13 ms·

You Will Not Understand This

382 points by 1337p337 9y ago

13of40 9y ago
"Fuck you forever for breaking e-mail for everyone in the world." Did, uh, anyone else understand that bit?
- whiteandnerdy 9y ago
  I _guess_ he means that siloing email provision to a few large providers means that its harder to run your own email server without being flagged as spam.
  - mahranch 9y ago
    Does he not remember how much spam we received before those sorts of upgrades? Email spam in the late 90s and early 2000s was insane. And every grandmother who plugged in their PC at the time got hit by it. "I ordered v1gr4 cheap from this business, why hasn't it shown up 4 months later?!" Sure, I guess it's harder to run your own email server, but the trade-off was virtually zero spam making its way to my inbox. I think that's a trade worth making, since I vividly remember the dark days of email. One thing I've noticed about people who are nostalgic for the past, is that they either misremember or forget the negative things while wearing their rose-colored glasses. I saw someone pining for the good old days of the late 90s internet due to a lack of ads everywhere and I gently reminded them that due to a lack of bandwidth and modems capable of download at speed, a gif file took 5 minutes to download and view, videos were basically non-existent to download as real-player was in its infancy serving up what amounted to flip-book quality clips which still took 15 minutes to download a 15 second clip. The internet wasn't in some golden age back in the late 90s, it was slow as fuck, quality was shit and there was barely any content. We take so much for granted today...
    - noncoml 9y ago
      Today it’s google that decides what spam(aka marketing emails) gets delivered to my mailbox. No matter how many times I mark some emails as spam, they always seem to find the way to my inbox. But I guess that’s what you get when you use an email service from an advertising company.
      - busterarm 9y ago
        Phishing emails seem to always sail right through their filters. I'm lucky that I'm extra paranoid.
        KozmoNau7 9y ago
        I honestly can't remember the last time I received any spam that didn't get caught by the filter. Right now, I have 12 mails in the spam folder, and that's my normal running 30 day average.
    - sametmax 9y ago
      While I agree, but I'm sure there is a balance. And clearly they don't try to find it. It's better business to lock everything in for yourself and say "we protect you". Google is all about control. They decide who is in and who is out. And that only works when the central power is benevolent. However we know there has never been in the history of any human structure an entity becoming the central power that stayed benevolent.
      - yters 9y ago
        Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
    - SerLava 9y ago
      >videos were basically non-existent to download as real-player was in its infancy serving up what amounted to flip-book quality clips which still took 15 minutes to download a 15 second clip. And then even after video was available, it was incredibly unreliable. Am I crazy, or does anyone else think YouTube became popular because the videos almost always worked when you hit Play? People seem to think the community features were responsible for YouTube's success, but I specifically remember finding videos, then looking them up on YouTube instead, because the original source was some garbage video player that you'd click and nothing would happen.
    - smilangalang 9y ago
      Anectodally the internet was reliable, fast as hell, and there was a vast world to explore for me in the 90's. And I'm not talking just text downloads. And certainly not referring to 28.8k modems. 56k was ok, shotgun 56k was better. I went pro in CS once I got ADSl and I dearly miss client side registration because it was so damn reliable and snappy with rarely any desync problems. Back then it was very easy to just aim further ahead of your moving target with the distance being proportional to your ping. I distincly remember playing kingpin and quake in a hotel room once and I had a 250 ping. All I did was prefire way early or in the case of the long range shots.. Oh god it was so satisfying to lead them by a few extra "feet", click, sit back and then after what seemed like forever I'd hear that thump thump thump of the rifle and they'd drop. You simply can't do that these days with reliability. You play against jerks on VPNs from AU who warp 20 feet before shooting you. I don't mean to say you're wrong, but I thought you might find it interesting. I was just a dumb kid but we downloaded stuff and had small 5-man lan parties where we played online too since we didnt have enough for balanced matches. It wasn't bad at all and we didn't even have a proper hub until much later on. Nowdays every realtime app suffers it seems. No matter where I'm at. And if you go to a big regional lan party everyone is queueing online. No local servers, or if there are it's kinda dead or it's private hard core competitive games, which I do love, but I miss the goofing off and socializing in lan servers too. The changes for me have been less than ideal, as a pro gamer and just regular gamer. Also as a UX/UI dev I've noticed things have become.. Annoying as hell to use. Even intentionally thanks to questionable business practices. Today I can plan my day online in 20minutes or less. Back in the day it wasn't too easy for me I wasn't the best student. Sorry for the novel. Thanks for sharing.
    - fjsolwmv 9y ago
      I want all the solutions Google provides and none of the drawbacks. If Google can't do that, they are obviously incompetent and worthless.
- busterarm 9y ago
  Gmail doesn't play well with plain text emails. Even if you manually select Plain Text to send, it still reflows lines at 78 characters by manually inserting linebreaks and adds its own special characters where it feels like. It also doesn't follow a handful of RFCs specific to email. There is no workaround for the forced hard-wrapping of lines in Plain Text. It will not let you use format=flowed either. Plain Text mode has been obviously unusable for a long time, and the only folks who ever really bothered to complain about it were kernel developers (the mailing list requires plain text). Nobody else cares, but they should. Go figure. If you're using a 'modern' mail client, you don't notice this. If you're using old, tried and true technology, the problems are plain as day. Gmail broke email.
  - busterarm 9y ago
    Tangentially, think of all of the wasted bits sent in the multipart section of the email (often 2-5x longer than the text itself) just because HTML is the default...
  - dahauns 9y ago
    Heh, yes - they are basically the heir to Outlook, which ironically does play well with plaintext email nowadays...
  - jon_richards 9y ago
    I get furious that it threads conversations automatically instead of with the "reply-to" built into the email protocol. It usually just threads emails with the same subject, but... It sometimes doesn't thread emails with the same subject, but after someone else has replied to the first one. You have to put "Re:" in the second email, since the reply automatically added "Re:" and I guess that's too different for gmail to accept, yet... If you try to separate your emails by environment, a completely keyword in the subject often isn't enough to stop the emails from threading. Even if you filter and label your email by the subject lines, emails that get threaded together get all labels. You can't even give gmail feedback like "This email does not belong in this thread". The only options are to accept their threading or turn off threading entirely.
- sametmax 9y ago
  My take would be: - now it's quite impossible to administrate your own email servers. Anti-spam measures are very effective (and enjoyable for us as users), but so paranoid that being part of the few select nodes that don't have their emails marked as spam (or are even propagated at all) is a full time job. - gmail dicthed IMAP in favor of their own API. Pluging an IMAP client into your email account requires to dig inside your account security settings and change several obscure values with scary names and warnings. Sometime it even doesn't work, and then you do it again later, and it works for no reason. A non tech saavy user will never succeed in doing that, and hence everybody will use the web base version. - the security of gmail accounts are insane. Not in the good way. I have yet to have a problem with a pirated account. But I had several problems with being locked out by Google deciding that "something was suspicious" because I was traveling or using someone else computer. Of course google has zero help desk to solve this. Loosing access to my emails is NOT ok. And to do it to protect me (against a threat visibly less likely than google freaking out) is adding insult to injury. - Google scans and collects every emails you send and receive. So much for privacy. It also shares everything, thanks to PRISM. Even when I decided to dicth gmail, most people are using gmail and will never setup encryption. So by just existing, my communication are spied on, even if I don't use the service myself. Oh, and the bot scanning your mails may follow links in them. I had "burn after reading" documents that I could never open because of this. - The gmail account is a google acount. Which means something that should be "just emails" is now a beacon to track me on all the websites I go to. It's also associated with all my google services activity. And on the android phones I log into. It requires a lot of effort and disciple on my part to mitigate that. Running a phone without an account is extra annoying. Having to juggle between several emails providers, migrate, make sure I have extensions to handle trackers, etc. I just wanted emails when I open my first gmail account. Not that. While I do appreciate what google did with gmail (it does have tremendous benefits), the cost to get that is quite important.