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Comment by monkeybutton | Hacker News Reader

Its already frustrating enough having to use Facebook just to look up a restaurant's information, the set times for a concert, or whatever about a local business or event. If all that stuff starts to disappear behind a meta-verse wall, I might just leap off the nearest bridge instead.

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Yes, it feels like a return to the walled-garden days of America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, etc. Essentially, they seem to be want to create a separate network that they control--one that is not "internet-ed" to other networks in an open fashion.

That's an interesting comparison, I never before thought of AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe as belonging to the walled-garden.

It's also a very American-centric view. The rest of the world is going back to forums and single-platform chatrooms and avoiding reddit/twitter/facebook, but never had an AOL/ProdigyCompuServe phase to go through.

If we could just get discord to <insert short feature wishlist> then I reckon the golden IRC days would be back with a vengence.

The early internet was largely America centric.

IRC won't come back for the masses, it's UX doesn't allow it.

IRC’s UX never went away for the masses, people use IRC semantics all the time on Slack and Discord. The UX that never became mainstream once the internet was, is the same as it ever was: people by and large don’t value decentralization and don’t understand how to use it effectively. The closest it’s ever gotten was torrents, and even then most people didn’t branch out from TPB.

No, the only similarity Slack on Discord have is that they are "chat like" and have "chat rooms"/"channels".

But the whole UX around using them is very very different.

And that is what matters for the normal user.

Just the list of lacking default features is quite long, like: predictable display of formatting, emoji, pictures, file sharing, voice chat, nested conversations/threads, chat history, different user roles, user avatars, etc.

And yes you can bolt all of this on top of IRC, but that doesn't matter. Defaults matter. At least for the common users UX.

And as long as the IRC standard doesn't include most of this points by default (especially chat history, avatars, etc.) it won't have another golden time.

Also no msg-commands as the default way to do things, programmers might like them, the common user doesn't.

Is that really true though? Do you have any sources to verify that? I'm from England and AOL felt pretty pervasive here.

Correction: Free AOL disks felt very pervasive here.

Free AOL disks were everywhere in France too.

Especially in my uncle’s cherry trees to scare the birds.

Future archaeologists are going to be sifting through the landfills and determine that AOL discs are going to either be some sort of currency or curious religious artifacts.

I was on AOL for a big stretch of that time, and those archaeologists wouldn’t be wrong. It was so pervasive that it was a thing of wonder and majesty on the actual www (eg the classic viral Web 1.0 post about getting a license plate starting with ASL).

I almost remember the exact moment I realised that AOL in fact wasn't the internet but rather some shovelware that sat above it. As soon as I got winsock working I never went back.

Yes, they were everywhere including cereal boxex. But who didn't repurpose these free 3.5" floppy disks to store their stuff back in the day anyway?

Well, yeah you make a fair point there. I can't speak to who used them but it at least felt like free AOL and Compuserve hours were in heavy use. Might just have been in my tiny sphere though.

I'm from Australia and free AOL CD's were everywhere by the late 90's, but I knew absolutely zero people that had ever used it.

Likewise, everyone was familiar with the 'Prodigy' and 'CompuServe' icons on our desktops with earlier versions of Windows, but nobody used them.

Discord is just another walled garden.

Unless “short feature wishlist” is “open source both the client and the server”, then the golden IRC days are not coming back. The whole point of IRC is that there isn’t a central point of control.

> The rest of the world [snip] never had an AOL/ProdigyCompuServe phase

In the Phillipines, Facebook is tied in with your mobile provider so most people only got Facebook (when I was there some years ago). Facebook is what some people there called the internet. Definitely a walled in garden, and definitely a strategy by Facebook to create a moat in some countries.

I'm aware of this 'colonising strategy' of FB in developing markets and I find it really sad that many people's first experience of the net and the web will have been FB.

I lived in England in the mid 90s and CompuServe (and to a lesser extent AOL) was the way I and most people I knew got 'online'.

It was a walled garden in a slightly different sense. AOL tried their best to force companies to buy AOL “keyword” so that the clueless user doesn’t have to type .com or .net at the end. If you want a comparison, that is like Google putting “I am feeling lucky” as the only option and then auctioning off that result.

Yep I guess the pull to be a walled garden is too great. Even Twitter, a product that should have been the true antithesis to walled garden pigeon holed themselves into walled garden state. I wrote a blog post about it a long time ago https://medium.com/@shareU/we-built-this-city-2cb97437942f

>walled garden

>links medium blog post which can only be accessed behind a login

It didn't ask me for a login (?)

depends on whether you've finished your free articles for the month

And whether you have an ad/tracker blocker.

Ah, I sit corrected. I have the blockers and don't think I've ever used Medium before.

Free products sooner or later end up becoming walled gardens unless it is open source and self hosted.

How about paid businesses models? Aren’t we ripe to start these now?

By definition, paid products are walled gardens from the beginning.

I'm not a huge fan of medium either, but I was able to scroll through the whole article without logging in. There's a prompt at the top, but nothing too obtrusive. I even tried with ublock origin off. What am I missing?

