This is a decent comparison. Metaverse is going to have most of the same issues with eyestrain, even more motion sickness and bulkier headgear. It might be a fun curiosity for some but it won't gain the mainstream appeal that Facebook has (or at least once had).
You’re wrong on this one, pre-“metaverse” it was just called social vr, and that universe is really something special. The creativity and energy in there is like nothing I’ve ever seen before and it’s very very exciting
Unfortunately, network effects are in play. Lots of people use facebook for things trivial and important. Local municipalities using it for events, etc. If you're not on it, you don't have a voice.
But I’d challenge this overall sentiment. I haven’t had Facebook since 2010 or so. Nothing bad happened. I have a large and loving family and lots of close friends that I spend time with. I didn’t lose my voice. If I’m angry I call my representative or show up at their office. If a company does something I disagree with I don’t buy their products and I leave feedback on their website.
It’s an illusion that we need Facebook or any other company as a conduit for feedback. We are choosing that path. It’s not one we need to take.
> It’s an illusion that we need Facebook or any other company as a conduit for feedback. We are choosing that path. It’s not one we need to take.
But it's a decision we took as a collective. Same as with many other things - we (people) use Facebook/Whatsapp/etcetera because _others_ are using them, not always because we need to.
If you as an individual decide to pull the plug off that stuff while people, groups or others around you that you're in touch with are still using them, you're risking to become a digital outcast. (I used Facebook from 2012 until 2018 and yes, it became a little harder to get in touch with people or many things that just assume everyone uses Facebook)
I wonder at what point I’ll be a digital outcast. What will that look like? Will my wife just sit on the couch and only message me through Facebook? Will my 3 friends I’ve known since high school not send me a text message to get together to play tennis and organize virtual tennis on Meta and not invite me?
I think more likely is that this concept is overhyped and fragile. Maybe you can think of something I’m missing here that not having Meta is causing ruin in my life for?
A few close contacts are easy to maintain with traditional means.
Many of the hobby groups I was a part of have moved to either facebook or discord, and old presences like individual forums or websites have disappeared or are shells of their former selves. If you aren't in a lot of groups, maybe this doesn't affect you the same?
Yea for some they moved to Slack but not a part of too many hobby groups or if I am I usually just subscribe to email updates. If they don’t do those then yea I’d either get a text message or an invite some other way or just not be part of the group anymore (which goes to show it wasn’t that important in the first place). It’s kind of a filtering mechanism for important interactions.
I've survived all my life just fine not being able to drive, doesn't mean it wont inconvenience others to not have a license (though yes, even without that they'd 'survive').
It'd definitely be harder to keep abreast of some events I go to without it and I'd never bother keeping the numbers of a lot of people I have on there without it yet can benefit from being able to reach.
> I've survived all my life just fine not being able to drive, doesn't mean it wont inconvenience others to not have a license (though yes, even without that they'd 'survive').
Don’t think these are very equivalent but I don’t think we should be designing society around cars either.
> It'd definitely be harder to keep abreast of some events I go to without it and I'd never bother keeping the numbers of a lot of people I have on there without it yet can benefit from being able to reach.
Everyone is different of course but I think for me meditation has helped just let go of people I’ve met. It makes the at-the-time interaction more interesting and meaningful for me because it’s unique and fleeting. It also makes getting someone’s phone number a more significant event because the interaction was so good that I think we should meet again. I also try to just stay in touch locally.
Admittedly on the professional side I have LinkedIn for most of that stuff but I’ve had days where I’ve been very close to deleting that too but just haven’t pulled the trigger. I think I’d be better off without it probably but it’s also so useless except as a Rolodex that it’s not doing too much harm.
For me when I was at the loneliest and most depressing times in my life I had Facebook. When I met my amazing wife and moved back to Columbus and had a strong social support network and loving family it really made Facebook (or TikTok or w/e) irrelevant.
> I've survived all my life just fine not being able to drive
Interesting. We have public transportation for those who either choose not to drive or cannot drive, or cannot afford a car, etc.
Is Meta starting to act like a government if it can ban you from "driving" in Meta's Metaverse, if Meta's Metaverse becomes a dominant mode? Will there be public funded options with less restrictive access than driving in Meta's Metaverse?
> 1) I predict meta will be a failure if it requires VR hardware.
Meta is almost certainly a word that gets banded around by (Ex-)Facebook meaning future communication platforms. In their eyes WhatsApp is part of the metaverse, FB is part of the metaverse, Oculus is part of the metaverse e.t.c.
> 2) I predict meta will be a failure if it requires VR hardware. Not to mention the cost.
Well the price of VR hardware has already gone from £700 hardware + a £1.5k Computer to £300 for one of the best headsets in 5 years (which does not need a separate computer to run) - so assuming you don't have a gaming computer, the cost is c1/5th of what it was not to long ago.
There is no reason to believe that cost will be a barrier in the western world.
I remember having an Apple Newton, which was visionary but sucked. People would always say to me, normal people aren't going to carry a pocket computer around like that. And they wouldn't because it sucked. But also, what would they need it for? Things change.
It is an interesting point. Yes, Facebook is a private firm and can do whatever it wants. But municipality is not. We must either ban public agencies from using such platforms or make them accountable to the sane standard as government
If you're banned from the public library its not a big deal.
If your voting site is moved to the library, then it becomes a big deal.
This became an issue in my state (or maybe larger area) WRT convicted pedos and similar convictions being able to vote, being legally barred from being within X feet of schools which are open, and voting sites being at schools.
Solution was the kids get voting day off, which hopefully will increase voter participation if someday everyone gets voting day off.
Utilization of the gym/community room/theater stage is never 100% anyway so on election Tuesday we'd spend a very late in the season gym class playing softball outside instead of field hockey in the gym, or stagecraft class would cohabitate with the wood shop for a day thus leaving the auditorium open.
Because of various long term migration patterns at least in the USA we also have districts that are practically emptied out despite having huge schools so you could give the voters an entire floor if needed, and other districts that are so packed I know personally of two schools that have two gymnasiums so you just dedicate one gym for one day.
School day off has been growing in the USA and I look forward to voting days being a holiday someday. Its a bit tricky because voter participation rates are low in the USA and some voters are uninformed enough to actually think we only have an election every four years, LOL, whereas its more like twice a year plus special elections where I live.
Of course if voting could change anything it would be banned, and we're replacing philosophical politics with identity politics so soon all that'll matter at voting time is the genetics of your parents. Already at that point with some demographics. Still, its interesting.
Well, you can't expect facebook to enable banned accounts for a single day, so that solution is off the table. Also, analogy with pedos is somewhat flawed: there is an actual reason why people don't want them around schools. Nobody justifies to people why some accounts are banned by facebook/google/etc. Most likely because they are no threat to society, but inconvenient to facebook/google/etc and their agenda. That's equivalent to mayor who dislikes you banning you from going to grocery store and giving no recourse or reasoning.
> there is an actual reason why people don't want them around schools
Agreed, but the real point is there's a geographic location you can't legally go to for some valid reason that the supreme court insists you must have access to on election day, regardless of the other reasons.
