Internal emails cause more trouble for Facebook and its C.E.O.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/facebooks-very-bad-month-just-got-worse

by jaytaylor • 8 years ago

342 212 8 years ago

blfr• 8 years ago

the company had hired a right-wing opposition research group, Definers Public Affairs, to dig up dirt on George Soros, after Soros gave a blistering speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos decrying the power of social media, especially Facebook and Google, for their “far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.”

What is this about? Because it's weird friendly fire. Both Soros and Facebook/Google want largely the same outcome from elections: liberal politicians who keep the markets humming while allowing for easy international trade and migration.

asianthrowaway• 8 years ago

Pot calling the kettle black.

Juliate3• 8 years ago

You might be mistaken about what Facebook "wants".

sattoshi• 8 years ago

Facebook is nautorious for silently banning anything right of center.

starbeast• 8 years ago

Both Soros and Facebook/Google want largely the same outcome from elections

I think we are consuming wildly differing news sources.

TictacTactic• 8 years ago

I think Facebook would like to be perceived as a liberal tech startup but keep in mind they knowingly sold the user info to Cambridge analytics for the republicans. The truth is their in it for the money like every other company. Apart of that means maintaining public perception.

beaconstudios2• 8 years ago

I think it would be reasonable to assume they sold user info to anyone who could afford it.

ben_w2• 8 years ago

I think what you identified is merely a shared instrumental goal, not an objective goal for either of them.

I think, from how they talk, that Facebook wants to have everybody watching it all the time. From how they talk, more even than making money.

I think Soros wants intellectual freedom. Not so sure about that, but it looks that way from the philanthropy.

Both just happen to be using free markets to work towards their goals.

ForHackernews3• 8 years ago

I've never understood why Soros is such a bogeyman to so many people. As far as I can see (from my position as a believer in so-called "western values" like freedom of speech, rule of law and fair elections), his goals seem entirely noble.

I get why despots like Viktor Orban hate Soros, but what about all the others? Do they hate him because he's rich and spends his money on politics? Because he comes off like a meddler, butting into other countries' affairs? Because he's (apparently?) Jewish? What is it?

porpoisely2• 8 years ago

Soros' foundation, Open Society, has supported censorship here in the US and Europe. Whether you agree or disagree with their objectives and methods, intellectual freedom certainly isn't one of their goals.

I do think the hyperbole over Zuckerburg and Soros by the media ( left and right ) is way overdone. The conservative media loves to portray Soros as pure evil while the liberal media paints him as a saint. And everyone ( left and right ) seems to hate Zuckerburg which I feel is ridiculous. Neither are all powerful demons nor saints who control the world. They are human beings just like you and me. Sure they have a lot of money, but lots of people in the US have money. They are influential, but not all powerful.

Maybe if we stopped painting people and sides as pure evil and pure good, we'd be better off and we could discuss the gray because most of life is in the gray.

rsynnott2• 8 years ago

I mean, it says it right in the article. Soros (like many people) is worried about social media pseudo-monopolies. That's obviously going to be threatening to said pseudo-monopolies.

seanhunter• 8 years ago

George Soros is very open publicly about what he wants to achieve. If you read "The Open Society and its Enemies" by Karl Popper, that's the intellectual foundation of what Soros is shooting for. THat's why his foundation is called something like the "Open Society Foundation". So: Democracy, scientific reasoning, strong institutions etc.

He has been extremely critical of the large tech monopolies (eg his Davos speech covered here and elsewhere https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/25/george-soro... ) so it's no surprise that Facebook would do "opposition" research on him. Facebook has a very large pavilion and visible presence at Davos so the criticism must have been particularly embarrassing in that context.

makomk2• 8 years ago

"The documents also reveal that, in 2015, a permissions update for Android devices, which users were required to accept, included a feature that continuously uploaded text messages and call logs to Facebook."

