Searching for a Future Beyond Facebook

https://longreads.com/2018/05/01/searching-for-a-future-beyond-facebook/

by kawera • 8 years ago

99 79 8 years ago

longreads.com

Martin1972• 8 years ago

Great!

amelius5• 8 years ago

A lot would be solved by outlawing targeted advertising.

Letmesleep692• 8 years ago

Seems impossible without outlawing all advertising. Advertising in the nytimes over some other paper or advertising on fox over cnn are all examples of targeted advertising. You'd have to make people randomly choose advertising spots from all of media. Doesn't seem feasible.

amelius5• 8 years ago

Yeah, you'd have to define it precisely, and make a few broad exceptions to make it practical.

I should have added "by default" to my sentence.

pdkl95• 8 years ago

Advertising in the nytimes over some other paper or advertising on fox over cnn are all examples of targeted advertising.

"Targeted" advertising generally refers to the tracking-based targeting of individual people. Re-defining the term to include all types of advertising makes the term mostly useless.

Doesn't seem feasible.

Banning targeted advertising would be easy with legislation that bans tracking and showing ads to individuals.

You'd have to make people randomly choose advertising spots from all of media.

Traditional advertising methods worked fine for centuries. Nobody[1] places ads randomly; you advertise where your product's audience will see it.

[1] Advertising intended to build general brand awareness instead of selling a specific product or service might buy ads somewhat randomly, because the goal is simply getting the brand name seen widely and often.

cmrdporcupine• 8 years ago

I'm sure there's a technical solution at the browser level -- a way to break cookie matchers. At least when I worked in retargeting, cookie matching was the secret sauce.

Preventing third party sources (images, scripts, "share buttons" etc.) from issuing or checking browser cookies might break a whole pile of useful things, but it'd make the world of retargeted ads dry up quickly.

Lionsion3• 8 years ago

> A lot would be solved by outlawing targeted advertising.
Seems impossible without outlawing all advertising. Advertising in the nytimes over some other paper or advertising on fox over cnn are all examples of targeted advertising. You'd have to make people randomly choose advertising spots from all of media. Doesn't seem feasible.

Not the OP, but I think he has a good idea stated over-broadly. Let me fix it:

A lot would be solved by outlawing profile-based targeted advertising.

If Facebook can't use you profile to individually target you, the advertisers are left to target the mass of "Facebook users" like they target the mass of "NY Times readers."

himom2• 8 years ago

Never gonna happen. The holy grail for advertisers is show you an ad on your phone, on your computer, on your car and in-person on signs and billboards enough that you’ll buy whatever it is to shut them up.

joering2• 8 years ago

GDPR does a beautiful thing bu limiting your ability to profile people without telling them exactly how you algorythm them and ability to opt out. Perhaps enough people on Facebook will be creeped out when they find out whats under their Faceook hood.

MarkMc• 8 years ago

The problem is that Facebook have complete control over the user experience of opting out:

To opt in just click 'Agree and Continue'. You won't ever hear from Facebook about this issue again.

To opt out click the much less visible 'Other Options' link, then scroll to the bottom of the page and expand each section and untick each box, then click 'Yes' when Facebook asks if you are sure, given that it will cause these problems for you. Then click 'Continue'. Now every 3 months Facebook will ask if you still want to opt out.

Plus Facebook can frame the opt-out option in the most unattractive light. When I try to disable 'ads personalisation' in Google it tells me 'You'll no longer be able to block or mute some ads'. Who wants to give up the ability to block ads?

BeetleB2• 8 years ago

A lot would be solved by outlawing targeted advertising

Many users are in favor of targeted advertising. In a lot of forums where this is discussed, I usually just look for heavily downvoted comments - there's usually a bunch saying "I'd rather not have ads, but if I do have them, I want personalized ads."

Downvoting them won't make the sentiment go away.

amelius5• 8 years ago

No, but I guess properly informing them about the consequences for privacy will.

there's usually a bunch saying "I'd rather not have ads, but if I do have them, I want personalized ads."

How badly do they want that? It sounds to me like they don't really care.

0xdead_beef• 8 years ago

I'd rather be exposed to generic advertising in the form of billboards, banners, and commercials, than head towards the dystopian future of The Minority Report in which you're constantly tracked, biometrics measured, and eyeballs scanned in order for advertisers to bombard you with personalized greetings and targeted ads that follow you relentlessly.

