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Things that I think will be important in the next decade

• firasd 7y ago
  I think the fact that he cites work on a 'private social platform' is significant. Even if you set aside broader trends in consumer apps and just look at FB itself, this trend is inevitable given the way statuses--a prominent part of the Newsfeed--have been in decline for years, while Groups have been flourishing.
  • Swizec 7y ago
    Haven't statuses just switched to instagram stories instead?
• jonstewart 7y ago
  I think antitrust enforcement and privacy legislation will be important in the next decade.
  • Cookingboy 7y ago
    I honestly don't think privacy legislation would make much headway, simply for the reason that vast majority of people outside of the HackerNews crowd don't care about it. When people say they care about privacy, most of the time they mean they care about anonymity, as in privacy from people who knows them personally. They don't want their internet search history to be known by friends or family or coworkers, but they probably have no qualm if it's just data being sent to large corporate service providers. That's why people would continue to trade personal info for conveniences for the foreseeable future, and as long as corporations maintain public anonymity for those data the most we'll ever see are temporary public outrages.
    • flattone 7y ago
      They might not but being concerned with that type of a thing comes with a deeper more committed understanding of why we might want to care about it can you take away the government is accountable for a lot of layers of our existence which we might not daily care about but are absolutely critical
    • advaita 7y ago
      This, exactly this. I have been trying to convert a bunch of my non-tech social network to start using privacy respecting services (DDG/Signal/Tutanota primarily) and have seen more of apathy than pushback. People seem to have no qualms about their search history/messaging being analyzed/indexed/used for targeting as long as they can keep using those services free.
      • tenpies 7y ago
        Honestly, until they experience first-hand a totalitarian government weaponizing their information they won't care. Even then, only that generation - well the survivors of that generation - will care. It's not enough to ponder about how much more deadly the Soviets could have been, or reading about what China is doing. For most people, if it's not happening to them immediately and directly, they just don't care.
      • Klonoar 7y ago
        Tutanota has a subpar UI/UX, and people like shiny. You won't get the masses with that. DDG is valiant, but doesn't give the same "read my mind" feeling that Google has people used to. I see few people stick with it due to this. Signal has proven itself as a great product in many ways, but people opt for the convenience that other messengers provide. The Signal crew seems to understand this, though, and slowly be working towards ways to match that. They'll (eventually, IMO) succeed for this reason - more "privacy respecting" entities need to take this route and understand that you will not get users or attention solely on espousing privacy rights.
    • cmdshiftf4 7y ago
      >When people say they care about privacy, most of the time they mean they care about anonymity, as in privacy from people who knows them personally. They don't want their internet search history to be known by friends or family or coworkers, but they probably have no qualm if it's just data being sent to large corporate service providers. >That's why people would continue to trade personal info for conveniences for the foreseeable future, and as long as corporations maintain public anonymity for those data the most we'll ever see are temporary public outrages. Absolutely agree. We've had no shortage of privacy related issues surfaced in the mainstream media, likely most notably Snowden's leaks. Some in the media made a concerted effort to make people understand just how grave the situation was, for example Colbert letting everyone know, on air, that they can access the dick pics you've sent people privately. People heard it, digested it briefly, shrugged their shoulders and continued on without regard. In fact, people have become worse with their private information than ever before: - People are now sending their DNA to private companies, with no care for the T&Cs involved, in exchange for utterly shallow, almost irrelevant genetic history infographics. - People are wearing "wearables" that are reporting their heart rate, activity levels, sleep quality, etc. to private companies. - People are opening their homes up to 24/7 surveillance with always on, always listening "smart home" devices. - Many more people than ever are posting naked photos/videos of themselves on Reddit, Snapchat, etc., hosted on sites whose owners they have no clue of, ran by staff they have no idea of, etc. They were told the risks, they did not care and so will be given, and will deserve, zero sympathy when something comes out highlighting the abuses enabled by some of the above. "We didn't know!" does not cut it anymore.
      • donmcronald 7y ago
        And soon if you don't want to be priced out of the market for important things like insurance, you'll be forced to go along with the invasive tech: https://onezero.medium.com/if-you-want-cheap-car-insurance-you-might-have-to-sacrifice-your-privacy-d4cdb312dcee https://onezero.medium.com/if-you-want-cheap-car-insurance-y... How do the ethics line up for an insurance company analyzing data from your wearables and seeing a data point that indicates a significant increase in the chance of a heart attack? Do they tell you and pay for preemptive care? Do they drop you as a customer? How many people have to die vs survive a heart attack to make warning you vs hoping you die the most profitable option?
    • maxerickson 7y ago
      GDPR and CCPA are law. People regularly complain about the GDPR here (US sites comply by region blocking GDPR covered users).
      • anoncake 7y ago
        > (US sites comply by region blocking GDPR covered users). The only thing they comply with is their own paranoia. The GDPR doesn't even apply to US companies if they don't specifically target EU users. I wouldn't be surprised if many sites were only violating the GDPR because they show those "cookie notices" which completely miss the point and don't help with compliance but could be considered catering to EU users.
    • taurath 7y ago
      It’s making headway right now, in the form of CCPA and GDPR. CCPA sets it up so masses of people can have a simple way to not only opt out of data collection but also delete data.
    • abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      My personal experience has been that people often don't know the extent of the data recorded and stored by corporations. For instance, someone (young and otherwise smart) simply refused to believe me when I told them that Google maps estimates traffic by tracking the location of every car using Google maps [1]. They thought Google was using live satellites imagery to estimate traffic. [1] Didn't even mention the part about Google possibly tracking your location even if you don't use maps.
• dvduval 7y ago
  Since I am self taught Mandarin, I thought it was novel when he did too, and I saw his humility when he tried to speak it. Now he is painful to read for me. First, he lost my trust. Second, it's esoteric, nothing very concrete. Perhaps our ability to be anywhere through augmented reality sounds interesting, but not all that novel.
