To my understanding Wikipedia is extremely well off financially on just the backs of donations, it's inherently a monopoly, but it is not tending towards evil despite having solid MRR.
I'd call it a monopoly by the same standards I'd call Facebook one. It's the only general-purpose encyclopedia on the internet that any person has heard of. It found a need and met it so perfectly that nobody would ever bother try to compete with it, because not only does it do its job near perfectly but it's also free and open source.
And they're not making Facebook money but they're making far more than small business money.
My point was to be that maybe Wikipedia is a case study in how to make a lot of money without sacrificing your virtues, that maybe there are more specific factors that drive other businesses towards being evil besides just having tons of money.
Over time wikipedia trends towards inequality of participation. This includes access by scholars and researchers. [1]
It also shows (seemingly regularly) political and religious bias worldwide. [2]
Wikipedia also seems to regularly be a platform of misinformation. Mass purging of sources. And delisting of accurate information. [3] [4] [5] (sources taken at random, too many to list.)
Wikipedia will always have problems, IMO. It's in it's nature. When I was a kid I would read encyclopedias like the other kids would read comics. It's clear to me that it's best to use Wikipedia as a conduit to sources, not as direct reference to fact.
I think calling this a threat is hyperbolic and intended as clickbait (it's working). All this is doing is reminding people that IG/FB is free and that this helps their revenue.
It's just bluster. No way Facebook/Instagram is writing off a quarter of the world's smartphone users (who also probably on average have a higher net worth than the remaining 75%).
Since the payments would have to be made through the App Store platform (unless Facebook forced the user to subscribe through a web browser) Apple would most likely be profiting though.
"would have to be made through the app store platform" not necessarily. Netflix operates through the app store and doesn't sell subscriptions on the App Store as a big FU to the 30% gouge...
Could Facebook make it happen and profitable in a way to get around Apples rules? I think so... I think Apple would change the rules shortly after though...
Yes, that's why I mentioned Facebook forcing users to subscribe through a web browser as that would be out of Apple's control.
AFAIK the rule is that users can subscribe to a service/product outside of an app and use their account's status on the app, but if the user wants to subscribe from within the app they need to go through the App Store subscription service.
I wonder if Apple's motives were mainly this all along. It's a brilliantly capitalistic move if it was. Either way, props to Apple for fighting against zuck. To me, it seems like he's taken way too many liberties with people's data all under the guise of disruption and making the world a better place.
If you are seriously considering paying for the poison that is Facebook, might I recommend you delete your Facebook account instead, and give your money to someone that needs it?
Maybe OP is suggesting everyone pay $12 to take down Facebook?
The method needs articulating as everyone on earth paying US$12 wouldn’t get close to buying them out and shutting them down.
Yeah empty threats all around. If only there was a way for google to follow suit. Personally this is enough of a feature for me to switch to an iphone as my next phone. And I've been an android user from the start. Even enough to advocate for it as well.
The fact you even have to go to such lengths, and that a mainstream browser even developed such a feature is such a red flag. It's like taking Tums after ever meal. There's something wrong there, and I hope users are taking a hard look at those hoops they jump through and determining whether it's really worth it or not.
I'd love to never touch facebook again, but my 80 year old mother uses it and won't give it up because its how she stays in touch with all her friends, and I'm kind of stuck with using it to communicate with her.
I also suspect that through browser fingerprinting that facebook can track everyone across the web anyway, particularly people who run a lot of customization on their desktop (O/S, graphics card, fonts, config settings, etc) that shows up in the fingerprint. If you're visiting sites which cause you to make requests to facebook servers you're leaking information to them, even if you've deleted your facebook account (and they can probably still track who you are).
>If you're visiting sites which cause you to make requests to facebook servers you're leaking information to them, even if you've deleted your facebook account (and they can probably still track who you are).
This is an important point that raises the question of threat model.
For me, the threat is not "Facebook can track me," in the same way that my threat model doesn't include state-level actors. Because, let's be real, Facebook is as good as a state-level actor.
The threat is in showing me ads or content that modify my behavior. For this reason, I:
* Block facebook/insta at the DNS level
* Don't have a Facebook account
* Block all ads
* Block all comment sections, like buttons, etc
I know this isn't something everyone can do. I know that there are tons of people out there who find value in Facebook. I just hope they are taking steps to at least block ads and are aware of when the platform is manipulating their emotions through targeted content, and have the sense to walk away from it from time to time. Perhaps that's asking too much, but I'm not going to stop making noise about it, not going to stop telling people they need to watch what they post / look at, because I think the platform is really damaging to people's attention and mental health.
For your grandmother -- I doubt it's making her buy stuff (fixed income) and I doubt it's making her turn to rage-tweeting about politics, so it's probably OK. And you're probably OK, too, being someone in tech who knows how this shit impacts people. But everyone else? I just worry, y'know?
Certainly made me happy about my wife and mother using iPhones. Maybe they'll start to listen to me :)
That said, I think the downside is still the walled garden. If Apple F/OSS their OS and let people modify it, and load applications outside the app store, I'd consider changing.
Until then, Lineage without Google apps is still a nicer experience than the walled gardens. For example, the Nexus 6 is still maintained (2014). It even recently got updated to 18.1 which is Android 11! Amazing.
Edit: Wow the Note3 and the LG G2 are still supported, too! They're from September 2013!
The walled garden is what makes things like this possible. If there wasn't a walled garden, Facebook would just say "we're shutting down on the Apple App Store, come download the Facebook App from the Facebook App Store" (or some other random third party App Store) and then all of the work Apple is doing to neuter these tracking mechanisms would go right out the window.
I view the walled garden as nothing but good. Build the walls higher. Hand me a brick and point me to the ladder.
At which point almost nobody would download Facebook, just like almost nobody uses anything except the Play Store on Android. Also Apple could easily implement blocks on the OS level. The walled garden just lets Apple siphon 30% alongside anti-competitive practices.
Until other companies also move to a third party App Store. Why wouldn't they?
And I'm fine with Apple siphoning off 30%. Make it 40%! I'd rather developers stop developing for iOS than to see any large changes in the App Store model. There are enough apps as it is.
> Until other companies also move to a third party App Store. Why wouldn't they?
While I don’t know the exact reason, this isn’t what’s happened on Android, which has always allowed multiple app stores. Everything mainstream is on Google’s Play Store, and quality FOSS apps get published to F-Droid. My theory is that users shy away from sideloading alternative app stores, even if it’s not very difficult to do so.
The Play Store takes 30%, in addition to their own set of restrictions. Surely 30% must be a large motivator for some mainstream apps moving to another store - it just turns out few users on Android will go for that.
Because 30% is big money. FB might be able to compensate enough, but plenty of apps can't. There should have been enough pull to have a SpotifyStore and an UberStore, or even a SpotifyUberStore. Yet it doesn't happen at all.
Everyone will still have to use Apple's store, especially given Apple PR makes sure to promote a cult-like adherence to anything Apple. Even fortnite couldn't survive outside the Play Store. It doesn't happen on Android, why would it on iOS?
The only thing a 3rd party store support will do is to ensure Apple couldn't abuse FOSS apps too much in their review process.
You can't realistically keep apps from tracking users without permission unless you're rejecting apps that are discovered to be doing that. If they have network access, they can track. The behavior is too abstract to be handled with permissions alone.
The apps cannot track if they have no permission to access the respective APIs that give them data they are tracking. What are they going to send via the network? Only things that the users specifically give to the app.
Look up what the Apple's tracking-prevention policy prevents for users that don't opt-in to tracking. You cannot ban generating device or user identifiers with OS permissions alone. Prevent using the built-in ones, sure, but fingerprinting or otherwise creating device or user IDs to share with 3rd parties and other apps? I'd love to see what a permissions model would look like that could do that automatically, at the OS level. I don't think such a thing exists. Not for any app with enough access to the system to do anything remotely useful in the first place.
Getting sued for stealing software from the users, and for interfering with the business of the suppliers, neither of whom have any agreement with Apple to let them ‘reject’ software arbitrarily.
Apple would not be 'stealing' software. Nobody promised that OSX could run any software the user wishes. Does Apple steal software and "interfere with the business of suppliers" every time they break backward compatibility?