Medium is extremely inconsistent with their account-/pay-walling. I think it’s intentionally chaotic and confusing to drive signup/subscription rates that wouldn’t happen if they communicated clearly what limits you’ve actually encountered.

I wrote a blog post on Medium about wall gardens…

shoot, i just replied with the same sentiment. then i saw your message.

To be fair (to myself and my feelings about walled gardens) I updated the post in 2018 but first I wrote it in 2012 when Medium was this cool new anti-wordpress blogging platform and it proves my point exactly.

something strikes as peculiar/funny about discussions of walled gardens, but then blogging about it on medium.

It really gets me down when local/state emergency services etc. use it as their primary means of news/updates.

Same! What a sad state the internet is in when a megaevil corp is used by local services to provide updates. I thought that was what Twitter was for?

I know several pacific islands were going to ban Facebook but apparently it's heavily in use by businesses.

Regina Lepping, a young entrepreneur from capital city Honiara, said the announcement had sent many small business owners scrambling to find alternatives to Facebook.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-15/solomon-islands-backt...

I've interacted with local businesses that use a Facebook page as a replacement for maintaining a website that they own. The rationale I've read is that their time is best spent providing their quality service versus learning website development (even with a block-based website builder), and hiring a web developer is too pricey, when they can create a Facebook page that is easy to set up.

Most importantly, it's easy for them to update and maintain a Facebook page, versus an independent website.

The federal government should launch its own platform for the US government and state and local governments to push all their updates. Something like Star Wars' Holonet.

This has always irked me. Perhaps it's heavy handed, but I would love a law that (1) requires governments at all levels to use open-access websites (and radio, a local newspaper of record, &c.), and (2) requires services like Facebook to syndicate any news and updates.

This is probably already the case : I can access my local government entities' FB pages without logging in to FB. Google indexes the pages so you don't need the FB search feature to find them.

Interesting that you would name a newspaper of record as a valid outlet for government news/updates. I feel like Facebook could make an argument for being essentially that today - after all, it is where the eyeballs are, which is why people use it for marriage announcements, birth announcements, classifieds, obituaries.... and on and on.

A newspaper of record has additional advantages. For example, the newspaper can't accidentally delete or automoderate an already published article, and anybody can cut the article out of the newspaper and save it without having to pay for electricity and digital storage media in perpetuity.

There is also comparatively more at stake when a newspaper gets facts wrong, versus misinformation on a Facebook post. When a newspaper mistakenly publishes false information at the time (which should not happen too often due to internal fact-checking teams or at least a trained editor and journalist), they issue a correction out of journalistic ethics. But when a Facebook post publishes a falsehood, there is far less obligation to issue a correction notice or remove the post.

Or stealth edit but by then people would have moved on to the next consumable news article.

This is such a straw man. You’re really comparing physical newspapers to Facebook? Even my boomer parents let their physical subscription go.

A "straw man" is an intentionally weak opponent in an argument. I don't think I've done that (where, in this thread, would I have the occasion to?)

I'm not comparing physical newspapers to Facebook. The Internet has obviously won. What I've said is that governments of all levels should not be allowed to solely distribute important public information solely via private platforms. A newspaper was just an obvious example, one that already has a legal precedent.

You can also screenshot and print a post on facebook. It's probably cheaper than buying a newspaper.

You can download scanned versions of respectable local newspapers for free (or at least, already paid for by taxes) in many US and Canadian cities if you have a public library card, by checking if you have a PressReader resource with the library. For example (just because it's a big city), the New York Public Library offers the service [0]. This is useful if there is interest in reading in-depth content about local news.

[0] https://www.nypl.org/research/collections/articles-databases...

But newspapers can't ban you permanently from ever reading again (including bans that track you via device or IP or other factors) for a one-time mistake like a drunk rant where you said the wrong thing. Imagine a hormonal 16 year old makes a violent (but ultimately just them spouting off with no real intent to follow through) threat against a local police department.

In the modern world, they basically lose digital citizenship for their mistake. There's no route for reconciliation or re-entry into society when it comes to major tech platforms and bans. With prison, you theoretically pay your time and then can re-enter society. Not so with online bans.

I wonder if Facebook could be legally compelled to offer read only accounts in the case of banning.

Seems like a simple solution.

By doing this, you are making them legally legitimate to convey imprudent information.

No, the simple solution is to enforce public authorities not to use Facebook (or similar platform) as their main communication channel.

You know the saying "it’s easy to make a Twitter clone, it’s not easy to become Twitter". Well government don’t need to become Twitter, so what is stopping them to provide a "public" Twitter clone just for those communications ?

If by 'lose digital citizenship' you mean 'kicked off Facebook' I think that's probably overstating. I got my first domestic internet connection in 1996 and have never had a Facebook account yet don't in any way feel deprived of 'digital citizenship'. Perhaps I'm unique!

Nope, you’re not :)

I understand that in Italy without a facebook (ie whatsapp) account it is very difficult to live a day-to-day life due to the fact that most vendors (eg doctor's offices) assume all customers have one.

