Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap
news.bioscholar.com
news.bioscholar.com
Google calendar for events - Anyone with any email address can be invited to an event. Google calendar also emails out standard format .ics files with it's invites so participants are free to use whatever calendar app they choose and just import the ics files. (This also hooks up nicely with my android calendar). I'm looking forward to when everyone on Facebook gets an @facebook email address and then I'm going to start sending them all Google calendar invites ;-) Seriously, I think Google calendar is a seriously under recognised service.
Twitter for a news feed equivalent - You don't need an account to read so it is open enough. (There is also status.net or identi.ca if you want even more openness). I embed a feed of the most recent posts in my webpage. If you want to subscribe, you can use RSS so you don't have to use twitter to follow me.
Photos - I use a combination of FlickR and my own custom image gallery on my website. On FlickR you can set the photos to be public so viewers don't need to have an account.
Messages - Obviously I just use email.
When I meet people I want to connect with, I ask for their email address rather than ask if they are on Facebook. I occasionally use Facebook to find people and then ask for their email address via Fb message.
I can't think of anything else I really miss out on from Fb.
I know a lot of people who have ditched their previous IM accounts in favour of the Fb IM platform.
If people stop following their email or logging in to their IM because they communicate using Facebook, it could change quickly.
That means that the people who cant be accessed without facebook had to voluntarily cut themselves off from email-only people first. And while doing that, they had no concerns that they will be missing connectivity, because from their POV the email-only people obviously had such a low social rank anyway, that they simply could afford to sorta blackmail them ("either you get a facebook account or I'll simply cut you off.") without any fear they could be losing anything of (social) worth.
Getting a facebook (or MySpace/ICQ/MSN/AIM/YIM/whatever 1-vendor-only proprietary network) account just because someone forces you to do it is a way to confess to yourself that you must have be pretty low in the pecking order in your desired social circle and that involuntarily creating accounts with service-de-jour wont be the last thing you'll be forced to do to avoid being cut off. Or, alternatively, just get real friends.
I can't tell if you've left Facebook and feel these solutions replace it, or if you've just read the list of features, and decided you're covered. What you're missing: The aggregated, passive flow of opportunities to stay in touch.
I occasionally have short conversations with people I haven't seen for a decade, prompted by something either I or they posted. It's nothing deep and profound, but it feels good to stay in touch.
If I just put pictures and news on my blog or flickr, I would be relying on hundreds of acquaintances from the past 15 year to regularly visit these places - and why would they do that?
I've got an Fb account, and I do use it lightly. I tend to have random conversations with people because of posts they make on twitter, or on their blogs.
I do watch my Fb news feed on my phone, so if I spot something worth starting up a conversation about I have the opportunity to.
My discomfort with Fb is that to even view content requires an account. Content is only shared amongst account holders. If I post some photos, or an event I don't want to require people to sign up to Fb to view that content. Hence I post my content on more open services. My concern is more for the other people who don't use Fb than it is for myself or those who already use Fb.
If I post content on a blog, I sometimes post a link on Fb. I don't see any problem with that. Some people choose to follow me via Fb, and that is fine, but I also want to remain open to those people who don't like Fb and I give them the option to follow me in other ways.
These are proxy relationships. Friends are welcome to call me, but I don't want to be involved in their lives 24/7, nor do I want the opportunity.
And telling me that the relationships I have on Facebook are worth less that not having them at all because they are on Facebook rather than on the phone(x) is incredibly arrogant and, well, none of your business.
(x) Never mind that they would have significant trouble reaching me using any of the 1998 contact information they have on me. Except for my name, which happens to be fairly unique, none of it is valid today, nor was it already by 2000.
I'm not talking about your relationships either...I could care less. That's my point. Facebook is what it is, but just because it's popular does not mean it's necessary.
My mom doesn't care about "openness". She cares what I put on my Facebook wall.
Photo alternative: cute. I'll never go to your Flickr page. I've seen ~100 pictures today of Thanksgiving celebrations, because they were in my News Feed.
Messages: Most of my FB messagers are spam, but what do you think is the easiest way to message a 14-year-old?
Facebook has in-fact done some serious web innovation the last years and W3C has completely dropped the ball. Facebook and Twitter have been catalyzing internet adoption and the general spread of information.
Mr. Berners-Lee's obsession about content-silos shows that there is a serious disconnect between the current state of the web and W3C. The web was about content and documents fifteen years ago, now it's about the flow of data.
I know Berners-Lee is a big Linked Data advocate, but the approach that's being taken by the W3C is painfully slow and doesn't take into account the fluidity of information.
