8 ms·

I think a bigger problem than 38% of webpages being dead is a lot of it is entities/groups/businesses now use facebook pages almost exclusively and have no othe

I think a bigger problem than 38% of webpages being dead is a lot of it is entities/groups/businesses now use facebook pages almost exclusively and have no other web presence outside of Facebook. In other words a Facebook account becomes a requirement to interact with them.

dzhiurgis 2y ago
I get your sentiment, but facebook also acts as a spam filter - not entirely bad thing for business owner
- Zambyte 2y ago
  Funnily enough I specifically don't use Facebook or other Facebook owned services because of all of the spam.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  Works both ways, too! If a business is only on Facebook, I don't do business with them as I don't use Facebook. A win-win in my book, as I prefer doing business with people whose ethics overlap with my own.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Maybe it’s different where you are, but around here that filter would mean I could almost only patronize large chains. Small businesses have Facebook or maybe insta (which is much worse, Facebook business pages grant far more access to a non-logged-in user) and no website. Restaurants might have a barely-updated website (the updates are on Facebook) that links to some third party ordering service, maybe.
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      I definitely get your point. But it's clear that continuing to use Facebook in that manner will only strengthen the isolation effect. Voting with your wallet and going against the machine invariably involves some level of personal sacrifice. For me, sacrificing patronage is incredibly easy to do. There is more to life than commercialization. My girlfriend says she only uses Facebook to interface with small stores, who use it as a sole point of contact or distribution. Let that sink in for a moment. Breaking this cycle will require hard work.
    - dazc 2y ago
      This as well, follow us on 'insta' and if you don't know what that means then we have no interest in doing business with you.
      - crtasm 2y ago
        I suspect people just don't stop to think hey - perhaps not everyone is/can be/wants to be on Instagram.
        vundercind 2y ago
        I suspect Instagram or Facebook gets them 10x the eyeballs of having a website, at 1/20th the effort, zero cost, and nearly zero skill or expertise at anything tech-related.
        crtasm 2y ago
        I suspect both can be true at the same time. In the case of Instagram it still seems silly to miss out on potential customers by only posting on a non-public platform though.
        vundercind 2y ago
        Facebook definitely makes more sense to me. It only stops me if I try to go browse back through all their photos or something. I can look at posts and any of their… I dunno how Facebook works, but featured or whatever images, for menus or current sales or what have you, no problem. Insta stops me if I try to scroll past the first screenfull of content, and doesn’t have as much info available outside of posts (most of which I can’t see) I have avoided a place with only insta, simply because i couldn’t see anything I needed to.
  - dazc 2y ago
    Many small businesses live on a shoe-string though and the cost of developing and maintaining a website is prohibitive. Their self administered facebook page isn't anything to write home about and, likely, generates zero business but it is free so long as they resist the temptation to boost posts and have an extra 3 people see them for only $36.
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      Sounds like an opportunity for someone to build a better, more open and interoperable platform.
- detourdog 2y ago
  Also acts as a customer filter for us old fogeys.
  - dazc 2y ago
    I thought facebook was all 'old fogeys' now?
- spurgu 2y ago
  From a user perspective Facebook's feed is spam. You used to be able to see a custom feed of a selected friend lists but since they removed that option the site has been completely unusable, unless perhaps you do something like remove 90% of your "friends" and groups but that would hurt usability in different ways.
  - xtracto 2y ago
    Ooooh so thats what happened. I just recently restarted using my Facebook account after about 6 years of not really using it. I found it odd that I was only scrolling to android games ads, some diy videos and some rage-motivated generic posts from accounts I don't know... I liked more the Facebook that showed me the humblebrag posts of my friends/connections (and I'm not being sarcastic)
    - ant6n 2y ago
      That was like 20 years ago. People have been sad about Facebook being impersonal for more than 10 years.
      - spurgu 2y ago
        It was very usable with custom lists up until recently. Their help pages still reference the ability to browse updates from custom friend lists (at least when I checked a couple of weeks ago) but the actual feature has been dead for a while now. Guess they didn't like that people were able minimize pointless engagement and doomscrolling.
  - relativ575 2y ago
    > From a user perspective Facebook's feed is spam. The topic is FB groups. They aren't spam, at least for those I'm a member. Some groups may be quiet, some are active, but I don't recall coming across spam posts from any of them. A particular group has a rule that members can promote their business once a week, enforced by the group's admin
    - deleted 2y ago
- elorant 2y ago
  If you advertise through Facebook you get a lot of fraudulent traffic. So I don’t see how they fight spam.
- iamacyborg 2y ago
  You’re not really running a business if all your content is on someone else’s platform and they don’t pay you for it.
nicbou 2y ago
The same happened with forums. They're all subreddits, Facebook groups or Discord chats now. A lot of valuable information is kept hidden in those groups now, and it makes me really sad.
- Iulioh 2y ago
  Man, i hate it. Not only a lot of communities are hidden because of Discord (at least with Reddit they were more discoverable), the worst part is the fact that they are unsearchable or behind a paywall. Like the "join my discord if you pay at least 3$/mo!" is pretty innocent but you are gatekeeping a community that before was pubblic. If we are talking about something like a content creator focused about an hobby or pc problems you can see how Google will become even more useless. Reddit was the least bad choice between it and Discord but has failed the "i want to be a social network".
  - 1992spacemovie 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ykonstant 2y ago
      I live on 350 Euros a month; my rent is 180 Euros. I literally cannot find 3 bucks to be part of a community. I am not a parasite.
      - ITB 2y ago
        You’re a good person
      - 1992spacemovie 2y ago
        I apologize for my above comment. I should have been more thoughtful. You are absolutely not a parasite and do have value.
    - distances 2y ago
      Even the idea of payment to access a community is just absurd. If I'm an integral part of a tight-knit community I can see myself participating in common expenses, but I would never pay for access. At that point you're just a consumer buying a service.
carlosjobim 2y ago
You can see business pages and their info on Facebook without an account. If they publish their email you can also contact them.
rchaud 2y ago
Are there any businessses of any notable size that are using Facebook alone? Local businesses near me have plenty of info on Google Maps. The website if they have one is usually out of date, but calling them directly answers my questions.
every 2y ago
I only use Facebook to stay in touch with widely dispersed family members. Nothing else. One peek a day to see what's up. Assuming you have an account, I find this makes the task much easier: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends
- Log_out_ 2y ago
  And meta keeps things endlessly. Not just a hyper compressed picture and a set of references to local files. That part of the siloed web vanishes too, just less dangly and obvious.
- KORraN 2y ago
  Thanks for this tip! I've added this to the parameter that I use to have most recent posts at the top: https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr&filter=friends https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr&filter=friends
skeeter2020 2y ago
Also 38% of a web filled with diversity, no hidden agenda, and amateurs (in the first best of ways). This number is probably now .00001% of a much bigger, far more homogeneous web. a web 1.0 site > today's walled garden "group page".
huhuhu111 2y ago
[dead]
pier25 2y ago
I've been to restaurants where they only have the menu in digital and uploaded to FB. And they looked at me as if I was a weirdo when I told them I don't use FB.
coffeebeqn 2y ago
I’ve had multiple pages and blogs since 2013 that I just didn’t feel like maintaining or paying the hosting and domain fees for anymore.
Brosper 2y ago
Many times I recommend to my clients to use Facebook instead of their own websites. It was overkill. Often having your own website is a waste of money.
philistine 2y ago
I’m doing my part. The non-profit I steer only had a Facebook page. I made them a website.

