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Comment by Dowwie | Hacker News Reader

I have had enough of the latest anti-Facebook vitriole. A lot of people want to see someone, preferably Zuck, drawn and quartered, but I don't. He has accepted responsibility for mistakes and has agreed to do more to protect its users. I believe him. I also believe he has earned a chance to redeem himself, considering the value that Facebook has created for society at little to no cost to its users.

Most of the Hacker News community has benefitted by Facebook, as users or through myriad successful open source projects. To take with both hands and to bite is unethical. It is wrong.

Facebook and Zuck aren't the only people who need to change.

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> considering the value that Facebook has created for society at little to no cost to its users.

Is Facebook a net positive for society? Every positive use of the platform I've seen has been offset by a negative one. Maybe I just have bad friends.

Also the "little to no cost" is debatable, when the users have been packaged and delivered as fresh marketing meat to firms like Cambridge Analytica in exchange for a $500B market cap.

I've never used Facebook but isn't its success mostly being "at the right place at the right time"? There were social networks before it and I'm not really sure what's so unique and revolutionary about Facebook. I think the main differentiating factor over something like MySpace was the use of real names and the more "adult" interface which lined up with the complete "mainstreamification" of the internet in the 2nd half of the 2000's.

As a thought experiment do you think that in an alternative universe where Zuckerberg doesn't exist there's no social networks? People started using Orkut, MySpace and friends then around 2008 decided "nah, this is silly" then went back to ICQ and sending emails?

Facebook's success factors were 1) seeded with Ivy League students 2) access to capital 3) no contrition.

> considering the value that Facebook has created for society at little to no cost to its users.

Would you mind listing the positives (and negatives as well) that you believe facebook created for society? I'm strongly against Facebook, but I'd be happy to be convinced of its generally positive effects. Though please don't mention their Open Source contributions, that's not Facebook, the social media network.

How do I downvote?

You need to reach a certain karma threshold, I don't remember the exact value.

You need to have more karma points on your profile. The downvote privilege has been at around 500 karma points (for a long time). That point is only the threshold, and the privilege is granted after going above that threshold. But it supposedly increases over time. The Unofficial Hacker News FAQ [1] has a lot more information.

[1]: https://www.jacquesmattheij.com/the-unofficial-hn-faq

After users reach 501 Karma, they gain the ability to downvote another comment

You can read more about undocumented features of Hacker News here [1].

[1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

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