5 ms·

Losing hope in G+ very fast. They're going to make the same mistakes that are killing Facebook. I'm also concerned about them selling data from G+, since Schmi

by ltamake 15y ago

Losing hope in G+ very fast. They're going to make the same mistakes that are killing Facebook. I'm also concerned about them selling data from G+, since Schmidt describes it as an identity service. It's a very evil concept.

yanw 15y ago
I don't see how it is an "evil concept", I think what he means by identity service is a platform on which they can build social apps, it's same as social network. And I'm quite annoyed by claims that associate a real identity requirement with selling data or ad targeting and such, they can target well enough using interests, not sure your name improves much on it. Also instead of speculating read the service's privacy policy and be certain about it.
- 0x44 15y ago
  Speaking as a caucasian male with a name that's basically unique in the world (there is only one person who has my name but that might have been a typo in the article as every where else he uses a different last name), having my name improves their ad targeting considerably.
  - 01Michael10 15y ago
    What does the fact you are a Caucasian male have to do with your point?
    - 0x44 15y ago
      One of the complaints about Google's true-name policy is that it unfairly discriminates against people who don't have Western sounding names, or who aren't middle-class white guys. The reported retort is that they're not yet out of beta and shouldn't have to concern themselves with multi-culturalism, so people with "non-standard" or "unique" names should just use something else.
    - dredmorbius 15y ago
      It's pointing out that it's not necessarily the socially marginalized , deviant, oppressed, or victimized who've an interest in anonymity or pseudonymity. As with 0x44, I've a name that's to the best of my knowledge unique in all the world. That's helpful when I wish to be known. When not, not so much. And I've accumulated a (thankfully short) list of people I don't much care to advertise my goings-on to. Having a distinctive pseudonym for certain roles is useful. Having a non-distinctive pseudonym (or several) for others, likewise. Sometimes, on the Internet, you really do want to be a dog.
  - yanw 15y ago
    Be that as it may, do think the primary reason for insisting on real names is to target ads better? they first need a sufficient critical mass to implement that, their reasons are different, at least in this early stage.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      I do think it's primarily about data. Maybe not specifically ad targeting, but about owning a relatively "clean" set of data that they can later exploit or sell in whatever way they prefer.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - yanw 15y ago
        Yeah but that isn't new it's how everyone is operating, facebook, linkedin, whomever. And users get to use the service freely in return.
- rjd 15y ago
  Its because the root motivation most people including myself see is that its about control. And things that try and control other things are evil. Years ago Google was a disruption force towards existing controlling organisations. Now Google are trying to prevent disruptive technologies eroding their market share. Hence they have joined the ranks of the old guard such as Microsoft, IBM, Apple etc... those desiring control, and hence arguably evil. Just the nature of business, they don't really have a choice, and many respects are bound by law to become 'evil'.
  - Permit 15y ago
    You don't think it cheapens the world 'evil' to be using it like that? I don't think control constitutes "profound immorality and wickedness" to be honest.
    - dredmorbius 15y ago
      Barron Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton) got this right a long time ago: all power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. There's a modern corrolary: data corrupts, absolute data corrupts absolutely. Google are well and truly headed down this path, it seems.
    - rjd 15y ago
      Well I haven't seen them sacrificing children to Baphomet or anything, but I do believe they are ethical and morally in the wrong camp and have been for a few years now. They take money from one industry and use it to crush/undermine competitors in other industries. Hence making a situation where no one can compete with them. IMO abusing market position i.e. they use advertising money to drive technology business out of business They have also perpetuated a belief that you shouldn't pay for anything on the internet. You know that would be fine if we lived in some Marxist utopia, but we don't. Things are expensive to make and produce and Google is making it harder and harder on a daily basis to get returns off products. They did what was needed, improved the world, but those days are gone.
      - 15y ago
frossie 15y ago
It's also quite duplicitous. It was represented as a social networking service, not as an identity service. Moreover people assumed (yeah, I know) that since privacy control was Facebook's Achilles' heel, that Google would do better than that, and they seemed to be going one step forward with the Circles thing. Ever since then, it has been two steps back. It's easy to say "Hey, if you want to be pseudonymous go elsewhere". I have no desire to be pseudonymous, but I certainly want to socialise with people who are. I can't be the only one. HN good news: the field is still wide open for someone who wants to do it right.
- halo 15y ago
  Fundamentally, Facebook is an identity directory. The ability to easily transfer real world identities and relationships into the digital world is the big problem Facebook solves. It's one of those fundamental problems left unresolved by Internet protocols, similar to Google being able to solve search because the web has no implementation built in by design. Facebook's communication features, the 'social networking', in itself isn't anything special. From that perspective, Google+ becomes much clearer. Google are attempting to use Facebook's poor social networking features to elbow in on their identity directory.
  - dirtyaura 15y ago
    > Fundamentally, Facebook is an identity directory. ... > Facebook's communication features, the 'social networking', in itself isn't anything special. Throw away your cynical world view for a second and just go to your Facebook feed and see how people are interacting there, having fun, supporting each other, spreading a little bit of love in form of "likes" (even if it's a bit silly) and come back and say it ain't anything special and it's just a solution to an identity directory problem. It's much more. Facebook is the closest thing to a chat at a bar with your friends that internet has to offer. Certainly, there are better bars already out there, but FB is a bar that your friends are willing to come to. It's still early days of internet and our virtual existence, so FB ain't that colourful and deep as an evening at a local pub can be, but painting it just as a identity directory is a fundamental misunderstanding of social internet.
Permit 15y ago
I don't think it's fair to say a lack of anonymity or other mistakes are killing Facebook. It very may well be true that mistakes killed the experience for you, but the truth is that most people are not overly concerned with the lack of privacy on their social networks. I think people online often mistake a vocal minority pushing for privacy settings on this network as a reflection of the wishes of everyone. Truth be told, most people are indifferent to the matter.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  Speaking for my own use-case, it's a mix of founder's statements (http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-users-dumb-fucks http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-use...), investments by less-than-pristine Russian businessmen, my own various intersections with data mining, personal information aggregators, and legal processes, history of wide-spread domestic spying (watch "The Lives of Others" about the East German Stasi for a chilling view, understanding that this has and does happen in many lands). The conceivable downsides of open participation in Facebook far outweigh the positives. Add in social fatigue in the mass market as well, I suspect the trend has peaked.
- alexqgb 15y ago
  It's not that they're indifferent to privacy in general. Rather, the system as reached a point where users are satisfied with the amount of control they've been given. Specifically, they can render their profiles invisible to people they don't know, disengage from people they come to dislike, remove their names from pictures they don't want to be tagged in, and easily limit any personal details (except birthdays) that they don't like sharing. For an enormous number of people, that's just fine.
cageface 15y ago
Google's shenanigans around G+ were the final straw for me. I'd been growing increasingly uneasy about the amount of personal information I'd placed in the hands one of company. As it became clearer that G+ was an attempt to harvest still more monetizable information I decided to bow out. I've now unplugged myself entirely from all Google services and I don't intend to ever again rely so heavily on any one company.
- puredemo 15y ago
  What do you use for email? I can't think of a strong alternative to gmail.
  - cageface 15y ago
    Right now I'm using fastmail.fm and Mail.app. There are some features I miss from gmail but it's good enough and I can use my own TLD more easily.
  - silverbax88 15y ago
    I've never understood why people love Gmail so much. The differences between Gmail and other email platforms aren't features to me, they are problems.
    - puredemo 15y ago
      The UI and the spam protection mostly. What other email platforms are you referring to?
gms 15y ago
'killing' Facebook? Facebook is hardly dying; rather the opposite.

