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Facebook Engineering has always been well regarded — starting with React on the front end, but also projects like Open Compute. Their product management on the

Facebook Engineering has always been well regarded — starting with React on the front end, but also projects like Open Compute. Their product management on the other hand— well, I mean, Facebook and Instagram are arguably as popular as McDonald’s. So they’ve got that going for them.

talldayo 2y ago
Spot-on. Hacker News has a hate-boner for Facebook and the Facebook-branded products, but from an engineering standpoint they're up there with Netflix solving problems at scale. FAIR had a better reputation than OpenAI since the start, and they've developed the Oculus acquisition to it's logical extremes. You can do a lot worse, looking at the way their peers handle similar situations. All the big tech companies have a Facebook-esque product they wish they could get rid of forever. Meta has Facebook, and instead of imploding like everyone said they would (for decades) they demonstrated competency in engineering and culture. The next 4 years will be a gauntlet with a literal "Mr. X" advising social media policy, but I frankly don't think Facebook has ever been down for the count in a pragmatic sense.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  I think the only concept I’ve heard as to the decline of Facebook is, Facebook is for “older people” (read: millennials+) but I have no idea how true this is.
  - zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
    It totally depends! I used to live in the city and now I live out in nowhere land. Everything around here is done thru facebook groups and facebook events. If you want to keep in touch with the community, it is really only on facebook. Some of my older facebook friends seem to have left the platform and I seen more than once of my old city friends posting final goodbyes declaring they are leaving the "dead" platform for discord or some stuff where their family will never find them.
- nmfisher 2y ago
  Did anyone think Facebook would fall over because their engineering sucked? It’s the product itself that’s garbage, not the infrastructure or the code.
concerndc1tizen 2y ago
and WhatsApp
- oblio 2y ago
  If anything, WhatsApp is probably bigger than Instagram around the world.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    It's also got an infinitely better reputation since it's arguably not social media, but just a solid instant messenger. I was personally very concerned when they acquired it, but went from a begrudging user (it was the de facto standard in the country I was living in at the time) to an excited one (Facebook/Meta added end-to-end encryption, multi-device capability, device migration etc.)
    - concerndc1tizen 2y ago
      If it's E2EE, can you explain how a new device is able to read the messages after logging in? In other words: Facebook has a copy of the decryption key.
      - lxgr 2y ago
        What do you mean by “read the messages”? WhatsApp doesn’t have a server-side message archive. If you mean messages pending delivery: A newly logged in device can request the sender to resend pending messages under its new key.
    - signal11 2y ago
      > infinitely better reputation You’ve clearly not seen it enshittify: * More UI space devoted to brands (the Updates tab * Communities UX is, uh, suboptimal * Brands / business accounts can message you with no opt out, you can block a chat after the fact but won’t stop them from messaging you from another account. These made the news in WhatsApp’s favourite testbed market[1], but if you think it’s not coming to other markets… Anyhow, tl;dr — WhatsApp’s no longer in the “put users first” phase, it’s in the “monetize” phase of Facebook Product Management. As a person who paid for WhatsApp pre-Facebook, that does make me sad. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/10/in-india-businesses-are-increasingly-spamming-users-on-whatsapp/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/10/in-india-businesses-are-in...

talldayo 2y ago

Spot-on. Hacker News has a hate-boner for Facebook and the Facebook-branded products, but from an engineering standpoint they're up there with Netflix solving problems at scale. FAIR had a better reputation than OpenAI since the start, and they've developed the Oculus acquisition to it's logical extremes. You can do a lot worse, looking at the way their peers handle similar situations. All the big tech companies have a Facebook-esque product they wish they could get rid of forever. Meta has Facebook, and instead of imploding like everyone said they would (for decades) they demonstrated competency in engineering and culture. The next 4 years will be a gauntlet with a literal "Mr. X" advising social media policy, but I frankly don't think Facebook has ever been down for the count in a pragmatic sense.

dgfitz 2y ago
I think the only concept I’ve heard as to the decline of Facebook is, Facebook is for “older people” (read: millennials+) but I have no idea how true this is.
- zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
  It totally depends! I used to live in the city and now I live out in nowhere land. Everything around here is done thru facebook groups and facebook events. If you want to keep in touch with the community, it is really only on facebook. Some of my older facebook friends seem to have left the platform and I seen more than once of my old city friends posting final goodbyes declaring they are leaving the "dead" platform for discord or some stuff where their family will never find them.
nmfisher 2y ago
Did anyone think Facebook would fall over because their engineering sucked? It’s the product itself that’s garbage, not the infrastructure or the code.

concerndc1tizen 2y ago

and WhatsApp

oblio 2y ago
If anything, WhatsApp is probably bigger than Instagram around the world.
- lxgr 2y ago
  It's also got an infinitely better reputation since it's arguably not social media, but just a solid instant messenger. I was personally very concerned when they acquired it, but went from a begrudging user (it was the de facto standard in the country I was living in at the time) to an excited one (Facebook/Meta added end-to-end encryption, multi-device capability, device migration etc.)
  - concerndc1tizen 2y ago
    If it's E2EE, can you explain how a new device is able to read the messages after logging in? In other words: Facebook has a copy of the decryption key.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      What do you mean by “read the messages”? WhatsApp doesn’t have a server-side message archive. If you mean messages pending delivery: A newly logged in device can request the sender to resend pending messages under its new key.
  - signal11 2y ago
    > infinitely better reputation You’ve clearly not seen it enshittify: * More UI space devoted to brands (the Updates tab * Communities UX is, uh, suboptimal * Brands / business accounts can message you with no opt out, you can block a chat after the fact but won’t stop them from messaging you from another account. These made the news in WhatsApp’s favourite testbed market[1], but if you think it’s not coming to other markets… Anyhow, tl;dr — WhatsApp’s no longer in the “put users first” phase, it’s in the “monetize” phase of Facebook Product Management. As a person who paid for WhatsApp pre-Facebook, that does make me sad. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/10/in-india-businesses-are-increasingly-spamming-users-on-whatsapp/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/10/in-india-businesses-are-in...