The comment sections are either empty, used as a notifier for friends or are right-wing/left-wing troll battle fields. Everyone seems overly emotional to get the most likes and bubble to the top. I removed subscriptions for newspapers to not accidentally have to stumble upon the inanen comments, something I dreaded only with youtube comments so far. Have the social network aspects of Facebook (and youtube) been destroyed by fatigue, other ways (WhatsApp?) of exchanging stuff immediately and ideological troll battles?
A. Becoming more computer-literate and going straight to sites as opposed to always Googling it before clicking, even once familiar with the URL, which won't correlate to usage
B. Visiting the site enough for AutoFill to take effect, which is ever-so-slightly inverse in correlation in terms of search popularity to site popularity
Here's a FB-related search term people will still use, even with AutoFill for Facebook, as some evidence. The rise is a similar pattern, but lacking the major drop: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Facebook...
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Google
What's actually happened is that fewer people are using search engines as their app launcher, because they are using the smartphone home screen instead.
1 Tunisia 100
2 Turkey 95
3 Venezuela 95
4 Ecuador 87
5 Peru 86
6 Algeria 84
7 El Salvador 81
8 Serbia 77
9 Colombia 75
10 Dominican Republic
Notice that none of the developed economies are showing up in the top 10. The dollar per user must be falling as users are increasingly coming from smaller economies which means less amount of ad revenue dollars.
It makes sense why Zuckerberg is crazy for China. Without another spurt of user base growth, Facebook's share price will not be sustainable.
However, the "Interest by region" is amusingly topical.
I've seen the point made with the railroad, and with the internet.
If you look at other tech terms, they are all "declining":
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=mobile,c...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
"Peak air travel" by aircraft departures occurred in 2001, and by total passenger miles, I believe hit around 2007. There's some wiggling around that, in that load factors and seat pitches allow for aircraft to carry more passenger miles on average. But the US DOT's 2000 forecasts for aviation fuel were high by a factor of 50% or so for ~2013. (I've not checked the data since.)
"Peak car", by passenger miles driven seems to have hit much of the US also around the 2007-8 financial crisis. But if you look at underlying trends, as early as 1990 or thereabouts ownership and miles driven were softening markedly particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
"Peak Computer", in terms of traditional desktop (and laptop) sales is well behind us. Mid-to-late 2000s IIRC. Several factors at play, including market saturation, a stagnation in computer capabilities (CPU speed, RAM, disk, and a bunch of other factors have more-or-less been in a holding pattern, though energy usage has fallen markedly), and the increased convenience of the Internet in your pocket making mobile devices far more attractive. We may be seeing backlash to that (security, privacy, burnout, etc.). There remains the point that computing devices are fundamentally difficult for much of the population to use.
Social networks can grow quickly, but also crash with devastating speed. Understanding just what it is which makes them attractive ... and unattractive ... is a key point to understanding their strength. Or weakness.
A similar question would read "Have we reached peak AOL?" or "Have we reached peak Windows?"
Facebook's main asset is its social graph and cross device map, which only Google currently has anything comparable too.
Any time a new type of app, ad unit or social trend becomes popular (group chat replacing FB groups for instance), they will buy it before it gets traction. Instagram has a much nicer ad unit format than Facebook, and appeals to a more upscale audience.
Combating this is partly why Facebook bought WhatsApp and spun out Messenger into its own app.
While he frames it in terms of being a good actor as opposed to making a profit, I can't fault him for this in what is essentially a PR post. At least it acknowledges common criticisms of Facebook's moderation, content policy, and editorial behavior, and displays an awareness that hurried knee-jerk hotfixes won't allay all concerns, but that they need a strategies to stay relevant.
I'm no fan of Facebook the product, or their business model being an elaborate data harvesting scheme, but place criticism where it's due, not on long-form PR blog posts that admit they fucked up a few times and they can do better -- even if they play up examples where FB being in the right place at the right time with the right marketshare has has helped people.
