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> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zucker

> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zuckerberg are favorite villains in the tech discourse in 2021. I don't agree with everything Facebook has done, but the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality that it's getting hard to take it seriously. > this still does seem like a very well thought-out and aggressive long-term mission that is worthy of being pursued, I agree. Once you get past the anti-Facebook hyperbole, it's interesting to read about where they're headed next. They have a lot of excellent engineers and a lot of revenue, so I'll be keeping an eye on where they invest their R&D spend.

Apocryphon 5y ago
Every community needs a villain, but ask yourself this: whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that it abandoned in 2018? M? Facebook Home? Parse? Wirehog? As seen with Google, just having excellent engineers and revenue are insufficient to building lasting products, much less fulfilling an aggressive long-term mission.
- paconbork 5y ago
  Libra became Novi and is still in active development for what it's worth
  - baby 5y ago
    Libra became Diem* Novi is the team at facebook that works on Diem and the novi wallet.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  >whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that was abandoned in 2018? M? Parse? Wirehog? Agree with your point - to a limit. Some of facebook experiements flopped but not all. Also, unlike Google, fb mostly marketed them as experiements. Replying mostly for sharing purposes since not all of these products' histories are common knowledge. Not to one-up anyone... > Libra Government Blocking. Seemed interesting, especially in a crypto world. Unclear if world needs more crypto projects. Some economists suggested the "basket of currency" approach at scale would just be an arbitrage opportunity for someone to drain the bank-of-facebook. I'm guessing this project existed partially as a vanity project or honeypot for hiring. > Portal? Still sold, still developed (uses alexa and amzn develops alexa-for-portal work still), still used. IMO it was good tech no one trusted (understandably). > Or Building 8 in general IIRC they have build a few internal products for fb and probably a lot of learning that goes into oculus/portal/etc. > M I think this was never GA and only a test trial? Would've been cool but again, because fb it couldn't be trusted. > Parse? Open sourced and available, but obviously mostly unused. FB doesn't really have a b2b sales team for this sort of product so it wasn't sustainable since it was not really invest-more-effort quality. I think it was a huge missed opportunity for fb to enter the data center race against aws/gcs/azure. If fb built a benign cash cow, maybe they'd taper down their scummy social network ambitions. Or at least the value extraction. AWS cash seems to fund cool amzn loss leaders (alexa, etc). I think the same thing applies to wit.ai and other AI products they buy - if they could commercialize them into an "AWS for AI" product suite maybe they'd find a new profit center. They have world class ML work already, so seems a good place to do this. > Wirehog I never heard of this one so i googled it [1]. Apparently it was a legal risk to continue at the time (ha!). Very similar to napster. Makes sense that a startup business (< 2 yo) would kill a controversial product. Ironic now that they seem to be above caring about legal risks. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    > Also, unlike Google, fb mostly marketed them as experiements. Fair enough. Though I'd argue that with these big internet companies, the line between actual product and perpetually in beta experiment is blurred, more often by Google than others. > IMO it was good tech no one trusted (understandably). And as a consequence, the adoption of Portal seems pretty negligible. > I think it was a huge missed opportunity for fb to enter the data center race against aws/gcs/azure. If fb built a benign cash cow, maybe they'd taper down their scummy social network ambitions. Or at least the value extraction. AWS cash seems to fund cool amzn loss leaders (alexa, etc). I think the same thing applies to wit.ai and other AI products they buy - if they could commercialize them into an "AWS for AI" product suite maybe they'd find a new profit center. Very intriguing point that provides useful thought for both a what-if (Facebook didn't kill Parse) and potential future opportunities- if only Facebook cared for them. > Makes sense that a startup business (< 2 yo) would kill a controversial product. Yeah, I just threw it in to get a full category