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Trust Is Built in Drops and Lost in Buckets

Negativity? Yes Facebook was negative for 20ish years and as a result of their behavior technical people don't like them.

This is not something, we are wrong about even if your "negativity here" silently suggests that.

You reminded me of something, please read this article: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/leave_my_br...

It is helpful for becoming negative to negative companies where they deserve it.

IG Farben had great technology (for that time) but needed change of name and half of century of good service so they have been removed from our memory as producers of Cyclone B. Now they are known as Bayer. And my neighbor (concentration camp survivor), while he was alive, wasn't buying Bayer products and he was quite vocal about it. Any of them, regardless of technology, different people, different products,... Guess why. Will you say he was negative?

Thats why FB was renamed and I am eagerly waiting what they will be like after 50 years. Until then, they will not be anywhere near my devices and even less filtering my sight.




For me personally they build a lot of trust back with their work on llama. Also they do have capable software engineers. But hardware is a different thing. I am still burned by their handling of hardware support for Oculus devices. To such a degree that neither VR nor AR is of significant interest anymore, never mind developing software for such products.

That said, I was never a Facebook user. I do have an account and that is that, which I tend to not use in most browser session because of Facebook surveillance.


If you are android user, dont know about Apple, 3rd party applications are full of Facebook SDK, try installing https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/releases (and pay author a coffee, he seriously deserves it) and check the domains apps are accessing. You might figure out you are Facebook user. Just nobody told you.


This was the point of App Tracking Transparency (ATT) on iOS. If an app embeds a third-party SDK that tracks you, such as the Facebook SDK, they are required to get your permission first with a system popup. They aren’t allowed to track you silently without your knowledge.


I would be very interested in learning how ATT compares with Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection. Does anyone know?


To be clear, ATT is the system Apple put in place for native apps that is enforced by the App Store review process. When it comes to the browser, I think you’re more interested in Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP).

You should check out WebKit‘s tracking prevention policy:

https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/

Also the Privacy category on the WebKit blog:

https://webkit.org/blog/category/privacy/

Specific blog posts you might be interested in are:

https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

https://webkit.org/blog/9521/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

https://webkit.org/blog/11338/cname-cloaking-and-bounce-trac...

https://webkit.org/blog/11545/updates-to-the-storage-access-...

https://webkit.org/blog/15697/private-browsing-2-0/


Yes, I am aware, that Apple is trying very hard to be the only one in ecosystem, that is tracking you where you cant do anything to avoid it due to completely closed phone.

With such a cure, you don't need disease.

That is why I was using heavily modified Android.

As I could prevent Android tracking me and kick the Google spyware out of it completely.

I am now using Sailfish ( https://sailfishos.org ) and I don't need to care about Google or Apple any more. Need to patch banking app from time to time and use plastic cards, but this is acceptable (well, not from bank software but I couldn't care less, they are free to port it to linux and make it open source /s ).

---

Anyway, the GDPR is requiring from applications to disclose tracking and allow you to chose what tracking if any, you will allow, before it occurs. Not only that, PIA cant be a payment for app usage.

So in theory, Apple is only enforcing what is already required from applications by EU directive.


Paid and provided by "Pay to win games, targeting kids, not preventing fake news (covid, human harrassment etc.), probably someone died due to lack of taking ownership/responsibility, election fraud through not acting on it.

Yes i do like Llama but lets be honest who paid for it and for what.

Just because suckerburg gives us nice toys...

He could actually start giving his money away to humanity in a relevant and meaningful way to start fixing what he did to our society.


I don't think we need more billionaires giving their money away. I think they and their companies need to pay tax properly so we can vote on how it's spent.


> Paid and provided by "Pay to win games, targeting kids, not preventing fake news

Guess what? New iOS features and YouTube videos are paid-for and provided in the exact same way. Both Apple and Google are complicit in spreading misinformation, advertising to kids and profiting from lootbox/microtransaction revenue. But nobody consciously objects to Apple for partnering with Taboola, or Google for supporting extremism on YouTube. No sane critic lashes out at Tim Cook or Sundar Pichai demanding they donate their life savings to offset the obvious damages they've created.

