What Happens When Facebook Goes the Way of Myspace?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
You can't go selling peoples private messages to Netflix (the sheer audacity of that just blows my mind!). You can't allow peoples private data to be sold to data analytics firms that are trying to sway elections.
Facebook is built on the belief that people don't need privacy and I think that's fundamentally wrong.
As an aside, I hope people continue migrating to https://MeWe.com which has a clear privacy bill of rights at its core and zero ads. It makes money in a far more traditional approach by charging for "pages" and extended emotions etc.
LOL, no. From company to another company, because this time, it will be different! (Hey there, https://ello.co ! )
Get your own thing. WordPess with webmentions, Mastodon, Gnusocial, SSBC, anything, but it really, really shouldn't be a single unit controlled thing.
Right on - all we need is a suite of standard protocols and data format for information exchange between social networks.
What is the guarantee that they stick to this and not got FB route later. Why should I trust "Sgrouples Inc."?
You should own your own data, and choose to share it with one or more networks. Should be able to be friends with people on BookFace, YourSpace, ICQQ, and choose what you want to share with them. Everyone browsing their feed in the app of their choice.
Then, Google just went and deleted "Don't be evil" from their manifesto. Literally they did that. That's like saying "Yo guys, we are evil now".
And what happened? Nothing. They are fine.
I'm hopeful the new generation of people growing up without privacy will learn to value it as they mature and control of their internet history is something they have to deal with.
Make laws with teeth. Look at HIPAA for example. The penalties are severe and therefore compliance is strict.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_pro...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
They can even launch a new social network, pretend it's different and make it easy to switch from Facebook...
That is wrong, Facebook's leadership doesn't act that way. Facebook is built on "fuck them, we'll take away their privacy and make money".
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes
So how do they make money?
Edit: They are doing the freemium model - its in their FAQ https://mewe.com/faq
You are not Facebook's customer. You are their product. You have no expectation of privacy for anything you post to Facebook, whether or not it's "private".
In the same way that "must" can either mean that something is inevitable, or mean that it is imperative.
It's misleading and it shouldn't be used that way. Can't be used that way, even...
You really aren't Facebook's customer - no money is exchanged for services rendered.
In short, because it doesn’t have much substance and may actually be counter-productive.
It's about as "isn't nearly as settled" as the question of whether Santa Claus is real. Just because there's a guy in a red suit at the mall and you got presents every year doesn't mean there's an actual jolly elf flying around in his sleigh handing the best presents to the richest kids. So yes, there's an illusion of "privacy". Your private data is private from your peers, who are just as much a product as you are. But it is never going to be private from Facebook's actual customers.
Market forces are relentless and amoral. This doesn't mean they're immoral, that they're evil. It just means they will not make an effort to be good, either. Facebook doesn't exist to facilitate communication and share cat videos. It facilitates communication in order to serve its actual purpose, which is to collect large amounts of valuable personal data from as many individuals as possible, in order to sell that data to companies that want to sell products to targeted individuals.
The whole purpose of government is to regulate amoral market forces to conform to our moral philosophy.
I agree that government should (and does) regulate amoral market forces to conform to a moral philosophy (although I disagree that it's the whole purpose). But at a certain point, it becomes difficult to manage. Consider the case of "Facebook sells your private messages". Undoubtedly, somewhere in the click-through license that no one ever bothered to read is a provision allowing them to do exactly that, making it clear that what you type into their platform is theirs to resell, whether it's "private" or not. So users agreed to this. For sufficiently abstract interpretations of "agreed". It may not be ethical, but it's certainly legal.
So what does government do about this amoral market force, exactly? Do they try to come up with a rigid, legalistic definition of "private" that businesses like Facebook must abide by? And what is "private", then? My IMs? My age? My friends? The history of what ads I've clicked on before? And how does this government regulation respond to the seemingly infinite imagination and determination of market forces? Like I said, it's like thermodynamics. It's hard to make a law that says no gasses shall pass beyond this seal, except gasses that are permitted by law to pass.
And to be absolutely clear, I'm not saying we should do nothing, or that this is a Good Thing, or that government should just "stay out of the way". I'm saying that it's really, really hard. And sometimes the only way to find the bugs is to run the code.
In the meantime, public hostility to the news is working better than any regulation would have, imho. Facebook went too far and alienated users. It may not hurt them much now, but it's part of a relentless drip-drip-drip that will eventually destroy them. Erosion is also a natural, amoral force.
And until then, we have a solution - don't use Facebook. Don't use social media that you don't completely trust. Yeah, it's annoying and stupid, but it's not as stupid as thinking they're going to respect your privacy if they can make a buck selling it.
As such, they can just continue to buy all the other new social network that pop-up and make sure that they have a dominant position in the social network market. Unless they make a big mistake (which completely possible), Facebook, as any modern dominant company, will just continue consolidating and securing their market share.
