
“This Is Serious”: Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral - tekacs
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-downward-spiral
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seem_2211
Facebook is a very good product - as a social CRM and messaging service, no
one even comes close.

Its reputation, however, is a total disaster. Last week when someone posed the
theory that Instagram strategically holds likes from users who they determine
as needing to use the site more (apparently untrue), most people took at as
fact. Hell I did.

And why wouldn't you. Every time you add a friend on Facebook it gives you a
fake notification on Messenger. Everytime you go on your Instagram profile it
nudges you to give away your cell number. They've broken the mobile site as
much as possible (to drive app installs), and made it so you need messenger as
a separate app. Zuckerberg can pretend it's all about "community" and "coming
together" but only a fool would take a look at how Facebook works and conclude
that's how things are currently set up. When I joined Facebook people were
often sharing statuses and updates. But that's not happening anymore (and
hasn't for quite some time). Growth hacking might make sense when you're a
scrappy startup and desperate for engagement, but it's user-hostile when you
hit Facebook's size.

Good riddance.

~~~
jonathanyc
> Facebook is a very good product - as a social CRM and messaging service, no
> one even comes close.

No, not really. Messenger is the worst messaging app I am obliged to use
daily; perhaps tied with Slack. All of my friends with whom I’ve discussed
this agree, but the sheer number of people we would like to chat with that use
Messenger, plus Facebook’s refusal to support open standards, means
Messenger’s quality is irrelevant.

~~~
christiangenco
What messaging app(s) do you prefer to use?

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wintercharm
This has been a long time coming. Facebook went too far, and they did finally
push too hard. Creating divides is great for growth early on, but if you do
nothing to repair the rifts you make, the structure cannot continue to stand.

His ruthlessness, and the change in facebook as it becomes something annoying
and self serving, rather than serving the needs of its users who try to
connect to each other. Facebook now charges pages to show stuff to users
who've liked it - indicating that they ALREADY want to see things from that
page.

This sort of extortionist double dipping is the kind of thing which ruins a
social network. This, along with numerous privacy violations, ridiculous
degrees of data mining, and more... good riddance.

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Mc_Big_G
Best decision of 2017 was deleting my Facebook account. I encourage everyone
to do the same. Next step is getting off of Gmail / Google Services, which I
also started last year by using duckduckgo full-time.

~~~
vijayr
What are you replacing gmail with?

~~~
Mc_Big_G
Probably Protonmail, but not sure yet as it's still on my todo list.

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LarryDarrell
I quit FB in 2009, so I'm ignorant of what it has been like since then. I
thought I would be forever labeled a crank for not participating. I have
noticed with some happiness the creeping realization among people that FB
might not be a force that changes humanity for the better.

~~~
RickS
In 2009 it was definitely seen as unusual not to participate. In my experience
by around 2014 people had stopped asking "why" when learning I didn't have
facebook. I think the desire to be "free of it" for the various meanings of
that phrase have become well understood public knowledge. I'm happy to see
social decluttering trend towards being a cultural norm.

~~~
ljf
I came late to the fb quitting game - quit Xmas 2016 and while I am a pretty
boringly stable person, my mental health has been greatly improved since I've
been off. I didn't realise how it was affecting me at the time but it made me
anxious, needy, boastful and shallow in my friendships.

Since leaving I actually talk with friends a lot more, and when I wonder how
an old friend is doing I reach out or try and meet up. Much better than just
stalking their fb profile and offering a like or two.

Now if I could just quit surfing the net on my phone all the damn time...

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gpsx
I don't think Facebook is the real problem when it comes to splitting the
world. The users are the problem. People are so divided because they are
getting information in silos. They end up seeing the world they want to see.
And if it is not Facebook, it's going to be someone else.

If facebook wants to be a part of fixing this, which is questionable as the
article points out, they need to start exposing people to alternate opinions,
rather than enforcing the ones people already have. Facebook is actually in a
position to do this. They should of course start slowly with more moderate
opinions. But they shouldn't move away from news. They should double down,
with more, diverse news.

