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Every day or two I see something new about facebook on hackernews front page, and pretty much all the discussion boils down to "how awful facebook is", "oh, I q

Every day or two I see something new about facebook on hackernews front page, and pretty much all the discussion boils down to "how awful facebook is", "oh, I quit it five years ago, I don't understand those people who still use it; oh, they sell our data to generate so much profit". Facebook has more than a billion active users, and is probably the most used social network in the world. I wish hackernews users stop repeating how awful facebook is and rather provide some constructive criticism.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> provide some constructive criticism instead Call your Congressman, Senator and State Attorney General and advocate for Facebook being broken up under antitrust law.
- ng12 8y ago
  Broken up into what? I don't understand what meaningful monopoly Facebook has, especially when compared to Apple and Google.
  - gliboc 8y ago
    Likes, interests, social relationships. Mostly every social data that is not provided by either pictures, internet history or contact list (which is about all Google and Apple have).
    - gliboc 8y ago
      And I forgot geolocation but all of them have it anyway.
    - ng12 8y ago
      Is there a precedent for this? Is it a monopoly if there's nothing preventing you from starting your own competing product collecting the same data? Of course Facebook has a monopoly over Facebook's own product.
      - gliboc 8y ago
        I don't know, but probably. Sometimes you had your information for shady reasons, and it would be almost impossible to recreate it. It is a bit what's happened with Facebook if you agree that the public lacked a sense of data-privacy until then, and got abused because of that. I guess that's what GDPR is about too. We used to discard the value of digital data, mostly I guess because it could be generated and exchanged at the speed of light. When people realized they could make money out of it, giants sitting on huge databases of personal data suddenly became the norm. And they don't share unless you pay them (if it is even in their business model). > Is it a monopoly if there's nothing preventing you from starting your own competing product collecting the same data? First, remember Facebook has more than two billion active users. I don't think you can realistically compete against that. Anyway, this is a thin line argument. In some countries, I've been told, Facebook acts almost like a hub for the internet. I guess you cannot either compete against the pipes themselves. I think Monopoly regulations are not about punishing evil corporations. They exist because such situations restrain innovation (including from companies having the monopoly) and generally disrupt free market by having one player able to do price-fixing. Honestly, I think Facebook is being hit hard by that first part by totally failing to appeal to a younger audience while becoming the dreamland of advertising.
        ng12 8y ago
        > First, remember Facebook has more than two billion active users. I don't think you can realistically compete against that. What about Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn?
        gliboc 8y ago
        Can you start your own product and compete against these ? Also, technically, Twitter has 336 million active users per month [1], Snapchat has 200 million daily active users so we can easily double that amount for monthly usage [2], while LinkedIn claims 550 million users, but the monthly visits are about 100 millions [3]. Whereas Facebook is indeed 2.2 billion monthly active users [4]. All of these three huge players combined still only add up to less than a billion, notwithstanding people who are counted thrice by using each platform. I'm surprised how huge the gap remains. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/ [3] https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-few-important-linkedin-stats/ https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-few... [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
  - sprafa 8y ago
    They should’ve obliged to allow for data portability with other social networks. There is no reason they can hold onto your friends list as a hostage. If you could move to other social networks and interop with their messenger and feed (how hard can that be anyway) they would be a lot less shitty in my view.
    - morgante 8y ago
      They used to allow far more data portability/access and that's exactly what got them in trouble (Cambridge Analytica).
      - civilitty 8y ago
        No, what allowed Cambridge Analytica to do what it did was lax privacy controls that allowed your friends to give CA permission to your data when they registered for the personality test app. That is not the same thing as data portability.
  - kerng 8y ago
    Split out WhatsApp and Instagram again, so we have some competition. Good for end users.
cryoshon 8y ago
see, you snuck in an entirely legitimate and factually true criticism in there: they sell our data. let's unpack that for a minute so we can put this "facebook criticisms are unreasonable" meme into its grave. there's nothing non-constructive about faulting their core business practice of stealing user data and selling it against their consent and often without their knowledge whatsoever. nobody would opt into any of it if there was not the carrot of a social network provided to people well before they understood the consequences. criticizing FB in this way is a propositional statement: IF a company sells my data, THEN that company is undesirable for me to interact with. that is a 100% actionable piece of information for FB. there is no higher form of constructive criticism. FB has all the information about what people don't like. it's their job to have the information. they don't care what the users like, is the thing. they don't sell to you, you are their product. so yeah, it isn't that the constructive criticism isn't out there. it's that they rely on not hearing it and not putting it into practice.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  That’s not remotely “factually true”. Please tell me, where can I buy this user data you speak of? Do you have a Facebook URL you can share where I can spend money to buy user data? I’m especially interested in buying stolen user data from Facebook, too. So please, if you can point me to somewhere that I can buy a giant zip file of stolen user data from Facebook, that’d be awesome. I suspect what you actually mean is that I can run ads that are targeted based on aggregate user data, but that’s not even remotely the same as buying user data. It’s not even close. I can’t run ads against small audiences either, so if someone clicks on my ads I know some general stuff about them based on my campaign targeting, but I’m certainly not getting a data dump about them, there’s no way for me to identify them, etc. And none of that targeting data is “stolen”, either. It’s all provided voluntarily by the user to Facebook in accordance with their privacy policy. Your contention is probably that people would never provide that data if they knew it was going to be sold, so it’s basically “stolen”. My response would be that: a) it isn’t sold, as we established, and b) people actually don’t care that much about this. If they did, they’d actually read the damn privacy policy they agreed to. But no one does, because they don’t really care enough to be bothered.
cgriswald 8y ago
> and rather provide some constructive criticism Sure, from a more-or-less former-user perspective: -Facebook should stop abusing the notification system. Try enabling it. It kind of sucks. You expect notifications about X, but they also give you notifications that are X-like-ish-kinda-if-you-squint-but-really-Y. Now try not using Facebook for a few days. Facebook will act like a 15-year-old who didn't hear from bae for 2 hours. It's a seemingly nonstop deluge of notifications about people and things you probably don't care about. Did you know my mom's cousin just made a post? Neither did I. I also didn't care. I don't even think my mom cares. I was surprised we were even FB friends. I haven't seen her since her wedding 30 years ago. -Friend suggestions are generally useless. Facebook doesn't seem to have figured out that if my aunt, uncle, and my cousins are friends with someone but not friends with anyone else in our family, that they are either a family friend or a relative from the other side of the family. Sure, I might be friends with that person, but this makes up a huge portion of my suggestions, and it's always useless. -Friend suggestions are also creepy. I will start a new class with a woman I've never seen before in it. We will not exchange numbers or email. We will share no phone numbers. We might have different majors. We have no mutual friends. We will generally not interact or possibly she will flirt. Time will go by. My (unusual) last name will appear in print. Then I will get a friend suggestion. If I were single it would be great to know which girls are looking me up, I guess...? -The interface is noisy and designed to get me to engage more with Facebook, but it's so off-putting I can't stand to be on it for long. Literally half my browser window gets ignored. Less is more. "Games Your Friends Play", "Instant Games", "Games"... and then right next to it in the chat component, "Instant Games","Your Games". I don't even play games on FB. The ones I have linked to Facebook are all phone apps which coincidentally I could (but don't) also play on FB. I could go on, but meh.
CaptainZapp 8y ago
"Facebook has more than a billion active users, and is probably the most used social network in the world." Eat shit! 10 billion flies can't be wrong...

