
Facebook’s war on free will - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks-war-on-free-will
======
athenot
> _The problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines, we are really
> outsourcing thinking to the organisations that run the machines._

This is the money quote of this article, and it's been on my mind quite a bit
as of late.

More than ever, we live in a world where there are many forces ready to take
full advantage of our laziness. It takes a bit of introspection to really
understand the tradeoffs that are appropriate. When it comes to Facebook, I'm
really getting the feeling that my friendships have been hacked (and tainted)
for someone else's profit. Fortunately, there is a way around: share important
stuff in person instead of on FB—heck, I'm finding myself using email more
these days—and keep Facebook usage for the few things it does well, like
planning get-togethers.

~~~
molteanu
This, from Dune:

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would
set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave
them."

~~~
Animats
With the bozos running things in Dune, it might have been better with machines
in charge.

~~~
leggomylibro
Maybe that's just what you get after generations of royal and wealthy-elite
inbreeding slowly but surely shrinks the available gene pool.

~~~
jerrycruncher
Which is exactly why Lynch was a brilliant choice to direct the first film
adaptation: owing to his own artistic idiosyncrasies, he was able to convey
how deeply strange such an inbred interstellar gentry might be, millennia into
the future.

------
zizek23
It's the Internet that enables communication. Families and friends would be
able to communicate once the Internet became possible whether Facebook exists
or not. People would be able to use and get value from the Internet whether
Google exists or not.

These companies add value but they are not the Internet. If they didn't exist
the Internet will continue being useful.

What they have been able to do is inject themselves into communication
pathways, provide a network effect in the case of facebook to leverage social
curiosity about others which in the larger scheme of things is not important,
and now sit on tons of data which has zero value to users and thus does not
enhance communication in any way, but helps advertisers.

~~~
ams6110
I'm not sure if you remember the internet before Google, but finding stuff was
significantly more difficult. Other search engines were either based off of
manually curated indexes or were simple keyword searches and you'd often need
to scroll pages of results to find a match that was actually relevant to what
you wanted.

People used to buy _printed books_ with lists of useful websites to help find
things.

So yes, the internet existed before Google and would exist without it, but
Google Search was a game-changer in making it useful to the average person.

~~~
ivm
A better search was inevitable. Google achieved it first and snowballed into a
monopoly. Same with Facebook – many social networks went extinct just because
it was spreading faster.

These companies appropriated the natural course of evolution of information
exchange between humans.

~~~
feelin_googley
"A better search was inevitable."

I see it this way too.

As usual, most of this confused brain dump by yet another technology-
challenged journalist could be reduced, per the "engineering mindset", to few
lines: Facebook is a website protected by a password. There is a backend
database. It contains photos, among other things. (Including personal data no
web user would have shared with some random website in the 1990's.)

How to explain a website's popularity? Not easily. Do not be fooled by ex post
facto "explanations" by those pontificating about already popular websites. If
we knew the reasons why _before the fact_ then we would not be having these
discussions about the perplexity of network effects.

Does every web user really want to visit the same website, all day, every day?
Do they set out to do that? ("Where do you want to go today?") If they do,
then why even have a "web" of _different_ sites? Why not stay on the same site
and just visit its many pages (e.g. "profiles")?

For example, as a technical matter, do _all web users need to log in to the
same college drop out 's website_ in order to share photos, or send messages
to each other? The engineering mindset says no. The engineering mindset says
there are many ways to accomplish this using a variety of methods. The most
popular method may not be the best method, from an engineering perspective.

According to the journalist the engineering mindset yearns for a mathematical
formula that proves why and how things _become_ popular (cf. became or stay
popular). But there is none.

The Google employee states that "web search" was cumbersome and slow back in
the early 1990's. True.

Today, thanks to _networking and hardware_ advances it is much faster.

But today's "search" is also manipulated to an extent not seen in the early
1990's. And increasingly, the web of "different" sites are (not obviously)
owned by the same company, perhaps the same one providing the "search". Users
are in some cases literally searching from among a selection of websites all
part of the same enity, though it does not appear to them that way.

Indeed, in some aspects we have come a long way from the web of the 1990's.

How to explain a website's _continued_ popularity? Manipulation of existing
users and acquiring all potential competition. The list of methods is too long
for an HN comment.

Needless to say, copying all the web's data and allowing access only by slow,
small scale querying (with each query being recorded and used for advertising
purposes) is not clearly an advance for users. It is just a tradeoff.

No technical barriers exist to opening up the web's data in bulk to every web
user, and that would certainly be an advance for users.