This is one of the reasons why developers (and even semantic web developers) have resorted to non-W3C technologies more and more: JSON, Javascript-wrappers, Webkit, client-side routing, non-REST HTTP requests, IOSockets/Coment, streaming apis, etc.
The web is emergent and out of control. Deal with it. Technologies and tools compete for attention and adoption. You snooze, you lose.
As for the 'content silos': Are you fucking kidding me? 'Content' being stuck in Facebook is not going to happen, in fact, the content is going to flow more and more. If you mark something as 'only my friends can see this', it will leak. Don't want to be tagged in a picture? Well, you have no choice. Face recognition will get you soon.
The internet, thanks to social web, is a giant copy machine. There's a huge shitstream of content and your attention and the activity around it is the thing that matters. Who cares about the damn content.
So maybe it's time for the 'Web Founder' and the W3 Web Museum to roll up their sleeves and do something, instead of bitch about the companies that actually advance the web.
So instead of bitching about the companies and people that actually advance the web and change the world, maybe it's time for the 'Web Founder' and the Web Museum to roll up their sleeves and do something...
My only hope is that in the long run freedom of innovation will always be stronger than a walled garden like Facebook.
I thought Berners-Lee invented the web - how can he get too much credit for that? Hypertext as an idea existed before that, I think, but he did it.
That's just the cost of entering a particular marketplace.
Think of it as rent.
Most businesses need to pay for marketing, of course running businesses is not free.
If Facebook adds as much value to the web as Google did with their search engine, then they more than deserve getting "rent".
What is truly disturbing is the slow pace at which new protocols are folded into the web. Perhaps that is a problem that should be addressed. Until then, we will keep seeing all these services being built on top of the existing web structure instead of as an extension to it.
It would be nice to see one day, a web infrastructure that is as well managed and patched as Linux is.
The web can't ever be as well-managed and patched as Linux is. The web doesn't have a pre-defined scope. It's more like a transport layer for content and other services. And I'd like to see it stay that way; companies will compete and innovate way faster than any small standards committee or group of maintainers will.
Also, maybe Tim found the right mix of ingredients. No idea, but perhaps early hypertext concepts did not include distributed documents, for example?
I also think that green is a totally awesome color, and that we can breed birds with horses to produce pegasii. For more attacks on the W3C at best tangential to Mr. Berners-Lee's actual essay, read on.
> Facebook has in-fact done some serious web innovation the last years and W3C has completely dropped the ball. Facebook and Twitter have been catalyzing internet adoption and the general spread of information.
I'll conveniently ignore companies like Flickr, who innovate without compromising data portability: http://laughingmeme.org/2010/05/18/minimal-competence-data-a...
> Mr. Berners-Lee's obsession about content-silos shows that there is a serious disconnect between the current state of the web and W3C. The web was about content and documents fifteen years ago, now it's about the flow of data.
Those URI thingamabobs that send you to content or documents? The web isn't about that anymore. It's about a golden shower of data, flowing down the firehose. You see, when people look up stuff on Wikipedia, they don't care about the page they're on, but the activity data on who's flowing in and out of it.
> I know Berners-Lee is a big Linked Data advocate, but the approach that's being taken by the W3C is painfully slow and doesn't take into account the fluidity of information.
See I took "flow of data" from my previous paragraph, applied my nifty FaceTwit thesaurus to it, and turned up "fluidity of information". More of my fluids to come.
> This is one of the reasons why developers (and even semantic web developers) have resorted to non-W3C technologies more and more: JSON, Javascript-wrappers, Webkit, client-side routing, non-REST HTTP requests, IOSockets/Coment, streaming apis, etc.
Look at me! I'm namedropping web technologies more than hip-hop artists namedrop the Notorious B.I.G or Tupac. I can do this all day: XML Servlet configotrons. Buffered packet gumballs. NoSQL big data Hadoopian piglets mashed up with tagsoup gravy. Activity ICMP hosepipe of RSS-killa sauce.
Pay special attention to my mention of non-REST HTTP requests. You see, REST HTTP requests are a W3C technology. But non-REST HTTP requests? That's not W3C, that's those innovative guys down the hall, second room to the right.
> The web is emergent and out of control. Deal with it. Technologies and tools compete for attention and adoption. You snooze, you lose.
Now I switch from my awesome web developer hat to my social media evangelist hat. This paragraph is not only a segue, it also panders to those of you playing buzzword bingo!