  • redis_mlc 7y ago
    > I thought it was novel when he did too He thought learning Mandarin would help him conquer China. lol.
    • rhizome 7y ago
      He's still young.
    • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      I really don’t think he did, just that is what the Chinese wanted to think for face reasons. He seemed very much like the average foreigner leaning it because he thought it was cool, because he had some family connection, and so on. Even him jogging in smoky Beijing is something a fresh off the plane foreigner would want to do (like I did when I was newly arrived to Beijing).
• Nextgrid 7y ago
  Can't see this article as connections to malicious domains like facebook.com are blocked on my network - anyone has the full text on a PasteBin or something?
  • BartBoch 7y ago
    Here you go: https://pastebin.com/aJHJhhVV https://pastebin.com/aJHJhhVV
    • Nextgrid 7y ago
      Thanks!
  • LeoPanthera 7y ago
    Claiming that facebook.com is "malicious" doesn't serve to make a point, it just makes you look reactionary.
    • derision 7y ago
      Anecdotal, and not the GP, but one of the interview questions I ask is "If you could uninvent one technology, what would it be and why?" Many of the answers are the same: Facebook. At least for developers, Facebook is generally seen as a net negative for the world in it's current form.
    • Nextgrid 7y ago
      It's less about proving a point and more that I have it blocked at the router level because I don't use Facebook myself and yet they still use the domain to serve tracking & stalking scripts which are malicious.
    • rhizome 7y ago
      What do you mean by "reactionary" here?
• obilgic 7y ago
  Honestly for a decade of change; this doesn't seem like a big enough perspective to have. Rather current challenges and things that are mostly anticipated. All of this is on CNBC everyday.
• sremani 7y ago
  Rule of Thumb : General Predictions from experts/specialists are almost useless. For decent predictions of the ways of a world, find multi-disciplinary generalists. They would likely be right, at least directionally.
  • lovecg 7y ago
    Do you have any pointers for some recent predictions you thought made sense?
    • rapnie 7y ago
      I am very curious for "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy" by Matt Stoller https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47891654-goliath https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47891654-goliath See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943874
• Nextgrid 7y ago
  So his main point is a private & potentially decentralised social platform. He didn't address how the platform is going to be funded though. Advertising as we know it is well and truly dead, and I don't think Facebook or Zuckerberg are the right entities to push for change in this field. They've already demonstrated their bad faith and maliciousness. There are ways to make advertising ethical, but Facebook definitely won't do that, as they currently profit from the negative externalities & bad side effects of the current advertising model. Doing advertising ethically will be a serious downgrade from their current income, and while it's still a big chunk of money they for sure won't like it and will never do it for this reason.
  • ghostcluster 7y ago
    Aren't things like Slack and Discord essentially private social networks? Same with other forms of group chat. I see way more activity in these kinds of channels than most of the public facing social networks other than Twitter.
  • cmdshiftf4 7y ago
    >Advertising as we know it is well and truly dead Based on what? More people are spending more money online than ever, the holidays alone in 2019 broke records at an increase of 3.4% over the previous year's sales [0]. That is on top of an increase of 2.8% the previous year, something which was heralded as a disappointment [1]. Given the above, people are clearly being guided what to buy and where to buy it, so how could one realistically claim that "advertising as we know it is well and truly dead"? [0]https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/25/reuters-america-corrected-record-online-sales-give-u-s-holiday-shopping-season-a-boost-report.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/25/reuters-america-corrected-re... [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/holiday-sales-were-a-huge-disappointment-retail-report-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/holiday-sales-were-a-huge-di...
    • Nextgrid 7y ago
      People are creeped out and think phones are listening to them, privacy regulations around the world (GDPR and the California one) are making it very hard to do targeted ads, etc.
• awb 7y ago
  > I don't think private companies should be making so many important decisions that touch on fundamental democratic values. > One way to address this is through regulation. > I've called for new regulation in these areas and over the next decade I hope we get clearer rules for the internet. Surprising to hear a near-monopoly call for regulation. > Another and perhaps even better way to address this is by establishing new ways for communities to govern themselves. An example of independent governance is the Oversight Board we're creating. Oh I see, self-regulation is the answer.
  • cityzen 7y ago
    Look up Joel Kaplan. Mark doesn’t give a shit about regulation unless it is to his benefit.
  • JohnFen 7y ago
    > Surprising to hear a near-monopoly advocate for regulation. Not really. When a company reaches a certain level of dominance, government regulation is a good thing because it increases the cost of entry to the market, so it acts as a kind of moat for the established players.
    • hinkley 7y ago
      Especially if they can get any of the rules to be as byzantine as their current internal processes.
  • neandrake 7y ago
    > Surprising to hear a near-monopoly call for regulation. Regulation can often mean a higher bar to entry for competitors. Compliance costs time/money and Facebook has plenty.
    • rhizome 7y ago
      Is there even an example of regulations decreasing the cost of entry?
• sys_64738 7y ago
  Zuck said, "It is important I find ways to get even more of your data and figure how to monetize it."
• cityzen 7y ago
  Why don’t we start the decade off right and knock it off with the political ads on Facebook. Seriously, this guy lacks so much self awareness it blows my mind.
  • DSingularity 7y ago
    It’s called hypocrisy! He pretends to care for decentralization while he pushes policies which fortify a monopolistic hold on social media. He claims to care for democracy as he runs a platform which undermines it by putting our governments for sale to the deepest pocket and most malicious. It’s disgusting.
• heymartinadams 7y ago
  How about standing up for simple truths and basic facts, for a change? Facebook’s active complicity in spreading falsehoods is appalling.
