If he actually going to deliver "Internet access" with those drones, or is this another one of his shenanigans trying to force-feed people Facebook as the "Internet" in poor countries?
Exactly, and I've started to look at the bright side of Facebook's "centralization" of the internet: it allows niche communities (like Hacker News) that aren't mainstream to thrive again. The end of the Eternal September.
Maybe all those ignorant poor people will just use the free Facebook-only internet to coordinate long enough to build their own infrastructure. Maybe a half dozen other providers will build planes and fly them over those ignorant poor people, providing competitive options. Maybe someone will invent mind-to-mind links.
On Free Basics: "We’ve learned a lot about how we need to interact with governments and the political system and regulators, and build support in order to have these things work. And I think we’ll take those lessons forward on the future work we’re doing in Free Basics, which by the way is continuing to roll out around the world. One day, once we’ve shown that it’s a successful program around the world, I hope that we’ll get another chance to come back to India and offer it there, too."
Come on, Mark... your stubbornness sometimes works well in making product decisions, but isn't working well in this strategic context. Free Basics rolled out in all these other countries by interacting with 'the political system', regulators, governments (not to mention telecoms.) But it was grassroots activists who stopped you in India. And you still haven't learned that what we want is not better management of regulators, but net neutrality. It blows my mind.
It is exhausting enough to have to oppose telecom networks and other industries in their efforts to turn the Internet into Cable TV (by creating different tiers and segments of the internet), and meanwhile every few months Mark wants to lunge into the conversation with this nonsense. Facebook should be helping preserve net neutrality worldwide, not putting their energy and resources into undermining it.
India wants the same Internet that Mark used to create Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. Accept nothing less.
Most U.S. tech companies were strong proponents of the FCC's net neutrality regulations because they don't want telecom networks to intervene between them and their users by segmenting access based on pricing or speed. Although it seems once you are as successful as Facebook (and now, Netflix) you start thinking less of "what if the ISP wants to rip me off by differentiating access to my app?" and more like "how can I partner with the ISP to get an advantage by differentiating access to my app?"
It'll make the world a better place. Normally that would be a bad argument, but for someone who has pledged 99% of his wealth to charity it might actually be on point.
That maybe true, and Gates seems to be doing some good stuff. But these mega-capitalists are generally destroying the world with their right hands and trying to clean it up with the left.
I wish people understood you just can't go into a foreign country and do whatever the hell you want.
I think it comes down to how one measures progress. Sometimes you have to work with corrupt governments and monopolies because the alternative is really null. I'd much rather give a lot of people access to basic services than no access at all--in fact, one hypothesis is that people will eventually be able to afford standard internet service (censored or not).
Eventually, more informed citizens will demand better regulations and more accountability from said corrupt organizations. We can't do it for them, they need to do it but they must first be empowered. Hell, a lot of the people who will benefit could care less about net neutrality when they're starving and have very few opportunities!
It's the startup way--minus the complete disruption, isn't it? MVP, then iterate, iterate... A complete disruption is just laughably impractical.
Disclaimer: I used to work at Facebook, but these opinions are entirely my own.
<I wish people understood you just can't go into a foreign country and do whatever the hell you want.>
I think the MNCs (multi-national corporations), particularly the tech MNC's, don't give a shit about countries. And why should they? The cyberspace domain doesn't consider things like borders or nationalities first-class citizens. They're just trivia.
On the internet, everyone is a few milliseconds away.
The awkward part is that most of the development of internet-based tech is happening in the West, so when it's offered to the world it looks an awful lot like Western governments intruding, since the MNC's default is their home country's laws.
>And you still haven't learned that what we want is not better management of regulators, but net neutrality.
He's not a moron. He absolutely knows this is what we want. He just doesn't care, because he's rich enough from selling our privacy to buy all the mansions around his to protect his privacy.
A whole generation of poor people in India and elsewhere growing up believing that Free Basics === The Internet? Sounds like the sort of captive audience most tech companies can only dream of.
Musk is trying to fix global climate change, avoid the 1 million+ yearly traffic deaths and secure the future of the human race in case there is a planetary-size disaster.
Zuck just wants more more users, "engagement" and in the end - opportunities for monetization.
Because global internet connectivity to help the 1 billion disenfranchised, unconnected 3rd world populace isn't altruistic enough for you?
EDIT: For those who aren't intimately familiar with the Google & FB plans for global internet coverage.... you shouldn't so quick to assume that it will only provide access to facebook.com (I happen to know many of the people working on both projects). This is like the people deriding Elon for building the Tesla Roadster first for the wealthy. Progress is a process that requires strategy, planning, and thoughtful rollouts.
Sure it is! But they're not giving out Internet connectivity. They're giving out Facebook & Co connectivity.
