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Comment by coef2 | Hacker News Reader

I miss the old days when Facebook was simply a fun way to reconnect with friend and family who lived far away. Unfortunately, those days are gone. It feels like an over engineered attention-hogging system that collects a large amount of data and risks people's mental health along the way.

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From the very beginning Facebook has been an AI wearing your friends as a skinsuit. People are only just starting to notice now.

Perhaps naive to say, but I think there was the briefest moment where your status updates started with "is", feeds were chronological, and photos and links weren't pushed over text, that it was not an adversarial actor to one's wellbeing.

Well they had to grow the userbase before they could abuse it :)

The early, organic days of social networking are always fun. They never would have pulled in billions of users if they started off how they are now.

Couldn't have said it better.

Nothing is a social network anymore.

Everything is a content-consumer a platform now.

People just want to scroll and scroll

People want to scroll and scroll, because social media make them miserable [1, 2, 3]

Perfect storm.

[1] https://time.com/4882372/social-media-facebook-instagram-unh... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-... [3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/navigating-the-maze/...

My hunch is that instant messaging is slowly taking over that space. If you actually want to connect with people you can without needing much of a platform.

There was an even briefer moment where there was no such thing as status updates. You didn't have a "wall." The point wasn't to post about your own life. You could go leave public messages on other people's profiles. And you could poke them. And that was about it.

I remember complaining like hell when the wall came out, that it was the beginning of the end. But this was before publicly recording your own thoughts somewhere everyone could see was commonplace, so I did it by messaging my friends on AIM.

And then when the Feed came out? It was received as creepy and stalkerish. And there are now (young) adults born in the time since who can't even fathom a world without ubiquitous feeds in your pocket.

Call me nostalgic, but we were saner then.

Oh wow, I’d even forgotten about pokes. Thanks for that trip down memory lane.

I made the mistake of sending a Gen Z (adult) friend a poking finger emoji to try to remind him about something.

It wasn't the first time I've had a generational digital (ha) communication failure, but it was the first time I've had one because I'm old and out of touch with what things mean these days!

Still a supported feature! You can find it if you dig around in the menus long enough.

Unless I’m remembering wrong, posting a public message on someone else’s profile was posting on their wall. Or was it called something else before it was somebody’s wall?

It didn't have a name. It wasn't really a "feature." You just went and posted on their "page" I guess I would call it.

The change to being able to post things on your own page and expecting other people to come to your page and read them (because, again, no Feed) wasn't received well at first.

Keep in mind, smartphones didn't exist yet, and the first ones didn't have selfie cameras even once they did. And the cameras on flip phones were mostly garbage, so if you wanted to show a picture, you had to bring a camera with you, plug it in, and upload it. So at first the Wall basically replaced AIM away messages so you could tell your friends which library you were going to go study in and how long. And this didn't seem problematic, because you were probably only friends with people in your school (it was only open to university students, and not many schools at first), and nobody was mining your data, because there were no business or entity pages.

Simpler, simpler days.

I joined Thefacebook in 2005. The place on your page where posts from other people appeared was called the “wall” then.

Yeah, that's about when it changed. The lack of a wall was a very early situation. I joined in 2004, back when it was only open to Ivy League and Boston-area schools.

It was still acceptable to write on someone else's wall when they came to be called that. You can still do that now I think but it's quite uncommon and how it works is now complicated but settings.

Sure, you could. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that now you could post on your own.

That's what turned it from a method of reaching out and sending messages to specific people when you had something to say to them to a means of shouting into the void and expecting (or at least hoping) that someone, somewhere, would see it and care what you had to say. It went from something actively pro-social to something self-focused.

Blogs and other self-focused things already existed, but almost nobody used them for small updates throughout the day. Why do you think the early joke about Twitter was that it was just a bunch of self-absorbed people posting pictures of their lunch? Nobody knew what to do with a tool like that yet, but the creation of that kind of tool has led to an intensity of self-focus and obsession the world had never seen before.

The wall was released maybe 6 months after Facebook launched. I think it was still called “The Facebook” at the time.

They were stealing your contacts from wherever they could get them. There was never a time when they didn't abuse their users.

I mean let's be clear on the history and not romanticize anything, Zuck created Facebook pretty much so he could spy on college girls. He denies this of course, but it all started with his Facemash site for ranking the girls, and then we get to the early Facebook era and there's his quote about the "4,000 dumbfucks trusting him with their photos" etc.