It's already too creepy that my smartphone has trained its autocorrect with words I've never texted before but can extrapolate from my digital footprint.

jarjoura• 8 years ago

Not all targeted advertising is bad. Would you try to stop a local high school fundraiser for intelligently reaching out to the community? Or your family's local small business from advertising to the audience most likely to want to shop there?

Targeted advertising in some shape or form has existed for a hundred years. Just open any magazine that is targeted at a specific audience and you'll see widely different ads running in those magazines. McDonalds or Coca-cola aren't going to waste ad dollars running campaigns in hunting or boating magazines for example.

adamsea3• 8 years ago

Would you try to stop a local high school fundraiser for intelligently reaching out to the community? Or your family's local small business from advertising to the audience most likely to shop there?

Can we just ban the rest of it then? ;)

thatfrenchguy• 8 years ago

Would you try to stop a local high school fundraiser for intelligently reaching out to the community

Yes, because it makes inequality worse ;-)

adamsea3• 8 years ago

I would also like to outlaw advertising in the following places: the in-flight announcements of airplanes, the loud, blaring tv kiosks at gas stations, and during movie previews.

In other words, create a modicum of public space which doesn’t have constant, intrusive noise.

Yetanfou• 8 years ago

Facebook (et al) is nothing but a blip on the time line of human history. Just like "we" have a history without Facebook I see no problems in a future without Facebook. Part of this future will come to pass due to legislation (GDPR being a good start), part of it due to the product - Facebook's users - becoming sentient and aware of the way it has been used. Another part will come to pass due to the ever rising censorship on sites like Facebook which will eventually lead to it becoming a bland repository of pablum as anything which could be construed as being even the least controversial will be locked behind dire warnings or flat-out refused with an accompanying block for the user.

joncrane• 8 years ago

Facebook's users - becoming sentient and aware
a bland repository of pablum

I believe you are overestimating the intelligence and "woke-ness" of the Facebook user community, and of humanity in general.

Lionsion3• 8 years ago

I believe you are overestimating the intelligence and "woke-ness" of the Facebook user community, and of humanity in general.

That's an extremely cynical and pessimistic outlook that allows for little actual improvement.

If enough motivated people blast their feeds with news about how Facebook users are being used and exploited, I could see enough Facebook users becoming "sentient and aware" to cripple the network.

It won't die completely, at least no right away (MySpace is still around, after all), but I think a dent can be made.

hinkley• 8 years ago

It seems we are going to follow the Superfund model here though. Only after the industry has polluted some places (lost control of huge amounts of PII for whole groups of individuals) will we make it illegal for somebody else to do the same thing. And the public will be stuck with the cleanup.

himom2• 8 years ago

Facebook’s downfalls are numerous:

- ads

- promotion of gossip to a global audience

- peer-pressured risk-taking

- pics, videos and other content that’s usually boring

A real friends platform:

- video / text chat

- arranging spontaneous and planned activities

- gather/raise funds for group activities

- where people are at

- what people are up to

- finding new friends from friends of friends for activities

- find new interests, get recommendations

- visualize social circles

- paid for by users

- never sells data

the_common_man• 8 years ago

Who pays for the real friends platform?

jacobush• 8 years ago

Who pays for the real friends?

2sk21• 8 years ago

Related question: can they even pay? The vast majority of the new users of Facebook are from developing countries with low income. There is no way to make them voluntarily pay for access to a social network.

lallysingh• 8 years ago

Split them up into different services by different vendors. A better* openid would make this easy.

* Better to include more privacy.

dreamfactored4• 8 years ago

Initially VC, then advertisers. It's more of the same shit but ridiculous given FB's size to think the market can only have one player. The way to accelerate network growth is base on an open source standard and encourage competitors using it.

CM30• 8 years ago

Aren't most of Facebook's issues social media issues in general? Most have ads, most promote gossip to a global audience, most inspire risk taking, etc. You could probably say the same thing about Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, maybe Reddit, etc.

A real friends platform like you mention is basically just social media, except user paid for and privacy friendly. Which is a neat idea, but comes into the issue of who exactly will pay for it, given people's insistence that things online are free.

realpeopleio• 8 years ago

"we must devise new business models and structural incentives that aren’t rooted in manipulation and coercion...In the short-term, that might be achieved by turning to basic subscription services, by paying for the things we use."

