
What Happens When Facebook Goes the Way of Myspace? - edward
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/magazine/what-happens-when-facebook-goes-the-way-of-myspace.html
======
AndrewSChapman
Honestly, I hope they do! Simply put, the company is ethically bankrupt and
deserve to be made an example of how _not_ to run a social network.

You can't go selling peoples _private_ messages to Netflix (the sheer audacity
of that just blows my mind!). You can't allow peoples private data to be sold
to data analytics firms that are trying to sway elections.

Facebook is built on the belief that people don't need privacy and I think
that's fundamentally wrong.

As an aside, I hope people continue migrating to
[https://MeWe.com](https://MeWe.com) which has a clear privacy bill of rights
at its core and zero ads. It makes money in a far more traditional approach by
charging for "pages" and extended emotions etc.

~~~
dominotw
> I hope people continue migrating to [http://MeWe.com](http://MeWe.com) which
> has a clear privacy bill of rights at its core and zero ads. It makes money
> in a far more traditional approach by charging for "pages" and extended
> emotions etc.

What is the guarantee that they stick to this and not got FB route later. Why
should I trust "Sgrouples Inc."?

~~~
AndrewSChapman
If they changed it would be suicide. Their whole raison d'être is around
privacy and no censorship.

~~~
zwaps
No. Google got big literally only because a huge f-ton of nerds saw them as a
new, unique, good alternative to the big tech companies and pushed their
services. Remember when working at Google was a dream that spawned several
movies even?

Then, Google just went and deleted "Don't be evil" from their manifesto.
Literally they did that. That's like saying "Yo guys, we are evil now".

And what happened? Nothing. They are fine.

------
maeln
Facebook as a website can go the way of MySpace. But Facebook as a company
will probably not. The subject is touched a bit toward the end of the article
but the reality is this: Facebook has reached a critical mass, as a company,
that MySpace never did.

As such, they can just continue to buy all the other new social network that
pop-up and make sure that they have a dominant position in the social network
market. Unless they make a big mistake (which completely possible), Facebook,
as any modern dominant company, will just continue consolidating and securing
their market share.

~~~
jasode
_> , they can just continue to buy all the other new social network that pop-
up_

Yes, many people have this fatalistic perspective about FB but they shouldn't
because Zuckerberg can't buy _all_ the competition. Buying a company requires
a _willing seller_ [0]. Consider that Facebook itself rejected offers from
Viacom (~$1.5 billion), Yahoo (~$1 billion), Microsoft ($24 billion),
etc.[1][2]

The bigger companies such as Microsoft can't force Zuckerberg to sell if he
doesn't want to sell. Likewise, Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion
but Evan Spiegel said "no". Yes, Snapchat is no longer a threat but that
doesn't mean another superior competitor can't rise up as a new threat that MZ
can't buy.

[0] my previous comment with other examples:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733501)

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-
ever-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-ever-tried-
to-buy-facebook-2010-5#nbc-met-with-facebook-in-2005-8)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/video/2016/10/21/steve-ballmer-
microsof...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2016/10/21/steve-ballmer-microsoft-
tried-to-buy-facebook.html)

~~~
user5994461
These offers were a joke. Try adding one zero. Pretty sure VC would give a
billion with little strings attached to any company that's threatening
Facebook.

Every seller has a price. WhatsApp went for $16B.

~~~
rapsey
They were not a joke. They were at an earlier stage of growth and all those
prices were fair for what it was at the time.

~~~
user5994461
Don't be surprised when a company in early stages of growth (tens of millions
of users with great potential for more) prefers to continue than take an early
exit.

The Microsoft deal looks incredibly one sided:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-microsoft-
trie...](https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-microsoft-tried-to-buy-
facebook-for-24-billion-2016-10)

Anyway, prices are up. There is more cash available now than there was 10
years ago, not to mention than being acquired by Google/Facebook/Microsoft is
a better brand name than Viacom. With funding rounds in over a hundred
millions, the founders might not even get a good cut out of a (single) billion
dollar sale.

------
chvid
This article reads like something between a hit-piece and a I-don't-like-
Facebook-opinion-piece.

A similarly article could be written about Google but it is not. I think the
interesting question is why not?

