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If you don't mind me asking, what do you/we think would constitute a better network? You mention privacy as a key factor -- I agree, but rationally a free soci

by parm289 13y ago

If you don't mind me asking, what do you/we think would constitute a better network? You mention privacy as a key factor -- I agree, but rationally a free social network must encourage sharing to stock its shelves with user information to provide to advertisers. In the other direction, there's App.net which can afford to enforce privacy because its income depends only on membership fees. (Unfortunately, membership fees inhibit the network effect.) So what would make Facebook better? A better photo-sharing experience? An Events system which could interface with external apps? Or, does it go deeper? More users, I think, are recognizing that Facebook shows their friends only at their best, and are struggling to compare their lives to the glorified lives of their friends. Will the next social network open the door to deeper sharing, as opposed to more sharing? (Path comes to mind here...)

dkulchenko 13y ago
I have no problem with the fact that Facebook has to gather and distribute some sort of information on you to get advertiser money, it's just a matter of the way they do it. There's obviously the whole Facebook uploading all your contacts without your permission issue (IIRC, that's still going on) and the fact that for whatever reason whenever I open up the Facebook app on an Android device, the GPS icon in my notification starts blinking that my location is being obtained. Which, if it were a rough network-based location to get my current city for targeted ads is fine - but it's not, and obtaining my exact location without my permission is not okay. (That's one of the things iOS gets right - per-app configurable permissions, it's a shame Android has nothing like it without a custom ROM.) To clarify, I think Facebook (the app) itself is fantastic. The issue isn't the tech, it's the shady behavior by the company who develops it.
- parm289 13y ago
  I agree that the technology is impressive -- after all, serving a billion users boggles the mind. I was getting at the faults of the platform, though. It seems that people are satisfied with Facebook's groups, chat, and events features, but not the news feed/status updates portion of the site. I was wondering aloud if a social network like Path, which seeks to encourage more honest sharing as opposed to a greater volume of sharing, offered some insight into why people are becoming dissatisfied with Facebook.
superuser2 13y ago
>stock its shelves with user information to provide to advertisers People are always talking about how Facebook is selling your data. Is there any evidence for this? They'll use your data internally to target ads on behalf of advertisers, but do we know that they're actually giving the advertisers any information?
- parm289 13y ago
  You're right. In retrospect that sentence had a negative connotation, but I didn't mean it that way. By "providing" I didn't strictly mean selling. Facebook encourages sharing to learn as much as possible about its users, then enables advertisers to fine-grain their target audiences based on specific information about users. I actually don't see a problem with that model, as long as ads are relevant to me and presented in a sane way.
- tomjen3 13y ago
  They have to be selling the data because the advertisers certainly aren't using it. I turned of my adblocker just to see what kinds of adds I was being offered. I could get cheap heating gas from a company 200 miles away, buy crap I didn't need including "magic" amulets and my favorite: get the exact degree that I already had from the exact university that I got it from. Facebook knows I am an atheist with a college degree, the school I went to and what degree I got there and my current city, so they should have been able to filter all of those out. None of that information was tricked out of me, btw, I added it all myself. Oh and the rest of the ads were 90% shitty dating sites (because, I suspect, that good dating sites don't need to advertise) more than half of which were obvious scams (again, I have a college STEM degree, don't show me the stuff that hopes to just get stupid people to sign up). Facebook does allow you to opt out of any given add or all ads from that company but they don't even allow you to opt out of ads for a particular group. So yeah, I hope Facebook is selling the information because I have no idea what else the use it for.

by parm289 13y ago

dkulchenko 13y ago

I have no problem with the fact that Facebook has to gather and distribute some sort of information on you to get advertiser money, it's just a matter of the way they do it. There's obviously the whole Facebook uploading all your contacts without your permission issue (IIRC, that's still going on) and the fact that for whatever reason whenever I open up the Facebook app on an Android device, the GPS icon in my notification starts blinking that my location is being obtained. Which, if it were a rough network-based location to get my current city for targeted ads is fine - but it's not, and obtaining my exact location without my permission is not okay. (That's one of the things iOS gets right - per-app configurable permissions, it's a shame Android has nothing like it without a custom ROM.) To clarify, I think Facebook (the app) itself is fantastic. The issue isn't the tech, it's the shady behavior by the company who develops it.

parm289 13y ago
I agree that the technology is impressive -- after all, serving a billion users boggles the mind. I was getting at the faults of the platform, though. It seems that people are satisfied with Facebook's groups, chat, and events features, but not the news feed/status updates portion of the site. I was wondering aloud if a social network like Path, which seeks to encourage more honest sharing as opposed to a greater volume of sharing, offered some insight into why people are becoming dissatisfied with Facebook.

superuser2 13y ago

>stock its shelves with user information to provide to advertisers People are always talking about how Facebook is selling your data. Is there any evidence for this? They'll use your data internally to target ads on behalf of advertisers, but do we know that they're actually giving the advertisers any information?

parm289 13y ago
You're right. In retrospect that sentence had a negative connotation, but I didn't mean it that way. By "providing" I didn't strictly mean selling. Facebook encourages sharing to learn as much as possible about its users, then enables advertisers to fine-grain their target audiences based on specific information about users. I actually don't see a problem with that model, as long as ads are relevant to me and presented in a sane way.
tomjen3 13y ago
They have to be selling the data because the advertisers certainly aren't using it. I turned of my adblocker just to see what kinds of adds I was being offered. I could get cheap heating gas from a company 200 miles away, buy crap I didn't need including "magic" amulets and my favorite: get the exact degree that I already had from the exact university that I got it from. Facebook knows I am an atheist with a college degree, the school I went to and what degree I got there and my current city, so they should have been able to filter all of those out. None of that information was tricked out of me, btw, I added it all myself. Oh and the rest of the ads were 90% shitty dating sites (because, I suspect, that good dating sites don't need to advertise) more than half of which were obvious scams (again, I have a college STEM degree, don't show me the stuff that hopes to just get stupid people to sign up). Facebook does allow you to opt out of any given add or all ads from that company but they don't even allow you to opt out of ads for a particular group. So yeah, I hope Facebook is selling the information because I have no idea what else the use it for.