There is no benevolent original version of FB. It was a toy made by a college nerd who wanted to siphon data about chicks. It was more user friendly back then because he didn't have a monopoly yet. Now it has expanded to siphoning data from the entire human race and because they're powerful they can be bigger bullies about it. Zuck has kind of indirectly apologized for being a creeper during his college years. But the behavior of his company hasn't changed.

Very true! I was annoyed by the loss of the "is" pattern and basically stopped using Facebook when the chronological feed was removed.

Nah, not from the very beginning. Before the News Feed, The Facebook was great to find people and keep in contact. Following someone’s page too often was called Facebook stalking and was socially discouraged.

Unfortunately parasocial behavior is good for engagement.

They didn't even have algorithmic feeds from beginning, so no.

There was a sweet spot right after the first big redesign and before the wall feed changed where things felt good. I was in high school still too, and lived in another state during the summer, so even if I didn't use it A LOT, it still really helped me keep up with some of my friends. Interestingly though, my best friends basically never posted anything.

This is a perfect illustration of misaligned AI.

The AI is given a proxy goal- 'maximize engagement'- which it achieves perfectly.

The user's goal - 'foster genuine connection' - is completely secondary.

The AI isn't malicious, it's just ruthlessly effective at optimizing for the wrong thing.

I don't think it's AI

the problem with meta is three fold:

1. zuckerberg is completely misaligned

2. facebook has hundreds of billions dollars of resources

3. zuckerberg has total control of facebook

normally a company with this level of resources would not be under the total control of a single individual

other shareholders would have pushed back on the obviously bad ideas of "metaverse" and "training AI on private photos of children"

but with facebook: misaligned zuckerberg is in total control, and no-one can stop him

so the rest of the world has to suffer whatever this amoral asshole wants to inflict upon them this month

now add AI into this, and zuckerberg can inflict even more damage onto society with fewer and fewer people to get in his way

(the same applies to Google and Musk's empire too)

What delusional nonsense. What AI was Facebook using in 2005?

I am building one with a chronological feed and no public profiles.

You need to already know someone to find them here.

Check out the waitlist!

https://waitlist-tx.pages.dev/

Edit:

Here are some rough layout designs https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uLwnXDdUsC9hMZBa1ysR...

It's intentionally simple

Your landing page talks about all the right goals. postx is a good placeholder name, I recommend ideating a better name for launch. looking forward, wish you the best.

Thank you Anand - for the encouragement and joining the waitlist!

It means really a lot to us.

We are working on a better name and the site!

I'll send you the welcome email manually soon!

new users will face the empty feed problem since by design one can't find anyone without their code.

No "People you may know" or "select at least N interests or follow N accounts to continue".

I think early adopters will invite their friends to join and that is the only way.

Got any suggestions?

Show 3 walls side by side: updates by friends, interactions by direct connections on shares by friends of friends, and public stories by those nearby (geographically). The latter could also turn into a way for local businesses to promote themselves. Keep the 3 in separate lanes in order to let the user decide how much they want to doom scroll.

Thanks for the thoughts.

But we are not interested turning into Facebook. You will only see posts of your friends and nothing more.

I was spending 8+ hours a day doom scrolling which led to this idea. I just want to see what my friends want me to see and that's it.

Sure thing. Oh - maybe let people follow non-friends that they want to see public updates from, and make everyone follow you, so their walls won't be so empty on Day 1 ;).

Thanks :)

Few others have suggested the same. But it kind of defeats the purpose since the goal is to see updates from your close friends and have only private profils. Even though empty feed is not good, it's a feature in our platform. We want to see what users do when the feed is empty. Only real way to have a non empty feed without compromising the core idea is letting users invite friends.

I am thinking along those lines!

You're basically describing the 3 default pages for a new user on a Mattermost instance :)

In addition to exporting one's contacts from Facebook in order to import them into an alternative, there should be a way to use whatever is provided through Facebook's "Download your data" to populate new accounts in the new alternative.

Perhaps it already exists but I have thought about writing something that takes what is provided by "Download your data" and produces a local SQLite database, a local webpage, local website or some combination thereof that is served from the user's computer instead of Meta servers.

However I do not use Facebook enough to justify the effort, and when I do I never look at the "feed".

We don't let anyone find you on the site without your short secret code which they need to ask you for. The code can be changed anytime. You (the user) need to actively ask your friends' code to build up the network. This also keeps the network small since you won't go out of your way to ask someone their code unless you really know them.

A really private place with only people that matter.

"We don't let anyone..."

"A really private place with only people that matter."

Including an unnecessary third party at the controls.

Hmmm.