And no, that isn't altruistic enough.
Besides the fact that Musk's plans are impressive and admirable regardless of altruism. No one is asking or expecting Musk to forego making boatloads of cash. He is and will continue to be wealthy, and that's the entire point: it's possible to do good without doing charity. Likewise, it's possible to do charity without doing good.
If you're honestly confused why a for-profit corporation needs to find a business model before they can provide a service then go back to the basics and start reading again.
Charities are altruistic, and even then it's more theory than practice. For example, when charities altruistically donate food to starving people, they can either send armed guards along with it, or watch the food taken by the local armed militia and sold for profit.
Dumping anything free into a market always distorts it, and that's after you figure out how to afford the cost of providing the free thing in the first place.
Where did I say I was confused? I only said that Free Basics isn't altruism and we shouldn't be giving Zuckerberg et al. the leeway earned by attempting to do altruistic things.
Facebook offered to add an indefinite number of partner sites to the Free Basics program. But the problem is regardless of how many sites are offered in the free data program, it legitimizes the concept of 'zero rating', enabling wireless carriers to split the internet into tiers.
Google wants to organize the world's information. Elon wants to go to Mars, reduce carbon emissions, save lives and increase efficiency with self-driving cars. Zuckerberg wants more users and for us to sit in VR pods like zombies.
Wait, so, Google controlling your access to information on the internet via "the front page" doesn't bother you. Facebook controlling your access to information inside of a website you have to visit and log in to, does bother you.
You realize that "organize the world's information" translates into "control the world's information", right? Just like "provide internet to everyone" translates into "control everyone's internet."
Google wants you to keep coming back so it can sell advertising. Facebook want's you to stay so it can sell advertising. Musk wants your eyes free to watch advertising while the car drives itself. Advertising wins every time.
The number and mood of comments in the thread is striking too. Zuck is almost a persona non grata in our future, like traditional banks, lobbyists and a supreme court who has never once read constitution correctly.
It's not so different. Zuckerberg simply came out and said 'I want your money.' whereas Musk left it as subtext. You just buy the veneer over Musk's pitch.
Musk wants to change the world ... by selling you the products to do so.
If Musk was after money, he wouldn't have started SpaceX. A rocket company is the dumbest way to make a fortune that you could imagine, short of putting your money in a pile and lighting it on fire. That he's made it work (so far) is miraculous.
That makes little sense. There's no vendor lock-in and SpaceX has no inherent advantage over its competitors, just a greater willingness to push ahead, try new things, and relentlessly streamline. The moment one of the incumbents decides to start imitating them, or some other billionaire with an interest in space (<cough>Bezos</cough>) starts their own version, they'll have competition again, if competition even went away in the first place.
For what it's worth, I honestly think Musk is just a geek who got lucky enough to be able to pay everyone else to build his toys. I don't think he saw SpaceX as an investment I think he saw it as crazy fun. If it hadn't worked out he would have gone on to build another valuable startup, since he already had a track record at that point. It just happened to work.
I don't know, VC is all about high-risk/high-reward, but there are differences of degree. A rocket company is rather higher risk and lower reward than the typical VC fodder.
Even if it was VC worthy, throwing all your money into two companies like that, when you're already rich, is not the sort of thing you'd see from someone motivated by money. The whole point of VC investing is to invest a little money in a lot of them to even out the risk.
The odds of SpaceX ever getting that far were tiny. There's a standard saying in aerospace: if you want to make a small fortune in the business, start with a large fortune.
Makes no sense. With $10 billion in net worth, if Musk sold his stock and lived for 40 more years, he could spend about $685,000 per day for the rest of his life.
Yet people think he's in this for more money. Hysterical.
This is an extremely narrow view - Musk just elicits pathos to an extreme degree because that is the inherent nature of his products. If you seriously don't think social media has brought positive effects to the world and the human condition, you are naive and set in viewing the world through the lens of black and white.
I don't know where people get the idea that "flying cars" is a more noble achievement than "140 characters".
All these narratives you're repeating--you probably picked it up from some news article or tweet--is just another way people package their own agenda. What you're saying is equivalent to saying police is much more important than scientists. The truth is both are important and it's foolish to say one is more important than another.
Basically you're comparing apples to oranges and saying oranges are bad because the guy who sells apples started a well packaged propaganda to sell more apple and you believe it word for word.
Bear in mind that this might still be Mr Zuckerberg's "Paypal Phase"; making his fortune by means of a generally-reviled yet enormously-used service to enable him to personally pivot to Great Human Projects once he casts it off.
Mr Musk wasn't known for wanting to save humanity in that phase of his life.
Except his net worth far exceeds that which is required to move from PayPal phase to Great Human Projects phase. I think you're giving him way too much credit.