Numerous weird corner cases could be imagined; soon to be ex-wife teaches at your local polling place and your lawyer insists/demands you go no-contact or even worse the judge orders you to no-contact her, now you can't vote.
One novelty that affects my kids is "in the old days" it was a city tradition to visit your old elementary school on the first day of school, but now its time to control people by fear thus terrorists are hiding behind every tree and fences everywhere and lockdowns and you're not allowed on school property without a guest badge and background screen or the cops will get called which does impact voting operations quite a bit compared to the 80s when they'd literally prop the doors open and be friendly if you wandered in.
For a long time they we were just "oh well" you can always vote at city hall or vote by mail, but there was some kind of court case either locally or larger scale and now we shut down the schools entirely so they're not legally schools for one day.
Wish you get a lift of the ban. Meanwhile, I can't wait to see another episode of "vip complains online about bigtech ban and an insider helps him out while the rest of the plebs struggle with their permabans"
Classic "honest mistake"™. Followed by people calling for immediate cease of any critique since "they are very sorry and corrected the error".
In all seriousness though: It's time to find some name for this behaviour where the only chance for support or help is being a VIP or making the news headlines somehow.
I like this more because it doesn't focus on ban, sometimes it is an issue of lost access and inability to recover. Also it highlights the channel of recovery, which is the frontpage of some site
At some point drift in language will change the definition of "social media" from the former definition of trying to profit off users self-generated content, to the modern "in practice" definition of a for-profit heavily politically censored propaganda channel.
So, no, under the old def HN was never about becoming trillionaires by selling our accts to google or whatever. And under the new definition HN has intense political leanings but is still primarily technical in nature and doesn't censor as much as Reddit or other fundamentalist or inquisition like as sites.
We should not pretend that message boards are not subject to many of the same pitfalls as more conventional social media. At the same time, we should not be so overbroad as to lump message boards and social media into the same category.
On a message board, 1) I don't have a profile that's rich with personal information, 2) I don't have a dedicated wall for my musings, 3) I don't have an individually-curated timeline, and 4) I don't have first-class social connections embedded in the platform.
Point 1 means that there is much less ability to identify me for the purposes of advertising, which avoids much of the perverse incentive that comes with monetizing social media users.
Point 2 means that I have much less personal attachment to this place as an outlet for creative self-expression, which helps to defuse both a sense of toxic entitlement that I might feel on behalf of the platform providers, as well as the sunk-cost fallacy that might keep me active here even if I no longer experienced pleasure from being here.
Point 3 keeps filter bubbles from fractally proliferating; there is still one bubble, but it's the bubble that everyone else on the platform inhabits.
Point 4 provides a mixture of all of the above benefits.
Again, this isn't to say that message boards are perfect or that social media must be inherently bad, but IMO the differences are important.
> we should not be so overbroad as to lump message boards and social media into the same category
The details you list seem incidental to the social media of today. Reddit fits much of what you say but most people would classify Reddit as clearly social media even though Reddit is closer to HN than FB by this divvying of conceptual boundaries. Perhaps the social media of tomorrow involves no wall and meetings in Oculus land. Then we would be talking about how social media is psychologically or socially problematic because of 3D immersion.
IMO the easiest bright line between social media and "something else" media is that social media is populated with content by amateurs or indie producers. If FB became 100% business then it would lose its credentials as "social" media and simply become "traditional" media, notwithstanding any timeline, wall, bubble or heuristic curation. If YouTube became all professionals then it would just become HBO, regardless of whether there are subscriptions, notifications, or channels.
In recent history Reddit has added things like profiles and walls in an attempt to pivot towards conventional social media, which serves to illustrate the difference. I'm not saying the line is perfectly clear, but I am saying that using "social media" to encompass both Facebook and HN dilutes the phrase beyond the point of meaning. Different platforms have different advantages and disadvantages, and after a certain point labels cease to have descriptive power if they get applied overbroadly. We should focus on precise features of each platform rather than get bogged down in the usual "is social media bad" -> "is this platform social media" -> "is this platform bad by the transitive property".
As for the "indie producer" aspect, that's certainly one useful property to consider, but I don't think it's sufficient since pre-internet we had things like 'zine culture which were the bastion of indies, and I would find it a stretch to call zines a form of social media, rather than just indie media.
This has been discussed a few times here on hacker news. The argument I prefer (that I can’t find anymore, sorry) is that hacker news is different from social media because it gives every user the same feed. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc give each user a custom feed based on perceived preferences. This has been argued to lead to users being isolated within their own echo chambers. Hacker news seems to suffer less from that problem because it continually exposes users to new topics and points of view they might not have sought out.
HN is a specialty forum. Facebook in some cases is where everyday life is negotiated. In Iceland, for instance, all the unofficial rent/"garage sale" sort of economy lives on Facebook as far as I'm aware. It's not quite WeChat levels (you could still rent through official channels and buy stuff from retailers instead of other individuals), but it's uncomfortably close.
Like HN bans, Facebook/Google bans wouldn't really be too much of a problem if they weren't _the_ platform in their respective domains. As much as I advocate for alternative platforms like Mastodon and PeerTube, them being a viable alternative is a future I hope to see, not the present reality.
HN is like a party in a big room, where there are clusters of people having conversations. People mingle between the groups, dipping into and out of the conversations. There are no "connections" between people, and the site (thank God) doesn't "suggest" or promote anything to you based on some algorithmic analysis of your past expressions.
So long as the site acts only as the big room in which the party happens, it's benign. Once the room becomes an active participant and manipulator it becomes what is now a modern "social networking" site, and should be regarded as poison. At that point, leave for your own sake.
> Once the room becomes an active participant and manipulator it becomes what is now a modern "social networking" site, and should be regarded as poison.
Hacker News is one of the most aggressively moderated forums you'll ever come across, the room is very much an active participant and always has been.
And the entire purpose of the karma system (particularly the censorship of downvoted items) is to suggest and promote some content over others. That HN doesn't use machine learning is just a quibble about complexity.
You're right -- I failed to mention the indeed biased bouncers. There was a real purge it seems, in fact, over the past few months, as a lot of names are now silent; and, the tone is now much more 'consistent' (echo chamber-ish).
Flagging/purging content is to me more acceptable than manipulation via suggesting/promoting, though, especially if the moderators are members. Maybe making this distinction is hair-splitting, though.
Shadow banning, on the other hand, is a disgusting technique. That seems like more a childish prank than a means of moderation, and only invites negativity (which is what was trying to be avoided, right?).
Overall, it's a pretty reliable source of links to good articles -- and some discussions.
Shadow banning is a very useful tool for moderation. It is extremely frustrating as a moderator dealing with users that persistently shit up the place and crank out new accounts to continue the abuse as soon as you ban them. Shadowbans greatly relieve the moderation workload in cases like this because the abusive users keep themselves occupied, potentially for weeks. As someone who has previously moderated a large phpbb, I don't lose any sleep over wasting the time of abusive users since they are happy to waste my time as a moderator by deliberately and repeatedly breaking the rules.