FB has changed so much for the better for me since I've joined an AutoRetro group featuring cars at least 25 years old and since I've started like-ing that group's posts. Now almost half of my feed is filled with photos of old Trabant, Lada or Opel Kadett cars, and I love that. The other half is indeed filled by mothers sharing their kids' stuff, which I don't give a crap about, and some fiery political stuff, which I care about but which I generally ignore, the reason being that there's not that much that I can change, politically-wise, by commenting on the Internet.
I've also found out that I've been a lot more relaxed and generally better off since I've stopped checking my feed on the phone when in public places (tramway, waiting in line at the Post office or at a general store). For those situations I always carry a magazine (the Economist folds really well) or a pocket book with me, and it's been for the best.
This is why some of my friends prefer Instagram as their primary social network. It's mostly hobbies, food, very little politics.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/17/zuckerberg_publishe...
Am I being too critical for thinking someone writing an article like this should know that Google searches / suggestions are personalized? Just because its suggested for them does not mean its universal.
If IP address X does a query, then a moment later the same IP does the same query but just doesn't send any cookies, I am pretty sure Google knows it's the same person.
In my google search suggestions, it falls behind "how to leave a group chat" and "how to leave a meetup group". Therefore it must be true that more people are trying to figure out how to get out of group chats or break it off with their meetup group than leaving facebook. This also must be a sign of the demise of group chat.
The other questions, hmm.
Another way to bypass customized results is to use StartPage. The only suggestion I get from there is "how to leave town"
> how to leave a group text on iphone
> how to leave a google review
> how to leave a review on etsy
> how to leave a group chat
El Rag agrees with you.
Facebook makes the most obvious choice of algorithms. An alternative choice of algorithms (e.g. deliberately exposing you to views you don't like) would create a much bigger backlash.
Anyway facebook has a long history of "huuuge outcry" every time they make a change, but its users have the attention span of a fruitfly.
"Rationalist"?? What's rational about him? The guy did not have any political existence 6 months ago, has no party, has no program, tells everyday the opposite of what he told the previous day because the audience is different, and yet gets more than 20% in opinion polls. That's a rationalist, uh?
If you want to persuade someone, telling them what they want to hear is an essential first step. It would be irrational to do othwise given his goals.
However, I have found it is not practical to remove Facebook because I use Messenger to talk with friends (either chat or voice). Much easier and cheaper than doing it with text (and it's way too easier for international friends). I removed the Messenger App from my phone though because it is abusive. I'm trying to find a way to communicate (P2P) with friends without facebook but it is too hard to convince them to install something else.
FYI you can deactivate Facebook without deactivating messenger. That is what I did. My messenger still works (although oddly, sharing links with friends has become a little worse ) and my Facebook profile is deactivated.
Mark, please! You're a spam-your-friends-with-fake-news-and-baby-photos service at best. The world will go on long after Facebook ceases to exist. Please stop pretending that you're Mother Teresa here.
It was marked [dead], not [flagged]... I just vouched for it to reply, I'm a bit surprised that users can hide a mod's post...
Edit: Correction, you are a sockpuppet, as you admit to in your 1st post, pointing out its primary use to manipulate discussion. Go away troll.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13672409 and marked it off-topic.
Let’s not forget, Facebook isn’t exactly being exploited by shady actors like Cambridge Analytica—it's profiting from them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...
I don't just mean that as a snarky crack. It's worth pondering the idea a bit. They've been headed in this direction for a while, but it's becoming undeniable.
(Remember, Facebook is more than just America. They and their stock valuation aspire to be global.)
This works since the beginning of humanity, I don't see why it surprises people that new technology resorts to proven methods.
The scary thing is, I think a lot of people on the industry actually believe their own BS...
Whether it's true or not, it's a useful illusion. People who believe that it's all meaningless tend to sit on message boards and shit on others instead.
The grandiose self-vision is annoying PR, but at least some of the companies have a fair amount to back it up with. Facebook is just the next iteration of Microsoft in my opinion -- they took a huge early lead with a superior product in a new industry, but now they're kind of evil and they will ride their market share for many decades.
The funny part is that Mother Teresa wasn't a good person, but made a lot of money from her image of nicety. I think its the same way with these individuals who are trying to act 'noble'. The most noble thing you could do is bring consumer trust back and invest into people.
