“Facebook has destroyed the open web”

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mark-zuckerberg-hypocrite-facebook-has-destroyed-open-web-1559298

by xkarga00 • 10 years ago

136 87 10 years ago

ibtimes.co.uk

fallenshell2• 10 years ago

"Against this global community" "Going against progress" Sorry Zuck, but shut the fuck up. All you want is more money and power. A great example is the free "internet" initiative he's pushing; all to lock people in Facebook.

This guy truly is, the world's biggest hypocrite. </rant>

pinewurst• 10 years ago

That may require a cage match between Zuck and Eric Schmidt.

gonzo• 10 years ago

Eric just turned 61, and is beta as fuck.

Zuck is 32 later this week.

I know where I'd place my money.

dang• 10 years ago

Please don't. If you have a substantive critique to make, you're more than welcome to, but "shut the fuck up, "all you want is money and power", and "world's biggest hypocrite" is the opposite of that, and predictably degraded the thread.

fallenshell2• 10 years ago

Excuse my misbehavior, I became angry.

meeper163• 10 years ago

The DNA of that person relates to a time when he called the users of fb "dumb f*cks"

rhizome• 10 years ago

This guy truly is, the world's biggest hypocrite

"Like anyone can even know that."

mschenkel• 10 years ago

Totally agree. Facebook is dotcom equivalent of AOL. Hopefully it goes away.

meeper163• 10 years ago

I could not agree more. It started out by copying myspace which copied friendster which copied...

smt88• 10 years ago

Free/open markets create powerful incumbents that eventually become big enough to turn themselves into a monopoly. There's no reason that the web wouldn't work the same way.

FussyZeus3• 10 years ago

Facebook is a fad. A damn big one I'll grant you but it's already losing it's grip on the next generation of users. It's huge now but I feel it's already lost it's luster, I mean come on, I'm a huge user (keeping up with friends across states is damn hard otherwise) and I can't stand being on it, and I know a lot of friends who feel the same.

It will have it's time, in due time. Hyperlinks are not dead.

cylinder• 10 years ago

my feed is garbage - just stupid memes and mostly sponsored posts. That said, most people I know use it as a "rolodex." It's the easiest way to add a contact and then quickly message them in the future. also, a lot of people still use it for events. people are still checking their feeds compulsively just out of a need for stimulation and when they feel lonely though. But facebook is basically a cloud contacts solution at this point.

vr36902• 10 years ago

Don't they have like 1.65B MAUs? How is that a fad?

FussyZeus3• 10 years ago

If you don't have the younger markets, you don't have a future. Once their parents are on a service, the younger market isn't if they don't need to be.

Facebook is delaying it by playing big in International markets and in developing countries but the social aspects can't be outrun and won't change, as I said, it's a BIG fad but it's a fad and it will die a fad's death in due time.

Why do think Zuck is pushing the Facebook private Internet in the developing world so hard? He's not stupid, he sees the writing on the wall.

TrevorJ3• 10 years ago

Agreed. Facebook is pretty irrelevant with the High School crowd. Every has smart phones with apps that offer far less friction for communicating.

lalos• 10 years ago

High school students will start using Facebook once they realize they can't keep "connected" with their high school friends that are studying in a bunch of different universities.

vaishaksuresh• 10 years ago

It is ironic considering there is a popup when you scroll down to the end of the article that asks you to share it on Facebook.

drivingmenuts3• 10 years ago

Facebook hasn't destroyed the web - it's still there and functioning fine. Hyperlinks still work.

What FB has done is made it easier for the lazy to connect with and stay within their own interest groups. FB has made it easy for people to ignore negative information with tons of cat pictures (I am as guilty as anyone for that) and cheerful little meaningless quotes. It's made it easier to post misinformation and spread it quickly.

But none of that has destroyed the internet. The internet (or more specifically, information) was going to get harder to find and navigate anyway, once you turn it loose on a few billion people.

Sure, in the early days, you could encapsulate 75% of existing websites in one directory, but thanks to the efforts of spammers, link farmers, and other lowlife, in addition to the efforts of well-meaning people, and faulty and well-working search algorithms, it's a mess.