dzhiurgis 2y ago

I get your sentiment, but facebook also acts as a spam filter - not entirely bad thing for business owner

Zambyte 2y ago
Funnily enough I specifically don't use Facebook or other Facebook owned services because of all of the spam.
soulofmischief 2y ago
Works both ways, too! If a business is only on Facebook, I don't do business with them as I don't use Facebook. A win-win in my book, as I prefer doing business with people whose ethics overlap with my own.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Maybe it’s different where you are, but around here that filter would mean I could almost only patronize large chains. Small businesses have Facebook or maybe insta (which is much worse, Facebook business pages grant far more access to a non-logged-in user) and no website. Restaurants might have a barely-updated website (the updates are on Facebook) that links to some third party ordering service, maybe.
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    I definitely get your point. But it's clear that continuing to use Facebook in that manner will only strengthen the isolation effect. Voting with your wallet and going against the machine invariably involves some level of personal sacrifice. For me, sacrificing patronage is incredibly easy to do. There is more to life than commercialization. My girlfriend says she only uses Facebook to interface with small stores, who use it as a sole point of contact or distribution. Let that sink in for a moment. Breaking this cycle will require hard work.
  - dazc 2y ago
    This as well, follow us on 'insta' and if you don't know what that means then we have no interest in doing business with you.
    - crtasm 2y ago
      I suspect people just don't stop to think hey - perhaps not everyone is/can be/wants to be on Instagram.
      - vundercind 2y ago
        I suspect Instagram or Facebook gets them 10x the eyeballs of having a website, at 1/20th the effort, zero cost, and nearly zero skill or expertise at anything tech-related.
        crtasm 2y ago
        I suspect both can be true at the same time. In the case of Instagram it still seems silly to miss out on potential customers by only posting on a non-public platform though.
        vundercind 2y ago
        Facebook definitely makes more sense to me. It only stops me if I try to go browse back through all their photos or something. I can look at posts and any of their… I dunno how Facebook works, but featured or whatever images, for menus or current sales or what have you, no problem. Insta stops me if I try to scroll past the first screenfull of content, and doesn’t have as much info available outside of posts (most of which I can’t see) I have avoided a place with only insta, simply because i couldn’t see anything I needed to.
- dazc 2y ago
  Many small businesses live on a shoe-string though and the cost of developing and maintaining a website is prohibitive. Their self administered facebook page isn't anything to write home about and, likely, generates zero business but it is free so long as they resist the temptation to boost posts and have an extra 3 people see them for only $36.
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    Sounds like an opportunity for someone to build a better, more open and interoperable platform.
detourdog 2y ago
Also acts as a customer filter for us old fogeys.
- dazc 2y ago
  I thought facebook was all 'old fogeys' now?
spurgu 2y ago
From a user perspective Facebook's feed is spam. You used to be able to see a custom feed of a selected friend lists but since they removed that option the site has been completely unusable, unless perhaps you do something like remove 90% of your "friends" and groups but that would hurt usability in different ways.
- xtracto 2y ago
  Ooooh so thats what happened. I just recently restarted using my Facebook account after about 6 years of not really using it. I found it odd that I was only scrolling to android games ads, some diy videos and some rage-motivated generic posts from accounts I don't know... I liked more the Facebook that showed me the humblebrag posts of my friends/connections (and I'm not being sarcastic)
  - ant6n 2y ago
    That was like 20 years ago. People have been sad about Facebook being impersonal for more than 10 years.
    - spurgu 2y ago
      It was very usable with custom lists up until recently. Their help pages still reference the ability to browse updates from custom friend lists (at least when I checked a couple of weeks ago) but the actual feature has been dead for a while now. Guess they didn't like that people were able minimize pointless engagement and doomscrolling.
- relativ575 2y ago
  > From a user perspective Facebook's feed is spam. The topic is FB groups. They aren't spam, at least for those I'm a member. Some groups may be quiet, some are active, but I don't recall coming across spam posts from any of them. A particular group has a rule that members can promote their business once a week, enforced by the group's admin
  - deleted 2y ago
elorant 2y ago
If you advertise through Facebook you get a lot of fraudulent traffic. So I don’t see how they fight spam.
iamacyborg 2y ago
You’re not really running a business if all your content is on someone else’s platform and they don’t pay you for it.

