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Most people creating websites want feedback too. Those platforms all had comment sections, but by the late 2000s, automated comment spam became impossible to ma

by rchaud 2y ago

Most people creating websites want feedback too. Those platforms all had comment sections, but by the late 2000s, automated comment spam became impossible to manage. Remember all the blog comments linking to Prada and Air Jordans using nonsensical sentence structures? All of those people who once had thriving blogs quickly moved to Facebook after that, preferring to have them handle moderation. In exchange FB took their audiences and locked them inside. Which is why every website now begs you to sign up for their mailing list as soon as the page loads.

rsynnott 2y ago
I think that's _slightly_ ahistorical; Facebook showed up in 2005 or so, and the golden age of blogging (certainly blogging with comments and backlinks and so on) was somewhat later, really only ending around 2012 (IMO the death of Google Reader was the last straw, though it had likely been in gentle decline for a bit at that point). Comment spam was a problem throughout, but not an intractable one, and many blogs _did_ use authentication with third parties (including Facebook) to try to stem it. Also, most people who had blogs did _not_ move to Facebook. They moved, mostly, to _Twitter_, which wasn't locked up until Musk broke the logged-out view, though it was certainly less convenient for non-logged-in users to view than a blog. The idea that Facebook replaced blogging just doesn't hold up at all, I don't think; it primarily replaced other social networks, and Craigslist and similar services.
- rchaud 2y ago
  I was around at the time. Facebook started in 2004, I had my acct in 2005 when it was US colleges only. General availability began in 2007, and then came the flood of parents and grandparents, causing college students to rapidly sanitize their pages and switch communications to Messenger instead of posting directly on people's pages (then known as 'walls'). The flood of 'normal users' led to creation of "groups" and "pages", that were effectively blogs. Discoverability of Groups and Pages was far easier compared to climbing the SEO mountain, so many moved to FB. One of the biggest blogs/websites that moved were the webcomic The Oatmeal, and the author has written (or illustrated) what happened when he moved. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people

by rchaud 2y ago

rsynnott 2y ago

I think that's _slightly_ ahistorical; Facebook showed up in 2005 or so, and the golden age of blogging (certainly blogging with comments and backlinks and so on) was somewhat later, really only ending around 2012 (IMO the death of Google Reader was the last straw, though it had likely been in gentle decline for a bit at that point). Comment spam was a problem throughout, but not an intractable one, and many blogs _did_ use authentication with third parties (including Facebook) to try to stem it. Also, most people who had blogs did _not_ move to Facebook. They moved, mostly, to _Twitter_, which wasn't locked up until Musk broke the logged-out view, though it was certainly less convenient for non-logged-in users to view than a blog. The idea that Facebook replaced blogging just doesn't hold up at all, I don't think; it primarily replaced other social networks, and Craigslist and similar services.

rchaud 2y ago
I was around at the time. Facebook started in 2004, I had my acct in 2005 when it was US colleges only. General availability began in 2007, and then came the flood of parents and grandparents, causing college students to rapidly sanitize their pages and switch communications to Messenger instead of posting directly on people's pages (then known as 'walls'). The flood of 'normal users' led to creation of "groups" and "pages", that were effectively blogs. Discoverability of Groups and Pages was far easier compared to climbing the SEO mountain, so many moved to FB. One of the biggest blogs/websites that moved were the webcomic The Oatmeal, and the author has written (or illustrated) what happened when he moved. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people