• slg 7y ago
  >I don't think private companies should be making so many important decisions that touch on fundamental democratic values... As long as our governments are seen as legitimate, rules established through a democratic process could add more legitimacy and trust than rules defined by companies alone. This is a big chicken and egg problem. Mark wants the government to set the rules but what happens when Facebook doesn't make the rules, people are elected through questionable means (notice he used the phrase 'seen as legitimate'), and those people don't want to crack down on Facebook because an unregulated Facebook is a key to them remaining in power. There is a feedback loop there that Facebook could shutoff with a single decision from Mark. It is much harder to fix that problem through government action.
  • gonzo41 7y ago
    Mark is lazy and value signalling. --There are a number of areas where I believe governments establishing clearer rules would be helpful, including around elections, harmful content, privacy, and data portability. Mark could do a lot on his own without waiting for government. Mark could: Ban harmful content, he is a US citizen and could start with keeping a tighter lid on content that doesn't conform with non extremist western values. And then integrate other value systems shortly over time. Mark could: get out of all election advertising and push Facebook to be a place where everyone doesn't talk about that stuff and ban targeted political adds and just do other stuff. Mark could: Easily respect peoples privacy. I hardened my facebook profile a while back to remove most public content and the level of granularity to the privacy controls seemed like it was intentionally made difficult to do what I was doing. Dark patterns. Mark could show leadership. he really could, he doesn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM
  • hellisothers 7y ago
    Mark wants the government to enact rules that only huge established players can possibly comply with in order to stamp out competition. If FB just went ahead and did these things themselves another player could enter the field in their place.
    • rhizome 7y ago
• xiphias2 7y ago
  ,,Today, many important institutions in our society still aren't doing enough to address the issues younger generations face -- from climate change to runaway costs of education, housing and healthcare. '' Maybe there are ways to improve the quality of discussions _within_ Facebook to help solve these problems. It works for Hacker News, so I don't think it would be impossible. Of course indirect revenue from oil companies would decrease somewhat, but a balance should be found.
  • fourstar 7y ago
    HN is essentially a hive mind cult. Look at my join date. At some point, you could dissent with your own opinion. Nowadays it’s downvotes and outrage. Shields up — ready for the downvotes. Not a great model for FB to follow. You’ll start getting DMs from people like “dang” telling you to behave, LOL.
    • xiphias2 7y ago
      As for me, I didn't get a DM, just a shadow ban for a controversial comment (xiphias is my original user name). A few months after not ever being voted up somebody wrote to me that she sees that I'm shadow banned even though I'm writing constructive comments. At the same time I don't know anything even comparable to HN, so I shy away from controversial wording / topics, and this way things that I write goes through the ,,dang'' filter. I still think that he's much more constructive than what would be here without him at this scale of (non-geek) users.
      • fourstar 7y ago
        Lobsters is probably the closest, I’d think. It’s not super active, though. Why not build it yourself? I got shadowbanned on Reddit after creating one of the more popular subreddits. It’s a weird feeling. With decentralized moderation, who sets the constitution? This is why AI/ML in response to this self-governance stuff is a meme.
        • xiphias2 7y ago
• jimbob45 7y ago
  Question: would VR be adopted en masse if it dropped permanently in price by 70% tomorrow?
  • truebosko 7y ago
    Nope. Not enough implementations right now outside of quirky demos or gaming. Of course see initial adoption by excited crowd but not mass market.
  • krapp 7y ago
    No. VR is probably destined to remain a niche interface. There just aren't enough potential applications which would benefit from VR, or which would be improved with VR. It won't be adopted en masse because there will never be that great a demand for it. Although if the price went down, what demand there was would probably be met. I definitely don't want to pay $400 or more for something that should just be a peripheral.
    • scabarott 7y ago
      Anyone who's seen clips of an NFL or NBA game on a VR headset knows that this is the future. Unfortunately we are not there yet and development seems to have really cooled down recently. In fact we might have another VR winter on hand until someone makes a new breakthrough and re-awakens all the hype and interest. But I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that sometime within my lifetime VR could easily become the main delivery medium of entertainment, replacing TV sets, movie screens and gaming consoles for most households
      • K0SM0S 7y ago
        Even beyond entertainment, when working hours in an office, I'd rather look at a beach or fantasy landscape with a nice ambient sound than a dull wall with rain under a greyish light outside. I'd likely spend most of my time in VR just because it's nicer. Life-like VR fundamentally holds the promise of being one more great social equalizer if you can essentially simulate material wealth (objects, locations) like a video game, even just the visual part of it. E.g. IKEA is all over such research, with good reason. Most people also don't realize that in terms of communication, any non-physical interaction (so excluding sex and hugs) would be just as good in VR as in reality, thereby making face-to-face meetings the norm anew (like before any form of distant communication existed, save for mail). That's bound to be a healthy change, a welcome improvement from text, audio and even video. It's just a little bit too early indeed, and probably headed for a (shorter) winter I agree. Come 2030ish we should have much more decent options to move forward (from current specs you'd estimate a 10x at least to reach 'acceptable' capabilities, and more like 100x if you seek visually life-like sim, i.e. ~250px per arc minute at 100Hz or more over at least 180° field of view).
• lokl 7y ago
  I prefer this list of what's important: https://www.gatesfoundation.org https://www.gatesfoundation.org. It has things like kids not dying from diarrhea.
  • hyperbovine 7y ago
    Normative vs. positive.
    • thedudeabides5 7y ago
      Not really, more “products and services that facebook offers” vs “various diseases we are trying to obliterate”
    • chillacy 7y ago
      Is the claim that Gates is sharing what he believes is most important and Zuckerberg is listing what he thinks will actually be important?
  • LeoPanthera 7y ago
    You can have both. Kids aren't dying because someone is making websites instead of curing disease.
    • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
      I believe that’s incorrect. The best people at FAANG aren’t working on next gen tech. They’re working on making fractional improvements to advertising, because the tiniest improvement there is a billion dollars. SV is brain draining more fields than just computer sciences.
