7 ms·

Roger McNamee says the 'like' button was 'beginning of the end'

117 points by colinprince 8y ago

komali2 8y ago
Somewhat lacking... Wish this article talked more about "why" the like button was the beginning of the end.
- MBCook 8y ago
  Agreed. They give it a sentence and then move on.
- himynameisdom 8y ago
  I believe it was discussed early on when the article states McNamee believed that's when FB started to receive emotional cues from users. But I can see why readers might want a more thorough dissection of that point.
- ams6110 8y ago
  The obvious reason to me is that people started posting not because they genuinely had something to share, but to garner more "likes." Anything that is measured will influence behaviors.
- kerng 8y ago
  It was when the emotional state of users started to be revealed at scale. That allows to leverage targeted messaging to change users behavior by catering their emotional needs.
tj-teej 8y ago
Blaming the like button for the end of the "soft cuddly" side of Facebook is spurious from someone who was an investor. Facebook didn't have to build a surveillance machine, it didn't have to extract every possible penny out of it's user's data, Facebook didn't have to stop being "cuddly"...until it raised money at an outrageous valuation and had an outrageous IPO. Blaming the Like button for actions necessitated by Facebook selling out their users for a higher valuation/money seems a bit rich coming from one of the investors.
- colinprince 8y ago
  I think what he's getting at is that Facebook's path became clear as soon as: 1. the reciprocity effect started (photo-tagging) and then; 2. social validation started (the like button)
  - sneakernets 8y ago
    That was always there anyway, but the like button made it that much easier to validate.
- CM30 8y ago
  Especially given how the like button wasn't exactly a novel concept, nor something that wouldn't have otherwise come about. These systems existed prior to Facebook and if it hadn't have introduced it, some other service in the same niche would have done exactly this. And Facebook's privacy issues and general sociopathic business attitudes predated all of it.
  - brlewis 8y ago
    Right, FriendFeed had Like before Facebook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like_button#FriendFeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like_button#FriendFeed
- monkeynotes 8y ago
  I think he's alluding to the `like` button being a symptom of the changes that were driven by things like IPO valuation. I don't think the like button is to blame as such, it's just an indicator of where the purpose of the company started to move in the direction of mining its users for profit.
  - mo30 8y ago
    Ofcourse it is to blame. It has added a number next to every expressed human thought. What do you think that does to behavior and thinking? No effect?
aphextron 8y ago
I’ve made this realization lately as well, that all “upvote” based social media is inherently toxic and bad for society. What’s been lost from the days of actual internet forums is the ability to make a point, and ignore it if you don’t like it. It used to be that we were all equals under the admin, and discussion was long form. However the incentives now have shifted discourse to the rhetorical and pithy, rather than creating meaningful connections. The result is a monoculture of thought that is doing real damage.
- airstrike 8y ago
  Upvoted for relevance
- lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
  Long form discussion is fairly orthogonal to "upvote" based social media in my appraisal. The simple fact that you choose to post your response here instead of one of the 'chan' style boards signals that you're really not looking for spaces where "everyone is equals under the admin".
- basic6 8y ago
  Karma is awful as well for similar reasons.
- kirion25 8y ago
  I think it has more to do with how thoughtless downvoting/upvoting can be in some implementations. But this isn't inherent to the upvote system. Requiring a comment for each vote to explain the user's position, for example, can curb this tendency.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    I don't know if requiring a comment for an upvote is so necessary; but requiring a comment (or an upvote of a comment) in order to downvote seems like it could help. I think the problem with upvoting tends to exist where there is no downvoting. I'm mostly at peace with net scores on my replies, though I feel a bit confused when the scores down without explanation. I think it is healthy to some extent to seek validation, but in order for it to be productive, I think we ought to know why people feel the way they do about what we say.
airstrike 8y ago
The Big Bang was also the beginning of the end but saying that doesn't really accomplish much
clhodapp 8y ago