They just need to time a new policy to a major release (say they make it apply only from that release on), and that would be no different then any other breaking change.
It wouldn't be popular on HN, but it's technically possible and legal. I'm sure that the Apple fans here will support it unreservedly.
>>Nobody promised that OSX could run any software the user wishes.
>In fact they have said this publicly in interviews.
So I can sue them for not running Apple II programs? Cool! There were always programs that failed to run for some reason or another, and programs taken out of the Mac store, etc.
>Apple doesn’t force you to install operating system upgrades, and many people don’t upgrade if it will break the software they work with.
Sure, just apply a new rejection policy after an upgrade, and state it applies from that version on. That's what Apple would normally do anyway. So you're just admitting I'm right.
>>In fact they have said this publicly in interviews.
> So I can sue them for not running Apple II programs? Cool! There were always programs that failed to run for some reason or another, and programs taken out of the Mac store, etc.
No, you just don’t know much about Apple.
They haven’t promised to be backward compatible with everything, but they have promised not to stop you from running what you want to run.
I.e. they have promised not to do what you are saying they should do.
> Sure, just apply a new rejection policy after an upgrade, and state it applies from that version on. That's what Apple would normally do anyway.
Apple has never done this.
> So you're just admitting I'm right.
Obviously not. In fact you have proven yourself completely wrong, by acknowledging that they could not do it under their current license and with their current software and would need to get people to agree to a new contract.
Yes, Apple, (or anyone else) could offer a service for the Max that users sign up for to remotely disable software they disapprove of.
Until the competition publishes an app called iMessage with a surveillance backdoor (unless you’re proposing phones perform DPI?) and the helpful, inevitable “merge app stores together” app that would be necessary in that world subsequently prioritizes the bad one, or users assume the bad one is the right one, or, or, or. There’s a million threat vectors for their model that don’t dissolve down to a technical mechanism.
Much of the security gained from having a single App Store is not technical in nature but rather reflects (conscious) security policy. This should be apparent. Fundamentally server people chafe at this but look at how much security work (and failure) goes into routinely running hostile code not written by you, particularly on the hosting side. Cloud providers have armies dedicated to the exact same security problems that app stores must solve and it is very often not good enough. That’s fine when nerds are involved but more people than nerds use phones.
This is accurate. HOWEVER being hostile to your OS can result in problems. If google REALLY wanted to do something, they could build in a form of adblocking into the OS layer itself. They can also keep that up to date via app updates from their side. Its definitely a battle, but facebook analytics is well documented by adblock communities and google keeping that list in the OS would be a possibility.
Having said that, google has no intention of waging war against facebook. They have an understanding already.
Android allows adb install over usb and still sandbox the application. Sandboxing is a feature of the OS and not the store. What's missing from parent description is the publisher signature to retain allowed permissions after upgrades, which still is a feature of the OS and not the store.
Stricter sandboxing makes it more difficult to fingerprint the user and lessens the burden and dependency on legal contracts and policies. Which is what Apple just did by blocking the access to unique device id.
> Personally this is enough of a feature for me to switch to an iphone as my next phone.
You can accomplish even more by not installing their crap apps to begin with, and have always had that choice. You need google to save you from yourself and this is a compelling enough reason for you to switch phones, even though you're smart and actually know all of what's been going on and how to prevent it, but choose not to?
I already don't use Facebook, but I agree with the parent that Apple's real action towards privacy and against ad-based business models have convinced me to switch from Android to iPhone. Contrast these privacy moves with Google's FLOC. I'd rather support Apple.
I made that move earlier this year. TBH, it's not like I trust Apple more than Google or Facebook... but at least for now my interests align better with their business model.
That being said, I've been tempted to get a Motorola Razr flip phone just for the sake of nostalgia, though I would have to root it and remove everything related to Google to feel comfortable with it.
What don’t you trust about Apple that equates them to Google or Facebook? I trust them more than Google and FB, but that is certainly a very low bar.
I trust that Apple isn’t profiting off my data. It isn’t even close to their business model so it allows them to give their users privacy G and F can’t.
I have a general distrust of device manufacturers nowadays. Seeing how far some other devices go (phones and smart TVs especially), I think it's a healthy attitude to have.
To give you an example, I recently implemented an allowlist on my firewall so only approved devices can access my WAN. I immediately started seeing frequent dropped packets from my wireless access point (Netgear Nighthawk AX200) and switch (Ubiquiti UniFi 8-port PoE) to Netgear and AWS IPs respectively. While some of that is probably them checking for updates, the volume didn't really seem warranted.
Going back to Apple though... sure, that's the exact reason why I switched. They already charge a premium, so they have less of an incentive to pad their quarterly earnings selling data. But they're still a company, still responding to shareholders, and they already collect certain amount of analytics. There's not that much of a jump from there to selling it, so being careful and mistrusting is probably a good thing IMO.
Because it's such a low bar, it's not at all hard to believe. They really don't have to try hard to be better than that, and their self-interest is real obvious.
But then you have to work at it, looking behind your shoulder that you’re not accidentally allowing something you don’t want to. I’d much rather pay for a system that will do as much of it for me.
You don't have to. I don't have Facebook or Messenger app installed and do not intend to. They are not going to sneak in, unless I specifically click on the Install button in the play store.
No need to pay someone to hold my hand in not clicking that button.
Why, if you only install Android apps from F-droid, you'll see that they build from source and mark all "anti-features"; the presence of the FB SDK won't pass without a large warning sign.
OTOH it's sort of hard to live on FOSS Android software alone.
I'm very familiar with how advertising currently works, but the field is also one that seems to evolve quickly (no doubt why: lots of money to be made).
Am I smarter than all the engineers and startups and existing firms whose revenues depend on tracking? Most likely not.
The other more mundane reason is just I'm lazy and tired. I just want a phone that works without wondering about patching the OS or whatever. Maybe you enjoy doing that, I don't.
I mean sure, if I want to cut communication with half my friends.
We don't live in an ideal bubble where I have full control over the tools I use. Its the same argument people make for video game moderation "if you don't like it, turn off chat" but then you're self-isolating.
Are jailbreaking and custom OSes still a thing on iPhone? I would happily switch to iPhone except the UI is so infuriatingly terrible that it's completely out of the question unless I can replace the UI.
I've been an Android user since they mostly caught up to Apple in UI (Nexus line, I believe). However, my wife will be getting a new iPhone in two days (hush hush) and I think I'm gonna take her old iPhone for a spin.
I pay for YouTube, and can't believe people feel their time watching commercials is worth less than $10/month. I'd probably pay more to not be datamined by Google, too.
Really I'd even consider creating a FaceBbook account if I could pay them not to use dark patterns. However I imagine there is already a shadow user profile of me, and Facebook is making making more money through sites that leak visitors' information than I'd be willing to pay for Facebook.
I'd happily pay Google to not be data mined and for a guarantee that if one of their algorithms closes my account by mistake I can immediately get an actual person to review and fix it.
I have been researching making the same transition (I also own an M1 now so they will work nicely together), but I am going to wait until they release the new phones in September.
I just wish I didn't have to choose between control and privacy.
Heck maybe I should just give up on the entire concept of phones.
I doubt they really care. Remember, these users are the products, not the customers: being able to sell exclusively "premium" (or targeted) ads isn't going to somehow tank anyone's business, which is why Apple's sideways approach here is asinine. They're slowly cutting off all means of distribution until every app is accessed through a subscription routed through the app store, where Apple can take yet another cut.
It's all petty landgrabs in the end, this is why I can't stand using MacOS. Can't Apple treat my computer like something other than a hostage for negotiation?
Interesting though, what if Apple gave away the hardware for free? It's a crazy business model, but if they can take 30% cut from everything it might work.
what if Apple gave away the hardware for free? It's a crazy business model,
It's been done before. Remember in the 90's when thousands (millions?) of people got free computers in exchange for allowing banner ads at the top of their screens?
They’d be forgoing a huge upfront cash injection when the user pays for the device. And by targeting consumers that can shell out circa $1k for a premium device without too much bother, they not only collect a high-income user base, but create an aura of exclusivity around their devices and ecosystem. Giving hoi polloi free iPhones would throw a spanner in these highly profitable works
While it's not as crazy, the video game console industry operates on negative cash flow in the hardware sales department. Consoles that cost $500 at retail cost $525 to build, and the Nintendo Switch was famously being shipped at a loss of nearly $50 per console sold. It's not an entirely foreign concept, but it is definitely lucrative. Apple could defend their 30% cut if they reduced the price of their hardware, but I get the feeling that their business relies on pumping those profit margins as fat as the customer can tolerate...
