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Treat Facebook like cigarettes, says me. Suggesting they're a near necessary part of life, like a utility, is laughable. But since he brought it up, replacing

Treat Facebook like cigarettes, says me. Suggesting they're a near necessary part of life, like a utility, is laughable. But since he brought it up, replacing them with a proper newspaper would be much more useful.

hi5eyes 7y ago
Facebook serves many important roles especially with the groups feature. I know many reddit/tech headasses will jerk off to the fact they abhor facebook but facebook is integral to many local communities helping facilitate an online flea market of sorts and almost being the most important network for students (used textbooks, study groups, entrepreneurship etc.) dont like it but its much more useful than the local news website
- ginko 7y ago
  Yeah, but I don't see how that's a good thing. Many groups near me have moved exclusively to Facebook meaning I'm essentially locked out from participating in them. Previously stuff like this would have been organized through a mailing list or maybe a BBS. Facebook taking this over means that you have to allow them spying on you to take part in basic social activities.
  - heartbeats 7y ago
    But that is the point. It's a feature, not a bug, to filter out anyone who is not willing to click through a license agreement for the sake of participating in the community. Such an individual is antisocial.
    - type0 7y ago
      Before HIV and AIDS, heroin addicts who didn't fancy the ideas to share a needle were also considered antisocial. Anywho, I'm still waiting for their Lifepoint feature to be implemented https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHefhIId4qY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHefhIId4qY
    - RandomGuyDTB 7y ago
      What? Are you delusional? I rarely ever get this concerned at HN comments, but to say outright that one should be willing to give up any liberties or rights a corporation deems are dangerous, in order to participate in a group that has no inherent need for their products anyway, is beyond nonsensical. This is more than can be called a "social contract"; Facebook is committing social theft by stealing away any local groups into its servers.
      - 0_____0 7y ago
        pretty sure parent comment is tongue-in-cheek
        RandomGuyDTB 7y ago
        Actually, on re-examination I thought I might've been a bit angrier than one should be when commenting on this site, but the poster confirmed they were serious.
      - heartbeats 7y ago
        Well, let's put it this way: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." You can stay away from Facebook and then feel really smug ten years from now when it eventually collapses. But until then, you'd have missed out on a lot of important things. The only winning move is to realize that you do not have a choice, and that the terms of service are just an illusion. For the record, I think Facebook's existence is regrettable. But the notion that you have any ability, choice, freedom, right, or opportunity to opt out from it is laughable. As for the idea of the social contract, I think you are actually spot on: > Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority [...] in exchange for protection of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order. Individuals have: [?] consented explicitly [x] consented tacitly [x] to surrender some of their freedoms [x] to submit to the authority [Facebook] [ ] in exchange for protection of their remaining rights [x] in exchange for maintenance of the social order In fact, it could even be argued that this de-facto state of affair ought to be made de-jure. Certainly, it is the case already today that many of my local government agencies are more active on Twitter or Facebook than they are over phone or e-mail. In fact, they rarely use e-mail for regulatory reasons. If someone is suicidal, has an extreme drinking problem, or holds extremist political beliefs, we consider this a transgression and rightfully lock them up/commit them to involuntary psychiatric care. Why is this not the case for all self-harmful behaviors? Considering many employers etc. already want it, it doesn't seem far-fetched to consider people hermits for refusing to participate, just as we consider an individual defect for not owning a smartphone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY
  - nl 7y ago
    The BBS and mailing list were vulnerable to spying too. I certainly remember the weird signatures people used on their emails to "confuse echelon".
- threeseed 7y ago
  I do love the hypocrisy and lack of self awareness amongst people who criticise Facebook and Instagram on websites like Reddit. Reddit has some of the most toxic communities on the internet bar none e.g. /r/gamersriseup, /r/kotakuinaction.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    I think the main difference is that you have to actively choose to participate in those groups on reddit, but on FB/IG, that kind of content is pushed at you.
    - threeseed 7y ago
      Those users and that toxicity spills out all across Reddit. And not sure how FB/IG would push that content to you unless you were friends with people posting that sort of content.
      - NeutronStar 7y ago
        Reddit's toxicity is a feature, not a bug. If your idea is shit it should be treated as shit.
- tmpz22 7y ago
  It truly is an excellent place to fence stolen goods!
- travisporter 7y ago
  It’s true and sad it’s come to this. Meetup is great but just doesn’t get the attention FB does. I either have to deal with the inconvenience of two accounts or let my local frisbee team look up my info, friends, any posts FB “resets” privacy settings on on, etc.