The like button may have kicked the journey off, but in my opinion the point of no return for a social network turning bad is when they start treating "like" as "maybe share" (which all the big ones have eventually done).
colinprince 8y ago
In the audio clip he says it was photo tagging that started the decline followed by the like button
kayamueller 8y ago
You know what’s cooler than having millions of Instagram followers? Not needing to have millions of Instagram followers. That’s why I always thought that the celebrities that aren’t on Instagram at all actually seem more self assured, appealing, and, believe it or not, cool.
- dymk 8y ago
  What you're doing is just a different kind of the social signaling than the one you're trying to seem above of. It's okay for people to enjoy Instagram. It's okay for people to not enjoy Instagram. It's okay to make one of your hobbies getting Instagram famous. Trying to put some value judgement on why one is _better_, and going out of your way to justify your own is a waste of time.
  - sifoobar 8y ago
    I would be careful with projecting that experience, everything is not about signaling; sooner or later mostly everyone will come to the conclusion that pretending isn't leading anywhere. Because it isn't. Not depending on Instagram's algorithms and the opinions of its marketing department and your followers is _better_, for everyone. Dependency in general is rarely a good thing. Judging is a different issue. But not giving a shit about what other people think usually goes hand in hand with not giving a shit about what they do either.
- 2019ideas 8y ago
  Millions of followers mean you have more influence. (like it or not) Some people want to release products and not pay for advertising, some people want to watch football.
khana 8y ago
That is a true statement.
himynameisdom 8y ago
It's amazing how deleting my account gave me a sense of autonomy over my own thoughts. It took a while, but after some time I didn't care about what other people liked and didn't like. It's amazing what original thought can do for a person. That little button has more power than most people think.
- tombert 8y ago
  I second this. I deleted my account four years ago because I kept getting in arguments with people, and I genuinely feel that deleting it made me a less insecure person.
  - padobson 8y ago
    I sort of find myself in the same boat, but now I have very few high quality arguments. Reddit and Facebook and Twitter are chalk full of people ready to have a low quality debate, but there are some rare instances where you'll get some genuine insight from interlocutors. HN seems to be a good source, but in general on any given subject it's very difficult to find a good faith, intellectually honest, substance-based disagreement on the Internet. As you say, it seems better for one's IQ and eIQ to lose Reddit and Facebook and Twitter, but it'd still be nice to have a place to sanity-check new ideas.
    - turc1656 8y ago
      Agree 100%. This is quite literally the only place I post anything online anymore, and it's been that way for some years now. I never had accounts with Twitter, Instagram, etc. Only Facebook because it was new when I was in college and a bunch of people suggested I sign up. I never really gave a shit about it, honestly. Didn't post that much. Commented on a few things. Never posted pictures. Gave it up many years ago. But, I did have a tendency to get into arguments on forums of other sites, including YouTube of all places. Most were news/political sites, though. I stopped commenting on any sites other than this one for many of the same reasons. It's just not worth it and is a giant time suck to comment elsewhere. I absolutely love not seeing asinine responses to my comments where I get enraged and then feel obligated to respond to counter that idiocy. I hated that feeling but was obsessed with proving myself. I do not miss that at all whatsoever.
firasd 8y ago
To offer another potential inflection point: public posts. That turned Facebook from solely a social network to a broadcast network, and--while it has been successful for their business--it led to them being mired in all these political-information-broadcasting type problems.
Zelphyr 8y ago
I really think the blame lies with Facebook management and not a button.
jcroll 8y ago
hits upvote button
PowerfulWizard 8y ago
I would really ️like being able to disable the ️like button on Instagram as you can for comments. I don't like the approval seeking nature of the way it is presented. EDIT: HN filtered out my emoji :S
- MikeGale 8y ago
  I can imagine an improvement in many UI's if I had a way to tailor it for what I want, not some corporate one size fits all. Like: 1. See no likes. 2. Filter out comments that are deeply nested quotes. 3. Filter out specific people on a specific subject that I don't need to read again. 4. Switch off all adverts. 5. Never see a public post. 6...
justinsaccount 8y ago
For me it was "sharing". It was when original content got pushed aside to non-stop sharing and re-sharing of memes and propaganda.