He wants to spread a platform across the globe that "connects" people by isolating them in front of their screens/VR goggles. That's the grand vision in a nutshell.
I'm curious what others think about the vision for a more-connected world. While I think the positives far outweigh the negatives in abstract, I wonder if the relatively segregated and disconnected civilizations we've built until now are equipped to deal with the complexities of a more-connected world. Cultural differences, religious differences, ethical differences, etc. are all potential points of friction when you begin connecting groups that had previously been separated by geography but can now interface with one-another. I think Mark's vision for a more-connected world is inevitable -- arguably, it's something that's been happening for all time, albeit perhaps not at the pace we see today, as digital connectivity provides the ability to connect distant groups far easier than physical connectivity ever allowed. I just hope the outcome is a net positive for humanity.
Well it will happen regardless of whether Facebook does it or not. Also it won't just be Facebook, there are many other companies (and future companies) that will increasingly make the world more connected. That's been the trend ever since the beginning of human history so I doubt it will stop.
So from FB's point of view, they probably don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a more connected place than them.
Tyler Cowen made some good points on this in terms of the general spread of bad mood, where a negative interpretation of the situation in one country can spread to others where it does not really apply.[1] I think there is also evidence of a more rapid spread of bad ideas, such as extremist views that can inspire individuals to acts of violence. The impact of connectedness on enabling international crime is also clear, and we've moved from email scams to ransomware. It seems that your idea for the increase in opportunities for interpersonal conflict would be an addition to this list of downsides, particularly as the quality of translation services increases.
> I'm curious what others think about the vision for a more-connected world.
I don't know about anyone else, but giving people Facebook-only service and calling it pretending that's the same as full internet access is not my idea of "more connected". Free or not, that's an insane level of lock-in.
I knew that would be response, but a tiny handful of token free sites don't help. It's either the internet or it isn't. And guess what: it's not.
It's impossible to overstate just how bad it would be to allow Facebook to define what is and isn't "the internet" for billions of people. I'm continuously stunned that anyone would defend their efforts in this area.
I'm not sure how you'd propose to stop them from trying. They're offering a service. People will accept or reject that service based on the costs and benefits.
Can you think of a way to provide internet to everyone in the world that wouldn't involve a powerful entity who's intentions worry you? Maybe distributing mesh networking tech? Well, that would have to be developed, manufactured, and distributed, AND maintained. Who's going to do that? A charity? A consortium of charities?
The book "Here Comes Everybody" also talks about that. Something I got out of it was that it ties people down less to a geographic area and allows to them to form communities with other like minded people (or consume like minded material).
After reading it, my conclusion is that it will be negative, unless we consciously discipline ourselves because of how self-reinforcing it can be (ie we start consuming only media that we agree with, unless we consciously decide that could be bad).
While we’re in the topic of books about worldwide connectivity may I suggest Mitchel’s” e-topia” [1]. Oldie but goodie. It describes connectivity from an architectural point of view promoting a vision about connected cities that shares a lot of commonalities with IoT, only it was written 15 years before the term became mainstream.
What I'm curious to see is if anyone is going to take the opposite end of that bet: Facebook's "openness"/"World is flat"/"End of history" vs. decentralized, tribal, anonymized, balkanized social networks.
As Facebook keeps accumulating users, and as users accumulate "friends", the SNR decreases and makes the product experience less valuable, notwithstanding the efforts they make to "optimize" the feed. Mine is mostly filled with things I'd rather never see.
Facebook is a social network that mostly reproduces geographic social networks, but that doesn't connect people based on affinities. The people discovery mechanism is close to non-existent. People in your Facebook neighbourhood are people who most likely live in your current, past, or "work" neighbourhood.
Are there any social networks that try to dynamically create communities/"neighbourhoods" based on behavior? (e.g. upvote a post and you get "closer" to the poster, with symmetric behavior for downvoting, and second order effects propagating to other users based on their own upvote/downvote of said post).
Apologies if that's too vague, I'm thinking out loud here.
The only systems that readily comes to mind is Reddit.
It's amazing how you can wind up on a subreddit and realise that you're nowhere near the bottom of the rabbit hole that you've been calling a hobby for the past n years.
I don't know if this qualifies for what you're after, though, because these communities are:
* based on users actively seeking out forums based on what they consider themselves to be interested in, and
* each community is centred around a single topic. There might be a subreddit for people who love Fraggles and a subreddit for people who love pop-tarts, but no subreddit for people who love both Fraggles and pop-tarts.
Zuckerberg in 10 years will be the Internets public enemy #1. The collection of tubes in which we refer to as the Internet, will eventual converge into a single tube leading straight into Mr. Zuckerbergs rectum, in which will give him the ability to feed us all his shit.
