
Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet - jakub_g
http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet/
======
arihant
While we can jump to being disgusted with Facebook, looking at the countries
they surveyed it is more likely that they did not communicate their questions
the right way. This could either happen due to language barrier, or due to
lack of understanding of the users.

What I think is this - when they said "Internet", 3-4% users understood that
to be open Web, with browser, a .com and the whole package. They responded
correctly that they don't use it. But correctly identified that they spend
time on Facebook. So in users' mind, they correctly distinguished open Web
from the apps. However, they conflated the term internet with the web.

And a lot of people will make such distinction. If you don't do any Web
browsing but remained in contact with your family over Whatsapp, you will term
it as, "I was off the Web to save time, but I did use Whatsapp." That does not
mean what this article concludes, that you don't think that Whatsapp uses
Internet.

~~~
dublinben
Those 3-4% of respondents are still mistaken. It is a common misconception
that the Internet is the same thing as the Web. You can use Facebook and not
the Web, but you can't use Facebook and not the Internet. This research is
trying to figure out how many people hold that exact mistaken belief.

~~~
arihant
But that's not what their conclusion is. Their conclusion is that people think
that they aren't using Internet when they're using Facebook. This makes it
sound like these users don't _get the concept of Internet._ While I think they
do get the concept but messed up on terminology.

This article makes it sound like these users think Facebook works with some
kind of magic dust. That's not it. They do get the concept, I think.

If the surveyor cannot themselves distinguish between _knowledge of
terminology_ and _understanding of concept,_ I can only conclude that their
communication with the people surveyed was equally malformed.

~~~
dhimes
I agree that they don't get the concept of the Internet, my reading of
dublinben's comment is that the issue is deeper: even the article confuses the
Internet (the wiring, routers, etc.) with the web (the pages and
software/servers). The sarcastic word 'Interwebs' came about to poke fun at
those who didn't understand that difference.

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ap22213
A while back, a highly-educated friend and I were driving through an area that
had a lot of data centers. She asked me what all of those gigantic blocks of
buildings contained. I told her that they were mostly filled with many servers
that were used to host all sorts of internet services.

It completely blew her mind. She had no idea that the services that she and
billions of others used on their phones actually required millions and
millions of computers to transmit and process the data. I'm not sure how she
thought it worked, but even after I explained it to her, she couldn't
comprehend that there were servers on the other end of her phone.

Magic.

------
stuaxo
When I was in Thailand the other month and had a phone, I could access
facebook when I had no credit, but no other internet site - so this does make
a kind of sense.

~~~
anc84
And it's incredibly weird considering Facebook's questionable
[https://www.internet.org/](https://www.internet.org/) campaign.

------
flippinburgers
They simply want to become the storefront for the world. We all know that for
most average people scratching the surface is all it takes to satiate them so
they will never go beyond facebook. They will do all of their communicating
and purchasing of goods through facebook. It is understandable but completely
disgusts me.

~~~
wahsd
I blame developers. There is an unrealized problem in the development
community that assumes that everyone wants every bell and whistle and feature
possible at all times. Guess what though, people, most people are not
engineers, tinkerers, hackers, or even simply inquisitive. Many, if not most
people, simply want to get basic shit done and as simply as possible.

------
amelius
I think the converse also holds:

Millions of internet users have no idea they’re using Facebook

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CydeWeys
You'd get even more disparate results if you polled people on who used (a)
Facebook and (b) the photoelectric effect, despite every computing device with
a display that renders Facebook being driven by the photoelectric effect.

"The Internet" is taken for granted and is so down in the weeds for most
people that they don't realize they're using it. Similarly, every time that I
glance at my watch to check the time, I'm not thinking about how it's using
general relativity to calculate the time from its GPS sources, but it is.

~~~
xrange
Maybe you mean something other than the photoelectric effect? None of light-
emitting-diodes, liquid-crystal-displays, or cathode-ray-tubes rely on the
photoelectric effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect)

------
jusben1369
This is all very AOL 1990's sounding. The failure in the logic is that FB is
the gateway drug. As people clicks links in FB and discover other resources
that are valuable they become users of those services and spread beyond FB
only usage.

~~~
onion2k
Except in the case of Facebook, they don't go further afield. People stay
within Facebook's walled garden, posting updates in Facebook, liking brands in
Facebook, talking to their friends in Facebook, playing games in Facebook ...
they don't leave.

To me this raises an interesting philosophical question - is Facebook actually
separate to the internet? It uses the underlying transport mechanisms of the
net, sure, but that's not really what we mean when we say the internet. When
my mother says she's using the internet she doesn't mean she's generating HTTP
GET requests to query servers and render the resulting HTML. She means she's
using a browser to read a page and then clicking on a link to get another
page. Facebook certainly isn't the world wide web or email, which is what most
people mean when they say "internet". If what you're doing is in an largely
separate, walled-off area, that you mostly access with an app rather than a
browser, is that really what we mean when we say the internet?

I'd need to think about it more, but I imagine there's quite a compelling
argument that using Facebook is _not_ using the internet for any non-technical
definition of 'the internet'.

~~~
mikegioia
I don't think Facebook is separate from the Internet. I think people's purview
changes and is different from one another.

For some people, "the Internet" is Facebook and maybe Netflix. That's it. They
may not even understand that there's more out there, or what a web page even
is. Facebook and Netflix are certainly closer to applications than they are
websites. I imagine the Internet to them is an extension of the apps they use
on their phone.