jackschultz 8y ago
A lot of talk comes up about the facebook and twitter like buttons where most people agree that they're terrible. I for one can't imagine bothering with twitter unless there was a like button, or at least some way for people to show they agree with what the person twitted. Are they supposed to reply to with a thumbs up emoji? Or "I agree"? They really need some easy way for people to show their agreement. The older original forums are one place where people in a more closed area can talk without distinct likes, but for a more open network, there needs to be something easy for people to show support so the people creating the content know what people like.
phkahler 8y ago
Facebooks decline began with the "Share" button. That's the one that enabled my friends to fill my feed with 3rd party bullshit. I used to go to there to see what was up with my friends, not get their take on reddit, politics and pet videos.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; next 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; then 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" (It's been months since I've cared to log into Facebook. Feels more like trudging through spam in an old e-mail inbox, now, than anything compelling.)
- turc1656 8y ago
  Wow. What you wrote sounds like a classic description of serious addiction. Something like an alcohol, drug, sex, or porn addict might go through. That shows the true power this type of product/service can wield over a person. These products are definitely designed to suck our time and souls. They are/were never made for the benefit of humanity, or whatever bullshit Zuckerberg and the other tech CEOs claim. They are designed to make us like the mindless slobs from Wall-E or the future humans from Idiocracy. Glad you finally kicked the habit, though, and are more productive because of it.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > What you wrote sounds like a classic description of serious addiction It's reasonable to characterize the American population as being debilitatingly addicted to social media. (Rome's leaden pipes come to mind.)
burtonator 8y ago
I'm working on a blog post about this. The issue isn't decentralization or issues like upvoting. The issue is one of economics. As long as we don't address the core fundamental flaw with capitalism - that capital flows towards central actors, we will never have a decentralized and fair communications structure. What's sad is that I think it might actually be impossible without major efforts to understand the problem. It just happens naturally and without some sort of aggressive taxation policy it's just going to keep happening over and over again.
- sm4rk0 8y ago
  If you analyze them deep enough, you'll find out that money (greed) is the root cause of ~90% of world problems. Taxation is just a workaround, not a solution to those problems.
innocentoldguy 8y ago
I think Like buttons and other forms of social media voting are destructive to intelligent thought. They can generate argument ad populum fallacies so bad ideas can appear to have merit based solely on popularity. They are a good example of why true democracies always devolve into mob-rules tyranny.
new_guy 8y ago
So, what did Facebook have before the like button? What would your ideal version of a social network be? From comments here, it seems so far: ->no selling users out ->no likes/dislikes (but then how do you filter out bad content?) ->no sharing 3rd party content? Edited: formatting
mandeepj 8y ago
Dude! it's been 10 years now. Where have you been all along? 'Like' button was added on February 9, 2009. And, it's not going anywhere
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
I'd like to use Instagram if it had a way to turn off likes. I'd like a way to share pics with my friends without the weird feeling of expecting likes, it just changes the dynamic of the whole thing. "I want to show you this, with no expectation of a return." would make Instagram a lot more interesting and less fake.
stcredzero 8y ago
The thing about mechanics like upvotes/downvotes, is that they're ripe for exploitation by evil/sociopathic people. (For virality. Often for outrage-driven virality.) That's okay on a place like reddit, because things are largely pseudonymous, and if things go south, you can go to a different place or just take a break or even get a new username. Your real life network of friends and family isn't so easily abandoned or replaced. Not so sure what the difference is with Twitter, but maybe it's one of granularity. There are no boundaries there, so people have to police things themselves with block lists, or appeal to Twitter itself to get people banned. It's also clearly ripe for exploitation by sociopaths. https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI (What of HN? HN is moderated.)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