That's why we made RealPeople.io (https://realpeople.io) have no ads at all. Users pay to use, and there's no AI, no sharing your data. Rather than trying to just convince users to take our word for it, we just built it into our business model. Our financial incentives align with keeping user data private. And since we don't get paid based on how many pages the user views or how long the user is on the system, there's no financial incentive to getting the user addicted.

can3p• 8 years ago

Is it possible to see any blog or real page without signing up? And is there an api to read/write/manage blog?

jasode3• 8 years ago

And since we don't get paid based on how many pages the user views or how long the user is on the system, there's no financial incentive to getting the user addicted.

Arguably, most of Facebook's addiction is the existence of virtually all their friends on the network.

Your $9/year cost is a lavish amount of money that exceeds the measly $1/year that 70% don't want to pay.[1] Why don't people want to pay 8 cents a month to avoid ads?!? That's a good question! Whatever the answer is, it affects how an alternative social network can grow and/or financially sustain itself.

If most of the people aren't in a $9/year network, then yes, it won't be addictive. The Google+ social network has targeted ads and yet it's not addictive -- because it's missing the network effect of having "everybody" on it.

Have you considered realistic human incentives in your economic model?

[1] https://www.tune.com/blog/mobile-ads-70-of-smartphone-owners...

lhorie2• 8 years ago

One could argue that LinkedIn has everybody on it (at least insofar as you are a working white collar adult), but it's not addictive either.

jakecopp• 8 years ago

I wonder about that figure of 70% of people not wanting to pay $1/year to block ads.

Everyone who wants to block ads uses an ad blocker. Those who don't care about ads don't bother to install one or ask their friends/family to install one.

Therefore nobody wants to pay to block ads!

pnutjam• 8 years ago

http://www.mewe.com is free, and built around privacy.

overcast2• 8 years ago

Until the day the general population actually pays for online services(this will never happen), Facebook like enterprises will exist. I know you'll respond and tell me that you'd pay, but the vast majority of people will not, and that's why any type of paid social network will fail. They require mass adoption to be successful.

vixen99• 8 years ago

Maybe one day the difficulties of establishing a nano/micro payment system will be overcome.

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-...

DSingularity3• 8 years ago

Thanks for the link. Regarding mental transaction costs, why not make refunds one-click-away? If after consuming the digital good or using the service a user feels “oh my this wasn’t worth it”, it takes one click to undo his usage. Wouldn’t that eliminate this cost by relaxing the user?

ufo• 8 years ago

Im not sure facebook would do the right thing if users paid for it. I suspect they would just keep on doing their data harvesting to increment their revenue.

For example, in the early days of cable TV it had very few ads but nowadays it is infested with ads and product placement.

I feel the only way out here is legislation.

overcast2• 8 years ago

Honestly, I don't believe any company would "do the right thing". Companies exist to make money, as much as they possibly can. They might start off with good intentions, but inevitably, they will start looking for alternate ways of revenue. Sure, maybe some not for profit, good intention, fairly tale business might pop up. But they will in NO way get to billions of users, and will be dwarfed by the free alternatives.

stevenicr2• 8 years ago

"actually pays for online services(this will never happen)" - I used to think this with several things, and that thinking was changed a few times.

Perhaps people paying for it is not "$10 per month" or ".01c per article". People could pay for their own controlled social network by sharing a slice of memory on their computer / phone / router and allowing access to their internet bandwidth for friends / family / friends of friends, and pay for something like scuttle / ipfs without setting up recurring cash loss through their bank card right?

As they learn they are paying with loss of privacy, loss of control, and other costs - how they choose to pay may change in ways beyond current thinking.

jonnydubowsky• 8 years ago

That's a beautiful expression of a possible shift to the underlying economics model of social media sites, and one I would contribute energy and commits (and hard drive space) to.

SakeOfBrevity• 8 years ago

"(...) when it comes to Facebook, the rot is deep. It can’t be excised. It can only be replaced by something else, by a form of connectivity that treats people not as laborers or commodities, but as human beings."

Almost on point. Facebook has ingrained itself into socio-individual behaviour schemas. Social medias are likely here to stay for a long time and I don't see a company treating it's users as 'human beings' not 'commodities' being a front-runner to win a hypothethical future social media companies race; there are just no areas left that any rival company could simultaneously 1) exploit to stay profitable 2) make people use it.

There will likely be some decentralized services but that's all.

