SaintSal

Maybe we were just too early.

When I first wrote that post, years ago, I expected most people to ignore it as tinfoil-hat stuff. But as time has passed, people are becoming more aware. (Also, the implications are becoming more costly.)

I no longer write off the non-technical public as "they don't understand/care."

This gives me hope that alternatives can work, even alternatives that require network effects. (Though, I think the best alternatives won't be another social network but something more akin to easy ways for people to run their own group communications. I don't think a me-too will win here, but something more of a leap-frog.)

Musicians find gigs through it. Businesses list specials, trips, blogs, etc.

Also students are highly reliant on it. These types of loose connections but strong network effects are hard to break.

However... > Way cheaper than sending out a snail mail newsletter or even managing an email list.

This is true less frequently. Facebook used to be a good organic channel to build, but now FB is forcing more payments, by forcing ads to FB pages, and then again for boosting posts on those pages. Plus, the costs are rising.

Groups of people who had lost contact in high school have gotten back in touch in retirement

I experienced this too, but I also had a controlled test, since I wanted to track down some high school friends who weren't on Facebook. Turned out not to be so hard, and caught up with a bunch of other old friends along the way. :)

Sometimes the alternatives offer other advantages we don't see if we frame the problem as replacing what we have now exactly.

Creating an account with a fake name doesn't help. Facebook will ascertain your real name through a combination of: - knowing who you communicate with - tracking your online behaviour (on and off site) - collecting your name and contact information off your friends devices and accounts

Even if you provided a fake name, you still agreed to the TOS, so they can proceed as if you're still bound by the legal implications.

Salim here. I agree with the 'mindlessly easy' part. I've noticed the lack of convenience, especially in sharing the little moments.

As for replacing a personalised news feed, I still use Twitter and find that email newsletters, especially curations like getrevue keep me well-informed on professional news.

As for a personal feed, I found that Facebook wasn't really that great - lots of noise and I still missed things I thought were important. I haven't found a replacement, but didn't feel the need to replace something inadequate.

I'm the guy who wrote that post - My guess is the front page might block urls that have been posted before. This post finds its way to HN every 6-12 months as a fresh post.

Still, it's really nice that it still gets attention from the HN community, and even nicer that each time, the discussion is more productive and inquisitive.

The issue with technical interventions is that you're still allowing FB to collect information on you via other means via their TOS. I haven't read the latest TOS but at the time I did, they could trade your data with your bank because you've allowed that.

Would love your thoughts. This has been a side project for a while, but thought I'd kick it out and see if it's worth giving it some more attention. The approach was to find the mentors that moved the needle on the top performers in different accelerator batches, and ask them how they mentor. Would we fun to keep interviewing and add more content, but the book needs to be financially viable for more time investment to make sense...

Thanks - I'll update the post.

If only we could have webpages on our mobiles, eh? :)

Thanks - that's helpful feedback for me to see how this can be read. I think that even if someone doesn't have anything to hide, there are still issues that are relevant to them. So that section is just to address the issue from that perspective.

I thought of this too. The problem is that adding noise doesn't throw off the existing signals. All you can do is try to introduce new patterns, like try to convince the linear regression that you're left-wing and right-wing. Random data won't do that though; you'd need to know what patterns to recreate. A lot of effort, and as you say, pretty paranoid given one could just optout and block web trackers.

Sorry - I just picked a theme and never thought to browser check. Weirdly, I run FF on Linux and it looks okay. Anyway, I'll try to tweak the font. Thanks for pointing it out.

Thanks for raising that. I've clarified in the post:

There are marketplaces to buy and sell consumer data orginally started around credit agencies and direct mail companies, then growing with the browser toolbar industry when Internet Explorer was big - now they're filled with more information than ever before.

http://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-w...

When I worked for a direct marketing arm of the agenccy JWT, we had a bunch of "list augementation" services for our clients' customer lists. Back then, they were used to derive and clean contact information, and glean insights into people's psychology via course methods like correlations to their postal code. (This was surprisingly accurate in Canada, but didn't work as well with US ZIP codes.)

That said, I'd love to hear from a modern insider too. I've just extrapolated.