- hejei00 7y ago
  It’s just software. There dozens of alternatives: Craigslist, next door, targeting all the things you say You’ve fallen for exactly Zuckerbergs real goal: make his printing press the only one that matters. But then his invention isn’t as unique as a physical printing press would have been to a community even just a generation ago. It’s not as hard to duplicate. This is where we ended up with forums like this one jacking itself off at how novel it’s Todo app, and IM clone are. So ubiquitous it’s banal, a single example is barely worth the extreme value placed upon it. This site spent years being mesmerized by the values placed in these companies. It was market manipulation: keep attention on a select few. Government let them become a monopoly of information because they could see the value in distributing their message. Powers that be are always at the cutting edge of information distribution. Not cause they care about tech but propagandizing the public. And the people cheered it on. And since you’re so worried about the local value: imagine the local value to tech workers who are hired to deal with local tech needs instead of it being outsourced to FAANGs which can restrict hiring and manipulate wages as they have. Your post is pure propaganda, mate. You’re regurgitating exactly the talking point they want. Please continue to carry water for the rich man, since he’s so concerned about the local value you highlight... while bailing on taxes that would directly help locals that prop his wealth up by continuing to go to work. Give me a fucking break.
edgefield0 7y ago
Treat it like cancer...
krtong 7y ago
If you're referring to social media platforms when you say "treat them like they're cigarettes" just remember you're smoking a pack right now.
- bonestamp2 7y ago
  If Hacker News is a pack of cigarettes, what is Facebook? I mean, this platform itself isn't tracking me across a major portion of the internet or trying to manipulate me to any significant degree relative to Facebook. Maybe some users are, but at least the platform itself isn't. Like any bad habit, some of worse than others.
  - krtong 7y ago
    Just because an insidious corporation has a tone-deaf marketing ploy to sell a brainwashing machine to wannabe brainwashers like cambridge analytica, that doesn't mean said brainwashing machine actually works. Was the attempt made? Sure, but Facebook's user data is still based on the garbled manic ramblings, likes, and shares of 50-million Facebook users who eschew posting anything of substance or resembling real life. Somehow, SOMEHOW, from that fundamentally flawed dataset Facebook thinks it can learn every user intimately enough to accurately predict how you'll react to content before you do. It then claims to possesses the computational power to analyze the data and project any media directly to its intended audience, never missing the target or accidentally displaying content to wouldbe dissenters who would, in kind, publicly rebuke the fallacies of dank memes and destroy the credibility of disreputable news sources in real-time. Oh wait, that's what happened. We all saw the memes, the Breitbart articles, the Alex Jones videos the same time Trump supporters did. We all made our attempts to rebuke shillary/immigration articles. We all had our Tea Party libertarian cousins subsequently block us. What kind of propaganda machine allows malcontents to sew dissent against major clients of Facebook like Cambridge Analytica? If Facebook intended to show the world that their brainwashing machine worked they failed pretty hard. If you want to build a propaganda machine in this day and age you can't attempt to control what users see, that's why we all left TV behind for the internet. You have to make it seem like the content is coming from other users. What you do is you give your users the power to control what other users see and don't see. On Reddit or HN, content is ranked, and even removed, based on a popularity contest-- or as it's more insidiously known, "mob rule." Then, subreddits and HN can control the direction of the content by simply pruning the mob of any dissenters, which then skews the mob's vote in a particular direction even more. That gives Reddit and HN a needed degree of separation from themselves and the actual content you see, which legitimizes the rankings (and removal) of certain content, while being still completely curated by the website's creators. Or maybe HN and Reddit are better mediums than Facebook for free speech. That's too hard for me to tell. There's no such thing as a flawless system. Simply stating that a social media platform has problems with free speech isn't enough for me to decide if one is good or bad, or better or worse, than anything else. The reality is, even if these websites are all attempted propaganda machines, none of them have been proven to work. We can't even be brainwashed by others. We can only brainwash ourselves. We were never going to win those arguments on Facebook because Trump supporters had already made up their minds long before any memes came along and added some higher-than-usual production value to their racism and xenophobia. We believe in timely and convenient untruths. Conservatives bought the story about hillary because they were in a hurry to discredit hillary, just like progressives bought the story about russian hackers and cambridge analytica because they were in a hurry to discredit trump. There's an even more fundamental flaw to all of this: can I quantify who you are into numbers? Without that I can't even target an audience. How accurate can those numbers possibly be? And if you knew how my tests worked and how I calculated your stats, you'd be able to game the system so your stats read anything you wanted.