Can't satisfy everyone

What is the difference between this and a group chat? Most people have < 20 people that they know well enough to give a secret code to unless you're a creator or personality, in which care we are back to snapchat.

If the posts are more long form, what is the difference between this and a blog where the "secret code" is the URL?

Or even a finsta account currated the way you want.

I don't say these as a "it's not gonna work" as in consumer its about the experience, I genuinely wonder why the experience will be better

These are very valid questions , thanks for asking them.

> Group chat Group chats work when everyone in one know each other. I have N different circles which don't overlap so group doesn't chat makes sense. Messages in group chat are more "in the face" - everyone has to. I just wanted a place where I can dump my thoughts without feeling like seeking immediate attention.

> Blog PostX is indeed something like a private blogging space. It's something I wanted for myself.

Honestly I am not fully sure how it's going to be used by people but I have built something me and my friends like and use.

I messed up the formatting. Below is the correct text

> Blog

PostX is indeed something like a private blogging space. It's something I wanted for myself.

Honestly I am not fully sure how it's going to be used by people but I have bi uilt something me and my friends like and use.

Are you really planning to not allow photos? I understand your reasoning for why this works in places a group chat wouldn’t, and I have group chats that I wish could do what your site does (share things to all my friends but we don’t all have to have all the same friends). But something I really appreciate about some of those group chats, especially smaller ones like a group of three, are the photos that friends post. Usually it’s not low effort, it’s real photos of their real lives. I like what you are doing a lot but the ability to post my photos to show to friends seems like a must for me.

Thanks for the response

Many early adopters have asked for photo support so we will be definitely supporting it in the next release.

We are just trying to figure out how to do it without it turning into a clout-chasing machine.

Awesome. I was going to say just don’t have a way to like photos, but then I don’t know if that solves the clout-chasing problem.

Yeah... aside from all the very obvious problems with this (network effects, most friends aren't weird techy no-images types, etc.)... the moment has passed. Nobody is going to trust another tech company with their real name & permanent social life again. They've seen what happens.

True though. We will be adding support for images in the next release.

We can add an option to export all data (in the pipeline) and let users delete account and data in one click (available on first release) but I don't know what else can be done.

End to end encryption is hard and I am not a programmer capable of implementing it safe enough to stop NSA level threats.

We will do what we can.

> I don't know what else can be done

I don't think there's anything technical you can do. I think it would require:

1. A stable income stream that doesn't depend on something at odds with your goals (i.e. not like Mozilla).

2. Incorporate as a non-profit with rock-solid "we're never going to transition to for-profit" legal terms.

I think Wikipedia is probably the closest thing we have to that, but even they don't have a reliable income source. I mean, they have more money than they know what to do with and waste most of it on outreach nonsense rather than putting it into an endowment... but it's not exactly a reliable source of money.

> PostX is a private, no-clout, no-AI social network for close friends

What can you possibly offer in this space that can not be done with a messaging group on WhatsApp/Signal/Matrix/XMPP ?

   - They are invite only
   - They are not public
   - People share updates in chronological order

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44402600

Basically group chats work only when everyone knows each other

> Group chats work when everyone knows each other.

That is (a) not true and (b) a non-issue, because you can create as many groups as you'd like.

> PostX is indeed something like a private blogging space. I just wanted a place where I can dump my thoughts without feeling like seeking immediate attention.

So, you are working on yet-another blog engine and you are promoting it like it's some revolutionary new idea? It may be interested for you if you want to treat it as some exercise, but do you see how underwhelming this seems to anyone else?

I am solving a problem I myself had and seeing if anyone else might find it interesting.

It may or may not take off like every other startup and I am fine with it.

Why the snark?

There is no snark. I'm just genuinely trying to warn you that you seem to be going down a rabbit-hole. You seem to be more enamored by working on your solution rather than solving your problem.

For you, it might be that exercising your design/coding/architecture chops might be valuable in itself - which is totally fine. But do not think for a second that other people need to particularly care about your solution to a problem, when there are already hundreds of similar projects that are more mature, more familiar and ready to be deployed.

(edited) Thanks!

We’re doing this just as an experiment — it doesn’t have to turn into anything big, so no rabbit hole problem.

English isn’t my first language, so it’s sometimes hard for me to infer things from just text.

Really appreciate your thoughts, especially since you’ve done a lot of work in this space.

We don’t think our idea is “revolutionary” or anything like that, and we’re not trying to spin it as one. At best, it might take off; at worst, it’s just a way to practice our programming skills.