~~~
libdjml
There are a load of criticisms you could call out about google, but suggesting
that their “one primary platform and single focus (social media)” is about to
collapse is not valid; they’re far too broadly invested (from mobile phones to
search to email) to claim they’re about to become irrelevant.

~~~
chvid
If you look at where their revenue is, it it probably not broad at all (just
search advertisement and AdSense).

And if you look solely at the US and Canada their adaption is probably
petering out as well.

And heart what is their core business other than a massive invasion of privacy
and data mining of personal information?

What about all these stories that has push management on the defence? (Google
China, that right-wing guy and so on.)

The point is. What this article is saying about Facebook could just as easily
had been said about Google with just about the same validity.

Why does Facebook get bad press whereas Google does not?

------
gopher2
The New York Times Technology section really wants me to delete my Facebook
account.

[https://imgur.com/a/fV6WKun](https://imgur.com/a/fV6WKun)

Is this content organization personalized? Or are they serving this to
everyone?

~~~
smarttack
It's hard not to suspect that there is at least some personal vendetta
involved here from the media. Facebook destroyed a lot of the business models
which were already reeling in the internet age.

------
buboard
Whatever vendetta the nytimes has with facebook has drawn too far too long.
yawn

~~~
hnauz
I'm starting to suspect they are trying to extort better ad prices from
Facebook. This won't stop until they cave. I hope they don't cave. The press
already has enough power as it is.

~~~
FranzFerdiNaN
Good. The press should have more power than corporations. Especially
corporations with the moral standing of Facebook.

~~~
hnauz
The NYT is a corporation. A corporation who lied about the WMD, garnering
support for a war which caused death and endless suffering to millions of
people.

~~~
matt4077
That particular episode is old enough to have graduated high school now. The
editor and reporter responsible were also fired, and it wasn’t so much that
the reporter “lied”, let alone the paper, but that they were lied to by the
administration at a time where there was still a general assumption that even
Republican officials would not actually blatantly lie to the American public.

So update your talking points. ( _yawn_ )

------
revskill
Facebook open sourced many useful libraries, and it's what matters to me
first. Secondly, as a user, it has problem, just like any company.

~~~
FranzFerdiNaN
Facebook was instrumental in electing the worst president ever that is causing
damage that will last for decades, it seems that every month now a story break
that they handle their users' data even worse than thought possible before,
but hey, they made this cool open source library so i guess it all balances
out!

~~~
chillacy
Why blame Facebook and not:

\- voters for actually choosing this guy

\- the media for giving this guy so much coverage

\- people for not fact checking

Blaming Facebook feels like shooting the messenger. It’s not going to fix any
of the underlying issues going into 2020. At worst it’s a distraction, like
birthers against Obama.

~~~
hackinthebochs
It's a strange meme that "facebook elected Trump" when every news org gave him
billions worth of free coverage because it was good for their bottom line.
They elected Trump because they knew a Trump presidency would be the best
thing to happen to them since Monica Lewinsky. Somehow we all seem to have
forgotten that.

------
golergka
> in the United States and Canada

And that key detail is why this article is wrong. US and Canada are certainly
most lukrative markets in terms of profit per single user, but they are far,
far from the only markets in the world. Facebook usage in North America may
start stagnating in the next few years, but it is still rapidly growing in
other areas. And after that, well, you just run out of people in the whole
humanity itself - and that's not a business problem that we have any
historical example of.

~~~
mijamo
There are plenty of examples of companies facing a saturated market. The
logical next step is to grow vertically as you cannot grow horizontally
anymore. Some succeed, many fail. In the long run, nearly all companies fail.

~~~
grecy
> _There are plenty of examples of companies facing a saturated market_

Globally though? Are there companies that have saturated the entire planet.

Facebook use is BOOMING in the developing world. I've been moving around
Africa though 30 countries for 2.5 yeas now - it's rare to meet someone that
doesn't have Facebook and whatsapp.

~~~
AstralStorm
At a certain point, Facebook might face being either broken up or outright
nationalized in some places...

~~~
kazen44
the seperation of whatsapp and facebook has recently been up to debate. Mainly
for apperently breaching terms of the acquisition.

Whatsapp is so universal it should really be either a federated system or a
public utility.

~~~
bigbugbag
Whatsapp is not universal, privacy aware people are keeping themselves and
friends away from whatsapp.

That being said what you are saing is basically that whatsapp should be
something totally different, akin to riot.im

I do agree though that a global public service of E2E encrypted communication
should exist, but whatsapp is the last option I'd consider for such a service.