Writing off is the not the issue. The real problem is that it will create an opening for another social network to first fill the vacuum, then pull away users from fb.
It's bigger than that: iOS is big enough that Facebook charging on that platform would be an existential threat to the company.
How?
It opens up the perfect opportunity for some competitor burning VC cash to swoop in and grab a ton of market share in a hurry, with a free iOS app.
FB knows this, so yeah, it's a completely hollow threat. But, just the idea that one of the tech giants has been backed into a corner by the risk of competition from paying-for-marketshare VCs or operating-in-the-red-on-purpose other tech giants, is really, really funny to me. No fun, eh Facebook? Hahahaha.
The strategic lesson is, always move upstream until you own the hardware.
Google had the search and moved upstream to own the OS and protect his search. But still has to beg Apple for 25% of its users (and 40% of its revenue, if I understand).
Content (films, instagram personalities) are at the mercy of apps; Apps, even on Heroku or Atlassian platforms, are at the mercy of the platforms; Platforms are at the mercy of cloud platforms (AWS, etc) who own the hardware.
The only counter-example is telecoms, who owned the hardware but became dumb pipes, after 20 years of extremely bad behavior (including modifying HTTP pages on the go and injecting JS to insert ads, for Verizon).
I was just thinking of this. And came to the conclusion how fragile Facebook really is compared to the rest of FAANMG. Google has search/YouTube/Android. Apple has a thriving iOS and hardware business. Amazon has AWS. Microsoft has Azure abd Office. All of Facebook's business is based on data mining. If Whatsapp starts charging money Signal will laugh all the way to the bank.
I won't be surprised if Facebook starts shopping for a phone manufacturer and spins their own Facebook mobile distro in the future.
Facebook Mobile distro would be something, but it’s an expected move. They’d have to be more creative and attack sideways.
Facebook could enter the actor/actress recruitment market, own contracts and manage their Instagram along all their artists’ public reputation and persona. It’s not hardware but at least it’s real-world assets that reinforce their network’s desirability.
Facebook could buy Homebrew or IntelliJ and become a tool that every developer for most languages need to use, and it would give it more leverage in negotiating with AWS/Azure (Oh, the SDK has bugs with GCP? too bad!)
Those are just examples that have not been implemented because they are half-ideas, but it’s the idea of attacking really sideways.
It's interesting to see when there is no way to 'PR' out of the situation, how the tone changes. There is absolutely no way someone to explain to the general public why it's good to be tracked.
This just sounds like you’re creating a second revenue stream for them. I don’t trust a single company to stop collecting and monetizing data that they are used to monetizing.
>The notice leans on users' vast enthusiasm for more personalized advertising
Ha ha. I think a study should be commissioned to see whether FB has overall bettered the lives of its users financially or the opposite. This would be the most effective way to judge how necessary FB really is.
(I'm not including the social aspect, because i personally think it hasn't helped anybody socially in the long run (obviously, short term benefits are possible))
A lot of on-line businesses created in the last ten years would not be profitable without the ability to grow their customer base. Anyone selling products specialised enough to only be relevant for 10% of a demographic group or less.
those businesses could have operated through any other large platform. 'the ability to grow their customer base' is more dependent on their business than on which platform they advertise. Google and apple can target users for you too. Facebook just happens to not do anything but social media and ads.
> Anyone selling products specialised enough to only be relevant for 10% of a demographic group or less.
The question from here is, without Facebook could that have happened? Does Facebook's ecosystem contribute to this success? Does it also contribute to a lack of competitors in this space?
Individual niches are not as interesting because you might think that the market for your calligraphy kit is a forum for Japanese speakers (10% conversion rate, 10k people largest forum) but Manga-watchers have a much better potential (2%, 5M). It’s easy to assume who your niche is, but almost every campaign is a surprise. This is why Custom Audience powers most ads. Therefore your market is a service that knows about many people’s niche interest, but is itself quite generic: that’s Wordpress·com (freemium, not interested in ads), reddit (not good at monetisation for a long time), twitter (same delay), GMail to some extend and much later Slack, Discord, maybe SnapChat and TikTok.
There is a duopoly in ads platforms because there’s a duopoly in effective ideas that scale to any support and any advertiser: keyword (Google) and personalisation. Many platforms have tried to base ads on the content of the page, but it’s hard to find ads that pair well with the war in Darfur. Many YouTube creators get away with promoted content, but it is murky more often than not. The most successful “editorial” attempt is OutBrain and Taboola that are essentially auto-generated articles with super-optimised clic-bait-y garbage.
You can imagine hosting that information yourself, edit it, expose it to ad slots in your browser with a protocol. Dave Winner certainly dreams of it. But for me, the proof that this could work was Facebook letting anyone edit their ad preference and information: for years, you could just tell Facebook that you were _not_ into cars, baby clothes or stamp collection. No one used it. It was linked on every ad; you were linked to it if you right-clic to say an ad wasn’t relevant; it was easily findable on the website and the app… No one touched it. So much so that improving it was impossible without traffic. Privacy advocate who claimed this needed to exist ignored my comments when I told them it already did. There was major internal support for it, but even VPs can’t argue against data.
You can look at the history: Facebook was created in 2004; they immediately had ads, but they only became a significant player on targeting from 2008 onwards. At that point, ads had been around since 1995 with Viaweb, so more than 15 years; Google had been around for since 1998, so 10 years and the acquisition that created AdWords five years earlier in 2003. If an alternative direction was easy, there was time to build something.
I’m not saying another reality isn’t possible — I dream of a protocol emerging from Facebook opening its preference embeddings, after realising that there’s a worthwhile ecosystem of apps to let people optimise it the way they want. But not enough people wanted it, while billions of people seem comfortable with delegating decisions and targeting entirely.
This argument I’m very skeptical of. The pre-Facebook internet was niched. Lots of sites for all sorts of subcultures. Online businesses that were relevant to <=10% of the population would advertise on the sites that cater to their niche. Facebook ads as a distribution channel is all that we know in this day and age. Who knows whether online small businesses would be better or worse with a different paradigm.
I'm part of several specialized groups, so much so that Facebook ads are actually too broad for me. If you're a specialist you're definitely going on a specific board for it, with Facebook communities only good for general buy/sell hobbies.
(I'm more likely to benefit from a reddit dedicated specific kinds of pens than I am to benefit from a facebook dedicated to the same.)
+1 this. HN always writes off, and even when they have no experience, claim FB & targeted ads aren't effective even in the face of proof and examples of individual HNers
Politics is an example of this change too. The big obvious nefarious. But to your example gives big boost to small campaigns.
I think also (i can't prove obviously) allowing more progressive candidates to raise and win by growing support nationwide to win in District.
Speak for yourself. Don't use words like "anybody" to force your point. Facebook has definitely benefitted me to stay in touch with my friends and loved ones over the years.
As one sample, I think it has helped me socially in the long run.
I wonder how such a study will take place? Does it take into account the cost of time spent productively browsing? Or the revenue streams that encouraged entrepreneurship and enriched FB marketplaces?
Not an FB shill but it has helped me reconnect with family overseas that I haven't contacted in 10 years or so (left as a child). So I am grateful for that, but I have not actively participated in the platform in general since 2012 or so) mostly because I noticed how cringe I was. I use their video chat platform to talk with them once a week.
Some more context, they're not native English speakers, live in a small dirt-village but somehow many people there have a mobile phone and FB so they found me/added me.
I really enjoyed this aspect of Facebook when I had it. However, after a while, I found Facebook feeds where causing me to dislike a lot of people who I otherwise enjoyed spending time with. Furthermore, if I actively cleaned up my feed by un-following or muting people - taking that action just reinforced the notion that this was a person I did not like. Dropping Facebook has without a doubt reduced my contacts and limited my communication. For those I communicate with outside of Facebook, its generally a more rewarding experience, and for acquaintances who I no longer have such ease of access to - I still like them when I'm reminded of them or have an encounter with them, or at least don't dislike them.
