses other perversions of 'open', such as the irony that some of FLOSS's biggest customers are megacorps like Apple and Microsoft, who up until recently contributed way less back than what they took. I don't think the web was 'stolen' from 'us', I think people just don't realize how controlling it was before. They're mistaking an epiphany for an actual loss of freedom that may or may not have been there in the first place. We need to fight for a free and open Internet, but let's not kid ourselves with inaccurate and misleading language.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
Never underestimate the ability of people to romanticise a past that never existed.
- malloryerik 10y ago
  In agreement with your comment allow me the indulgence of posting a favorite passage from the great Don Quixote: After don Quixote had satisfied his stomach, he took some acorns in his hand, and, examining them with great care, raised his voice to speak words like these: “What a happy time and a happy age were those that the ancients called Golden! And not because gold—which in this our Age of Iron is so valued—was gotten in that fortunate time without any trouble, but rather because the people who lived then didn’t know the two words yours and mine! In that holy age all things were commonly owned. To find their daily sustenance, they had only to raise their hands and take it from the robust oaks, which liberally offered their sweet and ripe fruit to them. Crystal clear fountains and running rivers, in magnificent abundance, offered them their delicious and transparent water. In the fissures of boulders and in the hollows of trees, the diligent and prudent bees formed their republics and offered to any hand, without recompense, the fertile harvest of their very sweet work. The robust cork trees shed their lightweight bark without any artifice other than their own courtesy, with which people began to cover their rustic houses, built only for protection against the rigors of the heavens. Everything then was friendship, everything was harmony. The heavy plow had not yet dared to open nor visit the pious bowels of our first mother, for she, without being forced, gave everywhere from her fertile and broad bosom that could fill, sustain, and delight the children that possessed her then. “It was then that the simple and beautiful young shepherdesses could travel from valley to valley and from hill to hill, either in braids or with their hair flowing behind, with only enough clothing to cover modestly what decency requires, and has always required. And their ornamentation was not like the Tyrian purple and silk woven in a thousand different ways that women esteem nowadays, but rather it was of intertwined green-dock and ivy, with which they carried themselves with perhaps as much dignity and composure as our courtesans do nowadays, strutting about in extravagant dresses. In those days, literary expressions of love were recited in a simple way, without any unnatural circumlocution to express them. “Fraud, deceit, and wickedness had not as yet contaminated truth and sincerity. Justice was administered on its own terms and was not tainted by favor and self-interest, which now impair, overturn, and persecute it. Arbitrary law had not yet debased the rulings of the judge, because in those days there was nothing to judge, nor anyone to be judged. “Young women, with their chastity intact, traveled about on their own anywhere they wanted, as I’ve said, without fearing the damaging boldness or lust of others, and if they suffered any ruination it was born of their own pleasure and free will. Nowadays, in our detestable age, no young woman is secure, even though she be hidden and locked in a new labyrinth of Crete, for even there, through the cracks or borne in the air, the plague of lust finds its way in with the zeal of cursed importunity, and brings her to ruin in spite of her seclusion. As time went by and as wickedness grew, the order of knight errantry was instituted to defend young women, protect widows, and help orphans and needy people. “I am a member of this order, brother goatherds, and I’m grateful for the hearty welcome and reception you’ve given me and my squire. For, although under natural law all living souls are obliged to show favor to knights errant, it’s still fitting that—knowing as I do you received and entertained me with no knowledge of this obligation—I should acknowledge your good will with utmost gratitude.” All of this long speech, which could well have been spared, was given by our knight because the acorns brought the Golden Age to his memory. And he was moved to give that useless speech to the goatherds, who, without saying a single word, were listening to him open-mouthed and amazed. Sancho also remained silent as he snacked on some acorns and visited very frequently a second wineskin that had been suspended from a cork tree to make the wine cool.

zitterbewegung 10y ago

The web wasn't stolen we gave it to them. You didn't have to sign up for Facebook. You don't have to sign up for googles services. Look how people like RMS use the web .