• elfexec 7y ago
  > Generational Change I could do without paid PR fluff. "When I started Facebook, one of the reasons I cared about giving people a voice was that I thought it would empower my generation" I'm pretty sure this was not one of his goals when he started facebook. > A New Private Social Platform So more facebook, just bite-sized for smaller groups. > Decentralizing Opportunity Essentially libra. > The Next Computing Platform Oculus. > New Forms of Governance "There are a number of areas where I believe governments establishing clearer rules would be helpful, including around elections, harmful content, privacy, and data portability. I've called for new regulation in these areas and over the next decade I hope we get clearer rules for the internet." Although I somewhat sympathize with his predicament here, whose regulation is he talking about? If governments step in, then facebook would have to ultimately fracture into national facebooks. US, European nations, India, Middle eastern nations, etc are not going to have the same ideas about elections, harmful content, privacy and data portability. Even within the US, we are not going to have real consensus on this issue. This is where principles could help, but principles always seem to lose to political and financial interests. In short, zuckerburg envisions we'll be using facebook on oculus paying with libra while governments solve all of facebooks intractable problems for him.
• buboard 7y ago
  when did an industry decentralize historically? the tendency is towards centralization. The only thing that can counter centralization is ubiquitous encryption
  • dredmorbius 7y ago
    Almost always: industries or activities which were once only viable in a single (or small number) of instances, but which, given increases in net total capabilities, but no inherent efficiencies of scale, require replicated instances rather than a centrally-controlled monopoly. Even here, if there's a space for centralised control, it's possible that either some single entity will gain effective unitary control or impose a control overlay. High-mass products, which ship poorly, products which are very highly localised (culture, custom), "high-touch" (1:1 or 1:(small-n) activities, on-site services, specifically-tailored activities, rapid spoilage, tend to be amongst these. Examples which come to mind of each: - High mass: concrete, dairy, and water. Shipping costs rapidly eat into profits, though water can move efficiently for hundreds, possibly as much as 1,000km, via aqueducts and pipelines. - Localised: culture, including to an extent the film industry (at least at the national level), which contrasts with video's otherwise extreme ephemerality, and hence centralisation. Teaching is probably the ultimate, with the failures of ed-tech reinforcing this yet again. The gold-standard in teaching remains 1:1 tutoring, for complex reasons. Most personal-care services, ranging from medical to beauty, therapy, and training. Activities proscribed by widely-varying local regulation also tend toward geographical dispersion. - Most of the trades -- plumbing, electrical, HVAC, landscaping, on-sight equipment maintenance, auto repair, and the like, all spawn from the fact that it's cheaper to provide local expertise and capability than to move the equipment to a centralised facility. The more specialised equipment is, the more likely service is to be centralised, and some transport equipment (aircraft, ships) sees centralised servicing based on both mobility and complexity. - The degree to which spoilage is no longer a pressing concern is impressive: cold-chains and air freight mean that fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers now move globally, though local produce remains viable. Freshly-cooked meals remain a holdout, with even in-city delivery limited to a few standbyes: pizza, Chinese takeaway, and the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel. (https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...). In most other cases, the supposed freedom from location afforded by technology and ephemeralisation actually strongly favours centralisation. Almost anything related to mass culture (film, music, video games, and some books, as well as clothing and fashion) tends extremely toward centralisation. Look around you at the "small shops" in your neighbourhood, town, or suburb. Those are the serivces which have resisted centralisation, though almost all have some strongly centralised elements.
• gmuslera 7y ago
  Important for which actors? Early adopters are already using some form of what will become mainstream this decade. Will came a a lot of new things for early adopters, but only a few will become mainstream in the next one. In the same way, intelligence agencies, hackers, and more are already using things that with a bit of luck general people will become aware this decade (but will fail to take good measures about it), and new advancements will become gradually available for both kinds of bad players in the next years, some that will remain, others that may be override by more prevailing ones. Besides technology, the divide that I did above will become more important next decade too. How technology changes us, and what we become caused by it, is more important than the technology itself. Think in how we went from a culture of discretion and privacy to one of mindless sharing.
• rdiddly 7y ago
  A little irksome to be told that climate change is an issue "younger generations face." Like I'll be dead soon so it doesn't matter to me. Is that what you're telling me? Well all right then, I'll sell that bicycle I keep laboriously pedaling and start partying with gasoline! Don't worry, you guys got this! No but the funny part is, since the climate has already changed, that actually means I'm currently dead.
• cmdshiftf4 7y ago
  >"at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology." Constant video surveillance, direct-to-eyes on-glass advertising, targeted advertising beamed on every approved spot, interests profiling via retina movements/focus and God knows what else will undoubtedly come about if AR glasses become "cool" and ubiquitous like mobile phones. Maybe we'll be able to see one another's social points, as earned on the Facebook Ubiquity Platform for All Things Interaction, when gazing upon one another? Maybe we'll be able to haze filter out those naughties who haven't earned enough, or have had points taken away for naughty behaviour like posting against the "community guidelines"? Maybe we'll be able to use image recognition + the voter records to put an angel or devil next to the people we agree/disagree with politically? How novel would that be? And talk about a time saver! Who wants to even acknowledge those who don't vote in line with our party!? But seriously though, what options do those of us have to not be part of this dystopian fucking nightmare that the tech elite have in store for us? Save up and try to buy a hut near their fallout shelters in NZ under the hopes that they won't shit where they hide?
  • jophde 7y ago
    Personally I have been moved to only use a desktop computer with Linux on it and switched to a Go Flip 3 dumb phone. It's helped my sanity quite a bit. I'm convinced tech peaked in 90s and the desktop dream was the best one.
    • polycaster 7y ago
      Enthused by your comment I visited the vendor's website just to be greeted with: "GO FLIP 3, with KaiOS 2.5, comes with Google Assistant to help you get things done like book appointments, make phone calls, and find answers on the go using just your voice." [1] Resistance is futile. [1] https://us.alcatelmobile.com/alcatel-go-flip-3/ https://us.alcatelmobile.com/alcatel-go-flip-3/
      • jophde 7y ago
        Yea I know... sadly its the best option right now.