Yes, many people have this fatalistic perspective about FB but they shouldn't because Zuckerberg can't buy all the competition. Buying a company requires a willing seller[0]. Consider that Facebook itself rejected offers from Viacom (~$1.5 billion), Yahoo (~$1 billion), Microsoft ($24 billion), etc.[1][2]
The bigger companies such as Microsoft can't force Zuckerberg to sell if he doesn't want to sell. Likewise, Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion but Evan Spiegel said "no". Yes, Snapchat is no longer a threat but that doesn't mean another superior competitor can't rise up as a new threat that MZ can't buy.
[0] my previous comment with other examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733501
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-ever-...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/video/2016/10/21/steve-ballmer-microsof...
It's also probably true that social network is also a more "volatile" market (as in, you see user switch from one SN to the other more easily).
Every seller has a price. WhatsApp went for $16B.
The Microsoft deal looks incredibly one sided: https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-microsoft-trie...
Anyway, prices are up. There is more cash available now than there was 10 years ago, not to mention than being acquired by Google/Facebook/Microsoft is a better brand name than Viacom. With funding rounds in over a hundred millions, the founders might not even get a good cut out of a (single) billion dollar sale.
But the competition will have to get money somewhere. Either from VCs (who will sell) or somewhere else, like from the users - but then Facebook can just copy the product and make it free, and take over that way.
Software is eating the world. In real world, there's a place for second best woodcutter, and for third best and for millions more. There's not place for second best Twitter or second best Facebook, or "the second best new thing", and people will always rather pay with their data than with money.
Facebook Google and Microsoft and Amazon and other megacorps are here to stay. They are humanity's future. We are in a pit and will never climb out.
...
You know, maybe nuclear war isn't such a bad thing after all.
Microsoft survived all that and is now the world's most valuable corporation again. Facebook isn't going to die either because it's effectively the Windows of people's lives.
Ordinary consumers could not use a text editor, a spreadsheet, send an email, or browse the internet, without doing it form either a Windows or Apple computer. Apple was a secluded niche for graphical designers and the like. Almost everybody else used a Windows computer. There were whole industries where everybody only used Windows operating system and the Office suite and where you could not work without.
Almost nothing ties me to Facebook and most businesses are not dependent on Facebook in any way. I can use computers, phones etc. without Facebook. I can contact people without it, write to them, see their pictures and videos etc. I can go online without. Most companies nowadays function perfectly fine without Facebook. If Facebook disappeared, only a few niches such as game studios, advertisers etc. would truly lose customers or the ability to work with others. Most advertising could be done through other channels in a matter of hours. Contacts with friends could be made in days using other platforms.
I was going to say that Facebook is where Microsoft were at some point in the late 70s or early 80s when it was just one out of several alternatives, but the comparison is just not good.
I try not to use Facebook. I had to let my family and friends know because they are setting up party invitations and making announcements on Facebook. OK - so far so good. They post on Facebook then send me a private message.
Then the camp fire happened in California (the Paradise fire). My brother in law's house burned and he is staying with us. He is not technically literate. Butte county is putting all disaster recovery information and streaming town hall meetings through Facebook! So I am back on Facebook to help my brother in law rebuild his home!
What if OP was living in a place where a cell phone and Facebook were "The Internet"? What if that was all OP knew and understood regarding such topics?
Not to mention the insane, massive momentum microsoft has in terms of MSP's/Partners..
As such, isn't their AI business very reliant on them being in the social network market ?
A similarly article could be written about Google but it is not. I think the interesting question is why not?
And if you look solely at the US and Canada their adaption is probably petering out as well.
And heart what is their core business other than a massive invasion of privacy and data mining of personal information?
What about all these stories that has push management on the defence? (Google China, that right-wing guy and so on.)
The point is. What this article is saying about Facebook could just as easily had been said about Google with just about the same validity.
Why does Facebook get bad press whereas Google does not?
Because they did with the shuttering of Google+ and nobody batted an eyelash.
I would add "unless you mean their main product" but what is that nowadays anyway?
Google earned more than $XXX billion in profit last quarter, and yet it has spent much of 2018 trapped in a defensive crouch. This year was defined by brutal press coverage, internal strife, executive departures and unwanted attention from authorities. The company stands accused of various offenses: degrading politics; empowering despots; leaving users vulnerable to abuse; abusing its users’ data for profit. It is in a constant state of crisis such that its executives’ responses to scandals end up becoming scandals themselves.
But the single event most pertinent to Google’s future, and with the most explanatory power regarding its recent past, came in Xxx, when the company admitted its flagship site had found a worrying limit. In late 2017, XXX million people a day were using Google in the United States and Canada. Despite strenuous efforts — you may have noticed more notifications lately — that number hasn’t been exceeded since.
...
The advertising data exposed in a user’s personal Google archive is, of course, just a sliver of what is available to the company. Google’s real profile of who you are — the one that it uses to fill your feeds and show you ads — is far more comprehensive. The company’s relentless accumulation of user data isn’t just a grab for power or a default behavior. It’s a long-term investment. You may forget Google; it could happen sooner than you expect. But it’s not likely to forget you.