You've posted several uncivil, unsubstantive, and/or inflammatory comments to Hacker News. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do that. Instead, please read what we're looking for on this site, and abide by the rules. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Tangent, but I'm fairly confident that voting here is often done less civilly than commenting. Blind upvoting of top comments, upvoting of shallowly positive comments, and downvoting of negative comments that are highly accurate but just not want people want to read, are a real problem here. It leads to rage commenting. It leads to groupthink. All sorts of undesirable consequences. So in HN's hierarchy of needs, I'd like to see more work on voting algos.
Spread FB to everyone so he can deliver news in headlines absent of nuance with the effect of reinforcing existing held beliefs, strengthening conspiracy theories, and increasing polarization and radicalism. Thanks Mark! Glad your hot or not prank worked out so well for you.
Something about Zuck just seems inauthentic and robotic. Maybe the style of writing makes it sound like a sponsored PR piece, or maybe it's the incessant corporate speak. I suspect the reality is Zuck is a strong CEO and weak innovator. Facebook is established and boring, and now all that's left is to entrench the world with proprietary Zuckernet. I strongly suspect Zuck will become the characterized depiction of the robber baron, but that's just my unfounded prediction.
> Maybe the style of writing makes it sound like a sponsored PR piece
I wouldn't be surprised if everything he writes went through 10 layers of PR and lawyer approval and departments making sure that it absolutely certainly doesn't offend anyone, cause any potential for lawsuits, doesn't divulge off-brand information, or hints at things that haven't been approved by the rest of the company.
"Corporate speak" is shorthand for that ^. It happens when you're the face of a big company.
The Tesla blog, Elon's contribution in particular, seems quite authentic. I wonder how many eyes see his work before it's published to the world. Maybe it's 10 layers of lawyers and PR, but the posts sure do maintain a strong level of facts and direct language. Would that be similar on his Twitter account? It seems extremely relaxed.
I believe the problem with Mark lies in the fact that to many of us he hasn’t build anything substantial. Sure, from a technical point of view Facebook is spectacular. Other than that it’s a boring place adding no value whatsoever to the Internet. There’s nothing innovative about it. He’s isn’t solving any kind of problem. Compared to other giants of our industry he seems dull and irrelevant. And so does his vision.
Facebook adds "no value whatsoever"? One billion people every day would disagree with you.
Facebook is the primary method that billions of people across the world use to stay in touch with family and friends. It's one of the most important pieces of my life and something I come back to almost every single day.
And no, I've never worked there nor will I ever. I don't own a single share of FB stock. I'm just a user who appreciates the value of what he uses, or at the very least, can appreciate the value that other people get out of a product that I myself may never use.
1. you don't have the grounds to speak for 1 billion people. you are not the whole facebook userbase. not every facebook user shares your opinions or uses the product the same way you do.
2. you don't know what the primary method billions of people use is. you're presuming and projecting. your own life and habits is not the life and habits of others.
3. it doesn't matter if your have a financial or material interest or not. this is a non-argument.
Well good for you. I on the other hand never felt the need to use the place and its privacy policies annoy the heck out of me. I also don’t like the fact that it’s a walled-in garden contradicting the essence of the medium it was built upon.
Other than that, you don’t have to be working somewhere to have a positive stance about the place. We’re not cheerleaders, we’re just opinionated people. No one is accusing you for promoting Facebook’s agenda out of personal interest. So chill, all is good.
Your claim of "no value" is clearly wrong. A consumer internet company cannot be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, have billions of users, and add "no value".
Yeah they are. Social habits and popularity are inherently valuable. Another way to say the same thing would be "what do people spend their attention on." If you capture and/or channel their attention, that's valuable.
Cause it's just a tool. A tool that promotes laziness in communication and personal contact. All for the low low cost of all your privacy so they can sell you to whoever. It's a convenient tool though
Facebook sure adds value. It connects people. Friendships, marriages, partnerships, businesses, and more exist because of facebook. I am not a user but the value it provides is real. Otherwise people would not use it (Google+).
so did myspace, so did AOL. it is just an re-implementation of existing ideas and products. Nothing it offers is new or anything we haven't had for decades. Sure, a lot of people use it NOW but that will change just like it did for myspace, AOL, and plenty of other platforms. And those marriages/partnerships/business/etc don't exist BECAUSE of facebook, they exist because people started them and now they USE facebook as a tool, if facebook died tomorrow and was replaced by a new web-based-communication-and-advertising tool all of those things would still exist and all the marriages/partnerships/businesses/etc would shift to that platform, they wouldn't cease to exist. It doesn't create any value in any sort of dynamic new way, it is just a re-implementation of the same tools people have been building since the start of the internet. Everybody survived the death of those other tools just fine, no "value" was lost.
