Walled gardens and trying to control and extract as much wealth-value for yourself, and lazily to maximize profits and reduce effort and intelligence-skill-sophistication required, goes contrary to nature and how tribes work - where adequately sharing of resources, and arguably distribution skillfully with purpose, is necessary for [social] cohesion.
Facebook was so successful solely because it piggybacked on the VC and advertising industrial complexes and was first-to-market; externalities wise though they weren't successful - Facebook and what Mark created and maintains has been net harmful to society, and arguably to a very severe degree; though he's not solely to blame, other systems and processes had to be corrupt, captured, in order for the scale of harm to be able to unfold, cascade.
Anyway, most people fled Facebook because they didn't want a single identity linked to every kind of thing they post. That's why the alternatives keep their users even when they are owned by Facebook.
Also, FB wasn't first-to-market.
Re: "FB wasn't first-to-market"
What platform then first connected close peer groups via requiring a university/college email address for login, for the platform to then quickly associated those users with each other relevancy wise - leading to the network effects that quickly launched Facebook?
(Zuckerberg knowing that there only needed to be one such platform, why he lied to/misled the ConnectU twins who were actively paying him to develop ConnectU - to which he launched TheFacebook first to get an advantage)
More or less the same thing
China runs a risk of any sufficiently isolated economy; its consumer preferences start diverging from the rest of the world's. The intentional isolation of the Chinese economy through measures like protectionism and the Great Firewall only increase this risk. It's not limited to China though, Japan has similar issues. As an example, until the advent of smartphones Japanese phonemakers were producing increasing amounts of esoteric features that only Japanese consumers wanted.
This would also apply to any App associated with Musk.
Not sure why this would be funny. Elon owns X.com since 2017.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29916995 (Jan 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424722 (Dec 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28934735 (Oct 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28711245 (Sept 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25177097 (Nov 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24246111 (Aug 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19107006 (Feb 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15892823 (Dec 2017)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14679796 (July 2017)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569702 (Sept 2016)
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Edit: dismayingly, your recent comments have been so frequently vicious that I think enough has to be enough at this point. I've banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
*And I mean force, not request.
But beyond that, it won't delete your messages. I guess they just own my words forever now.
That's a pretty weird objection. Even if there was a button at the bottom of your profile page that you could push to delete your account, there's nothing stopping that button from notifying some real person behind HN who could peruse your posting history before deletion.
> Even less privacy in my opinion.
What "privacy" are you talking about? You've posted these comments to a public website, where any user can view your entire comment history.
> But beyond that, it won't delete your messages. I guess they just own my words forever now.
I haven't read HN's terms of use or privacy policy (I suspect you haven't either? Ironic, considering the tone of your post), but presumably, as a condition of signing up in the first place, you've elected to allow that practice.
As a fellow HN user, I think it would be really bad for the community if random bits of old discussions just disappeared, making it difficult or impossible to understand the conversation that was going on at the time. I certainly think there should be exceptions; say you accidentally (or regretfully) posted some personal information that should be deleted... I believe in that case the HN mods would do you a solid and delete it. And I know that in some (all?) cases of account deletion, they'll make up a new username to attribute your posts to, which would dilute any association the posts have with you (assuming you used a name that you've used in other places).
Regardless, there's nothing stopping someone from scraping HN (or using the HN API) to mirror the content of discussions elsewhere. And they might not be in a jurisdiction where you can expect to get your data deleted if you really want to.
To me, these privacy/deletion laws are most useful to force a corporation to delete any data it has on you that it holds privately, and could use to identify you or monetize you or whatever. Once user-generated content comes into play, it feels like a different beast to me.
Yet from a site dedicated to creating the modern web, I assume modern web practices are followed.
Even 20 years ago in forums you could go through and delete your posts and edit your comments to blank. Add in 20 years of "we should be able to delete our accounts!", I had figured HN follows this practice.
Whatever, I don't care, I just make a new username once every few months.
They are not forced to make those popups because they are not forced to collect that data in the first place.
I will take those annoying popups all day every day and happily in return for everything else that's getting better only because of them and the rest of the effects of gdpr.
And it's still weaksauce. It's merely a solid start. They should keep going and do even more.
MORE GDPR PLEASE.
I cheer them on. It's a shame I have to rely on some other countries governments to do their damned jobs that my own isn't.
It's also a shame some of those same governments are also trying to censor porn. But this comment is about the cookie consent popups.
Don't do shitty things to your users and you don't need a popup.
From https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ :
> To comply with the regulations governing cookies under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive you must:
> ...
> Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies.
Defined as:
> Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what they do and why they are necessary should be explained to the user.