~~~
gaius
_Does every web user really want to visit the same website, all day, every
day?_

Actually in the 90's the theory was that people did want this, they were
called portals and various companies competed to build the ultimate portal
that would have your news and stock quotes and weather and whatever else all
on your browser's start page.

 _we have come a long way from the web of the 1990 's_

In some ways yes, but in others we've come full circle. Facebook is AOL.

------
ameister14
This was written so disrespectfully and dismissively of programmers, hackers
and engineers that I have a hard time reading it, despite my extreme distaste
for Facebook.

>In the labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the 60s
and 70s, they broke any rule that interfered with building the stuff of early
computing, such marvels as the first video games and word processors.

Also, Calling a 33 year old billionaire that has helmed the construction of
one of the largest companies the world has ever seen a (paraphrasing) 'good
boy that wanted to be a bit naughty' is just stupid. I understand why Foer did
it - he hates Silicon Valley for ruining his life at the helm of a magazine
formerly supported by more hands-off rich patrons. It makes his arguments
worse, though.

~~~
golemotron
Get used to it. The tech backlash is just beginning.

There are two forces. One is the series of gaffs by Google, FB, and Amazon and
the resultant public awareness of their power. The second is Trump's election.
When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning of
his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited. He sent the
signal that they were not part of the real economy.

Say what you want about Trump's morals or ineffectiveness, but things like
that send signals across a society whether we like it or not. "Greed is good"
came from Reagan's election in the 80s. Tech is losing its shine in our
culture.

~~~
mcintyre1994
> When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning
> of his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited.

Hmm? [https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-
te...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-tech-
leaders/)

"President-elect Donald Trump met with some of the most prominent executives
from the tech industry today at Trump Tower, with investor Peter Thiel and
Vice President-elect Mike Pence at his side. Trump opened the meeting with
CEOs from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others by thanking Thiel for
his support."

"Attendees included Eric Schmidt and Larry Page of Google, Tim Cook of Apple,
Satya Nadella and Brad Smith of Microsoft, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (who expressed
his excitement that Trump’s administration could be “the innovations
administration“), Safra Catz of Oracle, Chuck Robbins of Cisco and Sheryl
Sandberg of Facebook. Thiel’s business partner, Palantir CEO Alex Karp,
attended as well."

Seems like different sectors just had different meetings? Which meeting
specifically were you thinking of?

~~~
golemotron
This one. It was the first one as president.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-
white-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-white-house-
meeting-2017-1)

------
ikeyany
You could take a year-long class on the psychological influence (some call it
social engineering) of Facebook and you'd barely scratch the surface.

One example I find particularly interesting is how Facebook slowly expanded
what would trigger a notification, keeping people fixated on that red box like
rats to sugar water.

~~~
trendia
It had the opposite effect for me -- now that everything gives me a
notification, half the time I see the red dot on the corner I assune it's
something stupid.

~~~
danmaz74
It's the same for me, but I'm sure they have all the analytics they need to
know what increases engagement and what doesn't...

~~~
Bartweiss
I suspect it's a question of goals. Facebook talks a lot about increasing
usage _time_ and interaction count.

The changes drove me away, but I was a low-time, low-activity user to begin
with. Trading me for expanding the value of a 'whale' is probably a sensible
move for them.

------
dperfect
> By the time Zuckerberg began extolling the virtues of hacking, he had
> stripped the name of most of its original meaning and distilled it into a
> managerial philosophy that contains barely a hint of rebelliousness.
> Hackers, he told one interviewer, were “just this group of computer
> scientists who were trying to quickly prototype and see what was possible."

No, Zuckerberg did not somehow give the word "hacking" new meaning - those
meanings have been around for a long time.

> Facebook would never put it this way, but algorithms are meant to erode free
> will, to relieve humans of the burden of choosing, to nudge them in the
> right direction.

Again, no. The whole article is full of grandiose statements like this that
are either flat-out wrong or distorted to fit the author's narrative. Maybe if
"algorithms" were replaced with " _their_ algorithms", this argument (which
seems to be the thesis) would be slightly more credible. The problems
described in the article are _not_ products of algorithms or the "engineering
mindset". Those things are just manifestations of the real problem: Facebook's
current strategic mission.