Wow, that's some sleazy wording. While users were required to accept the permissions update for the simple reason that Android at the time didn't offer any way to pick and choose what permissions to grant, the very email they're basing this claim on says that actually accessing and uploading call logs was opt-in. Ironically, the coverage of this has demonstrated exactly why this was (as the released email put it) a high PR risk.

epistasis• 8 years ago

So they just uploaded everything, "just in case"? Your description doesn't sound any better than the article's.

ForHackernews3• 8 years ago

No, I think the parent comment is making the distinction that the Android permissions model at the time wasn't very granular, so Facebook's app had to request more permissions than it intended to use, and that FB offered a separate opt-in within their own app.

I don't use the FB app, and I have no idea how this was presented to users and whether it was a legitimate choice or a "dark pattern" to trick users into handing over everything.

gnulinux• 8 years ago

This is ridiculous. They uploaded my private messages because "Android didn't offer any way to pick and choose what permission to grant". Why didn't their app simply asked this in a pop up? Are we seriously gonna pretend this was a valid reason for people's text messages to be stolen by Facebook?

aoeusnth1• 8 years ago

Actually, the email only indicates that they intended it to be opt-in at some point. I don't remember whether they actually did implement that prompt for call records - and it certainly seemed like a surprise to everyone when it was discovered that they were doing that. Do you think that would be the case if people had knowingly gave permission for facebook to upload all that data?

eksemplar3• 8 years ago

I wonder when Facebook is going to get disrupted. It seems to me their key feature is having everyone connected, and while anecdotal, my friends list sure hasn’t been affected by these scandals.

What has been affected is the perception. It’s no longer considered cool to have a Facebook account. Meet-ups and interest groups are still heavily used in my social circles, but it’s almost always with an apology for being on Facebook.

Instagram has suffered less, but instagram isn’t really useful for anything but wasting time.

Facebook on the other hand serves as a modern day yellowpages and meetup combined, but with its popularity dropping and people slowly adopting privacy concerns, it seems like the right company with the right business model could displace Facebook.

Of course you could say something similar about google and how it’s search engine is so terrible at finding anything interesting.

Maybe it’s my little anecdotal world playing tricks on my perception, but to me, the whole web seems ripe for another revolution.

martinald• 8 years ago

Agreed - though at least in my contacts in the UK, everyone uses WhatsApp (and whatsapp groups) instead of FB. People used to make a FB event for a party now make a WhatsApp group which everyone gets invited into.

I think what Facebook is very very good at is tracking the market and identifying potential competitors and buying them up.

My previous thoughts (and still are) was that FB would become a media holding company, similar to Comcast or Fox/News Corp.

The problems I now see for them is they are really starting to piss off regulators, who will probably not look kindly to future acquisitions, especially larger ones.

They also have a problem that WhatsApp is IMO cannibalising their core 'social media' offerings and I can't see how they can commercialise that product without eroding the privacy and/or simplicity aspects which make it so popular.

In hindsight I think Apple locking iMessage to iPhone was a mistake. If they'd released an Android version Apple would have surpassed WhatsApp in non-US markets where iPhone penetration is lower, and would have dominated the messaging space like it does in the US, as they'd be preinstalled on every iPhone to seed the market.

TAForObvReasons• 8 years ago

iMessage arguably serves as lock-in for the iPhone user base. If it were supported on android, many people would switch to the less expensive Android + iMessage ecosystem, likely enough to really make a dent in their cash cow

gaius2• 8 years ago

think what Facebook is very very good at is tracking the market and identifying potential competitors

Well, they did that with Onavo didn’t they? Snooping VPN traffic to see who else their users were using. It remains to be seen if they can be as astute without that backdoor.

dade_• 8 years ago

They just need a leader with ethical qualities. They have always been lacking there, and birds of a feather...

samat• 8 years ago

iMessage (and more importantly, FaceTime) is the single most important reason why I buy apple devices for my whole extended family, so that we can communicate without ads, with privacy and with proper security in place.