• CptFribble 7y ago
  Look at everything Mark's overseen at Facebook over the last decade. The unimaginably deep dark pools of data collection, the targeting, Internet.org's absolutely transparent attempt to get developing nations trapped on Facebook under the guise of philanthropy, the complete non-response to extremism on their own platform until way after it was a problem, the list goes on and on. That's the last 10 years. Now Mark says they're building a more private, smaller platform? Private for who? Mark says he wants to enable small businesses to connect with customers through their networks. What he's really saying is he wants every last piece of society to operate through his network so Facebook can get it's cut of the local laundromat. I hate these grand-yet-bland, corporate flavored prognostications. There's absolutely no reason we should believe any of these things he's excited about will be a net benefit for the rest of us.
  • rhizome 7y ago
    There is nothing other than stereotypes of The Internet to suggest that Facebook is existing by any other terms than the ideals of the US Republican party.
• danfang 7y ago
  I agree we need a new private social platform. But, I hope it isn't Facebook that wins that race. I've been working on a social network that I believe represents "generational change" - no ads, no clickbait news, no public profiles. It goes against the grain of what current social networks are doing. Check it out at https://get.thread-app.com https://get.thread-app.com. It's still early days, but I would appreciate any feedback!
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • chillacy 7y ago
    This seems to be everything that commenters on HN claim to want, but the $20 a year thing seems to be fundamentally incompatible with how social networks grow.
  • kp98 7y ago
    Hey I tried out your app, but I don’t understand how to use it at all, in fact there’s no information really at all on what it is. Maybe you could consider making a small tutorial when you first sign up? Also feel free to email me if you want to talk about it, I’m also working on a social app. Was this built in react native?
• newscracker 7y ago
  What a bunch of crock! It seems like it’d always remain too much to ask for Mark to understand things and look at the big picture for the good of everyone. IMO, this post yet again makes a good case for breaking up the company. Most of this post is about how Facebook is looking for new ways to make money, and just a few sentences about large problems like diseases or poverty. He carelessly uses words like “private” and “decentralized” in dishonest senses to mean that: a) Facebook (the company) will provide you these solutions and misname them as private and decentralized b) Facebook (the company) will still run on ads and profiling users. Augmented and virtual reality — yet another way for Facebook to surveil people. Asking for regulations as if he wants it. What he has wanted from the time Facebook has come under scrutiny by lawmakers is regulatory capture...getting laws passed in a way that prevents competitors from even trying, while Facebook can continue to claim that it’s doing its best with “independent” boards and committees and escape penalties and punishments. Anyone wanting something better for the future can only hope that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg get out of running Facebook the company in any manner by 2030, if we go by wishlists by decades.
  • jliptzin 7y ago
    Or just stop using Facebook and its products.
    • newscracker 7y ago
      I wish more people would do it (though I’ve been advocating for this for a long time). The network effects are still strong, and people are loathe to try another platform that may not serve the same needs. I keep trying to push people away from WhatsApp (somewhat easily, I should say) because there are many alternatives. Instagram is tougher. The newer federated alternatives like Pixelfed aren’t there on features, and they don’t even have a mobile app yet! Facebook groups is another thing that doesn’t have a good enough replacement. In certain cases Facebook remains the best option to reach people. I’m not talking about personal messages or interactions, but about things of value to larger communities focused on social good.
    • freepor 7y ago
• gethoht 7y ago
  Fuck this asshole. Facebook is cancer full of political ads that can spout whatever falsehoods they want.
• ErikAugust 7y ago
  If Mark is ID number 4, are the first three test accounts?
• artemisyna 7y ago
  The number of people in this thread that apparently know the secret, nefarious intentions that Zuckerberg truly has is... Well, not surprising, given that this is the internet and Hacker News. :)
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • bitexploder 7y ago
    Zuckerberg has a history of being intellectually lazy and making choices that are a net negative for society. There is no secret to the nefariousness. It is right out in the open. He is not a good guy and his response to the overflowing racism and bad faith political content on FB is a giant meh. Twitter showed real leadership. It is Facebooks turn.
  • rapnie 7y ago
    Well, this is a thread speculating about the future decade, reflecting on a guy's insights who has a dubious track record, by intelligent people that are in the loop of current tech trends.
    • Kiro 7y ago
      An AI could easily have generated this thread.
    • artemisyna 7y ago
      I'm amused by this assessment given how you could pretty much say the exact same comment in reverse. Specifically, between these "intelligent people [on Hacker News]" and a "guy [with] dubious insights", one of these groups has a couple of billion dollars invested in every single one of the topics in the document whereas the other... well, maybe Bill or Jeff or Satya or one of the others reads Hacker News, but I doubt it. :)
  • koheripbal 7y ago
    This thread is a good example of how HackerNews has become less about analysis and informed commentary, and more about opinions and advocacy. I look at Mark's post and I see him being honest with people about how he believes the world is going to evolve - not necessarily how he wants it to evolve, nor how Facebook even intends to move forward. Everyone is so blinded by their emotional hatred of Mark that they cannot stomach discussing the points he is making.
• anonytrary 7y ago
  > By the end of this decade, I expect more institutions will be run by millennials and more policies will be set to address these problems with longer term outlooks. He "expects" this? This is trivially true in that it is an unavoidable result of the human lifecycle. 40 years from now, the boomers won't be in congress or in jobs -- they'll be dead. The only possible conclusion is that the millennials will replace them. I don't see why he felt the need to state that he "expects" this. Everyone who understands that humans die expects this. > reconstruct all kinds of smaller communities to give us that sense of intimacy again. This is how people use Facebook already. Most of my friends who "use" Facebook are really just in private groups and chat. Twitter is the go-to global platform -- it's one big bubble. Facebook is distinguishing itself as more of a private platform of isolated bubbles. This has already been happening for the past 10 years. > Decentralizing Opportunity... If we can make it so anyone can sell products through a storefront on Instagram, message and support their customers through Messenger, or send money home to another country instantly and at low cost through WhatsApp -- that will go a long way towards creating more opportunity around the world Decentralizing Opportunity? Maybe. Centralizing monetary transaction traffic to Facebook so they reap the equivalent of a VAT on every sale? Definitely.
