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The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early days. For

• gnomodromo 8y ago
  I have a news site with a comment section where you don't need an account to chat, the messages disappear after a while. Maybe I'll add accounts when there are many users, but there are no users yet :) http://www.uptopnews.com http://www.uptopnews.com
• octosphere 8y ago
  You can still be anonymous on Facebook if you use their onion service[1]. Although I think you can't register for an account under Tor, which is counter intuitive (I mean why would you offer a Tor hidden service if you can't register under it?). In that case I would register using a 3G/GSM IP which many people share (instead of a unique IP where few people share it); and then, once registered, proceed to browse Facebook with their hidden service. Just be careful, because if you are using Facebook with Tor, you run the risk of outing your real identity from things like your social graph, search queries, likes, and other metadata. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebookcorewwwi.onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebookcorewwwi.onion
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    > Facebook has been applauded for allowing such access, which makes it available in countries that actively try to block Facebook I’m not sure how I feel about this…
  • flyinghamster 8y ago
    > In that case I would register using a 3G/GSM IP which many people share Be careful... some cell providers use IPv6 these days. T-Mobile US gives me an IPv6 address and a 192.0.0.x CGNAT address.
    • octosphere 8y ago
      Noted. I guess as times goes on, it will be harder to find a cell provider that uses IPV4. They're really handy for anonymous accounts, especially with that sweet CGNAT which is dying out as more people tear existing infra apart to upgrade to IPV6
  • newscracker 8y ago
    > Just be careful, because if you are using Facebook with Tor, you run the risk of outing your real identity from things like your social graph, search queries, likes, and other metadata. You can’t be anonymous from Facebook or from Facebook users (with or without Tor) without violating its ToS and worrying about being blocked and asked to prove your real/authentic identity if you piss off some random person online or get flagged by one of its bots that check accounts periodically.
    • octosphere 8y ago
      Well if you setup an anonymous account with Facebook and use their Tor hidden service for the simple reason of harassing people, then of course you will get the ban-hammer. Some people just like being anonymous because they don't want their real name attached to their Facebook personal preferences. Such data is still precious to Facebook, but then the user runs the risk of outing themselves by what they 'like' and who they associate with, so I guess the trick is to keep activity on those sort of accounts to a minimum, which kind of sucks but it has to be done to maintain a reasonable anonymous presence on their platform.
    • FiveSquared 8y ago
      Use a fake name. 420/69 IQ play!
    • paulie_a 8y ago
      Who gives a crap about any tos? I have never read one in my life and will never. I'm simply going to do whatever the hell I want on any service. In the case of Facebook you will probably not get flagged even when you are a complete jackass, anonymous or not. Twenty percent of the userbase would disappear
  • LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    What is the utility of Facebook if you're anonymous? I thought it was used to communicate with, schedule activities with, and share pictures and videos with your friends. If Tom, Mary, Jane and AnonymousTorUser68292 are all tagged in a photo at Mary's house...that just doesn't seem to have much of a purpose.
    • cronix 8y ago
      There are many groups where people don't necessarily want their real info known. Domestic violence, rape and some cancer groups come to mind. Even HN allows throwaway accounts to protect sensitive info. There are more legitimate uses for FB than just the ones you laid out.
• agumonkey 8y ago
  There's a lot to say about before and after. The ~old guard of boards and simple messengers (icq, aim) were really low on issues. There was a subconscious push a bit before facebook to "leverage" web 2.0 dynamic and ubiquitous nature. And then the web became a new substrate for society (payment, shopping, identity). Not helped by the capitalistic side of things which means new / large => money => even weirder ideas. Now we realize that real life social structures were 1) seasoned 2) nicer and social networks are reinventing all the problems, but amplified by speed and scale. And also weird companies interests and paradigms, that weren't meshing well with us. I'm getting fuzzy ..