imartin2k 10y ago
It shows the problem with short-term vs long-term interests. For people it made a lot of sense to use these services individually. But collectively, it leads to undesirable outcomes.
- fny 10y ago
  "Collectively, it leads to undesirable outcomes." Clearly, there have been very desirable outcomes for most people using these services. Otherwise, no one would use them. I don't think the short-term vs long-term tipping point has been reached quite yet.
  - imron 10y ago
    You missed the part where the parent agrees with you - "For people it made a lot of sense to use these services individually" That doesn't in any way invalidate that 'Collectively, it leads to undesirable outcomes'. There are clearly undesirable collective outcomes that have resulted from this.
    - fny 10y ago
      My problem is that the "collective" would vote in favor of their new corporate overlords and retort "what undesirable outcomes?" While you and I fear the power corporations like Google have amassed through surveillance, most people don't, and I'm afraid they won't until they get burned.
  - imartin2k 10y ago
    I'd say what's described in the post is an undesirable outcome. "Otherwise, no one would use them." Cigarette smokers also find value in what they do (opportunity to contemplate, enjoyment, socialize) - yet the cost (for the individual and the society at large) is much bigger than the benefit. So just looking at the perceived value alone is not the best measure to evaluate the overall impact.

barnacs 10y ago

It wasn't stolen, we're giving it away. And not just the web, but our freedom. If you're using services that support surveillance capitalism or you are working on such products, please stop. Thank you!

vinceguidry 10y ago

This is just unnecessarily divisive. Look, this is the way commerce works. Checks on corporate behavior come in two realms, legal and ethical. Companies will violate ethics if everybody else is doing it. Companies violate the law if they are the proverbial bad eggs. If unethical practices become normal, the thing to do is to get a law passed. It's the way this has always worked. Laws change the entire landscape of commerce. They shake things up enough to where a new status quo is found. Law isn't perfect but it can shift the ethical regime more in the direction of the people. The author's recommendation of a world without kings is a fantasy. If you eliminate hierarchy that means everybody must become an institution. Being an institution is not fun. It's fun to fantasize about building your own house but only the really motivated actually do it. Kings do us a favor by creating structure where there once was none. Silicon Valley is ultimately a force for good.

ro_sharp 10y ago
> Companies violate the law if they are the proverbial bad eggs I would suggest that in general companies violate the law if the benefits of doing so exceed the costs (risk of penalties, imprisonment of officers and so on)
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  I would say there's certain segments of markets that will violate the law. I think this fits within the "bad egg" characterization I made before. New laws are often targeted directly at these segments, it changes the fabric of the market.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
forgottenpass 10y ago
This is just unnecessarily divisive. If a change in law is your recommendation, I'd suggest that this is not unnecessary. Rallying public opinion is often a necessary precursor to legislation.
bigbugbag 10y ago

d--b 10y ago

The argument is an angry version of "if it's free, you're the product," which at this stage is very uncontroversial, and only comments on the "we've lost control of our data" point made in the original post. The link between what author calls "people farming" and "surveillance" is not compelling. That said, I personally agree with the author in identifying the main problem of the web as people tracking. In my opinion, Tim Bernes-Lee points about misinformation and political advertising are not specific to the medium, but rather to the times we live in. People are pissed, people are scared, they need something to blame, they need some fantasy to believe in, they make up scary news, they vote for the guy that gives them a dream. What's specific to the web though, (and that is starting to spread out of the web) is the data tracking. Whether for advertising ends or for surveillance purposes, data tracking creates a power imbalance between people and systems that is unbearable. That power imbalance is the weirdness you felt the first time you saw a gmail ad related to the email you were reading. It's the anger that heats up your cheeks when the sales guy asks for your email address when you just want to buy shoes. It's the 2-hour phone call to the customer service that ends in "I'm sorry there is nothing I can do for you". It's the "late fee" mails you automatically receive for a service that you cancelled. It's realizing that the app your employer installed on your phone can tell them your location at all times. It's the swatting that reminds you not to shop for pressure cookers online. It's the cameras. It's the cars. It's the lightbulbs. We as people are weak. I don't think Silicon Valley intended it that way. I think they genuinely wanted to improve the world. And in order to keep it cheap, they found money where they could, and in the process, they undermined people's privacy in a way that is making the world a lot worse than it was. I personally feel hopeful. Countries are made of people. And I think that people are starting to get it. We need rules to prevent this. Laws that force companies to automatically give you the option not to track you. The same laws that forced mailing list senders to have the unsubscribe button (thank god for the unsubscribe button!). For this to happen, we need lobbying, we need awareness. We need a "this website is not tracking you" label. We need privacy checks.

ddebernardy 10y ago
> What's specific to the web though, (and that is starting to spread out of the web) is the data tracking. No it's not. Tracking is as old as marketing. And Taylorism comes to mind in the workplace for even older form a of systematic tracking. The scale is vaguely novel, but this is becquse meatspace is catching up with the number of data points that get tracked (IoT) and tools to analyze all of this data. Take something as innocuous-looking as video surveillance in a grocery store. The next thing you know, it'll use face recognition to systematically profile shoppers based on other data sources and send you a text message with a custom promo automatically, all while giving store owner the aggregated analytics they need to test store layouts that might increase profit.

