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Facebook won the social media war by cultivating a smaller, more selective group of users (college students). It meant sharing had some more definitive meaning,

Facebook won the social media war by cultivating a smaller, more selective group of users (college students). It meant sharing had some more definitive meaning, and provided some added safety for marketplace and message board functions. It was their secret weapon against the MySpaces and CraigsLists, and yet they completely abandoned it. If they really wanted to further their company mission, their Manhattan Project should have been a plan to keep the internet authentic and "owned" by humans. I no longer think this will be their downfall (it has been a problem in the system since at least 2012), but I cannot think of a more stark example of a company trashing an original philosophy so wholeheartedly.

loceng 7y ago
It wasn't Mark's original philosophy - it was a stolen mechanism that the twins who hired him to develop ConnectU had come up with, so unsurprising that it wouldn't be kept as a cornerstone.
knzhou 7y ago
That is a catch-22, isn't it? The common definition of "winning the social media war" is to get a lot of users. That is inherently contradictory to "cultivating" a "selective group". Just as water flows downhill, there will inevitably be a few most popular social networks, which will inevitably be driven by clickbait and moral panic and targeted by all bad actors. I already saw that happen with atheism. When I was young you had to be pretty far from normal to be really into it, and there was some fantasy that once everybody was an athiest, society would be cool and rational. Now about a hundred million Americans are effectively athiests and we're no more rational than before. The problems stayed the same, because people stayed the same.
- mistersquid 7y ago
  > Now about a hundred million Americans are effectively athiests and we're no more rational than before. The US has approximately 330 million people. Asserting more than 1/3 of all adults (330 million includes children) in the US are atheist is a bold and, in your comment, unsubstantiated claim.
  - klyrs 7y ago
    This is a weird tangent, and "effectively atheist" is an ill-defined umbrella, but if we take that to mean "no religion / unaffiliated / atheist / agnostic" then it doesn't seem too far off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_Sta...
  - knzhou 7y ago
    By survey, over a quarter of Americans are "nones" when it comes to religion. Much fewer actively take the label of athiest, but there's functionally no difference.
- schnevets 7y ago
  The measurement for success isn't "a lot of users", the measurement is "a lot of real users". Bots do not click on ads and make users more distrustful of the content on the platform. Even the most ill-informed person adds more to a group than an automated propaganda machine. I don't have a way for Facebook to counter the rise of AI and other technology trends short of all new accounts submitting a vial of blood to guarantee they are a unique human being. I'm being facetious here... but Zuck would probably love this dystopia. If Facebook devoted their near-infinite resources to solving this modern problem of technology, they would be in a much better shape today. The internet, privacy activists, and humanity as a whole may not be better off, but FBs value would be.
- schnevets 7y ago
  Also, I'm not so certain about your atheism argument. The decline of religion in the world has people thinking more rationally about some problems (LGBT Rights, a woman's right to choose, censorship based on lewd/unfit behavior, etc.). We may not be a utopia, but I wouldn't say "people stayed the same".

loceng 7y ago

It wasn't Mark's original philosophy - it was a stolen mechanism that the twins who hired him to develop ConnectU had come up with, so unsurprising that it wouldn't be kept as a cornerstone.

knzhou 7y ago

That is a catch-22, isn't it? The common definition of "winning the social media war" is to get a lot of users. That is inherently contradictory to "cultivating" a "selective group". Just as water flows downhill, there will inevitably be a few most popular social networks, which will inevitably be driven by clickbait and moral panic and targeted by all bad actors. I already saw that happen with atheism. When I was young you had to be pretty far from normal to be really into it, and there was some fantasy that once everybody was an athiest, society would be cool and rational. Now about a hundred million Americans are effectively athiests and we're no more rational than before. The problems stayed the same, because people stayed the same.

mistersquid 7y ago
> Now about a hundred million Americans are effectively athiests and we're no more rational than before. The US has approximately 330 million people. Asserting more than 1/3 of all adults (330 million includes children) in the US are atheist is a bold and, in your comment, unsubstantiated claim.
- klyrs 7y ago
  This is a weird tangent, and "effectively atheist" is an ill-defined umbrella, but if we take that to mean "no religion / unaffiliated / atheist / agnostic" then it doesn't seem too far off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_Sta...
- knzhou 7y ago
  By survey, over a quarter of Americans are "nones" when it comes to religion. Much fewer actively take the label of athiest, but there's functionally no difference.
schnevets 7y ago
The measurement for success isn't "a lot of users", the measurement is "a lot of real users". Bots do not click on ads and make users more distrustful of the content on the platform. Even the most ill-informed person adds more to a group than an automated propaganda machine. I don't have a way for Facebook to counter the rise of AI and other technology trends short of all new accounts submitting a vial of blood to guarantee they are a unique human being. I'm being facetious here... but Zuck would probably love this dystopia. If Facebook devoted their near-infinite resources to solving this modern problem of technology, they would be in a much better shape today. The internet, privacy activists, and humanity as a whole may not be better off, but FBs value would be.
schnevets 7y ago
Also, I'm not so certain about your atheism argument. The decline of religion in the world has people thinking more rationally about some problems (LGBT Rights, a woman's right to choose, censorship based on lewd/unfit behavior, etc.). We may not be a utopia, but I wouldn't say "people stayed the same".