117 points by colinprince 8y ago

komali2 8y ago

Somewhat lacking... Wish this article talked more about "why" the like button was the beginning of the end.

MBCook 8y ago
Agreed. They give it a sentence and then move on.
himynameisdom 8y ago
I believe it was discussed early on when the article states McNamee believed that's when FB started to receive emotional cues from users. But I can see why readers might want a more thorough dissection of that point.
ams6110 8y ago
The obvious reason to me is that people started posting not because they genuinely had something to share, but to garner more "likes." Anything that is measured will influence behaviors.
kerng 8y ago
It was when the emotional state of users started to be revealed at scale. That allows to leverage targeted messaging to change users behavior by catering their emotional needs.

tj-teej 8y ago

Blaming the like button for the end of the "soft cuddly" side of Facebook is spurious from someone who was an investor. Facebook didn't have to build a surveillance machine, it didn't have to extract every possible penny out of it's user's data, Facebook didn't have to stop being "cuddly"...until it raised money at an outrageous valuation and had an outrageous IPO. Blaming the Like button for actions necessitated by Facebook selling out their users for a higher valuation/money seems a bit rich coming from one of the investors.

colinprince 8y ago
I think what he's getting at is that Facebook's path became clear as soon as: 1. the reciprocity effect started (photo-tagging) and then; 2. social validation started (the like button)
- sneakernets 8y ago
  That was always there anyway, but the like button made it that much easier to validate.
CM30 8y ago
Especially given how the like button wasn't exactly a novel concept, nor something that wouldn't have otherwise come about. These systems existed prior to Facebook and if it hadn't have introduced it, some other service in the same niche would have done exactly this. And Facebook's privacy issues and general sociopathic business attitudes predated all of it.
- brlewis 8y ago
  Right, FriendFeed had Like before Facebook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like_button#FriendFeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like_button#FriendFeed
monkeynotes 8y ago
I think he's alluding to the `like` button being a symptom of the changes that were driven by things like IPO valuation. I don't think the like button is to blame as such, it's just an indicator of where the purpose of the company started to move in the direction of mining its users for profit.
- mo30 8y ago
  Ofcourse it is to blame. It has added a number next to every expressed human thought. What do you think that does to behavior and thinking? No effect?

aphextron 8y ago

I’ve made this realization lately as well, that all “upvote” based social media is inherently toxic and bad for society. What’s been lost from the days of actual internet forums is the ability to make a point, and ignore it if you don’t like it. It used to be that we were all equals under the admin, and discussion was long form. However the incentives now have shifted discourse to the rhetorical and pithy, rather than creating meaningful connections. The result is a monoculture of thought that is doing real damage.

airstrike 8y ago
Upvoted for relevance
lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
Long form discussion is fairly orthogonal to "upvote" based social media in my appraisal. The simple fact that you choose to post your response here instead of one of the 'chan' style boards signals that you're really not looking for spaces where "everyone is equals under the admin".
basic6 8y ago
Karma is awful as well for similar reasons.
kirion25 8y ago
I think it has more to do with how thoughtless downvoting/upvoting can be in some implementations. But this isn't inherent to the upvote system. Requiring a comment for each vote to explain the user's position, for example, can curb this tendency.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  I don't know if requiring a comment for an upvote is so necessary; but requiring a comment (or an upvote of a comment) in order to downvote seems like it could help. I think the problem with upvoting tends to exist where there is no downvoting. I'm mostly at peace with net scores on my replies, though I feel a bit confused when the scores down without explanation. I think it is healthy to some extent to seek validation, but in order for it to be productive, I think we ought to know why people feel the way they do about what we say.

airstrike 8y ago

The Big Bang was also the beginning of the end but saying that doesn't really accomplish much

clhodapp 8y ago

The like button may have kicked the journey off, but in my opinion the point of no return for a social network turning bad is when they start treating "like" as "maybe share" (which all the big ones have eventually done).