Lionsion3• 8 years ago

...and I don't see a company treating it's users as 'human beings' not 'commodities' being a front-runner to win a hypothethical future social media companies race; there are just no areas left that any rival company could simultaneously 1) exploit to stay profitable 2) make people use it.

There are a few billionaires who are having second thoughts about a lot of this, I wonder if one could fund a rival non-profit network and run it at a loss until it has enough momentum.

I know I'd shill for a non-profit, user-respecting social network and donate for its upkeep, but I just don't have the resources to keep one going.

GarrisonPrime• 8 years ago

It’s too bad an otherwise well written article on an important topic soiled itself with political statements.

If you think it didn’t, I suggest you have some hidden biases.

arca_vorago• 8 years ago

Look, the truth of the matter is we opened the floodgates to computing for the masses too quickly without the proper protections and training. So up until about ~2000 it was mostly just the geeks using computers. Suddenly though, with the nice gui of Windows and Mac, the kind of users who used their cd tray as a coffee cup holder exponentially multiplied... and thus /r/talesfromtechsupport was born.

They never learned to control and own their systems.

Then those users start buying other computers, with software they didn't have the option to control, in the form of smartphones.

Now there are huge swaths of users who are so used to being stuck in a user prison they don't own or control that they think it's normal!

It's not. Join the GNU+Linux revolution today!

So the problem with fb and twitter etc, is that they took what would have been a great model (individual websites) and tried to force everyone on their platform and then find various ways to lock them there... and now with all the backlash there is a growing awakening of computing freedom, but the problem is they keep thinking of blockchain or meshnet style decentraliztion to fix the problem, when the real problem is one of ownership.

So in my opinion we need a good copyleft foss federation tech and people to own their own data. The internet isn't fully decentralized... it's more of a heirarchical starspoke topology, and it's high time SV and the rest wakeup from buzzword bingo of decentralization. (If I hear one more story about how we don't need servers cause we're going to the cloud I'm going to explode, for example).

This is also why I think something like the freedombox is probably the closest thing to what the future lookes like.

pier252• 8 years ago

It's not a matter of freedom or control, it's about convenience.

choward• 8 years ago

People don't actually realize that the convenience comes with a cost though because they haven't been exposed to the other end of the spectrum.

the_greyd• 8 years ago

You haven't answered the fundamental question: How are they going to make money? The internet can be decentralized, and everything can be FOSS, but how is that going to make money for companies? If it isn't making money why will anyone bother changing their existing model? Unless we change the rules, we are not going to get different results. I wish there was a sustainable way to fund new tech by people. The growth we see in tech right now is manifested with this massive surveillance capitalism. Think about all the shiny tech/open source libraries coming out of google and facebook, now advertisements are what funds that. The line "All great civilizations were built on back of slaves" comes to mind. Our data and privacy is what we lose, for us to achieve this massive technological prowess.

coconutrandom• 8 years ago

They make money on hosting and compete on price and UI.

But to be blunt, nothing can stop users from re-centralizing to the cheapest/fastest/easiest system regardless of how decentralized the protocol.

rokhayakebe• 8 years ago

I wish there was a sustainable way to fund new tech by people.

We pay for our phone, electricity, connection service. We even pay for games. Yet we don't want to pay for the tools that help us manage our social networks.

Or perhaps noone has dared to launch a paid social network and stick to it long enough.

adamsea3• 8 years ago

“We” never controlled the floodgate to begin with.

intopieces• 8 years ago

They never learned to control and own their systems.

The overarching presumption here being that people want to learn to control and own their systems in the way you describe. By and large, they don't. This is evidenced plainly by the nonimpact of the "Cambridge Analytica Scandal," which, as far I can tell, has persuaded precisely zero people to move from the platform. The offending platform company recently held a highly successful convention to announce their new tech. Their stock has mostly recovered. Facebook continues to eat the world.

The future does not look like freedom box. The future looks like WeChat.

stevenicr2• 8 years ago

"zero people to move from the platform." seems like an outrageous claim.

I have talked to several different types of fbook users, and some have removed apps, but not their account, many have mentioned that they have more dread in it's functions that joy in it's uses.

Everyone I have spoken has changed the ways they use it, have lost trust in it, and are censoring themselves even more now than they were. Well not 100% of the people I have spoken with, my 80 year old grandmother still uses it the same, however she is now taking the advice of many and not believing anything she sees on there without researching sources further, which is a great thing imo.

My sample size of fbook users is of course something like 4.5e-7% or something like that, so not that much different that the precisely zero statement.