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    > The gmail account is a google acount. Yea, this is an irritating trend, not confined to Google. It's getting harder and harder to have separate accounts and separate identities (or, god forbid, no identity) across services anymore. BIG BUTTON: "LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK!!!" Small, gray 6pt text: "Create an account with us." How about no? How about neither? I just want to browse the web. I don't want a relationship with you, company. And I really, REALLY don't want such a close relationship where you to have this unique identifier of me that allows you to correlate my activity on your site with my unrelated or related activity on some other site. It's none of your business. I don't need you aggregating everything I do, and I don't care that you're only doing it to "improve my experience" in some vague way. My web experience was fine and dandy before you tried scanning my rectum daily. There are a scant few sites with whom I deliberately choose to share my identity, such as HN. This should be the exception.
- xelxebar 9y ago
  A couple people have replied about problems setting up private email servers and getting flaggad as spam. I run my own. With SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup properly, I've not noticed anywhere that's flagged me as spam. GMail users certainly receive my emails no problem.
  - busterarm 9y ago
    Are you running your own on physical hardware on-premises or in the cloud?
    - ThatGeoGuy 9y ago
      Not the guy you were replying to, but I run my own email off of a DigitalOcean vps, and I have yet to have problems with spam filters. I didn't even have problems with spam filters before I set up DKIM, DMARC, SPF, etc. I imagine if I set up a new IP on DigitalOcean today it might be a different story, but anecdotally I don't think I've actually observed instances where this has become a major issue.
    - Jaruzel 9y ago
      Also not the person you were replying to, but in most blocklists are ranges of what are known as dynamic IPs. i.e. those handed out to residential customers. Because most email spam comes from botnets running on peoples personal machines, these ranges are quite sensibly blocked. If you want to improve your chances of not being blocked when sending email, get a static IP address for your home connection (if your ISP supports that) or host your mailserver on a server instance at a proper hoster.
    - tvmalsv 9y ago
      I also run a personal mail server and haven't had any issues with delivery (that I know of). I'm using Mail-in-a-Box, which deserves all of the credit for keeping the box low friction to setup and maintain. I'm running it on a low-end VPS from a cloud provider I'm too embarrassed of to name, but it works (usually). Edited: cleaned up some of the mistakes made when editing and moving text around, prior to posting.
- gcb0 9y ago
  Yes. Despite the technical problems (e.g. pulling out dmarc on the last second to make others look bad), it taught everyone to reply on top. > Did, uh, anyone else understand that bit?
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    Outlook already did that, since basically forever. > it taught everyone to reply on top.
jf 9y ago
I'm relived that at least some people are leaving social media. "Gamification of personal interaction" certainly degraded my health. Quitting Facebook "cold turkey" is the best decision I've made this year.
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  Same here. I quit Facebook, and it was a great decision. I posted one recipe for leaving Facebook here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628060
- adventured 9y ago
  I found that no longer posting or interacting, accomplished enough to not need to quit. I enjoy being able to get updates, entirely at my leisure, regarding friends & family. Basically turns Facebook into an RSS feed of life updates. I've also never allowed Facebook on any phone, keeping it isolated in a specific use box. I joined Facebook when it initially became open to the public. For a few years it was nice, relatively calm, mostly fun. Then enough people joined that the quality of everything plunged, the public arguing and political fights escalated among friends, people increasingly brought the crap from real life to the platform. Frequent oversharing, having it be persistent (carried everywhere with you), and an always-present town square aspect (and how that warps behavior), then amplifies the negativity among the whole network. A few years ago I gave up posting & discussing anything, stopped sharing any media, deleted all my public posts and comments. The swamp that is Facebook nearly brought me to disliking a couple dozen people I've known my entire adult life. Facebook creates a pressurized social atmosphere, almost like cohabitation with the people you're connected to on there. It becomes like the saying about guests and fish both smelling after three days.
  - dmichulke 9y ago
    > I found that no longer posting or interacting, accomplished enough to not need to quit. [...] Basically turns Facebook into an RSS feed of life updates. This! However, I think there's a big cultural divide there. I have many Brazilian friends and many European ones and I feel that Facebook as an impact in this order: Brazilian >> French > German For many Brazilian friends it's to see and to be seen, for the European ones much less so. I'd also venture to guess that the post frequency is much higher (like an order of magnitude) for Brazilians than for others. If I include other nationalities with n <30, I'd say it's mostly a problem in the Americas where I see much higher usage and feel "high pressure to be seen as having a fulfilling life". Source: My account
busterarm 9y ago
This speaks to me on a visceral level. I was lucky enough to have started with computers, BBS and the early days of the web very early in my childhood. Hobbies and later a job supporting 70s-90s era tel co systems gave me a deep understanding of fundamental technologies and protocols no one thinks or cares about. My hope is that me and others like me who are young enough to have long careers (I'm in my early 30s) and have this knowledge can keep our feet on the brakes when needed, for as long as possible. At least as far as systems that people depend on. Education is key here. Call it preaching, even. I'm constantly showing my peers how to solve their problems more easily with old, standard tools that fit into existing ecosystems.
- doubleplusgood 9y ago
  Sure, but money talks louder.
wybiral 9y ago
My hope is that over time a large enough percentage of people will become annoyed to the point of giving a fighting chance to alternative approaches and platforms. Or a stigma develops around being overly addicted to these platforms and their use balances out some. Right now it seems like people are pulling the "social reward lever" over and over and the nature of the situation ensures that these platforms will try to maximize that behavior. But I suspect that in the long run some form of moderate usage and an appreciation for privacy and personal space will be obvious.
PeterStuer 9y ago
I decided to quit Facebook for a month. That was September. October came round, and I didn't go back. I feel better. Facebook lets you communicate about the things you feel passionate about. In a world gone crazy, this often means things that are deeply disturbing, extremely wrong. Writing about these just re-tears the wounds over and over. Another thing: there are so many new dogmas and taboos that rational discussion is hardly possible about fundamental things. I do miss the distant contact with faraway friends, but think I am more sane now.
- taneq 9y ago
  It's possible to cull all of your 'Facebook friends' and only keep those faraway friends, and use Facebook as a sort of IRC server with pictures. I have a few friends who've done that.
  - orwin 9y ago
    Well, i installed an IRC (well, mattermost actually,a glorified IRC) where my friends and i can discuss and keep everyone updated on latest news on tech and games. Honestly it's better than facebook (we can send each other snippet of code) and no one have to change the default setting to receive mails only when something interesting happen.
dingo_bat 9y ago
> Instagram > I paid them for the app. What? IG is a paid app?
- ladberg 9y ago
  It was before it was bought by Facebook.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    When?
Semaphor 9y ago
Can someone explain to me the facebook problem? I'm not talking about privacy problems, just all the people saying everything is so much better for them without it. Is it just me using it too weirdly? I use messenger to chat with people (I'd love to use my jabber account more, but everyone is either on FB, GTalk or WhatsApp), I read a few groups and use events to keep things organized and I post sometimes, either forgetting about it soon or if it strikes a point reading interesting discussions. The vast majority of my friendlist are people I know IRL, some exceptions are online friends I know via other channels. I also regularly delete people (usually on their birthday, thanks for the reminder facebook) I'm not in contact with anymore (well, and anyone who invites me to play a game more than once, first time I tell them never to spam me again, 2nd time they are gone). I'm just wondering how anything would improve for me without it?
