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[/.] The Era of Facebook Is an Anomaly

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  [/.] The Era of Facebook Is an Anomaly Dario Niedermann <dnied@tiscali.it> - 2014-03-16 11:08 +0100
    Re: [/.] The Era of Facebook Is an Anomaly Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> - 2014-03-16 10:51 +0000
      Re: [/.] The Era of Facebook Is an Anomaly RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-16 16:01 +0000

#1666 — [/.] The Era of Facebook Is an Anomaly

From <http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NPP-KzJas8k/story01.htm> :

| An anonymous reader writes "Speaking to The Verge, author and Microsoft
| Researcher Danah Boyd put words to a feeling I've had about Facebook
| and other social networking sites for a while, now: 'The era of
| Facebook is an anomaly.' She continues, 'The idea of everybody going
| to one site is just weird. Give me one other part of history where
| everybody shows up to the same social space. Fragmentation is a more
| natural state of being. [...]
| [...] Imagine being a Comcast customer and being unable to email
| somebody using Time Warner, or a T-Mobile subscriber who can't call
| somebody who's on Verizon. Why do we allow this with our social
| networks?"

That's what I've been saying all along. Facebook is the opposite of what
the Internet should be. The Internet's #1 advantage on earlier computer
networks like AOL or Compuserve is *decentralization*.

Give the Internet to the masses and WTF do they do in just a few years?
They flock to a centralized, closed network and lock themselves in.

Of course.

-- 
> cat /etc/slackware-version && uname -mprs
Slackware 14.0
Linux 3.12.0-dn i686 AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology MK-36

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#1667

On 2014-03-16 10:08, Dario Niedermann wrote:
> Facebook is the opposite of what the Internet should be. The
> Internet's #1 advantage on earlier computer networks like AOL or
> Compuserve is *decentralization*.
> 
> Give the Internet to the masses and WTF do they do in just a few
> years? They flock to a centralized, closed network and lock
> themselves in.

What proportion of Internet users use Face***k?

It's not reasonable to expect average users to acquire the kind of
in-depth knowledge which took geeks years to acquire. Perhaps the best
we can do is adopt a less-savvy friend or acquantance and mentor them.
(Having said that, I recently tried this with a PhD friend, he now knows
some of the advantages of using Linux but it's clear that he'll still
buy whatever his wife tells him to, and she bases her wisdom on what her
friends have read in oligarch-owned media. So YMMV...)

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#1681

On 2014-03-16, Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> wrote:
> On 2014-03-16 10:08, Dario Niedermann wrote:
>> Facebook is the opposite of what the Internet should be. The
>> Internet's #1 advantage on earlier computer networks like AOL or
>> Compuserve is *decentralization*.
>> 
>> Give the Internet to the masses and WTF do they do in just a few
>> years? They flock to a centralized, closed network and lock
>> themselves in.
>
> What proportion of Internet users use Face***k?
>
> It's not reasonable to expect average users to acquire the kind of
> in-depth knowledge which took geeks years to acquire. Perhaps the best
> we can do is adopt a less-savvy friend or acquantance and mentor them.
> (Having said that, I recently tried this with a PhD friend, he now
> knows some of the advantages of using Linux but it's clear that he'll
> still buy whatever his wife tells him to, and she bases her wisdom on
> what her friends have read in oligarch-owned media. So YMMV...)

I agree with the sentiment of the second paragraph above.  But maybe you
have to experience something different to appreciate the difference?  I
don't use Facebook and resolve I never will.  But for what some people
like the Internet for - sharing stuff with friends - they find it useful
and fun and interesting, if not slightly addictive.  So they are
perfectly happy inside the walled garden - it's a garden filled with
stuff they like.  I see a backlash and a slip in trendiness that will
lead FB to be a backwater eventually, but I doubt it's going to implode.

1. Some are waking up to the fact that the newsfeeds lead them to feel
jealous, anxious, left out, lonely, as though everyone else is doing fun
stuff and they're not.

2. Some are finally noticing it's not as useful as they thought and
takes too much time out of the day.

3. Meanwhile, the real death knell: the youth have decided now that it's
full of their moms and dads, it's not the cool place to be anymore.

4. And finally, everyone is pissed you now have to actually pay to
ensure everyone on your list sees your post.  That's a lot less fun than
they thought it was.

Me, I just find Zuck a self-absorbed twit.

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