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Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

I grew up when everyone was saying "don't post your face, name or address on the internet" - and that's what I've done. There are a total of maybe 3-6 pictures of me on the internet and my real name isn't attached to most of my brainfarts online.

It's not that I hide it like a secret agent, I just don't shove my face and name next to every opinion I have.

But the younger generations... They grew up with Snapchat which means Snap Streaks, which again means posting your face with every message. Next was Facebook, real names everywhere. Then came "personal branding", again face and name plastered everywhere.

And now governments want to lock in the real name + face + identity combo for everyone with laws. Fuck that.

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I still remember conversations here on HN, around the time Facebook was launched. It was considered insanity that you would give up your privacy to a firm.

I remember how that what seemed absurdly risky, meant absolutely nothing to the average person, and the astronomic value Facebook began to accumulate.

I wonder if it wasn't social media that set up the death spiral of the internet. The walled gardens on content and then the ad revenue created incentives to increase engagement, while capturing the value which would have gone to the open internet.

In that light, it seems AI firms are going to complete what Social Media started. Sequestering the remaining value of information and content, and then earning rents on it.

I didn't see it that way. when Facebook started it was like an intimate club.

Classmates.com was charging money for reunion information and Facebook was free.

It was the IPO that really tipped the scales.

In that one day Zuck became a Billionaire with everybody else's information.

We were bamboozled. Subscription versus free but not really.

Perhaps you didn't see it that way.

However, I do remember the conversations from that time.

I still don't have any social media other than LinkedIn that connects to my identity, and warned family against it for as long as I could.

Saying people on HN were bamboozled is ludicrous. HN is an old bastions for people who argue for privacy and anonymity. I sincerely doubt (hope) that many people would say they were fooled. That would indicate a degree of intellectual immaturity and avoidance of concequence which makes any other position held suspect.

It was clear that there was no other way this was going to go. Saying the IPO tipped the scales is also being wildly generous to firms.

Perhaps its the other side of the coin of the HN zeitgeist? faith in firms matching the distrust in government.

Facebook was started by a college kid who made a site for non-consensually rating the faces of his fellow female classmates. He called his initial users "dumb f*cks" for trusting him with their private information. Information, which he offered to share with his friend, also without consent. It was obvious from the start that Facebook was up to no good, but money and power [1] prevailed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Facebook

> There are a total of maybe 3-6 pictures of me on the internet

Incorrect, you are probably in the background of random photos on the internet, and by virtue of not having any profiles and social media sites can tag you and form a shadow profile around you.

Yeah, your family members will be more than happy to tag you once Facebook asks them who that person on a group photo is.

> by virtue of not having any profiles and social media sites can tag you and form a shadow profile around you.

This can be done to you whether you have a profile or not. Having an actual profile likely means that you've signed onto some tos that allows them to add a lot more to your "shadow profile" and use it in more ways, and that any complaints about the treatment will go to forced arbitration.

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