- jventura 9y ago
  For me it was information overload. Not that I care what my neighbour ate for lunch yesterday, but don't throw it in my face. I thought that such stupid information would be innocuous, and in a sense it is, but as they say, ignorance is bliss. I simply don't know what the current trend is on social media (are people still dropping water from buckets over themselves?) and I'm happier. In other words, I was once ignorant and I guess I'm happy because I now know how to be ignorant again! :)
  - Semaphor 9y ago
    I guess because I barely check the FB wall, I miss such things anyway ;) Thanks.
- adventured 9y ago
  In my experience, some of the nicest people I know also happen to have extremely overwhelming political opinions & behaviors. They're extreme partisans basically. Facebook has shown me a side of them that is very ugly. Plus, we're now culturally living in a time of belligerent identity politics combined with a sort of 'if you are not aggressively with us, you are against us and evil'. It's an incredibly toxic environment. For example (more recently), several of my most liberal friends (all extremely nice people in person) have become venom spewing monsters, they rage non-stop, pretty much every day, about Trump this and Trump that and so on and so forth. They spew vindictive statements, they cheer about terrible things, they wish for horrible things to happen for political reasons, they casually toss insults, they threaten their other friends if they support Trump or if they don't support the anti-Trump side enough. That kind of stuff makes me really dislike Facebook. Everybody I know on the network has had a similar experience over the last few years (and it really got bad with the election). And that's before you get to the other political stuff like intentional misinformation, lying, propaganda, fake news, etc. etc. And... that's before you get to the personal drama that occasionally spills over to FB. It's like six layers of hell frosted with brain-numbing spam from 22words and Bored Panda. So you start hiding posts by certain people, trying to restrain the flow of sewage. Block this page, block that game, ignore that notice, roll over a wall of 27 auto-playing spam videos, hide this post by that friend, stop seeing posts by that person. Facebook has gotten so large that it has become humanity, in my opinion, in all the good and bad ways that implies.
trzmiel4 9y ago
Here's a great article on social media and continuous distraction, looking at these issues from a number of angles. I can't recommend this piece enough. "There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon...
IanCal 9y ago
> Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. Yes, I am aware that this is likewise no accident. This is not an example of low search quality and can easily be the opposite. If I search for ruby gems, I probably want code. If someone else does, they may want actual gems. > The quality of ads displayed alongside various Google services has steadily devolved from semi-relevant to absolutely irrelevant at all times. Yes, I am aware that this is no accident. What possible incentive would they have to serve up less relevant adverts? > telepathic contact Reading and writing != telepathic. > Not a replacement for anything. That's a bad thing?
- speedplane 9y ago
  The core issue with Google today is that they've backed away from their mission of "organizing the world's information". They killed Google books, Google scholar is an afterthought, and most results either point to wikipedia or spam. They are definitely falling behind.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    They killed Google books What does this mean?
    - speedplane 9y ago
      Google books is done. Yes, the website is up, but they aren't scanning new books and gave up on the backlog. Try it yourself, go look for any book published since 2016.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        Wasn't there a large lawsuit that stopped that one?
        speedplane 9y ago
jdietrich 9y ago
>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to different users, that's why they're the market leader in search. The entire job of a search engine is to return relevant results. If I search for "takeaway pizza", I'm going to be pretty annoyed if the results are generated using PageRank alone, with no weighting for local relevance. If an American searches for "cricket", they almost certainly mean the cellular provider or the insect rather than the sport; if a British person makes the same search, the odds are reversed. Google's "broken" email service came to dominate the market because it offered a vastly better user experience than the realistic alternatives at the time - Hotmail, AOL or some crappy POP3 server with no real spam filtering. The things that people hate about Gmail are all rational, defensible design decisions that serve the majority of users well. The internet is a big place. Most statistics suggest that there are about 3.5bn people regularly using the internet. If you're optimising your service for the median user, there will be millions of outliers who hate your service with every fibre of their being. If you hate something, it might be irredeemably awful, or it might just not be for you. It's all too rare that people entertain the latter possibility.
- qualitytime 9y ago
  While I sympathise with your vote-for-mediocrity, it's clear you don't understand Google et al. with their army of A* engineers and $uit$. You sir are the product. By constantly telling you are the median, you shall become the median. More Median People === More Profit$ Great article. "You Will Not Understand This." how appropiate.
  - hokus 9y ago
    I'm shaking my head as to say yes.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  I can't find any sources for why Gmail has supposedly "broken" e-mail for "everyone in the world". Do you know what he's referring to?
uladzislau 9y ago
I think it all comes down to manipulation and usurping too much power over public and private opinion, it's applicable to every mentioned company. If you're not paying for the product - you're the product. If some people prefer to being played, it's their choice.
ggm 9y ago
I just exited. I didn't bleat about it. Maybe I should have ranted, but somehow I did not judge that as necessary or appropriate. Either you "get it" and don't need to be harangued, or you are embedded and a harangue is just hater gotta hate. So I just stopped. Three months ago. Not missing it.
zaarn 9y ago
I haven't used Facebook in well over a decade and I'm not even 25 years old yet. I don't think I missed out on much. (Though Facebook tried to get me back in not too long ago by claiming somebody was hacking my account which I had deleted... they also demanded a passport)
- kome 9y ago
  Perhaps you didn't delete the account, but just deactivated.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    Either way, it's definitely deleted now. I don't have much use for that website.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jamix 9y ago
> Instagram > I paid them for the app. Then they sold the app to Facebook. Now I see targeted ads and promoted posts. Was Instagram really a paid app at some point? Couldn't find any references to this.
- skinnyfoetusboy 9y ago
  The first post from Wired[1] about Instagram refers to it as a free app. I could see OP "misremembering" buying Instagram. [1] https://www.wired.com/2010/10/instagram-for-iphone-like-a-lomo-twitter-for-your-photos/ https://www.wired.com/2010/10/instagram-for-iphone-like-a-lo...
  - jerrre 9y ago
    Maybe confused with Whatsapp? A used to be paid (is it now?) app bought by Facebook?
- kurtisc 9y ago
  While other posters have pointed out it probably wasn't true for Instagram, it is something I've experienced now with multiple video games: I pay for a game during its infancy which then becomes free-to-play and forces other income streams upon me. Today I'm no longer confident that a game I buy will be playable in the same form 10 or 20 years down the line. Meanwhile, the only thing stopping me from playing old consoles and handhelds is the odd dead-but-replaceable CMOS battery or the odd dry-but-fixable solder joint. It really has reduced my interest in them as a whole - not that the multi billion dollar industry will miss me. As a whole, it seems being a consumer is becoming much more ephemeral. I can't access Facebook or Myspace with the design they had 10 years ago and I'm encouraged to repeatedly replace working products and assets on a stream of credit or leasing. The benefit for the companies is obvious, benefits for the consumer are not.
kome 9y ago
Beautiful! I agree 100% with it. Commercial web sucks, and what it's worse: it's boring and predictable. The resistance has started. So many people share the same feelings, that's why things like the tildeverse (tilde.club, tilde.town, neocities) do exist. Revolution won't use JavaScript.
- Micoloth 9y ago