I would argue that a lot of problems that companies have, like when Tim Cook was going around giving presentations on why encryption is important, is solved by bringing consumer trust back by working in the best interest for everyone, and not just for money.
https://www.amazon.com/Geek-Heresy-Rescuing-Social-Technolog...
Google, FB, etc. are a bit pretentious. You are world saving because you can afford it - you run companies with huge margins that rake in billions of dollars per QUARTER.
Let's keep it in perspective - you do it because you can, you're not successful because you do it.
It's the same reason you see Hollywood actors being outspoken political activists. Because if they stay out of politics, they're "only" insignificant entertainers.
It's the same reason you see comedians and TV shows getting political. Saturday Night Live (SNL) is just a show for laughs. But if it takes a political stance, suddenly the writers/producers/actors can feel good about making a positive change. (Whether it's actually positive is beside the point; it only matters they think it's positive.)
And so, Facebook is doing something to enact positive change. (For various definitions of positive.)
Facebook is only different in that it has enough money and influence to actually change things in the world. Whereas comedians, actors, TV shows can only offer political opinions and try to influence people, Facebook can actually change things thanks to its financial status and its staggeringly user base.
Where are the actions to back up the argument? Internet.org? India would like to kick internet.org in the nutsack. Giving money to charity? Where are the results from that investment?
Without any evidence, Mark Zuckerberg is just another king of spin. Aren't there enough cockroaches in the world already? Not saying Mark is one, but I'd like to see someone else point to the good FB is doing in the world and hear nothing at all from its CEO.
Sure, there are a ton of negative externalities of that such as fake news spam. But it also puts them in a unique position to tailor their site to encourage the behaviors and enforce the values they want. I think the focus on local communities is an important example. Obviously local communities can create groups now, but there is a lot that can be done to encourage those kinds of communities and groups and discover existing ones.
"The joy of reading" is coming under great fire.
In fact I am beginning to realize that I no longer enjoy reading from a phone. Never before in my reading experience did I get so worked up until now
Your comment not just includes fake news or junk reading but simply anything written in an opinion fashion.
This manifesto is an example of why reading has gone sour.
Humorously, Teresa caused a lot of pain and suffering all the while self-righteously convincing herself and others that she was doing god's work.
More similarities than one may think.
> how to leave facebook
> how to leave a club in lol (??)
> how to leave ashran (??)
> how to leave a discord server (??)
Seems Google has me pegged as a gamer... (I'm not, had to DDG all the suggestions marked with a question mark)
I blame myself for being stupid for believing that the web was about helping people reach progress through minimal harm. Sigh. Innocence !
Anything can peak, products and industries alike.
Also, there are several extensions specifically for blocking social media tracking, which also block comment sections (and you can still go directly to Facebook)
While this manifesto was a little over-the-top, and probably amplifies globalism as a cure-all, he does appear sincere in his desire to do good. Time will tell.
As far as I know, they rather have a cheap smartphone, than a PC ...
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/01/facebook-q4-2016-earnings/
Yes and no. It captured people while they were 20-somethings and has so far managed to hold onto many of them into their 30s and even 40s via its networking effect. But the last thing the next generation want to use is something that the previous generation used. So it's a blessing and a curse.
Facebook is no longer Harvard.
If you ask me, for a lot of these tech companies, this is a false dichotomy: they're outwardly preachy and inwardly cynical. How better to justify bad behaviour than to dress it up in grandiosity?
Just remember we're not just getting free lithium, aluminum and copper from another dimension to build all those cars, and when we're done with the cars, they're not just going to biodegrade back into forrests and coral reefs. Mining those minerals can have a pretty serious environmental impact.
There is some cognitive dissonance going here, we see a solution to climate change, but we don't want to observe the other side of the coin.
Yes, mining has an environmental impact, but 1 ton of aluminum used in a car does not necessarily mean 1 ton of aluminum was mined for it.
I.e., his solution to employment issues caused by automation is to merge with machines as opposed to addressing it on a social, political, economic, etc., level.
More and more I find this approach detrimental to society and likely to amplify all existing problems.
And even then, it was only because Friendster was crippled by scaling problems and MySpace was snowed under with self-promotion that Facebook even had a path out of the university populations to which they initially restricted themselves.