So that's pretty decent market strategy on Apple's end, i'd say.

ams61102• 8 years ago

It seems to me that Apple could deploy iMessage and FaceTime versions for Android whenever they wanted to. The only reason they aren't is probably that they don't want to cannibalize sales of their own hardware.

onyva• 8 years ago

Agreed about iMessage. Didn’t mind deleteting my Facebook and Instagram accounts (with couple of hundreds of followers) but WhatsApp is almost a requirement in some respects (work, school, family over seas). Would love to get rid of it ASAP for a product from a source I can trust... wish Mozilla were in the messaging business...

JustSomeNobody3• 8 years ago

iMessage on Android would be huge. Do that, then introduce a meetup feature and I swear half the people I know who "have to use Facebook" would delete their account. FB would shrivel up in five years.

fosco2• 8 years ago

isn't whatsapp owned by facebook? and instagram (in parent comment) why do people differentiate them from facebook?

to me you are still using facebook just an 'app' under facebook.

I feel this is akin to saying I use gmail but not google.

am I wrong here?

basch2• 8 years ago

My previous thoughts (and still are) was that FB would become a media holding company, similar to Comcast or Fox/News Corp.

Facebook should become a compute platform like AWS/Azure that specalizes in compute services for social services, including but not limited to authentication, spam detection, censorship/moderation tools, social graph, storage, bandwidth, localization, learning, ranking.

johannes1234321• 8 years ago

Well, Facebook has full pockets and a working cash machine. And at least until now the managed to identify threats. For example WhatsApp and Instagram were acquired. When G+ came they copied G+'s circle feature close enough with their contact grouping feature, when Snap didn't want to be acquired they added stories everywhere (WhatsApp, messenger, Facebook)

Yesterday's news tells us that competing with Facebook in the messenger field isn't easy (Google cancelling Allo)

For a long-term strategy we have to see how there diversification (facebook@work, Oculus, ...) works out and how long they can keep printing money.

subw00f• 8 years ago

I don't think you can say that about google. Care to elaborate?

eksemplar3• 8 years ago

When I google things the top results are a mix of advertising, advertising pretending to be content, the Danish wiki article and maybe a link to some short no-content post on Quora, medium, reddit or similar.

None of which is interesting.

Google is still good at finding specific things. Like when you commit an act of google programming or want to buy a book. But it’s really terrible and finding interesting content.

You could say that the web is flooded with shit, and be right, but HN is evidence that not everything on the internet is terrible, google just isn’t your portal to it anymore.

So we visit HN, but that means google has become yahoo, aol search and all those other search engines it replaced by being a combination of relevant, interesting and exploratively fresh.

I mean, 2018 was the year I adopted DuckDuckGo as my standard search engine, and it wasn’t because of privacy. Sure privacy helps, but to be honest, it was because it gives more interesting results. I’ll still use !g when I’m searching for something I know google will find, but if I’m just exploring a topic I’ll almost never use google.

kiriakasis2• 8 years ago

Too much advertising that mimic as search results. Sometimes even with the same title as the page you know you are looking for.

theklub• 8 years ago

I believe discord is replacing it. At least in my circles.

kiriakasis2• 8 years ago

Anecdotically my experience in Italy is that everyone and their dog have WhatsApp, if you go into the over 50 many have WhatsApp and not an email (or at least never check it)

leetbulb• 8 years ago

Discord definitely seems to be the preferred platform for the younger generation in my area. It just sucks that they have zero plans for text E2EE, at least the last I checked.

notahacker2• 8 years ago

To be honest I think the average person outside of tech isn't bothered enough by data misuse stories to lose access to their friends' list and shared photos.

I think Facebook's more likely to lose out because apart from messaging, its organization and events and business finding tools simply aren't that good or well-surfaced within the app because Facebook has prioritised the world of feed clickbait. Don't think it's security concerns that have my friends doing event invites via Whatsapp group threads as often as via Facebook's dedicated event invitation service. But the average person having a number of old friends whose only reliable contact information is their Facebook is a pretty big moat.

Jedd2• 8 years ago

To be honest I think the average person outside of tech isn't bothered enough by data misuse stories to lose access to their friends' list and shared photos.