  Thanks for the javascript part. By the way, here on HN there's been plenty of post about "websites" been cool lately. Please let's not confuse healthy individual control over the web with purely subjective old technology nostalgia. Tbh, 90s pure html was UGLY lol.
  - clydethefrog 9y ago
    See also brutalistwebsites.com for combining the old and the new.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- dorian-graph 9y ago
  Thank you for the links to the tildeverse!
  - kome 9y ago
    you are welcome!
    - dorian-graph 9y ago
      I'm slowly curating things like it, 'slow web', and other general anti-whatever-it-is-we're-calling-this websites.
lmaker 9y ago
pure vitriol
bufferoverflow 9y ago
Facebook is the worst offender. It's basically a group-think echo-chamber creation machine. With the identify politics in full bloom it's become orders of magnitude more insane. I've seen people demand their "friend" to apologise for their beliefs or they will tell their employer, as if there was anything of substance to tell. Most people are now afraid to express their religious/political/social/philosophical beliefs, cause it always ends up in a shitstorm, posturing and offense. Only after being on FB I realized how thin-skinned most people are online, it's impossible to have a rational conversation on FB anymore. Somehow if you say same things face-to-face, nothing happens. Maybe I'm desensitized by years of flamewars on various websites, almost nothing triggers me, and it seems like everything triggers most people these days, at least on FB.
- Tade0 9y ago
  > Most people are now afraid to express their religious/political/social/philosophical beliefs, cause it always ends up in a shitstorm, posturing and offense. Or maybe they're somewhat aware that in essence "nobody cares"? All in all this service started out as a socially acceptable way to stalk people. I have a friend who's wall consists mostly of political commentary. Clearly what he wants is attention, because any reaction to his posts is usually met with a textwall of his views, which anyone acquainted with him is aware of, so no discussion aside from the usual fecal matter throwing is possible. With time less and less people engaged him and currently his posts get no likes or comments. He became a one-man echo chamber.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    > Or maybe they're somewhat aware that in essence "nobody cares"? If nobody cared, the reaction would be a collective yawn. But since it creates a shitstorm, some people obviously care and are offended, that you are daring to have another opinion.
phreack 9y ago
Well I for one enjoy being on Tumblr. I curate the content I want to see by choosing who I follow, and (hopefully permanently), its timeline is ordered chronologically. The mobile clients are certainly terrible, and it's full of hiccups, but it's the only social media I enjoy browsing these days.
jccalhoun 9y ago
Someone needs to write a post about quitting reading posts about quitting social networks
toomanybeersies 9y ago
Is there anyone who's moved overseas and quit Facebook, and benefited from it? Because for me it's my primary link between my home country, where I live now, and all my other international friends. Sure, I could use email to keep in touch, but the problem with email is that it's an active communications medium, unless you have a mailing list and email everyone what you're up to, you don't keep up to date with what your friends are doing.
- corford 9y ago
  Yep. Not sure how old you are, maybe it's an age thing? I'm in my early thirties, live abroad and don't have an FB account. I stay in touch with my friends and family back home with phone, sms, whatsapp, skype, email and birthday/christmas cards in the post. Works fine.
  - PaulRobinson 9y ago
    You should be aware that WhatsApp _is_ Facebook, or at least is owned by them. It'll become crap over time. Watch this space.
    - corford 9y ago
      Very aware MZ needs to find a way to get some ROI on his investment. If/when it becomes shit, I'll drop it.
jochung 9y ago
A+ on critiquing social media, but I have bad news for you: provincialism is a normal facet of culture because humans are shallow. The internet of old was also preselected, towards the people most likely to have early access. It did not transcend borders, it was a new country. That country has vanished, and we should mourn it, and figure out how to bring it back. But that doesn't change the fact that real life is highly compartmentalized, and people want and need it to be in order to function. As real life bled into the virtual, this was inevitable. One of the most instructional things is to move to a completely different place and culture. People's experience of the last couple years will be entirely different, because everything that's been reported has been implicitly filtered by the question of "how does this affect our tribe/region/nation". Famous personalities won't be known, landmark events will be vague footnotes, and instead there's a whole parallel universe of facts and people. Everything you thought you knew is wrong. The internet is a poor fit for humanity. Good luck in getting away from that fact without feeling alienated from everyone around you. They don't like Cassandras and they don't like reality.
BucketSort 9y ago
I disagree with mostly everything here, which surprises me since I'm usually in line with most highly voted opinion pieces on here. I'd like to say something in particular about Facebook. I maintain a strict rule of only being friends with people I care about. It allows me to keep up with my family and friends, discuss local community events and news, and keep up with the local music scene. My belief is that a lot of people hate Facebook because they don't really like the people in their life. It makes me happy seeing updates from my community and family on a daily basis. Yes, Facebook is a tech company with the intention of making money off its users, but that's the nature of the game, I don't feel this is implicitly evil. It seems like people obsess about the negative of everything these days. I choose to focus on the positive and refuse to harbor such negative feelings as the author of this post does. The world is both a horror and dream, your experience and perspective collapses that duality. Be positive. Focus on the love, not hate. Bias the collapse towards a dream.
- NDICjQ2zlm5vJ6S 9y ago
  I agree that too much negativity is unhealthy and makes living needlessly less enjoyable, but what you're advocating here is willful ignorance. Ignoring bad aspects of certain services or people does not make them magically disappear; it's a short-term solution at best. By refusing to face the issues right now, you make them harder or downright impossible to solve later, or even cause more serious problems. And Facebook's data collection and gamification of social interactions is one such issue.
  - BucketSort 9y ago
    I can't fight every battle in the world. And it's not ignorance. I'm aware of some dubious practices, but almost everything has this duality. I'm sure you have some electronics made by low wage Chinese workers. Do you fight that battle? My statement is more about being a happy person than ignorance. And in my view, if you are happy, you are productive and creative, which is good for society and the people in your life. We must ignore many injustices and negativity in the world, because everything in our lives are riddled with it. Thus, I'm aware of my selective attention, and I do so because I wish to be the best person I can be for myself and my community. Does this mean Facebook gets a free pass? Of course not. These are valid concerns. But if I'm not going to act on something, I'm not gonna give it attention. Again, I'm not saying these issues should just go away and people should shut up. I'm saying pick your battles and win them, don't battle everything and win nothing.
EGreg 9y ago
Although I could semi understand that rant, I didn't understand the rest of the guy's blog posts. At all. What is he going on about in that blog?
autokad 9y ago
> "Mandatory non-linear curation of user contributed content." I always forget how much this bugs me. I get wall posts from friends saying they are going out if anyone wants to join them, 24 hours after they post it.
dylanz 9y ago
This posts title, and the conversations in here, are a beautiful display of irony :) That said, that "Panther Den" patch is awesome, and led me to a description of it and some other pretty interesting defense/IT patches: http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Mission_Patches_Their_Source_and_Meaning_002.html http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Mission_Pa...
swlkr 9y ago
We're definitely in a web hangover that will probably affect more people in the coming years
dnautics 9y ago
I think there is something to this nonlinear curation business... Maybe there's room for a for-pay social network that treats attention as rivalrous resource.
trisimix 9y ago
Preach
draw_down 9y ago
Oh, I understand it just fine. But forgive me if I don’t find “fuck Google because the internet used to be cooler” to be a particularly compelling sentiment.
ilvez 9y ago
I'm just adding one drop to the ocean of social-network quitters. Last year about the same time in November, I left Facebook for good. Life is so much better without it. Less stress, less stupid media, less time spent mindless scrolling. Sometimes I feel left out, because FB is so overwhelmingly taken role of event organizing etc, but I still hope that one day something breaks, people take back their freedom and more natural independent communes appear.