range and historical range of different products killed by Facebook. I also edited in Facebook Home as well to touch upon smartphone software. My main point is that it's all well and good for a corporate behemoth like FB to make the claim that they're getting into a new speculative field, but it's natural to be skeptical given how many of their experiments or (attempts at) products don't stick around. So as exciting as this sounds like, I give it as much credence as, say, IBM saying that Watson is going to revolutionize and transform healthcare through artificial intelligence. It also goes in line with my cousin comment in another subthread about how Facebook's history is littered with retired replications of existing products. I didn't even mention Facebook cloud gaming (Facebook Gaming - admittedly still in progress), video streaming (Facebook Live), Clubhouse (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27580014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27580014), even HQ Trivia (Confetti). So that makes one wonder- does Zuckerberg really care about the metaverse idea, or is he just getting into it because Apple supposedly is?
    - baby 5y ago
      I’m wondering about numbers for portal actually. It’s hard to believe that it didn’t turn a profit during covid. I had one to talk to my parents (who had one too) and it was too small but it was still great to have. If the big version wasn’t so expensive I would have bought it in a heartbeat for me and my oldies.
- ManuelKiessling 5y ago
  You can hide a lot of stupidity and aimlessness in growth.
- baby 5y ago
  Libra and Portal are still things. Not sure I hard about the others.
JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
I wouldn't characterize people as being dishonest when they talk about the societal-scale issues posed by platforms like Facebook. It's tough to separate those emotions from a purely analytical discussion of their technology.
mustacheemperor 5y ago
>the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality It has completely poisoned discussion on a number of virtual reality communities, since Facebook owns Oculus and the Quest 2 is very commercially successful. The /r/virtualreality community has become incredible negative, tribal, and toxic over the last couple years, mostly revolving around conspiratorial speculation about the future of the oculus platform as owned by Facebook. Almost any discussion about any topic is guaranteed to have at least a couple comments somehow relating it back to why Facebook is evil and "destroying VR."
- baby 5y ago
  I find that very sad. Talked to a friend today who really want a Quest but didn’t buy one because facebook. I told him to just create a fake account, but heh. People are scared of cookies nowadays.
salt-thrower 5y ago
Is it hyperbole to say that Facebook helped enable genocide in Myanmar? Or that it has been an incredibly useful tool for political propaganda, more so than traditional media ever was? They have not done anything to meaningfully address the very real issues their platform has, and are forging ahead regardless to become even more ubiquitous. The negativity is very understandable.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >Is it hyperbole to say that Facebook helped enable genocide in Myanmar? I'm not knowledgeable or qualified to judge the facts, but for the sake of discussion, probably not. No more than the thing people always bring up about IBM punch cards and the holocaust. That doesn't make the negativity understandable. I'm not sure what more can be said without triggering an accusation of "whataboutism". To be clear, I think equating any context or comparison of anything with whataboutism is a flagrant misuse of the word, but it does seem to be a popular way to have the last word.
yann2 5y ago
Excellent engineers and revenues that massively dwarf FBs can be found at AT&T too but tell us how much attention you pay to whatever bullshit comes out of their CEOs 6 inch chimp brain.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Though I haven't been a customer of AT&T since the 1990s, I can see they run a large physical infrastructure operation that delivers communications services. I understand where their revenue comes from and what they mostly spend it on (ie I understand that as well as I do FB's business despite having no contact with AT&T). Also, AT&T isn't constantly spamming me with disinformation and bad memes, nor do I have the impression that they're tracking my every move across the internet. While knowing nothing about AT&T's CEO, I'm pretty sure that s/he doesn't sit atop a weird corporate governance structure where the CEO holds a majority of the voting shares and is thus a dictator-for-life.

