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Duckduckgo is a competitor to Google. Its based on Yandex and Bing, two other competitors to Google. Noone needs Facebook, it serves no valid purpose for the

Duckduckgo is a competitor to Google. Its based on Yandex and Bing, two other competitors to Google. Noone needs Facebook, it serves no valid purpose for the human race. Same with Twitter. We don't need them, and we don't need competition for them. They should go away with no replacement. Source: was Facebook engineer. Listened to Fuckerberg make one too many all-hands speeches about engagement. Resigned several years ago.

quietbritishjim 6y ago
The practical reality is that sharing photos of some group event with the other people at that event is easy in Facebook, and hard to imagine how to do that without some analogous service. I'm aware that many people use Facebook for other odd things but this was Facebook's original use case, and the literal source of its name, and it is still useful for that. Even if you could come up with some alternative or even decentralised way of doing that, this doesn't change the fact that you're addressing the purpose of Facebook, rather than proving your claim that "it serves no purpose". At university (pre-Facebook) I had a friend who ran a Facebook-like server for sharing photos amongst our group of friends. That need was already there and strong enough he wrote code for it.
- sep_field 6y ago
  Facebook runs a huge amount of different services. Some of them have value, but they are ones that people had and have other alternatives for. This doesn't mean that Facebook as a whole has value, as the whole is more evil than the sum of its parts. Anything of value will not be lost as we de-Facebook the planet. Also, the original use case of Facebook was for Mark and his buddies to rate the attractiveness of their female classmates and share inside information on them. Despicable.
  - reimertz 6y ago
    Would yoy be interested in doing an AMA? Seems like you have a lot to say and I'd be down to listen.
    - sep_field 6y ago
      I'm not really wanting to accumulate a fanbase that's interested in my opinions just because I have them, and I doubt I have anything worthwhile to say about just any random question. I add my contributions where I think I have something worthwhile to say -- if others appreciate my contribution as well that's a win-win. Thanks for your interest, its flattering, but I don't see an AMA working out.
      - nodesocket 6y ago
        In this post, you also commented (but deleted now): > Fuck small businesses. Fuck big businesses too. Death to capitalism. Perhaps you’d enjoy Venezuela. As a small business owner myself I don’t take too kindly to this comment, but would like to offer some advice. Maybe go out and start a business or cause your passionate about and that interests you. This anti-capitalism / business attitude negativity is toxic for you. I’ve traveled pretty decently all over the world and yet to find a country that provides the opportunity of the US. You can literally do most anything you want, and it sounds like you being a previous FB employee you are super smart and probably not desperate for income in the short term.
        sep_field 6y ago
        I deleted it because it was overly emotive and didn't constructively add to the conversation. It being deleted, you were welcome to have ignored it. Since you didn't, however, you should know that your advice is pointless. Everything you've achieved will be lost. All your loved ones will die, along with your enemies. All the same is true for me.
  - quietbritishjim 6y ago
    Ah, I think I see... you're saying that Facebook is an overall net negative to society. Even you now acknowledge that it has some uses, but you consider them to be outweighted by its negatives. Your original comment made out that Facebook has no uses at all. I think you were just trying to really emphasise your point that it's a net benefit overall, but you've ended up saying something totally different. I know that sounds pedantic but it undermines your point because most people will read its literal meaning (like I did) and then just think, oh, this comment is factually incorrect.
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    Hardline stances like this just lose people. C’mon, _no_ benefit whatsoever? I quit fb around 2015 or so and it bit me when dealing with groups/events and social exchanges. Meetup wasn’t as big and it’s still not as good as fb since less people use it. Fb marketplace is more useful for me than craiglist usually, but both are good to check.
- jtdev 6y ago
  Why not just use iOS Messages or whatever Android app Google has anointed for the next 15 minutes for messaging?
- hrbf 6y ago
  What I’ve always wondered is what the issue is with using essentially any gallery service (or even a cloud drive with semi-public links for this) and just send that link to those people via their email address. Why would I need to use a service like Facebook for that? Additionally, I’ve never grasped what those Facebook features supposedly used for private communication elevate them over simple email use in general. I’ve found them more cumbersome to deal with than email, to be honest.
harryf 6y ago
> Duckduckgo is a competitor to Google. Its based on Yandex and Bing, two other competitors to Google. Interesting. Can you elaborate? Like is DuckDuckGo using some of Yandex’s open source? Or the Bing search API?
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  This is their writeup on it, I think they get some kind of permission based on serving their ads but I'm not positive. https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources
- Kuinox 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview
bko 6y ago
> Noone needs Facebook, it serves no valid purpose for the human race Billions of people find value in facebook and use it daily. Who are you to make that call?
- justinclift 6y ago
  Just because other people don't agree with that call, doesn't mean he's not allowed to have an opinion.
  - sep_field 6y ago
    I appreciate your support in this discussion, but please don't assume my gender. My pronouns are they/them. Thank you!
    - justinclift 6y ago
      So, "... doesn't mean they're not allowed to have an opinion"?
      - sep_field 6y ago
        yes, that is awesome! thank you!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- sep_field 6y ago
  They'll be able to find value in nonmonopolized and nonalgorithmic versions of the services that Facebook has gobbled up, just like they did before Facebook existed. I'm not making that call, I'm making a prediction and hoping it comes true, and contributing to a discussion that may possibly, in some small way, contribute to it coming true. If you look around this thread, you'll notice some other people that seem to be aligned to this. I'm not the first to point these things out, and I won't be the last. As a former Facebook employee, I have a responsibility to speak up.
nradov 6y ago
I don't need Facebook but it sure is the best way to share my underwater photographs with friends. Nothing else provides the same usability, reach, or ability to engage with other users.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  Well, there is Instagram... also owned by Facebook :-) I do agree that there isn’t a alternative for fb groups. And marketplace is better than Craigslist in my area.

