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Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

This bit made me laugh:

"Over the past year and a half, Facebook's business has performed well and the value of our stock has grown to the point that I can fully fund our philanthropy and retain voting control of Facebook for 20 years or more,"

I don't think we will be needing Facebook to stay in touch with our friends in 20 years time, by then it should be as anachronistic as the Yellow Pages are today.

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This assumes that Facebook the corporation doesn't build/buy/otherwise control the thing that replaces Facebook the web application in 20 years.

We'll see about that.

Yellow pages (or rather white pages for individuals) seemed sinister in that unless you opted out, your address and phone number iirc were listed by default.

Actually that's kind of like what these social networks still do today isn't it?

Strangely, 20 years ago very few people thought that their name in the phone book was a privacy concern. A few people got unlisted numbers but that was generally because they were public figures to one degree or another and wanted to avoid nuisance calls.

A few people got unlisted numbers but that was generally because they were public figures to one degree or another

Probably a bigger reason that "few" people got unlisted numbers was because it actually cost extra per month to do that. As Dave Barry is fond of saying: "I am not making this up".

This was a concern for most professionals. If you were a physician, lawyer, dentist, etc you did this because you didn't want patients/clients looking you up at home. My father, who is a physician, did this and refuses to open an FB account for the same reason.

In "Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview" (which is great), Jobs mentions that when he was twelve he needed some computer parts and looked up Bill Hewlett in the phone book and called him at home. Hewlett picked up, Jobs got the parts and a job at HP (summer job?). Maybe people used to respect other peoples time more and having a listed number was not a big problem.

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