Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

Re:Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site le... by anigbrowl on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @04:58PM (#23316312)

Not the recommendation engines. The graph. All the social media companies (and indeed Google and others) profit by putting up a wall and then allowing people to look at individual leaves of a tree behind the wall, 50% of which is grown with the help of people's own requests. You go to the window, submit your query, and receive a small number of leaves.

These companies do provide some value by building the infrastructure and so on. But the graph itself is kept proprietary, most likely because it is not copyrightable.

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Re:Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site le... by devonkim on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @09:24AM (#23322757)

The graph in itself is pretty close to privacy issues that border closely as well. Even if FB et al were government funded that wouldn’t make it good either. And said data could be considered competitive advantages but perhaps not. If everyone got a copy of various social networks’ friends lists, the number of viable alternatives would skyrocket quickly because the lock-in effect would be gone. Perhaps this needs to be theorized more along modernized anti-trust laws (which don’t work in a tech given anti-trust laws were based around trying to lower consumer prices).

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Re:Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site le... by annadane on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @07:52PM (#23317846)

Yeah, pretty much. It's easy for Facebook to claim that it's popular and the best thing going when you specifically need a FB account for contacting people

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