There is this, too. Old Army buddies spamming my timeline with 40 ridiculous hateful far-right memes a day. Band girl from middle school who was my first ever date praising the Proud Boys and showing up to the capitol protest. My aunt posting nonsense like the dog with a ham cold cut on its face saying it was burned trying to rescue people from a fire and betting no one would share it.
These are people I love. Some of them I have literally been to war with. I'd have died for them and they'd have died for me. I don't want Facebook to convince me all humans are garbage. They're not. I know these people. This isn't really them.
JFC. This is insane that you're making it out to be Facebook's fault for having terrible people in your life. HN comments have gotten worst than even Reddit.
> Some more context, they're not native English speakers, live in a small dirt-village but somehow many people there have a mobile phone and FB so they found me/added me.
This probably isn't a happy coincidence. Facebook is "the internet" for large swaths of the world outside of North American and Europe. Very similar to how AOL has been "the internet" for my 70-year-old mom for the past 20 years, only recently being supplanted by Facebook.
I hate Facebook with a passion and don’t have an account anymore.
That said, my wife has sold a lot of stuff to local folks that would have been thrown out. (Baby stuff, sports gear, etc) Shipping is too expensive and you don’t get the creepy scams that you find on craiglist.
I loved Facebook early on. 2006-2008 it allowed me to reconnect with a ton of old high school friends just ahead of my ten-year reunion. I moved away right after graduating and had lost contact with basically everyone before that.
But I've long since drifted away, ditched Facebook, and just kept people's phone numbers for the few I still care about. Trying to stay friends with people in faraway cities I never see in person in perpetuity by seeing their pictures pop up in a feed every now and then seems like a pointless fool's errand.
I could also see the people I'd become friends with "online native" gathering into cliques and echo chambers and becoming increasingly radical and angry, and I am neither of those things and wanted no part of it. Hobbyist communities exclusively for me from now on.
This is the wrong metric to study in isolation. If I buy a copy of the Harry Potter book, I am worse off financially but better off overall since I got lots of value from that book in excess of the amount that it cost me.
that will not certainly offset lost ad revenue due to less effective advertising. If this happens maybe people will start to realise that you don't really need FB that badly after all. I cancelled all my FB/IG accounts a few years back, only whatsapp is holding me back but if I would be happy to pay for whatsapp to get out of tracking.
You know, I’d be happy to fill in a quick survey of what I’m actually interested in hearing about. Less invasive and probably more accurate. So many ‘personalised’ ads I get are for stuff I would never buy.
"Engagement" algorithm is like, "they are very active when nightmares are happening so they must like it". So the algorithm adds in more nightmares, engage.
I suspect that it's because they embed some Spotify thing for their shitcast at the bottom of the page (I refuse to let them use the established term for such a DRM-walled ripoff of the real deal). I know for sure that Spotify's regular web interface requires Firefox's DRM plugin, because that's the reason I run it in its own VM.
I don't think it could achieve critical mass, but if there was some alternate Facebook with just as widespread of use that you had to pay for but it didn't track you or show you creepily personal ads I would strongly consider using it.
If ads companies like FB, GOOG pull all of their apps from the iOS app store, would customers move to android? Is the vendor lock-in strong enough that people would find iOS alternatives than buy an android phone?
I mean, sure this sounds great - if Facebook would let us pay for access instead of selling data on us - but I don't see that happening ever. Aside from this being an obvious bluff, I see the best case scenario is that Facebook charges for a premium access, but still tracks you as best it can get away with. If Facebook can figure out how to do it, they'd sell you a service and sell your info to the highest bidder.
Also, Facebook doesn't track purely for better ads. That's the benign version. Facebook tracks because it wants to own the aggregate profile of "you" online.
Also the users willing to pay are the most valuable to advertise to.
I think I also read the per user dollar value of ad revenue was $150/month? Way more than any individual would pay - and losing a subset would reduce this for the others.
Also the preference for targeted ads is rationalized nonsense (imo) when the cost is user data:
“To test if users truly find 'relevant ads' as value-add: make two products, one with ads and one without and charge for the one with ads - see how many people buy it.
Why doesn't Hulu charge more many for their streaming service with ads instead of their service without? The behavior of these companies suggests they know on some level this value-add nonsense is a rationalization. Even if you say it's only value-add when compared to un-targeted ads - let users choose to have un-targeted ads without giving up their data privacy. I'd bet money on what choice they'd make.”
First of all, "shadow profikes" aren't a conspiracy theory. They're a fact.
Secondly, the profiles aren't 'useless'. They're highly valuable. Both for being able to present users with a targeted experience from day one & for controlling the internet-identity part of the online world. Which will surely only become more important with time, as more and more things from our lives move online.
Parent said "Also, Facebook doesn't track purely for better ads. That's the benign version. Facebook tracks because it wants to own the aggregate profile of "you" online"
He's implying that they aren't doing this for better ads or targeting. I'm not saying that "shadow profiles" don't exist, I'm saying that they do, and they're benign.
US users are probably looking in the $100 to $200 range, if I've read my SEC report right. The other problem is then they have to think about churn in a different way - right now, it's easy to resurrect churned users. When people are paying, it changes their behaviors and relationship with a company.
That's a global statistic. Some users are far more valuable. For example, users in Canada and the US generate more than that per quarter. You would pay double but if you are in the US that's not enough. Would you pay 5x that (or about what you pay for Netflix)?
If they remove the ads, reorganize the feed, stop showing crap and let me focus on the things that are worth seeing, don't optimize for spending more time on the site, etc then not only would I pay a reasonable amount, but I would use FB more.
I remember FB as a place I would want to go and share content. These days I only spend a few minutes checking my notifications (and FB is definitively getting wise to that because they are putting more and more irrelevant things into them).
Let's be honest, even if Facebook started charging for access, they wouldn't shut down their other streams of revenue. That ship has sailed, Facebook is not and never can be a company that treats its users like the customers. Facebook users are the resources they exploit for profit, and they've been locked into that business model since inception.
> How much more honest a relationship it might be if Facebook charged for its wares.
The author seems to think that Facebook would suddenly stop doing all the other things it does to make money, once a user would pay. Of course they would not.
On the contrary: Facebook would see those paying users as extra valuable for tracking, keep harassing and confusing them until they click the wrong button once, and then sell that "premium" user data for more.
I would actually consider using Facebook if I could pay for it and not be tracked or datamined. There is a let a legit use case for sharing photos, personal stories, and discussing news and information with a curated list of your friends and family.
I see this often, but the trust problem still exists. There's no universe where I can trust Facebook (or Google or...) To not track me. Others have their own standards, but I don't feel like it's unreasonable to consider them APTs no different than the spyware of old. They have datacenters dedicated to exactly that. How can my data be reliably segregated so that it's not 'accidentally' included later?
Even if the data stays all first-party, they make so many copies and it gets put in so many datasets across the world that co-mingling and abuse of it just feels inevitable at that scale.
Uploading your daily business, personal photos, and down to what you eat to a profile on someone else's servers was never a good idea from the very start. I find it pretty amusing how it becomes outrage and parroting after the fact that bad news comes out about Facebook. We knew what Facebook was doing in 2008-2012 era as well but nobody parroted these old and tired narratives then.
I've always taken Zuck's infamous "dumb fucks" comment to come from a place of astonishment, more than malice. Posting tons of private info under your own name online was strongly against Web norms at the time, but all those newbies didn't know that. FB and others made it normal, but the reasons it was a bad idea to begin with didn't go away.
I would even say it was against social norms. Don't talk to strangers. Don't give away your phone number. Don't give away your address. Don't tell state your mother's maiden name.
It was such a simple thing to get all of those new people on social media to give up all of that very personal information without hesitation. Yet, if some random person at the supermarket asked you any of those questions in person you'd definitely raise an eyebrow and walk away. SocialEngineering++
Exactly. If you used the internet from the beginning you clearly saw how Facebook is a data harvesting scam. By late 2010 I'd chatted with several engineers at Facebook about how they were clearly storing all chats/messages indefinitely, even if you deleted your PMs. So to the dude up there downvoting me, yes, many of us in tech knew this very early on. It was literally the goal of Facebook from the time you ever heard about Facebook.