I think Meta and moreover Facebook is a purely detestable platform. It's absolutely hilarious how unwilling this website is to apply the same criticism to their other favorite services. The cognitive dissonance is arresting.


To be fair, you don't know what the poster believes about those services either.


That's true, but my stance frankly wouldn't change if they also thought Google and Apple needed to spend the rest of their existence as a charity case. My point is more that it's a silly measure of damages, since this behavior is table stakes in the FAANG echelons. It's like saying that we should reject Open Source contributions by Google and Amazon because they pay their engineers with money made off exploitative server deals. It's a reach.


I don't really understand your point. Company A is corrupt, the company B and C are corrupt too (and D, E, F,...). We have 3 corrupt companies. Why would here be any problem saying that company A is corrupt? Or from another perspective, why would be A less corrupt if B and C are doing the same thing?

Open Source contributions are there for three reasons. Either the license requires it (Google Fuchsia is a step into avoiding this and keep next generation hardware close source), it is a public relations stunt or they want other software developers work for them for free (which is also lowering the wages for their developers).

Never ever mistake any company that has public stocks doing anything else but earning money for the stock owners. As they didn't buy the stocks to support charity but to earn money, which is the greatest reason why their products are worse deal for their customers on y2y basis.


Apple is responsible for plenty of death in foxcon companies.

Google, is a lot different than Apple or Facebook. Google did a lot for our society through Android, Google maps, https, Gmail, Kubernetes and Search.

YouTube had a problem with fake news and especially the algorithm (flat earth etc.) but they actually acted on it a lot faster than facebook ever tried.

But yes pls don't assume something without knowing were my viewpoints are. There is no cognitive dissonance but we talk here about facebook and not about every other companie on the planet.


I have made my peace with React (I know I can draw anything I can imagine with it, which I can't say for Vue, I can even draw 3-d worlds) but many people think React ruined web development.


In American history books we just call it Zyklon B.


Did you just compare a Silicon Valley tech company selling ads to IG Farben? It’s very hard to take this post seriously even though your point stands.


Why are you downplaying them as “a tech company selling ads” when the most relevant characteristic of theirs is facilitating genocide in Myanmar, then obstructing the investigation, and fuelling ethnic violence in more places like Ethiopia?

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/07/facebooks...


I'm not sure exactly what the extent of the "facilitation" was in the first link, so what I'm about to say might be a little vague, but the second doesn't appear to be about them covering up their role in said "facilitation", but rather their refusal to provide so much user data to The Gambia looking to prosecute Myanmar officials for war crimes.

The way you've phrased that makes it sound as though Facebook were trying to hide the actions they took to facilitate things, which I think is a miscommunication.


I think the Myanmar experience has a lot to do with why Facebook tries to disappear politics talk on Threads. I mean, negative talk about your neighbors is how political violence starts.

People on the Fediverse get high and mighty about the Myanmar incident but in a Fediverse world the Myanmar government would have run the big instance in their language and would have defederated anyone who tried to stop them, alternately outsiders could have defederated but then they wouldn't have any influence.

Fediverse folks could have refused to run a server to support genocide but there is no way they could stop their software from supporting genocide. A centralized system like Facebook does have more control and more responsibility but when they took that responsibility later on Myanmar kicked them out

https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-censorship-virtual-privat...


Why ? The discussion is about fixing brand reputation, and he quotes probably one of the most disgustingly successful rebrands in history. If even IG Farben managed to successfully rebrand, surely a company that just went "a little too far" with private data, can too. Looks quite on topic to me.


It’s a level of hyperbole that could only be taken seriously by an autistic person or someone in tech. That’s why.


Not only my point stands, I still remember a world almost without narcissists, people traveling for fun, not to take a photo to brag, times where people listened to doctors not some people recommending horse dewormer, UK not suffering due to Brexit consequences ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8425058/ ), people actually bonding in person,...