Apocryphon 5y ago

Every community needs a villain, but ask yourself this: whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that it abandoned in 2018? M? Facebook Home? Parse? Wirehog? As seen with Google, just having excellent engineers and revenue are insufficient to building lasting products, much less fulfilling an aggressive long-term mission.

paconbork 5y ago
Libra became Novi and is still in active development for what it's worth
- baby 5y ago
  Libra became Diem* Novi is the team at facebook that works on Diem and the novi wallet.
vineyardmike 5y ago
>whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that was abandoned in 2018? M? Parse? Wirehog? Agree with your point - to a limit. Some of facebook experiements flopped but not all. Also, unlike Google, fb mostly marketed them as experiements. Replying mostly for sharing purposes since not all of these products' histories are common knowledge. Not to one-up anyone... > Libra Government Blocking. Seemed interesting, especially in a crypto world. Unclear if world needs more crypto projects. Some economists suggested the "basket of currency" approach at scale would just be an arbitrage opportunity for someone to drain the bank-of-facebook. I'm guessing this project existed partially as a vanity project or honeypot for hiring. > Portal? Still sold, still developed (uses alexa and amzn develops alexa-for-portal work still), still used. IMO it was good tech no one trusted (understandably). > Or Building 8 in general IIRC they have build a few internal products for fb and probably a lot of learning that goes into oculus/portal/etc. > M I think this was never GA and only a test trial? Would've been cool but again, because fb it couldn't be trusted. > Parse? Open sourced and available, but obviously mostly unused. FB doesn't really have a b2b sales team for this sort of product so it wasn't sustainable since it was not really invest-more-effort quality. I think it was a huge missed opportunity for fb to enter the data center race against aws/gcs/azure. If fb built a benign cash cow, maybe they'd taper down their scummy social network ambitions. Or at least the value extraction. AWS cash seems to fund cool amzn loss leaders (alexa, etc). I think the same thing applies to wit.ai and other AI products they buy - if they could commercialize them into an "AWS for AI" product suite maybe they'd find a new profit center. They have world class ML work already, so seems a good place to do this. > Wirehog I never heard of this one so i googled it [1]. Apparently it was a legal risk to continue at the time (ha!). Very similar to napster. Makes sense that a startup business (< 2 yo) would kill a controversial product. Ironic now that they seem to be above caring about legal risks. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  > Also, unlike Google, fb mostly marketed them as experiements. Fair enough. Though I'd argue that with these big internet companies, the line between actual product and perpetually in beta experiment is blurred, more often by Google than others. > IMO it was good tech no one trusted (understandably). And as a consequence, the adoption of Portal seems pretty negligible. > I think it was a huge missed opportunity for fb to enter the data center race against aws/gcs/azure. If fb built a benign cash cow, maybe they'd taper down their scummy social network ambitions. Or at least the value extraction. AWS cash seems to fund cool amzn loss leaders (alexa, etc). I think the same thing applies to wit.ai and other AI products they buy - if they could commercialize them into an "AWS for AI" product suite maybe they'd find a new profit center. Very intriguing point that provides useful thought for both a what-if (Facebook didn't kill Parse) and potential future opportunities- if only Facebook cared for them. > Makes sense that a startup business (< 2 yo) would kill a controversial product. Yeah, I just threw it in to get a full category range and historical range of different products killed by Facebook. I also edited in Facebook Home as well to touch upon smartphone software. My main point is that it's all well and good for a corporate behemoth like FB to make the claim that they're getting into a new speculative field, but it's natural to be skeptical given how many of their experiments or (attempts at) products don't stick around. So as exciting as this sounds like, I give it as much credence as, say, IBM saying that Watson is going to revolutionize and transform healthcare through artificial intelligence. It also goes in line with my cousin comment in another subthread about how Facebook's history is littered with retired replications of existing products. I didn't even mention Facebook cloud gaming (Facebook Gaming - admittedly still in progress), video streaming (Facebook Live), Clubhouse (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27580014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27580014), even HQ Trivia (Confetti). So that makes one wonder- does Zuckerberg really care about the metaverse idea, or is he just getting into it because Apple supposedly is?
  - baby 5y ago
    I’m wondering about numbers for portal actually. It’s hard to believe that it didn’t turn a profit during covid. I had one to talk to my parents (who had one too) and it was too small but it was still great to have. If the big version wasn’t so expensive I would have bought it in a heartbeat for me and my oldies.
ManuelKiessling 5y ago
You can hide a lot of stupidity and aimlessness in growth.
baby 5y ago
Libra and Portal are still things. Not sure I hard about the others.

JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago

I wouldn't characterize people as being dishonest when they talk about the societal-scale issues posed by platforms like Facebook. It's tough to separate those emotions from a purely analytical discussion of their technology.

mustacheemperor 5y ago

>the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality It has completely poisoned discussion on a number of virtual reality communities, since Facebook owns Oculus and the Quest 2 is very commercially successful. The /r/virtualreality community has become incredible negative, tribal, and toxic over the last couple years, mostly revolving around conspiratorial speculation about the future of the oculus platform as owned by Facebook. Almost any discussion about any topic is guaranteed to have at least a couple comments somehow relating it back to why Facebook is evil and "destroying VR."

baby 5y ago
I find that very sad. Talked to a friend today who really want a Quest but didn’t buy one because facebook. I told him to just create a fake account, but heh. People are scared of cookies nowadays.

salt-thrower 5y ago

Is it hyperbole to say that Facebook helped enable genocide in Myanmar? Or that it has been an incredibly useful tool for political propaganda, more so than traditional media ever was? They have not done anything to meaningfully address the very real issues their platform has, and are forging ahead regardless to become even more ubiquitous. The negativity is very understandable.

perl4ever 5y ago
>Is it hyperbole to say that Facebook helped enable genocide in Myanmar? I'm not knowledgeable or qualified to judge the facts, but for the sake of discussion, probably not. No more than the thing people always bring up about IBM punch cards and the holocaust. That doesn't make the negativity understandable. I'm not sure what more can be said without triggering an accusation of "whataboutism". To be clear, I think equating any context or comparison of anything with whataboutism is a flagrant misuse of the word, but it does seem to be a popular way to have the last word.

yann2 5y ago

Excellent engineers and revenues that massively dwarf FBs can be found at AT&T too but tell us how much attention you pay to whatever bullshit comes out of their CEOs 6 inch chimp brain.

anigbrowl 5y ago
Though I haven't been a customer of AT&T since the 1990s, I can see they run a large physical infrastructure operation that delivers communications services. I understand where their revenue comes from and what they mostly spend it on (ie I understand that as well as I do FB's business despite having no contact with AT&T). Also, AT&T isn't constantly spamming me with disinformation and bad memes, nor do I have the impression that they're tracking my every move across the internet. While knowing nothing about AT&T's CEO, I'm pretty sure that s/he doesn't sit atop a weird corporate governance structure where the CEO holds a majority of the voting shares and is thus a dictator-for-life.