I agree with a lot of what the article is saying, but unfortunately it comes
across as blaming the use of technology and engineering. Like civil laws,
those things can be helpful or detrimental to people (as most tools can), and
sometimes they have unintended consequences. Ultimately, the responsibility
still lies 100% with the organization creating those algorithms, not in the
use of algorithms _per se_.

~~~
jpetso
Question: If you take an organization with the goal to make money, and you
execute well on social media with the help of capable engineers, will the end
result have been drastically different than what Zuckerberg came up with?

If the aims and initial circumstances are similar, and the methods of
engineering people & data with code are known, and few errors are made to get
there, how much is really left to the individual as opposed to the system
itself?

Would there have been any way that Facebook did _not_ become its evil current
self, without accepting that it would eventually be replaced by an equivalent
organization that _did_ decide to "listen to the data" and let algorithms
decide what's most effective in getting us to be a potent tool for shareholder
enrichment?

It might have been Facebook's set of algorithms and engineering prowess that
got us to the point we're at now, but I wouldn't refute the statement that the
use of those methods would cause better long-term results in someone else's
hands.

------
Chardok
“In a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional
company,” Zuckerberg has said. “We have this large community of people, and
more than other technology companies we’re really setting policies.”

And _this_ is why I am arguing for a serious revamping of regulation on these
companies. As they collect more and more data, build shadow profiles of non-
users, conduct "experiments" on their users, attacking individualism and
rights to privacy, they are operating much more like a government than a
corporation. Combine this with the massive financial clout they have and we
are having our actual constitutional rights violated, while being told our
Bill of rights don't apply to them because they are a corporation, not the
government.

------
ScottBurson
_“The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers
and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty
quickly,” Zuckerberg has said. “Having two identities for yourself is an
example of a lack of integrity.”_

Mark Zuckerberg lecturing us about integrity is quite a hoot -- particularly
when his argument is completely self-serving. What's next, lessons in Gandhian
pacifism from Kim Jong-un? Anyway, he's flat wrong. Having multiple
identities, in the sense that we adapt our behavior and interests somewhat to
the people we're interacting with, is inevitable, and there's absolutely
nothing wrong with it. Integrity is something deeper.

------
root_axis
I wish people would stop contributing to the Facebook mythos that elevates a
social media platform into some kind of software based deity. It's just a
website, it's not a threat to "free will" any more than a cigarette or coke
addiction is a threat to "free will". People recite grand expositions
regarding how "I stopped using facebook and it changed my life forever! I've
never looked back!"... wonderful, but I want to suggest that it's just not
that big of a deal either way, it's a website where people post selfies,
memes, and uninformed political opinions, it really isn't that life-altering.
If you truly despise Facebook, stop feeding its delusions of grandeur.

~~~
bamboozled
It's not a website, it's a complex and sophisticated media and marketing
platform with many, many different features and all of that comes with a bunch
of pros and cons.

~~~
ryandrake
...that you can choose whether or not to use.

~~~
Chardok
Thats not entirely true. Facebook will build a profile on you through like
buttons and information shared from family/friends/acquaintances whether you
choose to or not.

~~~
tyfon
I can't wait for GDPR.

Then facebook/google/whatever can't process data from me without consent
(which they do not have without an account)..

"Under GDPR organizations in breach of GDPR can be fined up to 4% of annual
global turnover or €20 Million (whichever is greater). This is the maximum
fine that can be imposed for the most serious infringements e.g._not having
sufficient customer consent to process data_ or violating the core of Privacy
by Design concepts."

[http://www.eugdpr.org/the-regulation.html](http://www.eugdpr.org/the-
regulation.html)

~~~
majewsky
> can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover

I'm not overly familar with the English terms for all these economic stats,
but I think "turnover" is "revenue", and that's $27.638E9 [1] according to
Wikipedia. So the fine would be about $1.1E9. On the same Wikipedia page, I
see that their net income is some $10.217E9. Is "net income" the same as
"profit"? If so, does that mean that even this massive fine would only be 10%
of their profit?

If so, I can easily see "annual GDPR fine" becoming a standard bulletpoint in
their earnings report, as long as Facebook thinks that the data collected is
worth more than the fine.

[1] 1E9 = 1 billion

~~~
tyfon
The fine is "pr incident" afaik.

Not once a year

------
bogomipz
Slight tangent - since the image of the 1 Hacker Way FB sign is invariably
used in FB pieces, its amusing to note that the back of this sign still shows
the Sun Microsystems logo that they cheaply painted over when they took the
space over:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ce5VS24UAAAxxLF.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ce5VS24UAAAxxLF.jpg)

~~~
hzay
Actually they keep this to remind themselves every day that one day they could
be dust too. There are also a few other relics from the Sun era deliberately
left over in the campus for the same reason.