jstewartmobile 10y ago

The worst part is that if you're employed, it's probably a job requirement to use at least one of these surveillance capitalism platforms. Most people I know in tech have to be on Slack. Most people I know in advertising and PR have to be on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For some jobs, like journalism, even the "troops on the ground" are required to post and tweet. Even for jobs without the social media taint, a lot of companies use corporate gmail, so now Google is way up in your business. In 2007, you could probably just chalk it all up to poor personal choices. In 2017, I don't know if that's entirely true. We're in a situation that cries out for regulation, although that will probably not happen in the US until after a calamity, since regulation is seen as one of the heads of the beast in our money religion. edit: Slightly off-topic, but both mainstream mobile platforms have chilling surveillance and control aspects that make most of the web seem benign in comparison.

dovdovdov 10y ago
I like Slack, our team communication has never been better, I like Facebook (messenger) because it's a common platform for all my acquaintances. Are we forced to share anything (really) personal though?
- zdkl 10y ago
  The fact is merely using these services is enough to grant them a wealth of information that would have required stasi-like organisation not 30years back.
  - dovdovdov 10y ago
    Oh yeah, the old age of informers. Everyone is losing their job to machines. :(
  - beagle3 10y ago
    You don't even have to use Facebook to grant them that. Not using Adblock/disconnect is enough to tell them about your virtual whereabouts, and your RL friends will update geotagged pictures of you.

xor1 10y ago

Richard Stallman and Hideo Kojima were right.

Keverw 10y ago

I don't think we really need more regulations in this area. There is already a bunch of privacy related laws on the books. Plus using data to improve the user experience, recommendations(YouTube, Netflix), targeted ads seems pretty neat(I prefer ads about tech products, my interests compared to makeup or pads). The products get better and improve. Facebook doesn't sell your information, they let advertisers use it to target you. Probably more profitable to let companies use the data instead of selling it. Companies like LexisNexis and Acxiom are the ones I'd be really worried about. Some states DMV's even sell databases. I'd be more worried about them, Google and Facebook are way better corporate citizens than these mega databroker companies would be. At least Google and Facebook you can opt-out of. LexisNexis, good luck opting-out. Last time I checked only law enforcement who fear they are in danger can opt-out. Regulations are what kills innovation. Probably since the government has mainly left the internet alone is probably why it's one of the most innovative industries. Imagine having to read a 300 page 2 column paged document and wait on a lengthly process before you are even allowed to put up even a blog. Then all of this talk lately about "fake news" just seems like censorship. I am worried that some day the internet will be over regulated and censored it will be just like cable television at some point.

epigramx 10y ago

When TV was the main mass communication system you needed a single antenna or a single satellite to project to unlimited people in the projected area. While that was one-way and the internet is two-way, the internet introduced the requirement for the projector to have the infrastructure to support millions of users individually. That means the main technological reason Google and Facebook took over was that you need money to take over the internet, you can't just do it for free, and those like Wikipedia that did it in a less profitable way had to be very proficient in collecting donations.

tannhaeuser 10y ago

Could it be that US antitrust regulation policies and authorities, or lack thereof, are part of the problem? Edit: not saying it is, but what about the WA deal?

unlmtd 10y ago

Google doesn't exist. There are only people who work under an umbrella termed "Google". Those people do not agree with each others on everything. So, Yes, we can work with some of them. After all, wasn't Snowden 'The NSA' !?

z3t4 10y ago

At least Google cares for the web because of the revenue it gets from the Google search engine. Google wants everything to be a web app, while Facebook wants everything to be a Facebook app, and Microsoft wants everything to be a dot.net app.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bambax 10y ago

While I agree with the gist of the article, I have a problem conflating Google and Facebook in the same evil bag. Facebook is the evilest of evil, not only for the reasons stated, but also because information entered into Facebook never comes out. You have to have an account on FB to see anything on the platform. That is contrary to everything the Web ever stood for. Since I don't have a Facebook account, most of my friends don't either, and I will prevent my kids from having one for as long as humanely possible, I'm not sure what kind of benefit it provides. (I'm aware that 25% of all of humanity is on Facebook so they must find something in it. I just don't know what it is, and would rather not find out.) But, to me, Google is quite different. Not only is Google Search is unparalleled, it's also quite open. Yes, Google constantly tries to have you "login" and turn on search history, etc., but one can still use Google Search completely anonymously. That's not a detail, that is a very important feature of Google Search. * * * Now about fighting back, what about starving the beast with adblock? Everyone concerned by any of this should not only use adblock but heavily promote it to everyone. That's probably not the complete solution but it's obviously part of it.