I think the key part is "if facebook disappeared and was replaced by another tool." The important part is how many people are in the SAME tool. The value to the user of a network depends on how many other people are in that network. The same number of people, split up into different networks, wouldn't be a linear decrease in value, it would be an exponential decrease in value.
Maybe the fact that reality is clearly contradicting your intuition about value is important? 1 Billion-ish people find Facebook valuable. You disagreeing with them just makes you wrong, or maybe lacking in empathy. I didn't understand the value in ridesharing. I still think it shouldn't be nearly as popular as it is. But that's me not understanding reality; it isn't reality being wrong.
>Compared to other giants of our industry he seems dull and irrelevant
Well, that is if you only view facebook.com, the product. But the tech that it supports and develops can be pretty cool. Oculus, React, and all kinds of research stuff. A bit like you don't necessarily regard Bell at anything exciting but it still finances Bell Labs which is pretty cool.
But I realize that's not what we're talking about.
That's because the character now called "Mark Zuckerberg" is completely different from the human man named Mark Zuckerberg.
The fact that they apparently share the same edifice and orifice is a reasonable source of confusion, but nobody should be under the illusion that "Mark Zuckerberg" and Mark Zuckerberg are the same thing.
He has always seemed inauthentic to me (though quite smart in handling things). Even before "The Social Network" movie came to be, many people saw him as shrewd, ruthless, arrogant and uncaring. Whatever Facebook has done, with all its missteps on privacy and the still-flourishing-but-ridiculous "authentic names" policy that puts people at a disadvantage, will always be tied as blotches to his name and legacy (not that he needs many).
I thought there were some smaller positive changes in him after his daughter was born. Time will tell what kind of a world he wants his daughter (and future children) to live in and what he would like to be known for.
Steve Jobs did this really well. If you want to show authenticity, you need to show both your good and the bad side. All we see from Zuck is his good side and that's why he comes across as pretentious.
That's an interesting insight that I never really realized before. I think a lot of people try to pinpoint why Steve Jobs is and was so respected despite the negative ways he treated people. I may have lost respect for him through these accounts, but I don't think I've ever questioned his authenticity.
I had an idea the other day of creating a three-fold informational website.
1. How to backup your Facebook content and delete your account.
2. How to use non-Facebook services to share photos, organize events and talk to friends.
3. How to open an online trading account and purchase PUT options against FB.
In my delusion of grandeur I imagined this site going viral with the idea that if a critical mass of users decided to follow through on those steps then Facebook's network effect and user base would crumble and their stock price would plummet.
All that lost stock value would flow directly into the hands of the users that went through step 3... a legitimate capitalistic redistribution of wealth and a new opportunity for the world to define social networking is done.
I still kind of have stars in my eyes when I talk about it.
I think the biggest challenge in doing something like this and making an impact is a call to action.
Some users strongly dislike Facebook and already have the motivation necessary to execute on something like this if you made the process easy. I suspect, however, that most Facebook users are either indifferent or genuinely enjoy the service, and it will be difficult to convince these people they should cease using Facebook. Citing privacy concerns or some of Facebook's well-publicized unethical behavior seems to me like it would mainly preach to the choir.
Yeah, it's definitely not an easy sell and would require the right presentation, but I think there is a strong undercurrent of fatigue and discontent with Facebook that can be tapped into with the right message.
I think that message could energize and wake up a decent number of people and if this generated momentum then it'd feed into itself.
The fact that a measurable decrease in users could create a panic in stock price that can be profited from directly is another selling point. I'm not well-versed in investment instruments, but I do believe that spending $100 on PUT options before even a 10% drop in stock price would pay off quite handsomely.
I mean, you may like Facebook... but it's not like you couldn't create a fresh account after you make a little money, right? How much money have they profited from sharing your personal information? Every large company can benefit from a reality check...
Dunno if that message would play to more loyal users, but my mental cost/benefit analysis for this idea seems pretty favorable.
I think for the average consumer the idea of purchasing stock on a whim, let alone shorting a stock, is an alien and uninvitingly risky act. A site that asks me to follow some instructions to spend $100 to help bring down big F would send off all kinds of mental alarm bells. There could be money to be made, but I think profiting from Facebook's loss muddies the issue.
True, but like you said, most of the ethical arguments against Facebook are preaching to the choir. Sad as it is, money (even the chance of it) typically motivates more effectively than ethics.
I think if there are enough people willing to go through a convoluted process to help a Nigerian prince that it becomes a meme, then there are plenty of people who would be willing to go through the perfectly legitimate process of opening an E-Trade or Charles-Schwabb account and buying PUT options. Everything on the site would be verifiable by any financial advisor, though they may not understand/agree with the overall strategy.
And really this is just my personal musings, I have plenty of my own doubts otherwise I would be building this site and not openly sharing and commenting about it on HN.