Source: worked there

~~~
bogomipz
>"Actually they keep this to remind themselves every day that one day they
could be dust too."

How is it a reminder if it isn't at all visible to anyone there? The back of
the sign is obscured by woods. The only way to see it is to walk around to the
back of it. I'm not surprised that company propaganda would spin this into
some nonsense about 'this is a reminder ..." though.

------
moretai
Just get off facebook.

~~~
blfr
Yes. I'm getting tired of these articles complaining about Facebook when you
can stop using it literally any minute.

Also, Grauniad is a terrible source of tech news:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14179497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14179497)

~~~
zebrafish
The point is not about "you" the HN reader, or you the poster, or me. The
point is about all of the millions of users who are unaware, haven't read this
article, are tech-illiterate, don't understand the psychology, etc.

You and I are completely insignificant in the face of this horde of people who
are becoming increasingly vulnerable to subtle manipulation. That's the point
of this article. A rising tide lifts all boats.

We're past the point where telling people to stop using the services would
have any measurable effect.

~~~
ryandrake
That's actually a pretty dismissive comment. It may not have been your
intention, but it reads like: "Oh, those poor commoners, who aren't as
intelligent as us and can't see the truth that we can see! Why, they're using
this terrible thing and they don't even know any better! The masses must be
saved from themselves."

~~~
zebrafish
No, you're pretty close. I will nitpick that awareness has nothing to do with
intelligence and I mentioned nothing about anyone's intelligence level.
However, awareness doesn't guarantee compliance.

People were made aware that smoking causes cancer, vaccines do not cause
autism, and that man-made production of CO2 was causing accelerated climate
change. In each of those cases, there are experts in the field warning common
people of the danger. In each of those cases, the experts observed that people
didn't know about the dangers beforehand. In each of those cases, there are
people who refute the claims of the experts or flat out do not care (I should
note that plenty of intelligent people fall into this last category).

I expect this scenario will be no different.

------
jknz
Getting off facebook will not suit everyone, mostly because a lot of users
will use messenger or need facebook to beventa in the loop of some social
events.

There is way to empty one's Facebook feed and remove all notifications that
are not related to messenger. The solution is to unfollow everyone, until the
facebook feed displays "no more posts to show". One can then enjoy the
messaging features of facebook without the bad. One can also view some
profiles or groups occasionally but this prevents the passive consumption of
feeds.

~~~
emilburzo
Or just install 'Kill news feed' ->
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-
feed/hjo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-
feed/hjobfcedfgohjkaieocljfcppjbkglfd?hl=en)

(no affiliation)

~~~
gaius
Replacing Facebook with a Google product isn't the bargain you think it is.

~~~
emilburzo
What do you mean?

It's a chrome extension that hides the news feed part of facebook, leaving the
chat/group/event stuff without the endless scrolling.

------
lvoudour
> Data, like victims of torture, tells its interrogator what it wants to hear

That is a great analogy and something that bit more than a few scientists and
engineers over the years

------
TwoNineA
This implies that there is such a thing as 'free will'.

~~~
raverbashing
So, you making this comment has been inevitable?

~~~
firmgently
Modern mainstream science does not allow for the existence of free will.
Materialism (everything is physical) and Determinism (everything that ever
happens is an inevitable and ultimately predictable consequence of The Big
Bang) reign in contemporary thought. Free will is largely considered to be an
illusion or psychological trick (see eg. Daniel C. Dennett 'Freedom Evolves')
and several studies have shown that decisions happen before we become aware of
them and believe ourselves to have consciously decided (see Benjamin Libet's
experiments amongst many others).

For free will to exist the question of what is doing the willing has to be
answered. The classic (René Descartes) explanation was that of the Cartesian
Theatre, the idea that somewhere inside our heads there is some kind of entity
that is separate from the physical substance that makes up our bodies. As far
as I can see modern science's answer to that is 'nah - neurons' (I'm
oversimplifying, people go into lots of detail about electrochemical processes
which happen in the brain).

I'm not necessarily saying I agree with/believe all of this (although
Dennett's books are quite persuasive) but I'm not aware of any 'respectable'
current theories that allow for any kind of 'ghost in the machine' \- and
without that, there's nowhere for free will to come from (and _with that_ all
that happens is you then need to answer what is driving the free will of the
ghost/spirit/agent and where it comes from - which is similar to how The Big
Bang doesn't explain why something could spontaneously appear out of nothing,
only that it did and what happened next. Soap Bubble Universes, Multiverses
etc just push the question one step further away... one turtle further down
the stack).

