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Comment by trpc | Hacker News Reader

Not only that, Facebook is designed to lock users inside their services as long as possible. The web, to billions of users now, is simply Facebook. The only way to make people leave Facebook and visit your website or app is to PAY Facebook to promote your page and posts so that users visit your services. It's the biggest carefully designed theft of time and effort of all time. Facebook must be destroyed or at least weakened by the power of governments now or never.

Also most social websites were designed on free labor by users like Quora and Reddit (at least the new corporatist reddit)

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Just stop using it then. I’ve never used it as they are amoral, and don’t feel I missed much. Facebook will fade away in time, like MySpace,yahoo,aol,etc.

Various companies from AOL to Apple tried this in the 90’s (e.g. eWorld) - it’s the natural tendency for large corporations to corral their users. Arguably the windows attenpt to kill the web, and later mobile app stores are a continuation of this trend.

They all failed in the end, as the open web is more attractive, but there will always be gatekeepers, because most people don’t want to build their own platforms, they just want to read and share their stuff.

I wish I could, but my elderly parents live on Facebook. They’ll never send me a text, never call my phone, never send me an email. It’s always a Facebook message or call, and they’re upset and confused if I don’t answer.

>and they’re upset and confused if I don’t answer.

Then just let them be upset. Try to explain it to them, but if they don't accept it, then let them be upset. If you back down they will never ever learn it. Never. Not a chance.

Parents are hard to cut off.

My parents are as paranoid as I am (grew up in a US enabled dictatorship) so it was easy to get them to use Signal. If they weren’t so cool, I’d use FB or WhatsApp

But my aunts and uncles and cousins (who, ironically also grew up in this dictatorship) laugh and use Facebook.

That’s cool. I don’t talk to them often. They know I love them. And they know I won’t use FB.

> Parents are hard to cut off.

You wouldn't be cutting them off. They'd be cutting you off by refusing to use any of the myriad other communications methods.

If you got rid of your facebook account, they will find another way to contact you. And then they are also more likely to leave facebook, or at least use it less. I had people complain when I dropped whatsapp and say that they wouldn't be able to get hold of me if I stopped using it. I just told them it crashed my phone too often and then they found other ways to contact me.

Exactly. This line of reasoning is just an excuse that people use to justify maintaining the status quo rather than doing some hard work to change it.

These grandpeople had to have been using something else 10 years ago to communicate with their grandkids... and then over these 10 years then simultaneously learned how to use FB, forgot how to use that other technology they'd used their whole life, and also lost the ability to learn how to use any other communication technology?

Not impossible with cognitive deterioration, but probably a lot more rare than this excuse.

If my grandparents were still alive today I'd just tell them that Facebook was controlled by the Democrats and we should use X,Y, or Z instead of effectively donating to Obama's campaign. They'd have deleted the app and gone back to text messages and phone calls by the end of dinner.

Interesting tactic. I have started telling people that I have joined the technological wing of the Amish and that Facebook was built by the devil. It gets very little push-back compared to listing more concrete reasons, complete with examples, of Facebook's actual documented behaviour. Doing that gets me nowhere fast, but if I use exaggerated nonsense people seem to just go along with it while nodding sagely.

> complain when I dropped whatsapp and say that they wouldn't be able to get hold of me

This blows my mind. I mean having Whatsapp implies one has a phone which implies one can receive SMS messages or God forbid, a phone call.

Yes, but in this particular case it would have been an international phone call and as everybody knows, those are clearly impossible.

Not if they’re not well-off in a country that has Free Basics. Hard to say no to free when not just your friends and family, but pretty much your culture, uses Facebook as it’s the de facto standard.

You could. Try it and see. Being on Facebook is probably incredibly damaging for them in terms of what news they are exposed to anyway, you’d be doing them a favour.

For some people, because of their jobs or their need for social validation, this is just not an option. You cannot impose this decision on personal willpower or morality because it's more complicated than that.

> because of their jobs or their need for social validation, this is just not an option.

I don't understand this... are jobs and the source of peoples social validation not options? I used to derive social validation from drinking and kicking ass in video games, but then I found out you could get it from other places that were more productive, and less physically deteriorating.

If there are really people out there who are wholly dependent on Facebook for their social validation then that is a tragedy akin to finding out that there is an entire population of people who can't metabolize food without a special compound found only in White Castle burgers.

How about anybody who belongs to a marginalized minority group in their own (physical) community? For example, there are plenty of parts of the US where LGBTQ folks have to reach out beyond their physical location to find a community that will truly accept them (not to mention countries where their existence is criminalized).

Facebook is a highly imperfect solution for them — but it exists, and there aren’t always better options.

Just like how some parts of the country are food deserts where people actually don’t have access to anything much more nutritious than White Castle.

I don't think the scarcity of options is due to any shortage of potential communities on the internet--there's a perpetual scarcity of extant communities due to naturally-monopolizing network effects. If Facebook weren't the place, it would be somewhere else. Any old forum would do if it were where the people are.

That is a good point, and an even greater tragedy.