by ltamake 15y ago

yanw 15y ago

I don't see how it is an "evil concept", I think what he means by identity service is a platform on which they can build social apps, it's same as social network. And I'm quite annoyed by claims that associate a real identity requirement with selling data or ad targeting and such, they can target well enough using interests, not sure your name improves much on it. Also instead of speculating read the service's privacy policy and be certain about it.

0x44 15y ago
Speaking as a caucasian male with a name that's basically unique in the world (there is only one person who has my name but that might have been a typo in the article as every where else he uses a different last name), having my name improves their ad targeting considerably.
- 01Michael10 15y ago
  What does the fact you are a Caucasian male have to do with your point?
  - 0x44 15y ago
    One of the complaints about Google's true-name policy is that it unfairly discriminates against people who don't have Western sounding names, or who aren't middle-class white guys. The reported retort is that they're not yet out of beta and shouldn't have to concern themselves with multi-culturalism, so people with "non-standard" or "unique" names should just use something else.
  - dredmorbius 15y ago
    It's pointing out that it's not necessarily the socially marginalized , deviant, oppressed, or victimized who've an interest in anonymity or pseudonymity. As with 0x44, I've a name that's to the best of my knowledge unique in all the world. That's helpful when I wish to be known. When not, not so much. And I've accumulated a (thankfully short) list of people I don't much care to advertise my goings-on to. Having a distinctive pseudonym for certain roles is useful. Having a non-distinctive pseudonym (or several) for others, likewise. Sometimes, on the Internet, you really do want to be a dog.
- yanw 15y ago
  Be that as it may, do think the primary reason for insisting on real names is to target ads better? they first need a sufficient critical mass to implement that, their reasons are different, at least in this early stage.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    I do think it's primarily about data. Maybe not specifically ad targeting, but about owning a relatively "clean" set of data that they can later exploit or sell in whatever way they prefer.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - yanw 15y ago
      Yeah but that isn't new it's how everyone is operating, facebook, linkedin, whomever. And users get to use the service freely in return.
rjd 15y ago
Its because the root motivation most people including myself see is that its about control. And things that try and control other things are evil. Years ago Google was a disruption force towards existing controlling organisations. Now Google are trying to prevent disruptive technologies eroding their market share. Hence they have joined the ranks of the old guard such as Microsoft, IBM, Apple etc... those desiring control, and hence arguably evil. Just the nature of business, they don't really have a choice, and many respects are bound by law to become 'evil'.
- Permit 15y ago
  You don't think it cheapens the world 'evil' to be using it like that? I don't think control constitutes "profound immorality and wickedness" to be honest.
  - dredmorbius 15y ago
    Barron Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton) got this right a long time ago: all power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. There's a modern corrolary: data corrupts, absolute data corrupts absolutely. Google are well and truly headed down this path, it seems.
  - rjd 15y ago
    Well I haven't seen them sacrificing children to Baphomet or anything, but I do believe they are ethical and morally in the wrong camp and have been for a few years now. They take money from one industry and use it to crush/undermine competitors in other industries. Hence making a situation where no one can compete with them. IMO abusing market position i.e. they use advertising money to drive technology business out of business They have also perpetuated a belief that you shouldn't pay for anything on the internet. You know that would be fine if we lived in some Marxist utopia, but we don't. Things are expensive to make and produce and Google is making it harder and harder on a daily basis to get returns off products. They did what was needed, improved the world, but those days are gone.
    - 15y ago