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> provide some constructive criticism instead Call your Congressman, Senator and State Attorney General and advocate for Facebook being broken up under antitrust law.

ng12 8y ago
Broken up into what? I don't understand what meaningful monopoly Facebook has, especially when compared to Apple and Google.
- gliboc 8y ago
  Likes, interests, social relationships. Mostly every social data that is not provided by either pictures, internet history or contact list (which is about all Google and Apple have).
  - gliboc 8y ago
    And I forgot geolocation but all of them have it anyway.
  - ng12 8y ago
    Is there a precedent for this? Is it a monopoly if there's nothing preventing you from starting your own competing product collecting the same data? Of course Facebook has a monopoly over Facebook's own product.
    - gliboc 8y ago
      I don't know, but probably. Sometimes you had your information for shady reasons, and it would be almost impossible to recreate it. It is a bit what's happened with Facebook if you agree that the public lacked a sense of data-privacy until then, and got abused because of that. I guess that's what GDPR is about too. We used to discard the value of digital data, mostly I guess because it could be generated and exchanged at the speed of light. When people realized they could make money out of it, giants sitting on huge databases of personal data suddenly became the norm. And they don't share unless you pay them (if it is even in their business model). > Is it a monopoly if there's nothing preventing you from starting your own competing product collecting the same data? First, remember Facebook has more than two billion active users. I don't think you can realistically compete against that. Anyway, this is a thin line argument. In some countries, I've been told, Facebook acts almost like a hub for the internet. I guess you cannot either compete against the pipes themselves. I think Monopoly regulations are not about punishing evil corporations. They exist because such situations restrain innovation (including from companies having the monopoly) and generally disrupt free market by having one player able to do price-fixing. Honestly, I think Facebook is being hit hard by that first part by totally failing to appeal to a younger audience while becoming the dreamland of advertising.
      - ng12 8y ago
        > First, remember Facebook has more than two billion active users. I don't think you can realistically compete against that. What about Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn?
        gliboc 8y ago
        Can you start your own product and compete against these ? Also, technically, Twitter has 336 million active users per month [1], Snapchat has 200 million daily active users so we can easily double that amount for monthly usage [2], while LinkedIn claims 550 million users, but the monthly visits are about 100 millions [3]. Whereas Facebook is indeed 2.2 billion monthly active users [4]. All of these three huge players combined still only add up to less than a billion, notwithstanding people who are counted thrice by using each platform. I'm surprised how huge the gap remains. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/ [3] https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-few-important-linkedin-stats/ https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-few... [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
- sprafa 8y ago
  They should’ve obliged to allow for data portability with other social networks. There is no reason they can hold onto your friends list as a hostage. If you could move to other social networks and interop with their messenger and feed (how hard can that be anyway) they would be a lot less shitty in my view.
  - morgante 8y ago
    They used to allow far more data portability/access and that's exactly what got them in trouble (Cambridge Analytica).
    - civilitty 8y ago
      No, what allowed Cambridge Analytica to do what it did was lax privacy controls that allowed your friends to give CA permission to your data when they registered for the personality test app. That is not the same thing as data portability.
- kerng 8y ago
  Split out WhatsApp and Instagram again, so we have some competition. Good for end users.

