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Comment by muglug | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is just transitioning to becoming the digital equivalent of an oil company. They make a product that billions consume, but that many people think is doing damage to the environment (even though many of those critics still consume the product).

That's why their PR machine is now switching to these slightly astroturfy campaigns. The next step is an advert along the lines of "They call it pollution. We call it life".

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Analogies in fiction to the "oil company uber alles" - Technocore in the Hyperion Cantos [0] as well as Phyrexian Unlife [1] in Magic the Gathering CCG.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos [1] https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?mult...

Phyrexian Unlife might be the most emotionally effective magic card.

> Facebook is just transitioning to becoming the digital equivalent of an oil company. They make a product that billions consume, but that many people think is doing damage to the environment (even though many of those critics still consume the product).

I like that analogy or narrative. The aesthetic value of the analogy is appealing to me.

I’d argue that’s an improvement, their previous PR regime sounded like the Soviet information ministry.

> Facebook is just transitioning to becoming the digital equivalent of an oil company.

Seems more analogous to a tobacco company. Some people think it's bad and they use it anyway.

> Seems more analogous to a tobacco company

They have an addictive product in common. But oil seems more apt.

The sale of tobacco is highly regulated. Oil, less so; Facebook, not at all.

Oil became useful in the Industrial Revolution, and enabled downstream innovation. Facebook came about amidst the modern Internet and is likewise a platform. Tobacco is old and the end of the line; the ancillary market is limited.

Finally, both oil and Facebook are tools (for some). Tobacco could be thought of as a tool, but it‘a more universally hedonistic.

One interesting aspect of FB's externalized cost structure is that the damage is both to society (like pollution as you mention) and also the individual consumer (more like cigarettes) because the product is designed to be addictive and while releasing momentary dopamine to the user, makes them more depressed on the whole.

Oil so useful that modern society would collapse without it.

Facebook is not meeting a core need. It's peddling something entirely optional to society. At best it provides entertainment value, while being extremely addictive and dangerous.

Facebook is like crack.

Human connection is a core need. Facebook provides it (or something a lot like it).

And yet, after not using Facebook for over a year, I don't miss it one bit and feel like my human connections have improved as a direct result.

Human connection can be had in many alternative ways, with a lot less drama and controversy.

Reading these posts full of hyperbole, one would think human society couldn't exist without Facebook.

It certainly could and did for thousands of years... but it would be very different. If facebook went away you would just get other companies springing up to fill the void (Snapchat, Tiktok, etc). That’s how you know it’s a core need.

I don't understand how "it would be very different" if other companies were to just spring "up to fill the void."

Doesn't this phenomenon merely indicate that some market forces believe that the industry Facebook works within has potential for more profits than are currently being extracted?

Facebook is human to computer.

I consider human connections to be person to person, where you can see, talk to, hear, gauge body language and nuance, and adjust to that in real time. Facebook is a substitute for human connection, and a poor one at that. I see a lot in the news about how people feel more depressed and alone than ever, and are online more than ever and checking their devices every few minutes. So much so that it's to the point that when they actually DO have person to person contact they're still tied into their devices instead of being present in the moment with undivided attention and enjoying that other persons company. I agree that human connection is a core need. I just think we're conflating facebook as somewhat fulfilling that need. I'd argue it's doing the opposite and destroying human connections, in general.

I haven't seen a tv ad in years.

Back then, facebook had a tv ad series. It was a vague, "what's this ad for?" kind of ad. The jist of the ad was "friendship is great" with some sort of facebook=friendship reveal at the end.

The ad was creepy. The suggestion that facebook is providing the core human need of friendship is creepy. Facebook is incidental.

Facebook is to human connection what sugar is to nutrition.

So, inherently necessary, and quite important if you're diabetic?

Not exactly. More like "not a substitute for".

In Southeast Asia, Facebook is the main or only online presence for many, many businesses. They don't have their own websites, just a corporate Facebook page, a phone number (for Whatsapp/SMS mostly) and a Google Maps entry. I'm not saying all these businesses would disappear if Facebook did, but it's not clear how they'd be online. Most of them have zero IT.

I'm certain that given the size of that market, some enterprising company would step up to fill it.

One might expect Garena to do it, but why haven't they already? Maybe Grab can.

Wow I didn’t know that. What are some examples?

That’s interesting to think about compared to so many companies I’ve seen having their own url, even if their website is all html tables and css rules from 10+ years ago.

Here's an example: https://facebook.com/BelimbingSuperstar/

That is a midrange restaurant in tech-savvy Singapore, opened a few months ago by people who already had another successful restaurant.

And here is their website: http://belimbingsuperstar.com

As of this writing the website is literally a GoDaddy placeholder page. They use the domain for email only, they didn't even bother to redirect it to Facebook.

It's increasingly common for small businesses in US. Many restaurants, for example, have a Facebook page, a Yelp page etc, but they don't have a website.

> Oil so useful that modern society would collapse without it.

I don't like the taste of this, I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly why, but it's something like:

We depend on oil, because we depend on oil. I can say I "need" my phone but I bet I'd be just like anybody else in the 60s if I didn't have my phone. I "need" the BART but only because I live in a city that exists in its current state because of the existence of public transit. Etc. Feel where I'm going on this?

Modern society would absolutely collapse if oil just suddenly vanished. Obviously. But how could that possibly happen? It's impossible. And it's also, I think, absurd to suggest there's no possible way to quickly and intelligently transition off oil dependency, barring the fight against the Oil lobby, which I'll get to.

Also, I postulate modern society could absolutely exist in an almost identical form to how it does today, if it hadn't become addicted to oil from the get go. It's feasible from an economic and engineering standpoint that we could have transitioned our entire electrical grid to nuclear, with some trickles of hydro and wind here and there, in the 1980s. Sure electric cars haven't really been entirely feasible until recently, but electrified public transit absolutely has been, and maybe we would have gotten better electrified vehicles sooner if there wasn't as much oil available.

My basic point is that Oil is not "necessary" for modern society, either in its formation or in its current iteration, and that we can absolutely get by without it, EXCEPT for the fact that would hurt some shareholders in a very big way and so they will fight tooth and nail to prevent them. With them out of the way, the obstacles would be so much less.

Feel free to replace oil with whatever dominant energy source you'd prefer, for your timeline of choice. I think the core argument still holds.

To elaborate: my problem with the Facebook <-> Oil Company analogy is the magnitude mismatch in the utility axis. Facebook's operating niche describes very specific solutions for social interaction, in a space saturated with stronger and very enjoyable alternatives, some as old as humanity itself.

I think the scale might work out in the toxicity axis though.

Ah, fair, I completely agree.

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