But it was going to happen and FB is not to blame for it. If they are to blame for it, we all equally share the guilt.

codecamper2• 10 years ago

well said. FB just makes it easy for lazy people to use the Internet. It turns out that most people don't want much more of a challenge beyond just reading their feeds.

plus. it's blue. people like blue.

5ilv3r5• 10 years ago

"Hyperlinks still work."

I observe that this is increasingly no longer true. Links no longer show you when you have visited them. Chains of 301s are common. Tracking links are now the norm. The link text almost never is where you are actually going. Pages automatically redirect you based on a ton of probed information (mobile, desktop, tablet, logged in to G+, logged into facebook, etc), and even normal browser shortcuts to interact with them are no longer working correctly with so many weird effing span and divs being recast into "links" that never work right, in css of all things.

No no. The modern hyperlink is totally busted. I blame the framework hockers and the halfass web"app" community.

paulddraper• 10 years ago

I must use 100+ links a day with 99% success rate.

toomuchtodo• 10 years ago

There any good Chrome extensions out there that'll strip all of the tracking data from URLs as you browse?

herbst2• 10 years ago

Not to mention how many of these links link into closed networks like facebook and therefore are not even public available even thought they appear and are described to be.

raddad2• 10 years ago

easier for the lazy to connect with and stay within their own interest groups

Facebook reminds me of AOL. People who had AOL had no idea of anything outside of AOL. I had to show many how to get out of AOL and they were astonished there was so much more.

If Facebook was an ISP it truly would be the new AOL.

TheOtherHobbes• 10 years ago

There's always going to be a niche for a service that does what AOL and FB do.

FB will be killed by its successor soon - possibly within five years, certainly within 10.

Jury's out on whether it will be founded in the US, or whether it will even need a web browser.

(I strongly suspect the answer to both questions will be "no.')

jeeva• 10 years ago

Weren't they actually providing bandwidth to some small area, with the provision that only Facebook was unmetered?

Seems pretty close...

Razengan2• 10 years ago

The internet (or more specifically, information) was going to get harder to find and navigate anyway, once you turn it loose on a few billion people.

That sheds light on a much scarier issue: Google.com has effectively BECOME the internet.

How do you find information that isn't indexed by Google? There has to be a better way than just word of mouth, but all other alternatives afforded by current tech will just shift the problem to some other megaportal.

Nadya• 10 years ago

There has to be a better way than just word of mouth, but all other alternatives afforded by current tech will just shift the problem to some other "megaportal."

I don't see why there has to be. Word of mouth is probably the best method possible.

chris_wot• 10 years ago

It just requires a group of people to start a new bunch of niche indexing projects.

My idea, which may be a bit off the wall, is really to go down a path whereby you only index a subject. So node.js guys just give a search engine that indexes node.js material, Python people index Python articles, short-haired cat people index only short-haired cats... They key is to make the subject you are indexing manageable in scope. So you keep it small.

The key things that Google have IMO is how good they are at locating documents, and ensuring that they have mapped out their search to what is relevant. But I think that for those who know what they are looking for, specific indexing of a particular domain of knowledge would make searching more relevant.

Now the next steps are to find a way to discover this content. But in this case, submitting to the smaller indexers would be helpful. Take HN for instance - in the grand scheme of things it's a big index of stuff that interests hackers, now if you indexed HN that would be a search engine based on user submitted links.

Then you could figure out a way for indexes to collaborate with each other.

What it would in essence do would be to democratize search. And it would penalise information that wasn't in the open, though someone could make it work by paying for links to good content and charging a monthly fee to use their index. The index would be a broker, but the more reputable it is the more content it can index. And the market would stabilise on a price - if you can't afford it, you use a competitor, of you could make your own.

It would need a framework for decentralised collaboration, and perhaps a good mechanism for the indexing and displaying search results.

Just an idea. Might not be practical!

jrnichols• 10 years ago

That sheds light on a much scarier issue: Google.com has effectively BECOME the internet.