382 points by 1337p337 9y ago

13of40 9y ago

"Fuck you forever for breaking e-mail for everyone in the world." Did, uh, anyone else understand that bit?

whiteandnerdy 9y ago
I _guess_ he means that siloing email provision to a few large providers means that its harder to run your own email server without being flagged as spam.
- mahranch 9y ago
  Does he not remember how much spam we received before those sorts of upgrades? Email spam in the late 90s and early 2000s was insane. And every grandmother who plugged in their PC at the time got hit by it. "I ordered v1gr4 cheap from this business, why hasn't it shown up 4 months later?!" Sure, I guess it's harder to run your own email server, but the trade-off was virtually zero spam making its way to my inbox. I think that's a trade worth making, since I vividly remember the dark days of email. One thing I've noticed about people who are nostalgic for the past, is that they either misremember or forget the negative things while wearing their rose-colored glasses. I saw someone pining for the good old days of the late 90s internet due to a lack of ads everywhere and I gently reminded them that due to a lack of bandwidth and modems capable of download at speed, a gif file took 5 minutes to download and view, videos were basically non-existent to download as real-player was in its infancy serving up what amounted to flip-book quality clips which still took 15 minutes to download a 15 second clip. The internet wasn't in some golden age back in the late 90s, it was slow as fuck, quality was shit and there was barely any content. We take so much for granted today...
  - noncoml 9y ago
    Today it’s google that decides what spam(aka marketing emails) gets delivered to my mailbox. No matter how many times I mark some emails as spam, they always seem to find the way to my inbox. But I guess that’s what you get when you use an email service from an advertising company.
    - busterarm 9y ago
      Phishing emails seem to always sail right through their filters. I'm lucky that I'm extra paranoid.
      - KozmoNau7 9y ago
        I honestly can't remember the last time I received any spam that didn't get caught by the filter. Right now, I have 12 mails in the spam folder, and that's my normal running 30 day average.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    While I agree, but I'm sure there is a balance. And clearly they don't try to find it. It's better business to lock everything in for yourself and say "we protect you". Google is all about control. They decide who is in and who is out. And that only works when the central power is benevolent. However we know there has never been in the history of any human structure an entity becoming the central power that stayed benevolent.
    - yters 9y ago
      Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  - SerLava 9y ago
    >videos were basically non-existent to download as real-player was in its infancy serving up what amounted to flip-book quality clips which still took 15 minutes to download a 15 second clip. And then even after video was available, it was incredibly unreliable. Am I crazy, or does anyone else think YouTube became popular because the videos almost always worked when you hit Play? People seem to think the community features were responsible for YouTube's success, but I specifically remember finding videos, then looking them up on YouTube instead, because the original source was some garbage video player that you'd click and nothing would happen.
  - smilangalang 9y ago
    Anectodally the internet was reliable, fast as hell, and there was a vast world to explore for me in the 90's. And I'm not talking just text downloads. And certainly not referring to 28.8k modems. 56k was ok, shotgun 56k was better. I went pro in CS once I got ADSl and I dearly miss client side registration because it was so damn reliable and snappy with rarely any desync problems. Back then it was very easy to just aim further ahead of your moving target with the distance being proportional to your ping. I distincly remember playing kingpin and quake in a hotel room once and I had a 250 ping. All I did was prefire way early or in the case of the long range shots.. Oh god it was so satisfying to lead them by a few extra "feet", click, sit back and then after what seemed like forever I'd hear that thump thump thump of the rifle and they'd drop. You simply can't do that these days with reliability. You play against jerks on VPNs from AU who warp 20 feet before shooting you. I don't mean to say you're wrong, but I thought you might find it interesting. I was just a dumb kid but we downloaded stuff and had small 5-man lan parties where we played online too since we didnt have enough for balanced matches. It wasn't bad at all and we didn't even have a proper hub until much later on. Nowdays every realtime app suffers it seems. No matter where I'm at. And if you go to a big regional lan party everyone is queueing online. No local servers, or if there are it's kinda dead or it's private hard core competitive games, which I do love, but I miss the goofing off and socializing in lan servers too. The changes for me have been less than ideal, as a pro gamer and just regular gamer. Also as a UX/UI dev I've noticed things have become.. Annoying as hell to use. Even intentionally thanks to questionable business practices. Today I can plan my day online in 20minutes or less. Back in the day it wasn't too easy for me I wasn't the best student. Sorry for the novel. Thanks for sharing.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    I want all the solutions Google provides and none of the drawbacks. If Google can't do that, they are obviously incompetent and worthless.
busterarm 9y ago
Gmail doesn't play well with plain text emails. Even if you manually select Plain Text to send, it still reflows lines at 78 characters by manually inserting linebreaks and adds its own special characters where it feels like. It also doesn't follow a handful of RFCs specific to email. There is no workaround for the forced hard-wrapping of lines in Plain Text. It will not let you use format=flowed either. Plain Text mode has been obviously unusable for a long time, and the only folks who ever really bothered to complain about it were kernel developers (the mailing list requires plain text). Nobody else cares, but they should. Go figure. If you're using a 'modern' mail client, you don't notice this. If you're using old, tried and true technology, the problems are plain as day. Gmail broke email.
- busterarm 9y ago
  Tangentially, think of all of the wasted bits sent in the multipart section of the email (often 2-5x longer than the text itself) just because HTML is the default...
- dahauns 9y ago
  Heh, yes - they are basically the heir to Outlook, which ironically does play well with plaintext email nowadays...
- jon_richards 9y ago
  I get furious that it threads conversations automatically instead of with the "reply-to" built into the email protocol. It usually just threads emails with the same subject, but... It sometimes doesn't thread emails with the same subject, but after someone else has replied to the first one. You have to put "Re:" in the second email, since the reply automatically added "Re:" and I guess that's too different for gmail to accept, yet... If you try to separate your emails by environment, a completely keyword in the subject often isn't enough to stop the emails from threading. Even if you filter and label your email by the subject lines, emails that get threaded together get all labels. You can't even give gmail feedback like "This email does not belong in this thread". The only options are to accept their threading or turn off threading entirely.
sametmax 9y ago
My take would be: - now it's quite impossible to administrate your own email servers. Anti-spam measures are very effective (and enjoyable for us as users), but so paranoid that being part of the few select nodes that don't have their emails marked as spam (or are even propagated at all) is a full time job. - gmail dicthed IMAP in favor of their own API. Pluging an IMAP client into your email account requires to dig inside your account security settings and change several obscure values with scary names and warnings. Sometime it even doesn't work, and then you do it again later, and it works for no reason. A non tech saavy user will never succeed in doing that, and hence everybody will use the web base version. - the security of gmail accounts are insane. Not in the good way. I have yet to have a problem with a pirated account. But I had several problems with being locked out by Google deciding that "something was suspicious" because I was traveling or using someone else computer. Of course google has zero help desk to solve this. Loosing access to my emails is NOT ok. And to do it to protect me (against a threat visibly less likely than google freaking out) is adding insult to injury. - Google scans and collects every emails you send and receive. So much for privacy. It also shares everything, thanks to PRISM. Even when I decided to dicth gmail, most people are using gmail and will never setup encryption. So by just existing, my communication are spied on, even if I don't use the service myself. Oh, and the bot scanning your mails may follow links in them. I had "burn after reading" documents that I could never open because of this. - The gmail account is a google acount. Which means something that should be "just emails" is now a beacon to track me on all the websites I go to. It's also associated with all my google services activity. And on the android phones I log into. It requires a lot of effort and disciple on my part to mitigate that. Running a phone without an account is extra annoying. Having to juggle between several emails providers, migrate, make sure I have extensions to handle trackers, etc. I just wanted emails when I open my first gmail account. Not that. While I do appreciate what google did with gmail (it does have tremendous benefits), the cost to get that is quite important.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  > The gmail account is a google acount. Yea, this is an irritating trend, not confined to Google. It's getting harder and harder to have separate accounts and separate identities (or, god forbid, no identity) across services anymore. BIG BUTTON: "LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK!!!" Small, gray 6pt text: "Create an account with us." How about no? How about neither? I just want to browse the web. I don't want a relationship with you, company. And I really, REALLY don't want such a close relationship where you to have this unique identifier of me that allows you to correlate my activity on your site with my unrelated or related activity on some other site. It's none of your business. I don't need you aggregating everything I do, and I don't care that you're only doing it to "improve my experience" in some vague way. My web experience was fine and dandy before you tried scanning my rectum daily. There are a scant few sites with whom I deliberately choose to share my identity, such as HN. This should be the exception.
xelxebar 9y ago
A couple people have replied about problems setting up private email servers and getting flaggad as spam. I run my own. With SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup properly, I've not noticed anywhere that's flagged me as spam. GMail users certainly receive my emails no problem.
- busterarm 9y ago
  Are you running your own on physical hardware on-premises or in the cloud?
  - ThatGeoGuy 9y ago
    Not the guy you were replying to, but I run my own email off of a DigitalOcean vps, and I have yet to have problems with spam filters. I didn't even have problems with spam filters before I set up DKIM, DMARC, SPF, etc. I imagine if I set up a new IP on DigitalOcean today it might be a different story, but anecdotally I don't think I've actually observed instances where this has become a major issue.
  - Jaruzel 9y ago
    Also not the person you were replying to, but in most blocklists are ranges of what are known as dynamic IPs. i.e. those handed out to residential customers. Because most email spam comes from botnets running on peoples personal machines, these ranges are quite sensibly blocked. If you want to improve your chances of not being blocked when sending email, get a static IP address for your home connection (if your ISP supports that) or host your mailserver on a server instance at a proper hoster.
  - tvmalsv 9y ago
    I also run a personal mail server and haven't had any issues with delivery (that I know of). I'm using Mail-in-a-Box, which deserves all of the credit for keeping the box low friction to setup and maintain. I'm running it on a low-end VPS from a cloud provider I'm too embarrassed of to name, but it works (usually). Edited: cleaned up some of the mistakes made when editing and moving text around, prior to posting.
gcb0 9y ago
Yes. Despite the technical problems (e.g. pulling out dmarc on the last second to make others look bad), it taught everyone to reply on top. > Did, uh, anyone else understand that bit?
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  Outlook already did that, since basically forever. > it taught everyone to reply on top.