• danieldk 8y ago
  The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. Heck, I wrote a Dutch online book about Slackware with a guy I didn't really know the name of until after a couple of years when he told me he just used a pseudonym. For me, social network stopped being social as soon as reasonable assurance of anonymity when out the window To me it is the introduction of likes (which are really a hack to make people more addicted through social confirmation) destroyed social networks. Shallower posts (party pictures, family announcements, memes) to get more likes, so people post them more and more. Genuinely interesting posts are buried by algorithms. Since comments can be liked as well, people write comments to conform with group biases (and are more likely to be upvoted) rather than to be useful. tl;dr: to increase engagement, social networks have turned into popularity contests. As with other popularity contests, they are usually vain.
  • AlexandrB 8y ago
    > tl;dr: to increase engagement, social networks have turned into popularity contests. As with other popularity contests, they are usually vain. The idea of "engagement" as a key metric for some of these services is bizarre. When Netflix changed from 5-star ratings to like/dislike to "increase engagement", the usefulness of ratings on the site plummeted. I will take a single, considered review over thousands of mindless "+1" clicks any day of the week. Emoji "reactions" are like that too. They're fun to click on, but are all noise and no signal if you actually want feedback.
    • PretzelFisch 8y ago
      >The idea of "engagement" as a key metric for some of these services is bizarre. If they were a social network, I would agree. But they are an ad display network. therefore engagement is a key metric to their business and customers.
      • njarboe 8y ago
        But what is weird is Netflix is not an ad network (yet?). Why would they be interested in "engagement" ie, people watching lots of stuff? That costs them extra money. Their best customer would be someone who pays the $10/month and watches just a few movies/shows.
• cgriswald 8y ago
  Imagine going to a bar and having your name, relationship status, political orientation, and a list of your big mistakes floating above your head. Good times. Good times.
  • scarecrowbob 8y ago
    To be fair, that's what it is like to go anywhere in a small town you've lived in for a long time. :D
    • DenisM 8y ago
      So all of the downsides and none of the advantages of a closely-knit community?
      • krapp 8y ago
        The upside depends on your race, religion, sexual orientation and social class like anywhere else.
    • pseudalopex 8y ago
      To be fair, that's why some people leave small towns.
    • gaius 8y ago
      To be fair, that's what it is like to go anywhere in a small town you've lived in for a long time. :D That's true, but it's also true that in the next town over, you can be anonymous again. The difference with social media is the profile follows you everywhere.
      • thaumasiotes 8y ago
        You cannot be anonymous in the next town over, because those townfolk, like your local townfolk, know everyone and everything that belongs in their town. Your unfamiliarity means you don't belong and aren't trustworthy. You can be anonymous in a city.
• madprops 8y ago
  I mean there's still Reddit, the chans, forums, etc, with a lot of activity, if you want to live those days again.
  • bhhaskin 8y ago
    Reddit is quickly heading down the same path as Facebook. Especially with the new design.
    • debaserab2 8y ago
      Yep, just waiting for the day I can no longer opt out. Feels like it’s coming soon. Boy those ad designs on the new layout sure are starting to look like regular posts. I’m sure it won’t get any worse, right?
      • dkasper 8y ago
        The ads say “PROMOTED” in capital blue letters and Adblockers still work. Is it really so bad?
        • naravara 8y ago
          >The ads say “PROMOTED” in capital blue letters and Adblockers still work. Is it really so bad? That adage about boiling the frog by slowly upping the temperature so it doesn't notice probably applies here
          • hopler 8y ago
            The adage of people using up free things until the providers go bankrupt also applies.
        • gruez 8y ago
          >Adblockers still work not on iOS
      • rnd0 8y ago
• reaperducer 8y ago
  The article mentions of days when you were anonymous It's funny how in the early days of the internet, everyone was so open and honest about who they are that it was very common for their e-mail messages, Usenet posts, finger plans, etc... to have their real names, home and/or work addresses, and home and/or work phone numbers. Then the scammers discovered the internet, and everyone had to dummy up about who they are. Then the corporations got involved, and decided to use "AI" unmask everyone and sell that information back to the scammers. I wonder what the next move is. Maybe we should all go back to blatantly stating who we are to make the corporations' information gathering worthless.
