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Please excuse some meta commentary here. Is HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I cannot believe the amount of posts about Facebook, condemning Face

Please excuse some meta commentary here. Is HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I cannot believe the amount of posts about Facebook, condemning Facebook, blaming Facebook, assuming the worst motives of Facebook, and picking apart every word said by Facebook executives. In every post's comments there are the same tired "you are the product", "I deleted Facebook and if you don't you're an idiot", "dumb fucks trust me" comments. It's getting so that I don't even want to refresh here, since at any given time a chunk of the headlines are taken up with the same old shit hating on Facebook. I roll my eyes and move on usually, but it's getting to me to see a forum I enjoy devolve into a negative hate train of spite. I don't work for Facebook, they thought I wasn't smart enough to work there. I have no financial interest in Facebook. I do use Facebook moderately often. I'm mostly just tired of seeing the negativity and hate.

toufka 9y ago
Because the underlying issue is right now one of the largest and most intrinsically important and unresolved issues for not just our industry, but for our society. You're effectively on the front-line of a social discourse that will eventually settle to become part of our social fabric. And on that front line there's a lot of thrashing about - but that's a good thing. It's worth our time and effort to bring up the issues, hash them out, run through ideas, gather evidence , etc.
praneshp 9y ago
> s HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I I've been here 3-4 years, and Fb (and Uber) have a special level of hatred here. If my first job had been at facebook I'd have stayed off here because I'd have found the toxicity impossible to take. On the other hand, people fall over themselves to defend Elon Musk for doing pretty much the same thing Uber did: Kill a person due to misleading marketing, enforced by a statement with more misleading stuff.
AlexandrB 9y ago
I think Facebook is getting beat on because it's in the middle of a media maelstrom and under a lot of scrutiny as a result. I also think it deserves every bit of it and many of its social media peers do too (LinkedIn is basically Facebook with even more "dark patterns"). Regarding some of the specific comments you're seeing repeated - yes "you are the product" gets trotted out a lot - but it's basically correct, isn't it? You haven't offered any counter-argument here. Pointing out that Facebook's material incentives are absolutely not aligned with those of their users is always going to be relevant when discussing how Facebook handles user data. Facebook could minimize the data they gather instead of maximizing it, they could give users fine-grained control over what data "partners" get to use/target, they could make the defaults for many options private. There's no incentive to do any of this though - so in many cases they do the opposite [1]. [1] http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I think Facebook is getting beat on because it's in the middle of a media maelstrom and under a lot of scrutiny as a result. Facebook is getting beat on because the left and the privacy conscious are concerned, for slightly different reasons, over the scope of the corporate manipulation using personal data, and the Trumpist segment of the right wants to keep attention on FB to deflect as much public attention as possible from entities tied to Russia and/or the Trump campaign involved in the same scandal. That doesn't quite give everyone a beef against Facebook, but it does mean they are getting adverse attention from all sides.

toufka 9y ago

Because the underlying issue is right now one of the largest and most intrinsically important and unresolved issues for not just our industry, but for our society. You're effectively on the front-line of a social discourse that will eventually settle to become part of our social fabric. And on that front line there's a lot of thrashing about - but that's a good thing. It's worth our time and effort to bring up the issues, hash them out, run through ideas, gather evidence , etc.

praneshp 9y ago

> s HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I I've been here 3-4 years, and Fb (and Uber) have a special level of hatred here. If my first job had been at facebook I'd have stayed off here because I'd have found the toxicity impossible to take. On the other hand, people fall over themselves to defend Elon Musk for doing pretty much the same thing Uber did: Kill a person due to misleading marketing, enforced by a statement with more misleading stuff.

AlexandrB 9y ago

I think Facebook is getting beat on because it's in the middle of a media maelstrom and under a lot of scrutiny as a result. I also think it deserves every bit of it and many of its social media peers do too (LinkedIn is basically Facebook with even more "dark patterns"). Regarding some of the specific comments you're seeing repeated - yes "you are the product" gets trotted out a lot - but it's basically correct, isn't it? You haven't offered any counter-argument here. Pointing out that Facebook's material incentives are absolutely not aligned with those of their users is always going to be relevant when discussing how Facebook handles user data. Facebook could minimize the data they gather instead of maximizing it, they could give users fine-grained control over what data "partners" get to use/target, they could make the defaults for many options private. There's no incentive to do any of this though - so in many cases they do the opposite [1]. [1] http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

dragonwriter 9y ago
> I think Facebook is getting beat on because it's in the middle of a media maelstrom and under a lot of scrutiny as a result. Facebook is getting beat on because the left and the privacy conscious are concerned, for slightly different reasons, over the scope of the corporate manipulation using personal data, and the Trumpist segment of the right wants to keep attention on FB to deflect as much public attention as possible from entities tied to Russia and/or the Trump campaign involved in the same scandal. That doesn't quite give everyone a beef against Facebook, but it does mean they are getting adverse attention from all sides.