I've noticed this in schools where Google products are used. The kids are now equating Google with the entire internet. They don't know anything about email - they just know Gmail. That's what is kind of scary to me. It's frustrating at home as well because while I am doing my best to educate the kids about technology, they are afraid to do anything outside of the Googlesphere and think things are broken if it doesn't perform just like the Google product. that's what I'm worried about. They don't see anything outside of the Google walled garden.

kangar00• 10 years ago

Facebook hasn't destroyed the web - it's still there and functioning fine. Hyperlinks still work.

Completely agree.

And let's choose something else similar, for the sake of argument.

Google dominates web search at 64% of searches: https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-R...

Post anyone could write: "That's so unfair, because Google owns more than half of all searches. They get to decide what you find on the web!"

In fact, the argument of the bias bubble is the one that Duck Duck Go uses, and I don't disagree with it. Google's results are biased.

However, does the fact that Google can and does hide some (or even many) relevant pages on the web from you make them responsible for "closing the web"?

Of course not! Without Google, instead of random but relevant websites and blogs providing answers when you search, you'd probably go to a centralized sites for information or data, which could be biased and ignorant.

Without Google, think of all of the internet companies that never would have grown because they would never have been found.

Back to Facebook. Sure, many on Facebook just share photos, comments, have discussions, etc. But, there are a lot of links shared and pages you can like to get more links in your feed. As a Facebook user, I see much more new content and read information I would have been unaware of if I'd only been reading HN or a news website. I also share the best stories from HN, exposing a number of my friends to articles they would not have otherwise read.

In my opinion, Facebook hasn't closed the web. In fact, it seems that the web would have been more closed if Facebook and Google had never existed.

smadge• 10 years ago

"hyperlinks still work"

Not on Facebook, which is the whole point. You can paste URLs into Facebook, but they aren't hypertext.

rawTruthHurts• 10 years ago

On "the open web", which is mentioned on the point, they still do.

Pica_soO• 10 years ago

the lazy

the same lazies who refuse to install linux i presume. The lazies who refuse to become experts and share your ideas of the world. This culture, too lazy to create a decent user experience- deserves to suffer.

Ileca• 10 years ago

Only fools believe (listen) a thief. As much as any PR guy.

zwieback• 10 years ago

I've read the "blogs were great, FB is bad" article a few times in recent years and put it off as whining. I was a whiner myself when Usenet gave way to blogs but got over it.

However, it might be different in emerging markets where phones are the primary platform and FB may be dominating, not really sure if that's true but certainly different from the US.

blub5• 10 years ago

I've heard a story from an acquaintance from Germany: their kids were ostracised in school by the others until they had a smartphone and started using WhatsApp.

Whenever WhatsApp is shut down in Brazil, a local chimes that it's used everywhere, even by emergency medical service personnel.

That should cause one some uneasy feelings...

vinceguidry3• 10 years ago

The article is as stupid as the website it's on is. Value-added sharing mechanisms that take the expertise out of creating useful Internet content does not de-democratize the Internet. You are still as free as before to make your own websites and share your content the way it was done before Facebook. Facebook is popular but that can't be held against it.

More generally, populism by itself does not threaten democracy. It's when the people that elect demagogues let those demagogues destroy public institutions that democracy is undermined. But it's the people that are at fault here, they are the ones that let themselves get hoodwinked.

Napoleon destroyed the French Republic. But the French were absolutely complicit and just let him do it because they were hungry for empire. All of Europe was like that back then and she wasn't cured of that disease until WW2 showed them how utterly stupid warmongering in the Industrial age was.

HappyTypist• 10 years ago

Facebook is prioritising native content over external hyperlinks. That's a subtle but significant lock in.

drivingmenuts3• 10 years ago

So? They aren't preventing you from going outside the service to find your own information. FB's policies dictate how you interact with FB, but you don't have to interact with FB at all, if you choose not to.

devishard3• 10 years ago

You are still as free as before to make your own websites and share your content the way it was done before Facebook.