jf 9y ago

I'm relived that at least some people are leaving social media. "Gamification of personal interaction" certainly degraded my health. Quitting Facebook "cold turkey" is the best decision I've made this year.

JoshMnem 9y ago
Same here. I quit Facebook, and it was a great decision. I posted one recipe for leaving Facebook here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628060
adventured 9y ago
I found that no longer posting or interacting, accomplished enough to not need to quit. I enjoy being able to get updates, entirely at my leisure, regarding friends & family. Basically turns Facebook into an RSS feed of life updates. I've also never allowed Facebook on any phone, keeping it isolated in a specific use box. I joined Facebook when it initially became open to the public. For a few years it was nice, relatively calm, mostly fun. Then enough people joined that the quality of everything plunged, the public arguing and political fights escalated among friends, people increasingly brought the crap from real life to the platform. Frequent oversharing, having it be persistent (carried everywhere with you), and an always-present town square aspect (and how that warps behavior), then amplifies the negativity among the whole network. A few years ago I gave up posting & discussing anything, stopped sharing any media, deleted all my public posts and comments. The swamp that is Facebook nearly brought me to disliking a couple dozen people I've known my entire adult life. Facebook creates a pressurized social atmosphere, almost like cohabitation with the people you're connected to on there. It becomes like the saying about guests and fish both smelling after three days.
- dmichulke 9y ago
  > I found that no longer posting or interacting, accomplished enough to not need to quit. [...] Basically turns Facebook into an RSS feed of life updates. This! However, I think there's a big cultural divide there. I have many Brazilian friends and many European ones and I feel that Facebook as an impact in this order: Brazilian >> French > German For many Brazilian friends it's to see and to be seen, for the European ones much less so. I'd also venture to guess that the post frequency is much higher (like an order of magnitude) for Brazilians than for others. If I include other nationalities with n <30, I'd say it's mostly a problem in the Americas where I see much higher usage and feel "high pressure to be seen as having a fulfilling life". Source: My account

busterarm 9y ago

This speaks to me on a visceral level. I was lucky enough to have started with computers, BBS and the early days of the web very early in my childhood. Hobbies and later a job supporting 70s-90s era tel co systems gave me a deep understanding of fundamental technologies and protocols no one thinks or cares about. My hope is that me and others like me who are young enough to have long careers (I'm in my early 30s) and have this knowledge can keep our feet on the brakes when needed, for as long as possible. At least as far as systems that people depend on. Education is key here. Call it preaching, even. I'm constantly showing my peers how to solve their problems more easily with old, standard tools that fit into existing ecosystems.

doubleplusgood 9y ago
Sure, but money talks louder.

wybiral 9y ago

My hope is that over time a large enough percentage of people will become annoyed to the point of giving a fighting chance to alternative approaches and platforms. Or a stigma develops around being overly addicted to these platforms and their use balances out some. Right now it seems like people are pulling the "social reward lever" over and over and the nature of the situation ensures that these platforms will try to maximize that behavior. But I suspect that in the long run some form of moderate usage and an appreciation for privacy and personal space will be obvious.

PeterStuer 9y ago

I decided to quit Facebook for a month. That was September. October came round, and I didn't go back. I feel better. Facebook lets you communicate about the things you feel passionate about. In a world gone crazy, this often means things that are deeply disturbing, extremely wrong. Writing about these just re-tears the wounds over and over. Another thing: there are so many new dogmas and taboos that rational discussion is hardly possible about fundamental things. I do miss the distant contact with faraway friends, but think I am more sane now.

taneq 9y ago
It's possible to cull all of your 'Facebook friends' and only keep those faraway friends, and use Facebook as a sort of IRC server with pictures. I have a few friends who've done that.
- orwin 9y ago
  Well, i installed an IRC (well, mattermost actually,a glorified IRC) where my friends and i can discuss and keep everyone updated on latest news on tech and games. Honestly it's better than facebook (we can send each other snippet of code) and no one have to change the default setting to receive mails only when something interesting happen.

dingo_bat 9y ago

> Instagram > I paid them for the app. What? IG is a paid app?

ladberg 9y ago
It was before it was bought by Facebook.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  When?