I never really thought about it, but your description made me fear some well-meaning persons will "revamp" HN and turn it into something "fresh and modern" and introduce new features that allow us to "engage".
Maybe it's just me, but I never got the hang of the social network part of GitHub. Sure, I interact with issues related to work and I star repos that I might need later, but I never used the feed or had some discussions on it which are not work related.
It's not just you. I always thought this statement ("github is a social media platform") to be a bit of a meme. I've never had any interactions like that, nor have seen anyone else do it. Some users prefer to make their profile a bulletin board of their "achievements" (real achievements speak for themselves without glitz or unicorn symbols), or use it as something of a PR platform. You can easily avoid those types. (For example, these was a pretty funny LGTM from some random guy on the recent multicore OCaml pull request in like 5-10 minutes since it was posted. The PR in question is a giant and very complicated patchset that was in the works for about a decade, I think?)
I always took it as that interacting with each others’ repos, issues, and PRs effectively makes it a social network. It’s just a different kind of dynamic than we see in other kinds of SNS.
But I did receive comments in private from acquaintances who had picked up on my GitHub activities. On the one hand, I felt happy for the feedback, because it was people that I like to interact with. On the other hand, I felt like I wasn't aware that this information was aggregated and posted on a dashboard page that anyone who ever clicked "follow" on my profile was looking at with some frequency.
I do use the GitHub profile as a resumé, and as a work platform. I don't have LinkedIn. I do use it to showcase some of the stuff I find interesting to work on, and to show my skillset. But I also realize that I'm giving away timestamp information about my work habits, and I don't know if I like that.
Maybe my age (finished grad school in 2004) but I never created a Facebook account. Seemed like a waste of time and energy. And now? I’d gladly buy an Occulus but nope, need a Facebook account. Seems like a horrid company and where the cigarettes analogy seems apt and I used to smoke Marlboros as a kid. A lot of kids are now addicted to a product that actively harms them, Instaspam especially. Frankly love that FB makes it so hard to read stuff posted. Every time I’m linked to something there and it requires an account, I nope right out. I’ve banned Facebook from my life. Highly recommend not what you’ve lost, but what you’ll find instead.
Tbf its hard to find specific things/tweets you're looking for on Twitter even if you do have an account.
At least that's how it was until I stopped logging in about a year ago. But I can still access linked content. On mobile, I just have to paste the url into the browser address bar and it works.
Yeah but it feels like navigating around gets weird if you're not logged, because any link from the direct-linked content (original tweet for RTs, comments, etc...) will navigate then immediately hide the information behind a big popup, and if you close that popup... it sends you back where you came from.
It's a recent anti-pattern they added. Possible solution: replace the "twitter.com" portion of the URL by "nitter.net" and you won't be nagged by things like that.
It's definitely a weird and (anonymous-)user-hostile design, but here's a trick: reloading the page instead of closing the popup does load the content without the popup. (Until you navigate to the next link, of course, after which you'll need another reload.)
Well, they work as long as the company is powerful. And push people away as soon as the power reduces.
It's one of those policies that provide metastability, but increase the rate of change once the stability is lost. Powerful people normally like them, as they care much less about rate of change than about conserving power.
Is Tiktok worse than FB because of the way the platform is designed, or because of the way people are using it (trends etc), or something I’m not seeing?
From my perspective TikTok is worse because it’s algorithm is better at holding human addition, and it’s headquarters is located in an authoritative country. I don’t have any evidence to defend these statements, and it’s quite possible propaganda has influenced by opinion here. I’d love to hear from the experts.
It's interesting because they're both bad but in different ways. Facebook's addictive nature is in interacting with other people: FB wants you to start flame wars in the comments, share things around with people, etc. FB tries to connect you with other people to hate them. Facebook distorts a person's idea of OTHER PEOPLE. Facebook is like meeting the Duggers and assuming they're representative of all Americans. Facebook makes people angry and aggressive.
TT's addictive nature is more insidious because it's more internal: Humans are pattern-matching machines and TikTok will show you a LOT of very niche content to the point where your brain thinks it's important and true (think TV/movie product placement; they wouldn't do it if it didn't work). Because of TT's form, it's harder for the average person (non-creator) to be drawn into a social group, but it's easier for them to be firehosed into accepting false narratives through sheer repetition. TT distorts a person's idea of HOW PEOPLE LIVE; imagine if your main idea of how Americans live was USSR propaganda. TT makes people apathetic and prone to hug-boxes.
They're both taking advantage of the fight-or-flight mechanism, FB just wants you to fight and TT wants you to 'flee' (into its loving escapist arms, of course).
There are healthy use cases for both FB and TT (and even Twitter), but they're directly at odds with the incentives of the platforms themselves + we have a society full of unhealthy and traumatized people, so instead you get these evil clone versions.
I'd also say that both the US and China are authoritarian countries. China more so, but the mental health/addictive problems with TT are inherent to its design and medium decisions, not which nationality made it.
It's algo is actually showing me what I'm interested at not some reddit-tier meaningless political fighting. Despite headquartered in authoritative country I'm the user experience is better with less drama. Go figure.
TikTok seems like a more casual/fun experience to me. I suppose it depends on how you use it. My son and I have a great time watching animal videos, jokes and some other stuff.
I never got into instagram, but Facebook is always trying to lure me in with suggestive “interviews” of college girls and weird mom videos on the Facebook feed, which is otherwise very curated.
Tiktok actually shows you content you'd like to see. So in that sense it's "addictive." It shows me weird local commercials, retro computing stuff, and clips from old industrial films.
'Reels' is a lot worse. It shows you generic stuff that's slightly personalized by things you "liked" over a decade ago. No reason to use it.
About two-thirds of the way down I see "we’re working on new ways to log into Quest that won’t require a Facebook account" -- which, of course, makes no promises that it will see the light of day.
(Would've bought an Oculus by now if it wasn't for that requirement.)
I am thinking FB doesn't care about us if we don't have a FB account.
We are not contributing to the metaverse, why would they? The value of selling a handful of games for approximately $100 of revenue is peanuts compared to their metaverse idea.
Given that FB probably loses money on each quest sold, I think it's likely they are happy every time one of us grumpy loners declines to purchase their device
Interestingly those born in 2004 don't necessarily have them either - my neighbour was born then and mentioned that their year group don't use FB at all.
Is it really worth it? I'm not sure what benefit people get out of either LinkedIn or Facebook. They seem like not only a time suck, but also a great way for presenting your personal information for people and corporations to harvest. Personally I value my privacy and data over whatever miniscule (if any) tangible benefit I would see from using such a service.
This isn't even mentioning the rampant misinformation and divisive bullshit permeating the platforms (yes both of them)
I use LinkedIn to passively trawl offers from recruiters and ask for references. Most offers aren't particularly good but a few random recruiting recruiting connections I made ended up being important. The data I give LinkedIn effectively matches my resume which I have to be comfortable to send to random people in the first place, so I'm not particularly worried about the data provided. I do not browse the feed or post anything publically. I only privately message people I'm connected with, or those who provided a job posting I was willing to apply to.