nicbou 2y ago

The same happened with forums. They're all subreddits, Facebook groups or Discord chats now. A lot of valuable information is kept hidden in those groups now, and it makes me really sad.

Iulioh 2y ago
Man, i hate it. Not only a lot of communities are hidden because of Discord (at least with Reddit they were more discoverable), the worst part is the fact that they are unsearchable or behind a paywall. Like the "join my discord if you pay at least 3$/mo!" is pretty innocent but you are gatekeeping a community that before was pubblic. If we are talking about something like a content creator focused about an hobby or pc problems you can see how Google will become even more useless. Reddit was the least bad choice between it and Discord but has failed the "i want to be a social network".
- 1992spacemovie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ykonstant 2y ago
    I live on 350 Euros a month; my rent is 180 Euros. I literally cannot find 3 bucks to be part of a community. I am not a parasite.
    - ITB 2y ago
      You’re a good person
    - 1992spacemovie 2y ago
      I apologize for my above comment. I should have been more thoughtful. You are absolutely not a parasite and do have value.
  - distances 2y ago
    Even the idea of payment to access a community is just absurd. If I'm an integral part of a tight-knit community I can see myself participating in common expenses, but I would never pay for access. At that point you're just a consumer buying a service.

carlosjobim 2y ago

You can see business pages and their info on Facebook without an account. If they publish their email you can also contact them.

rchaud 2y ago

Are there any businessses of any notable size that are using Facebook alone? Local businesses near me have plenty of info on Google Maps. The website if they have one is usually out of date, but calling them directly answers my questions.

every 2y ago

I only use Facebook to stay in touch with widely dispersed family members. Nothing else. One peek a day to see what's up. Assuming you have an account, I find this makes the task much easier: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends

Log_out_ 2y ago
And meta keeps things endlessly. Not just a hyper compressed picture and a set of references to local files. That part of the siloed web vanishes too, just less dangly and obvious.
KORraN 2y ago
Thanks for this tip! I've added this to the parameter that I use to have most recent posts at the top: https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr&filter=friends https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr&filter=friends

skeeter2020 2y ago

Also 38% of a web filled with diversity, no hidden agenda, and amateurs (in the first best of ways). This number is probably now .00001% of a much bigger, far more homogeneous web. a web 1.0 site > today's walled garden "group page".

huhuhu111 2y ago

[dead]

pier25 2y ago

I've been to restaurants where they only have the menu in digital and uploaded to FB. And they looked at me as if I was a weirdo when I told them I don't use FB.

coffeebeqn 2y ago

I’ve had multiple pages and blogs since 2013 that I just didn’t feel like maintaining or paying the hosting and domain fees for anymore.

Brosper 2y ago

Many times I recommend to my clients to use Facebook instead of their own websites. It was overkill. Often having your own website is a waste of money.

philistine 2y ago

I’m doing my part. The non-profit I steer only had a Facebook page. I made them a website.