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Facebook is scared, and they should be. For years it has been painfully clear that facebook has been a net negative for society. Bring back the days of being

Facebook is scared, and they should be. For years it has been painfully clear that facebook has been a net negative for society. Bring back the days of being able to trust your device and services you use without have to skim through TOS and hope they didn't throw a Facebook auth sdk in somewhere.

Threeve303 6y ago
> Bring back the days of being able to trust your device and services you use Did that time ever really exist?
- Bancakes 6y ago
  I think loading alternate DOS-compatible OS's was about the last mark of that era.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    PalmOS was pretty secure in that regard IIRC.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Before the whole "attention economy" bullshit happened you could reasonably trust software from a known, popular company not to be malicious (back then the creepy tracking behavior was considered "spyware" and would immediately get flagged by any anti-malware software, ruin the publisher's reputation and potentially put them in legal trouble). Nowadays, most software out there comes with some kind of spyware (Facebook SDK, extremely granular analytics sometimes going as far as screen recording, etc) and nobody seems to care.
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    So before the internet — before "snitching".
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      When do you think the internet was invented, in the 00s?
- diveanon 6y ago
  Yes, for decades in fact. What the web has become since the rise of weaponized ad-tech is a tragedy.
amelius 6y ago
> Facebook is scared, and they should be. On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, I don't think it's a healthy situation if companies need to own the entire hardware platform to be safe from another company's whims.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  > On the other hand, I don't think it's a healthy situation if companies need to own the entire hardware platform to be safe from another company's whims. Maybe we (as humans) shouldn't have tried to over-optimize everything and squeeze every bit of whatever we wanted out from something.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    (Austin Powers voice) Yay capitalism! Edit: Have people not seen Austin Powers? Do I need to add the /s?
    - phs318u 6y ago
      I think of HN as Slashdot of old, filtering out any comments less than +4, and minus the “humour” tag. So, no, /s won’t cut it I’m afraid.
      - bayindirh 6y ago
        As a reader of the old slashdot and a non-native speaker, the progress of score on my comments give me mixed emotions. It first gets a small bump, then hit in the head to -1/-2, making me question my thinking, ideas and my English skills for conveying them. Then, after a random time, it gets back to 0 and gets a small or a big bump depending on support, converting my comment to a small battleground which is kinda amusing. :D
- myspy 6y ago
  This could also happen politically when governments make it a requirement. Facebook has the luck that not many in power understand what problems they cause and how they should be fighted.
conradev 6y ago
Is it really a net negative? There are _plenty_ of things wrong with Facebook but I still wouldn’t consider it net negative for society. Facebook has done a lot to connect people that we don’t read about in news articles.
- jb1991 6y ago
  Plenty of other ways to use tech to connect people without such intrusions into security and privacy.
  - conradev 6y ago
    There definitely are, and I didn’t argue that Facebook was the only way – just that it has done more good for the world than bad. There are indeed plenty of other ways to connect people without intrusions into privacy, and hopefully Facebook will be forced into those corners (chat apps broken up, content-based advertising instead, offering a subscription, etc.) People seem to think that the whole thing is rotten and we need to get rid of it, and it’s a great first instinct – but frankly Facebook is here to stay. We need to figure out how we can make that more sustainable.
    - randomsearch 6y ago
      Don’t want to labour this, but undermining democratic societies is such a negative it’s pretty hard to see any app balancing that one out. And that’s just a single example.
      - JKCalhoun 6y ago
        Agree: cool that grandma got to connect with the grandkids. Undermining a democracy though? I think net-negative still stands. I deleted FB years ago.
    - vanilla_nut 6y ago
      I've seen Facebook's algorithmic feeds radicalize an entire side of my family over the past 10 years because they've been allowed to bury themselves in a radical-right leaning feed of Fox, OANN, and online conspiracy theorists. There's nobody moderate left to help normalize their beliefs, so they keep drifting further and further right based on what Tucker Carlson tells them. I have a very hard time socializing that that half of my family any more because they bring up politics constantly and their beliefs on race, healthcare, etc. are frankly embarrassing to be associated with. And I say this as somebody who is overall very moderate and willing to engage with both left and right-leaning beliefs. Facebook made half of my family unbearable to deal with. I don't think that's a unique situation by any means. So I'd say that they're an awful awful cancer on society that needs to die.
giancarlostoro 6y ago
> Bring back the days of being able to trust your device and services you use without have to skim through TOS and hope they didn't throw a Facebook auth sdk in somewhere. Agreed. If you make money from invading my privacy I hope you go bankrupt when your ability to spy is stripped from you.
jariel 6y ago
"For years it has been painfully clear that facebook has been a net negative for society." This is just hyperbolic and probably not true. Why do we, ostensibly smart people, so susceptible to such dramatic thinking? Zillions of people use FB every day to read about stuff, connect, organize things. Some of it is a little heated, some of it misinformation, it's a problem. But these bandwagon statements are just too much.
- kordlessagain 6y ago
  > Zillions of people use FB every day to read about stuff, connect, organize things. This is literally a bandwagon bias argument.
- diveanon 6y ago
  Have you just not been paying attention the last 4 years or just being willfully ignorant. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you aren't living in the US and haven't logged into facebook during the recent election year.
  - jariel 6y ago
    Are you able to step out of your campus/post-campus bubble, or just 'wilfully ignorant'? I use FB when required for family events, and for niche advertising. The vast majority of my family and peers use it, for a variety of reasons, almost none of which is toxic or insidious. Facebook is a reflection of the the internet itself: you have your ice cream blogs, videos about cats, your CNNs, Foxs and the occasional Newsmax turds, very angry social justice types, weddings, funerals, sales, new toys, new interiors, babies, graduations etc. etc. That's life. I was wary of Facebook right form the start, with Millenials foolishly handing over every little bit of their personal lives thinking 'this was the future' ... but also wary of Facebook now, largely for the same reasons, though the evolution was always a little bit obvious if you think about it. People were way too upbeat about it then and way to downbeat about it now. Realize what a narrative and try to get off of it. Facebook was always gossip, prone to bits of otherwise tawdry trash, but otherwise normal for any given era.