quietbritishjim 6y ago

The practical reality is that sharing photos of some group event with the other people at that event is easy in Facebook, and hard to imagine how to do that without some analogous service. I'm aware that many people use Facebook for other odd things but this was Facebook's original use case, and the literal source of its name, and it is still useful for that. Even if you could come up with some alternative or even decentralised way of doing that, this doesn't change the fact that you're addressing the purpose of Facebook, rather than proving your claim that "it serves no purpose". At university (pre-Facebook) I had a friend who ran a Facebook-like server for sharing photos amongst our group of friends. That need was already there and strong enough he wrote code for it.

sep_field 6y ago
Facebook runs a huge amount of different services. Some of them have value, but they are ones that people had and have other alternatives for. This doesn't mean that Facebook as a whole has value, as the whole is more evil than the sum of its parts. Anything of value will not be lost as we de-Facebook the planet. Also, the original use case of Facebook was for Mark and his buddies to rate the attractiveness of their female classmates and share inside information on them. Despicable.
- reimertz 6y ago
  Would yoy be interested in doing an AMA? Seems like you have a lot to say and I'd be down to listen.
  - sep_field 6y ago
    I'm not really wanting to accumulate a fanbase that's interested in my opinions just because I have them, and I doubt I have anything worthwhile to say about just any random question. I add my contributions where I think I have something worthwhile to say -- if others appreciate my contribution as well that's a win-win. Thanks for your interest, its flattering, but I don't see an AMA working out.
    - nodesocket 6y ago
      In this post, you also commented (but deleted now): > Fuck small businesses. Fuck big businesses too. Death to capitalism. Perhaps you’d enjoy Venezuela. As a small business owner myself I don’t take too kindly to this comment, but would like to offer some advice. Maybe go out and start a business or cause your passionate about and that interests you. This anti-capitalism / business attitude negativity is toxic for you. I’ve traveled pretty decently all over the world and yet to find a country that provides the opportunity of the US. You can literally do most anything you want, and it sounds like you being a previous FB employee you are super smart and probably not desperate for income in the short term.
      - sep_field 6y ago
        I deleted it because it was overly emotive and didn't constructively add to the conversation. It being deleted, you were welcome to have ignored it. Since you didn't, however, you should know that your advice is pointless. Everything you've achieved will be lost. All your loved ones will die, along with your enemies. All the same is true for me.
- quietbritishjim 6y ago
  Ah, I think I see... you're saying that Facebook is an overall net negative to society. Even you now acknowledge that it has some uses, but you consider them to be outweighted by its negatives. Your original comment made out that Facebook has no uses at all. I think you were just trying to really emphasise your point that it's a net benefit overall, but you've ended up saying something totally different. I know that sounds pedantic but it undermines your point because most people will read its literal meaning (like I did) and then just think, oh, this comment is factually incorrect.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  Hardline stances like this just lose people. C’mon, _no_ benefit whatsoever? I quit fb around 2015 or so and it bit me when dealing with groups/events and social exchanges. Meetup wasn’t as big and it’s still not as good as fb since less people use it. Fb marketplace is more useful for me than craiglist usually, but both are good to check.
jtdev 6y ago
Why not just use iOS Messages or whatever Android app Google has anointed for the next 15 minutes for messaging?
hrbf 6y ago
What I’ve always wondered is what the issue is with using essentially any gallery service (or even a cloud drive with semi-public links for this) and just send that link to those people via their email address. Why would I need to use a service like Facebook for that? Additionally, I’ve never grasped what those Facebook features supposedly used for private communication elevate them over simple email use in general. I’ve found them more cumbersome to deal with than email, to be honest.

harryf 6y ago

> Duckduckgo is a competitor to Google. Its based on Yandex and Bing, two other competitors to Google. Interesting. Can you elaborate? Like is DuckDuckGo using some of Yandex’s open source? Or the Bing search API?

boomboomsubban 6y ago
This is their writeup on it, I think they get some kind of permission based on serving their ads but I'm not positive. https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources
Kuinox 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview

bko 6y ago

> Noone needs Facebook, it serves no valid purpose for the human race Billions of people find value in facebook and use it daily. Who are you to make that call?

justinclift 6y ago
Just because other people don't agree with that call, doesn't mean he's not allowed to have an opinion.
- sep_field 6y ago
  I appreciate your support in this discussion, but please don't assume my gender. My pronouns are they/them. Thank you!
  - justinclift 6y ago
    So, "... doesn't mean they're not allowed to have an opinion"?
    - sep_field 6y ago
      yes, that is awesome! thank you!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sep_field 6y ago
They'll be able to find value in nonmonopolized and nonalgorithmic versions of the services that Facebook has gobbled up, just like they did before Facebook existed. I'm not making that call, I'm making a prediction and hoping it comes true, and contributing to a discussion that may possibly, in some small way, contribute to it coming true. If you look around this thread, you'll notice some other people that seem to be aligned to this. I'm not the first to point these things out, and I won't be the last. As a former Facebook employee, I have a responsibility to speak up.

nradov 6y ago

I don't need Facebook but it sure is the best way to share my underwater photographs with friends. Nothing else provides the same usability, reach, or ability to engage with other users.

andrewzah 6y ago
Well, there is Instagram... also owned by Facebook :-) I do agree that there isn’t a alternative for fb groups. And marketplace is better than Craigslist in my area.