Four. Freaking. Decades.
It's not right to say, "Mother Teresa was not a good person because [minor thing I disagree about]."
Her views do not cancel 45 years of service. I wish more people would be "bad" like Mother Teresa. There would be fewer depressed, fewer lonely, fewer suicidal, fewer addicts, fewer outcasts.
The atheist Hitchens wrote several hit pieces on the religious Teresa due to her views on abortion, suffering, women's rights, and more. But the world is not made better by spilling rivers of ink about perceived imperfections in the laborers helping society's outcasts. The world is made better by the good things people do for others.
I'd rather live in a world with 1 imperfect laboring Mother Teresa than 1000 babbling do-nothings.
She raised billions of dollars and very little of it ended up helping the people she was supposed to be caring for.
> I wish more people would be "bad" like Mother Teresa.
Don't worry, there are people like Benny Hinn, like Peter Popov, like Creflow Dollar who are out there taking mountains of money from people in the name of faith to spend on their gold-plated jets.
Mother Theresa did more damage to the world than you can possibly imagine. If instead of celebrating misery she worked to mitigate, instead of being staunchly opposed to birth control she had encouraged family planning, if instead of using the sick and dying as a fund-raising tool instead of helping them get back on their own feet to lift themselves up the world would be a better place.
Mother Theresa clearly didn't give a shit about women's rights.
> The world is made better by the good things people do for others.
Especially if those good things help others pay it forward. She kept her flock just sick and miserable enough they didn't escape. She's like someone with Munchausen syndrome by proxy in a monstrous scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_syndrome_by_proxy
Where's the evidence for that? I read Hitchens' utterly biased hit piece on her, I didn't see real evidence, just accusations and editorializing.
> "She raised billions of dollars and very little of it ended up helping the people she was supposed to be caring for."
Be specific. She raised billions, but very little helped the people? Give us numbers, and show us original sources. Hitchens' hit pieces didn't contain these. (As I recall, even Hitchens acknowledged that Mother Teresa didn't live luxuriously herself.)
>> There are plenty of others like Benny Hinn...
Hinn, Popov and others shysters aren't caring for the sick, feeding the hungry. Red herring.
Actually, the piece he wrote was about how she would deny medicine to those who needed it, and reused needles between patients, along with putting down 'modern' equipment and anything non-religious. All while she received millions in funding she did not invest into her 'homes'. The 'houses' poor people went to where she said she would take care of them, were actually houses of death for them, even if it was treatable.
45 years of service means nothing, if your 45 years of service includes purposefully making people suffer and denying them of care they need, while making money for yourself and trying to look like a saint.
Also related:
I'd rather take an honest, measured view of these companies. Many have the potential to change our lives, for both good and ill. Buying into the BS is a great way to short circuit healthy skepticism.
Selling the BS is a fantastic smokescreen.
This is something I've wrestled with a lot in my personal life: you can have an accurate self-image and never really accomplish anything, or you can have an inflated self-image and achievements that probably don't quite justify it but come a lot closer than the achievements of the people with accurate self-images. Empirically, there doesn't seem to be a middle ground, except for a few rare folks who seemingly have no self-image (they just don't think about it much). That sort of delusional megalomania seems to be a necessary motive force for tackling hard, risky problems. And if you don't have it, then some other delusional megalomaniac will be the one who actually attempts it, and gets resources simply because he's the only one trying.
People who find success often become delusional megalomaniacs after achieving that success, when they see their success as evidence of their own greatness, not before. The idea that it's the megalomania (or a black turtleneck) that makes you successful, or even makes you brave enough to attempt the things that might make you successful, is an illusion.
A defining commonality of delusional megalomaniacs is their destructiveness and their danger to the people around them and themselves. Worse, they tend to attract followers who both amplify the reach of that destructiveness and who create an echo chamber that reflects back and amplifies the megalomania that attracted them, making the situation worse.
> That sort of delusional megalomania seems to be a necessary motive force for tackling hard, risky problems.
There's no evidence of this. Everything difficult was not solved by assholes, and Zuckerberg didn't solve anything difficult.