Everyone paying attention when Path et al were uploading whole phone address books (which lead to Apple adding it as a specific permission in the next iOS) knew this data was getting stored indefinitely.
There were plenty of greybeards making claims about FB tracking etc, they just got written off as crackpots. The below link describes the history of some of FBs tracking and includes publicised examples from 2010 and 2011.
To me it’s just that we believed FB back then when they claimed ‘it’s a bug’, ‘a limited number of users were affected’ or ‘we don’t don’t do that’.
I created a fake account for testing a fix to a bug for my company. I used a fake email, fake name, fake location, etc. I used a photo of something I was given for graduation and a date of birth that was within 6 months of my real one.
They started recommending my friends from my high school. I went to a magnet school for my junior and senior years, and Facebook even recognized that. I graduated 10 years before I signed up. And the one piece I made sure I faked was the school I went to. I'm shy. If I wanted to communicate with someone I figured I'd add them myself.
Nothing magical to it. They had some other piece of data from someone else (or me from some other source) that matched up (the data was fake, but I had used it previously; I don't make that mistake anymore). But it showed me just how dedicated to getting all of this data they were.
I think for me that a pay model without advertising would've been enough to prevent me from quitting, but now that I no longer have to put that energy into the website and my emotional associations with it, I am gone.
"Social" should be an Internet protocol. The only reason it's not is that we basically stopped making protocols (well, ones that gain any meaningful traction, anyway—I'm aware there are some lightly-used efforts at social protocols) because all the companies in a position to push them to a meaningful number of users are better served by making interoperability difficult. The "free" services spyvertising economy, where captive non-paying user count & eyeball time is what matters, is why things are this way.
Usenet, email, http, XMPP, IRC, et c. Yes, just like those. In combination, that bunch is already not too far off. The trouble is that anything trying to do that is competing with "free" spyvertising services, which have no incentive to integrate with them (i.e. implement the protocol), unless it's to do it temporarily to eat their meager market share before cutting them off. IMO that dynamic is why protocols have stagnated for decades. Working on a client or server for some new protocol is thankless when you know it'll be niche at best, and more likely DOA. Making a go at a business with one is insane in this market. So they stagnate. No new ones catch hold, and old ones make slow progress at best, or gradually die.
ActivityPub is more than lightly used, it just isn't used by people you want to associate with. You pretty much have to either accept radical leftism and hang out with tankies or you get to hang out with the actual Nazis that are blocked by the "mainstream" leftist servers
Yes yes, there's radicalization for everyone! God forbid you want to use social media for something besides political fighting though
There's such political fighting everywhere on the 'net. I use ActivityPub for musicians, programmers and Cory Doctorow, and don't have to deal with much of that, because I just avoid it.
The Federated Timeline is slightly cursed (I haven't curated it for a while), but less so than Twitter. (My instance, Fosstodon, doesn't really federate with the Nazi instances; those it has ended up federating with have been swiftly blocked, because Fosstodon's admins don't like admin-condoned harassment of their users.)
> My instance, Fosstodon, doesn't really federate with the Nazi instances; those it has ended up federating with have been swiftly blocked, because Fosstodon's admins don't like admin-condoned harassment of their users.
And I'm glad that with email we don't have server operators deciding on politics for their users. ActivityPub has a long way to go if labeling instances as "Nazi" is enough break federation.
I see this argument made often on HN, but it's not clear to me how an internet protocol would make social networks more accountable towards their users. Do you mind explaining your reasoning here? Specifically, how would a protocol prevent motivated companies from tracking your personal information?
at the very least it'd mean you could take your data and connections out of one service and go to another which would mean there is genuine competition that isn't hampered by network effects of platforms.
> Specifically, how would a protocol prevent motivated companies from tracking your personal information?
They could still try! But you'd have options.
Take email, for example. I cannot imagine something like that coming into existence today.
I can use my own client to avoid ads and tracking from my service provider—did I download this message? Sure, the server knows that. How long have I looked at the message? Which message did I look at next? Did I follow any links (yes, someone might track that part, but my email provider's going to have a hard time doing that)? What mouse movements did I make while looking at it? No such luck there, and yes websites and closed-platform services do track that stuff.
I can switch providers. Say my email provider starts injecting trackers into all links. I can just dump their ass if I don't like it. I keep using email, and now they receive zero info about me (I mean, they might get a little if I send emails to their users, but you get my point). If I have my own domain name I don't even need to tell anyone I switched.
I can email someone using a different provider. Yes blocklists or whatever might cause a problem but, fundamentally, this does work.
Protocols force providers to act like a telco, at least, except that the situation's even better for software because the barriers to entry in the market are so low... unless all your competitors are giving away access to their strictly closed ecosystem for free, and not supporting open protocols. Then you're screwed, and that's exactly what's happening now and why the Internet protocols are largely frozen in time.
I see, thanks for the detailed reply. Yeah it's sad that companies have no incentive nowadays to support open protocols (besides the ones that already exist). I wonder if regulation could solve this problem or at least encourage healthy competition into the marketplace.
I was just thinking that Facebook would seem to fit into the sort-of-standard pricing of $5/mo, or $50/yr. If they'd opt you out of ALL advertising for this, that would be something worth considering. They could charge this, and actually make MORE from paying customers. But I'm pretty sure that they would pull the cable stunt, and eventually let ads creep into paying accounts.
I deleted my account when the COVID nonsense started. They'd have to pay ME to get back on, and watch morons bloviate about anything involving math or science. I have plenty of my own moronic bloviating, thanks.
I think that allowing people to pay and genuinely stopping mining their data would hit FB a lot harder than just $30-40 per year.
I’d bet on a correlation between users that are worth more than average and ones who’d pay to avoid being tracked. It’s a claim I have no evidence to support.
But their valuation isn’t directly based on that number. That’s the floor on their valuation. The ceiling is “how much more do you think they could extract per person?” Soon as they set a price and drop their current model they in effect put a ceiling on how much they can extract per person since upping the price won’t really work out so well. This grounds their valuation.
Yes, anyone who runs a business with digital customers knows this. iOS and Mac users pay more as a group so they are more valuable so they are all the more important to track and guide down various "marketing funnels".
This used to be why newspapers charged money. Newspapers used to make 80% of their revenue from advertising. Theoretically lowering or eliminating altogether their cover price would increase their distribution by much more than the loss of revenue from the cover price. However, a paying customer is worth a lot more to an advertiser than a free customer so newspapers kept charging.
Indeed you can serve html content quite cheaply from your server, where you had to create and deliver physical matter to the readers before. But when you get your newspaper ads to 10k households instead of 1k, doesn't that increase the value of those ads by a factor 10 to the advertiser? The only thing I could think of would be spam prevention (you don't want someone to order 100 examples of your newspaper), but there are also other ways to combat spam.
Distribution costs were about 20% of their expenses. Cover & subscription revenue was also about 20%. Let's assume that other expenses are about 60% and profit about 20%. Let's assume that making the paper free would increase distribution by 10X. So gross revenue would be 800%. Subtract 200% for distribution, and 60% fixed expenses leaving profit of 540%/20% or a 27X increase in profit.
Obviously it wasn't a 27X increase in profit to stop charging for the paper. Why not? Because a free reader wasn't worth the same as a paid reader -- a paid reader was worth about 100X a free reader. Most free newspapers weren't actually read, and paying readers are a much more valuable demographic to advertisers.
Newspapers used to make 80% of their revenue from advertising
I'm not disputing this, but adding a bit of information.
I worked for two very large newspaper companies during the time when the web started becoming big. It basically broke down this way at those companies:
Subscription and newsstand revenue paid for printing and distribution.
Display advertising paid for the journalists.
Classified ads paid for everything else.
My observation was that it wasn't people getting their news for free that killed newspapers. It was Craigslist. Classifieds were the near-zero-overhead cash cow of the newspapers we owned. Once classified advertising imploded, the money had to come out of the other buckets.
However, a paying customer is worth a lot more to an advertiser than a free customer so newspapers kept charging.
A lot of newspapers experimented with free editions, usually aimed at commuters. These papers were used to boost official circulation figures, since they were "editions" of the main paper. The same way a bulldog edition is counted along with the paper that lands on someone's front porch in the morning.