------
samfisher83
I think they are like a bank or big tobacco. Too big to fail. They have 2
billion users. Supposed someone came up with a new search engine better than
google. You can go switch to that and it wouldn't be too hard. For a new
social network you would need all you friends too switch too. How is grandma
going to share her grand kids pics.

~~~
vidarh
While that is to an extent a hindrance, it is also an opening.

Social groups in real life are relatively contained. Facebook just mushes it
all together. This is one of the few things Google+ got right, with asymmetric
relationships and ease of controlling who sees what.

While Google+ "failed", that's the attack angle I'd take if I wanted to go
after Facebook: Look for ways to let people better _limit_ sharing, to
encourage _deeper_ sharing. To truly get that right you need to also let
people manage separate identities.

Though really, I'd like to see more decentralised approaches to take over.

~~~
samfisher83
I think most people she want to share a pic and tag their friends. I don't
think people want something so complicated.

~~~
vidarh
It doesn't need to be that complicated. The Google+ model let you do what you
suggest, but also let you assign people to one or more circles, so that you
could share with specific subsets of your friends by picking a circle. E.g.
"family", "people it's ok to share pics from nights out partying with", "work
colleagues" etc., and you can assign people to more than one circle. It
provided a decent basis for enough containment, if it wasn't for their lack of
willingness to deal with pseudonyms and multiple identities.

As for "most people" wanting something simple: I'd argue that most people have
something _far more complex_ today: People sign up to multitudes of sites and
create different identities for e.g. dating, different forums, their regular
circle of friends. People often go to great lengths to separate them. People
even often have multiple accounts on the same sites.

Sites like Facebook stubbornly trying to get people to tie everything to a
single name that they're know to by everyone is fundamentally flawed for this
reason, and it will always present a barrier, and it's something that's
exploitable if someone comes up with the right model to start eating away at
them at the fringes.

------
flareback
I can't say that I really care. I don't have a facebook account. I'm sure if
they go away someone new will step up and start doing the exact same things.

------
ElijahLynn
When Facebook becomes the new Myspace, there will not be a new Facebook, it
will be something is user-centered, that cares about the user. It will likely
be de-centralized, but I haven't found something that has the low friction
onboarding that FB provides that accomplishes this yet.

The new solution won't require you to pick a server (e.g. Mastodon) and will
be straight forward to the user.

It will come.

------
ilovetux
I miss Myspace, it was way less creepy and IMHO led to much more meaningful
communication.

~~~
rwmj
Myspace was very poorly implemented. Slow, often even displaying errors on
some pages.

The social network I miss is Mixi, which was a sort of proto-Facebook around
in the early 2000s (in Japan and Japanese only). Mixi had some really
interesting features like being able to see who had browsed your account. (To
be fair Mixi still exists, but they kind of died when FB became popular, as
well as putting itself out of business with some onerous changes to their
terms of service and business practices.)

~~~
LinuxBender
Myspace wasn't even meant to be a social networking site when it started. When
I registered all the domains initially, there were hundreds of variants of
"myspace, mylinuxspace, mywindowsspace, mydesktopspace" and such. It was
supposed to be the box.com of the time. There was an app you installed and
created an "X:" drive.

They had a couple HP SureStore arrays.. I forgot how much storage exactly, but
they were about 19TB comprised of 9 and 18 GB drives in raid 50 or 51. There
was no de-duplication and basically it was the same few hundred megs of music,
animated gifs and porn over and over again.

They didn't make any money and sold everything to some news company. Even
then, it was quite a while before it started to take shape as a social
networking site.

------
parliament32
>What Happens When Facebook Goes the Way of Myspace?

The world will be a better place.

------
thewileyone
Life goes on. Stop using social media for a few days and you'll find that
you've lost nothing by avoiding it.

------
cityzen
Well, hopefully one difference will be that people remember Tom as your first
friend and Mark as the the lying asshole he is.

------
rchaud
Didn't Cambridge Analytica shut down and re-open the same day under a new
name?

A company that built its riches on the back of a spectacularly successful
surveillance apparatus isn't going to go away. Especially not now that its use
as a psyops tool (2016 US electon, Rohingya genocide) has been proven.

FB as a product may one day not exist, but its leaders will welcome the
absence of the press spotlight so they can start working with law enforcement,
military and other groups that will pay big for their knowledge.

Think Peter Thiel and Palantir.

------
dominotw
Facebook the website maybe... Facebook the company, NO. whatsapp, insta are
still killers.

------
RRRA
I can't wait...

------
Dowwie
The New York Times is not what it used to be, either

~~~
Theodores
I wish there was some truth to that.

They have always been the tool of those that rule this world, whether those
rulers be in Wall Street or the Pentagon. Their work cheerleading the world to
war is a constant. They side with the interests of capital rather than people.
Any aberrations to this, e.g. straying from one political party to another, is
still representing and furthering time-old vested interests. Online media has
yet to usurp the old timers of dead tree media.

