4 ms·

> One thing I find fascinating, and have not seen discussed, is what will happen to all this data in, say, a couple hundred years. My prediction: If Facebook l

by ardy42 8y ago

> One thing I find fascinating, and have not seen discussed, is what will happen to all this data in, say, a couple hundred years. My prediction: If Facebook looses popularity like MySpace: it will hold onto dead people's profiles as long as possible, until it finally goes out of business or its skeleton team of developers makes a critical mistake. Their business at that point will basically be like that of domain squatters. They'll even start sharing things hidden from the public behind privacy settings. If Facebook remains popular, however, it will eventually aggressively purge the profiles of the dead to focus resources on more lucrative monetization opportunities of active consumers.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
I think you're probably right - for a period of time. But I'm imagining far into the future. 200-300 years.
epicide 8y ago
Even if Facebook-the-product dies[0], Facebook-the-company will continue to be around for a looong time. Even if they fall out of public favor, they have enough money, enough data, enough business connections, etc. to continue for a very long time [1]. Honestly, if somehow enough people actually manage to get mad enough at Facebook for it to potentially affect their bottom line, they would likely use Zuckerberg as a scapegoat and ditch him. People like to latch onto a single individual as the problem, so that stunt would probably placate a lot of people [2]. [0]: Even this seems very unlikely given how many deep ties they have into peoples' lives. Keep in mind that it is far from just a social networking tool or blogging platform. [1]: Hell, they probably have enough money and blackmail data to do whatever they want. Including blackmail. [2]: Witch hunts are more popular than ever :)
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  > they would likely use Zuckerberg as a scapegoat and ditch him IIRC, Zuckerberg has a controlling stake in Facebook through supervoting shares, so he's not getting ditched unless he wants to be ditched.
  - smt88 8y ago
    > so he's not getting ditched unless he wants to be ditched I believe he can be removed from his executive role by a court if he's found guilty of a crime (which I believe is likely in the next few years). I'm not sure about his ownership of the company, but I think a court could order him to transfer supervoting shares as part of a penalty. But then that begs the question of whether the human individual, Mark Zuckerberg, still owns those shares. They may be in some kind of trust that he can never lose control over.
- rexpop 8y ago
  > [2]: Witch hunts are more popular than ever :) Come back with that when 10s of 10,000s of rich, white men have been systematically murdered. Until then, what you're saying is about as sensitive as using "Auschwitz" or "my Vietnam" to describe a mundane inconvenience.
  - epicide 8y ago
    I had it as a footnote because I meant it to pertain to a more broad group of people than rich white men. My point wasn't to make a snide remark like "oh everyone gets mad at the poor CEOs". My point was that crowds seem to enjoy watching public displays of punishment. With the internet, this only gets amplified. As far as being "as sensitive as using 'Auschwitz'", I was/am not aware of any narrow set of events or group of people that were "systematically murdered" under the term "witch hunt" [0]. Granted, I only did a cursory check. The term is generally accepted as a category of attack, as opposed to referencing a singular event (such as the Holocaust). From the Wikipedia page: "In current language, "witch-hunt" metaphorically means an investigation usually conducted with much publicity, supposedly to uncover subversive activity, disloyalty and so on, but really to weaken political opposition." [0]: I will concede that, yes, people were actually gruesomely murdered under the guise of being witches, which might be enough to refrain from using the term for something that is not murder, but I'd hardly call murdering anybody you don't like "systematic".
    - rexpop 8y ago
      Thank you for this gracious response. I recognize that the term's colloquial use is far broader than I implied. Frankly, I think it's a gross mischaracterization of events, and erases real history to use it that way. As for the "systemic" nature of historic witch-hunts, fruitful research efforts would uncover "Malleus Maleficarum", the textbook for engaging in witch-hunting. I believe the continent-wide application of a uniform methodology—especially when funded by the preeminent institutional authority—qualifies as systematic. Sections of "Witches, Midwives, and Nurses" by Dierdre English and Barbara Ehrenreich explain its historical use. Their research reveals with-hunts to have been a far cry from "murdering anybody you don't like."
InternetUser 8y ago
MySpace is holding on to users' profiles? When was the last time you went to a Myspace page? There might still be an active page with that user's name, but several years ago, there was a massive MySpace re-design and overhaul that totally wiped out (at least from public view) HTML customizations of profiles (which MySpace became famous for), embedded music widgets, the entire "About Me" sidebar on the left (where people listed all their favorite stuff, and personal info), the comments (in the comment sidebar that was on the right), blog posts (in the blog section), and countless photos and photo albums, seemingly just saving the profile picture and then some photos that were NOT put into albums. I know that because I went back to a list of MySpace links I had bookmarked from 2006 to 2009 and they are just about all useless. Celebrity tweets aside, people generally make that sweeping overestimation about the permanence (or at least the public discoverability of) such stuff; as for Facebook itself, users have deleted tons of photos and even their own entire profiles, and typically it's the most interesting (juicy) stuff, e.g. when a girl is going through college and deletes slutty and mischievous pictures of herself from earlier years and parties and relationships. (Side-note: you spelled "loses" as "looses," one of the most common spelling mistakes.)
- vidarh 8y ago
  Myspace were holding on to a bunch of data after the redesign you mention, but they recently had a massive further data loss: https://mashable.com/article/myspace-data-loss/ https://mashable.com/article/myspace-data-loss/
- dajohnson89 8y ago
  sometimes I wonder if senior employees/executives nerf a product and then start a business that fills the void.