Threeve303 6y ago

> Bring back the days of being able to trust your device and services you use Did that time ever really exist?

Bancakes 6y ago
I think loading alternate DOS-compatible OS's was about the last mark of that era.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  PalmOS was pretty secure in that regard IIRC.
Nextgrid 6y ago
Before the whole "attention economy" bullshit happened you could reasonably trust software from a known, popular company not to be malicious (back then the creepy tracking behavior was considered "spyware" and would immediately get flagged by any anti-malware software, ruin the publisher's reputation and potentially put them in legal trouble). Nowadays, most software out there comes with some kind of spyware (Facebook SDK, extremely granular analytics sometimes going as far as screen recording, etc) and nobody seems to care.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  So before the internet — before "snitching".
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    When do you think the internet was invented, in the 00s?
diveanon 6y ago
Yes, for decades in fact. What the web has become since the rise of weaponized ad-tech is a tragedy.

amelius 6y ago

> Facebook is scared, and they should be. On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, I don't think it's a healthy situation if companies need to own the entire hardware platform to be safe from another company's whims.

bayindirh 6y ago
> On the other hand, I don't think it's a healthy situation if companies need to own the entire hardware platform to be safe from another company's whims. Maybe we (as humans) shouldn't have tried to over-optimize everything and squeeze every bit of whatever we wanted out from something.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  (Austin Powers voice) Yay capitalism! Edit: Have people not seen Austin Powers? Do I need to add the /s?
  - phs318u 6y ago
    I think of HN as Slashdot of old, filtering out any comments less than +4, and minus the “humour” tag. So, no, /s won’t cut it I’m afraid.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      As a reader of the old slashdot and a non-native speaker, the progress of score on my comments give me mixed emotions. It first gets a small bump, then hit in the head to -1/-2, making me question my thinking, ideas and my English skills for conveying them. Then, after a random time, it gets back to 0 and gets a small or a big bump depending on support, converting my comment to a small battleground which is kinda amusing. :D
myspy 6y ago
This could also happen politically when governments make it a requirement. Facebook has the luck that not many in power understand what problems they cause and how they should be fighted.