hi5eyes 7y ago

Facebook serves many important roles especially with the groups feature. I know many reddit/tech headasses will jerk off to the fact they abhor facebook but facebook is integral to many local communities helping facilitate an online flea market of sorts and almost being the most important network for students (used textbooks, study groups, entrepreneurship etc.) dont like it but its much more useful than the local news website

ginko 7y ago
Yeah, but I don't see how that's a good thing. Many groups near me have moved exclusively to Facebook meaning I'm essentially locked out from participating in them. Previously stuff like this would have been organized through a mailing list or maybe a BBS. Facebook taking this over means that you have to allow them spying on you to take part in basic social activities.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  But that is the point. It's a feature, not a bug, to filter out anyone who is not willing to click through a license agreement for the sake of participating in the community. Such an individual is antisocial.
  - type0 7y ago
    Before HIV and AIDS, heroin addicts who didn't fancy the ideas to share a needle were also considered antisocial. Anywho, I'm still waiting for their Lifepoint feature to be implemented https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHefhIId4qY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHefhIId4qY
  - RandomGuyDTB 7y ago
    What? Are you delusional? I rarely ever get this concerned at HN comments, but to say outright that one should be willing to give up any liberties or rights a corporation deems are dangerous, in order to participate in a group that has no inherent need for their products anyway, is beyond nonsensical. This is more than can be called a "social contract"; Facebook is committing social theft by stealing away any local groups into its servers.
    - 0_____0 7y ago
      pretty sure parent comment is tongue-in-cheek
      - RandomGuyDTB 7y ago
        Actually, on re-examination I thought I might've been a bit angrier than one should be when commenting on this site, but the poster confirmed they were serious.
    - heartbeats 7y ago
      Well, let's put it this way: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." You can stay away from Facebook and then feel really smug ten years from now when it eventually collapses. But until then, you'd have missed out on a lot of important things. The only winning move is to realize that you do not have a choice, and that the terms of service are just an illusion. For the record, I think Facebook's existence is regrettable. But the notion that you have any ability, choice, freedom, right, or opportunity to opt out from it is laughable. As for the idea of the social contract, I think you are actually spot on: > Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority [...] in exchange for protection of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order. Individuals have: [?] consented explicitly [x] consented tacitly [x] to surrender some of their freedoms [x] to submit to the authority [Facebook] [ ] in exchange for protection of their remaining rights [x] in exchange for maintenance of the social order In fact, it could even be argued that this de-facto state of affair ought to be made de-jure. Certainly, it is the case already today that many of my local government agencies are more active on Twitter or Facebook than they are over phone or e-mail. In fact, they rarely use e-mail for regulatory reasons. If someone is suicidal, has an extreme drinking problem, or holds extremist political beliefs, we consider this a transgression and rightfully lock them up/commit them to involuntary psychiatric care. Why is this not the case for all self-harmful behaviors? Considering many employers etc. already want it, it doesn't seem far-fetched to consider people hermits for refusing to participate, just as we consider an individual defect for not owning a smartphone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY
- nl 7y ago
  The BBS and mailing list were vulnerable to spying too. I certainly remember the weird signatures people used on their emails to "confuse echelon".
threeseed 7y ago
I do love the hypocrisy and lack of self awareness amongst people who criticise Facebook and Instagram on websites like Reddit. Reddit has some of the most toxic communities on the internet bar none e.g. /r/gamersriseup, /r/kotakuinaction.
- jedberg 7y ago
  I think the main difference is that you have to actively choose to participate in those groups on reddit, but on FB/IG, that kind of content is pushed at you.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Those users and that toxicity spills out all across Reddit. And not sure how FB/IG would push that content to you unless you were friends with people posting that sort of content.
    - NeutronStar 7y ago
      Reddit's toxicity is a feature, not a bug. If your idea is shit it should be treated as shit.
tmpz22 7y ago
It truly is an excellent place to fence stolen goods!
travisporter 7y ago
It’s true and sad it’s come to this. Meetup is great but just doesn’t get the attention FB does. I either have to deal with the inconvenience of two accounts or let my local frisbee team look up my info, friends, any posts FB “resets” privacy settings on on, etc.
hejei00 7y ago
It’s just software. There dozens of alternatives: Craigslist, next door, targeting all the things you say You’ve fallen for exactly Zuckerbergs real goal: make his printing press the only one that matters. But then his invention isn’t as unique as a physical printing press would have been to a community even just a generation ago. It’s not as hard to duplicate. This is where we ended up with forums like this one jacking itself off at how novel it’s Todo app, and IM clone are. So ubiquitous it’s banal, a single example is barely worth the extreme value placed upon it. This site spent years being mesmerized by the values placed in these companies. It was market manipulation: keep attention on a select few. Government let them become a monopoly of information because they could see the value in distributing their message. Powers that be are always at the cutting edge of information distribution. Not cause they care about tech but propagandizing the public. And the people cheered it on. And since you’re so worried about the local value: imagine the local value to tech workers who are hired to deal with local tech needs instead of it being outsourced to FAANGs which can restrict hiring and manipulate wages as they have. Your post is pure propaganda, mate. You’re regurgitating exactly the talking point they want. Please continue to carry water for the rich man, since he’s so concerned about the local value you highlight... while bailing on taxes that would directly help locals that prop his wealth up by continuing to go to work. Give me a fucking break.

