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Facebook has been invaluable to me for keeping in touch with friends and family from my entire life time. I've rekindled contact with lost friends, kept in touc

by harel 12y ago

Facebook has been invaluable to me for keeping in touch with friends and family from my entire life time. I've rekindled contact with lost friends, kept in touch with family living abroad, made new friends. Its a tool and like any tool there are instructions and warning labels. What more, this tool is free, and to be fair, costs millions of dollars a month to run. And we mustn't forget Facebook is also a business, and yes, we are not the customers - we are the product used to keep the machine running and make some people a healthy profit in the process. That is the nature of business. Remember that, accept that and use it right, and Facebook is great. You don't like - get off it but don't expect everybody to follow suit. There has been (are still are) many attempts to move the party else where. They all failed or will fail since the point of the 'party' is having everybody attend and attend all at once.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
"[...] we are the product used to keep the machine running and make some people a healthy profit in the process. That is the nature of business." Making a profit is the nature of business. Requiring payment in giving up privacy and control over your perception as the only options is not, and being a monopoly also is not. "They all failed or will fail since the point of the 'party' is having everybody attend and attend all at once." That is exactly why facebook must be faught, the name economics has for this is "network externality"[1] - the monopolization of a dominant communication system by one entity has a cost for those who don't participate, which is not acceptable. Also, you might want to consider that "having everybody attend and attend all at once" technically does not require a monopoly. The telephone network, for example, is also one telephone network where every participant can call every other participant, but still, there are multiple telcos offering access to the network, competing with one another. Something similar is true for most traditional internet services, and the internet itself. Every machine on the internet can send packets to every other machine on the internet, but there are plenty of providers to choose from. You can send email from every email account to every other, but there are plenty of email providers, and it's relatively easy to open your own. Every website hosted anywhere can be read by anyone, not matter which provider they connect through ... all of those technologies allow you access through one single telephone, email client, and web browser, but there is no single entity that controls all of it, and that is vital in order to avoid an unhealthy concentration of power that in the end is likely to affect not just those who choose to use facebook, but all of society. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
- runeks 12y ago
  > That is exactly why facebook must be faught [...] Why the war talk? Can't people who are willing to accept Facebook's terms just use it, while those who are unwilling refrain from using Facebook?
  - learnstats2 12y ago
    OK. I'm not willing to accept Facebook's terms. Now, what should I do about my friends posting my photo and personal details such that Facebook creates a shadow profile of me without my permission?
    - zo1 12y ago
      Tell your friends that you are not willing to accept their terms of friendship. On multiple occasions I've asked my friends/acquaintances to not post a specific photo that I'm in, and they've stuck to it. They might still keep it, as a keepsake, but it's not publicly available. If I wanted to go any further than that, I'd have to ask myself the extreme question of... "Why go out in public at all" due to all the times I'd have my face or actions tracked.
      - bsilvereagle 12y ago
        Unfortunately, it's not as simple as not uploading a single photograph. If Facebook has scraped your friend's (or grandma's) contact lists, the shadow profile has been created, and the friend tracking has begun.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
        Yes, that is the kind of question that dissidents in societies that work(ed) like facebook do/did ask themselves.
      - strathmeyer 12y ago
        When someone does something that prevents you from going outside, society generally makes that illegal. You might find that some of us are not all-powerful enough to make people do things simply by threatening to no longer be their friend.
amirmc 12y ago
FB is valuable for me too but that doesn't mean I trust it. As you say, it's a business that exists to turn a profit and I am cattle. I don't like this arrangement but I don't really have an alternative (as you say). However, that does not mean that people shouldn't draw attention to what FB is, what it captures and what it does in your name. Nobody reads the "instructions and warning labels" and even if they did, they're not going to comprehend them. Would you then admonish the user to RTFM? I'd call that victim-blaming. How many developers would dare blame the user for not understanding how to use their shiny new web-app? Why take the same approach to those who can't understand a ToS? FB may be a tool but that's also an oversimplification. It's not anything like a 'hammer', or even a chainsaw. I'd consider it more like a drug (eg morphine), which is also a tool but is not really your friend. Those kinds of tools get regulated.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
  "but I don't really have an alternative (as you say)." Which is another way to say that you in fact do have an alternative. People in oppressive regimes tell themselves the same, which is how they do get perpetuated. The change happens when people accept the fact that there is an alternative.
  - tomphoolery 12y ago
    Facebook is a social network, not an oppressive regime.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
      There is no contradiction between those two terms. Nation states are social networks, too, and some of them are oppressive regimes. One risk factor for becoming oppressive is a concentration of power. Facebook concentrates a lot of power. The concentration of power is why people feel that they have no alternative. Note: Analogies are analogies because they are analogous, not because they are an exact copy.
  - acjohnson55 12y ago
VLM 12y ago
You can search and replace your argument with the automotive industry and it works pretty well. You can't be a successful adult without a car, no matter how loud an extremely small minority of the population claims otherwise, and the general public has pretty much no interest in the alternatives. Yet, in contrast to the auto industry, no one thought it was great that Ford Pinto gas tanks would explode, or the cops punish people for the crime of "driving while black". If as a company you insist on business practices or class of business operations that inevitably results in the destruction of any real free market probably via monopolization, you can expect criticism and regulation to at least try to reduce the harm.
- CalRobert 12y ago
  I own no car and live comfortably, because I don't live in the US. Why the dig at those who cycle, walk, or take transit?
  - umanwizard 12y ago
    I don't own a car and almost never miss it. Granted I would miss it slightly more often if ride-sharing services didn't exist as sometimes I'm too lazy to cycle, but it'd still be perfectly doable. I live in the US.
- umanwizard 12y ago
  I'm glad you're here to point out that I can't be a successful adult without a car. I hadn't realized that, but now that I'm clued in I can go buy one to fix the issue. P.S. I think around 25% of my coworkers have cars, and we live in the US making six figures.
- richsherwood 12y ago
  You can't be a successful adult without a car? That's one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. That's like saying you don't love your wife unless you buy her a diamond. Granted one has more purpose than the other but essentially they are both material objects that we as humans place too much value on.
ekr 12y ago
I seriously doubt that 'millions of dollars a month to run' price-tag. There are alternative, even superior open source software solutions. The only cost are the servers, but certainly, even with facebook's traffic, a well built stack could run on not more than a dozen. So I'd imagine facebook could be run on a few thousands of dollars a month, certainly the costs shouldn't be that much higher than wikipedia's. The only thing that's valuable in facebook, and hard to replace, is the user-base, which was won through heavy marketing, and having a more attractive product at a critical stage (more attractive =/= technically superior).
- stingraycharles 12y ago
  Huh what? Are you really suggesting facebook could be run on a few dozen servers, or are you just trolling?
  - yuvadam 12y ago
    Not centrally, no. But many existing P2P networks prove that you do not need massive data centers to hoard everyone's data. You can use the collaborative effort of humanities existing computation devices. Decentralize all the things.
    - stingraycharles 12y ago
      That was not the point he was making -- he was making the point that "even with facebook's amount of traffic, you could host it on a dozen servers". That is just so far detached from reality I cannot take that seriously. I agree that p2p social networks are an interesting alternative, but they are a whole different kind of product and a kind of apples / oranges comparison in terms of cost of operation.
    - gnopgnip 12y ago
      Decentralization is less efficient. Instead of each piece of information being copied in a few place it would need to be copied to hundreds or thousands with a decentralized system.
- 12y ago
fat0wl 12y ago
Honestly, I'd rather they make it a paid service than a dystopian clusterfuck of advertising espionage. I'm more likely to quit the wonnnnderful "free" service you describe and defend because it "costs millions of dollars a month to run". Those millions of dollars are just R&D on how to get advertisers more intimate data. If they didn't pay for all that gross research, the infrastructure wouldn't cost nearly as much.