The more socially competent you are, the less useful this probably is. Many people probably have some useful network of friends they built in college. I have little to draw on aside from a handful of people I worked with which I had professional rapport with which I never developed a personal connection. So thus, I am stuck on LinkedIn on the off chance I need a new job and a reference.
From what I hear, the action is in the groups, while ungrouped facebook is a barren wasteland with older people sharing conspiracy theories and other urgent PSAs they think are important. Definitely still skews older, but people seem to attempt the groups for niche interests.
People also have large group chats, which is a trend across all networks and general interaction.
Easy to miss that this trend is happening if you aren't part of any.
Its publicly accessible content on social networks like this which are going by the way side. The engagement is much less visible.
Same here. I just didn't get why I'd want to broadcast every shit I took, or everything I ate. Low on substance, high on drama.
Fast forward to today, and we now know that Facebook and other social media are encouraging narcissistic behavior, because narcissists are easy to manipulate: They are highly likely to have multiple addictions, they are easy to emotionally provoke, have nearly no ability to moderate there own behavior, and they take any attack on there beliefs as a persona attack, and will hate there attacker forever, becoming flying monkeys.
I highly encourage everyone to watch the documovie: The Social Dilemma.
I don't use Facebook either. Part of the problem is that other people treat it as if everyone is on Facebook.
People will only invite you to events on Facebook. Restaurants will only post updates to Facebook. Businesses have support forums in Facebook groups. Etc.
You do miss out on a portion of the internet by not being on Facebook. But I think that's because people rely too much on it.
I keep a Facebook account for the sole reason that I don't want some derplgänger with the same name causing me employment trouble in the future.
It may sound like a dumb reason, but I have seen the pattern of some eponymous innocent suffering because lazy HR didn't verify waaaaaaay too many times to not take the threat seriously.
You realize by making an account and adding a picture you greatly increase the chance someone will clone your profile vs someone creating a profile with photos they have sourced from somewhere else. If the latter happens it is probably from your friend group.
I go through this frequently and it's not even due to Facebook, it's just due to having a stupidly common western name.
To the point of I have folders, digital and physical full of sworn statements I've had to make, and official court documents from six different states attesting "no the John Doe before you applying for this job is not the one who came up in your background check database for grand larceny, no he's not the one who came up for involuntary manslaughter either." and I'm always ready for that conversation later in the interview when I get an email from the recruiter/HR "hey, we have a question about something that came up in your background check"
I keep a (deactivated) Facebook account just to prevent Facebook leaking my acquaintances to any random with my name and email.
That's right - in 2021, Facebook doesn't make you immediately verify your email when you sign up! They eventually close the account if you don't verify but by that point whoever signed up with your name and email already has access to parts of your shadow profile Facebook leaks (ex through 'suggested friends').
You would need to have a very unique name for that to be necessary and you are also putting a lot of confidence in HR's ability to disambiguate the profiles if you indeed have a doppelganger.
On the contrary, I have an exceedingly common name, which is why I need to have my own account to point to, as compared to the other several dozen same-name folks who have the potential to cause me trouble. There's no trusting HR here, it's a matter of being ready up front.
Perfectly reasonable question. The answer is that it has been my experience (across multiple companies, over significant time) that they tend to think you're making excuses for not showing your real profile unless you have an actual profile to show them.
There's lots of info on FB, behind soft walls. Lots of businesses don't have homepages, for example. Or people organize their events there. And the general network effect - by its nature, you miss out of everything that happens there.
Events have died completely in my circle. It’s a WhatsApp group for parties now - appreciate the irony, but everyone also has 4 or 5 messaging apps so switching could happen quickly if prompted.
You can create an account that has none of your personal information. I understand why people don't have an FB account. I don't, and I use an Oculus . But the downside of having an FB account is they plant cookies on your browser or track you in their app.
If you are only using the FB account on your Oculus, its an Oculus account that calls itself an FB account. You need an account for most game devices these days and for Steam. I am not saying its perfect, I am saying that not using an Oculus because you are off FB doesn't make that much sense to me. I do exactly that.
One thing I can think of that might complicate this is that Facebook has a policy of not allowing nicknames if I understand correctly. Which is why they can also verify you with national ID and others if something happens (and it does).
How would I remain as anonymous as I am on Steam for the community and still work within Facebook's terms of service?
I know plenty of people with nicknames (generally, fake last names) on Facebook. They just have to "look" real. Perhaps use your middle name as your last name.
I did that back when I had an account about a decade ago, and some do gooder got into an argument with me, didn't like my opinion and reported my account. It got locked and they asked for a government issued ID. Fuck that. I never went to the site again. Good riddance.
> You can create an account that has none of your personal information
Facebook pretends this is the case, but they use some dirty tricks to require personal information without explicitly requiring it.
In particular, if you create an account without a phone number, you'll find that within a day or two your account will inevitably be flagged for "suspicious" behavior, and you'll be required to enable two-factor-authentication with a valid phone number. (I assume the "suspicious" behavior here is your account existing without a phone number.)
> But the downside of having an FB account is they plant cookies on your browser or track you in their app.
Use Firefox, it automatically puts Facebook in its own Firefox Container so no FB cookies tracking you everywhere. And don't use their app it's basically spyware.
No, it's the other way around. You can already no longer create a non-Facebook Oculus account, and some time next year they'll require Oculus accounts be "upgraded" to Facebook in order to use the devices at all.
Interesting they've said that, but this is Facebook - I'll believe it when I see it, and even then be astonished if they make it possible to port purchases or de-Facebook an account created during the period when that has been mandatory.
I recently recreated a facebook account merely because many companies offer more prompt customer service through that platform. Instead of filling in some broken "contact us" form and wondering if you get a reply it's just one more way to track down customer service for things.
That said, I'm keeping their creepy apps off my phone...
Nobody needs a Facebook account but there is a lot on there to like. Instagram has a tremendous amount of creativity and craft (and a bunch of butt shots), WhatsApp is a low cost way for billions of people to text, Facebook lets me keep updated on old friends and acquaintances. Overall I think I get positive value from it.
Unpopular opinion: Instagram and Pintrest are absolutely amazing for discovering aesthetics and visual culture. I don't use them for their intended purposes or any social need. Have no followers or I follow no one. Just save images and cultivate what I like.
The aptly named Matrix might end up being the perfect OSS Metaverse. It will require people to actually bother to build it though. Identity is going to be key and we should accept no substitute for the federated variety. So, matrix has that and the brand. And conveniently, Facebook has nothing else than a vague idea of what they think they might need to build, which is basically Whatsapp and Instagram but with AR goggles, in their narrow minded heads. Which, is they same as saying that they have no clue whatsoever. That's good news! Whatever, it's going to be, it's not going to be theirs to own in perpetuity.