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wand3r
Facebook has become the landline telephone. You dont want to get rid of it,
it's good for keeping in touch with those few people you don't see often, it's
pretty much all spam, and its increasingly bundled in to shit you use so its
actually more annoying to outright cancel it than just ignore it.

~~~
subpixel
It's interesting that you mention landlines. I feel like I've been slightly
ahead of the curve in giving up: a landline (~2005), cable (~2007), and
Facebook (2014).

Twitter and Instagram still exist on my phone, and I have the occasional
desire to push content to them, but I haven't in about a year.

I feel about the experience of swimming through other people's political ideas
and vacation and/or kids photos the way I imagine an alcoholic feels about
drinking: I've tried that and it made me miserable.

The fact that my wife still uses social media means a truly important child
photo or life event eventually makes its way to me.

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squozzer
I feel like picking this article apart.

First three paras - Zuck is bad dude for doing what businesses have been doing
for centuries if not millenia - stealing ideas and poaching employees. Look
hard enough at VF's history and I feel confident you'll find the same
behaviors.

Next para - Summary of FB's status.

Next two paras - FB turns out to not be a panacea for social isolation, not a
classmates.com on steroids. Like other forms of communication (e.g. TV), it
amplifies some human frailties. I am old enough to remember when serial
killers would taunt TV stations. People blamed TV for that, maybe with some
justification. FB's problem, it seems, stems from its democratization of
opinion, especially when it plays a role, however minor, in generating a
political outcome that some people dislike.

Next three paras - The bloom is off the rose for FB and other social media
sites. Too many stories / rumors about surveillance / psychological
manipulation abound, and social media is paying a price for that. The sharks,
disguised as regulators and other social paladins, are circling, and giving
Zuck et al. a taste of their own medicine. Worded quite speculatively, I might
add.

Last two paras - Additional speculation about FB's long-term viability and
some whistful karmic comeuppance conjuring.

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tomkinson
Facebook exceeded all of our goodwill and patience as consumers as almost no
other company ever has. Deceit is their goto. After all, Zuckerberg (while
young at the time) did call his own users 'dumb fucks' if I recall when asked
why they share things with Facebook. That says everything you need to know. I
will also mention I have heard this same narrative for the past 7 years.

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nallerooth
I'm still waiting for GDPR to become active before I'm deleting my account.
While I'm quite certain that Facebook will still keep my data (somehow),
they'll have a harder time using it without completely scrubbing any personal
details.

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jumpkickhit
An interesting article for sure. I sure wouldn't have predicted what happened
to digg.com.

Also with automatic videos playing on so many sites, mixed with bandwidth
limitations set by telcos, some users might opt out of websites that do that
to save on bandwidth.

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runciblespoon
> Years ago .. the young founder reached out to a friend of mine who had also
> started a company

What was the name of the C.E.O, the name of the company and the nature of the
product?

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pascalxus
Facebook & zuckerberg are victims of it's own success. Inherent to social
networks, is the network effects power law which makes Facebook incredibly
power. It's that enormous power which seems to be the root cause which leads
people to be so suspicious of it. Great power, requires great responsibility

It's interesting to note, that when Obama used the platform to get elected, no
one minded. But, when the opposing party does it, everyone judges it
negatively.

~~~
RickS
> It's that enormous power which seems to be the root cause which leads people
> to be so suspicious of it

I would say it was their behaving suspiciously that causes people to be
suspicious of it.

> when Obama used the platform to get elected, no one minded. But, when the
> opposing party does it, everyone judges it negatively

At the risk of getting too political, I believe only one of those campaigns
has been confirmed by the company to have been operated in part by foreign
powers actively attempting to subvert the election. That's a bit beyond "i
like the one guy better" as far as reasons for judgement go.

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mankash666
All the metrics and evidence are to the contrary - Facebook is growing from
strength to strength.

We may all dislike Facebook & Uber, but the fact is that they're growing
despite negative press. The reason is probably because of being leaders in
spaces that are valuable & essential.

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cmurf
Off topic: It annoys me to no end, the sheer hubris required, to enable 2FA
with codes (e.g. Google Authenticator) you must first enable 2FA by SMS and
give them your phone number. The UI won't let me multifactor with an OTP app
alone, these dicks are always doing a shake down for my phone number.

This policy, and so many others, come from an attitude. And it's the attitude
people are realizing they don't like, never liked, and are less inclined to
overlook.

