5 ms·

Facebook for All

33 points by detcader 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cinquemb 13y ago
For some reason as of late, I keep trying to frame what is going on now with socioeconomic events of the past. Then the idea wandered into my mind about something I see emerging, where data is not only gaining more economic value, but it is increasingly available to people to monetize if they can "connect the dots" with whatever they seek to provide value in (or how someone starts seeing value where you previously did not), which seems to be landing us in an age of the data robber barons. Where the ability to offer people something they might value, in return for data about not only them, but the world they live in through the way they see it. Maybe I'm over thinking things, but as someone in the midst of it all, I can't help but try to make sense of what is going on in relation to other things.
- detcader 13y ago
  From Wikipedia: "Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as the materialist conception of history. It is a theory of socioeconomic development according to which changes in material conditions (technology and productive capacity) are the primary influence on how society and the economy are organised. Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. Social classes and the relationship between them, plus the political structures and ways of thinking in society, are founded on and reflect contemporary economic activity." [1] From about.com: "Carol Hanisch's essay explains the idea behind the phrase "the personal is political." A common debate between "personal" and "political" questioned whether women's consciousness-raising groups [during the late 1960s and 1970s] were a useful part of the political women's movement. According to Hanisch, calling the groups "therapy" was a misnomer, as the groups were not intended to solve any women's personal problems. Instead, consciousness-raising was a form of political action to elicit discussion about such topics as women's relationships, their roles in marriage, and their feelings about childbearing." [2] It is essential from any angle to talk about and recognize social, cultural, and economic historical and present systems in any discourse, even about one's personal experience. Activists and academics have been recognizing this for centuries, and the principle applies as much to supposedly democratic, egalitarian "technology" as any facet of life [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism [2] http://womenshistory.about.com/od/feminism/a/consciousness_raising.htm http://womenshistory.about.com/od/feminism/a/consciousness_r...
johnvschmitt 13y ago
Yes, "Facebook for All" is not the same as "Internet for All". But, it certainly won't end there. I'm sure that many people who are users of any tech, will someday become makers in tech. I was a user first, before I was a builder, in any platform. First you use it. Then, you figure it out. You take it apart & study it, see similar things all around you now. Then, you repurpose it, combine it, fix it, build something better than it, etc. It's not a bad thing to get corporate sponsors underwriting basic connectivity to those who don't have any.
- detcader 13y ago
  [From a wider standpoint (and at the risk of stating the obvious) I think it's at least a little bit outrageous that, when people the world over lack basic human rights even under the US government, Facebook is opining about whether connection to the internet should be added to a list that is ignored and non-unanimous anyway. The type of rights that protect people from violence should be ensured to everybody first, just my opinion] How do you take apart an iPad? I think that is the point.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > The type of rights that protect people from violence should be ensured to everybody first If we are scrupulous and careful never to advocate for rights that don't protect people from violence, we will never ensure any other rights, no matter how deserved they are, unless we cast everything in those terms. Like, for instance, the right to not get blown up by a terrorist. That's how the slippery slope starts. But I am helping derail the conversation.
  - visakanv 13y ago
    I used to feel very strongly about these things too, but ultimately I think everybody is up to build and pursue whatever they like. We can't force other people to do things our way. We can attempt to persuade them to, or guilt-trip them to, but we can't force them to care about what we care about. That said, humans have always have had "odd" priorities that might not make sense from the lens of rational cost-benefit analysis. Venkat Rao wrote quite an interesting piece about this- about how some people genuinely prefer the occasional escapism of movies to, say, proper sanitation. We don't sit down and rationally work on our worst problems, we're aspirational, we're idealistic. People working on humanitarian projects have found that the threat of death and the promise of salvation from death DON'T actually stop people from defecating in the streets, etc. It may be that people want Facebook more than they want protection from violence. That might seem utterly crazy, but it might also be true. That said, Facebook is free to do as it pleases. C'est la vie.
Ihmahr 13y ago
How could anyone believe in a facebook/zuckerberg do-good movement when their last movement (FWD.US) was so incredibly backwards?
- antihero 13y ago
  What was backwards about FWD.us? I thought Facebook was trying to make it easier for companies to hire internationally? I'm not saying I disagree, and am of course sceptical of Facebook however, you provide nothing to the debate.
gfodor 13y ago
This article falls into the common trap of being a concern troll by assuming the next generation is not as clever as the one of the author's. There was a time when AOL was "going online" too. Corporate interests always go in this direction and the hackers hack around it eventually. If Facebook runs a line to a village that only allows Facebook-only access, you can bet your bottom dollar that that connection and hardware will be hacked and exploited to its maximum effect, software restrictions be damned, by the very teenagers the author assumes are too stupid, ignorant, or whatever, to do it. I'd rather this be the status quo than no connection at all. What we really need to be worried about is not if Facebook is going to restrict Facebook-only access with software and hardware tricks, but if the local government is going to back those restrictions up with guns. Send the Mexican teenagers locked down phones, sure, but also leave it up to them what they want to do with them. Somehow I doubt a Mexican village's law enforcement is going to spend its time chasing down teenagers who are abusing their Facebook-subsidized Internet connection. Who knows, maybe Zuckerberg himself will ignore this too, much like Microsoft and Adobe have never come down hard on kids pirating their software since it's in their best interest the kids learn to hack and use their software in the long run. The Facebook-only aspect to this program may very well just be what was necessary to get the board to sign off on everything. (This is all speculation of course.) It's in Zuck's best interest not to just get people to use Facebook, but for kids to continue to learn how to hack and build stuff so he can hire the smartest ones.
namenotrequired 13y ago
Let's hope Facebook's move will lead others to try and get the same market.