Matrix is for now one of the few actually federated things (in addition to email) that still has a chance of not failing. As such it's a good basis for people to build a Metaverse on top of. Of course it is going to require people actually showing up and doing that. Email completely destroyed it's competitors by virtue of "you can email everyone instead of just the morons that bought the exact same shit that you bought". Thirty years on, nothing has changed. Whatever it's going to be, Zuck's ffing walled garden ain't it.
Neal Stephenson has been repeatedly answering the question what he thinks about the whole Meta thing as part of his recent book tour for Termination Shock. He'd be the person that coined the whole notion of the Metaverse in Snowcrash in the early 90's.
He does not seem very impressed with this effort by Facebook and nor did Facebook bother to even talk to him about their plans. I think that is probably a tactical mistake by Facebook and it kind of outlines how desperate they are.
Speaking of Matrix and the implied association, Keanu's not too impressed by Facebook's hijacking of Neal Stephenson's term/concept either https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZyu0_vYhs
I'm banned from Instagram and i can't create new accounts because they banned my phone number. So if i want an instagram account i have to buy another number. No way. I can still live without instagram, but this is the way Facebook inc/Meta do business.
For me Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatApp have to die!
And that's why you probably should have had a separate account for running your business. I don't use Facebook for anything except some of the groups that remain there and which are relevant to my hobbies. Strong opinions get you suspended because there will always be someone offended by what you say.
I think business accounts have to be linked with personal accounts, and Facebook requires users to use their legal name. They also do phone verification for signups now so it's not trivial to get around their requirements
You're 100% right. A few years back you could sign up for business accounts which were seperate from your personal identity, but 2 or 3 years back this practice was cancelled and you had to start linking your business account to your personal account.
Also having two facebook accounts is not allowed by their TOS. That's the first thing our partner manager asked me: "do you have multiple accounts by any chance? That often gets people banned".
Calling facebook "meta" is the ultimate in marketing people their own conceptual understanding of things back to them. Truly FB is trying to ZUCK the internet. This meme takeover is the worst part, speaking as a mostly non-user of FACEBOOK products.
I dreamed of a OS filter that lets you turn "meta" back to "facebook" where appropriate. We can't bring AI to the OS fast enough.
I've done and created a second account, which was reduced to a limited account the minute I linked my secondary phone number. Probably used that number on my old account already, so they were quick to strike it down.
I could not link a phone, but I need to link my phone number if I want to get access to more advanced functionality such as running ads, pages, et cetera.
Surely there are a thousand other ways I could sign up again -- but to be honest I don't want to jump through those hoops. I just want my account back. And since that isn't happening, I hope my tale serves as a warning for people never to rely on Facebook as they can take your access away if their bots think you're suspicious.
In the early 90s I ran a BBS and was a USENET user and administrator (ISP) for years. The SnR of major social media platforms is so poor now. I find it hard to even explain to the young how much better such forums can be.
It amazes me that on the one hand, people keep getting banned from Facebook for odd inscrutable reasons, while on the other hand, none of the spammers or scammers I've reported ever get banned, no matter how obvious.
Literally yesterday, I was looking through my ignored friend requests and found some random profile that had thousands of 'friends', and all the posts in his timeline were ads for dodgy weight loss and/or boner pills, with hundreds of people tagged in the photos. Dozens of posts a day, every post title full of punctuation-as-text to avoid triggering spam filters. Reported it as a spam account, got a response a few hours later that they had checked the profile, determined it didn't violate their community standards and that it would not be removed.
I guess it's just fascinating that with all that money and power, they've managed to build a moderation system with such a high rate of both false-positives and false-negatives. You'd think they could at least constrain it to being terrible in one direction.
They probably have to have a higher threshold to ban people on a thing like marketplace. It's very hard to sell anything without someone complaining sometimes. Sometimes the complainers are scammers.
And maybe they make money from it, so they don't want to kill the goose. I would also guess that heavy FB users are a terrific concentration of suckers.
Every time I see an article about the advance of AI, with the vague sci-fi theme of "AI is now so good it is about to replace humans" I think of the many, many stories I've heard like yours, where the FAANG seem unable to build even basic statistical systems, nevermind AI. Some articles suggest AI is on the verge of human sentience, meanwhile, in real life, I constantly encounter stupid algorithms, even from big companies with lots of money. The advertising companies are the worst. I bought a guitar and then, for the next 6 months, every ad I saw on every site was about guitars. How many guitars do they really think I'm going to buy in one year? It's really a once-every-two-or-three-years purchase, it doesn't justify the saturation I was exposed to.
Or elevators. I'm in New York City and everyday I go into some building that has a terrible algorithm for its elevators. I don't need advanced AI, my life would be improved with even minor tweaks to most algorithms for elevators.
Don't blame the algorithms, blame the people who decide policy. It's perfectly possible to find a ton of spammers in Google, FB and Twitter by manual and/or automated methods. Their continued existence shows they are tolerated.
> "AI is now so good it is about to replace humans"
Clearly how good it is (not) is not an impediment to being pushed upon us and replacing humans. FAANG certainly seem to prefer the low cost over the quality of the results.
On one hand I agree, it is perplexing. But then I realize that profile with a picture of a hot girl with lots of "friends" counts as a user that brings "engagement on the platform" so it's valuable to FB when they're trying to convince shareholders that the platform isn't dying. They're specifically incentivized to ignore those accounts and let them persist.
why would anyone want to constrain it that way? To ban no one or ban everyone would be terrible.
Do the math: 1 million of 2 Billion legit users get banned wrongly. 2.9 Billion of 3 Billion slammers get banned.
That leaves a huge amount of false positive and false negatives while still being almost perfect.
What about vendors that add tethering after the fact? That’s far worse behavior, but even that has not been enough to change the status quo.
My GoPro camera once worked fine without signing into their service. Then one day they forced me to create an account and log in, just to continue to use the app to control my hardware.
This pissed me off so much that the camera was “accidentally” destroyed not long after, but not before thinking hard about tying it to a brick and returning it via their corporate office window. Now, I tell everyone that will listen to avoid buying their products. Shame on them and any company that does such despicable things to their own customers.
Well, he is pretty open about this, despite his ambivalence to Facebook he even says he realises that it has more a hold of him than he thought it would.
Hang in there. De-Zucking your life is a net positive.
I want my account back, I even said so at the end. But I also want to let people know that, despite having access to some high level people inside of FB, I most likely won't get my account back.
So it's two-fold: I want people to know they can get banned, at any time, for life, without much of a warning. And two: you might depend on Facebook more than you'd like to, so plan accordingly.
I really hate that I can't talk to James anymore. I didn't even bother to swap email addresses.
This is one of the reasons I don't have any FB (or FB owned) account. You're at their mercy, with all your eggs in their basket you have to hope they don't decide you're not allowed your eggs.
It's not the only reason. Not even at the top on my list for reasons. But if there is going to be a metaverse, Facebook cannot be the gatekeeper, or any other US tech company that randomly and for no given reason permabans you cough Google.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. This person chose to get into a business run entirely on someone else's property and now they're paying the price for that bad decision. They lampshade this in the first couple paragraphs but that doesn't change the relevance.