I would even go so far as to say for some people, Google is the only way they
know of to find things. Which to me is more scary, since Google in a sense can
control what X% of the population sees as the users aren't even aware of
another means of accessing blocked content.

~~~
dhimes
_I would even go so far as to say for some people, Google is the only way they
know of to find things_

Totally agree. I watched a family member Google "budget rental cars" to get to
budget.com. Seriously. She wasn't searching, she needed customer service in
order to keep a car a few extra days.

To her, Google _is_ the "internet" (web, actually, but you know what I mean in
this context).

------
ohitsdom
Scary, especially with the launch of Instant Articles (news content hosted by
Facebook, further raising the walls of their garden).

Reminds me of when an article on the Facebook login system ranked highly with
Google and people were confused on how to login:
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/faceb...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/facebook-
readwriteweb)

------
eliben
This is sickening - no other word to describe it.

------
gambiting
To be fair, where I'm from(Poland) some operators sell "Facebook only" plans
which allow for unlimited access to Facebook,but they come with no data
allowance for anything else. So maybe some of people on those plans really
think that they are using facebook and not the internet(since they are not
paying for it?).

------
onewaystreet
For many people "the internet" is whatever apps/websites they use the most.
Facebook's just the most popular.

------
h43k3r
Facebook should also invest something in teaching these people "What is
Internet?" and shouldn't limit the people to Facebook when they talk about
Internet.org

Just investing in Internet.org with FB ads in mind is not at all good for the
community. We go to internet for utilities not for seeing ads.

~~~
Sideloader
Facebook isn't a benevolent society dedicated to introducing people to the
greater Internet, it's a publicly traded company interested in maximizing
returns for its shareholders. Unsurprisingly, keeping users within the FB
ecosystem is the company's main goal, hence the internet.org expansion. This
is a worrying development given how many people around the world use FB
regularly but the company is not going to promote something that doesn't
increase its bottom line.

Mark Zuckerberg gives lip service to the idea of net neutrality and says he
supports unrestricted access to the free and open Internet, then turns around
and does the opposite. The EFF and other organizations have taken the company
to task for this devious bait and switch move. I have no idea whether this has
had any effect but given FB's track record I suspect not.

The best thing you can do is ditch Facebook and explain to others why they
might want to consider doing the same. Personally, I get very little value out
of the platform and although I do have a FB account I login only three or four
times a year.

------
wahsd
To be fair, they really aren't using the internet when milling around inside
of Facebook's network. The internet is about connecting autonomous computers,
server, networks, and systems together ... precisely not simply circle jerking
in Facebook land.

------
pizu
Perhaps, this shows how people perceive the world:

Internet = browsing web pages on PC/Mac (using a web browser)

FB = apps/software on phones and tablets (or in a web browser, occasionally)

FB is then much more a standalone/native app than a website.

------
Kenji
To me this sounds like a failure of public education and not facebook's fault.
Public schools should teach what the internet is. Not knowing what the
internet is is akin to illiteracy in today's world.

~~~
mhurron
> Not knowing what the internet is is akin to illiteracy in today's world.

Ya, just like programming is the fourth 'R.'

They know where to get to where they want to go. That Facebook is another site
on the internet really isn't important. They use Facebook and when they want
to get on the internet they go to Google and search.

What people call it and what it is just isn't important. They're not fixing it
and they're not working with it at a technical level, they're just using it
without needing to know details of how it works.

Just like I don't need to know anything about how gas explodes to make my car
go forward in order to drive it.

------
j4kp07
There was no control in this research. So it's rubbish.

------
dataker
I'd criticize the methodology of such survey.

Asking 'Is FB the internet?' has different meaning in these countries.

------
joshdance
This seems just like AOL before. Most people didn't know they were using the
internet. Just AOL.

------
wahsd
Just as Zuckerberg said he wants it, for Facebook to replace the internet is
is expressed goal.

~~~
scholia
Have you got an actual quote for that, ie not just some clickbait journalist's
interpretation of what he said.

What he actually said is here:
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881)

"The internet is one of the most powerful tools for economic and social
progress. It gives people access to jobs, knowledge and opportunities. It
gives voice to the voiceless in our society, and it connects people with vital
resources for health and education. I believe everyone in the world deserves
access to these opportunities."

~~~
wahsd
Sorry, you're wrong. That's a recent comment that I am not referring to. I did
not save a referent to the original statement when he made it back, oh, maybe
5-6 years ago because even though it immediately struck me, I did not seem to
have taken a note of it. Someone once responded to one of my comments on
Reddit with the same source, but that was also a while ago and I didn't take
note of it. If Reddit had better search functionality, maybe I could find the
source, but I have not been successful the couple attempts I have made at
finding it because someone like you tries to cast doubt on the claim.

I don't even know why you need the quote; his actions and their manifestation
in how Facebook operates and what it does and how it serves as a global
surveillance system for not only our government but governments all around the
world speaks far louder than any single quote he made and was probably told is
not a good idea to repeat.

~~~
scholia
It sounds unlikely at best, and "maybe 5-6 years ago" is so long ago in
Internet time it's hardly worth bothering about.

Anyway, I always ask for quotes because they are almost always wrong. Either
the journalist misquoted it or the reader completely failed to understand it.

So, I'm not wrong unless you can prove I'm wrong.