It's entirely possible to have a useful website without requiring a popup. It's just not how most companies prefer to have the web work.
i.e. you need to add a popup or a banner
Also, "should" be explained; I don't believe it's a violation of the law to not do so.
The pop-ups you see are the industries ham-fisted attempts to circumvent that legislation and carry on data harvesting.
A site that uses cookies for purposes intrinsic to the core functioning of the site doesn't have to show any popups at all.
You're using one now.
Every site chooses to uses a popup as a fig leaf to justify their unnecessarily intrusive data collection. Comply with GDPR rules by default and you don't need a popup or can defer it until necessary.
They regulate it without innovating it.
Just look at the amount of Americans that think that they have to request permission to use cookies. Disinformation is a powerful tool.
Governments have always lagged to regulate corporations, either because of conflicts of interest or plain incompetence, which is especially true for Big Tech.
But at least the EU is trying to some extent, which was GP's point.
> No they just made it peppered with useless popups.
The popups were a workaround the web adopted due to the lack of technical details in the law, but the law itself isn't to blame. There have been many fines handed out, which is a step in the right direction, at the very least. We should celebrate any step towards protecting citizens from corporations, not scoff that it's not perfect.
They could have gone with the do not track header, but they didn't although they still could and it would be okay within the concept of the law which just requires consent for tracking.
I'm hopeful that the laws will keep evolving in response to citizen needs, but I'm still glad I have some control over the data companies have on me, however limited that may be.
[1] In its current form, the GDPR massively helps entrench existing incumbents. Compliance is technically difficult and costly and can be difficult for new players just getting started. There should be more assistance given to startups and small companies, and pieces such as the right to access and export data should only apply to companies of 10 employees and larger (or some revenue threshold). These are costly and difficult to implement, and I know my startup is not in compliance. It would take a month just to build that functionality.
All those things are the default. It is hard to run into a situation where you risk violating the GDPR without actively making a decision to do so, with maybe the exception of the whole "users have a right to all their information/delete all their information" thing, which should be a straight-forward database operation unless you're doing something asinine.
The minute you have user accounts, you have to export everything associated with EU residents that invoke data export rights. Every table with a user foreign key.
This is a big scope.
Every upvote. Every comment. Every file upload. Even on your innocuous personal blog.
Any product imaginable quickly becomes a big GDPR data export problem.
As an example: assuming a standard RDBMS setup with a primary and replicas, I would expect that bulk operations would be done on particular replicas dedicated for that purpose. That way you aren't interfering with writes, or with the "normal" reads that come with regular website use.
If you are starting out now, and you want to avoid trouble, you just avoid collecting data about site visitors. And when you do need to collect data (perhaps you need customer accounts), then you spend some time thinking about what it means to furnish that data on request, or to delete that data. No, it's not zero work. But it's a hell of a lot easier to build these sorts of controls into a system from the start, than it is to build it in later. I don't really work with web/full-stack frameworks, but I would be surprised if there aren't built-in or third-party modules for the popular ones to help with this process.
Even with the "charitable reading", I don't agree with OP. China is ranked better on the gender inequality index than America. This would fit in with the notion of government approval and subject to government control, or lack therefore. Similar picture with self-made billionaire women. Does that mean the United States should strive for the contrary?
https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit...
I am under no obligation to pedantically cover every possible nuance in my comments. Others have done a much better job at that anyway.
For example China has done more to make lock downs impossible to happen again in the last three months than three years of trucker convoys and freedom marches could have done.
These ideas get so widely adopted for a reason, and that reason is often that a particular idea thrives in, or reinforces, a totalitarian social environment. For example, “everything apps” are a dream come true for any anti-democratic regime.
A single point where all everyday transactions and information flows through, that you can easily monitor and influence to control citizens? And it comes with free network effects that mean you don’t have to spend time eradicating or control competing ecosystems? Very useful.
WeChat certainly filled in a lot of holes in iOS such as QR code scanning (which didn’t get native support until a few years ago) so it provided a sort of OS within the phone OS to get a utility knife of features being used in China that Apple neglected. But I wouldn’t say they have complete domination of all markets.
Keep in mind QR codes were a thing in China since the early 2010s, whereas the US didn’t start adopting QR codes until the later half of the decade when Apple finally made QR scanning part of the OS… because Apple was hell bent on making BLE beacons a thing.
So our “everything app” was iOS and Apple literally held us back by 5-8 years regarding QR code adoption just because of some corporate agenda…
Like there had been the famous PizzaTool in SVR4, countless hacks over modern history with IRC, server status reports with pagers, prepaid topups over SMS, or food deliveries and micropayments with WeChat, on and on. The common denominator of those isn’t China or Asia. Sorry I didn’t post it as a top level comment, maybe I should have.