33 points by detcader 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

For some reason as of late, I keep trying to frame what is going on now with socioeconomic events of the past. Then the idea wandered into my mind about something I see emerging, where data is not only gaining more economic value, but it is increasingly available to people to monetize if they can "connect the dots" with whatever they seek to provide value in (or how someone starts seeing value where you previously did not), which seems to be landing us in an age of the data robber barons. Where the ability to offer people something they might value, in return for data about not only them, but the world they live in through the way they see it. Maybe I'm over thinking things, but as someone in the midst of it all, I can't help but try to make sense of what is going on in relation to other things.

detcader 13y ago
From Wikipedia: "Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as the materialist conception of history. It is a theory of socioeconomic development according to which changes in material conditions (technology and productive capacity) are the primary influence on how society and the economy are organised. Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. Social classes and the relationship between them, plus the political structures and ways of thinking in society, are founded on and reflect contemporary economic activity." [1] From about.com: "Carol Hanisch's essay explains the idea behind the phrase "the personal is political." A common debate between "personal" and "political" questioned whether women's consciousness-raising groups [during the late 1960s and 1970s] were a useful part of the political women's movement. According to Hanisch, calling the groups "therapy" was a misnomer, as the groups were not intended to solve any women's personal problems. Instead, consciousness-raising was a form of political action to elicit discussion about such topics as women's relationships, their roles in marriage, and their feelings about childbearing." [2] It is essential from any angle to talk about and recognize social, cultural, and economic historical and present systems in any discourse, even about one's personal experience. Activists and academics have been recognizing this for centuries, and the principle applies as much to supposedly democratic, egalitarian "technology" as any facet of life [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism [2] http://womenshistory.about.com/od/feminism/a/consciousness_raising.htm http://womenshistory.about.com/od/feminism/a/consciousness_r...

johnvschmitt 13y ago

Yes, "Facebook for All" is not the same as "Internet for All". But, it certainly won't end there. I'm sure that many people who are users of any tech, will someday become makers in tech. I was a user first, before I was a builder, in any platform. First you use it. Then, you figure it out. You take it apart & study it, see similar things all around you now. Then, you repurpose it, combine it, fix it, build something better than it, etc. It's not a bad thing to get corporate sponsors underwriting basic connectivity to those who don't have any.

detcader 13y ago
[From a wider standpoint (and at the risk of stating the obvious) I think it's at least a little bit outrageous that, when people the world over lack basic human rights even under the US government, Facebook is opining about whether connection to the internet should be added to a list that is ignored and non-unanimous anyway. The type of rights that protect people from violence should be ensured to everybody first, just my opinion] How do you take apart an iPad? I think that is the point.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > The type of rights that protect people from violence should be ensured to everybody first If we are scrupulous and careful never to advocate for rights that don't protect people from violence, we will never ensure any other rights, no matter how deserved they are, unless we cast everything in those terms. Like, for instance, the right to not get blown up by a terrorist. That's how the slippery slope starts. But I am helping derail the conversation.
- visakanv 13y ago
  I used to feel very strongly about these things too, but ultimately I think everybody is up to build and pursue whatever they like. We can't force other people to do things our way. We can attempt to persuade them to, or guilt-trip them to, but we can't force them to care about what we care about. That said, humans have always have had "odd" priorities that might not make sense from the lens of rational cost-benefit analysis. Venkat Rao wrote quite an interesting piece about this- about how some people genuinely prefer the occasional escapism of movies to, say, proper sanitation. We don't sit down and rationally work on our worst problems, we're aspirational, we're idealistic. People working on humanitarian projects have found that the threat of death and the promise of salvation from death DON'T actually stop people from defecating in the streets, etc. It may be that people want Facebook more than they want protection from violence. That might seem utterly crazy, but it might also be true. That said, Facebook is free to do as it pleases. C'est la vie.

Ihmahr 13y ago

How could anyone believe in a facebook/zuckerberg do-good movement when their last movement (FWD.US) was so incredibly backwards?

antihero 13y ago
What was backwards about FWD.us? I thought Facebook was trying to make it easier for companies to hire internationally? I'm not saying I disagree, and am of course sceptical of Facebook however, you provide nothing to the debate.

gfodor 13y ago

This article falls into the common trap of being a concern troll by assuming the next generation is not as clever as the one of the author's. There was a time when AOL was "going online" too. Corporate interests always go in this direction and the hackers hack around it eventually. If Facebook runs a line to a village that only allows Facebook-only access, you can bet your bottom dollar that that connection and hardware will be hacked and exploited to its maximum effect, software restrictions be damned, by the very teenagers the author assumes are too stupid, ignorant, or whatever, to do it. I'd rather this be the status quo than no connection at all. What we really need to be worried about is not if Facebook is going to restrict Facebook-only access with software and hardware tricks, but if the local government is going to back those restrictions up with guns. Send the Mexican teenagers locked down phones, sure, but also leave it up to them what they want to do with them. Somehow I doubt a Mexican village's law enforcement is going to spend its time chasing down teenagers who are abusing their Facebook-subsidized Internet connection. Who knows, maybe Zuckerberg himself will ignore this too, much like Microsoft and Adobe have never come down hard on kids pirating their software since it's in their best interest the kids learn to hack and use their software in the long run. The Facebook-only aspect to this program may very well just be what was necessary to get the board to sign off on everything. (This is all speculation of course.) It's in Zuck's best interest not to just get people to use Facebook, but for kids to continue to learn how to hack and build stuff so he can hire the smartest ones.

namenotrequired 13y ago

Let's hope Facebook's move will lead others to try and get the same market.