by ardy42 8y ago

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

I think you're probably right - for a period of time. But I'm imagining far into the future. 200-300 years.

epicide 8y ago

Even if Facebook-the-product dies[0], Facebook-the-company will continue to be around for a looong time. Even if they fall out of public favor, they have enough money, enough data, enough business connections, etc. to continue for a very long time [1]. Honestly, if somehow enough people actually manage to get mad enough at Facebook for it to potentially affect their bottom line, they would likely use Zuckerberg as a scapegoat and ditch him. People like to latch onto a single individual as the problem, so that stunt would probably placate a lot of people [2]. [0]: Even this seems very unlikely given how many deep ties they have into peoples' lives. Keep in mind that it is far from just a social networking tool or blogging platform. [1]: Hell, they probably have enough money and blackmail data to do whatever they want. Including blackmail. [2]: Witch hunts are more popular than ever :)

CharlesColeman 8y ago
> they would likely use Zuckerberg as a scapegoat and ditch him IIRC, Zuckerberg has a controlling stake in Facebook through supervoting shares, so he's not getting ditched unless he wants to be ditched.
- smt88 8y ago
  > so he's not getting ditched unless he wants to be ditched I believe he can be removed from his executive role by a court if he's found guilty of a crime (which I believe is likely in the next few years). I'm not sure about his ownership of the company, but I think a court could order him to transfer supervoting shares as part of a penalty. But then that begs the question of whether the human individual, Mark Zuckerberg, still owns those shares. They may be in some kind of trust that he can never lose control over.
rexpop 8y ago
> [2]: Witch hunts are more popular than ever :) Come back with that when 10s of 10,000s of rich, white men have been systematically murdered. Until then, what you're saying is about as sensitive as using "Auschwitz" or "my Vietnam" to describe a mundane inconvenience.
- epicide 8y ago
  I had it as a footnote because I meant it to pertain to a more broad group of people than rich white men. My point wasn't to make a snide remark like "oh everyone gets mad at the poor CEOs". My point was that crowds seem to enjoy watching public displays of punishment. With the internet, this only gets amplified. As far as being "as sensitive as using 'Auschwitz'", I was/am not aware of any narrow set of events or group of people that were "systematically murdered" under the term "witch hunt" [0]. Granted, I only did a cursory check. The term is generally accepted as a category of attack, as opposed to referencing a singular event (such as the Holocaust). From the Wikipedia page: "In current language, "witch-hunt" metaphorically means an investigation usually conducted with much publicity, supposedly to uncover subversive activity, disloyalty and so on, but really to weaken political opposition." [0]: I will concede that, yes, people were actually gruesomely murdered under the guise of being witches, which might be enough to refrain from using the term for something that is not murder, but I'd hardly call murdering anybody you don't like "systematic".
  - rexpop 8y ago
    Thank you for this gracious response. I recognize that the term's colloquial use is far broader than I implied. Frankly, I think it's a gross mischaracterization of events, and erases real history to use it that way. As for the "systemic" nature of historic witch-hunts, fruitful research efforts would uncover "Malleus Maleficarum", the textbook for engaging in witch-hunting. I believe the continent-wide application of a uniform methodology—especially when funded by the preeminent institutional authority—qualifies as systematic. Sections of "Witches, Midwives, and Nurses" by Dierdre English and Barbara Ehrenreich explain its historical use. Their research reveals with-hunts to have been a far cry from "murdering anybody you don't like."

InternetUser 8y ago

MySpace is holding on to users' profiles? When was the last time you went to a Myspace page? There might still be an active page with that user's name, but several years ago, there was a massive MySpace re-design and overhaul that totally wiped out (at least from public view) HTML customizations of profiles (which MySpace became famous for), embedded music widgets, the entire "About Me" sidebar on the left (where people listed all their favorite stuff, and personal info), the comments (in the comment sidebar that was on the right), blog posts (in the blog section), and countless photos and photo albums, seemingly just saving the profile picture and then some photos that were NOT put into albums. I know that because I went back to a list of MySpace links I had bookmarked from 2006 to 2009 and they are just about all useless. Celebrity tweets aside, people generally make that sweeping overestimation about the permanence (or at least the public discoverability of) such stuff; as for Facebook itself, users have deleted tons of photos and even their own entire profiles, and typically it's the most interesting (juicy) stuff, e.g. when a girl is going through college and deletes slutty and mischievous pictures of herself from earlier years and parties and relationships. (Side-note: you spelled "loses" as "looses," one of the most common spelling mistakes.)

vidarh 8y ago
Myspace were holding on to a bunch of data after the redesign you mention, but they recently had a massive further data loss: https://mashable.com/article/myspace-data-loss/ https://mashable.com/article/myspace-data-loss/
dajohnson89 8y ago
sometimes I wonder if senior employees/executives nerf a product and then start a business that fills the void.