  • whatshisface 8y ago
    >Maybe we should all go back to blatantly stating who we are to make the corporations' information gathering worthless. Google doesn't stop at your name and address, in fact that's not even what they are mainly interested in. Revealing your identifying information would just open yourself up to harassment, especially when a tech company leaks the top 10,000 list of the most-likely-to-buy customers of some embarrassing product.
  • kardos 8y ago
    > Maybe we should all go back to blatantly stating who we are to make the corporations' information gathering worthless. Well yes, that would devalue your name/address details, so they'd shift to more invasive approaches like reading your emails and messages, bugging your person and/or home, tracking your financial transactions, etc.
    • laumars 8y ago
      Not sure if that’s intended to be taken sarcastically or not but some of those things do already happen like reading your emails/instant messages and tracking your financial transactions.
      • reaperducer 8y ago
        I think it was sarcasm, since he described most free e-mail services, Facebook messenger, Google Home, and whatever the name is of Google's in-house org that thinks it's entitled to the records of 80% of the world's credit card transactions.
• slantaclaus 8y ago
  This was why I quit using twitter.
• 300bps 8y ago
  I do miss those early days. I got my first modem in 1985. I racked up a $300 phone bill my first month calling bulletin boards exchanging messages and software with people all over the world. My parents took my modem from me until I paid off the debt. I’ve been on dozens of forums with topics I’m interested in over the last 3.5 decades. I’ve used every kind of internet communication including Usenet, irc, web, etc. There’s no reason to miss the early days. Those special interest forums are still out there with lots of activity. Just look for them! I’ll take today’s ease of communication any day over having to dial up with a 300 baud modem to a single-person-at-a-time BBS.
  • heavyset_go 8y ago
    > Just look for them! That's an issue in itself. Google used to have a "discussion" search feature you could use to find a search term in forum posts. Now, that feature is gone. Social media content is highly prioritized and incentivized. Forum discoverability was better in the past. Now, if you search for a community, you'll find a half-dozen Facebook groups, its Twitter feed, a subreddit, its G+ counterpart and YouTube videos.
    • int_19h 8y ago
      Adding +forum to the query usually narrows it down as expected.
• golergka 8y ago
  I see people using Twitter for this all the time.
• Matumio 8y ago
  This describes roughly my experience with small mastodon instances right now. It has been called "twitter like it was in the early days". Mostly pseudonyms, feeling of anonymity and being part of a small group. No algorithmic selection of content. Liking a post doesn't even affect its visibility. People are less afraid to post unpolished content, e.g. artists I follow report they feel less pressure when posting a rough sketch or personal stuff that doesn't fit into their portfolio. The flip side: there is no way to filter all the trivialities and show only the "best" posts.
  • naravara 8y ago
    >The flip side: there is no way to filter all the trivialities and show only the "best" posts. Trivialities are fine. I just wish there was a language (as in, spoken language not profanity) and NSFW filter.
• Paperweight 8y ago
  When everyone's anonymous, anyone can speak their mind without worrying about offending anyone. When everyone's identified, only the crazies and extremists truly speak their mind - they don't care about offending anyone. You might end up with a mix of crazies and extremist "thought leaders" with packs of quiet followers - a suppression of the moderates and deep thinkers.
  • naravara 8y ago
    Many years ago a lot site's comment sections give you a choice between using an anonymous account for the site or linking to your Facebook or Twitter accounts to post. I experimented with using my real name/ID on some of them under the assumption that I'd be more inclined to be polite, assume good faith, avoid unproductive engagements with people, etc. if I wasn't anonymous. It didn't work. It just deterred me from commenting at all, and when I did comment I think I was more terse and condescending than usual. I'm not sure why, but I wonder if maybe in anonymous forums I kind of just assumed a lot of the stupid things being said were by edgy teenagers. I was inclined to be patient with them or write them off since I just sort of assumed they were too young to know better and would grow out of it. But once you see the profile pictures of the people posting, and they're grown ass men who really ought to know better, it's much harder to be nice because you know these peoples' horrible beliefs have consequences.