The self-image comes into play when you're trying to act in a certain accordance with what's in your head. If you think you're bound for great things, you'll look for great things to tackle and you won't be satisfied until you're at whatever version of success you have in your head. If your self-image is happy & settled-down, you'll similarly stress over this. Eventually though, you'll probably get what you wanted because the law of attraction is quite real.
When you talk about accomplishment, it's a relative term though I understand you mean money in this case. Self-image is self-directed, and typically comes from a desire, which naturally comes from a lack. You will see many buy into the trap that money = happiness, and they will thus imagine themselves as some rich, successful tech CEO. After that, self-image has to match up with real-world, so work. The ones who truly believe they are will eventually succeed, and the ones with little willpower will fail. This goes for every facet of life.
That's why it's good to ponder "who am I?" because it's actually a step after "what do I want?" If you can see it, you can be it. Some will call it megalomania and others will call it dedication. Without knowing the person intimately, it's hard to understand which it is, but I'm an optimist and lean on the side of most successful people got there through a lot of hard work -- where their self-image was tested again & again.
The truth is nobody can tell you that you are or aren't successful. Ultimately, it's a personal decision and comes down to if your ideal version of yourself is staring back at you in the mirror.
I very much agree with the first sentence.
But I don't know if I agree with the second. People who believe that something is meaningless, or hard to do, are at least not doing any damage, while saviors of the world have done plenty of damage. We humans seem to have an inherent bias for powerful persons, in that we tend to like them even if they're a terrible influence.
I think you mean "easier to get convince others to work 80-hour weeks for illusory stock options".
(i <3 u 'idlewords)
But hey, let's not get that get in the way of a great response, right?
And why would Lithium no longer be required? In some hypothetical future that doesn't exist? It's needed now, and that's all that's important. Moreover, its great performance in batteries is directly related to fundamental physics and the position of Li on the periodic table, and that's not going to change.
>But hey, let's not get that get in the way of a great response, right?
Let what get in the way of a great response? Your nonsensical predictions?
I would bet on the Facebook mobile app being a major cause, though. Instead of hitting the web version at all, they're opening the mobile app.
I still won't use "OK Google", because it's the new Bluetooth headset, only douchebags use it in public. Come on Google, how much do you lose by allowing custom phrases?
Does the mobile app take away that much usage from the web? I can see how it'll increase overall usage as people will use FB when they otherwise couldn't, but I imagine anyone who could be using it on a computer will still use the web version over a mobile app (web seems more functional, especially so with the recent Facebook/Messenger division).
We saw a similar effect at Google with porn queries, particularly during the day. As soon as image search came to mobile Google, many porn queries moved to mobile; as of 2013 porn queries were twice as likely on mobile search as desktop.
however, i dont see how facebook being #2 and #3 among searches means anything against the fact that most people either dont close facebook or as soon as they type 'f' facebook.com is autocomplete. unless you get to see how many autocompleted hits they are getting, you are experiencing a selection bias
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=facebook...
- You go to Google to research what to buy.
- You go to Amazon to give Amazon your hard earned money.
- You go to Facebook to brag what you bought.
Yet the market cap of Facebook rivals those two with far less revenue and highest multiplier.
This cannot last.
The problem is this is also going to be Facebook's downfall at some indeterminate future date. Because if some other social network ever becomes more popular than Facebook, Facebook is over.
Amazon has a radically higher multiple than Facebook. About six times higher, being charitable with Amazon's flaky net income.
Facebook will hit $13 or $14 billion in net income for fiscal 2017. Explain to me how a 27 or 28 pe ratio is unsupportable when you're growing net income at 30% or higher.
Meanwhile Google is growing its net income at 18% with a PE of 30. A far more lopsided ratio than Facebook has now, and one that is going to get much worse in just the next four quarters.
So you're wrong on both counts. Facebook has the superior value proposition based on valuation to net income + factoring growth rate.
Also, a surprisingly large fraction of users cannot touch-type. They've been trained to go to Google to search, so they type in g-o-o-g-l-e-ENTER and get where they intended, and never notice the autocomplete suggestions showing up in the Omnibox or the fact that they could just type their whole query in and get answers.
