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It's displaced several competitive ecosystems. Many of the things Facebook is used for were originally disparate services-- think of the smaller social groups
by hakfoo 8y ago
It's displaced several competitive ecosystems.
Many of the things Facebook is used for were originally disparate services-- think of the smaller social groups that would have been mailing lists, or at least message boards. Event management-- RSVPing and messaging participants-- used to be a fairly competitive space too.
If you need services in those spaces, and lack the technical skills to roll everything from scratch-- but it doesn't fit with the Facebook model or business tastes-- you've got far fewer options than you had 10 years ago.
I'm thinking, for example, a community I enjoyed many years ago. It was for collaborative writing so most everyone posted under pen names. In 1998 it was implemented by a mailing list which got cross-posted to a newsgroup. In 2005 it would have probably been thrown up on a cheap "hosted forum" service like ProBoards. In 2018 it would be a Facebook group, and almost certainly stuck with posting under real names. And that's the most benign "we lost something" outcome I can picture.
- mistermann 8y agoIt's an odd situation, while anyone is certainly still able to do any of these things (openness), Facebook and their kind have largely made it a fool's errand to even try. And I agree, the world has probably suffered more than we can imagine (and you have to imagine, what could have been). Yet, I think even the most rabid anti-FB person would have a hard time making a case they've broken any laws, at all. And this is all distinct from the very serious free speech (not first amendment) issues, which are another huge problem. I wish instead of freaking out over the latest petty outrage du jour, our societies would spend more time considering whether whether we might be going down the wrong path in a variety of ways. All the same stuff we see on the news day after day after day almost feels like cover fire.