Is this content organization personalized? Or are they serving this to everyone?
Also, regular NYT users now have feed stories coming from other news sources as well so their reliance on NYT as the only source gets reduced.
Mind you, I'm not defending FB in any capacity, I just find it odd to not treat NYT articles like what they are: just another biased piece put out by a biased giant media corporation.
So update your talking points. (yawn)
This is a conspiracy theory that fails even the “theory” part.
Some purposely as key part of their business model. Some more by accident.
Everybody crossed a red traffic light once in their live, still we should go after people ignoring red lights.
- voters for actually choosing this guy
- the media for giving this guy so much coverage
- people for not fact checking
Blaming Facebook feels like shooting the messenger. It’s not going to fix any of the underlying issues going into 2020. At worst it’s a distraction, like birthers against Obama.
And that key detail is why this article is wrong. US and Canada are certainly most lukrative markets in terms of profit per single user, but they are far, far from the only markets in the world. Facebook usage in North America may start stagnating in the next few years, but it is still rapidly growing in other areas. And after that, well, you just run out of people in the whole humanity itself - and that's not a business problem that we have any historical example of.
Globally though? Are there companies that have saturated the entire planet.
Facebook use is BOOMING in the developing world. I've been moving around Africa though 30 countries for 2.5 yeas now - it's rare to meet someone that doesn't have Facebook and whatsapp.
But this growing numbers of users happen to lower the ARPU (average revenue per user) as those users generates almost no revenue and there's no opportunity to change that anytime soon.
There's a reason market capitalization of Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft lost about 1000 billions dollars collectively and about 20% in the recent months.
There is a form of awareness that these companies are overvalued much, that market are saturated and they are going to face the reality in the near future.
Having a lot Africans using facebook is just adding to its operating cost at the moment, economic gains from Africa are going to China. China is taking over Africa's economy at an alarming pace, not facebook.
Sure, they could take over their local data centers and hold their employees hostage but without the 100% backing of fb itself there's no way a foreign government could take over their business.
Whatsapp is so universal it should really be either a federated system or a public utility.
That being said what you are saing is basically that whatsapp should be something totally different, akin to riot.im
I do agree though that a global public service of E2E encrypted communication should exist, but whatsapp is the last option I'd consider for such a service.
I say that only to say that I'm not going to join it (Facebook owns it, c'mon mate) and those who allow me to influence their technology choices will not either.
KFC is in a lot more, but still only a small fraction.
Social groups in real life are relatively contained. Facebook just mushes it all together. This is one of the few things Google+ got right, with asymmetric relationships and ease of controlling who sees what.
While Google+ "failed", that's the attack angle I'd take if I wanted to go after Facebook: Look for ways to let people better limit sharing, to encourage deeper sharing. To truly get that right you need to also let people manage separate identities.
Though really, I'd like to see more decentralised approaches to take over.
As for "most people" wanting something simple: I'd argue that most people have something far more complex today: People sign up to multitudes of sites and create different identities for e.g. dating, different forums, their regular circle of friends. People often go to great lengths to separate them. People even often have multiple accounts on the same sites.
Sites like Facebook stubbornly trying to get people to tie everything to a single name that they're know to by everyone is fundamentally flawed for this reason, and it will always present a barrier, and it's something that's exploitable if someone comes up with the right model to start eating away at them at the fringes.
The new solution won't require you to pick a server (e.g. Mastodon) and will be straight forward to the user.
It will come.
The social network I miss is Mixi, which was a sort of proto-Facebook around in the early 2000s (in Japan and Japanese only). Mixi had some really interesting features like being able to see who had browsed your account. (To be fair Mixi still exists, but they kind of died when FB became popular, as well as putting itself out of business with some onerous changes to their terms of service and business practices.)
They had a couple HP SureStore arrays.. I forgot how much storage exactly, but they were about 19TB comprised of 9 and 18 GB drives in raid 50 or 51. There was no de-duplication and basically it was the same few hundred megs of music, animated gifs and porn over and over again.
They didn't make any money and sold everything to some news company. Even then, it was quite a while before it started to take shape as a social networking site.
The world will be a better place.
A company that built its riches on the back of a spectacularly successful surveillance apparatus isn't going to go away. Especially not now that its use as a psyops tool (2016 US electon, Rohingya genocide) has been proven.
FB as a product may one day not exist, but its leaders will welcome the absence of the press spotlight so they can start working with law enforcement, military and other groups that will pay big for their knowledge.
Think Peter Thiel and Palantir.
They have always been the tool of those that rule this world, whether those rulers be in Wall Street or the Pentagon. Their work cheerleading the world to war is a constant. They side with the interests of capital rather than people. Any aberrations to this, e.g. straying from one political party to another, is still representing and furthering time-old vested interests. Online media has yet to usurp the old timers of dead tree media.