Shut down all the banks 2 weeks, eg no access to any money.
Shut down all Gasoline for 2 weeks. Eg no personal transit (shut up you smug Tesla drivers I'm getting you next).
Shut down all electricity for 2 weeks. No Power. (All you with power on your roofs and teslas... this gets your grocery store fridges).
I think you need to re-evaluate what is "essential".
But I do like to ponder the thought of all Google services, or all Amazon services shutting down for 2 weeks. Clearly not as essential, but the impact on the daily life of at least most of the US would at least be noticeable.
I believe these are still the early days of "internet giants". They seem giant now, but with MS, Google, Amazon, and other "giants" aiming to provide much of the structure of not only the internet, but also some of our daily lives (delivery, web, phone, internet access, information/news), I can imagine twenty years from now the reach of these "giants" to be far closer to "essential" then we feel they are now.
Who knows, maybe we will forever be in a cycle of "giants" growing, evolving, and failing without ever becoming essential. I don't know how it will work haha, but interesting to consider.
I've long been in favor of ending the Sherman act for this reason. You can target companies that are politically opposed to you by just a bit of rhetoric and government over reach. One interesting way to think about what good breaking up companies do is think of Standard Oil's breakup leading to a butterfly affect so to speak that encouraged the increase usage of carbon base fuels. There were relatively crappy electric car models in the 1900s, there was actually a point where the electric car worked better than gas (1). If Standard Oil was to remain together and lack of competition meant higher oil prices this could have led Ford and others to research ways to make the electric model more capable for the masses as consumer demand would seek such alternatives. 100 years later, we may be in a much better position environmentally..maybe. Just a butterfly effect thought nonetheless. All that said, the best thing to do in order to combat monopolies in the free market is to legalize insider trading and spoofing. The markets will figure it out. Insiders acting on information they know without having to go through SEC hoops would be able to react more quickly and damage firms in ways that could work to destabilize such giants.
1.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
E.g. a sibling comment mentions Facebook pages for small businesses: if Facebook went away or stopped offering them generally, that would fix itself within less than two weeks. If the vast majority assumes they can find all businesses on Facebook, but yours isn't because Facebook doesn't like your name or some aspect of your business, that's a long-term issue.
These are disasters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
Those are disasters.
If google was down for 2 weeks, there would be some big problems for some companies and some people. But there are plenty of work arounds: phones still work just fine, amazon would be up, etc. If it was the whole information grid down, yes that'd be a large hit to the economy. But 9/11 essentially shut down business for 2 weeks as well. Google going down, not really a disaster. 9/11... Disaster.
It is essential for small bussinesses all over the world that rely on fb pages instead of investing in creation of their own web pages
the consumption of oil was going to skyrocket from 1911 no matter what due to technology, during a time where people primarily traveled by boat and train.
I think if oil was of a higher price due to lack of competition there would have been more incentives by car companies to try to figure a way to make the costs of running a car go down to appeal to the emerging middle class. There would have been more money in R&D at those earlier times trying to solve problems that were not really considered or kept to the side because they were too difficult. I believe for the most part discoveries could be made even then that would build up to suitable electric cars. Of course we wouldn't have had them by 1911.. as one would need to take into consideration the break up of Standard Oil. It would have been interesting to see what the military would have came up with during WWI/WWII if oil was too costly and battles needed to be won with the usage of vehicles and how that would translate over to private business and civilian life.
This is why Facebook buys out anything new that looks like it might threaten Facebook's dominance.
we can email our friends, text them or meet them in the bar though.
I can't be the only one who uses `httping www.google.com` to check if the internet is up?
In Germany only bands add musicians used it.
No social pressure to stay at MySpace.
If you were in Germany, you may not have seen this, because MySpace didn't enter Germany until 2006 or 2007. At that point, Facebook was already starting to beat them with new users. By 2008, the established user base of MySpace was fleeing in droves to Facebook. The network effects that would have created social pressure to stay actually caused it to collapse even faster.
There is nothing that would prevent this exact thing from happening to Facebook. If a better site were to come along (or if Facebook were to become vastly less competitive than they are now), the social pressure could actually cause them to collapse just as fast as MySpace did.