I was unfairly (and unprofessionally) pressured into using fb for a group project chat at uni this year. I tried to create an account about 5 times but was completely unable. Each time I logged in or created an account, I was shown to have ‘violated community standards’ and promptly kicked off. This was on brand-spanking-new accounts. I must have really pissed someone off at fb over the years.
By any chance did you have an initial picture without your face?
Over recent years Facebook has been clamping down with those same sort of messages (sometimes it will appear after a few days or weeks for people I know) and for better or worse the main fix was having a picture with a face on a brand new account.
Older accounts don't have this problem though.
It's a similar tactic to how in recent years twitter lets you sign up without a mobile number but after some time you will suspiciously get your account locked until you "verify" with a mobile number.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadNot the vision you’ll get from Meta however
Depends on what you’re trying to say doesn’t it?
But I’d challenge this overall sentiment. I haven’t had Facebook since 2010 or so. Nothing bad happened. I have a large and loving family and lots of close friends that I spend time with. I didn’t lose my voice. If I’m angry I call my representative or show up at their office. If a company does something I disagree with I don’t buy their products and I leave feedback on their website.
It’s an illusion that we need Facebook or any other company as a conduit for feedback. We are choosing that path. It’s not one we need to take.
But it's a decision we took as a collective. Same as with many other things - we (people) use Facebook/Whatsapp/etcetera because _others_ are using them, not always because we need to.
If you as an individual decide to pull the plug off that stuff while people, groups or others around you that you're in touch with are still using them, you're risking to become a digital outcast. (I used Facebook from 2012 until 2018 and yes, it became a little harder to get in touch with people or many things that just assume everyone uses Facebook)
I think more likely is that this concept is overhyped and fragile. Maybe you can think of something I’m missing here that not having Meta is causing ruin in my life for?
Many of the hobby groups I was a part of have moved to either facebook or discord, and old presences like individual forums or websites have disappeared or are shells of their former selves. If you aren't in a lot of groups, maybe this doesn't affect you the same?
It'd definitely be harder to keep abreast of some events I go to without it and I'd never bother keeping the numbers of a lot of people I have on there without it yet can benefit from being able to reach.
Don’t think these are very equivalent but I don’t think we should be designing society around cars either.
> It'd definitely be harder to keep abreast of some events I go to without it and I'd never bother keeping the numbers of a lot of people I have on there without it yet can benefit from being able to reach.
Everyone is different of course but I think for me meditation has helped just let go of people I’ve met. It makes the at-the-time interaction more interesting and meaningful for me because it’s unique and fleeting. It also makes getting someone’s phone number a more significant event because the interaction was so good that I think we should meet again. I also try to just stay in touch locally.
Admittedly on the professional side I have LinkedIn for most of that stuff but I’ve had days where I’ve been very close to deleting that too but just haven’t pulled the trigger. I think I’d be better off without it probably but it’s also so useless except as a Rolodex that it’s not doing too much harm.
For me when I was at the loneliest and most depressing times in my life I had Facebook. When I met my amazing wife and moved back to Columbus and had a strong social support network and loving family it really made Facebook (or TikTok or w/e) irrelevant.
Interesting. We have public transportation for those who either choose not to drive or cannot drive, or cannot afford a car, etc.
Is Meta starting to act like a government if it can ban you from "driving" in Meta's Metaverse, if Meta's Metaverse becomes a dominant mode? Will there be public funded options with less restrictive access than driving in Meta's Metaverse?
I predict meta will be a failure if it requires VR hardware.
Not to mention the cost.
It doesn't.
The idea behind Meta is that it is a multi-device experience all connected to the same backend.
If the experience they start with is entertaining and compelling, they’ll use it.
> 1) I predict meta will be a failure if it requires VR hardware.
Meta is almost certainly a word that gets banded around by (Ex-)Facebook meaning future communication platforms. In their eyes WhatsApp is part of the metaverse, FB is part of the metaverse, Oculus is part of the metaverse e.t.c.
> 2) I predict meta will be a failure if it requires VR hardware. Not to mention the cost.
Well the price of VR hardware has already gone from £700 hardware + a £1.5k Computer to £300 for one of the best headsets in 5 years (which does not need a separate computer to run) - so assuming you don't have a gaming computer, the cost is c1/5th of what it was not to long ago.
There is no reason to believe that cost will be a barrier in the western world.
If your voting site is moved to the library, then it becomes a big deal.
This became an issue in my state (or maybe larger area) WRT convicted pedos and similar convictions being able to vote, being legally barred from being within X feet of schools which are open, and voting sites being at schools.
Solution was the kids get voting day off, which hopefully will increase voter participation if someday everyone gets voting day off.
I am from UK and many voting places are schools and the whole school has the day off. I think this has been true for over a hundred years.
Because of various long term migration patterns at least in the USA we also have districts that are practically emptied out despite having huge schools so you could give the voters an entire floor if needed, and other districts that are so packed I know personally of two schools that have two gymnasiums so you just dedicate one gym for one day.
School day off has been growing in the USA and I look forward to voting days being a holiday someday. Its a bit tricky because voter participation rates are low in the USA and some voters are uninformed enough to actually think we only have an election every four years, LOL, whereas its more like twice a year plus special elections where I live.
Of course if voting could change anything it would be banned, and we're replacing philosophical politics with identity politics so soon all that'll matter at voting time is the genetics of your parents. Already at that point with some demographics. Still, its interesting.
Agreed, but the real point is there's a geographic location you can't legally go to for some valid reason that the supreme court insists you must have access to on election day, regardless of the other reasons.
Numerous weird corner cases could be imagined; soon to be ex-wife teaches at your local polling place and your lawyer insists/demands you go no-contact or even worse the judge orders you to no-contact her, now you can't vote.
One novelty that affects my kids is "in the old days" it was a city tradition to visit your old elementary school on the first day of school, but now its time to control people by fear thus terrorists are hiding behind every tree and fences everywhere and lockdowns and you're not allowed on school property without a guest badge and background screen or the cops will get called which does impact voting operations quite a bit compared to the 80s when they'd literally prop the doors open and be friendly if you wandered in.
For a long time they we were just "oh well" you can always vote at city hall or vote by mail, but there was some kind of court case either locally or larger scale and now we shut down the schools entirely so they're not legally schools for one day.
In all seriousness though: It's time to find some name for this behaviour where the only chance for support or help is being a VIP or making the news headlines somehow.
"I'm a VIP, you can't pleban me."
Any other term more fun and memorable?
“Zuck permabanned me but I frontpaged to get back my account”
So, no, under the old def HN was never about becoming trillionaires by selling our accts to google or whatever. And under the new definition HN has intense political leanings but is still primarily technical in nature and doesn't censor as much as Reddit or other fundamentalist or inquisition like as sites.
On a message board, 1) I don't have a profile that's rich with personal information, 2) I don't have a dedicated wall for my musings, 3) I don't have an individually-curated timeline, and 4) I don't have first-class social connections embedded in the platform.
Point 1 means that there is much less ability to identify me for the purposes of advertising, which avoids much of the perverse incentive that comes with monetizing social media users.
