Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

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> The thing is, we’re not really asking for Facebook to control itself, we’re asking Facebook to control other people.

But it already does. That's it's job. That's what advertising is for. I suppose "control" is a tad strong, but that's the dream of every advertiser - to deliver a message to exactly right person at the exactly right time so that they take a desired action (buy, vote, post, etc).

Whenever this debate comes up I can't help but wonder what a non-commercial (non-profit?) version of Facebook would look like. I'm sure people would still post stuff for likes, but would it still be a career path for "influencers" where they use their popularity to push products of dubious value with little disclosure? Would there be an "algorithmic feed" whose contents you have little control over? Would posts by your friends be drowned out by "high engagement content"?

Advertising fundamentally alters the medium that carries it. It happened with cable TV (remember cliffhangers before commercial breaks?), and it has happened to the internet. Let's not pretend Facebook's shitty products are somehow the natural state of things. Better social media ("prestige" social media?) might be possible.

> Whenever this debate comes up I can't help but wonder what a non-commercial (non-profit?) version of Facebook would look like. I'm sure people would still post stuff for likes, but would it still be a career path for "influencers" where they use their popularity to push products of dubious value with little disclosure?

How would FB being non-profit prevent individuals advertising products on their own page?

This is the problem with most of these critiques of FB: they're not about FB.

What you don't like is people being able to communicate easily with each other and reach a wide audience.

> What you don't like is people being able to communicate easily with each other and reach a wide audience.

That's what the internet allowed with blogs. And blogs were (and are) relatively great! What's the difference? Blogs could not be shoved in your face by manipulating your "timeline" based on commercial considerations of "engagement". SEO has somewhat damaged blogs over time (another victim of ad-funded incentives), but IMHO it's a far better situation than Facebook.

> How would FB being non-profit prevent individuals advertising products on their own page?

Maybe it wouldn't but maybe that content wouldn't end up in everyone's face as often either. It's hard to say because we don't have a non-commercial social network to compare to. The best example of a non-commercial internet service is Wikipedia - unfortunately this isn't a great analog. It's hard to reverse engineer which of Facebook's worst features are there because of commercial considerations, but surely some of them are. Things like the algorithmic feed or suppressing content from people you explicitly follow (unless they pay up) are there to squeeze more money from existing users.

> And blogs were (and are) relatively great! What's the difference? Blogs could not be shoved in your face by manipulating your "timeline" based on commercial considerations of "engagement".

The real difference is that there were far fewer people using the internet then and the average person using the blogosphere was more intelligent and thoughtful than the average person using FB.

You might not feel this way, but reverting back to blogs puts a considerable impediment in the way of most people for sharing their own thoughts with their friends and peers.

Not that you explicitly claimed otherwise, but the focal point of the moment's discourse seems to be a small fraction of teens who reported suicidal ideation citing content they see on Instagram as the first thing that triggers suicidal ideation for them, and I very, very strongly doubt that the relevant content is often ads, or even content that could be argued to result from the fact that the platform is ad-supported.

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