• jes5199 7y ago
  I say AR yes, but glasses no
• subpixel 7y ago
  This strikes me as mainly a lot of malarkey from a person who will happily earn more billions in coming years trough the monetized distraction of a another final generation. But I’m dumbfounded by the private network reference. Zuck sees people trying to circumvent oppressive regimes as some sort of emerging market opportunity? Or does he think you and I would pay to use “FB Private” if they promised to turn off everything about normal Facebook’s current business model?
  • netsharc 7y ago
    > This strikes me as mainly a lot of malarkey Hear hear. "Holy shit, I got rich, I must be smart! It's a new decade, let me write something I think sounds smart and publish it."
• spicyramen 7y ago
  I still don't understand how the one of the most intelligent minds in Silicon Valley work for Facebook to make sure people click ads. Can they work on real problems like the ones Bill Gates foundation is working on? No, non-profitable enough
  • Thorrez 7y ago
    Facebook makes money. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative spends money. Microsoft makes money. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spends money. It's a bit strange to compare Mark Zuckerberg's money making organization to Bill Gate's money spending organization.
    • mlurp 7y ago
      I don't have any love for Microsoft, but they at least have a handful of objectively useful products that probably make the world a little better. Pretty much all the research I've heard about social media indicates that it makes the world worse. So I think it is relevant.
      • quelltext 7y ago
        That's interesting. I just don't think there has been any research into holistically evaluating social networks. AFAIK studies mostly focus on small parts often with the premise to find something negative (e.g. effect of seeing other feeds with success stories). Obviously a lot of people do in fact derive pleasure and some other benefits or they wouldn't keep using it.
        • Thorrez 7y ago
          > Obviously a lot of people do in fact derive pleasure and some other benefits or they wouldn't keep using it. Sure, but it could still be overall harmful. E.g. gambling, drugs, smoking.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
• numbsafari 7y ago
  > As long as our governments are seen as legitimate... > Another perhaps better way ... is the new Oversight Board we are creating... Zuck wants to use FB to continue to delegitimize democratic governments so he can replace them with FB itself. Zuck is a fascist.
  • dang 7y ago
    Maybe so, but olease don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
• kats 7y ago
  Mark Zuckerberg is much more thoughtful than he's given credit for.
• Thorrez 7y ago
  The section titles are pretty funny. It's almost as if they were chosen to specifically disappoint cypherpunks. > A New Private Social Platform Cypherpunk: Signal! Tor! Riot! Mark: Small groups of people who know each other. > Decentralizing Opportunity Cypherpunk: Bitcoin! Peertube! IPFS! Mastadon! Namecoin! Scuttlebutt! Mark: Products for small businesses. > The Next Computing Platform Cypherpunk: Ethereum! Urbit! Homomorphic encryption! RISC-V! Solid! Dfinity! Blockstack! Mark: Augmented reality.
  • wavefunction 7y ago
    Mark's definitely on his own augmented reality. Unfortunately the rest of us get to enjoy the Coriolis effects of it via his monetization of dishonesty.
    • ainiriand 7y ago
      I particularly like this comment. I have nothing else to add, keep moving.
  • __float 7y ago
    You give a lot of weight to cryptocurrency/blockchain/similar tech, and there's a lot more out there than that. I'm still waiting to see one reasonably decent application of a blockchain, and remarkably few of the things you mentioned provide much more than opportunities for scams and speculation.
    • Thorrez 7y ago
      While I do have a certain interest in some of those technologies, the character "Cypherpunk" was not autobiographical. Yeah, a lot of blockchain stuff seems quite impractical and motivated by pump-and-dump opportunities. But if I close my eyes, I can almost imagine a reality where the blockchain tech is useful and widespread.
  • superboum 7y ago
    IMHO this choice of word is not neutral. Facebook is not the cool thing anymore, it faces many contestations. Assimilating its adversaries vocabulary after rendering it meaningless can be a way to fight them, to prevent any change. Non-expert will be a bit more lost because the same words will now mean two different things. Now, we will have to explain the difference between Fediverse decentralized and Facebook decentralized for example. Until they ""steal"" another word :P
• surround 7y ago
  Decentralized opportunity... centralized on Facebook’s apps?
• JDiculous 7y ago
  Mark seems to be embracing remote work here citing how it can help alleviate skyrocketing housing costs, yet Facebook doesn't hire remote workers. He's in a position to start an industry trend here by putting his money where his mouth is, but instead we just get this blog post. Certainly better than nothing though, just like him previpusly bringing up universal basic income. Would be nice to see him again put his money where his mouth in and support Andrew Yang. He's rich enough to do whatever he wants and actually change reality.
  • chillacy 7y ago
    Zuckerberg said he supported UBI because he recognized that he was only able to start a business because he grew up well-off enough to know that he wouldn't starve if the business failed. But... I always like to think of the Taleb quote: "Don't tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio" So, still waiting (unlike Elon Musk and Sam Altman who have both come out in support of Yang right now)
• nikolay 7y ago
  I think Zuck is too full of himself. People often get confused that their success means that they are wise, and that we should listen to them. Should we as well follow the thought leadership of drug cartels and the Saudi monarchs?
  • bitexploder 7y ago
    I did have a hard time taking any of what he wrote seriously. It was not thought provoking for me and I felt it wasn’t deep or interesting. It’s interesting in the sense that it is useful to know where FB may be headed, but when I think of Facebook all I see is another advertising company looking for more ways to put ads in front of captive eyeballs.