Point 2 means that I have much less personal attachment to this place as an outlet for creative self-expression, which helps to defuse both a sense of toxic entitlement that I might feel on behalf of the platform providers, as well as the sunk-cost fallacy that might keep me active here even if I no longer experienced pleasure from being here.
Point 3 keeps filter bubbles from fractally proliferating; there is still one bubble, but it's the bubble that everyone else on the platform inhabits.
Point 4 provides a mixture of all of the above benefits.
Again, this isn't to say that message boards are perfect or that social media must be inherently bad, but IMO the differences are important.
The details you list seem incidental to the social media of today. Reddit fits much of what you say but most people would classify Reddit as clearly social media even though Reddit is closer to HN than FB by this divvying of conceptual boundaries. Perhaps the social media of tomorrow involves no wall and meetings in Oculus land. Then we would be talking about how social media is psychologically or socially problematic because of 3D immersion.
IMO the easiest bright line between social media and "something else" media is that social media is populated with content by amateurs or indie producers. If FB became 100% business then it would lose its credentials as "social" media and simply become "traditional" media, notwithstanding any timeline, wall, bubble or heuristic curation. If YouTube became all professionals then it would just become HBO, regardless of whether there are subscriptions, notifications, or channels.
As for the "indie producer" aspect, that's certainly one useful property to consider, but I don't think it's sufficient since pre-internet we had things like 'zine culture which were the bastion of indies, and I would find it a stretch to call zines a form of social media, rather than just indie media.
If not, what would they be?
Like HN bans, Facebook/Google bans wouldn't really be too much of a problem if they weren't _the_ platform in their respective domains. As much as I advocate for alternative platforms like Mastodon and PeerTube, them being a viable alternative is a future I hope to see, not the present reality.
So long as the site acts only as the big room in which the party happens, it's benign. Once the room becomes an active participant and manipulator it becomes what is now a modern "social networking" site, and should be regarded as poison. At that point, leave for your own sake.
Hacker News is one of the most aggressively moderated forums you'll ever come across, the room is very much an active participant and always has been.
And the entire purpose of the karma system (particularly the censorship of downvoted items) is to suggest and promote some content over others. That HN doesn't use machine learning is just a quibble about complexity.
Flagging/purging content is to me more acceptable than manipulation via suggesting/promoting, though, especially if the moderators are members. Maybe making this distinction is hair-splitting, though.
Shadow banning, on the other hand, is a disgusting technique. That seems like more a childish prank than a means of moderation, and only invites negativity (which is what was trying to be avoided, right?).
Overall, it's a pretty reliable source of links to good articles -- and some discussions.
Maybe it's just me, but I never got the hang of the social network part of GitHub. Sure, I interact with issues related to work and I star repos that I might need later, but I never used the feed or had some discussions on it which are not work related.
But I did receive comments in private from acquaintances who had picked up on my GitHub activities. On the one hand, I felt happy for the feedback, because it was people that I like to interact with. On the other hand, I felt like I wasn't aware that this information was aggregated and posted on a dashboard page that anyone who ever clicked "follow" on my profile was looking at with some frequency.
I do use the GitHub profile as a resumé, and as a work platform. I don't have LinkedIn. I do use it to showcase some of the stuff I find interesting to work on, and to show my skillset. But I also realize that I'm giving away timestamp information about my work habits, and I don't know if I like that.
Direct link to the material--I can see it, if I'm trying to find additional material, nope.
The negative patterns are too bold.
At least that's how it was until I stopped logging in about a year ago. But I can still access linked content. On mobile, I just have to paste the url into the browser address bar and it works.
Yeah but it feels like navigating around gets weird if you're not logged, because any link from the direct-linked content (original tweet for RTs, comments, etc...) will navigate then immediately hide the information behind a big popup, and if you close that popup... it sends you back where you came from.
[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...
Well, they work as long as the company is powerful. And push people away as soon as the power reduces.
It's one of those policies that provide metastability, but increase the rate of change once the stability is lost. Powerful people normally like them, as they care much less about rate of change than about conserving power.
Me neither. The "dumb fucks trusted me" vibe rubbed me the wrong way right out of the gate.
Wish someone had stopped them grabbing Whatsapp, etc., deleted my account there too.
TT's addictive nature is more insidious because it's more internal: Humans are pattern-matching machines and TikTok will show you a LOT of very niche content to the point where your brain thinks it's important and true (think TV/movie product placement; they wouldn't do it if it didn't work). Because of TT's form, it's harder for the average person (non-creator) to be drawn into a social group, but it's easier for them to be firehosed into accepting false narratives through sheer repetition. TT distorts a person's idea of HOW PEOPLE LIVE; imagine if your main idea of how Americans live was USSR propaganda. TT makes people apathetic and prone to hug-boxes.
They're both taking advantage of the fight-or-flight mechanism, FB just wants you to fight and TT wants you to 'flee' (into its loving escapist arms, of course).
There are healthy use cases for both FB and TT (and even Twitter), but they're directly at odds with the incentives of the platforms themselves + we have a society full of unhealthy and traumatized people, so instead you get these evil clone versions.
I'd also say that both the US and China are authoritarian countries. China more so, but the mental health/addictive problems with TT are inherent to its design and medium decisions, not which nationality made it.
I never got into instagram, but Facebook is always trying to lure me in with suggestive “interviews” of college girls and weird mom videos on the Facebook feed, which is otherwise very curated.
TikTok is a maximizer of wasted attention.
'Reels' is a lot worse. It shows you generic stuff that's slightly personalized by things you "liked" over a decade ago. No reason to use it.
Facebook says that Oculus won't require a Facebook sign in anymore.
https://www.facebook.com/boz/posts/10114026973983491
When they bought Oculus they made a definitive statement saying that Oculus devices will never need an FB account to use.
To me they lost all credibility. Not just because of this instance but many other instances of lying and deceit.
https://uploadvr.com/how-to-play-pc-vr-oculus-quest-2/
I just read and reread the Boz words and don’t see how any of it translates into “no Meta (Facebook) account needed”?
(Would've bought an Oculus by now if it wasn't for that requirement.)
We are not contributing to the metaverse, why would they? The value of selling a handful of games for approximately $100 of revenue is peanuts compared to their metaverse idea.
Given that FB probably loses money on each quest sold, I think it's likely they are happy every time one of us grumpy loners declines to purchase their device
This isn't even mentioning the rampant misinformation and divisive bullshit permeating the platforms (yes both of them)
The more socially competent you are, the less useful this probably is. Many people probably have some useful network of friends they built in college. I have little to draw on aside from a handful of people I worked with which I had professional rapport with which I never developed a personal connection. So thus, I am stuck on LinkedIn on the off chance I need a new job and a reference.
People also have large group chats, which is a trend across all networks and general interaction.
Easy to miss that this trend is happening if you aren't part of any.
Its publicly accessible content on social networks like this which are going by the way side. The engagement is much less visible.
