Antisocial – Ello and Facebook
adamwilcox.org
adamwilcox.org
If you learn to use it, it's pretty good. There is real value is in the many, many useful groups (both public and private) as well as the event invitations.
Yes, I understand "if you don't pay for it you are the product". I think that's bunk - or rather, I don't think that makes it any less useful.
Newspapers have been subsidised by advertising for years (the cost of the paper basically covers distribution costs). That never made them any less useful.
(And Ello? I care even less than the author. PG has the canonical technique for building a product like this: concentrate on a very small market subset, and then expand. I don't see that they have done that.)
I have to say it's a lot better than I had imagined. I first I was really excited to express myself amongst friends without forcing them to email me.. the next step was when my family found me, and now I express myself on there... less. Finally, I've gotten used to it and it's just another communication tool. I basically use it to track events and chat with people. So.. pretty boring, but a useful tool.
My initial hesitation wasn't really a "badge of honour" or a principled stance of any kind, although when I told people I didn't have an account they usually took it that way. When I joined, lots of comments along the lines of, "I thought you were too cool for FB! lol". It was never about that for me. It was just a general... unease.. about the idea of writing down in a database who was, and was not, my friend.
I don't find that, in real life, friendship is a binary yes/no relation, and therefore I find it weird to explicitly encode this more or less ephemeral thing that is friendship and social dynamics into a formal data structure. However, on joining, I quickly realized that FB "friendship" has little to do with the real thing, and is simply a way to stay connected with people. So no biggie after all.
To some extent I think it's just because there's such an expectation of it in some circles, that people either give in and get one after the Nth time being pestered about it, or become somewhat defiant about not giving in and getting one. It's difficult to just not have a Facebook account in a low-key way in such a context.
That does vary hugely based on demographics and social circle, though; for some people, having or not having a Facebook account is not a big deal and they barely think about it either way.
Honestly, everything you do online is tracked unless you use addons/extensions to counter these and block these trackers. You're always going to be tracked no matter what you do. Unless you recycle names online you're going to be tracked.
Isn't "Silicon Valley hipsters" a small market subset?
Are you kidding? I can come up with better, but John Oliver is funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw
> Yes, I understand "if you don't pay for it you are the product". I think that's bunk - or rather, I don't think that makes it any less useful.
That's like saying smoking's long term carcinogenic effects don't make it any less enjoyable.
By the way, advertising doesn't subsidize anything. Advertisers get their money from us. There is no free lunch. In fact, advertising gives us lunch that is less tasty, costs more, and gives us food poisoning: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372640
filters out the junk you don't want to see, leaving behind the stories and page elements you do wish to see
Also, who just calls their FAQ/Help a "WTF page?"
Fair enough.
Of course, most of the planet thinks FB has value, so this observation is of relatively limited utility.
...
"I can’t work up any enthusiasm for Ello"
¯\_(ツ)_/¯