If you were being dishonest, what would you think differently.

I think most people are vaguely aware their data on Facebook is being misappropriated, but they don't understand the implications of that, especially in the long term.

The challenge, and it seems most of the informed are stuck on how to resolve this, is explaining why this is a horrendously bad situation.

Just today at lunch with a phd mathematician (ie someone way smarter than me), I was struggling to get past his 'I've nothing to hide, why does it matter' attitude about fb and messenger android apps.

Beltiras2• 8 years ago

There are a lot of startups trying. Hopefully one of them will reach critical mass. I would be happy to leave Facebook but being involved in politics makes it a prerequisite to reach my audience.

hazz99• 8 years ago

What startups? I've seen a lot of messaging solutions, but not too many full competitors. Maybe I've been a bit blind

squish78• 8 years ago

I remember back when Facebook was only available to college students. I wonder if any startup would create another 'exclusive' network to increase it's perceived social value

jbreckmckye• 8 years ago

Contrary data point: over the past month three of my friends have closed their Facebook accounts - and they are not technical people. So it's not only a matter of reputation.

merpnderp• 8 years ago

I bet I’ve lost 5% of my friends list to people sick of Facebook’s constant bickering over politics and social posturing.

bwindels• 8 years ago

Whether it happens or not, if the disruptor doesn't have a business model not based on targeted advertisement, I don't see how it will be different once it becomes large enough.

My hope would be a decentralized service, where everyone hosting an instance determines their own business model, or a paid service. None of which will be as fast to iterate, and be able to crank out features as fast as Facebook can ...

elorant• 8 years ago

It will get disrupted when people realize the cost of putting their personal life online. The Cambridge Analytica incident was a good start but we need many more cases like it to start making a trend.

Puer• 8 years ago

Instagram has suffered less, but instagram isn’t really useful for anything but wasting time.

Is Instagram useless, or just useless to you? I understand that HN isn't Facebook's target market, but it's disappointing to read comments that dismiss its services and anyone who does find utility in them.

cribbles• 8 years ago

A few years ago I would have made the semi-contrarian point that Facebook[1] was here to stay, for the long-foreseeable future.

I say "semi-contrarian" because remember, even 4 or 5 years ago Facebook seemed to be the latest corporate iteration in an ever-flipping lineage from AIM lists to Friendster to MySpace.[2] So the common gospel was: "Facebook" - such as it was understood - could be toppled any day now. Remember MySpace?

The counterargument was that the market capture was incomparable and the network effect was insurmountable. And that's still true, kind of.

But the way we use Facebook has changed. In short, it's gone from being a single service with a bunch of features to being an SSO gateway for a bunch of federated platforms. And that's not just a change in user perception, it's reflective of a completely different product strategy.

That strategy seems to have worked out pretty well for Facebook so far, and I'm not sure what they could have done differently. But I think it leaves them vulnerable to any one of those platforms, or all of them, being usurped by new kids on the block.

Part of the problem is that none of Facebook's platforms are all that great in their own right.[3] But that alone doesn't make them vulnerable. MySpace proved you can have a terrible product and coast off network effect alone, while Google+ proved that without a network, you have nothing.

But wait a minute. Does any one of these platforms on their own have the network effect that "Facebook" itself once had? I mean, yeah, they've absorbed a greater user share than the 2012 webapp ever had. But that's not what I'm talking about. Is connectivity to "Facebook," and hence its network, a killer feature at this point?

To give one example: I have zero confidence anyone on Groups is a "real person," it doesn't offer any unique features, it's painful to use for anything other than reading a general quasi-chronological survey of recent posts, and it means nothing to me that 17 or 18 "real friends" happen to be a member of the group (how does that help me find a sublet?).

Right now I'm one of millions of people who "just use Facebook for Events and Messenger." Except I don't _just_ message people through Messenger, and I don't _just_ learn about events through Events, and the fact that "my friends" are "on" these platforms seems to mean less and less every day. But I'm still on them... for now... with gradually diminishing frequency... basically out of ambivalence.