Fast forward to today, and we now know that Facebook and other social media are encouraging narcissistic behavior, because narcissists are easy to manipulate: They are highly likely to have multiple addictions, they are easy to emotionally provoke, have nearly no ability to moderate there own behavior, and they take any attack on there beliefs as a persona attack, and will hate there attacker forever, becoming flying monkeys.
I highly encourage everyone to watch the documovie: The Social Dilemma.
People will only invite you to events on Facebook. Restaurants will only post updates to Facebook. Businesses have support forums in Facebook groups. Etc.
You do miss out on a portion of the internet by not being on Facebook. But I think that's because people rely too much on it.
It may sound like a dumb reason, but I have seen the pattern of some eponymous innocent suffering because lazy HR didn't verify waaaaaaay too many times to not take the threat seriously.
To the point of I have folders, digital and physical full of sworn statements I've had to make, and official court documents from six different states attesting "no the John Doe before you applying for this job is not the one who came up in your background check database for grand larceny, no he's not the one who came up for involuntary manslaughter either." and I'm always ready for that conversation later in the interview when I get an email from the recruiter/HR "hey, we have a question about something that came up in your background check"
Even at a small town library there was another patron with my name.
That's right - in 2021, Facebook doesn't make you immediately verify your email when you sign up! They eventually close the account if you don't verify but by that point whoever signed up with your name and email already has access to parts of your shadow profile Facebook leaks (ex through 'suggested friends').
I'm not confident that is true in any meaningful sense as it seems to align too nicely with what Facebook would like people to think.
If you are only using the FB account on your Oculus, its an Oculus account that calls itself an FB account. You need an account for most game devices these days and for Steam. I am not saying its perfect, I am saying that not using an Oculus because you are off FB doesn't make that much sense to me. I do exactly that.
How would I remain as anonymous as I am on Steam for the community and still work within Facebook's terms of service?
Facebook pretends this is the case, but they use some dirty tricks to require personal information without explicitly requiring it.
In particular, if you create an account without a phone number, you'll find that within a day or two your account will inevitably be flagged for "suspicious" behavior, and you'll be required to enable two-factor-authentication with a valid phone number. (I assume the "suspicious" behavior here is your account existing without a phone number.)
I've seen this pattern and the excuses people make for it too (anti spam prevention, as if there are no other anti spam prevention methods)
Use Firefox, it automatically puts Facebook in its own Firefox Container so no FB cookies tracking you everywhere. And don't use their app it's basically spyware.
That said, I'm keeping their creepy apps off my phone...
Matrix is for now one of the few actually federated things (in addition to email) that still has a chance of not failing. As such it's a good basis for people to build a Metaverse on top of. Of course it is going to require people actually showing up and doing that. Email completely destroyed it's competitors by virtue of "you can email everyone instead of just the morons that bought the exact same shit that you bought". Thirty years on, nothing has changed. Whatever it's going to be, Zuck's ffing walled garden ain't it.
Neal Stephenson has been repeatedly answering the question what he thinks about the whole Meta thing as part of his recent book tour for Termination Shock. He'd be the person that coined the whole notion of the Metaverse in Snowcrash in the early 90's.
He does not seem very impressed with this effort by Facebook and nor did Facebook bother to even talk to him about their plans. I think that is probably a tactical mistake by Facebook and it kind of outlines how desperate they are.
Also having two facebook accounts is not allowed by their TOS. That's the first thing our partner manager asked me: "do you have multiple accounts by any chance? That often gets people banned".
Bonus: economic opportunity for lower class.
I dreamed of a OS filter that lets you turn "meta" back to "facebook" where appropriate. We can't bring AI to the OS fast enough.
I could not link a phone, but I need to link my phone number if I want to get access to more advanced functionality such as running ads, pages, et cetera.
Surely there are a thousand other ways I could sign up again -- but to be honest I don't want to jump through those hoops. I just want my account back. And since that isn't happening, I hope my tale serves as a warning for people never to rely on Facebook as they can take your access away if their bots think you're suspicious.
Also a few weeks into using an account I made for testing a product that uses their signin system, it asked me to scan in and upload my passport.
Luckily it wasn’t a core part of my job so I just gave up having any kind of Facebook account.
They really care that you have exactly one account in your real name.
It’s one of the best things that can happen to you, to be honest. Facebook is a cancer on society.
If you’re going to disallow disconnection between meatspace and VR, there’s nothing virtual left in it.
Literally yesterday, I was looking through my ignored friend requests and found some random profile that had thousands of 'friends', and all the posts in his timeline were ads for dodgy weight loss and/or boner pills, with hundreds of people tagged in the photos. Dozens of posts a day, every post title full of punctuation-as-text to avoid triggering spam filters. Reported it as a spam account, got a response a few hours later that they had checked the profile, determined it didn't violate their community standards and that it would not be removed.
I guess it's just fascinating that with all that money and power, they've managed to build a moderation system with such a high rate of both false-positives and false-negatives. You'd think they could at least constrain it to being terrible in one direction.
And maybe they make money from it, so they don't want to kill the goose. I would also guess that heavy FB users are a terrific concentration of suckers.
Like the Apple Mac tower and a generator... very dangerous weapons.
That's why burglars and shoplifters call it Fencebook.
Or elevators. I'm in New York City and everyday I go into some building that has a terrible algorithm for its elevators. I don't need advanced AI, my life would be improved with even minor tweaks to most algorithms for elevators.
Clearly how good it is (not) is not an impediment to being pushed upon us and replacing humans. FAANG certainly seem to prefer the low cost over the quality of the results.
why would anyone want to constrain it that way? To ban no one or ban everyone would be terrible.
Do the math: 1 million of 2 Billion legit users get banned wrongly. 2.9 Billion of 3 Billion slammers get banned. That leaves a huge amount of false positive and false negatives while still being almost perfect.
Block and filter anything related to their platforms.
There should be a "no-tether" law.
My GoPro camera once worked fine without signing into their service. Then one day they forced me to create an account and log in, just to continue to use the app to control my hardware.
This pissed me off so much that the camera was “accidentally” destroyed not long after, but not before thinking hard about tying it to a brick and returning it via their corporate office window. Now, I tell everyone that will listen to avoid buying their products. Shame on them and any company that does such despicable things to their own customers.
Hang in there. De-Zucking your life is a net positive.
So it's two-fold: I want people to know they can get banned, at any time, for life, without much of a warning. And two: you might depend on Facebook more than you'd like to, so plan accordingly.
I really hate that I can't talk to James anymore. I didn't even bother to swap email addresses.
It's not the only reason. Not even at the top on my list for reasons. But if there is going to be a metaverse, Facebook cannot be the gatekeeper, or any other US tech company that randomly and for no given reason permabans you cough Google.
Over recent years Facebook has been clamping down with those same sort of messages (sometimes it will appear after a few days or weeks for people I know) and for better or worse the main fix was having a picture with a face on a brand new account.
Older accounts don't have this problem though.
It's a similar tactic to how in recent years twitter lets you sign up without a mobile number but after some time you will suspiciously get your account locked until you "verify" with a mobile number.