Or in words of Umberto Eco ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco ):

“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”

You are underestimating the horror that Facebook did to human society. I am accusing them of crime against humanity. And all that, just for selling ads - where you will be able to see the comparison with IG Farben, do whatever it takes, to earn money.

I accept the argument, that if they wouldn't, someone else would, but nevertheless THEY did it or we would be talking about someone else.


Even if you don’t like it, idiots do have as much right to speak as any Nobel Prize winner. Not only that, the more they speak, the better, as the chances of stopping being an idiot increase. All Nobel Prizes were at some point also idiots, if they’re still not idiots today about some topics.



This reeks of nostalgia. The past wasn't as great as you remember it, and the present isn't as terrible as you think it is.


Nope, I am quite rational here and if I wouldn't witness change in society, I wouldn't believe it. I am seriously worried for humanity, as what I am seeing today is: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808 (and this was shot in pre-facebook era)

Fun fact, they didn't have large budget for shooting so they were searching for footwear that would look futuristic. They found some unknown company producing cheap "shoes" so horrible that the director wasn't worried for it to succeed as "no one would wear that". The company was Crocks.

https://media.snopes.com/2023/09/idiocracy.png

Anyway, this whole thread is actually proving my point. It wouldn't happen before Facebook.


Go back to any random year in human history and ask the older people whether they think the world was better when they were young. They will all say "yes" (evidence for this exists in countless survived writings, as well as other social phenomena like people becoming more conservative as they age). It's one of the most natural things in the world.

That alone should be a very strong signal that maybe your nostalgia is not based on a rational unbiased observation of the changes in society.

edit: and to be clear, obviously there have been times in history where things really did get worse for a period. But if you're proposing that that's happening now, you have a massive burden of proof to overcome, and you should be absolutely really totally sure that you're not being influenced by rose-tinted glasses. Which I'm not even sure is possible.


I understood immediately where you are pointing. And I wish you would be right.

Correlation does not imply causation.


So what? You believe the world has gotten worse every year since the beginning of time? Or is it that all those older people throughout history have been wrong, but somehow it's you that's finally gotten it right?


Whatever. I don't have time to fight every logical fallacy you produce. I think I have explained it well, there is no need for me to bother with everyone who doesn't understand it.


Your Kaczynskian wall of text sure told em.


Fair that perhaps they (the director specifically) thought that (they look like something nobody would want to wear) about Crocs. Heck, I thought that back then, many did. So perhaps that's why Snopes is saying it's true.

But Crocs had actually become somewhat popular already before Idiocracy.

The more realistic full picture explanation being that they chose something that they or someone on their staff, like many "look at those idiots" types (myself at the time included), already knew and considered a stupid trend is much more likely. It doesn't at all negate that they in fact thought nobody with taste would wear those shoes, but I don't think that choice was entirely made in isolation not aware of the trend.

The effect of watching the movie and seeing Crocs worn was yet another of those pieces of evidence that the stupid people of today connect to that fictional future world, like all the other stuff on the movie dialed all the way to the top (energy drinks, corporate sponsorships, etc.)

The mere fact that someone knew of Crocs, thought of them, and chose them because of their ugliness, means they were popular/successful enough to pop up on someone's radar, despite them ostensibly not being something that would be worn by anyone. Perhaps they didn't know how much more popular Crocs would become but they for sure must have picked them as an artifact of things already going in a weird direction (Why can you get this? Who would want this? Someone must, these will be the stupid people of tomorrow.)

But also, actually, so what?

Look at some of the fashion of past decades older movies. Some of it is cool but a lot of it is super ridiculous.

And if you look at Crocs, are they really objectively stupid? Treating them as a high fashion item probably is. But they are versatile and robust, good for many types of use cases were people used to wear other types of cheap plastic sandals. People wearing leather shoes surely thought sneaker were stupid until they became so mainstream that they were evaluated more objectively.