... Of course, if some people here did think it was viable I wouldn't take much convincing to start putting it together...
I'm not saying it won't exist. I just think it'll go the way of Yahoo! (oh wait.) I think people will move on to something else. Many young people don't have an account and many people who do only have one begrudgingly.
I'd wish for that to be true for a few different reasons, but it's not going to happen. FB will exist, morph into what other services provide, and even perhaps struggle a bit to grow or to handle a reduction in active users as other services (like Snapchat) grab more users. The social media world will see more and more copying of ideas between different walled gardens. But the resolve shown by FB in keeping the platform and making it better is in stark contrast to the several bungles and lack of focus and attention from the likes of Google+ (still no vanity URLs for all in 2016?!).
Bring facebook to everyone and replace the internet. He said he was going to do it years ago and here we go, he's going to do it; a proprietary, walled internet in which you are only allowed to speak and think liberal authoritarian approved things. Facebook wants to know, are you thinking the right things?
Facebook to me just looks like a service that wants to build as big of a walled garden as it can and then feed the inhabitants whatever it wants to further its agenda. Then they just speak of it in terms of "helping" everyone.
Of all the household name tech leaders (Brin, Bezos, Musk, Jobs, etc), Zuckerberg really does strike me as the least substantial and most likely to be inauthentic. Obviously this is just a personal opinion but Facebook seems so laughably inconsequential compared to all of the companies that have made these other founders rich and famous. Apple invents incredible stuff. Google has organized the world's information in astounding ways. Musk is trying to change how energy is consumed (clown show aside). Facebook sells ads based on viral videos of cats falling off furniture and provides yet another forum for people to showcase their own vanity. It's not surprising to me that this is a guy who right before Facebook, created a website to compete with "Hot or Not".
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadOr are people just wiping his bottom because he happens to be making money (for now)?
Yes.
Come on, Mark... your stubbornness sometimes works well in making product decisions, but isn't working well in this strategic context. Free Basics rolled out in all these other countries by interacting with 'the political system', regulators, governments (not to mention telecoms.) But it was grassroots activists who stopped you in India. And you still haven't learned that what we want is not better management of regulators, but net neutrality. It blows my mind.
It is exhausting enough to have to oppose telecom networks and other industries in their efforts to turn the Internet into Cable TV (by creating different tiers and segments of the internet), and meanwhile every few months Mark wants to lunge into the conversation with this nonsense. Facebook should be helping preserve net neutrality worldwide, not putting their energy and resources into undermining it.
India wants the same Internet that Mark used to create Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. Accept nothing less.
I think it comes down to how one measures progress. Sometimes you have to work with corrupt governments and monopolies because the alternative is really null. I'd much rather give a lot of people access to basic services than no access at all--in fact, one hypothesis is that people will eventually be able to afford standard internet service (censored or not).
Eventually, more informed citizens will demand better regulations and more accountability from said corrupt organizations. We can't do it for them, they need to do it but they must first be empowered. Hell, a lot of the people who will benefit could care less about net neutrality when they're starving and have very few opportunities!
It's the startup way--minus the complete disruption, isn't it? MVP, then iterate, iterate... A complete disruption is just laughably impractical.
Disclaimer: I used to work at Facebook, but these opinions are entirely my own.
I think the MNCs (multi-national corporations), particularly the tech MNC's, don't give a shit about countries. And why should they? The cyberspace domain doesn't consider things like borders or nationalities first-class citizens. They're just trivia.
On the internet, everyone is a few milliseconds away.
The awkward part is that most of the development of internet-based tech is happening in the West, so when it's offered to the world it looks an awful lot like Western governments intruding, since the MNC's default is their home country's laws.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair
He's not a moron. He absolutely knows this is what we want. He just doesn't care, because he's rich enough from selling our privacy to buy all the mansions around his to protect his privacy.
A whole generation of poor people in India and elsewhere growing up believing that Free Basics === The Internet? Sounds like the sort of captive audience most tech companies can only dream of.
Musk is trying to fix global climate change, avoid the 1 million+ yearly traffic deaths and secure the future of the human race in case there is a planetary-size disaster.
Zuck just wants more more users, "engagement" and in the end - opportunities for monetization.
EDIT: For those who aren't intimately familiar with the Google & FB plans for global internet coverage.... you shouldn't so quick to assume that it will only provide access to facebook.com (I happen to know many of the people working on both projects). This is like the people deriding Elon for building the Tesla Roadster first for the wealthy. Progress is a process that requires strategy, planning, and thoughtful rollouts.
And no, that isn't altruistic enough.
Besides the fact that Musk's plans are impressive and admirable regardless of altruism. No one is asking or expecting Musk to forego making boatloads of cash. He is and will continue to be wealthy, and that's the entire point: it's possible to do good without doing charity. Likewise, it's possible to do charity without doing good.
