I have a side rant that has been bubbling in me for a long time on this issue. My city's alternative weekly paper, The Dallas Observer, switched from Livefyre to Facebook's commenting system about two years ago. Livefyre was bad but the Facebook comment system is worse. With Facebook forcing "real" people accounts, comments plummeted on stories that presented alternate takes on local stories that didn't fall into line with the Dallas Morning News's traditional power structure patriarchs (mostly land developers).

The editor's suggestion to people that wanted to comment on a story without using their "real name" was to create a separate Facebook account. Un-fucking real.

My conspiracy theory is that The Dallas Observer, and probably all Village Voice Media properties, were promised better exposure in Facebook user's news feeds if they used the Facebook comment engine. Seems like a devil's bargain to me.

I put the Facebook comment system squarely in the evil-Facebook pile.

it discourages thoughtful users who happens to have dissenting views and exposes groupthink, people who care to create fake accounts as well as people who don't care.

So I'm going to be generous and agree with your statement at face value, it probably did have nothing to do with any of the things you mentioned.

Indeed, and since the beginning of the web there have been ways to create private content. The old-fashioned solutions give real control to the user.

> Facebook is a fantastic place for web content that isn't meant to be public.

Not really, because: a) you have no control over the platform -- the notion of private can change on a FB's whim and there is nothing you can do -- and b) you have no control over whom your content actually reaches, FB's opaque algorithm does.

> Is Facebook actively encouraging this web breaking behaviour or is it a "mis-use" of what the tool originally intended

Can you remember FB ever complaining that people should use the open web for some of the stuff that goes on in there? I don't mean to offend you, but I would say that you have to be a bit naive to believe that they do not desire to turn the web into a walled garden under their complete control.

FB is horrible because it nurtures psychological pathology, not because it's not open. Everything you need to know about FB can be summarized from Zuck's generous offer to let employees freeze their eggs so that instead of having kids and leading normal lives they can work for him. Dude is gross, and so is his platform.

It's not as though Facebook is coercing people to do this in order to lengthen their careers. People will do it anyway due to a culture that already exists and because they want to; from that perspective, Facebook is providing a nice benefit for people who don't want to compromise their career. It's not for you to say that this decision constitutes "abnormal" behavior - its characteristic of a lot of peoples' rational career optimization.

I'm not claiming it's altruistic, but I am claiming it's a poor heuristic for judging a company.

Nobody is saying don't have private silos, but I believe Gruber and co are saying don't pretend like a private silo is public, when it isn't.

>...internet.org and Free Basics...

Last week I met someone who spent the better part of two years in Mozambique and other parts of Africa for the Peace Corps. He spent most of his time in areas that had little to no internet access.

He used Free Basics a lot while he was there and considered it integral to his work and sanity (in his words). Based on his experience, I would consider your specific example web enabling, not web breaking. There are many people who want to connect to the internet even if it's not the open, platonic ideal that is passionately endorsed message boards like HN.

From what he told me, his alternative to using Free Basics was climbing a tree and waiting for a signal so he could send emails for work. It's not a perfect system, but it's fairly uncharitable to call it web breaking just because you don't believe one company should have control over it.

As well, it literally is "web breaking" when one company has control over the entire network. This is not a matter of mere dissatisfaction with the current state of events; it's a description of the seismic shift in control.

But the longer term risks of facebook net far outweigh the help for your friend in Africa.

I don't believe one company should have control over the internet. In fact, I really really don't believe this. Attempting to be the sole gatekeeper of information in the modern world is in my estimation something that should not be allowed. Anywhere. Ever. I guess I can't blame facebook for trying to do this. But I recoil in moral disgust at the implications.

In Facebook's defence, there is a difference between "public" and "discoverable". They don't go out of their way to make things discoverable. That's their business and may be evil or not depending on someone's given values.

But "public" content on Facebook could potentially be seen by anyone - and that's staying true to the definition.