This actually reminds of the military, which is another service that provides a way for people to escape tragic home or community situations for a new situation where they might find a sense of shared purpose and unity.

Pacifists and others opposed to US militarism would likely also say that anyone participating in the military is perpetuating evils and insist there must be a better way to escape these situations that also aligns with their sense of morality...

Really all these exceptions exist and are absolutely valid (imo) but I'd be curious what percentages we're talking about here... what proportion of people would be dead or worse off (vs alive or better off) today if not for the existence of FB?

For everyone in a who found their sense of community online, how many found contempt and ostracization from a mob 1000x the size of their physical community? How many physical communities (and families) are being divided along lines drawn up by online communities?

The analogy to this is saying, “if you don’t like climate change, just stop using fossil fuels”. Great as far as it goes, but the problem still exists beyond the bubble of my own consumer preference. We’re moving towards big FB regulation in Europe - I hope - which would set a precedent for it globally. Although my choice would be the Chinese solution...

The Chinese solution of nationalizing social media...? Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

Oh no. I meant kicking FB out altogether. Anyway, we already have a form of social credit in the West. It’s called your credit score, and you can’t buy a house without being a good boy.

"a form", yes. But it is a very superficial similarity. As long as you have enough money and as along as you pay people on time, no one will care about what else you do with your life.

The social credit score in China is based on state-sponsored gamification and the latest psychological insights. This takes things to a completely different level.

Sure you can -- if you can pay in cash

Choosing not to use Facebook is in no way analogous to choosing not to use gasoline or electricity.

It’s analogous in that the problems associated with its use don’t disappear if only you stop using it.

That is what advocacy is for.

I stopped using it based on advocacy by others.

You can too.

you can stop using Facebook, but Facebook is still using you by way of its trackers on company websites.

So?

Let them. In fact, let them continue to escalate all that means.

It is all on a path to greater regulation.

And, once it gets there, I will very gladly point out they got what they deserve.

...so we actually agree with OP's premise that they should be regulated?

Totally.

> Let them

No.

I'm not going to do nothing while people hit me in the face just because the law might, at some point, give them what they deserve for it.

I'm going to do what I can to make the face-punching stop first.

Such as?

Your question underlines the problem.

I don't use these services, and put up as many security barriers against the data collection they engage in as I can, through the use of VPNs, firewalls, avoiding the execution of Javascript, etc. But I can't stop everything.

Even so, I'm going to stop as much as I can. I refuse to just lay down and surrender.

Great! I do similar things.

In my view, it all counts. Surround the problem.

Maybe not but Facebook could be looked at as a resource to fulfill or strengthen a basic human need: human connection (like electricity can fulfill or strengthen climate control so we can survive harsher weather).

> the problem still exists beyond the bubble of my own consumer preference

Rain isn't very wet: it's only tiny drops

Plus, it doesn't even solve the problem within your own bubble.

I think AOL had a classic tagline 'So easy to use no wonder we're number one' which resonated with non-techies coming online in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Suddenly you had all these people wanting the internet and AOL made it easy with flooding the mailboxes of people with CDs. It was a sequence of events for which they just happened upon the massive uptake due to their marketing. I don't think this was particularly planned by AOL since if they truly understood what they were doing then they'd have known dialup was limited due to the uptake of broadband. It's analogous to Apple realizing the iPod was limited and music players would merge into cell phones as people only want to carry one device. Apple launched the iPhone at exactly the right time. AOL didn't have any answer to broadband.

>Facebook must be destroyed or at least weakened by the power of governments now or never.

I weakened Facebook in my life by reducing my reliance on it, to the point where I stopped using it entirely.

The last thing I'd want is for governments to get involved in choices that I should be making for myself. This one is too easy.

At least reddit lets you get some pageviews without forcing you to pay. Facebook's pages and likes are a total scam. It's impossible to reach users without paying, while it takes a lot of effort to create the network of likes. That's double effort for zero benefit.

I agree that reddit is still the fairest social website even after the many changes they did to monetize their services, which isn't wrong btw since it's in the end a business, Quora is now nothing but a big spam and self promotion website but fortunately they don't have the power to force users to stay in their circle of influence like Facebook. ProductHunt doesn't need a comment, it's a shameless cheesy website designed as "pay for shilling" scheme.

quora is def. the worst. Low quality, tons of spam, all the good ppl left, clutters google search results.

> clutters google search results

let's not forget Pinterest, the image aggregator slash image search destroyer

You can’t destroy Facebook. My entire life is on Facebook, my friends are on facebook, and all my social life is organized on Facebook.

I wouldn’t know what to do with my life if Facebook suddenly disappeared.

For the many people for whom this is true, that's not a life. It's a personalized ad campaign with your own content.

That's patronizing. I am one of those people and I love my life.

I love Facebook and would kill myself if it disappears.

If you’re serious, I highly recommend scheduling an appointment with a specialist. Facebook isn’t worth anyone’s time, not to mention life.

Why? I'm extremely happy and full of energy. My life was miserable before Facebook.

Seek help.

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