Semaphor 9y ago

Can someone explain to me the facebook problem? I'm not talking about privacy problems, just all the people saying everything is so much better for them without it. Is it just me using it too weirdly? I use messenger to chat with people (I'd love to use my jabber account more, but everyone is either on FB, GTalk or WhatsApp), I read a few groups and use events to keep things organized and I post sometimes, either forgetting about it soon or if it strikes a point reading interesting discussions. The vast majority of my friendlist are people I know IRL, some exceptions are online friends I know via other channels. I also regularly delete people (usually on their birthday, thanks for the reminder facebook) I'm not in contact with anymore (well, and anyone who invites me to play a game more than once, first time I tell them never to spam me again, 2nd time they are gone). I'm just wondering how anything would improve for me without it?

jventura 9y ago
For me it was information overload. Not that I care what my neighbour ate for lunch yesterday, but don't throw it in my face. I thought that such stupid information would be innocuous, and in a sense it is, but as they say, ignorance is bliss. I simply don't know what the current trend is on social media (are people still dropping water from buckets over themselves?) and I'm happier. In other words, I was once ignorant and I guess I'm happy because I now know how to be ignorant again! :)
- Semaphor 9y ago
  I guess because I barely check the FB wall, I miss such things anyway ;) Thanks.
adventured 9y ago
In my experience, some of the nicest people I know also happen to have extremely overwhelming political opinions & behaviors. They're extreme partisans basically. Facebook has shown me a side of them that is very ugly. Plus, we're now culturally living in a time of belligerent identity politics combined with a sort of 'if you are not aggressively with us, you are against us and evil'. It's an incredibly toxic environment. For example (more recently), several of my most liberal friends (all extremely nice people in person) have become venom spewing monsters, they rage non-stop, pretty much every day, about Trump this and Trump that and so on and so forth. They spew vindictive statements, they cheer about terrible things, they wish for horrible things to happen for political reasons, they casually toss insults, they threaten their other friends if they support Trump or if they don't support the anti-Trump side enough. That kind of stuff makes me really dislike Facebook. Everybody I know on the network has had a similar experience over the last few years (and it really got bad with the election). And that's before you get to the other political stuff like intentional misinformation, lying, propaganda, fake news, etc. etc. And... that's before you get to the personal drama that occasionally spills over to FB. It's like six layers of hell frosted with brain-numbing spam from 22words and Bored Panda. So you start hiding posts by certain people, trying to restrain the flow of sewage. Block this page, block that game, ignore that notice, roll over a wall of 27 auto-playing spam videos, hide this post by that friend, stop seeing posts by that person. Facebook has gotten so large that it has become humanity, in my opinion, in all the good and bad ways that implies.

trzmiel4 9y ago

Here's a great article on social media and continuous distraction, looking at these issues from a number of angles. I can't recommend this piece enough. "There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon...

IanCal 9y ago

> Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. Yes, I am aware that this is likewise no accident. This is not an example of low search quality and can easily be the opposite. If I search for ruby gems, I probably want code. If someone else does, they may want actual gems. > The quality of ads displayed alongside various Google services has steadily devolved from semi-relevant to absolutely irrelevant at all times. Yes, I am aware that this is no accident. What possible incentive would they have to serve up less relevant adverts? > telepathic contact Reading and writing != telepathic. > Not a replacement for anything. That's a bad thing?

speedplane 9y ago
The core issue with Google today is that they've backed away from their mission of "organizing the world's information". They killed Google books, Google scholar is an afterthought, and most results either point to wikipedia or spam. They are definitely falling behind.
- icebraining 9y ago
  They killed Google books What does this mean?
  - speedplane 9y ago
    Google books is done. Yes, the website is up, but they aren't scanning new books and gave up on the backlog. Try it yourself, go look for any book published since 2016.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      Wasn't there a large lawsuit that stopped that one?
      - speedplane 9y ago

jdietrich 9y ago

>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to different users, that's why they're the market leader in search. The entire job of a search engine is to return relevant results. If I search for "takeaway pizza", I'm going to be pretty annoyed if the results are generated using PageRank alone, with no weighting for local relevance. If an American searches for "cricket", they almost certainly mean the cellular provider or the insect rather than the sport; if a British person makes the same search, the odds are reversed. Google's "broken" email service came to dominate the market because it offered a vastly better user experience than the realistic alternatives at the time - Hotmail, AOL or some crappy POP3 server with no real spam filtering. The things that people hate about Gmail are all rational, defensible design decisions that serve the majority of users well. The internet is a big place. Most statistics suggest that there are about 3.5bn people regularly using the internet. If you're optimising your service for the median user, there will be millions of outliers who hate your service with every fibre of their being. If you hate something, it might be irredeemably awful, or it might just not be for you. It's all too rare that people entertain the latter possibility.

qualitytime 9y ago
While I sympathise with your vote-for-mediocrity, it's clear you don't understand Google et al. with their army of A* engineers and $uit$. You sir are the product. By constantly telling you are the median, you shall become the median. More Median People === More Profit$ Great article. "You Will Not Understand This." how appropiate.
- hokus 9y ago
  I'm shaking my head as to say yes.
KozmoNau7 9y ago
I can't find any sources for why Gmail has supposedly "broken" e-mail for "everyone in the world". Do you know what he's referring to?

uladzislau 9y ago

I think it all comes down to manipulation and usurping too much power over public and private opinion, it's applicable to every mentioned company. If you're not paying for the product - you're the product. If some people prefer to being played, it's their choice.

ggm 9y ago

I just exited. I didn't bleat about it. Maybe I should have ranted, but somehow I did not judge that as necessary or appropriate. Either you "get it" and don't need to be harangued, or you are embedded and a harangue is just hater gotta hate. So I just stopped. Three months ago. Not missing it.

zaarn 9y ago

I haven't used Facebook in well over a decade and I'm not even 25 years old yet. I don't think I missed out on much. (Though Facebook tried to get me back in not too long ago by claiming somebody was hacking my account which I had deleted... they also demanded a passport)

kome 9y ago
Perhaps you didn't delete the account, but just deactivated.
- zaarn 9y ago
  Either way, it's definitely deleted now. I don't have much use for that website.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jamix 9y ago

> Instagram > I paid them for the app. Then they sold the app to Facebook. Now I see targeted ads and promoted posts. Was Instagram really a paid app at some point? Couldn't find any references to this.

skinnyfoetusboy 9y ago
The first post from Wired[1] about Instagram refers to it as a free app. I could see OP "misremembering" buying Instagram. [1] https://www.wired.com/2010/10/instagram-for-iphone-like-a-lomo-twitter-for-your-photos/ https://www.wired.com/2010/10/instagram-for-iphone-like-a-lo...
- jerrre 9y ago
  Maybe confused with Whatsapp? A used to be paid (is it now?) app bought by Facebook?
kurtisc 9y ago
While other posters have pointed out it probably wasn't true for Instagram, it is something I've experienced now with multiple video games: I pay for a game during its infancy which then becomes free-to-play and forces other income streams upon me. Today I'm no longer confident that a game I buy will be playable in the same form 10 or 20 years down the line. Meanwhile, the only thing stopping me from playing old consoles and handhelds is the odd dead-but-replaceable CMOS battery or the odd dry-but-fixable solder joint. It really has reduced my interest in them as a whole - not that the multi billion dollar industry will miss me. As a whole, it seems being a consumer is becoming much more ephemeral. I can't access Facebook or Myspace with the design they had 10 years ago and I'm encouraged to repeatedly replace working products and assets on a stream of credit or leasing. The benefit for the companies is obvious, benefits for the consumer are not.

kome 9y ago

Beautiful! I agree 100% with it. Commercial web sucks, and what it's worse: it's boring and predictable. The resistance has started. So many people share the same feelings, that's why things like the tildeverse (tilde.club, tilde.town, neocities) do exist. Revolution won't use JavaScript.

