Facebook F8 2019: What to Expect After Facebook's Bad Year | Hacker News Reader

Facebook F8 2019: What to Expect After Facebook's Bad Year

wired.com

Anyone else feel that they've gone past the point of caring about what Facebook does anymore?

Even from a developer standpoint, they've randomly deprecated so many APIs, so many flows of doing something, ban you because you competed with a future product of theirs, that I wouldn't be touching anything relating to them remotely with a pole.

Yeah, you could argue that's the risk you take by working on someone else's APIs, but then, there are still so many successful companies out there who don't screw their developers as bad.

Even all the newer features they announce for developers to use translates into some sort of dark pattern for the end user, so still, I feel reluctant to work on their APIs. Eg. The watch party stuff. There's actually no way (even programmatically) to disable all watch party notifications.

Facebook became popular because of developers. Facebook will die for the same reason of screwing over the very people who helped them become so successful in the first place. I'm not even getting into the argument about the users who trusted them and their platform...

I don’t think Facebook became popular because of developers. They have certainly given the community some great tools and libraries, but I cannot think of any instances in the past ten years where people were saying “oh yeah, it’s a joy to develop on FB APIs”. Once they even acknowledged devs, they were so big that the infrastructure set up for development was all about the walled garden.

Then there was the episode of prohibitive licensing of libraries that made it hard to sue FB if they were ripping off your product but you were building with React.

If Facebook is going to die, it’s going to be because of something other than devs. Devs are not enamored with it. They’re at best beholden to it.

It looks like developers were just another group used by FB for their own purpose, when convenient. In this case, developers were the "growth hack" doing a big part of the legwork of increasing FB's value and stickiness to end-users, themselves used in order to sell data to the customers (advertisers). Rememeber when Zynga's stock was used as a proxy for FB as they were the first to go public?

Now that FB the ad broker is big enough, they don't need to care about developers and only need to give the illusion that they care about the users.

> Anyone else feel that they've gone past the point of caring about what Facebook does anymore?

From a developer perspective, I care about what Facebook is doing with their Occulus products. Rift-S and Quest are definitely something I'm looking for.

Unfortunately Facebook seems to tightly integrate Occulus with Facebook - like you cant even use most things without logging into your Facebook account.

Thats not even a little bit true. You've always been able to create a completely independent oculus account

Which is true (or both?)

Facebook had a great idea to connect people, and then an advertising scheme derailed that idea into evil.

Facebook had a great idea to connect people, and empirically found out that people mostly suck and generally hate each other.

Given your options only, I’d say something in the middle of those two. An advertising scheme (not exclusive to Facebook) that realizes it can make more money by promoting higher “engagement” even if that engagement is negative sentiment and even if the content of that engagement is inappropriate, inaccurate, or unpleasant.

The second is true. I dont see how their ads contributed to it. Their ads are a huge brake to virality. If they continued allowing e.g. pages to post to all their followers (which was the case initially) there would be even greater outrages. In fact it would be so bad that most people would have left. So, i think their idea to stiff people for $$ actually helped them sustain an audience. In medium term though, they have alienated marketers so much with their greediness that they are leaving.

So, Facebook is making a stable coin. I’m normally pretty bearish on anything involving blockchains, I think they’re pointless, but that’s not my issue here. The idea of giving facebook any control over a monetary system, even just as the developer of a decentralized one, gives me the shivers.

You can always choose not to use it, I know I certainly won't be. If we assume that Facebook's current user base (elderly relatives sharing fake news memes) aren't going to be interested either then who's left?

^^^^^ And to pile on to this sentiment a currency will only hold value if someone is willing to accept it. Launching a stable coin is so they can get around KYC and money-exchange regulations. Given their enabling of terrorism and propaganda in the past I assume we'll be soon reading about this system and all the malfeasance associated with it. facebook has never displayed a mature sense of responsibility or duty to the societies they impact.

Given Facebook owns a large part of the social media market through Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp I suspect people will start using the coin without much thought. It’s already going to be baked in across their services and for most people that is now their social lives

I know, and that makes me very uncomfortable.

One of the proverbs I have seen come to fruition in my life time and time again is that convenience is the ultimate factor for the majority of consumers. Even competing products that are better at X or at a lower price lose out if the convenience of switching is bad.

> for most people that is now their social lives

Until recently I always though that FB is most people's social media lives but the way you phrased it made me pause and realize that FB, for more and more people, is becoming the full extent of their social lives. It's the drug that makes one feel as if they are socializing when in fact they are lonely—either physically alone or in a group where they are mentally alone, unable to relate their full self to others in person.

Honestly, probably a worse year. They just don't seem to get why they are in the hole they are in and keep trying to escape by digging up.

> What to Expect After Facebook's Bad Year

In what regard was that a bad year? Omit all the buzz and go straight to what FB cares about: financials and users [1]

Increases:

- 38% in ad revenue

- 16% in payments and other fees

- 37% in total revenue

- 39% in net income

- 40% in Diluted Earnings per Share

- 9% in DAUs

- 9% in MAUs

Decreases:

- 30% in amount of income tax paid due to Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Facebook had an amazing year.

[1] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

Facebook stock is up in this "very bad year". If Facebook executives could have every single year be just like this one forever, they would take that!

Facebook is certainly suffering if you measure its performance by the tone that journalists take when discussing the company. It's not a good thing per se to have journalists criticize you, but it isn't the most important metric to a company either. Overall, Facebook had a strong, successful year.

WRT the blockchain/stablecoin effort there is something I don’t understand:

If it’s only for internal consumption what’s the point of a blockchain?

So if it’s for external use also then even the best “stable coin” is going to move against USD (and whatever other currencies they’re trying to follow). This will create tax implications for their users in the USA (and possibly elsewhere). Every time you use FBcoin to buy something or send to someone you need to report the loss or gain converted to USD, just like other cryptocurrencies surely?

And this is why I’m bearish on blockchain solutions. Once you start actually working through the details it gets weird.

It that was a bad year i wonder what will be a good one.

Should it not be called F7? Like i18n and k8s?

more precisely f6k

Reply on news.ycombinator.com