Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet | Hacker News Reader

Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet

qz.com

70 pointsjakub_g41 comments

While we can jump to being disgusted with Facebook, looking at the countries they surveyed it is more likely that they did not communicate their questions the right way. This could either happen due to language barrier, or due to lack of understanding of the users.

What I think is this - when they said "Internet", 3-4% users understood that to be open Web, with browser, a .com and the whole package. They responded correctly that they don't use it. But correctly identified that they spend time on Facebook. So in users' mind, they correctly distinguished open Web from the apps. However, they conflated the term internet with the web.

And a lot of people will make such distinction. If you don't do any Web browsing but remained in contact with your family over Whatsapp, you will term it as, "I was off the Web to save time, but I did use Whatsapp." That does not mean what this article concludes, that you don't think that Whatsapp uses Internet.

Those 3-4% of respondents are still mistaken. It is a common misconception that the Internet is the same thing as the Web. You can use Facebook and not the Web, but you can't use Facebook and not the Internet. This research is trying to figure out how many people hold that exact mistaken belief.

I believe arihant understands that distinction, going by their sentence, "However, they conflated the term internet with the web." arihant's main point was that if the point of the survey is one understanding of words, then the wording is going to be very important. (And wording is already important in surveys.)

But that's not what their conclusion is. Their conclusion is that people think that they aren't using Internet when they're using Facebook. This makes it sound like these users don't get the concept of Internet. While I think they do get the concept but messed up on terminology.

This article makes it sound like these users think Facebook works with some kind of magic dust. That's not it. They do get the concept, I think.

If the surveyor cannot themselves distinguish between knowledge of terminology and understanding of concept, I can only conclude that their communication with the people surveyed was equally malformed.

I agree that they don't get the concept of the Internet, my reading of dublinben's comment is that the issue is deeper: even the article confuses the Internet (the wiring, routers, etc.) with the web (the pages and software/servers). The sarcastic word 'Interwebs' came about to poke fun at those who didn't understand that difference.

Precisely. They might as well have asked them if they use TCP/IP. What percentage would answer yes to that?

A while back, a highly-educated friend and I were driving through an area that had a lot of data centers. She asked me what all of those gigantic blocks of buildings contained. I told her that they were mostly filled with many servers that were used to host all sorts of internet services.

It completely blew her mind. She had no idea that the services that she and billions of others used on their phones actually required millions and millions of computers to transmit and process the data. I'm not sure how she thought it worked, but even after I explained it to her, she couldn't comprehend that there were servers on the other end of her phone.

Magic.

When I was in Thailand the other month and had a phone, I could access facebook when I had no credit, but no other internet site - so this does make a kind of sense.

And it's incredibly weird considering Facebook's questionable https://www.internet.org/ campaign.

Maybe through 0.facebook.com [1]

[1] https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/fast-and-free-facebo...

They simply want to become the storefront for the world. We all know that for most average people scratching the surface is all it takes to satiate them so they will never go beyond facebook. They will do all of their communicating and purchasing of goods through facebook. It is understandable but completely disgusts me.

I blame developers. There is an unrealized problem in the development community that assumes that everyone wants every bell and whistle and feature possible at all times. Guess what though, people, most people are not engineers, tinkerers, hackers, or even simply inquisitive. Many, if not most people, simply want to get basic shit done and as simply as possible.

I think the converse also holds:

Millions of internet users have no idea they’re using Facebook

You'd get even more disparate results if you polled people on who used (a) Facebook and (b) the photoelectric effect, despite every computing device with a display that renders Facebook being driven by the photoelectric effect.

"The Internet" is taken for granted and is so down in the weeds for most people that they don't realize they're using it. Similarly, every time that I glance at my watch to check the time, I'm not thinking about how it's using general relativity to calculate the time from its GPS sources, but it is.

Maybe you mean something other than the photoelectric effect? None of light-emitting-diodes, liquid-crystal-displays, or cathode-ray-tubes rely on the photoelectric effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect

This is all very AOL 1990's sounding. The failure in the logic is that FB is the gateway drug. As people clicks links in FB and discover other resources that are valuable they become users of those services and spread beyond FB only usage.

for users that have internet access beyond facebook. Internet.org and many mobile phone providers provide free access to facebook but not the rest of the internet.

Except in the case of Facebook, they don't go further afield. People stay within Facebook's walled garden, posting updates in Facebook, liking brands in Facebook, talking to their friends in Facebook, playing games in Facebook ... they don't leave.

To me this raises an interesting philosophical question - is Facebook actually separate to the internet? It uses the underlying transport mechanisms of the net, sure, but that's not really what we mean when we say the internet. When my mother says she's using the internet she doesn't mean she's generating HTTP GET requests to query servers and render the resulting HTML. She means she's using a browser to read a page and then clicking on a link to get another page. Facebook certainly isn't the world wide web or email, which is what most people mean when they say "internet". If what you're doing is in an largely separate, walled-off area, that you mostly access with an app rather than a browser, is that really what we mean when we say the internet?

I'd need to think about it more, but I imagine there's quite a compelling argument that using Facebook is not using the internet for any non-technical definition of 'the internet'.

I don't think Facebook is separate from the Internet. I think people's purview changes and is different from one another.

For some people, "the Internet" is Facebook and maybe Netflix. That's it. They may not even understand that there's more out there, or what a web page even is. Facebook and Netflix are certainly closer to applications than they are websites. I imagine the Internet to them is an extension of the apps they use on their phone.