And nobody will read them if you don't integrate with Facebook and other social media--where you will be censored.

But it's the people that are at fault here, they are the ones that let themselves get hoodwinked.

Did you really claim that scam victims are to blame when they get scammed, and not the scammers? I'm all for avoiding naiveté, but that doesn't excuse the actions of manipulative people and organizations.

vinceguidry3• 10 years ago

And nobody will read them if you don't integrate with Facebook and other social media--where you will be censored.

That's not an issue with Facebook, it's the natural consequence of being popular. Things are popular because the public likes them. You can't say that something being powerful because the public made them powerful is undemocratic. Either you're giving the public what they want or you're not. Dethroning Facebook would be profoundly undemocratic. Facebook is a public institution, albeit under private management.

Did you really claim that scam victims are to blame when they get scammed, and not the scammers?

The people are bigger than the politicians. Politicians have to, at some point, give the people what they want. The days where you can brutally put down rebellions is over. Not even CCP can get away with it. Napoleon could not have given Europe war if the French truly didn't want war.

Napoleon did not have to scam the French, they went into it willingly.

Democracy is the progressive march of what most people want over what a few people want. If what most people want is stupid, democracy will not save you from that.

curun1r• 10 years ago

I used to think that. Then my parents found Facebook and started using it. Their friends send them interesting content, which comes to their inbox where they consume it. Then, they do the natural thing and forward it to me if they think I'll find it interesting. Now, I have hundreds, if not thousands, of emails in my inbox with links that, if I click them, require me to login as my parents if I want to see the content.

The fact that Facebook doesn't send pure hyperlinks but, instead, links that funnel through Facebook to be authenticated and tracked, is extremely annoying and dangerous to a free and open web.

meeper163• 10 years ago

Just like AOL, many facebook users think facebook is the internet.

Mendenhall• 10 years ago

I feel "everyone" being afraid of words has destroyed the open web. Edit this, censor that, surpress this, etc etc.

Complacency and intolerance of other ideas is and always will be the issue.

codecamper2• 10 years ago

why couldn't we create a decentralized social network. could such a thing exist?

5ilv3r5• 10 years ago

https://diasporafoundation.org/ and http://pump.io/ are attempts at that.

bigphishy• 10 years ago

Have to second diaspora,Diaspora is a vestige of intellectual content and quality discussion.

bawana• 10 years ago

And I remember the net before the web. FTP, Gopher, and lynx. So why did a 'web browser' succeed? Because you could integrate bandwidth hogging graphics?? or was it to mimic the gui interfaces of mac OS, windows, BEos, etc? I still mourn the loss of the newsgroups and usenet. Well, Usenet is still around, but in name only. So what's next-VR interfaces?

The web and FB has made us dumber- we point and click and no longer have to search and think.

5ilv3r5• 10 years ago

I am very interested in seeing in the post-web internet.

mbreese2• 10 years ago

I'm not sure you will be happy when we get there. I'm fairly certain that it's already here - phone apps are pretty much on their way to being post-web.

tpeo• 10 years ago

I'm young enough that I've never had to use any of these, except for FTP. But the contemporary needlessly bloated and avertising-centered web does make me nostalgic for things I didn't experience. It even makes browsing through Html-only sites feels refreshing.

tawpKek• 10 years ago

The web and FB has made us dumber- we point and click and no longer have to search and think.

That is a bold and baseless statement.

halpme• 10 years ago

To echo what everyone else has said, my feed is utter garbage and a lot of friends post stuff that makes me cringe. I've unsubscribed from the majority of my friends so now all I see are ads and sponsored posts.

Here's the thing, I get to see what events my friends are going to, which usually end up being really fun and not something I would have found out about otherwise. So nowadays I only use facebook to find and management events to attend.

tn13• 10 years ago

Open web sucked before Facebook. Facebook has created a nice safe sandbox for most people.

avindroth• 10 years ago

The vast majority of those on Facebook were not the ones participating in the open web.

“Facebook has destroyed the open web”

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