hugh4life 10y ago
Google is a lot less useful than it used to be... Google getting rid of blog search, forum search, and google reader has done as much as facebook to silo-ize the web.
- natoliniak 10y ago
  I agree. Google's removal of the discussions filter was a big blow to the openness of the web. There are some hacky solutions that emulate that feature but it is not as good. I was hoping Bing might pick up on it and introduce similar features, but it looks like their ad sponsors are just not happy with people having instant access to uncensored and unmoderated product discussions and reviews.
  - squarefoot 10y ago
    "Google's removal of the discussions filter was a big blow to the openness of the web" This! With that filter I could name a product and find common people talking about it, now all I find is companies selling the product. This is getting even worse when searching political topics because from mixed people discussing the topic I now find only news sites or biased sources promoting their point.

HugoDaniel 10y ago

What about porn ? He forgot to mention the "free" porn industry.

notlisted 10y ago

FB did steal the web and your social network. Remember how FB grew? If not, let me remind you: "See which of your friends are also on FB! Just give us your Google and Yahoo contacts". Yes, you gave FB permission to check your contacts, but FB omitted to tell us that they would be HOLDING ON to your contacts forever and ever. FB then sent those contacts, without your permission and not per your request, an email saying YOU were on FB or and email that YOU had asked them to join. Initially there was a little quid-pro-quo, you could also export contacts from FB to Goole and/or Yahoo. This was closed down soon after they gobbled up the contact lists of the world[1][2]. Of course, LinkedIn later did a similar thing, and grew in a similar fashion, but at least there you could, and can, REMOVE the contacts you've handed over without full disclosure. I willingly GAVE my contacts to Google/Yahoo, and they provided a service for me, GMAIL/YMAIL. Facebook STOLE what I gave to google/yahoo, and they used dark patterns. The cat is out of the bag, but let's not forget our history. PS Articles have even claimed that shadow-profiles were created for those who had not signed up yet, which could be matched with actual sign-ups at a later date. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/facebook-google-contacts/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/facebook-google-contacts/ [2] http://searchengineland.com/facebook-you-have-no-right-to-export-email-addresses-55247 http://searchengineland.com/facebook-you-have-no-right-to-ex...

richardwhiuk 10y ago
They asked for them, and you gave them, and annoyed all of them.
- notlisted 10y ago
  At the time it was implied they would be matched to existing members (a one-time check, as other services did). The "we're holding on to them in perpetuity" bit was definitely not clear. The spammy part happened a little later. Relevant (2009): ("facebook sent invites to my entire contact list!") https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/gmail/SvvOuSDUFuA/O6kCMGF9SfMJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/gmail/SvvOuSDUF...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

sushobhan 10y ago

Web becoming much like the economy where there are big players who control the web and others who are shouting for equality. There is another group, largest amongst these three, almost 90% of general population, who don't bother/understand and go with the wind. With big data come into the scene, things get out of hands as these "big guns" are on a spree to collect more and more of our personal details. IOT is another thing that will surely make situation much worse, as they are meant to be our personal assistance, we are allowing them to learn our behavior and act accordingly. When we see an advertisement related to our 3days earlier search, it's not the ad that is get promoted instead we are getting sold.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

panglott 10y ago

The older Web wasn't much harder to use, but it was overrun with spam and content farms and the threats of anonymous communication were far more visible.

mirimir 10y ago
Sure, we can argue about spam and content farms, then and now. But what do you mean "the threats of anonymous communication were far more visible"? Threats to, or threats from?

ams6110 10y ago

The original, open, non-privacy-invading web is still there. There are many sites sharing and hyperlinking academic research and relevant practitioner information that do not have advertising and do not track you. We are the ones who voted with our clicks to use the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google.

ashark 10y ago
Is there some kind of search engine that limits itself to the "ancient"-style web, as it existed from its beginning to ~10-12 years ago, though not necessarily confined to older sites when newer ones fit the style and content of that period? I'd use the hell out of something like that. I'd take enthusiastic amateurs with their web-rings and guest books, and academic sites over the modern advertising-centric web any day. Very little of that bubbles to the top of searches as it is (Wikipedia being easily the most prominent).
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  If this exists let me know, I want in. A couple days ago I reminisced of web rings and thought that this was actually not that bad.