Is this product direction sustainable?

[1] Any references I make to Facebook in this post refer to the core service - the website, the app, whatever you want to call it. Not the company, which I'm aware owns WhatsApp, Instagram, etc, and could potentially continue to coast off acquisitions alone.

[2] This is a myopically North American view: in Brazil it would have started with Orkut, in Southeast Aria Friendster held steady market share for quite a while, etc. The point is that we used to consider portal-like predecessors as a litmus of comparison for Facebook’s health, and now that doesn’t seem as salient.

[3] I mean, Groups _barely_ serves its job of being the sort of Craigslist-with-authentication into which it's evolved, in part _because_ it evolved into that role over time. The Events interface is totally cluttered and incoherent, and despite its ubiquity, it seems to get the lowest social engagement of any of Facebook's core products. Messenger is... fine I guess, but I have no strong preference for it over WhatsApp or iMessage, and having hypothetical connection to hundreds of "friends" I haven't spoken to in years isn't exactly a value-add.

Finnucane• 8 years ago

I still have a facebook account, I just use it less and less. And while I don't think many of my friends have dropped it either, it seems they are also using it less and less. Most of my feed now comes from a fairly small group of people.

AlwaysRock• 8 years ago

The thing to keep in mind about facebook is that the average user isnt a tech person.

My parents use facebook nearly constantly. That wont change anytime soon. I don't know if they could list a single facebook, "scandal" that happened this year. It's not that they are dumb people they just don't care. Their friends use it so they use it.

wdr1• 8 years ago

I think Facebook is benefiting from everyone having learned their lesson.

The saw their trust woefully violated by Facebook, and they'll never give another network the same access to their data again. And, thus, stay on Facebook.

sjg007• 8 years ago

It'll be something you don't expect. Maybe an iMessage plugin.

rapind• 8 years ago

I think the problem is the business model, not specifically Facebook. Are any of their competitors following and succeeding at a different model at scale?

thrwyahk11111• 8 years ago

For sure Facebook main quality is being place where every one is.

But I believe you’re wrong about instagram. Living in Brazil, I feel that Facebook and Instagram are two sides of the same coin. It keeps people interested and “connected” when Facebook is going down.

From Orkut to Facebook, it was the same.

The difference is that Facebook bought its potential competitors before they were cool

tzfld• 8 years ago

There is an intensive negative media campaign against Facebook lately, rightful or not.

mlthoughts2018• 8 years ago

Facebook has perpetrated a series of negative actions successively for a long time. A large number of people are negatively affected by the ramifications of these bad actions. The reporting of these actions therefore seems like responsible journalism just calling it like they see it, reporting on the serial perpetrator of meaningful bad actions.

Given this, it seems disingenuous and even harmful to attribute the negativity side of it to the “media” or suggest that the coordination and timing of the stories is a media “campaign.”

Nobody denies that the media can coordinate like this and probably has in the past and will again. However, there is no need to reach for conspiracy theories when it comes to negative reporting on Facebook.

Facebook is negative. Facebook has perpetrated a serial campaign of negative behaviors. The media in this case are merely just reporting that. Any negativity is down to Facebook itself for acting negatively, not down to the media.

lithos3• 8 years ago

The media doesn't "need" to coordinate on Facebook. They just need to do their job.

Reporters when doing an interest story will as part of their job research further into the subject. Facebook just happens to have a really long trail of SV mentality of move fast and deal with the consequences later. It's Facebook's fault for making themselves really interesting before cleaning themselves.

Can you really blame reporters doing their job, researching an interesting subject, and one that has so much dirt that it's easy to do your job.

janzij• 8 years ago

Glad that I'm not the only one noticing it. Last time it was Uber. Now they moved on to Facebook.

Uber didn't change much, and so won't Facebook, because the media will eventually pick another target (I wonder which, I'm guessing Google) which makes people click their links. They don't really care about reporting or about making things right, they just need a dead horse to beat.

