SaintSal

Maybe we were just too early.

When I first wrote that post, years ago, I expected most people to ignore it as tinfoil-hat stuff. But as time has passed, people are becoming more aware. (Also, the implications are becoming more costly.)

I no longer write off the non-technical public as "they don't understand/care."

This gives me hope that alternatives can work, even alternatives that require network effects. (Though, I think the best alternatives won't be another social network but something more akin to easy ways for people to run their own group communications. I don't think a me-too will win here, but something more of a leap-frog.)

> Musicians find gigs through it. Businesses list specials, trips, blogs, etc.

Also students are highly reliant on it. These types of loose connections but strong network effects are hard to break.

However... > Way cheaper than sending out a snail mail newsletter or even managing an email list.

This is true less frequently. Facebook used to be a good organic channel to build, but now FB is forcing more payments, by forcing ads to FB pages, and then again for boosting posts on those pages. Plus, the costs are rising.

> Groups of people who had lost contact in high school have gotten back in touch in retirement

I experienced this too, but I also had a controlled test, since I wanted to track down some high school friends who weren't on Facebook. Turned out not to be so hard, and caught up with a bunch of other old friends along the way. :)

Sometimes the alternatives offer other advantages we don't see if we frame the problem as replacing what we have now exactly.

Creating an account with a fake name doesn't help. Facebook will ascertain your real name through a combination of: - knowing who you communicate with - tracking your online behaviour (on and off site) - collecting your name and contact information off your friends devices and accounts

Even if you provided a fake name, you still agreed to the TOS, so they can proceed as if you're still bound by the legal implications.

Salim here. I agree with the 'mindlessly easy' part. I've noticed the lack of convenience, especially in sharing the little moments.

As for replacing a personalised news feed, I still use Twitter and find that email newsletters, especially curations like getrevue keep me well-informed on professional news.

As for a personal feed, I found that Facebook wasn't really that great - lots of noise and I still missed things I thought were important. I haven't found a replacement, but didn't feel the need to replace something inadequate.

I'm the guy who wrote that post - My guess is the front page might block urls that have been posted before. This post finds its way to HN every 6-12 months as a fresh post.

Still, it's really nice that it still gets attention from the HN community, and even nicer that each time, the discussion is more productive and inquisitive.

The issue with technical interventions is that you're still allowing FB to collect information on you via other means via their TOS. I haven't read the latest TOS but at the time I did, they could trade your data with your bank because you've allowed that.

Would love your thoughts. This has been a side project for a while, but thought I'd kick it out and see if it's worth giving it some more attention. The approach was to find the mentors that moved the needle on the top performers in different accelerator batches, and ask them how they mentor. Would we fun to keep interviewing and add more content, but the book needs to be financially viable for more time investment to make sense...

Thanks - I'll update the post.

If only we could have webpages on our mobiles, eh? :)

Thanks - that's helpful feedback for me to see how this can be read. I think that even if someone doesn't have anything to hide, there are still issues that are relevant to them. So that section is just to address the issue from that perspective.

I thought of this too. The problem is that adding noise doesn't throw off the existing signals. All you can do is try to introduce new patterns, like try to convince the linear regression that you're left-wing and right-wing. Random data won't do that though; you'd need to know what patterns to recreate. A lot of effort, and as you say, pretty paranoid given one could just optout and block web trackers.

Sorry - I just picked a theme and never thought to browser check. Weirdly, I run FF on Linux and it looks okay. Anyway, I'll try to tweak the font. Thanks for pointing it out.

Good point, thanks. I should be clearer - Facebook sells ads but reveals data to third parties, who sell data.