edgefield0 7y ago

Treat it like cancer...

krtong 7y ago

If you're referring to social media platforms when you say "treat them like they're cigarettes" just remember you're smoking a pack right now.

bonestamp2 7y ago
If Hacker News is a pack of cigarettes, what is Facebook? I mean, this platform itself isn't tracking me across a major portion of the internet or trying to manipulate me to any significant degree relative to Facebook. Maybe some users are, but at least the platform itself isn't. Like any bad habit, some of worse than others.
- krtong 7y ago
  Just because an insidious corporation has a tone-deaf marketing ploy to sell a brainwashing machine to wannabe brainwashers like cambridge analytica, that doesn't mean said brainwashing machine actually works. Was the attempt made? Sure, but Facebook's user data is still based on the garbled manic ramblings, likes, and shares of 50-million Facebook users who eschew posting anything of substance or resembling real life. Somehow, SOMEHOW, from that fundamentally flawed dataset Facebook thinks it can learn every user intimately enough to accurately predict how you'll react to content before you do. It then claims to possesses the computational power to analyze the data and project any media directly to its intended audience, never missing the target or accidentally displaying content to wouldbe dissenters who would, in kind, publicly rebuke the fallacies of dank memes and destroy the credibility of disreputable news sources in real-time. Oh wait, that's what happened. We all saw the memes, the Breitbart articles, the Alex Jones videos the same time Trump supporters did. We all made our attempts to rebuke shillary/immigration articles. We all had our Tea Party libertarian cousins subsequently block us. What kind of propaganda machine allows malcontents to sew dissent against major clients of Facebook like Cambridge Analytica? If Facebook intended to show the world that their brainwashing machine worked they failed pretty hard. If you want to build a propaganda machine in this day and age you can't attempt to control what users see, that's why we all left TV behind for the internet. You have to make it seem like the content is coming from other users. What you do is you give your users the power to control what other users see and don't see. On Reddit or HN, content is ranked, and even removed, based on a popularity contest-- or as it's more insidiously known, "mob rule." Then, subreddits and HN can control the direction of the content by simply pruning the mob of any dissenters, which then skews the mob's vote in a particular direction even more. That gives Reddit and HN a needed degree of separation from themselves and the actual content you see, which legitimizes the rankings (and removal) of certain content, while being still completely curated by the website's creators. Or maybe HN and Reddit are better mediums than Facebook for free speech. That's too hard for me to tell. There's no such thing as a flawless system. Simply stating that a social media platform has problems with free speech isn't enough for me to decide if one is good or bad, or better or worse, than anything else. The reality is, even if these websites are all attempted propaganda machines, none of them have been proven to work. We can't even be brainwashed by others. We can only brainwash ourselves. We were never going to win those arguments on Facebook because Trump supporters had already made up their minds long before any memes came along and added some higher-than-usual production value to their racism and xenophobia. We believe in timely and convenient untruths. Conservatives bought the story about hillary because they were in a hurry to discredit hillary, just like progressives bought the story about russian hackers and cambridge analytica because they were in a hurry to discredit trump. There's an even more fundamental flaw to all of this: can I quantify who you are into numbers? Without that I can't even target an audience. How accurate can those numbers possibly be? And if you knew how my tests worked and how I calculated your stats, you'd be able to game the system so your stats read anything you wanted.