I am happy the power of the media dwindles year after year, they should have no right to do something like this against certain people or companies they don't like. They are bullies, that's all they are.

lithos3• 8 years ago

Facebook has had a long period of time where they were boring to the media. Letting them make many mistakes, mostly SV style move fast deal with the consequences later style.

Then they got caught doing (or not) interesting things. Meaning any competent reporter will find LOTS if SV style mistakes when researching the original story.

This is just what happens to anyone/thing that leaves a trail of interesting-ness after they appear in the media the first time. Do you really expect reporters to not report on things they find, or maybe you're asking reporters to be worse at research.

wffurr• 8 years ago

Uber did change substantially. Kalanick was forced out. Adults run the company now hence fewer scandals to report on.

Self driving car division is dead in the water. They will end up licensing tech and competing with Waymo.

misiti3780• 8 years ago

Uber has seen huge changes - they lost their CEO and shut down their self driving truck division - also the head of the lidar technology from the otto acquisition was fired. there are probably many more things i cant think of

mholmes680• 8 years ago

Google seemed to have some trouble recently when they didnt show up to congress... but then it just disappeared. Facebook seems to have tried to own up to it, and its backfiring... Google must have just paid off everyone with their lobbying powerhouse to make it go quiet.

lithos3• 8 years ago

Even if there wasn't. The news would still report on this (and their other mistakes) and it would still be mostly negative.

matt40772• 8 years ago

Yeah. Just like “the media” has a long-standing campaign against hurricanes and earthquakes. It’s really getting tiresome and boring by now. I suspect it’s George Soros and his investment in better-future-futures driving this relentless onslaught on perfectly normal natural catastrophes and corporate wrongdoing.

Dirlewanger• 8 years ago

How is reporting on British MP's actions regarding Facebook an "intensive negative media campaign"? Is this not actually happening or something?

dexen4• 8 years ago

The negative campaign started when the media learned of Facebook selling data to Trump's presidential campaign via Cambridge Analytica.

It was more or less the same [edit: data / service] Facebook provided to Obama's both campaigns, except selling to Obama was seen as "supporting progressive cause" and "modern way of reaching out to the young voters", while selling to Trump was deemed a "terrible betrayal" and "hacking the democracy"; the press' opinion on Facebook turned from "that dependably progressive company we can get mutual support from" to "that unpredictable hired gun that's willing to work with anybody bad".

Think of it; nothing else has changed. The press, and people in general, were well aware for years that Facebook is collecting, processing, and selling reams upon reams of user data. It was all glossed over as long as it was supporting the good cause. Now it's bemoaned to no end.

It doesn't help that the press has natural adversarial relationship with Facebook just as much as with Google and other similar, due to the platforms being both major news channel (direct competitor), while at the same time the major source of web traffic to the news' websites, thus ad revenue.

gerbilly3• 8 years ago

except selling to Obama was seen as "supporting progressive cause"

I'm pretty sure Obama didn't use a Russian troll farm during his campaigns.

jjulius• 8 years ago

The negative campaign started when the media learned of Facebook selling data to Trump's presidential campaign via Cambridge Analytica.

You're forgetting about the part where Cambridge Analytica obtained data erroneously through a Facebook API.

SonicSoul• 8 years ago

Not sure if you’re just trolling but to say that press is attacking FB for it being used in a presidential campaign is a straw man. The issue is very specific to targeting unknowing users with fake news in order to influence the outcome of a election and how much FB was aware of this. Obama did not do this. Did nothing like this. It’s completely false equivalency to compare social media usage as intended with this shady business

owenwil• 8 years ago

It isn't a media campaign, it's that the company did countless shitty things, and they're coming to light over time. It's important, not a campaign.

jseliger• 8 years ago

Facebook has become a scapegoat: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo... for a media system that is unable to cope with its role in the 2016 election.

Once a company (or individual) becomes a media target, the media generates its own news about the company.

At the same time, most media companies cannot admit this dynamic even if they understand it (they don't).

all2• 8 years ago

Its the editor's and producer's job to make sure garbage like this doesn't happen. I lean on my (very little) experience with NPR.

