I would be interested if theirs any information on a big tech company rolling out a FB replacer or if Mark did something to really anger someone. From what I can tell most posts seems to be around Britain releasing information. Not trying to start a conspiracy just trying to understand why all the posts today.
Facebook is in the middle of a media scapegoat frenzy: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo.... So we're going to keep seeing anti-Facebook articles for a while; it's more attractive to blame Facebook than it is to examine the media's role in the 2016 election or to look carefully at underlying forces, a la The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium by Gurri.
If you look at the stock charts alone, your friend is probably correct. The date, specifically, seems to be Thursday July 26th.
A better question might be how did they get away with... I don’t know any of it really, for so long?
Don't have any opinion on it, just wanted to read other people's takes.
IMO, neither. The media in general does have a large amount of anti-FB fervor that is substanceless (this article isn't one though the exact same link was posted already [0]). However, regardless of frequency on HN, the crowd here is too niche to affect FB's sustainability.
[citation needed]
Cambridge Analytica? Soros? This clusterfuck? What was substanceless?
* Cambridge Analytica: A company accessed friends lists via an api and sold them to another company. Friends lists are pretty much public on every other service. Very low quality data. Happened years ago. Original company accessed the data legitimately via api.
* Soros: Billionaire investor in FB starts publicly bad mouthing FB. FB hires team to find out why. Non-story.
* This story (strategic use of data with various partners): Literally every company that sells data does this. Some shady user practices, yes, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Altogether these are pretty minor things but the media coverage would have you think FB is causing the world economy to collapse.
My theory is that this is happening for two reasons:
1. Old media business models continue to deteriorate. FB is the new gatekeeper so the old gatekeepers are attacking it.
2. Extreme left-wing political bias in major media companies is still looking for a scapegoat for the 2016 election results and trying to to stop platforms that can circumvent their narrative.
Again, FB has a lot wrong with it, but to not view this as a coordinated attack from a handful of centralized mainstream media players is to miss the real story here.
Personally, I'm happy that the media is finally starting to pay attention. Facebook has been doing shady, unethical, user-hostile stuff for a long time - since way before 2016. This has been building for a while now and I think the attention is entirely deserved.
And I'm not even part of the Elite Secret Socialist George Soros-Funded Left-Wing Media Cabal.
- "Facebook Used People’s Data to Favor Certain Partners and Punish Rivals, Documents Show" [0]
- "A Hot Seat for Facebook, an Empty Chair for Zuckerberg and a Vow to Share Secret Files" [1]
- "On Thanksgiving Eve, Facebook Acknowledges Details of Times Investigation" [2]
All three strike me as substantive. Yes, the NYT opinion section is a bit fluffy, and yes, that strikes me as a problem in a world where folks are increasingly unable to distinguish between journalism and editorial, but at the end of the day commentary like that is what the "opinion" label is for.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/technology/facebook-docum...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/technology/facebook-briti...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/business/on-thanksgiving-...
This is an OPPORTUNITY for HN readers in general to take a critical look at what this particular incarnation in Internet future-history is.
We should be documenting every detail and aspect of what is happening in tech, SV, FB, Goog, appl, etc all around us - as - how will we reflect on everything come 5, 10, 20 years from now.
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# ASK HN: is anyone working on the forensic cyber-#archeologist path? Who?
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We can't just assume "media" is doing it... HOLY CRAP - what was his name who fell from grace - the Micheal-something/AOL/Gawker?/WTF-was-his-name - who was ousted as a jerk and now we can't even recall his name... frak.
AH... the internet helped me:
ARRINGTON: https://gawker.com/5732314/aols-new-problem-mike-arrington
yeah -- we need to keep tabs.
FB will not be around forever (maybe?) but their footprint shall -- so we need to learn how to divine the right path.