frossie 15y ago

It's also quite duplicitous. It was represented as a social networking service, not as an identity service. Moreover people assumed (yeah, I know) that since privacy control was Facebook's Achilles' heel, that Google would do better than that, and they seemed to be going one step forward with the Circles thing. Ever since then, it has been two steps back. It's easy to say "Hey, if you want to be pseudonymous go elsewhere". I have no desire to be pseudonymous, but I certainly want to socialise with people who are. I can't be the only one. HN good news: the field is still wide open for someone who wants to do it right.

halo 15y ago
Fundamentally, Facebook is an identity directory. The ability to easily transfer real world identities and relationships into the digital world is the big problem Facebook solves. It's one of those fundamental problems left unresolved by Internet protocols, similar to Google being able to solve search because the web has no implementation built in by design. Facebook's communication features, the 'social networking', in itself isn't anything special. From that perspective, Google+ becomes much clearer. Google are attempting to use Facebook's poor social networking features to elbow in on their identity directory.
- dirtyaura 15y ago
  > Fundamentally, Facebook is an identity directory. ... > Facebook's communication features, the 'social networking', in itself isn't anything special. Throw away your cynical world view for a second and just go to your Facebook feed and see how people are interacting there, having fun, supporting each other, spreading a little bit of love in form of "likes" (even if it's a bit silly) and come back and say it ain't anything special and it's just a solution to an identity directory problem. It's much more. Facebook is the closest thing to a chat at a bar with your friends that internet has to offer. Certainly, there are better bars already out there, but FB is a bar that your friends are willing to come to. It's still early days of internet and our virtual existence, so FB ain't that colourful and deep as an evening at a local pub can be, but painting it just as a identity directory is a fundamental misunderstanding of social internet.

Permit 15y ago

I don't think it's fair to say a lack of anonymity or other mistakes are killing Facebook. It very may well be true that mistakes killed the experience for you, but the truth is that most people are not overly concerned with the lack of privacy on their social networks. I think people online often mistake a vocal minority pushing for privacy settings on this network as a reflection of the wishes of everyone. Truth be told, most people are indifferent to the matter.

dredmorbius 15y ago
Speaking for my own use-case, it's a mix of founder's statements (http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-users-dumb-fucks http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-use...), investments by less-than-pristine Russian businessmen, my own various intersections with data mining, personal information aggregators, and legal processes, history of wide-spread domestic spying (watch "The Lives of Others" about the East German Stasi for a chilling view, understanding that this has and does happen in many lands). The conceivable downsides of open participation in Facebook far outweigh the positives. Add in social fatigue in the mass market as well, I suspect the trend has peaked.
alexqgb 15y ago
It's not that they're indifferent to privacy in general. Rather, the system as reached a point where users are satisfied with the amount of control they've been given. Specifically, they can render their profiles invisible to people they don't know, disengage from people they come to dislike, remove their names from pictures they don't want to be tagged in, and easily limit any personal details (except birthdays) that they don't like sharing. For an enormous number of people, that's just fine.

cageface 15y ago

Google's shenanigans around G+ were the final straw for me. I'd been growing increasingly uneasy about the amount of personal information I'd placed in the hands one of company. As it became clearer that G+ was an attempt to harvest still more monetizable information I decided to bow out. I've now unplugged myself entirely from all Google services and I don't intend to ever again rely so heavily on any one company.

puredemo 15y ago
What do you use for email? I can't think of a strong alternative to gmail.
- cageface 15y ago
  Right now I'm using fastmail.fm and Mail.app. There are some features I miss from gmail but it's good enough and I can use my own TLD more easily.
- silverbax88 15y ago
  I've never understood why people love Gmail so much. The differences between Gmail and other email platforms aren't features to me, they are problems.
  - puredemo 15y ago
    The UI and the spam protection mostly. What other email platforms are you referring to?

gms 15y ago

'killing' Facebook? Facebook is hardly dying; rather the opposite.