by harel 12y ago

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago

"[...] we are the product used to keep the machine running and make some people a healthy profit in the process. That is the nature of business." Making a profit is the nature of business. Requiring payment in giving up privacy and control over your perception as the only options is not, and being a monopoly also is not. "They all failed or will fail since the point of the 'party' is having everybody attend and attend all at once." That is exactly why facebook must be faught, the name economics has for this is "network externality"[1] - the monopolization of a dominant communication system by one entity has a cost for those who don't participate, which is not acceptable. Also, you might want to consider that "having everybody attend and attend all at once" technically does not require a monopoly. The telephone network, for example, is also one telephone network where every participant can call every other participant, but still, there are multiple telcos offering access to the network, competing with one another. Something similar is true for most traditional internet services, and the internet itself. Every machine on the internet can send packets to every other machine on the internet, but there are plenty of providers to choose from. You can send email from every email account to every other, but there are plenty of email providers, and it's relatively easy to open your own. Every website hosted anywhere can be read by anyone, not matter which provider they connect through ... all of those technologies allow you access through one single telephone, email client, and web browser, but there is no single entity that controls all of it, and that is vital in order to avoid an unhealthy concentration of power that in the end is likely to affect not just those who choose to use facebook, but all of society. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

runeks 12y ago
> That is exactly why facebook must be faught [...] Why the war talk? Can't people who are willing to accept Facebook's terms just use it, while those who are unwilling refrain from using Facebook?
- learnstats2 12y ago
  OK. I'm not willing to accept Facebook's terms. Now, what should I do about my friends posting my photo and personal details such that Facebook creates a shadow profile of me without my permission?
  - zo1 12y ago
    Tell your friends that you are not willing to accept their terms of friendship. On multiple occasions I've asked my friends/acquaintances to not post a specific photo that I'm in, and they've stuck to it. They might still keep it, as a keepsake, but it's not publicly available. If I wanted to go any further than that, I'd have to ask myself the extreme question of... "Why go out in public at all" due to all the times I'd have my face or actions tracked.
    - bsilvereagle 12y ago
      Unfortunately, it's not as simple as not uploading a single photograph. If Facebook has scraped your friend's (or grandma's) contact lists, the shadow profile has been created, and the friend tracking has begun.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
      Yes, that is the kind of question that dissidents in societies that work(ed) like facebook do/did ask themselves.
    - strathmeyer 12y ago
      When someone does something that prevents you from going outside, society generally makes that illegal. You might find that some of us are not all-powerful enough to make people do things simply by threatening to no longer be their friend.