At some point, moms will once again infiltrate TikTok to make the kids not want to be there. Something else will pop up in its place, and the process will start all over. again.
Before Facebook, we had America Online, and that had vertically integrated the browser, feed readers, search, file sharing, email, async messaging, chat, social networking, and the ISP. It was so integrated with society that we used to advertise brands e.g. "Go to Keyword NBC1999" and everyone just knew that was an AOL keyword and knew how to use it.
As best as I remember, AOL failed because it only offered dial-up access for the longest time, and users jumped ship to DSL. Would something like AOL survive now?
If it does come around again, it'll be as a protection against spam, mark my words.
Its main social component, AIM, was free for anyone to use. Basically they were unable to monetize the primary social component of their network!
Except on mobile, where on feature phones AIM was a paid add on.
In some alternate timeline AIM could have become the WeChat of the west, AOL had all the needed features, but by the time technology was ready for WeChat like apps, AOL was basically gone.
They should have become WhatsApp though. Missed opportunity there.
People forget how great AOL was in the 90s, it was way more powerful than the web at the time. Great forum software, good chat interfaces, and tons of original content was being generated for it.
While WeChat was adding features, such as an independent creator marketplace, or payment systems, Facebook spent time aggressively pushing online web games that almost killed their platform.
Then Facebook started going for attention metrics above all else, and it became an app that fed people stories that made everyone angry and depressed, but did a good job increasing engagement!
Facebook should have started cloning WeChat features years earlier than they did.
Facebook's other problem is their real name policy. Having to be friends with someone to message them seriously limits how many people I talk to through Messenger.
But as it is, Facebook Marketplace is winning. Facebook events is winning. Facebook payments, no, not sure how they messed that up. Venmo and a few others are duking that one out, heck Venmo is used at garage sales.
Facebook doesn't need hyper growth, they need to just keep current user's happy and coming back for things. It doesn't matter if they aren't the #1 destination for GenZ to post photos. If everyone is buying/selling used goods, and going to concerts, and arranging birthday parties, and posting a small selection of curated travel photos, then be happy with that, and keep expanding into adjacent markets.
And separate out "people I want to talk to" from "people I want to show my life to".
I think the fact that nobody in the west has taken a WeChat like "everything app" position might be a sign that it's not necessary or inevitable.
So then ... Why should they copy WeChat? As an exercise in and of itself?
The best answer I could come up with is "domination" and I don't think that's a good reason to do something.
That's not a requirement at all. You can message literally anyone on FB, conditionally - there 'message' button is visible (exception to hackers). You can also message Zuck, even though you may not be friends with him.
You can "message" anyone you want, except that if you aren't friends it will almost always fall in some weird secret hidden bucket that most people never look at, and is hard to find even if you try. If you share a direct connection it might go through, but in my experience not always.
YMMV! In the very recent times, I've sent countless messages to members in various Bronco groups and sellers in the marketplace, I've almost always got the response.
Messaging a random person does.
Point is I want a messenger contact list that is distinct from my FB friends list.
Isn't that exactly the problem? If I can't be reasonably sure that a message I send will be seen by the recipient, the messaging service is useless to me.
Try messaging someone Facebook doesn't think you have a reason to message. It will go to a different inbox that I bet half of users don't know exists, and even those that do check it once a year.
This is not the case in democratic countries. Most people treat financial transactions and public opinion as separate entities. Commenting on amazon is way different than commenting on twitter. Integrating twitter with banking account is not going to be successful.
I think Compuserve was probably a better example. It was pretty good at being an everything app - but sadly wasn't able to adapt to the internet
(This was all back in the 90s when I was a teenager of course, so I may have gotten the details wrong, or just didn't know what I was doing when I was using Compuserve's Internet connectivity.)
On another note about Facebook, even though Facebook/Messenger is still past its prime in the US, Whatsapp is like the closest Facebook-made Wechat equivalent because that is absolutely popping off in other parts of the world like Latin America. Literally everyone (people & businesses) use it as their primary channel of interaction on a daily basis. In the US it’s still not nearly as popular.
Lest we forget, Facebook was the ONLY social network people used for a good long while, at least when I was graduating HS and entering college. You had Facebook for actual social networking, band/music pages on MySpace, and everything else was essentially porn bots and pedophiles, aka "spam city". So you have to wonder, if an everything app actually is a good idea, why couldn't the one company who had the most opportunity at the perfect time with as much funding as they could possibly need...not be able to do it?
Just because something works in China, doesn't mean it will work everywhere else. Actually, I would say that if something works in China, your best bet is that it _won't_ work anywhere else. TikTok being a notable exception.