conradev 6y ago

Is it really a net negative? There are _plenty_ of things wrong with Facebook but I still wouldn’t consider it net negative for society. Facebook has done a lot to connect people that we don’t read about in news articles.

jb1991 6y ago
Plenty of other ways to use tech to connect people without such intrusions into security and privacy.
- conradev 6y ago
  There definitely are, and I didn’t argue that Facebook was the only way – just that it has done more good for the world than bad. There are indeed plenty of other ways to connect people without intrusions into privacy, and hopefully Facebook will be forced into those corners (chat apps broken up, content-based advertising instead, offering a subscription, etc.) People seem to think that the whole thing is rotten and we need to get rid of it, and it’s a great first instinct – but frankly Facebook is here to stay. We need to figure out how we can make that more sustainable.
  - randomsearch 6y ago
    Don’t want to labour this, but undermining democratic societies is such a negative it’s pretty hard to see any app balancing that one out. And that’s just a single example.
    - JKCalhoun 6y ago
      Agree: cool that grandma got to connect with the grandkids. Undermining a democracy though? I think net-negative still stands. I deleted FB years ago.
  - vanilla_nut 6y ago
    I've seen Facebook's algorithmic feeds radicalize an entire side of my family over the past 10 years because they've been allowed to bury themselves in a radical-right leaning feed of Fox, OANN, and online conspiracy theorists. There's nobody moderate left to help normalize their beliefs, so they keep drifting further and further right based on what Tucker Carlson tells them. I have a very hard time socializing that that half of my family any more because they bring up politics constantly and their beliefs on race, healthcare, etc. are frankly embarrassing to be associated with. And I say this as somebody who is overall very moderate and willing to engage with both left and right-leaning beliefs. Facebook made half of my family unbearable to deal with. I don't think that's a unique situation by any means. So I'd say that they're an awful awful cancer on society that needs to die.

giancarlostoro 6y ago

> Bring back the days of being able to trust your device and services you use without have to skim through TOS and hope they didn't throw a Facebook auth sdk in somewhere. Agreed. If you make money from invading my privacy I hope you go bankrupt when your ability to spy is stripped from you.

jariel 6y ago

"For years it has been painfully clear that facebook has been a net negative for society." This is just hyperbolic and probably not true. Why do we, ostensibly smart people, so susceptible to such dramatic thinking? Zillions of people use FB every day to read about stuff, connect, organize things. Some of it is a little heated, some of it misinformation, it's a problem. But these bandwagon statements are just too much.

kordlessagain 6y ago
> Zillions of people use FB every day to read about stuff, connect, organize things. This is literally a bandwagon bias argument.
diveanon 6y ago
Have you just not been paying attention the last 4 years or just being willfully ignorant. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you aren't living in the US and haven't logged into facebook during the recent election year.
- jariel 6y ago
  Are you able to step out of your campus/post-campus bubble, or just 'wilfully ignorant'? I use FB when required for family events, and for niche advertising. The vast majority of my family and peers use it, for a variety of reasons, almost none of which is toxic or insidious. Facebook is a reflection of the the internet itself: you have your ice cream blogs, videos about cats, your CNNs, Foxs and the occasional Newsmax turds, very angry social justice types, weddings, funerals, sales, new toys, new interiors, babies, graduations etc. etc. That's life. I was wary of Facebook right form the start, with Millenials foolishly handing over every little bit of their personal lives thinking 'this was the future' ... but also wary of Facebook now, largely for the same reasons, though the evolution was always a little bit obvious if you think about it. People were way too upbeat about it then and way to downbeat about it now. Realize what a narrative and try to get off of it. Facebook was always gossip, prone to bits of otherwise tawdry trash, but otherwise normal for any given era.