For whatever reason, most of the free editions went away, even before people stopped commuting.
It's like my local newspaper's way of handling paid subscriptions. Read as many articles online as you want through the tiny little window we allow the actual content to exist in, sandwiched between animated clickbait ads, some which masquerade as other news stories, with the occasional popup.
It's your newspaper's way of getting you to get the print version. Dead tree ads are far more valuable than online ones.
As someone who subscribes to several dead tree newspapers and magazines, it's a much better experience than anything I've ever seen digitally. (Except for those that allow PDF downloads.)
And that's why we have Netflix today. If Netflix started pushing commercials I'd leave immediately, and I think a lot of other people would too. Meanwhile Netflix is printing money like crazy.
metafilter and something awful are great communities, in part because they're effectively immune to spam. far, far to the left of the majority of facebook, tho.
I'm pretty sure that someone deep within Google is running the numbers that if they were to do this on Android what would be the hit to Google and the hit to FB and if it is worth to take that hit if it hurts their competitor, FB, more.
I would be very surprised if Google is not looking into to. Google has other avenues to collect data and deep tentacles so the hit to them may not be much, but FB might be hurt more. And, on the flip side, it may also buy Google some privacy goodwill.
"You must pay us to put this spyware on your phone so we can sell your data to other companies and use it to influence your purchasing behaviors and who you are friends with."
264 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadTo my understanding Wikipedia is extremely well off financially on just the backs of donations, it's inherently a monopoly, but it is not tending towards evil despite having solid MRR.
Also, I'm glad they're doing well but they're not making Facebook-levels of money
And they're not making Facebook money but they're making far more than small business money.
My point was to be that maybe Wikipedia is a case study in how to make a lot of money without sacrificing your virtues, that maybe there are more specific factors that drive other businesses towards being evil besides just having tons of money.
It also shows (seemingly regularly) political and religious bias worldwide. [2]
Wikipedia also seems to regularly be a platform of misinformation. Mass purging of sources. And delisting of accurate information. [3] [4] [5] (sources taken at random, too many to list.)
Wikipedia will always have problems, IMO. It's in it's nature. When I was a kid I would read encyclopedias like the other kids would read comics. It's clear to me that it's best to use Wikipedia as a conduit to sources, not as direct reference to fact.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26871092/
[2] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-culture-war
[3] https://prn.fm/wikipedia-misinformation-prejudice-case-examp...
[4] https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/the_wikiped...
[5] https://www.conservapedia.com/Wikipedia_prejudice_and_KAL_00...
I think calling this a threat is hyperbolic and intended as clickbait (it's working). All this is doing is reminding people that IG/FB is free and that this helps their revenue.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as...
It would be hilarious if they actually started making more money because Apple forced their hand.
Could Facebook make it happen and profitable in a way to get around Apples rules? I think so... I think Apple would change the rules shortly after though...
AFAIK the rule is that users can subscribe to a service/product outside of an app and use their account's status on the app, but if the user wants to subscribe from within the app they need to go through the App Store subscription service.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
($53 per US user)
If you are seriously considering paying for the poison that is Facebook, might I recommend you delete your Facebook account instead, and give your money to someone that needs it?
Now, whether asking users to pay for a social network at all is a viable business model, is another question.
0: https://drewdevault.com/2014/10/10/The-profitability-of-onli...
I also suspect that through browser fingerprinting that facebook can track everyone across the web anyway, particularly people who run a lot of customization on their desktop (O/S, graphics card, fonts, config settings, etc) that shows up in the fingerprint. If you're visiting sites which cause you to make requests to facebook servers you're leaking information to them, even if you've deleted your facebook account (and they can probably still track who you are).
This is an important point that raises the question of threat model.
For me, the threat is not "Facebook can track me," in the same way that my threat model doesn't include state-level actors. Because, let's be real, Facebook is as good as a state-level actor.
The threat is in showing me ads or content that modify my behavior. For this reason, I:
* Block facebook/insta at the DNS level * Don't have a Facebook account * Block all ads * Block all comment sections, like buttons, etc
I know this isn't something everyone can do. I know that there are tons of people out there who find value in Facebook. I just hope they are taking steps to at least block ads and are aware of when the platform is manipulating their emotions through targeted content, and have the sense to walk away from it from time to time. Perhaps that's asking too much, but I'm not going to stop making noise about it, not going to stop telling people they need to watch what they post / look at, because I think the platform is really damaging to people's attention and mental health.
For your grandmother -- I doubt it's making her buy stuff (fixed income) and I doubt it's making her turn to rage-tweeting about politics, so it's probably OK. And you're probably OK, too, being someone in tech who knows how this shit impacts people. But everyone else? I just worry, y'know?
mother. I'm old.
That said, I think the downside is still the walled garden. If Apple F/OSS their OS and let people modify it, and load applications outside the app store, I'd consider changing.
Until then, Lineage without Google apps is still a nicer experience than the walled gardens. For example, the Nexus 6 is still maintained (2014). It even recently got updated to 18.1 which is Android 11! Amazing.
Edit: Wow the Note3 and the LG G2 are still supported, too! They're from September 2013!
I view the walled garden as nothing but good. Build the walls higher. Hand me a brick and point me to the ladder.
And I'm fine with Apple siphoning off 30%. Make it 40%! I'd rather developers stop developing for iOS than to see any large changes in the App Store model. There are enough apps as it is.
While I don’t know the exact reason, this isn’t what’s happened on Android, which has always allowed multiple app stores. Everything mainstream is on Google’s Play Store, and quality FOSS apps get published to F-Droid. My theory is that users shy away from sideloading alternative app stores, even if it’s not very difficult to do so.
I don't think users would shy away from mainstream apps like Facebook if they moved to another app store platform.
The only thing a 3rd party store support will do is to ensure Apple couldn't abuse FOSS apps too much in their review process.
They could have all the same levels of security without the need to prevent competition.
Each app can track user behavior within the app itself, and can send this data to an aggregator who pays for it.
That way you are tracked across all participating apps.
This was common practice until Apple banned it.
This is false.
Apple can’t legally use Gatekeeper to ’reject’ apps which violate App Store policies.
They just need to time a new policy to a major release (say they make it apply only from that release on), and that would be no different then any other breaking change.
It wouldn't be popular on HN, but it's technically possible and legal. I'm sure that the Apple fans here will support it unreservedly.
> Nobody promised that OSX could run any software the user wishes.
In fact they have said this publicly in interviews.
> Does Apple steal software and "interfere with the business of suppliers" every time they break backward compatibility?
Apple doesn’t force you to install operating system upgrades, and many people don’t upgrade if it will break the software they work with.
>In fact they have said this publicly in interviews.
So I can sue them for not running Apple II programs? Cool! There were always programs that failed to run for some reason or another, and programs taken out of the Mac store, etc.
>Apple doesn’t force you to install operating system upgrades, and many people don’t upgrade if it will break the software they work with.
Sure, just apply a new rejection policy after an upgrade, and state it applies from that version on. That's what Apple would normally do anyway. So you're just admitting I'm right.
> So I can sue them for not running Apple II programs? Cool! There were always programs that failed to run for some reason or another, and programs taken out of the Mac store, etc.
No, you just don’t know much about Apple.
They haven’t promised to be backward compatible with everything, but they have promised not to stop you from running what you want to run.
I.e. they have promised not to do what you are saying they should do.
> Sure, just apply a new rejection policy after an upgrade, and state it applies from that version on. That's what Apple would normally do anyway.
Apple has never done this.
> So you're just admitting I'm right.
Obviously not. In fact you have proven yourself completely wrong, by acknowledging that they could not do it under their current license and with their current software and would need to get people to agree to a new contract.
Yes, Apple, (or anyone else) could offer a service for the Max that users sign up for to remotely disable software they disapprove of.
But that isn’t what you said.
Much of the security gained from having a single App Store is not technical in nature but rather reflects (conscious) security policy. This should be apparent. Fundamentally server people chafe at this but look at how much security work (and failure) goes into routinely running hostile code not written by you, particularly on the hosting side. Cloud providers have armies dedicated to the exact same security problems that app stores must solve and it is very often not good enough. That’s fine when nerds are involved but more people than nerds use phones.
This is absurdly false.