Part of the problem is that radio and newspapers require payment and governments are loath to pay for even paper for flyers in many cases.

The US already has a federal law mandating Government Access Television, and many states have corresponding laws[1]. The costs for it are already built into our cable and other distribution costs.

Similarly, every state that I'm aware of has both a Public Access Radio station and carries NPR broadcasting.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-access_television

The government should be creating their own services for both state and local governments to create websites. Instead, you got a 10,000 vendors charging outrageous prices that can't even get something like security right. Something like 18F would be awesome for these cities to start using. Unfortunately, politics is very corrupt so politicians are always going to want to pay a friend of a friend a million dollars to say that it was the vendors fault than to do something right, and the vendor will have some reason why it wasn't their fault. Rinse, recycle, repeat.

Also educational institutions

Where I live they use nextdoor for that purpose. I’m not sure which is worse.

Nextdoor infinitely worse. It's such a toxic cesspool.

But... they are both toxic cesspools. [Insert office meme of Pam saying both pictures are the same]

You're right, it's dismal. I appeal you make it the furthest away bridge, give yourself plenty of time to reconsider, and maybe find a nice restaurant, concert, business or event along the way.

(Bridges) (Open Now)

<< We found this slower route instead >>

Why have I never ever run into this problem in the ten years of not having Facebook?

Admittedly I use Google for the answers. But I’ve never once needed FB. Is this a regional thing? Some areas exclusively use FB for a storefront?

This is my question too. I’ve never used Facebook, yet I’ve never had any trouble finding the information I am looking for. Is it just very very specific places?

A lot of small businesses in the UK seem to use Facebook rather than putting up a web page. I can see why they do it, it doesn't cost anything and they don't need to worry about renewing domains or hosting issues. It's not a great experience for their customers though, especially if you don't have a Facebook account.

It's possible you're not in the same market as us. Lots of small businesses have no interest in running and updating a website, especially when there's a free alternative that most of their customers have access to.

My local ferry https://www.libertylandingcityferry.com/ only has its service updates on FB https://www.facebook.com/LibertyLandingFerry

I didn't have facebook for the last few years and I was wondering if I'd have to come back to it to be able to access local news/info. Never happened and never needed to. It's true though that in some countries that's the primary communication channel for businesses and even governments unfortunately.

Thanks for putting into words what I've been noticing and feeling. There's something dreadful that ephemerally appears whenever a service or someone links to an FB page.

This is the reason I went anti facebook years back not because of privacy implications but I felt with facebook the web will become less open. As most business will make a facebook page instead of a website accessible to everyone

Given the efficacy of Facebook's targeted advertising this may be inevitable.

Some random website containing a restaurant's information simply isn't worth maintaining if all your customers use Facebook anyway.

All of your customers will continue to be Facebook users if you post things on a Facebook page that only Facebook users can view. And Facebook users are an apparently diminishing portion of the population, as per the article this thread is discussing...

Not a good plan for any business, I would think. Would be nice to see more businesses on Mastodon or (gasp!) just run their own websites again. Can you imagine how difficult it must be for a business to buy a domain, hosting, and slap together a static site in this day and age?

Their mobile site forces you to login to even view things anymore.

mbasic.facebook.com works fine

A meta-verse bridge or an actual bridge?

https://old.reddit.com/r/KidsAreFuckingStupid/comments/sa7j9...

If you call a local business you can usually get that sort of information without logging into facebook.

Some local businesses only provide their "number" as a WhatsApp contact, so you're kinda stuck on a Facebook-owned platform anyway.

Can you give an example? I just go to google maps or Apple Maps and type in any business and have all the information I have ever needed.

You might be in the US. In many other countries WhatsApp is a first class communication mechanism, comparable to WeChat in China.

I wonder what percentage of Facebook's users are only there because of 3 or fewer friends, bands, groups/clubs/interests, or businesses that still use Facebook as their primary means of communication.

In there just for collectible items, in my country most of the second hand sellers use facebook.

I basically still log in for interest group posts (e.g., photos from my son's preschool) and to RSVP for party invites. I'd love to see alternatives take over for these.

I only use it to find local events. If it weren’t for fb and insta you’d think nothing was happening at all. The old local publications were all mothballed by the pandemic.

I have never used Facebook and I’ve never had trouble finding that kind of information on non-Facebook sites. Are you just used to looking on Facebook first?

There are many businesses (Restaurants, doggy daycare) that no longer have websites but have transitioned solely to a Facebook page for cost and technical ease of maintenance reasons.

Yeah it’s terrible and I’m sure it’s costs then a lot of business

why don't you just use Google search for checking such info as restaurant hours, direction etc? Much easier than checking on FB I suppose.

Many restaurants don't have a website anymore. Yes, you can google for directions and opening times, but you can find menu or daily lunch on their Facebook only.

does a google search find data that might be visible in google maps?

I'm not sure if Google put a stop to it, but in my area there was an issue about 6-8 months ago with the business hours listed on Google being changed by competitors. Usually they would alter opening or closing hours by an hour or two, so it wasn't obvious.

*oculus off the nearest bridge

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