Good point, thanks. I should be clearer - Facebook sells ads but reveals data to third parties, who sell data.

Good point on it sounding nutty though. I just added a reference to this http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-22916329

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/02/03/facebook-linkedin-g...

I think I had a few more in the sources section at the bottom of the post too.

They've introduced an optional feature that records media around you. Based on their past record of changing defaults, I think it's a reasonable possibility that this feature will be turned on by default in the future.

wyck - I quickly wrote this for my immediate family and posted as-is. I'm actually a big fan of Thiel and see the positive sides of the theory as well. To someone not from our tech startup world though, I wanted to be clear about the politics of the people behind the service, and the possible implications. Facebook is a business, and it likely has a political agenda behind it.

I'm sure you're a nice person. I also honestly think that Facebook, the NSA, Al Jazeera and even Cheezburger are full of nice people who want to make the world a better place. (Maybe not FOX news though. :) ) That doesn't necessarily condone what their organisations do.

tl'dr; A couple of months back I posted an article about Gmail retention (see here) in which I showed that Google not only saves copies of your unsent messages, but virtually every iteration of any message you type is potentially saved by Google. This means that it is available by subpoena to Google from whichever entity sees fit.. [With Meilvelope] Yes, your email message is encrypted. Yes, anyone attempting to intercept the message won’t be able to read it while either in transit or looking in your sent folder. Yes, this makes you feel warm and fuzzy because you’re using encryption until you understand that, yes, Google still has the pre-encrypted message sitting on their servers. Not only this, but they saved multiple copies while you were typing your message.

I created an email list if anyone who wants to be updated: http://eepurl.com/FeE2z

I also see the potential for global companies -

Some of the stories I've heard around African Fintech point to a more grounded approach, with systems built around political redundancy and growth coming from old-fashioned cashflow.

I'm hoping to learn more about this, as there's potential for us to learn, not just teach, and potential for these companies to jump the chasm into Western markets, where the finance system is getting shakier.

Perhaps the first Antifragile Fintech startups will come from emerging markets.

Having spoken to a few charities, there's potential that the accelerator model could offer them a bigger bang for their buck. So it feels like there's potential to work with them to get things rolling, which means we can focus on startups that focus on customers and fundamentals, not just startups that choose the investment path. (This was actually the goal of Founder Centric when we started it!)

Ha! That's funny. But seriously, we're talking about using tech to solve education, distribution and financial problems.

"Our Academies programme is rooted in the conviction that effective indigenous leadership will be the key to progress in the developing world... "

I like this attitude. A lot of our accelerator clients ask us with a kind of cultural change, from bring protective of ideas, to being open and inclusive. This is easier when there's a local community of experience tech founders to connect - so we can include the new founders and they feel safe sharing.

I'm wondering how/if AKDN has a similar goal, or if they look for existing, indiginous attitudes that help others take on the right attitudes...

Thanks! How can I learn more about what you're doing?

"people just need a gentle steer in the right direction and a little positive encouragement" I'm interested in what you mean by that. To help me better understand, are there particular stories you're thinking of behind that advice?

This is a great idea! Remote techies could get projects off the ground faster, and then act as technical mentors to enable the local founders to progress faster.

The timing might be fine. There's a lot of pre-investment groundwork I'll need to do, and ideally run an MVP, before there's an established investment opportunity. Things going a bit mental atm, but I'm looking forward to getting back to you on email! Thx!

Plan A is tech, particularly web-tech on mobile, since the whole FirefoxOS/tablet thing looks promising.

We've done a decent amount of training for general entrepreneurship in London, so I'd keep my eyes open for ways to help general entrepreneurs too.

Good point - that's why I really want to go and see for myself, and talk to people who have. Also, I'll be watching the FirefoxOS marketplace for apps that aren't ported from other mobile platforms, but built around grassroots needs.

In the same way that the likes of M-PESA enabled a group of tech founders, like in the pan-African transaction networks for example, there are untapped needs in food distribution and other "last mile" inefficiencies where tech could help. My feeling atm is that we can borrow lessons from vertical accelerators like HealthBox, for example, and speed up the time to get to a rapid field trial.