The world has a serious problem to resolve here because if there truly is no
free will then there is no justification for punishing people for their
actions - they had no choice in the matter... in which case the criminal
justice system is barbaric and unfounded.

I realise a lot of people here will already know this stuff but it plays on my
mind quite a lot so please excuse the essay :)

~~~
nql
The non-existence of free will has no direct policy implication. Since people
are deterministic, the knowledge of punishments would create different
behaviors.

~~~
funkymike
The non-existence of free has huge policy implications. There are many
discussions of this. For example the top result on Google for me looking for
"free will justice punishment" was this:

[https://www.orlandocriminaldefenseattorneyblog.com/2016/01/f...](https://www.orlandocriminaldefenseattorneyblog.com/2016/01/free-
will-determinism-criminal-justice-system.html)

If a criminal has no free will, then they are not responsible for their
actions since responsibility is dependent on moral agency. I disagree with
that author's conclusion though, that you have to let every criminal go. I
think that when someone is apprehended and determined to have committed the
crime the decision to be made now comes from a different perspective. What
treatment of this person will produce the best (or least bad) outcome for
society on the whole? In one case that could mean letting the person go if
every indication is that they will not commit another crime regardless of any
punishment. In another case it could be locking them up and never letting them
out, even on a first offence, if it is very likely that they will commit
serious crimes if freed.

Of course there are still discussions to be had weighing the impact of the
sentencing decision on the victim, the perpetrator, and the rest of society.
There's also how much trust to place in the scientific models of likelihood
for recidivism. But accepting that people have no moral agency undercuts the
most basic premise of laws and the justice system.

~~~
nql
The direct participants in the justice system are not the whole picture.
Society is not just affected by the judgement against the defendant, but by
the logical precedent of the judgement. Making fair and consistent rules has
widespread impact, allowing other people to understand the consequences of
their actions and respond accordingly.

A deterministic universe does not mean people do not have moral agency. It
just means some people are predetermined to behave immorally. That does not
mean we should not do what we can to prevent that behavior.

------
Hyperbolic
Despite how much I dislike Facebook, this article started off decent, but took
a strange (and disrepectful) turn into hacker culture and algorithms that was
completely unfounded. Facebook addiction and the centralization of the
Internet has literally nothing to do with the concept of algorithms. Sure,
machine learning ventures at Facebook contribute to the need to track users
and invade privacy, but that's not the fault of computer scientists working on
these algorithms. That's the fault of Facebook's business model.

~~~
gggdvnkhmbgjvbn
Its because its an excerpt from a book, I think. I totally agree, I'm on board
with the point of the article but its written like an amateur Adam Curtis.

------
bogomipz
>"At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg had even asked the Chinese
president, Xi Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his soon-
to-be-born first child — usually a privilege reserved for older relatives, or
sometimes a fortune teller. Mr. Xi declined, according to a person briefed on
the matter."

Does getting FB into China mean so much to this person that he's willing to
consider a name suggested by a complete stranger for his own child?

The picture of Mark Zuckerberg running though Tiananmen Square is also quite
telling. It's completely stage-managed so that it's taken while Mark is
smiling and Chairman Mao's picture is clearly in the frame behind him. I
wonder how many attempts this "spontaneous" picture required.

I happened to be in Beijing that same weekend as this photo op. The local
reaction to that picture wasn't one of celebrity adulation because people
recognized Mark Zuckerberg founder of FB as he's not a household name there.
The reaction was one of complete consternation that someone would be out
jogging in such hazardous air quality. That's not an early morning fog in the
background it's air pollution. It seemed like most people were donning air
pollution masks that weekend because the particulate in the was so heavy.

I mention this only because it seems to the same awkward and obsequious
behavior as asking the President of China to offer a name for your unborn
child.

------
Animats
The real problem with Facebook is "sharing". I want to see what my friends are
_doing_ , and have zero interest in their "sharing". Sharing is spamming.

------
hughw
The author mischaracterizes algorithms and ridiculously attributes their
importance in computer science to a desire by programmers to polish their own
images. He reveals ignorance of one of the biggest motivations for the
earliest computers, which was to solve differential equations in several
domains. Eigenvalue estimation algorithms existed long before Page Rank.

~~~
deathgrindfreak
Exactly. To me he mistakes concepts like page ranking (which I think are much
more akin to heuristics) with the purely mathematical concept of computation.

