This might be an unpopular opinion in the tech-savvy crowd of HN, but while I agree with pretty much 100% of the points brought up in this article, I still disagree that leaving facebook is a net positive. I simply believe that as privacy violating as facebook is, as scary and orwellian their statistical analysis of my life and habits are, they have solved a very real problem for real people: social networking online.
You can argue that facebook benefits from a lock-in effect and you wouldn't be wrong, but facebook hasn't always had that effect. They must have been doing something right from the start to get that effect.
I remember around 2007-ish when facebook was introduced in my life as a kind of cool club for university kids (I think they had already dropped this idea by then, but I still remember "networks" being a thing), and joining I was struck by how it was everything that my other social networks was not. It felt "professional", it allowed a low-frequency update into people's lives that wasn't matched by IM services like MSN/ICQ/whatever back then, and as it developed it turned into a crucial tool for groups in school, events (a major thing for me as a student), and more.
There will always be people that say they don't "get" facebook, that anything you can do on facebook you can do with other technology. Well, if you're one of those people you're probably also one of those people who thought "meh" when you saw Dropbox the first time because you can easily put together the same thing yourself with an FTP server and version control. Well, the kicker is obvious: normal people who don't read HN can not. Facebook changed lives for people who "can not".
If you fast forward to today and look at how non-profits are run, how political organizations are run, how after school-groups are run, you might have a point saying they could use something else. They could, but not without losing functionality. The payoff is always "a worse solution but you get to keep your privacy". The reality is, almost nobody wants that (unless you're politically active in a repressive regime, but facebook does support Tor, so kudos to them). The basic issues from the past linger: who will host it, who will support it, who will pay for it? Are we going to use an e-mail list, a web based forum, how will we communicate and share content?
Like it or not, ad financed networks solve all these issues and people are more than happy to sell their browsing habits for that. I don't think that's changing anytime soon, because even if the minority ("you and me") may be willing to pay for a substitute to buy out our own privacy, most people won't, and then the whole point falls anyway, because the solutions will obviously not integrate.
Well, the kicker is obvious: normal people who don't read HN can not. Facebook changed lives for people who "can not".
Agreed! Too many techies are out of touch with "normal" people. "We need to have our own infrastructure!", "Why are you not setting up your own mail server?!" Duh, it's not doable for people outside of the adminsphere!
The payoff is always "a worse solution but you get to keep your privacy".
The reality is, almost nobody wants that
who will host it, who will support it, who will pay for it?
I don't think that's changing anytime soon, because even if the minority
("you and me") may be willing to pay for a substitute to buy out our own
privacy, most people won't, and then the whole point falls anyway, because
the solutions will obviously not integrate.
Agreed as well! But I don't completely follow your reasoning: I think it is our, the IT's, responsibility to build tools that anybody can use on rented infrastructure. You can automate almost everything nowadays, from bootstrapping the OS to installation of packages and administration via web interfaces. The key point is to keep control over generated data.
I kind of feel like you contradict yourself. I agree, it's not doable for "normal people" to set up their own social network services. Not only is it not doable, most people actively do not want to do it, even if they had the knowledge. For this reason, the phrase "rented infrastructure" is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Nobody will rent infrastructure to save their privacy. The only way you'll get people to pay for it is if it has functional superiority over facebook, meaning killer features. They will still want someone else to host it, support it and patch it. That becomes expensive, fast. Expensive for "normal people" who are in "normal groups" like parent/school groups, their kids' football teams etc -- organizations who do not have budget for "information technology privacy initiatives", because nobody understands what it is, nobody cares and nobody sees what the return on investment is (maybe because there is none, which techies will never admit).
I think the unfortunate truth is that people in general don't care about their data. There are people who do, but they normally have very special reasons to and they will never be a majority, unless we have massive social upheaval worldwide. Hopefully that will not happen, but if it does the technology is already there to solve that problem when it comes along.
There are many free and admirable initiatives such as "riseup" who provide communication services free of charge to organizations working for social change. There are frameworks for you if you care about your data and want to disconnect: but most people don't care. And if you care, you will move away from normal people. That's the unfortunate truth, and it's not changing anytime soon. I'm all for educating the masses, but people will not switch facebook for encrypted e-mail. Not because a lack of encryption workshops, but because it's not the same thing, and facebook is as far as functionality goes, objectively better at solving the problem people perceive.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Surely you can't be suggesting that social interaction between human beings is a "manufactured" requirement?
No. Social interaction between human beings has been going on well before these social networks.
The manufactured requirement is the need to reach to every person we ever know and share every little detail of your life with them, possibly multiple times a day, in return for their some kind of acknowledgement...
That is the manufactured need and that is what people are hooked on.
Social interaction between human beings was also severely limited for most of human history as soon as geographical distance was introduced. You don't have to look further back than the massive emigrations to the US from Europe, it completely shattered extended families. The need to communicate with the people you love is not "manufactured", what's always been missing is a well working and easy to use solution for it online. Facebook solves a problem, I don't even see a controversy in that statement. If they didn't, people wouldn't use it.
> The need to communicate with the people you love is not "manufactured"...
Again, the need is not manufactured. But the need for constantly in touch, is manufactured. No one before social network wanted that. There was normal mails, then we had telephones, emails etc etc..all of which have solved this pretty well, even across the globe.
Ideally could have an "ad financed network" that is open-source and distributed p2p, allowing anyone to install the server in their home on a raspberry pi and still be somewhat in control.
Most people don't know what a raspberry pi is. Even if you pre-packaged it for them to the extent where you only need to plug in the box and literally do nothing else, they would still ask why they'd want it over facebook. What's the answer? There is none. At least none that will convince regular people.
but there is not much money that needs to be made to recoup the basic costs of a raspberry and the energy, and all the profit can be given directly to the users and content creators.
You can argue that facebook benefits from a lock-in effect and you wouldn't be wrong, but facebook hasn't always had that effect. They must have been doing something right from the start to get that effect.
I remember around 2007-ish when facebook was introduced in my life as a kind of cool club for university kids (I think they had already dropped this idea by then, but I still remember "networks" being a thing), and joining I was struck by how it was everything that my other social networks was not. It felt "professional", it allowed a low-frequency update into people's lives that wasn't matched by IM services like MSN/ICQ/whatever back then, and as it developed it turned into a crucial tool for groups in school, events (a major thing for me as a student), and more.
There will always be people that say they don't "get" facebook, that anything you can do on facebook you can do with other technology. Well, if you're one of those people you're probably also one of those people who thought "meh" when you saw Dropbox the first time because you can easily put together the same thing yourself with an FTP server and version control. Well, the kicker is obvious: normal people who don't read HN can not. Facebook changed lives for people who "can not".
If you fast forward to today and look at how non-profits are run, how political organizations are run, how after school-groups are run, you might have a point saying they could use something else. They could, but not without losing functionality. The payoff is always "a worse solution but you get to keep your privacy". The reality is, almost nobody wants that (unless you're politically active in a repressive regime, but facebook does support Tor, so kudos to them). The basic issues from the past linger: who will host it, who will support it, who will pay for it? Are we going to use an e-mail list, a web based forum, how will we communicate and share content? Like it or not, ad financed networks solve all these issues and people are more than happy to sell their browsing habits for that. I don't think that's changing anytime soon, because even if the minority ("you and me") may be willing to pay for a substitute to buy out our own privacy, most people won't, and then the whole point falls anyway, because the solutions will obviously not integrate.