Charities are altruistic, and even then it's more theory than practice. For example, when charities altruistically donate food to starving people, they can either send armed guards along with it, or watch the food taken by the local armed militia and sold for profit.
Dumping anything free into a market always distorts it, and that's after you figure out how to afford the cost of providing the free thing in the first place.
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/parmyolson/files/2016/02/1271...
He just looks so happy with his zombie army.
Elon wants us to sit in our cars and spaceships like zombies.
Everything sounds bad if you tack on "like zombies" as an empty insult at the end.
http://www.thiel-a-vision.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/fla...
Perhaps more apt:
http://api.ning.com/files/bFPh39OVQGutOnwuJRXsBubBr1Jq6O1mbb...
Google has 7 products with 1 billion users, as explained in this article titled "Google has 7 products with 1 billion users." http://www.popsci.com/google-has-7-products-with-1-billion-u...
You realize that "organize the world's information" translates into "control the world's information", right? Just like "provide internet to everyone" translates into "control everyone's internet."
Google wants you to keep coming back so it can sell advertising. Facebook want's you to stay so it can sell advertising. Musk wants your eyes free to watch advertising while the car drives itself. Advertising wins every time.
Musk wants to change the world ... by selling you the products to do so.
Zuckerberg hopes he can change the world through the side-effects of a product designed for advertisers to sell stuff.
I mean, I can't think of anything else they could do for revenue.
There is no altruism here, he's trying to create an industry where he would be the monopoly.
Even if it was VC worthy, throwing all your money into two companies like that, when you're already rich, is not the sort of thing you'd see from someone motivated by money. The whole point of VC investing is to invest a little money in a lot of them to even out the risk.
Yet people think he's in this for more money. Hysterical.
Maybe he doesn't have much of an intention. Maybe he's just sitting on top of a rocket ship and looking around and going "okay, what now?"
All these narratives you're repeating--you probably picked it up from some news article or tweet--is just another way people package their own agenda. What you're saying is equivalent to saying police is much more important than scientists. The truth is both are important and it's foolish to say one is more important than another.
Basically you're comparing apples to oranges and saying oranges are bad because the guy who sells apples started a well packaged propaganda to sell more apple and you believe it word for word.
Strange to equate 140 characters to "scientists," but what do I know.
What's the point of going to Mars, if not to share the experience with other people?
Mr Musk wasn't known for wanting to save humanity in that phase of his life.
Google tells me Zuck's current net worth is $35B.
Sure, this might be inexact, but the latter number is about 200 times larger than the first.
He wants to spread a platform across the globe that "connects" people by isolating them in front of their screens/VR goggles. That's the grand vision in a nutshell.
So from FB's point of view, they probably don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a more connected place than them.
[1]http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-18/bad-moods-...
I don't know about anyone else, but giving people Facebook-only service and calling it pretending that's the same as full internet access is not my idea of "more connected". Free or not, that's an insane level of lock-in.
One bizarre consequence of zero rating limitations is that in Angola people started attaching pirated content to Wikipedia articles to create free filesharing. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-zero-facebook-fre...
It's impossible to overstate just how bad it would be to allow Facebook to define what is and isn't "the internet" for billions of people. I'm continuously stunned that anyone would defend their efforts in this area.
Can you think of a way to provide internet to everyone in the world that wouldn't involve a powerful entity who's intentions worry you? Maybe distributing mesh networking tech? Well, that would have to be developed, manufactured, and distributed, AND maintained. Who's going to do that? A charity? A consortium of charities?
After reading it, my conclusion is that it will be negative, unless we consciously discipline ourselves because of how self-reinforcing it can be (ie we start consuming only media that we agree with, unless we consciously decide that could be bad).
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/e-topia-Urban-Life-Jim-Know-ebook/dp/...
As Facebook keeps accumulating users, and as users accumulate "friends", the SNR decreases and makes the product experience less valuable, notwithstanding the efforts they make to "optimize" the feed. Mine is mostly filled with things I'd rather never see.
Facebook is a social network that mostly reproduces geographic social networks, but that doesn't connect people based on affinities. The people discovery mechanism is close to non-existent. People in your Facebook neighbourhood are people who most likely live in your current, past, or "work" neighbourhood.
Are there any social networks that try to dynamically create communities/"neighbourhoods" based on behavior? (e.g. upvote a post and you get "closer" to the poster, with symmetric behavior for downvoting, and second order effects propagating to other users based on their own upvote/downvote of said post).
Apologies if that's too vague, I'm thinking out loud here.
It's amazing how you can wind up on a subreddit and realise that you're nowhere near the bottom of the rabbit hole that you've been calling a hobby for the past n years.