  • analyst74 8y ago
    I never thought about it this way, but it makes a lot of sense. Although to your last point, I don't think following thought leaders is such a bad thing. I mean, we have been following crazies for as long as humans have history.
  • Larrikin 8y ago
    The failed experiment that is 4chan was founded on this idea and its plainly clear that anonymity in a large community leads people to just spout the craziness constantly and loudly because well researched and thoughtful comments are simply lost in the sea of crap and there are literally no downsides to constantly lying. You can thoroughly debunk a persons claims and they'll resort to insults or usually will stop responding and then proceed to post the same garbage within a day or even an hour. A minimum of pseudo anonymity that holds people accountable for what they say is an important part of enforcing a healthy community of people making good faith arguments.
• joe_the_user 8y ago
  The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early days. I use Facebook for this 75-80% of the time. A few IRL friends communicate with my account but it's mostly about common interests with people spread across the world. I did this in various web boards before Facebook but Facebook is better, more people with my common interests are gathered in one place, better debate happens, discovery is easier and so-forth. But that's how I've systematically worked to use Facebook. I run a group where I enforce civility ruthlessly, banning all trolls in an otherwise troll-heavy part of the site. Facebook is a factor because it allows better interest-discovery than other sites and it's easier to compete with admins who allowing trolling just by creating a group and being better (where starting a competing web-board was hard). This might not be how most people experience FB but remember, the board users were only a small fraction of the population also. Edit: Hot tip, Facebook doesn't make much of an effort to enforce real names. A little, certainly but not much. Most people today don't get the value or need for anonymous accounts. That was true before Facebook too but then the majority simply hesitated to get online at all. I'm not sure if this is a matter of education or psychology, whether this will ever change or not.
  • r3bl 8y ago
    > Hot tip, Facebook doesn't make much of an effort to enforce real names. A little, certainly but not much. It's certainly easy to say that until you get requested for an ID, being locked out all your activities and friends until you compromise your privacy.
• ineedasername 8y ago
  Yes, I remember in the old days of AIM, at least among everyone I knew it acted as a sort of social network itself. (it was separate from the AOL ISP service, a stand alone application) It was one of the default applications installed in all computer in the labs at University. And it was very common at the time to use its search function to seek out random people and chat. I wouldn't get too rose colored glasses about that era of computing though, flame wars were nothing new (and there's still probably some Usenet flamewars that continue to rage uninterrupted for decades.)
• pweissbrod 8y ago
  "days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early days" That's what HN is to me right now. Yeah it's not truly anonymous but almost everyone here's a stranger to me and I have some wonderful discourse with like-minded perceptive folks any time I visit. Also reddit to a lesser degree but more experienced redditors than myself this is diminishing I don't fully understand that point
• ddingus 8y ago
  Those days still exist. There are many great forums, and Reddit is still reasonable despite the trouble. Some sites, Quora, Facebook, et al. are using real name policies with mixed results. Facebook is mostly a negative for me, though I do enjoy a few private groups. Quora, of the real names experiments, has actually been a reasonable experience. 8 was early to the platform and many of us early on made strong efforts to set good norms around real names. A lot of that worked well. It is working a little less well at big scale, though like I said, not bad. Sometimes more authoritarian than I prefer. The new spaces feature is a big test. Could be real names Reddit. Hmmm... Having tried all extremes, I frankly still prefer pseudonyms. Handling trolls and such is not too big of a deal, and minor league for me personally. The number one thing one can do to innoculate a community against trolling is to educate members on agency in dialog and model strong norms as to how that can work. (People have more options than the usual righteous indignation and when they use them, trolling becomes largely ineffective as does "bitings" of varioys kinds) Avoiding the bigger venues leaves one with mostly the same basic experiences that have always had value. Typed on mobile, plz forgive typos
• closeparen 8y ago
  This is not a temporal change, it is a venue change. Systems like Facebook and systems like HN may both be called "social networking" but they facilitate totally different kinds of communities. Each has its place.