Micoloth 9y ago
Thanks for the javascript part. By the way, here on HN there's been plenty of post about "websites" been cool lately. Please let's not confuse healthy individual control over the web with purely subjective old technology nostalgia. Tbh, 90s pure html was UGLY lol.
- clydethefrog 9y ago
  See also brutalistwebsites.com for combining the old and the new.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dorian-graph 9y ago
Thank you for the links to the tildeverse!
- kome 9y ago
  you are welcome!
  - dorian-graph 9y ago
    I'm slowly curating things like it, 'slow web', and other general anti-whatever-it-is-we're-calling-this websites.

lmaker 9y ago

pure vitriol

bufferoverflow 9y ago

Facebook is the worst offender. It's basically a group-think echo-chamber creation machine. With the identify politics in full bloom it's become orders of magnitude more insane. I've seen people demand their "friend" to apologise for their beliefs or they will tell their employer, as if there was anything of substance to tell. Most people are now afraid to express their religious/political/social/philosophical beliefs, cause it always ends up in a shitstorm, posturing and offense. Only after being on FB I realized how thin-skinned most people are online, it's impossible to have a rational conversation on FB anymore. Somehow if you say same things face-to-face, nothing happens. Maybe I'm desensitized by years of flamewars on various websites, almost nothing triggers me, and it seems like everything triggers most people these days, at least on FB.

Tade0 9y ago
> Most people are now afraid to express their religious/political/social/philosophical beliefs, cause it always ends up in a shitstorm, posturing and offense. Or maybe they're somewhat aware that in essence "nobody cares"? All in all this service started out as a socially acceptable way to stalk people. I have a friend who's wall consists mostly of political commentary. Clearly what he wants is attention, because any reaction to his posts is usually met with a textwall of his views, which anyone acquainted with him is aware of, so no discussion aside from the usual fecal matter throwing is possible. With time less and less people engaged him and currently his posts get no likes or comments. He became a one-man echo chamber.
- vetinari 9y ago
  > Or maybe they're somewhat aware that in essence "nobody cares"? If nobody cared, the reaction would be a collective yawn. But since it creates a shitstorm, some people obviously care and are offended, that you are daring to have another opinion.

phreack 9y ago

Well I for one enjoy being on Tumblr. I curate the content I want to see by choosing who I follow, and (hopefully permanently), its timeline is ordered chronologically. The mobile clients are certainly terrible, and it's full of hiccups, but it's the only social media I enjoy browsing these days.

jccalhoun 9y ago

Someone needs to write a post about quitting reading posts about quitting social networks

toomanybeersies 9y ago

Is there anyone who's moved overseas and quit Facebook, and benefited from it? Because for me it's my primary link between my home country, where I live now, and all my other international friends. Sure, I could use email to keep in touch, but the problem with email is that it's an active communications medium, unless you have a mailing list and email everyone what you're up to, you don't keep up to date with what your friends are doing.

corford 9y ago
Yep. Not sure how old you are, maybe it's an age thing? I'm in my early thirties, live abroad and don't have an FB account. I stay in touch with my friends and family back home with phone, sms, whatsapp, skype, email and birthday/christmas cards in the post. Works fine.
- PaulRobinson 9y ago
  You should be aware that WhatsApp _is_ Facebook, or at least is owned by them. It'll become crap over time. Watch this space.
  - corford 9y ago
    Very aware MZ needs to find a way to get some ROI on his investment. If/when it becomes shit, I'll drop it.

jochung 9y ago

A+ on critiquing social media, but I have bad news for you: provincialism is a normal facet of culture because humans are shallow. The internet of old was also preselected, towards the people most likely to have early access. It did not transcend borders, it was a new country. That country has vanished, and we should mourn it, and figure out how to bring it back. But that doesn't change the fact that real life is highly compartmentalized, and people want and need it to be in order to function. As real life bled into the virtual, this was inevitable. One of the most instructional things is to move to a completely different place and culture. People's experience of the last couple years will be entirely different, because everything that's been reported has been implicitly filtered by the question of "how does this affect our tribe/region/nation". Famous personalities won't be known, landmark events will be vague footnotes, and instead there's a whole parallel universe of facts and people. Everything you thought you knew is wrong. The internet is a poor fit for humanity. Good luck in getting away from that fact without feeling alienated from everyone around you. They don't like Cassandras and they don't like reality.

BucketSort 9y ago

I disagree with mostly everything here, which surprises me since I'm usually in line with most highly voted opinion pieces on here. I'd like to say something in particular about Facebook. I maintain a strict rule of only being friends with people I care about. It allows me to keep up with my family and friends, discuss local community events and news, and keep up with the local music scene. My belief is that a lot of people hate Facebook because they don't really like the people in their life. It makes me happy seeing updates from my community and family on a daily basis. Yes, Facebook is a tech company with the intention of making money off its users, but that's the nature of the game, I don't feel this is implicitly evil. It seems like people obsess about the negative of everything these days. I choose to focus on the positive and refuse to harbor such negative feelings as the author of this post does. The world is both a horror and dream, your experience and perspective collapses that duality. Be positive. Focus on the love, not hate. Bias the collapse towards a dream.

NDICjQ2zlm5vJ6S 9y ago
I agree that too much negativity is unhealthy and makes living needlessly less enjoyable, but what you're advocating here is willful ignorance. Ignoring bad aspects of certain services or people does not make them magically disappear; it's a short-term solution at best. By refusing to face the issues right now, you make them harder or downright impossible to solve later, or even cause more serious problems. And Facebook's data collection and gamification of social interactions is one such issue.
- BucketSort 9y ago
  I can't fight every battle in the world. And it's not ignorance. I'm aware of some dubious practices, but almost everything has this duality. I'm sure you have some electronics made by low wage Chinese workers. Do you fight that battle? My statement is more about being a happy person than ignorance. And in my view, if you are happy, you are productive and creative, which is good for society and the people in your life. We must ignore many injustices and negativity in the world, because everything in our lives are riddled with it. Thus, I'm aware of my selective attention, and I do so because I wish to be the best person I can be for myself and my community. Does this mean Facebook gets a free pass? Of course not. These are valid concerns. But if I'm not going to act on something, I'm not gonna give it attention. Again, I'm not saying these issues should just go away and people should shut up. I'm saying pick your battles and win them, don't battle everything and win nothing.

EGreg 9y ago

Although I could semi understand that rant, I didn't understand the rest of the guy's blog posts. At all. What is he going on about in that blog?

autokad 9y ago

> "Mandatory non-linear curation of user contributed content." I always forget how much this bugs me. I get wall posts from friends saying they are going out if anyone wants to join them, 24 hours after they post it.

dylanz 9y ago

This posts title, and the conversations in here, are a beautiful display of irony :) That said, that "Panther Den" patch is awesome, and led me to a description of it and some other pretty interesting defense/IT patches: http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Mission_Patches_Their_Source_and_Meaning_002.html http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Mission_Pa...

swlkr 9y ago

We're definitely in a web hangover that will probably affect more people in the coming years

dnautics 9y ago

I think there is something to this nonlinear curation business... Maybe there's room for a for-pay social network that treats attention as rivalrous resource.

trisimix 9y ago

Preach

draw_down 9y ago

Oh, I understand it just fine. But forgive me if I don’t find “fuck Google because the internet used to be cooler” to be a particularly compelling sentiment.

ilvez 9y ago

I'm just adding one drop to the ocean of social-network quitters. Last year about the same time in November, I left Facebook for good. Life is so much better without it. Less stress, less stupid media, less time spent mindless scrolling. Sometimes I feel left out, because FB is so overwhelmingly taken role of event organizing etc, but I still hope that one day something breaks, people take back their freedom and more natural independent communes appear.