> The permissions settings are in the OS. They could have all the same levels of security without the need to prevent competition.
This is also completely false.
OS hardening can’t prevent fingerprinting or cross app tracking toolkits.
Those are prevented by policy and contract.
Having said that, google has no intention of waging war against facebook. They have an understanding already.
> This is absurdly false.
Forgive me, it's wget, a checksum check, and then install command.
This is absurdly false.
Stricter sandboxing makes it more difficult to fingerprint the user and lessens the burden and dependency on legal contracts and policies. Which is what Apple just did by blocking the access to unique device id.
You can accomplish even more by not installing their crap apps to begin with, and have always had that choice. You need google to save you from yourself and this is a compelling enough reason for you to switch phones, even though you're smart and actually know all of what's been going on and how to prevent it, but choose not to?
That being said, I've been tempted to get a Motorola Razr flip phone just for the sake of nostalgia, though I would have to root it and remove everything related to Google to feel comfortable with it.
I trust that Apple isn’t profiting off my data. It isn’t even close to their business model so it allows them to give their users privacy G and F can’t.
To give you an example, I recently implemented an allowlist on my firewall so only approved devices can access my WAN. I immediately started seeing frequent dropped packets from my wireless access point (Netgear Nighthawk AX200) and switch (Ubiquiti UniFi 8-port PoE) to Netgear and AWS IPs respectively. While some of that is probably them checking for updates, the volume didn't really seem warranted.
Going back to Apple though... sure, that's the exact reason why I switched. They already charge a premium, so they have less of an incentive to pad their quarterly earnings selling data. But they're still a company, still responding to shareholders, and they already collect certain amount of analytics. There's not that much of a jump from there to selling it, so being careful and mistrusting is probably a good thing IMO.
No need to pay someone to hold my hand in not clicking that button.
You don't really, though. Because who knows which applications listed in the app store have the FB SDK embedded inside.
There's no practical way for me to inspect every app listing that I might consider installing, to see if it contains the FB SDK.
OTOH it's sort of hard to live on FOSS Android software alone.
I'm very familiar with how advertising currently works, but the field is also one that seems to evolve quickly (no doubt why: lots of money to be made).
Am I smarter than all the engineers and startups and existing firms whose revenues depend on tracking? Most likely not.
The other more mundane reason is just I'm lazy and tired. I just want a phone that works without wondering about patching the OS or whatever. Maybe you enjoy doing that, I don't.
We don't live in an ideal bubble where I have full control over the tools I use. Its the same argument people make for video game moderation "if you don't like it, turn off chat" but then you're self-isolating.
Point is, this is a social problem.
Really I'd even consider creating a FaceBbook account if I could pay them not to use dark patterns. However I imagine there is already a shadow user profile of me, and Facebook is making making more money through sites that leak visitors' information than I'd be willing to pay for Facebook.
I just wish I didn't have to choose between control and privacy.
Heck maybe I should just give up on the entire concept of phones.
It's all petty landgrabs in the end, this is why I can't stand using MacOS. Can't Apple treat my computer like something other than a hostage for negotiation?
It's been done before. Remember in the 90's when thousands (millions?) of people got free computers in exchange for allowing banner ads at the top of their screens?
I like to refine this to say
"these user's attention is the product
How?
It opens up the perfect opportunity for some competitor burning VC cash to swoop in and grab a ton of market share in a hurry, with a free iOS app.
FB knows this, so yeah, it's a completely hollow threat. But, just the idea that one of the tech giants has been backed into a corner by the risk of competition from paying-for-marketshare VCs or operating-in-the-red-on-purpose other tech giants, is really, really funny to me. No fun, eh Facebook? Hahahaha.
Google had the search and moved upstream to own the OS and protect his search. But still has to beg Apple for 25% of its users (and 40% of its revenue, if I understand).
Content (films, instagram personalities) are at the mercy of apps; Apps, even on Heroku or Atlassian platforms, are at the mercy of the platforms; Platforms are at the mercy of cloud platforms (AWS, etc) who own the hardware.
The only counter-example is telecoms, who owned the hardware but became dumb pipes, after 20 years of extremely bad behavior (including modifying HTTP pages on the go and injecting JS to insert ads, for Verizon).
I won't be surprised if Facebook starts shopping for a phone manufacturer and spins their own Facebook mobile distro in the future.
Facebook could enter the actor/actress recruitment market, own contracts and manage their Instagram along all their artists’ public reputation and persona. It’s not hardware but at least it’s real-world assets that reinforce their network’s desirability.
Facebook could buy Homebrew or IntelliJ and become a tool that every developer for most languages need to use, and it would give it more leverage in negotiating with AWS/Azure (Oh, the SDK has bugs with GCP? too bad!)
Those are just examples that have not been implemented because they are half-ideas, but it’s the idea of attacking really sideways.
is this really the case? I know so many people who have the latest phones but the bank owns their house and car. lot of bling but empty pockets.
At this point I don't think I'd trust Facebook either way but there are a host of others that I would be happy to pay for service.
Ha ha. I think a study should be commissioned to see whether FB has overall bettered the lives of its users financially or the opposite. This would be the most effective way to judge how necessary FB really is.
(I'm not including the social aspect, because i personally think it hasn't helped anybody socially in the long run (obviously, short term benefits are possible))
The question from here is, without Facebook could that have happened? Does Facebook's ecosystem contribute to this success? Does it also contribute to a lack of competitors in this space?
Individual niches are not as interesting because you might think that the market for your calligraphy kit is a forum for Japanese speakers (10% conversion rate, 10k people largest forum) but Manga-watchers have a much better potential (2%, 5M). It’s easy to assume who your niche is, but almost every campaign is a surprise. This is why Custom Audience powers most ads. Therefore your market is a service that knows about many people’s niche interest, but is itself quite generic: that’s Wordpress·com (freemium, not interested in ads), reddit (not good at monetisation for a long time), twitter (same delay), GMail to some extend and much later Slack, Discord, maybe SnapChat and TikTok.
There is a duopoly in ads platforms because there’s a duopoly in effective ideas that scale to any support and any advertiser: keyword (Google) and personalisation. Many platforms have tried to base ads on the content of the page, but it’s hard to find ads that pair well with the war in Darfur. Many YouTube creators get away with promoted content, but it is murky more often than not. The most successful “editorial” attempt is OutBrain and Taboola that are essentially auto-generated articles with super-optimised clic-bait-y garbage.
You can imagine hosting that information yourself, edit it, expose it to ad slots in your browser with a protocol. Dave Winner certainly dreams of it. But for me, the proof that this could work was Facebook letting anyone edit their ad preference and information: for years, you could just tell Facebook that you were _not_ into cars, baby clothes or stamp collection. No one used it. It was linked on every ad; you were linked to it if you right-clic to say an ad wasn’t relevant; it was easily findable on the website and the app… No one touched it. So much so that improving it was impossible without traffic. Privacy advocate who claimed this needed to exist ignored my comments when I told them it already did. There was major internal support for it, but even VPs can’t argue against data.
You can look at the history: Facebook was created in 2004; they immediately had ads, but they only became a significant player on targeting from 2008 onwards. At that point, ads had been around since 1995 with Viaweb, so more than 15 years; Google had been around for since 1998, so 10 years and the acquisition that created AdWords five years earlier in 2003. If an alternative direction was easy, there was time to build something.
I’m not saying another reality isn’t possible — I dream of a protocol emerging from Facebook opening its preference embeddings, after realising that there’s a worthwhile ecosystem of apps to let people optimise it the way they want. But not enough people wanted it, while billions of people seem comfortable with delegating decisions and targeting entirely.
(I'm more likely to benefit from a reddit dedicated specific kinds of pens than I am to benefit from a facebook dedicated to the same.)
Politics is an example of this change too. The big obvious nefarious. But to your example gives big boost to small campaigns.
I think also (i can't prove obviously) allowing more progressive candidates to raise and win by growing support nationwide to win in District.
I wonder how such a study will take place? Does it take into account the cost of time spent productively browsing? Or the revenue streams that encouraged entrepreneurship and enriched FB marketplaces?
Some more context, they're not native English speakers, live in a small dirt-village but somehow many people there have a mobile phone and FB so they found me/added me.