Risks people’s mental health? I would say it is pretty obvious that FB and IG are bad for people. Some may have a natural mental fortitude and can survive it without instruction but for the rest of us we need some instructions on how to use these platforms without compromising key aspects of our mental health.

I’d like to see a proper study on this that can be replicated before I jump on this train. And I’m a supporter of Jonathan “the kids are not alright” Haidt but let’s not kid ourselves his work is questionable throughout.

It’s easy to dogpile. I’d like to see more proof, that’s all. “It’s obvious” doesn’t cut it for me. For one, we have major societal problems that are being exposed through these platforms, and the mere knowledge of the problem has a negative impact on the individual. Do we shut the platform down because it’s showing us things we don’t want to see, or do we fix the societal problem? And many others.

Pop some terms into Google scholar and you'll find study after study after study both correlating social media use with worse mental health and demonstrating improvements from reducing use, in children and adults both.

It varies by demographic, but yeah, social media are pretty universally awful for humans, and that's not just conjecture.

> correlating

That's the issue, and it is what you attempted to answer.

Causation is much harder to tease out from the noise.

Rose-tinted glasses. Here's what Mark Zuckerberg had to say about his own platform in 2004:

> 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

I have similar feelings. In the early days, Facebook was more like a cozy corner of the Internet, where you could see the latest news from your high school classmates and the dinner photos posted by distant relatives. It was very relaxing. Now when I open the app, I feel like I am being manipulated by the algorithm, constantly pushing you to click and watch things, and I can't stop. It has become smarter, but also more indifferent.

I have Fluff-Busting Purity, I'm part of a bunch of Facebook groups, and I only browse on my laptop. I pretty much only see what I want to.

myspace back in the day was a creative open canvas. You could put whatever random stuff on an HTML page and that was "you". Super unstructured, wild. Whatever.

Facebook came out and was a whole different thing. Facebook is a "database with a web (and later mobile app) frontend". It's all about data mining. Always has, always will be.

These days I treat Facebook as a marketplace for offloading lightly used items.

Social media is dead to me.

What a coincidence, I use it as a market for buying lightly used items.

Facebook marketplace has surprisingly large number of listings and in my country not even dedicated marketplaces can come close

Facebook marketplace killed or vastly reduced the size of other marketplace platforms in many countries. Strangely it also seems like the amount of fraud rose as people moved to Facebook Marketplace. I guess it was easier for scammers to work on Facebook, needing only one platform to commit fraud in multiple countries, rather than attempting to work on hundreds of local sites.

> Social media is dead to me

You know, HN is social media.

Actually I don't think there is a single definition of social media but some countries/juridictions created their own for legal purposes and for most of them hn would not be considered a social media for various reasons: - no discovery of users - no subscription of users content - no private/direct messages

Provide wildly different features: get everybody hooked on a different feature.

That's the trick with these social systems. They don't care about the features each person dislikes or doesn't use.

Would a friends and staying in touch social network even succeed today?

I am trying to find out with the one I am building :)

I wonder how many people can give up effortless doomscrolling to see a limited length chronological feed made up of their friends' posts

From early days of FB I remember it nagged to read all my addressbook/contacts. It was always data hungry. It wouldn't grow so quickly and big without gray ethics.

Read Careless People. It was never about that.

Don’t forget supercharging the spread of hate such as the harmful anti-Rohingya content in Myanmar

Who even uses Facebook anymore? I don't know anyone who posts to their own profile anymore, and I'm part of the generation where literally everybody was posting every detail of their lives to FB as students.

For "seeing what old friends are up to", that's entirely shifted to IG. (Yes, pedants, I know that this is an FB product.)

The only time I ever open FB nowadays is for the marketplace, and when I do, all I see in the feed is garbage brainrot from big slop accounts.

I don't know where you live, but at least here in Scandinavia FB is still the de facto "one-stop shop" as far as social media goes.

Sure, younger people use other apps / platforms, but society as a whole here is way, way too invested in FB.

Marketplace :/

This is a real Rip Van Winkle style take (posted with gentle humor)

Yeah the one difference with some other enshittified things is that I really have the impression that Facebook was always meant to go this way.

It was also one of the first to drop genuine user-sercing features like the old timeline (just all the posts of people you followed which you came there to see) which it replaced with the algorithmic feed which recommended stuff you never asked for or wanted.

Instagram did keep that feature though until 2 years and still has it although it's constantly switching it off.

So Feb 4, 2004 (founding) to September 6, 2006 (newsfeed). LOL.

What I don't understand is how come they could make such a crappy product, almost everything is totally unusable both on the web and the app, it's pathetic to be a Meta engineer at that point

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