    • nikolay 7y ago
      One thing I can't understand is why Facebook is still around. But, at the same time, Twitter is still around, too. I guess people got tired switching platforms.
      • atdt 7y ago
        The vast majority of users have never known other platforms.
      • paganel 7y ago
        Because they also purchased IG and WhatsApp and because their messaging app is reasonably successful (in parts because they didn’t add groups to IG messaging, otherwise younger folks would have been even more eager to leave FB). As far as I can tell the main FB app/website has been pretty much deserted by younger people.
      • AndrewDucker 7y ago
        If I want to communicate with a bunch of my friends, going back 30 years, it's where I have to go. I could, I guess, go back to running mailing lists or manual methods of keeping track of contact details and sending things directly to people. But short of that there's no easier way for me to keep up with friends who are distributed around the planet.
• dannyw 7y ago
  What sort of censorship is going on in the comments? If you look at the Twitter responses to any famous person's comment, you can see how polarising it tends to be. Everyone there is kissing Zuckerberg's ass, for the lack of a better expression (sorry). What's going on there?
  • sverhagen 7y ago
    You have to be on Facebook to respond? Selection bias?
  • jcims 7y ago
    That was the first thing I noticed, very creepy. What would Facebook minions be called?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• sibeliuss 7y ago
  tyrant
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• mlang23 7y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmXACRrzLMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmXACRrzLMA (Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye...)
• ddmma 7y ago
  As your mind will become another peripheral to cloud systems, I think in the next decade, is more important to regain yourself from the social media fake virtualizations and balance with true life experiences.
• fergie 7y ago
  Funny the way that he included "Decentralizing Opportunity", and then followed up by envisioning a scarily centralized future for e-commerce. Thats a shame because a re-decentralization of the web is one of the things that really should happen. True decentralization will happen when anybody can host a functional website on their mobile phone(s) without depending upon the services of a corporate behemoth.
  • davidy123 7y ago
    This. There are real initiatives to support actual decentralization, not "decentralization" that means using any service, as long as Facebook owns it.
    • ravenstine 7y ago
      Decentralization is just taking the place that blockchain took for a while before too many people lost faith in it.
      • davidy123 7y ago
        Decentralization as a general idea predates blockchain. VRM/personal data lockers, for example.
• archivist1 7y ago
  so... Facebook wants to acquire Stripe.
  • malydok 7y ago
    I thought he meant Libra.
• kick 7y ago
  No one in this thread has pointed out that Zuckerberg states that he is literally planning to bring how WeChat works in China (one marketplace for literally everything, sent through conventional apps and all fielded by a single company) to the entire world with Facebook. That ambition is impressive, amazing, and terrifying, and everyone is completely ignoring it. The 2020s are going to be interesting.
• jeromebaek 7y ago
  Wow! I’m impressed. He sounds like an adult now. He actually has nuanced opinions. What a world we live in.
• sjg007 7y ago
  My take: >A New Private Social Platform Marc doesn't know what it will be but wants to buy it. He knows that it is a thing.. Well we all do and have been trying to figure it out. Path was one attempt... maybe it was too early. > Decentralizing Opportunity Marc could already allow easy "buy it now" buttons in Facebook but doesn't for some reason... >New Forms of Governance This is the wrong question. He should be pushing democratic ideals world wide.
• bitxbit 7y ago
  It read like something an advanced AI would write in the not too distant future.
• unnouinceput 7y ago
  Another one who doesn't know how calendar works. There is no year zero Marky darling
• neiman 7y ago
  It scares me when he talks about "Decentralizing Opportunity"...
• ptah 7y ago
  so he's focusing on low hanging fruit for 10 years. i take it this is his retirement announcement? if not, why not focus on real challenges like climate change
• sytelus 7y ago
  So AI didn't make it to Zuck's 5 most important things for the next decade (but small businesses and VR did)! Huh?
  • Auslaender 7y ago
    I'm more worried that he didn't even mention the word "privacy".
• ykevinator 7y ago
  Why does he think he's a thought leader?
• arminiusreturns 7y ago
  Ignoring his ramblings, but saying what I think will be important: Control. The problem with technological advances today aren't with the tech itself, it's that the burst of consumer users allowed people like apple to turn computing into a user prison where the user has no control. This then set a standard, and many people have grown up without ever using a free and open source piece of software. So AR and VR and AI and virtual assistants etc, the main problem is always going to go back to the root of why RMS started GNU in the first place; because he saw the future of tech was a fight for control of the user. He was just a man ahead of his time and socially awkward enough that it was and is easy to dismiss him based on what are essentially ad hominem attacks. The future I want is FOSS/FOSH, regardless of the tech!
  • saq7 7y ago
    The dream of open source isn't any closer to being realized than it has ever been. Open source enthusiasts tend to overlook the fact that most people don't want control. Control is difficult to handle and requires a lot more energy and effort than ceding the control to another entity. This isn't strictly a terrible thing. Anyone who has chosen to share their life with a partner gets that it is a lot easier if you divide up control of different aspects of your life among each other. The problem is - as a society in general, and as tech consumers in particular, who should we cede the control to and how should the controllers be held accountable? These are the same problems societies have faced for millennia, and now that newly emerging tech can operate at the scale of society in a couple of years, it is unreasonable to expect that billions of people adopt the libertarian mindset when it comes to tech alone.
    • mikelyons 7y ago
      So then the greater holy war is to make control easier and more friendly so that more people desire it.
• thehoomanist 7y ago
  Zuckerberg’s letter for 2020: “Democratically elected governments are okay—for now. You know what’s even better to decide what you can or can’t say? Our private, non-elected board”.
• greenie_beans 7y ago
  WOOF!
• sunstone 7y ago
  So, The Road Ahead redux.
