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> What you don't like is people being able to communicate easily with each other and reach a wide audience. That's what the internet allowed with blogs. And bl
by AlexandrB 5y ago
> What you don't like is people being able to communicate easily with each other and reach a wide audience.
That's what the internet allowed with blogs. And blogs were (and are) relatively great! What's the difference? Blogs could not be shoved in your face by manipulating your "timeline" based on commercial considerations of "engagement". SEO has somewhat damaged blogs over time (another victim of ad-funded incentives), but IMHO it's a far better situation than Facebook.
> How would FB being non-profit prevent individuals advertising products on their own page?
Maybe it wouldn't but maybe that content wouldn't end up in everyone's face as often either. It's hard to say because we don't have a non-commercial social network to compare to. The best example of a non-commercial internet service is Wikipedia - unfortunately this isn't a great analog. It's hard to reverse engineer which of Facebook's worst features are there because of commercial considerations, but surely some of them are. Things like the algorithmic feed or suppressing content from people you explicitly follow (unless they pay up) are there to squeeze more money from existing users.
- whimsicalism 5y ago> And blogs were (and are) relatively great! What's the difference? Blogs could not be shoved in your face by manipulating your "timeline" based on commercial considerations of "engagement". The real difference is that there were far fewer people using the internet then and the average person using the blogosphere was more intelligent and thoughtful than the average person using FB. You might not feel this way, but reverting back to blogs puts a considerable impediment in the way of most people for sharing their own thoughts with their friends and peers.