

 What Happened to the Facebook Killer? It's Complicated - 001sky
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/10/2/what-happened-to-the-facebook-killer-it-s-complicated

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donebizkit
Why do we overcomplicate our analysis of social media and web 2.0? We all got
on Facebook because it was new, it was fun, we shared pictures, we poked each
other, we implicitly pried on our friends. Some of us got on Google+ because
we were intrigued by what new it can bring to the table. The answer was none.
Some of us stuck with Facebook because we're too lazy to manage two networks.
Some of us continued on Google+ just to brag about having a Google+ account.
Most of us didn't care about privacy, freedom, human rights or whatever mambo
jumbo the media pundits were talking about, and who the hell cares who owns
the data. it's just pictures and stupid text. we're just having fun at the end
of the day. No need for philosophical analyses. It's just a game and once we
get bored we'll move on.

~~~
nsmartt
It's a lot more than pictures and text.

Jane goes to a party but doesn't want anyone who wasn't there to know. Jane's
friends post pictures of her at said party. Now everyone who checks Facebook
before Jane sees that she's been tagged in these pictures. Until now, Jane's
never really considered that she should screen tags for approval first.

Jane has her profile available to anyone who is a friend of a friend. Jane's
never considered that people who might have an interest in her may add any of
her loose acquaintances or work friends. Any undesirable who happens to add
one of her 'friends' now has access to her political beliefs, check-ins,
address, cell phone number, favorite books, movies, music.

The problem is that the average person doesn't consider the implications of
over-sharing or of Facebook's oversights in terms of privacy. Jane doesn't
consider a _timeline of every major event in her life_ to be a problem because
only 'friends of friends' can see it anyway.

It's foolish of you to believe this is just a game and that boredom is all it
will take to pass. People put their lives on social media without a second
thought.

~~~
misiti3780
if you put your life on social media without understanding the consequences,
that is your own fault. i agree the average person doesnt understand the
implications, but it is out of laziness that they do not (it's really not that
complicated).

(if facebook changes their settings, that is one, thing, but if you are too
lazy to look at what settings exist, that is not facebook's problem)

i totally agree that social media and facebook has become much more than
pictures and text - it has a created a generation of people who want to take a
picture every 5 minutes no matter how insignificant the event and upload them
to "look cool". it has also created a generation of people that pour their
heart and emotions out onto facebook to try to gain attention, likes, etc.

if that type of behavior comes back to bite them in the ass, im not sure it is
possible to feel sorry for them though....

~~~
geofft
Jane didn't put her life on social media; her friends did.

The problem with Facebook is not what it enables or what settings it has --
it's the cultural shift, engineered by a single company, that it's socially
acceptable to take pictures of your friends, post them publicly, identify them
by name in a worldwide, searchable database, and preserve those pictures for
eternity, all without Jane's consent.

That would have been an unthinkable invasion of privacy not twenty years ago,
against an individual, and now we do that to everyone in society.

If people want to preserve their own actions, that's one thing, and it's fine
not to feel sorry for them. If they want to preserve other people's actions
without their consent, that's another thing entirely.

~~~
taligent
>take pictures of your friends, post them publicly, identify them by name in a
worldwide, searchable database

Facebook's data is only public if you want it to be.

~~~
geofft
No. It's also public if anyone you interact with wants it to be. I have no way
to prevent someone else from taking a picture of me and uploading it to
Facebook with my name attached.

This is the sort of behavior that used to be the realm of tabloid journalists
and paparazzi and viewed as ethically uncool; now it's expected of everyone.

------
grey-area
Facebook won't be killed by another product, but by the growing data-mining
and exploitation of its data (probably not even by Facebook itself). If you
post often enough, Facebook (and/or twitter and g+) provides a map of all your
activities, affiliations and even aspirations in great detail (often with
geolocated photos, and cross-linked posts by people you have confirmed as
friends), which is a treasure trove of information for companies which want to
find out more about you.

Facebook has privacy controls to pretend that they're hiding your data, but in
the words of its founder, those who trust in them are 'dumb f __ks' - they are
there to encourage more sharing, not less, and are constantly undermined by
the company itself.

That data has not been exploited properly at all yet, but when the great data-
mining scandal of 2021 hits, and people are regularly being denied services
(insurance,travel,benefits,jobs) because of risky activities in their youth,
or confronted with just how much _anyone_ can find out about the last 30 years
of their life with a trivial search, there will probably be a swing back to
much tighter personal control of information, treatment of all data posted to
any service as already in the public record, and a general acceptance that
maybe we shared too much. Perhaps our concept of privacy will shift, but I
doubt it will extend to letting corporations and governments mine the
highlights and interstices of our life for every salient fact, which is where
we are headed if people continue to use Facebook or similar services their
entire life.

One thing I do think might change gradually is that we'll stop believing that
pseudonyms on a forum or privacy controls on a sharing website can protect
your identity in any meaningful way, and start accepting that anything posted
anywhere can and will be traced back to us.