These are people I love. Some of them I have literally been to war with. I'd have died for them and they'd have died for me. I don't want Facebook to convince me all humans are garbage. They're not. I know these people. This isn't really them.
This probably isn't a happy coincidence. Facebook is "the internet" for large swaths of the world outside of North American and Europe. Very similar to how AOL has been "the internet" for my 70-year-old mom for the past 20 years, only recently being supplanted by Facebook.
That said, my wife has sold a lot of stuff to local folks that would have been thrown out. (Baby stuff, sports gear, etc) Shipping is too expensive and you don’t get the creepy scams that you find on craiglist.
But I've long since drifted away, ditched Facebook, and just kept people's phone numbers for the few I still care about. Trying to stay friends with people in faraway cities I never see in person in perpetuity by seeing their pictures pop up in a feed every now and then seems like a pointless fool's errand.
I could also see the people I'd become friends with "online native" gathering into cliques and echo chambers and becoming increasingly radical and angry, and I am neither of those things and wanted no part of it. Hobbyist communities exclusively for me from now on.
This is the wrong metric to study in isolation. If I buy a copy of the Harry Potter book, I am worse off financially but better off overall since I got lots of value from that book in excess of the amount that it cost me.
Also, Facebook doesn't track purely for better ads. That's the benign version. Facebook tracks because it wants to own the aggregate profile of "you" online.
I think I also read the per user dollar value of ad revenue was $150/month? Way more than any individual would pay - and losing a subset would reduce this for the others.
Also the preference for targeted ads is rationalized nonsense (imo) when the cost is user data:
“To test if users truly find 'relevant ads' as value-add: make two products, one with ads and one without and charge for the one with ads - see how many people buy it.
Why doesn't Hulu charge more many for their streaming service with ads instead of their service without? The behavior of these companies suggests they know on some level this value-add nonsense is a rationalization. Even if you say it's only value-add when compared to un-targeted ads - let users choose to have un-targeted ads without giving up their data privacy. I'd bet money on what choice they'd make.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27069492
Secondly, the profiles aren't 'useless'. They're highly valuable. Both for being able to present users with a targeted experience from day one & for controlling the internet-identity part of the online world. Which will surely only become more important with time, as more and more things from our lives move online.
He's implying that they aren't doing this for better ads or targeting. I'm not saying that "shadow profiles" don't exist, I'm saying that they do, and they're benign.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average...
I would pay double that in a heartbeat to remove ads from Facebook and Instagram!
I remember FB as a place I would want to go and share content. These days I only spend a few minutes checking my notifications (and FB is definitively getting wise to that because they are putting more and more irrelevant things into them).
"The first one is always free"?
The author seems to think that Facebook would suddenly stop doing all the other things it does to make money, once a user would pay. Of course they would not.
On the contrary: Facebook would see those paying users as extra valuable for tracking, keep harassing and confusing them until they click the wrong button once, and then sell that "premium" user data for more.
Even if the data stays all first-party, they make so many copies and it gets put in so many datasets across the world that co-mingling and abuse of it just feels inevitable at that scale.
I would even say it was against social norms. Don't talk to strangers. Don't give away your phone number. Don't give away your address. Don't tell state your mother's maiden name.
It was such a simple thing to get all of those new people on social media to give up all of that very personal information without hesitation. Yet, if some random person at the supermarket asked you any of those questions in person you'd definitely raise an eyebrow and walk away. SocialEngineering++
We didn't know that Facebook was compiling dossiers on every human being on the planet, even the ones without Facebook accounts.
https://www.propublica.org/article/its-complicated-facebooks...
They started recommending my friends from my high school. I went to a magnet school for my junior and senior years, and Facebook even recognized that. I graduated 10 years before I signed up. And the one piece I made sure I faked was the school I went to. I'm shy. If I wanted to communicate with someone I figured I'd add them myself.
Nothing magical to it. They had some other piece of data from someone else (or me from some other source) that matched up (the data was fake, but I had used it previously; I don't make that mistake anymore). But it showed me just how dedicated to getting all of this data they were.
Because in my opinion the browsers would need to make it as easy to use as any other website or phone app if it were ever to gain traction.
Yes yes, there's radicalization for everyone! God forbid you want to use social media for something besides political fighting though
The Federated Timeline is slightly cursed (I haven't curated it for a while), but less so than Twitter. (My instance, Fosstodon, doesn't really federate with the Nazi instances; those it has ended up federating with have been swiftly blocked, because Fosstodon's admins don't like admin-condoned harassment of their users.)
And I'm glad that with email we don't have server operators deciding on politics for their users. ActivityPub has a long way to go if labeling instances as "Nazi" is enough break federation.
And I guess this is sort of how fediverse is working.
Protocols don’t make much money compared to walled gardens selling max data possible.
They could still try! But you'd have options.
Take email, for example. I cannot imagine something like that coming into existence today.
I can use my own client to avoid ads and tracking from my service provider—did I download this message? Sure, the server knows that. How long have I looked at the message? Which message did I look at next? Did I follow any links (yes, someone might track that part, but my email provider's going to have a hard time doing that)? What mouse movements did I make while looking at it? No such luck there, and yes websites and closed-platform services do track that stuff.
I can switch providers. Say my email provider starts injecting trackers into all links. I can just dump their ass if I don't like it. I keep using email, and now they receive zero info about me (I mean, they might get a little if I send emails to their users, but you get my point). If I have my own domain name I don't even need to tell anyone I switched.
I can email someone using a different provider. Yes blocklists or whatever might cause a problem but, fundamentally, this does work.
Protocols force providers to act like a telco, at least, except that the situation's even better for software because the barriers to entry in the market are so low... unless all your competitors are giving away access to their strictly closed ecosystem for free, and not supporting open protocols. Then you're screwed, and that's exactly what's happening now and why the Internet protocols are largely frozen in time.
I deleted my account when the COVID nonsense started. They'd have to pay ME to get back on, and watch morons bloviate about anything involving math or science. I have plenty of my own moronic bloviating, thanks.
I’d bet on a correlation between users that are worth more than average and ones who’d pay to avoid being tracked. It’s a claim I have no evidence to support.
However they wouldn’t have to pay to maintain their creepy advertising systems and would presumably save on processing and bandwidth etc.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average...
Obviously it wasn't a 27X increase in profit to stop charging for the paper. Why not? Because a free reader wasn't worth the same as a paid reader -- a paid reader was worth about 100X a free reader. Most free newspapers weren't actually read, and paying readers are a much more valuable demographic to advertisers.
It depends where. Where I live they were negotiated individually but in the range of 25-40%.
I'm not disputing this, but adding a bit of information.
I worked for two very large newspaper companies during the time when the web started becoming big. It basically broke down this way at those companies:
Subscription and newsstand revenue paid for printing and distribution.
Display advertising paid for the journalists.
Classified ads paid for everything else.
My observation was that it wasn't people getting their news for free that killed newspapers. It was Craigslist. Classifieds were the near-zero-overhead cash cow of the newspapers we owned. Once classified advertising imploded, the money had to come out of the other buckets.
However, a paying customer is worth a lot more to an advertiser than a free customer so newspapers kept charging.
A lot of newspapers experimented with free editions, usually aimed at commuters. These papers were used to boost official circulation figures, since they were "editions" of the main paper. The same way a bulldog edition is counted along with the paper that lands on someone's front porch in the morning.
For whatever reason, most of the free editions went away, even before people stopped commuting.
As someone who subscribes to several dead tree newspapers and magazines, it's a much better experience than anything I've ever seen digitally. (Except for those that allow PDF downloads.)
Even Apple does this now.
Charge higher prices for the hardware, but still include (unequal) advertising inside the OS.
https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1390696646854397955?s...
That can on the table: it may be coke for you but Pepsi for your friend. The background radio ads in the show, maybe direct advertising.
More subtle, still print
I feel like we're in a long game of "boil the frog" till one day we're happy that our favorite service only has one or two ads.
Facebook doesn’t sell user data. They also happen to be the only company with a process in place to fight against other company doing it.
Maybe this move can indirectly give us some answers.
I would be very surprised if Google is not looking into to. Google has other avenues to collect data and deep tentacles so the hit to them may not be much, but FB might be hurt more. And, on the flip side, it may also buy Google some privacy goodwill.
gfys fb