
Dear Mark Zuckerberg (2012) - martinesko36
http://daltoncaldwell.com/dear-mark-zuckerberg
======
mattsfrey
The proliferation of these so called "prophetic" articles coming out now
amuses me greatly. Am I really alone in thinking FB was cancer from the get
go?. Was Snowden and PRISM not enough? Why is this new CA crap even news? I
feel like the signs and warnings have been there the entire time, finally
mainstream outlets take it seriously and make an issue of it all, and
therefore now it's a big deal. SMH

~~~
bradleyayers
Perhaps people have been looking for something to blame since Trump was
elected, and have a different lens on this issue now.

~~~
mattsfrey
I think that's a really good point actually, thanks for mentioning. I think
people shrugged off the overarching privacy and surveillance issues of PRISM
et al, even as egregious as it was, but once it comes out that FBs data
shenanigans were being used to aid the most hated political figure in recent
history, THEN it's a big deal. Thats kind of my point really. TBH though I'm
just glad that people are catching up now and its reaching the masses. I
thought the whole Snowden thing with PRISM etc was going to be a game changer,
just this unbelievable revelation that confirmed the worst fears of the big
data adtech industry and its potential for abuse, but had to sit in stunned
silence as it was brushed off entirely without incident.

------
JumpCrisscross
Two months later, Caldwell launched App.net [1], a subscription-based ersatz
Twitter.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net)

~~~
Raed667
I think that the idea is nobel but it misses a core concept of how users
interact with their platforms, they don't want to pay money.

Sometimes I see comments on HN about how that person would gladly pay for an
ad free version of the service but experiences have shown over and over that
it just doesn't work.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _users...don 't want to pay money_

I don't think this was as obvious in 2012.

~~~
mehrdada
It was just as obvious in 2012, if not more. It's just that they worked hard
on pulling off a small but surprising crowdfunding/preorder-like campaign
among a specific group right after they were pissed at Twitter for restricting
client apps (betrayal) and basically pulling the plug on the protocol idea in
favor of an ad business.

Their approach, however, by building a paid Twitter clone as the "killer app"
of their platform, which isn't a very useful use case when you have free
Twitter, awfully reminds me of what Dennis Ritchie wrote in Anti-Foreword of
Unix Haters Handbook[1]:

"Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want the same
thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves; other times you want
something different, but can't seem to get people to use it"

They really wished they owned Twitter, and they did it their way, although if
they really were Twitter owners, they too would have likely opted for the
proven, lucrative, and more straightforward ad business over the protocol
business at that point.

Criticism aside, it was probably worth trying anyway, and the fact that they
raised funds in their initial campaign ($5/user if I remember correctly) was
not easy to pull off and surprising.

[1]: [https://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf](https://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf)

------
elgenie
$FB closed at $21.50 on the day this article was posted and at $153.03
yesterday. The stock price at the time was being beaten down by concerns over
whether the company would be able to adapt to a shift to mobile, and not any
issues with how tactfully (or not) acquihire offers were being made.

------
jacquesm
Here is the thread on HN when the article originally appeared:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325231)

------
mzuvella
Facebook stock price quadrupled by the end of 2013.

------
jondubois
> The executive apologized and said he would take my feedback under
> consideration.

Wow software 'entrepreneurs' are really pathetic sometimes. This is not the
normal cutthroat business that normally happens in the real world... So the
Facebook executive apologised for giving OP a generous offer to buy their
startup which Facebook doesn't even need anymore? Sounds like charity to me.
OP is a spoiled brat in my opinion. Based on my experience, what should have
happened is the executive should have laughed at him all the way to the door
for being so foolish/arrogant.

Now you understand why Facebook is full of entitled jerks... They acquihired
them.

~~~
jondubois
I didn't realise that OP works for YC now. This explains why Facebook execs
treated him so nicely. It just shows the double standards people have in the
industry when dealing with financially well connected people vs regular
people.

------
drewblaisdell
Unrelated to the article content, but what ever happened to Dalton Caldwell? I
was very into the Dustin Curtis/svbtle hype in 2009-2013, and remember reading
Dalton's articles from way back when. Is he blogging elsewhere now or has he
dropped off?

~~~
jimbru
Dalton is currently a Y Combinator Partner
([http://www.ycombinator.com/people/](http://www.ycombinator.com/people/)).