colinprince 8y ago

In the audio clip he says it was photo tagging that started the decline followed by the like button

kayamueller 8y ago

You know what’s cooler than having millions of Instagram followers? Not needing to have millions of Instagram followers. That’s why I always thought that the celebrities that aren’t on Instagram at all actually seem more self assured, appealing, and, believe it or not, cool.

dymk 8y ago
What you're doing is just a different kind of the social signaling than the one you're trying to seem above of. It's okay for people to enjoy Instagram. It's okay for people to not enjoy Instagram. It's okay to make one of your hobbies getting Instagram famous. Trying to put some value judgement on why one is _better_, and going out of your way to justify your own is a waste of time.
- sifoobar 8y ago
  I would be careful with projecting that experience, everything is not about signaling; sooner or later mostly everyone will come to the conclusion that pretending isn't leading anywhere. Because it isn't. Not depending on Instagram's algorithms and the opinions of its marketing department and your followers is _better_, for everyone. Dependency in general is rarely a good thing. Judging is a different issue. But not giving a shit about what other people think usually goes hand in hand with not giving a shit about what they do either.
2019ideas 8y ago
Millions of followers mean you have more influence. (like it or not) Some people want to release products and not pay for advertising, some people want to watch football.

khana 8y ago

That is a true statement.

himynameisdom 8y ago

It's amazing how deleting my account gave me a sense of autonomy over my own thoughts. It took a while, but after some time I didn't care about what other people liked and didn't like. It's amazing what original thought can do for a person. That little button has more power than most people think.

tombert 8y ago
I second this. I deleted my account four years ago because I kept getting in arguments with people, and I genuinely feel that deleting it made me a less insecure person.
- padobson 8y ago
  I sort of find myself in the same boat, but now I have very few high quality arguments. Reddit and Facebook and Twitter are chalk full of people ready to have a low quality debate, but there are some rare instances where you'll get some genuine insight from interlocutors. HN seems to be a good source, but in general on any given subject it's very difficult to find a good faith, intellectually honest, substance-based disagreement on the Internet. As you say, it seems better for one's IQ and eIQ to lose Reddit and Facebook and Twitter, but it'd still be nice to have a place to sanity-check new ideas.
  - turc1656 8y ago
    Agree 100%. This is quite literally the only place I post anything online anymore, and it's been that way for some years now. I never had accounts with Twitter, Instagram, etc. Only Facebook because it was new when I was in college and a bunch of people suggested I sign up. I never really gave a shit about it, honestly. Didn't post that much. Commented on a few things. Never posted pictures. Gave it up many years ago. But, I did have a tendency to get into arguments on forums of other sites, including YouTube of all places. Most were news/political sites, though. I stopped commenting on any sites other than this one for many of the same reasons. It's just not worth it and is a giant time suck to comment elsewhere. I absolutely love not seeing asinine responses to my comments where I get enraged and then feel obligated to respond to counter that idiocy. I hated that feeling but was obsessed with proving myself. I do not miss that at all whatsoever.

firasd 8y ago

To offer another potential inflection point: public posts. That turned Facebook from solely a social network to a broadcast network, and--while it has been successful for their business--it led to them being mired in all these political-information-broadcasting type problems.