amirmc 12y ago

FB is valuable for me too but that doesn't mean I trust it. As you say, it's a business that exists to turn a profit and I am cattle. I don't like this arrangement but I don't really have an alternative (as you say). However, that does not mean that people shouldn't draw attention to what FB is, what it captures and what it does in your name. Nobody reads the "instructions and warning labels" and even if they did, they're not going to comprehend them. Would you then admonish the user to RTFM? I'd call that victim-blaming. How many developers would dare blame the user for not understanding how to use their shiny new web-app? Why take the same approach to those who can't understand a ToS? FB may be a tool but that's also an oversimplification. It's not anything like a 'hammer', or even a chainsaw. I'd consider it more like a drug (eg morphine), which is also a tool but is not really your friend. Those kinds of tools get regulated.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
"but I don't really have an alternative (as you say)." Which is another way to say that you in fact do have an alternative. People in oppressive regimes tell themselves the same, which is how they do get perpetuated. The change happens when people accept the fact that there is an alternative.
- tomphoolery 12y ago
  Facebook is a social network, not an oppressive regime.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
    There is no contradiction between those two terms. Nation states are social networks, too, and some of them are oppressive regimes. One risk factor for becoming oppressive is a concentration of power. Facebook concentrates a lot of power. The concentration of power is why people feel that they have no alternative. Note: Analogies are analogies because they are analogous, not because they are an exact copy.
- acjohnson55 12y ago

VLM 12y ago

You can search and replace your argument with the automotive industry and it works pretty well. You can't be a successful adult without a car, no matter how loud an extremely small minority of the population claims otherwise, and the general public has pretty much no interest in the alternatives. Yet, in contrast to the auto industry, no one thought it was great that Ford Pinto gas tanks would explode, or the cops punish people for the crime of "driving while black". If as a company you insist on business practices or class of business operations that inevitably results in the destruction of any real free market probably via monopolization, you can expect criticism and regulation to at least try to reduce the harm.

CalRobert 12y ago
I own no car and live comfortably, because I don't live in the US. Why the dig at those who cycle, walk, or take transit?
- umanwizard 12y ago
  I don't own a car and almost never miss it. Granted I would miss it slightly more often if ride-sharing services didn't exist as sometimes I'm too lazy to cycle, but it'd still be perfectly doable. I live in the US.
umanwizard 12y ago
I'm glad you're here to point out that I can't be a successful adult without a car. I hadn't realized that, but now that I'm clued in I can go buy one to fix the issue. P.S. I think around 25% of my coworkers have cars, and we live in the US making six figures.
richsherwood 12y ago
You can't be a successful adult without a car? That's one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. That's like saying you don't love your wife unless you buy her a diamond. Granted one has more purpose than the other but essentially they are both material objects that we as humans place too much value on.

ekr 12y ago

I seriously doubt that 'millions of dollars a month to run' price-tag. There are alternative, even superior open source software solutions. The only cost are the servers, but certainly, even with facebook's traffic, a well built stack could run on not more than a dozen. So I'd imagine facebook could be run on a few thousands of dollars a month, certainly the costs shouldn't be that much higher than wikipedia's. The only thing that's valuable in facebook, and hard to replace, is the user-base, which was won through heavy marketing, and having a more attractive product at a critical stage (more attractive =/= technically superior).

stingraycharles 12y ago
Huh what? Are you really suggesting facebook could be run on a few dozen servers, or are you just trolling?
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Not centrally, no. But many existing P2P networks prove that you do not need massive data centers to hoard everyone's data. You can use the collaborative effort of humanities existing computation devices. Decentralize all the things.
  - stingraycharles 12y ago
    That was not the point he was making -- he was making the point that "even with facebook's amount of traffic, you could host it on a dozen servers". That is just so far detached from reality I cannot take that seriously. I agree that p2p social networks are an interesting alternative, but they are a whole different kind of product and a kind of apples / oranges comparison in terms of cost of operation.
  - gnopgnip 12y ago
    Decentralization is less efficient. Instead of each piece of information being copied in a few place it would need to be copied to hundreds or thousands with a decentralized system.
12y ago

fat0wl 12y ago

Honestly, I'd rather they make it a paid service than a dystopian clusterfuck of advertising espionage. I'm more likely to quit the wonnnnderful "free" service you describe and defend because it "costs millions of dollars a month to run". Those millions of dollars are just R&D on how to get advertisers more intimate data. If they didn't pay for all that gross research, the infrastructure wouldn't cost nearly as much.