cryoshon 8y ago

see, you snuck in an entirely legitimate and factually true criticism in there: they sell our data. let's unpack that for a minute so we can put this "facebook criticisms are unreasonable" meme into its grave. there's nothing non-constructive about faulting their core business practice of stealing user data and selling it against their consent and often without their knowledge whatsoever. nobody would opt into any of it if there was not the carrot of a social network provided to people well before they understood the consequences. criticizing FB in this way is a propositional statement: IF a company sells my data, THEN that company is undesirable for me to interact with. that is a 100% actionable piece of information for FB. there is no higher form of constructive criticism. FB has all the information about what people don't like. it's their job to have the information. they don't care what the users like, is the thing. they don't sell to you, you are their product. so yeah, it isn't that the constructive criticism isn't out there. it's that they rely on not hearing it and not putting it into practice.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
That’s not remotely “factually true”. Please tell me, where can I buy this user data you speak of? Do you have a Facebook URL you can share where I can spend money to buy user data? I’m especially interested in buying stolen user data from Facebook, too. So please, if you can point me to somewhere that I can buy a giant zip file of stolen user data from Facebook, that’d be awesome. I suspect what you actually mean is that I can run ads that are targeted based on aggregate user data, but that’s not even remotely the same as buying user data. It’s not even close. I can’t run ads against small audiences either, so if someone clicks on my ads I know some general stuff about them based on my campaign targeting, but I’m certainly not getting a data dump about them, there’s no way for me to identify them, etc. And none of that targeting data is “stolen”, either. It’s all provided voluntarily by the user to Facebook in accordance with their privacy policy. Your contention is probably that people would never provide that data if they knew it was going to be sold, so it’s basically “stolen”. My response would be that: a) it isn’t sold, as we established, and b) people actually don’t care that much about this. If they did, they’d actually read the damn privacy policy they agreed to. But no one does, because they don’t really care enough to be bothered.

cgriswald 8y ago

> and rather provide some constructive criticism Sure, from a more-or-less former-user perspective: -Facebook should stop abusing the notification system. Try enabling it. It kind of sucks. You expect notifications about X, but they also give you notifications that are X-like-ish-kinda-if-you-squint-but-really-Y. Now try not using Facebook for a few days. Facebook will act like a 15-year-old who didn't hear from bae for 2 hours. It's a seemingly nonstop deluge of notifications about people and things you probably don't care about. Did you know my mom's cousin just made a post? Neither did I. I also didn't care. I don't even think my mom cares. I was surprised we were even FB friends. I haven't seen her since her wedding 30 years ago. -Friend suggestions are generally useless. Facebook doesn't seem to have figured out that if my aunt, uncle, and my cousins are friends with someone but not friends with anyone else in our family, that they are either a family friend or a relative from the other side of the family. Sure, I might be friends with that person, but this makes up a huge portion of my suggestions, and it's always useless. -Friend suggestions are also creepy. I will start a new class with a woman I've never seen before in it. We will not exchange numbers or email. We will share no phone numbers. We might have different majors. We have no mutual friends. We will generally not interact or possibly she will flirt. Time will go by. My (unusual) last name will appear in print. Then I will get a friend suggestion. If I were single it would be great to know which girls are looking me up, I guess...? -The interface is noisy and designed to get me to engage more with Facebook, but it's so off-putting I can't stand to be on it for long. Literally half my browser window gets ignored. Less is more. "Games Your Friends Play", "Instant Games", "Games"... and then right next to it in the chat component, "Instant Games","Your Games". I don't even play games on FB. The ones I have linked to Facebook are all phone apps which coincidentally I could (but don't) also play on FB. I could go on, but meh.

CaptainZapp 8y ago

"Facebook has more than a billion active users, and is probably the most used social network in the world." Eat shit! 10 billion flies can't be wrong...