I think it's sage to say it looks for some time that fbook was trying desperately to encourage people to share as much as possible via the portal, and I think many people are realizing that is not the best thing for most people. I don't have access to the internal stats that may show this or not, and I do now expect the co to announce these kinds of metrics in a helpful way either.

Maybe someone on the inside can publish them via tinder and brag they have access to that kind of data and get better dates.

I would expect more snaplike than wechat like in the future for things that are personal, but we'll see. I've always thought fbook would become the new linked in (sterilized from personal stuff publicly), just as big G is becoming more like the yellow pages. This does open up desires for many groups around the world to have freedom boxes or something similar I imagine.

Eire_Banshee• 8 years ago

Well, this isnt incredibly pretentious

18pfsmt2• 8 years ago

Go ahead and make your case, but 5-word throwaway pot-shot comments are cancer for HN.

Am I pretentious for changing my own oil, rotating my own tires, and other minor repairs to my car? I'm not going to defend the tone or all of the opinions, but recognizing how to exact as much control over your own life/ data as possible is valid. Especially, when others are advocating getting the federal government involved.

olivermarks• 8 years ago

TLDR

"Ultimately, to challenge Facebook, Google, and the many unknown players of the data economy, we must devise new business models and structural incentives that aren’t rooted in manipulation and coercion; that don’t depend on the constant surveillance of users, on gathering information on everything they read and purchase, and on building that information into complex dossiers designed to elicit some action — a click, a purchase, a vote. We must move beyond surveillance capitalism and its built-in inequities. In the short-term, that might be achieved by turning to basic subscription services, by paying for the things we use. But on a longer time horizon, we must consider whether we want to live in a world that converts all of our experiences into machine-readable data — data that doesn’t belong to us, that doesn’t serve us"

I have no idea how we can avoid this - Google is so invasive it is increasingly tracking and recording everything about our lives. Gillian Tett had a good piece in the FT about how autocomplete in search fields influences our thinking. https://www.ft.com/content/7dc8eae4-4d99-11e8-97e4-13afc22d8... Google maps records any changes we make to our property for future permit/permissions comparisons etc - we have no control over this and little ability to opt out.

DSingularity3• 8 years ago

Aside from privacy there is another important issue to consider. Facebook makes censorship decisions it has no authority and probably little expertise to make. All with little to no accountability.

Consider the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the censorship of Palestinian voices as an example. In general there should be no tolerance for speech that incites violence. Everybody agrees to this. But in this particular case things are different. The Palestinians are an occupied people and the Israeli army and Israeli colonizing settlers are occupying forces. The international community is almost in total agreement — the Palestinians have every right to engage in armed resistance against the occupation forces. Yet Facebook still delete accounts which call for resistance. To make matters worse, they allow the formidable, multi-million dollar funded, Israeli state-aponsered propaganda machine to use Facebook to normalize occupation, to demonize Palestinians, to dehumanize Palestinians, and to disrupt foreign protest/resistance in western democracies. How is this not morally bankrupt!?

Come on. I do not understand this — how can any educated individual support a company like Facebook is beyond me. How can all those top notch researchers work for them? Facebook has 0 moral integrity.

It tells quite a story about us techies. While they are some of the smartest people they are also the least morally-driven people. So selfish. Look at the world you Facebook engineers are creating. A world where a massive, world-wide, media platform doesn’t direct flows of information based on ethics and responsibility. The information flows based on profit and power. Of course Facebook will acquiesce to the majority of Israeli government requests. They project billions of dollars worth of power. Palestinians barely have enough to eat. Screw what the Palestinians think, what can they do? When Facebook and it’s platform acts as the Israeli propagandist and censor Facebook only loses if it’s users or employees get upset. What are the chances of that? Who controls what reaches our newfeeds? Are our feeds not filtered by what’s popular according to the masses and what hasn’t been downvotes to oblivion?

I truly despise Facebook. I hate how they have no accountability. I hate the effects they are having on the world and people. I hate the way they influence how people think and nobody calls it censorship.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/09/1... [2] https://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-partisans-work-censor...

a_brawling_boo• 8 years ago

I am surprised no one has mentioned mastodon. Organizations or individuals can set up their own server and people can interact with their local communities that can police and or use the data as they want, AND there is a federated feed of all the mastodon instances where you interact in a public forum.

Searching for a Future Beyond Facebook

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