I would even go so far as to say for some people, Google is the only way they know of to find things. Which to me is more scary, since Google in a sense can control what X% of the population sees as the users aren't even aware of another means of accessing blocked content.

I would even go so far as to say for some people, Google is the only way they know of to find things

Totally agree. I watched a family member Google "budget rental cars" to get to budget.com. Seriously. She wasn't searching, she needed customer service in order to keep a car a few extra days.

To her, Google is the "internet" (web, actually, but you know what I mean in this context).

Also there are two data plans; Facebook and/or Internet. This was discussed before. We should blame the ISPs too.

Many people in the AOL heyday of the 1990s didn't go outside of AOL's garden, either. You could chat, talk to friends, play games, do some online shopping, book flights, all from within the AOL client and without firing up their built-in browser. And many people didn't use that.

Right. I suspect the response to my answer depends partly on whether you're old enough to remember how all pervasive AOL was.

My parents were AOL subscribers for about a decade. Actually, they started out as GNN subscribers, and just stayed when AOL purchased GNN. So much of my early internet experiences were done within AOL (although I didn't hesitate to fire up Netscape).

Scary, especially with the launch of Instant Articles (news content hosted by Facebook, further raising the walls of their garden).

Reminds me of when an article on the Facebook login system ranked highly with Google and people were confused on how to login: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/faceb...

This is sickening - no other word to describe it.

To be fair, where I'm from(Poland) some operators sell "Facebook only" plans which allow for unlimited access to Facebook,but they come with no data allowance for anything else. So maybe some of people on those plans really think that they are using facebook and not the internet(since they are not paying for it?).

For many people "the internet" is whatever apps/websites they use the most. Facebook's just the most popular.

Facebook should also invest something in teaching these people "What is Internet?" and shouldn't limit the people to Facebook when they talk about Internet.org

Just investing in Internet.org with FB ads in mind is not at all good for the community. We go to internet for utilities not for seeing ads.

Facebook isn't a benevolent society dedicated to introducing people to the greater Internet, it's a publicly traded company interested in maximizing returns for its shareholders. Unsurprisingly, keeping users within the FB ecosystem is the company's main goal, hence the internet.org expansion. This is a worrying development given how many people around the world use FB regularly but the company is not going to promote something that doesn't increase its bottom line.

Mark Zuckerberg gives lip service to the idea of net neutrality and says he supports unrestricted access to the free and open Internet, then turns around and does the opposite. The EFF and other organizations have taken the company to task for this devious bait and switch move. I have no idea whether this has had any effect but given FB's track record I suspect not.

The best thing you can do is ditch Facebook and explain to others why they might want to consider doing the same. Personally, I get very little value out of the platform and although I do have a FB account I login only three or four times a year.

To be fair, they really aren't using the internet when milling around inside of Facebook's network. The internet is about connecting autonomous computers, server, networks, and systems together ... precisely not simply circle jerking in Facebook land.

Perhaps, this shows how people perceive the world:

Internet = browsing web pages on PC/Mac (using a web browser)

FB = apps/software on phones and tablets (or in a web browser, occasionally)

FB is then much more a standalone/native app than a website.

To me this sounds like a failure of public education and not facebook's fault. Public schools should teach what the internet is. Not knowing what the internet is is akin to illiteracy in today's world.

> Not knowing what the internet is is akin to illiteracy in today's world.

Ya, just like programming is the fourth 'R.'

They know where to get to where they want to go. That Facebook is another site on the internet really isn't important. They use Facebook and when they want to get on the internet they go to Google and search.

What people call it and what it is just isn't important. They're not fixing it and they're not working with it at a technical level, they're just using it without needing to know details of how it works.

Just like I don't need to know anything about how gas explodes to make my car go forward in order to drive it.

There was no control in this research. So it's rubbish.

I'd criticize the methodology of such survey.

Asking 'Is FB the internet?' has different meaning in these countries.

This seems just like AOL before. Most people didn't know they were using the internet. Just AOL.

Just as Zuckerberg said he wants it, for Facebook to replace the internet is is expressed goal.

Have you got an actual quote for that, ie not just some clickbait journalist's interpretation of what he said.

What he actually said is here: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881

"The internet is one of the most powerful tools for economic and social progress. It gives people access to jobs, knowledge and opportunities. It gives voice to the voiceless in our society, and it connects people with vital resources for health and education. I believe everyone in the world deserves access to these opportunities."

Sorry, you're wrong. That's a recent comment that I am not referring to. I did not save a referent to the original statement when he made it back, oh, maybe 5-6 years ago because even though it immediately struck me, I did not seem to have taken a note of it. Someone once responded to one of my comments on Reddit with the same source, but that was also a while ago and I didn't take note of it. If Reddit had better search functionality, maybe I could find the source, but I have not been successful the couple attempts I have made at finding it because someone like you tries to cast doubt on the claim.

I don't even know why you need the quote; his actions and their manifestation in how Facebook operates and what it does and how it serves as a global surveillance system for not only our government but governments all around the world speaks far louder than any single quote he made and was probably told is not a good idea to repeat.

It sounds unlikely at best, and "maybe 5-6 years ago" is so long ago in Internet time it's hardly worth bothering about.

Anyway, I always ask for quotes because they are almost always wrong. Either the journalist misquoted it or the reader completely failed to understand it.

So, I'm not wrong unless you can prove I'm wrong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com