Zelphyr 8y ago

I really think the blame lies with Facebook management and not a button.

jcroll 8y ago

hits upvote button

PowerfulWizard 8y ago

I would really ️like being able to disable the ️like button on Instagram as you can for comments. I don't like the approval seeking nature of the way it is presented. EDIT: HN filtered out my emoji :S

MikeGale 8y ago
I can imagine an improvement in many UI's if I had a way to tailor it for what I want, not some corporate one size fits all. Like: 1. See no likes. 2. Filter out comments that are deeply nested quotes. 3. Filter out specific people on a specific subject that I don't need to read again. 4. Switch off all adverts. 5. Never see a public post. 6...

justinsaccount 8y ago

For me it was "sharing". It was when original content got pushed aside to non-stop sharing and re-sharing of memes and propaganda.

jackschultz 8y ago

A lot of talk comes up about the facebook and twitter like buttons where most people agree that they're terrible. I for one can't imagine bothering with twitter unless there was a like button, or at least some way for people to show they agree with what the person twitted. Are they supposed to reply to with a thumbs up emoji? Or "I agree"? They really need some easy way for people to show their agreement. The older original forums are one place where people in a more closed area can talk without distinct likes, but for a more open network, there needs to be something easy for people to show support so the people creating the content know what people like.

phkahler 8y ago

Facebooks decline began with the "Share" button. That's the one that enabled my friends to fill my feed with 3rd party bullshit. I used to go to there to see what was up with my friends, not get their take on reddit, politics and pet videos.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; next 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; then 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" (It's been months since I've cared to log into Facebook. Feels more like trudging through spam in an old e-mail inbox, now, than anything compelling.)

turc1656 8y ago
Wow. What you wrote sounds like a classic description of serious addiction. Something like an alcohol, drug, sex, or porn addict might go through. That shows the true power this type of product/service can wield over a person. These products are definitely designed to suck our time and souls. They are/were never made for the benefit of humanity, or whatever bullshit Zuckerberg and the other tech CEOs claim. They are designed to make us like the mindless slobs from Wall-E or the future humans from Idiocracy. Glad you finally kicked the habit, though, and are more productive because of it.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > What you wrote sounds like a classic description of serious addiction It's reasonable to characterize the American population as being debilitatingly addicted to social media. (Rome's leaden pipes come to mind.)

burtonator 8y ago

I'm working on a blog post about this. The issue isn't decentralization or issues like upvoting. The issue is one of economics. As long as we don't address the core fundamental flaw with capitalism - that capital flows towards central actors, we will never have a decentralized and fair communications structure. What's sad is that I think it might actually be impossible without major efforts to understand the problem. It just happens naturally and without some sort of aggressive taxation policy it's just going to keep happening over and over again.

sm4rk0 8y ago
If you analyze them deep enough, you'll find out that money (greed) is the root cause of ~90% of world problems. Taxation is just a workaround, not a solution to those problems.

innocentoldguy 8y ago

I think Like buttons and other forms of social media voting are destructive to intelligent thought. They can generate argument ad populum fallacies so bad ideas can appear to have merit based solely on popularity. They are a good example of why true democracies always devolve into mob-rules tyranny.

new_guy 8y ago

So, what did Facebook have before the like button? What would your ideal version of a social network be? From comments here, it seems so far: ->no selling users out ->no likes/dislikes (but then how do you filter out bad content?) ->no sharing 3rd party content? Edited: formatting

mandeepj 8y ago

Dude! it's been 10 years now. Where have you been all along? 'Like' button was added on February 9, 2009. And, it's not going anywhere

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

I'd like to use Instagram if it had a way to turn off likes. I'd like a way to share pics with my friends without the weird feeling of expecting likes, it just changes the dynamic of the whole thing. "I want to show you this, with no expectation of a return." would make Instagram a lot more interesting and less fake.

stcredzero 8y ago

The thing about mechanics like upvotes/downvotes, is that they're ripe for exploitation by evil/sociopathic people. (For virality. Often for outrage-driven virality.) That's okay on a place like reddit, because things are largely pseudonymous, and if things go south, you can go to a different place or just take a break or even get a new username. Your real life network of friends and family isn't so easily abandoned or replaced. Not so sure what the difference is with Twitter, but maybe it's one of granularity. There are no boundaries there, so people have to police things themselves with block lists, or appeal to Twitter itself to get people banned. It's also clearly ripe for exploitation by sociopaths. https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI (What of HN? HN is moderated.)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]