~~~
taligent
And how is this ANY different from Google which knows far more about you then
Facebook ?

Oh that's right. It isn't. Which makes this idea that Facebook is going to die
as realistic as Google is going to die.

~~~
pessimizer
Google knows an awful lot more about my interests, but a hell of a lot less
about my associations, or things that I have actually done, than facebook.

~~~
tedunangst
Between gmail and google voice, they know quite a bit about a lot of people's
associations.

~~~
pessimizer
True, but most facebook friends rarely, if ever, merit an actual email. And
when they do, unless they are also in gmail, it won't trigger as large a
cascade of edges gaining weight in a massive social graph.

------
dickbasedregex
Is it complicated? Diaspora was a nice idea but if I recall correctly it was a
group of kids with no experience or evidence of being able to execute who
happen to catch a great marketing wind.

~~~
troymc
"A group of kids with no experience or evidence of being able to execute who
happen to catch a great marketing wind" describes many organizations that
_did_ become successful (including Facebook).

~~~
nostrademons
Facebook was Mark Zuckerburg's 3rd company. His second, Synapse Media Player,
was a machine-learning-based music player that got 7-figure buyout offers from
Microsoft and AOL when Zuckerburg was 17.

------
nc17
It's not that complicated, especially if you have been following Diaspora
here. Too much spotlight, not enough traction, a suicide, no more money.

------
olalonde
Maybe not the most constructive comment but what the hell is that picture?
They are (were) a startup, not a boy band... Is this a new trend I was not
aware of?

~~~
brazzy
Let me introduce you to a concept called "hype"...

------
troymc
Maybe there won't be one big Facebook killer, but a thousand "niche" social
networks, each with an average of a million active users, each hyper-serving
its community. Hacker News, Second Life, Metafilter, deviantART, Ravelry (for
knitters), and on and on...

~~~
mseebach
But those (or similar) communities existed long before Facebook did - they
serve a vertical of common interests, rather than a horizontal of people you
know. Some of them might be replaced by Facebook groups, but plenty of them
will and can continue to exist outside of Facebook.

For any kind of specialized discussion on computer stuff and startups, I'll
take a bunch of perfect strangers on HN over friends on Facebook any day. On
the other hand, posting pics of my new apartment or from my holiday would be
(let's say) underappreciated here. On the other hand, people I share
friendship or family ties with cares about this stuff, even if we have no
interests relevant to the matter in common.

------
oelmekki
There is a very good reason peer to peer social networks can't work nowadays
(not even considering diaspora quality).

It's not about internet overlords. It's not about ad industry pressure. It's
not about governments pressure.

It's about internet access providers. Most of them provide unbalanced
bandwidth : you have high speed download and low speed upload.

Which user would want his peers to watch a video streaming at a few hundreds
kb/sec ? P2P social networks can only fail until we have decent upload
bandwith.

Granted, if it's really P2P, people you authorize seeing it can then
participate in its sharing, but it still is not acceptable on very first
minutes after posting : you may have something like 10 people trying to
download your content from your ridiculous upload speed, which, btw, can
greatly affect your browsing experience meanwhile.

~~~
andreasvc
The US may be an exception but here in Europe I think most people have 1 mbit
upload; that seems plenty to me. Video might be tricky, but typically you use
YouTube for that anyway. FB isn't in the business of hosting videos so why
should a p2p social network be?

~~~
oelmekki
> FB isn't in the business of hosting videos so why should a p2p social
> network be?

Remember that the whole point of using P2P social network was to avoid
centralized service and keep control of one data.

------
seunghomattyang
How often does "something" killer actually kill its target?

~~~
jamesbritt
"Mosiac killer" comes to mind.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Zodiac killer

~~~
tedunangst
was the zodiac, didn't kill the zodiac

------
pdx
josephcooney hellbanned 4 days ago.

~~~
OJ
This seems like a rather unjustified and wanton punishment to me. I can't see
anything in his history that is worthy of such treatment. I scan around other
areas of HN and see people who are blatant trolls appearing everywhere and
they aren't hallbanned. Yet someone, like josephcooney, who appears to have a
brain and attempts to be actively involved in moderate and reasonable
discussion is axed?

Just goes to show that HN is becoming a ghetto, that's if it isn't already
one.

Poor form if you ask me.

~~~
shawabawa3
My first account was hellbanned after my first comment (I was stupid enough to
make a joke). I had no idea for weeks, and hellbanning also makes the site
incredibly slow.

I only realised after I logged out and the site was fast. It's absolutely
absurd to hellban someone after 1 comment (and it wasn't racist, aggressive,
etc). What's wrong with warnings, or at least telling me I was banned?

------
krichman
It's not complicated. It's that there is no other option that gives more
benefit (to the average user) than having all your contacts in one system.
It's not going down until the privacy issue becomes enough to make average
users quit, something with greater benefit appears, or something gets users to
switch services en masse overnight.

------
rat87
dexter killed him? maybe? I haven't seen the recent seasons.