~~~
hughw
Probably there are a lot of heuristics in page ranking now, but it began life
as an eigenvalue problem [1].

[1][http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf](http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf)

------
zackmorris
Has anyone come up with a way of tracking what gets shared where? Perhaps with
a hidden pixel or some other mechanism to track requests? Or is that
impossible because Facebook is a walled garden?

I'm thinking that since there is no check against Facebook's sharing algorithm
going haywire (in effect censoring certain things for monetary gain) that that
creates an incentive to not be fair. The public nature of the internet used to
be our proof of fairness, for example with Twitter or YouTube.

It occurred to me that the same 3 people that like my posts are probably the
only ones seeing them, since I'm one of the only ones who likes theirs back.
We're collectively hellbanned, and I can't think of a stronger incentive to
quit using Facebook.

~~~
gmueckl
The last monitoring attempt that I heard of used a browser plugin to scrape
the user's posts. The point was to monitor political parties and their ad
targeting before the upcoming elections in Germany.

Generally, Facebook needs to view contents of posts that is able to access
third party websites a severe bug. It is an unwelcome data leak at least and a
true attack vector at worst. So, tracking by linking to a third party tracking
pixel should be impossible.

------
DarkIye
This article started off well but began to lose me around the time he said:

"Computer scientists have an aphorism that describes how algorithms
relentlessly hunt for patterns: they talk about torturing the data until it
confesses."

This is the first time I have seen this formulation of the nature of data.
Data is almost always regarded as an input, or a resource, or a substrate, not
a being of any kind.

The article generally seems to be less about its title and more about
Facebook's business on the whole, and it's an interesting read.

------
bogomipz
I feel like both the velocity of these articles about "The Facebook
corporation" and people's awareness of their shady practices are increasing
overall.

I guess I wonder will it manage to effect any change in people's online
behavior and wholesale submission to this corporation's whims and agenda? I
would like to believe yes but my anecdotal observations of people and their
smart phones suggests to me there's no basis for believing that.

------
tadufre
These phone companies are terrible. All they want to do is make money off of
their customers. I stopped using phones to communicate a couple of months ago.
My real friends still send me telegrams.

These telegraph companies are terrible. All they want to do is make money ...

------
sparkzilla
>His company was, as we all know, a dorm-room lark, a thing he ginned up in a
Red Bull–induced fit of sleeplessness.

False. He stole the business from the Winklevoss twins.

------
ComodoHacker
Very good read. Too bad, when the author talks about power of algorithms, he
doesn't mention Bitcoin and Ethereum.

------
fredastaire
7 words about Facebook: No way to put pages into categories

(so much about free will / organzing)

------
tastythrowaway
at what point do we stop blaming facebook and start blaming ourselves?

~~~
bgun
This is a trope and not useful for solving problems of culture, psychology, or
addiction. It is the same as saying "when you ban guns, only criminals will
have guns" or "everyone has a choice, so choose not to do drugs". These are
vapid recitations and cannot address complex issues.

~~~
tastythrowaway
This is absolutely not the same as your gun ban argument. It is also not the
same as your "choose not to use" argument. How do people think they can give
away all of their information, to someone who trades in information, and
somehow act surprised when that entity leverages this information?

------
DanCarvajal
> Mark Zuckerberg is a good boy, but he wanted to be bad, or maybe just a
> little bit naughty.

K thanks Guardian

------
megamindbrian
I'm unable to believe that anyone running a product with over a billion active
users has anything less than altruistic intentions. Who is to say any of us
have free will? Who is to say any of us deserve free will after all the wars
we've caused and damage to the environment? If your going to get theological
don't bother, you are out of date.

------
disease
I feel like once someone figures out what the next big thing in social media
is, facebook will go the way of myspace.

Here's the next big thing: a federated, open source network that allows users
to sell their own data.

~~~
divanvisagie
Those sorts of things only appeal to people who know what they mean, which is
a ver very small part of facebook. Does my mother or grandmother care about a
social network being federated or open source? No , not even close. Only
technical people care about this stuff and it adds no value for the average
user.

~~~
gmueckl
Also, in my experience, no distributed competition for any service X lived up
to a centralized, commercially run X in the past. Decentralization has in the
past always added a layer of complexity that makes things appear slow, breaks
things randomly and generally ends up in the user's way in one way or another.