Citing idiocracy and Crocs seems like a very weak argument to your case and even Idiocracy's point (fashion choices don't indicate the world is getting stupid). Mind you I'm not disagreeing that things have gotten worse in many ways and social media is definitely not helping. OTOH, Facebook actually was somewhat reasonable for a long time, and useful to connect with people. Only once the Twitterification of it started did it get so bad. But somehow Twitter never gets the bad reputation.


No. Crocks became popular after Idiocracy. Check the year they were shooting as it took them a few years to release it. Chat with Mike Judge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBu_RpKqCg8


Yep


At most, it just laid bare to see what were the normal social interactions and thoughts of millions of people and made possible far more viral spread of ideas. On the last one, I don't even think it's social media's fault, it's probably the whole internet at large, it's just these sorts of interactions happen most there.


I have been active on internet forums since the mid-late 90s. Facebook and Instagram and their other social media didn't create any of those bad human traits, they were rampant to begin with.

What these normie-networks did do was make a UX for public posting so easy that scores of low-education users were able to be influenced and re-share low-infromation-quality stuff in huge magnitudes. FB is guilty of making a super accessible user experience, and then in not being aggressive early enough in having high standards for its userbase. But it didn't invent society's ills.


I found myself stepping back from social media and deleted a lot of my accounts in 2016 -- the election and the Cambridge Analytica thing was a big reason. LinkedIn could have been the worst because I had spent so much time promoting myself and prospecting, I met a lot of good folks but I also met so many bullshitters who helped make me into a bullshitter.

The influx of normies circa 2000 did not seem so bad to me but Facebook and Twitter were another thing.


I was thinking a lot about it, but at the times of IRC and forums (and modems ;) ) this was not an issue on society scale. Facebook actually revolutionized it and made it available to anyone including showing the more contraverse opinions to other people as it was more likely for them to click. They were/are literally pumping up all the bad in society, to earn more money.


My point is that the less savoury aspects of human interaction were still happening, just not in the open. The popularity of the internet as a medium of human interaction just made it visible, recordable, searchable and pressed the gas pedal. I wouldn't particularlyblame FB for inventing this.


So your argument is that making computers and the internet easier to use for normal people is cause for societal destruction? I can’t be convinced, but that does seem like more of an indictment on people than it does tech.


Not my argument. You are fighting Umberto Eco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco ) here.

Let me repeat him as you probably didnt catch it (I dont understand how, but this is one of the things, I dont understand, so I wont argue about it):

“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”

I can just confirm that what he has seen and described is correct. And the more that you are standing your ground, the more you are proving, he was correct.


His entire argument amounts to Eternal September[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September


The tech company that got Donald Trump elected, and helped make all of our grandparents into lunatics?

That Facebook?


Wasn't that Twitter? You know, the site he actually used?


2017 called they want their meme back.


You remember that Facebook customer who got sued for breaking privacy agreements and profiling FB users? That’s the most public one.

Also the Russians sitting around posting on social media meme is still actively in use. I’ve seen it at least a handful of times this month


facebook has not been negative, they notably refused to play ball with the antipoaching agreements with other big tech companies in the bay, and technical people such as myself greatly respect them for it


Facebook still has 3B happy users.

It's only privileged, highly-paid coastal elites that hate FB.

Zuck, can literally say GFY as they don't matter in the broad scheme of things and innovations.


My non-computer-nerd midwestern friends, some of whom are blue collar and zero of whom are anywhere near making coastal FAANG or finance money, all hate Facebook.


Yes, but are they on Instagram though?


Why is this an argument? First of all x many people using something doesn't necessarily mean something is good (network effects if not fake accounts) but also buying up competition is somehow seen as a positive?


Oh, yes, because that’s how network effects work. Every single one would be happy if Meta and all its properties folded tomorrow, though.


Ummm sure buddy. Let's bring anecdotes vs real world data


Where’s the data?




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