• tenebrisalietum 7y ago
  I feel like Mark is speaking in code here. Generational change: Boomers and political reposts are making younger, more desirable demographics not want to use my platform. A New Private Social Platform: Making everyone in the world talk in the same space is damaging user engagement Decentralizing Opportunity: Selling stuff and moving money on Facebook. Mark wants to be a bank. The Next Computing Platform: Mark wants to be your next remote access client for your job. New Forms of Governance: How much do I pay and to who for regulatory capture so competitors can't arise?
• kangnkodos 7y ago
  Facebook buys Oculus. Zuckerberg predicts that VR will be the next big thing in the 20's. Shocking.
• titzer 7y ago
  Hi Mark, In the next decade I don't want to give you any money and I don't want you to know anything about me. Also my friends, family, likes, dislikes, my appearance, what my voice sounds like, or what I'm susceptible to buying. You have no right to this data and I want you to stop trying to get it. Kind of like what was absolutely normal in the 1990s or earlier, where it would have been impossible to know such things without literally following people around 24/7--you know, the kind of stalker behavior that would end up with me getting a restraining order against you. Kind of like before your insatiable and frightening lust to know everything about people drove you to build a surveillance panopticon designed for one purpose: to make you and your ilk some of the richest people in the world. Please stop trying to sell access to my eyeballs.
• Jaruzel 7y ago
  Got Facebook blocked, or simply don't want to visit it directly? I run a FB proxy for public posts: https://nofb.pw/?p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F4%2Fposts%2F10111311886191191%2F https://nofb.pw/?p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F4%2Fpost...
• zarathuthra 7y ago
  Remember that time Zuck had a barbeque alone and livestreamed it on facebook? that was really weird.
• zarathuthra 7y ago
  Remember when Zuck had a barbecue alone and live streamed it on facebook?
• steve76 7y ago
  Do you: * Lobby on ULW while freezing users' funds? * Provide context and intent of the vulnerable to the worlds worst? * Demand free market reform after turning the job interview into an Olympic event? * Ban bossy at home only to turn people into chattel? * Bully away private wealth while being caught on Jeffry Epstein's private jet? Do you wake up each morning longing for simpler times, when each day was better than the one before, all because you gave everything away to be ... ... ... ... ... ... rich and famous? Maybe Larry Summers was right! Ronald Reagan couldn't have both low taxes and big military spending! (chuckle ... ... ... and I thought !I! was bad !!! !!! !!!) That is, without the modern advancements in orbital instrumentation and the imagining of gravitational singularities! Pace make the heart! * Pinpoint cancer treatments by pace making the heart! * Bring circulation to the deep recesses of mortified neurological tissue by pace making the heart! Prettier smaller slider cards, gearboxes, telegraphs, visual cues, and or gatekeepers to sacred logistic routes likely dating to prehistory have exhausted the world's patience. If you're good enough, invasive therapies are not required. Leave people alone! An honest effort is owed to your * friends and family * allies who made the sacrifice * and our pristine ancestors before they are lost for good. Really go after it, show the world what technology can do when provided free reign to "run it off the rails" if need be. Simply go to the absolutely worst place of your life, your life not anyone else's, and do not leave, do not do anything else, until it's no longer the worst part of your life. Then go to the next worst place, and repeat. Do it long enough, and I can finally go public with all the stuff I'm doing currently held back by all that pesky morality, let alone all the stuff I've already done, such as that low frequency circadian beam I shot which envelopes the Earth, vaccinating humanity against some bad epidemics. REAL BAD. What you see as the complexities of electromagnetic, turns out, are just targeted acoustics. Quasi particles. Stokes Theorem. It's all in the boundary layer. The Camden Healthcare Hotspotting Project just proved the best way to keep from wearing down that treadmill kill switch is to take long pleasant walks among plentiful pastures. There is no better reality to augment than what you will unavoidably turn into. There is no better governance than the sun and stars. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha -TTFN!
• steve76 7y ago
  Do you: * Lobby on ULW while freezing users' funds? * Provide context and intent of the vulnerable to the worlds worst? * Demand free market reform after turning the job interview into an Olympic event? * Ban bossy at home only to turn people into chattel? * Bully away private wealth while being caught on Jeffry Epstein's private jet? Do you wake up each morning longing for simpler times, when each day was better than the one before, all because you gave everything away to be ... ... ... ... ... ... rich and famous? Maybe Larry Summers was right! Ronald Reagan couldn't have both low taxes and big military spending! (chuckle ... ... ... and I thought !I! was bad !!! !!! !!!) That is, without the modern advancements in orbital instrumentation and the imagining of gravitational singularities! Pace make the heart! * Pinpoint cancer treatments by pace making the heart! * Bring circulation to the deep recesses of mortified neurological tissue by pace making the heart! Prettier smaller slider cards, gearboxes, telegraphs, visual cues, and or gatekeepers to sacred logistic routes likely dating to prehistory have exhausted the world's patience. If you're good enough, invasive therapies are not required. Leave people alone! An honest effort is owed to your * friends and family * allies who made the sacrifice * and our pristine ancestors before they are lost for good. Really go after it, show the world what technology can do when provided free reign to "run it off the rails" if need be. Simply go to the absolutely worst place of your life, your life not anyone else's, and do not leave, do not do anything else, until it's no longer the worst part of your life. Then go to the next worst place, and repeat. Do it long enough, and I can finally go public with all the stuff I'm doing currently held back by all that pesky morality, let alone all the stuff I've already done, such as that low frequency circadian beam I shot which envelopes the Earth, vaccinating humanity against some bad epidemics. REAL BAD. What you see as the complexities of electromagnetic, turns out, are just targeted acoustics. Quasi particles. Stokes Theorem. It's all in the boundary layer. The Camden Healthcare Hotspotting Project just proved the best way to keep from wearing down that treadmill kill switch is to take long pleasant walks among plentiful pastures. There is no better reality to augment than what you will unavoidably turn into. There is no better governance than the sun and stars.
• mgh2 7y ago
  I wish I could downvote this self-promoting post