I don't know if this qualifies for what you're after, though, because these communities are:
* based on users actively seeking out forums based on what they consider themselves to be interested in, and
* each community is centred around a single topic. There might be a subreddit for people who love Fraggles and a subreddit for people who love pop-tarts, but no subreddit for people who love both Fraggles and pop-tarts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
It started as a place for dudes to see if girls had boyfriends. Now, it's all about using people's baby pictures to sell advertisements.
I don't know why women would want to use a service that is so inherently anti-woman.
I wouldn't be surprised if everything he writes went through 10 layers of PR and lawyer approval and departments making sure that it absolutely certainly doesn't offend anyone, cause any potential for lawsuits, doesn't divulge off-brand information, or hints at things that haven't been approved by the rest of the company.
"Corporate speak" is shorthand for that ^. It happens when you're the face of a big company.
Facebook is the primary method that billions of people across the world use to stay in touch with family and friends. It's one of the most important pieces of my life and something I come back to almost every single day.
And no, I've never worked there nor will I ever. I don't own a single share of FB stock. I'm just a user who appreciates the value of what he uses, or at the very least, can appreciate the value that other people get out of a product that I myself may never use.
2. you don't know what the primary method billions of people use is. you're presuming and projecting. your own life and habits is not the life and habits of others.
3. it doesn't matter if your have a financial or material interest or not. this is a non-argument.
Other than that, you don’t have to be working somewhere to have a positive stance about the place. We’re not cheerleaders, we’re just opinionated people. No one is accusing you for promoting Facebook’s agenda out of personal interest. So chill, all is good.
remember, we're talking about value for FB users, not value for FB customers (i.e. advertisers).
Reading this made me sad.
Maybe the fact that reality is clearly contradicting your intuition about value is important? 1 Billion-ish people find Facebook valuable. You disagreeing with them just makes you wrong, or maybe lacking in empathy. I didn't understand the value in ridesharing. I still think it shouldn't be nearly as popular as it is. But that's me not understanding reality; it isn't reality being wrong.
Well, that is if you only view facebook.com, the product. But the tech that it supports and develops can be pretty cool. Oculus, React, and all kinds of research stuff. A bit like you don't necessarily regard Bell at anything exciting but it still finances Bell Labs which is pretty cool.
But I realize that's not what we're talking about.
The fact that they apparently share the same edifice and orifice is a reasonable source of confusion, but nobody should be under the illusion that "Mark Zuckerberg" and Mark Zuckerberg are the same thing.
I thought there were some smaller positive changes in him after his daughter was born. Time will tell what kind of a world he wants his daughter (and future children) to live in and what he would like to be known for.
1. How to backup your Facebook content and delete your account.
2. How to use non-Facebook services to share photos, organize events and talk to friends.
3. How to open an online trading account and purchase PUT options against FB.
In my delusion of grandeur I imagined this site going viral with the idea that if a critical mass of users decided to follow through on those steps then Facebook's network effect and user base would crumble and their stock price would plummet.
All that lost stock value would flow directly into the hands of the users that went through step 3... a legitimate capitalistic redistribution of wealth and a new opportunity for the world to define social networking is done.
I still kind of have stars in my eyes when I talk about it.
Some users strongly dislike Facebook and already have the motivation necessary to execute on something like this if you made the process easy. I suspect, however, that most Facebook users are either indifferent or genuinely enjoy the service, and it will be difficult to convince these people they should cease using Facebook. Citing privacy concerns or some of Facebook's well-publicized unethical behavior seems to me like it would mainly preach to the choir.
So how do you sell this?
I think that message could energize and wake up a decent number of people and if this generated momentum then it'd feed into itself.
The fact that a measurable decrease in users could create a panic in stock price that can be profited from directly is another selling point. I'm not well-versed in investment instruments, but I do believe that spending $100 on PUT options before even a 10% drop in stock price would pay off quite handsomely.
I mean, you may like Facebook... but it's not like you couldn't create a fresh account after you make a little money, right? How much money have they profited from sharing your personal information? Every large company can benefit from a reality check...
Dunno if that message would play to more loyal users, but my mental cost/benefit analysis for this idea seems pretty favorable.
I think if there are enough people willing to go through a convoluted process to help a Nigerian prince that it becomes a meme, then there are plenty of people who would be willing to go through the perfectly legitimate process of opening an E-Trade or Charles-Schwabb account and buying PUT options. Everything on the site would be verifiable by any financial advisor, though they may not understand/agree with the overall strategy.
And really this is just my personal musings, I have plenty of my own doubts otherwise I would be building this site and not openly sharing and commenting about it on HN.
... Of course, if some people here did think it was viable I wouldn't take much convincing to start putting it together...