Things driven by advertising seem to become caricatures of themselves... My wife an I watched this happen to Food Network in the early 2010's.

People like Paula Dean, who acted normally, began to have deeper accents, brighter eyes, more ridiculous 'Southern' turns of phrase. And it wasn't just her. It happened to other personalities as well.

In fact, I think that people have pointed out this phenomena on YouTube, as well (people conforming to some 'norm' that gets them the most cash).

danso2• 8 years ago

The NYT story likely took months to fully investigate. The current UK hearings are a result of last March's investigations into Cambridge Analytica. You believe that the UK hearings should just be ignored?

parthdesai• 8 years ago

I don't have fb app or messenger installed, but i definitely take a lot things that are said about fb in media with a grain of salt. Keep in a lot of these media houses are losing their clicks to fb. I know of people who actually get their news through fb newsfeed...

pavelrub• 8 years ago

Is every collection of negative or positive stories about X, in close proximity to each other, is always a "media campaign" governed by some hidden interests?

This is the same kind of logic as thinking that everything some CEO does is a "marketing ploy", or that every terrorist attack is a false flag operation.

parliament324• 8 years ago

It's about time. FB has been shady as shit for an awfully long time, but we're finally in a place where you can publish FB-negative articles and actually get views / no backlash.

I don't think much has changed from FB's behaviour, nor is there a coordinated media campaign against them. Rather, the general public is warming up to the idea that FB might not be all that great, which opens a window for the media to publish stories about FB in a negative light.

r3vrse• 8 years ago

Every now and then I rise above the temporal miasma of popular web culture and think: why is this surprising?

BBS, AOL, Netscape, MySpace, Tumblr, FB, Insta, Snap...

Why are we surprised by this progression? All "good" things go bad. The same lessons, rinsed and repeated. Power, money corrupts. We burn effigies and mark their passing. We move on.

Tempted to say a little more history and psychology instead of fiscal fixation would make a difference. Tempted, but no. It's not how humans work.

pbhjpbhj2• 8 years ago

Tempted to say a little more history and psychology instead of fiscal fixation would make a difference. Tempted, but no. It's not how humans work. //

I don't think profit motive is innate, we're not Ferengi!

However, things can't go on growing forever, and the rich need growth to get richer, and need churn to maintain fashion as the societal norm that feeds growth, and feeds purchases of stuff in order to fit in ...

Things that work well enough and stably and are liked are prime for exploitation for [more] profit. It's really only very few people driving that exploitation -- though perhaps many more would if given the chance.

pas• 8 years ago

not profit, but simple rational local optimization. if you were not selfish enough, you would be dead. (or your ancestors would have died before proceating.)

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

WhompingWindows• 8 years ago

Do they "go" bad or are they surpassed/replaced by better things? I'd argue Tumblr is inherently a better product than AOL or BBS. With FB, while it certainly slid over time, it also acquired the next/better platforms to protect itself against their disruption, and so it may actually be somewhat protected or given longer shelf life.

porpoisely2• 8 years ago

Facebook stopped being cool a decade ago when adults, parents, companies started using it. Like most social media, it started with the young and was cool. Then it got quickly adopted by the adults. If anything, instagram, twitch, tiktok, etc is cool. Facebook is practically a utility now.

I doubt facebook is going to get disrupted any time soon. No more than Elon Musk was going to jail or his businesses ( tesla, spacex ) taken from him. Facebook is more than facebook. It's an ecosystem. It's the preferred login mechanism of a lot of the web. Also, facebook owns Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. Nearly 1.5 billion people use Messenger alone.

The media is in attack mode against facebook. Everything from the media about them will be exaggerated and negative. So I'd take anything the news about facebook with a grain of salt.

Even the new yorker doesn't believe facebook is going anywhere.

https://www.facebook.com/newyorker

specialist4• 8 years ago

A social network stops being cool when that coworker you dislike tries to connect with you.