> As for the 'content silos': Are you fucking kidding me? 'Content' being stuck in Facebook is not going to happen, in fact, the content is going to flow more and more. If you mark something as 'only my friends can see this', it will leak. Don't want to be tagged in a picture? Well, you have no choice. Face recognition will get you soon.
I mentioned flow of data previously. But now it's the content that's flowing. The ultra-innovative internet catalyzer Facebook won't be able to keep your data private. Why? Because I say so, that's why.
> The internet, thanks to social web, is a giant copy machine. There's a huge shitstream of content and your attention and the activity around it is the thing that matters. Who cares about the damn content.
Want to know the internet's secret? No one watches Youtube videos. No one shares links to content on Twitter and Facebook. They just look at the activity around it. In fact, if my pal Tim BL didn't write this _content_, I'd still have some activity to do! Furious activity in fact, in the privacy of my room while penning my next ode to Facebook and Twitter.
Btw if you haven't been keeping up on my use of liquids, we've gone from flow to fluidity to shitstream. Which mirrors the general coherence of this comment.
> So maybe it's time for the 'Web Founder' and the W3 Web Museum to roll up their sleeves and do something, instead of bitch about the companies that actually advance the web.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the other _companies_ that are members of the World Wide Web _Consortium_ better start rolling up their sleeves. They aren't doing anything to advance the internet.
> So instead of bitching about the companies and people that actually advance the web and change the world, maybe it's time for the 'Web Founder' and the Web Museum to roll up their sleeves and do something...
That last paragraph was so good, I'ma say it twice while flipping the order of my sentence. That's activity, you see. With activity, you can copypasta content, because no one cares about content anymore. And now that I have proven my point, my point is proven.
This is exactly the kind of reply I don't want to see on HN.
What I think is particularly sad is that I bet he/she could have given a good argument that helped people understand the dangers of a Facebook-monopolized Internet.
"Berners-Lee and W3C get way too much credit for the web". Putting 'Web Founder' in airquotes. This blatant disrespect is what angered me the most and influenced my decision to fisk instead of a polite rebuttal.
Tim Berners-Lee:
- was the first to execute on the idea of combining hypertext with TCP/IP and DNS
- wrote the first browser and HTTP server
- gave it away instead of encumbering it with patents or royalties
- has the humility to downplay his accomplishment and share the credit where it is due: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Kids (under "Did you invent the Internet?")
- continues to work on the web to make sure it remains open and transparent instead of resting on his laurels assured of his place in history. The Scientific American essay is but the most recent example
I'm not sure what more he would need to do to be considered the founder of the web.
He produced a masterwork, but I can't think of a second one — from my POV all the awesome post-IETF web developments happened despite the W3C's best efforts to derail them.
But we already knew that, so it's an easy case to make.
Tim's point is that Facebook is harmful and getting more harmful. That's entirely consistent with your point, despite the tone of disagreement that pervades your post.
Staying out of Facebook isn't enough.
Are there no other photo sharing services out there?
I think entrepreneurs wanting to build a social product are in better shape today because of Facebook and its built-in social network. But you are, of course, correct that building on somebody else's platform is always dangerous.
Lastly, "Open" is not really a feature to end-users. Diaspora will win if they can build compelling features that Facebook, as a result of its closed network, can't. Otherwise, I doubt highly it will be successful.
Companies like Disney control the movie industry by controlling the channel. You can make movies all you want, but try to get them into the theatres and rental stores. It's the same for the music industry. You can cut cd's all you want but try to get them on the radio or in the music stores. You can make a website and it can be the best website in the world, but if it doesn't appear in a search engine, it doesn't exist.
With all these big, rich companies doing business on the internet, do you think for a minute they are going to allow it to remain free?
If instead of facebook we had all Facebook's features gradually added to Gmail (If you sent a Googler back 5-6 years in a time machine, that might be what we'd get), I don't think it would seem odd that it should be an island.
i don't think these companies are going to do it, and this seems exactly what w3c is meant to do. so why not? seems more productive.
Here's Tim's foaf data as an example: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card
Preferably something as compelling as Sir Tim's original vision for the Web...
We'll start first in the States, and call it AOL.
Really, what's the matter with blogs and feed readers for keeping in touch?
You know what would be great? A blogging platform that's light (picture / link attachment painless) and that also has a feed reader built in.
Oh wait ... http://www.tumblr.com/
...and suddenly you've taken on about a million problems that are tangential to the problem of keeping in touch with people.
Serf - TCP/IP
Berners-Lee - World Wide Web, HTML, HTTP (I think)