Balgair• 8 years ago

LinkedIn in a nutshell.

stedaniels• 8 years ago

It wasn't that the "adults" adopted it, it's that the younger generation inevitably grew up and turned into the adults.

smelendez• 8 years ago

It was both. Plenty of parents and grandparents of that first college-aged Facebook generation are on Facebook now.

rc_hadoken• 8 years ago

Holy shit, this. The whole "my parents joined so I left because it wasn't cool" isn't it. The people who adopted in the early naughts are now those very adults we speak of. No Jane --although cute-- I don't care about your baby. And is it really a good idea to put your baby on social media without their explicit consent? Who owns a child's social media presence before they do?

not_real_acct• 8 years ago

The media is in attack mode against facebook. Everything from the media about them will be exaggerated and negative. So I'd take anything the news about facebook with a grain of salt.

It's shocking how heavy-handed it is. Literally every day I see some news article about how Facebook is O-V-E-R.

Meanwhile, my friends list hasn't changed one bit, and I haven't met a single person who's dumped Facebook for more than a few months. Some leave, but they always come back.

Everything about this seems like an organized attack on FB by the mainstream media.

digitailor• 8 years ago

5 years off FB, 4 years off InstagramFB + dating apps

While living in LA and NYC, and single

Has both negatively and positively impacted my life

We don’t always go back, the assertion is biased and/or anecdotal and shouldn’t be publicly made

This is definitely a PR offensive mixed with journalist arousal and legislator outrage. Impossible to know all the actors

Read “10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” by Jaron Lanier, especially if you’re on HN but don’t know who that is

eezurr• 8 years ago

HN Mods why are you allowing click bait headlines on here? You're throwing another rock into the net we're carrying every time you allow this. Some day the master fisherman are going to get sick of carrying rocks. ie, I come here to learn from the fishermen, not the rock throwers.

I can "feel" this headline yanking my brain for attention. "How could it get worse?!" "What did they do now?!" "How was this month very bad?!" "I for sure enjoy perceived petty revenge against large evil corp".

Edit: We're allowed to have a different title than the actual article.

wglb• 8 years ago

I think that the title reflects the content of the article. The rules say that the title must be not editorialized.

This comment doesn't really add to the discussion in a positive way.

danso2• 8 years ago

I agree the headline is seemingly a little clickbaity. But the article itself is 1,700 words from the New Yorker. Because it enumerates a variety of controversies, "Very Bad Month" ends up being the most succinct way to describe the content of the article.

I don't understand "fishermen" metaphor. Whose "we" in "You're throwing another rock into the net we're carrying..."?

dang• 8 years ago

We don't come close to seeing all the posts here, so if you want us to take a look at a baity headline or some other concern on HN, you need to email us at hn@ycombinator.com. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Someone pinged me about your comment and I've changed the title now, but of course it's too late to make much difference.

ineedasername• 8 years ago

It seems like Facebook got caught in a monetization trap. They started on a model of "get the audience, figure out revenue streams later". But then when it came to crunch time on figuring out monetization strategies, they realized there was no easy answer. Charge for access? Sell your users & their data to 3rd parties in various ways? (I do wonder if a freemium model would have worked.)

Either way it's like they had a panic and got it all wrong, began considering & trying all kinds of shady things. Then to hide that fact they made it even worse, first by hiding it and looking duplicitous, then by doing even more shady things.

pers0n• 8 years ago

It’s not a bad month unless they lose 10% of their users, until then they are strong and will be around for many years. Yahoo and aol are still around

sudovancity• 8 years ago

I stopped using Facebook in 2009 when my parents and grandparents hopped on, I was 19 and felt like it wasn't cool anymore. Now I am telling them all to leave it due to privacy concerns, but hardly any of my family cares about privacy concerns and are just worried about keeping in touch. Which I understand but it is sad to see so little being understood about privacy. However, I don't see people like my parents ever leaving Facebook, and if they do, they will be the ones rejoining in a couple of days.

Internal emails cause more trouble for Facebook and its C.E.O.

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