I have used facebook probably daily since 2007 - until a few weeks ago a recent phone update moved some icons around and offloaded the facebook app. Where facebook used to be on my home screen was replaced by LI for some reason, and I found that I was for a few days reflexively clicking "linkedin" notifications when I clearly was absent mindedly trying to reach facebook. When I realized what had happened, I decided not to re-install facebook to see if I actually missed it or if it was just a dumb, idle compulsion. Haven't missed it at all! I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't accidentally gone through this. It had somehow wormed itself into my habits in a really compulsive way that was also not even providing me value, clearly, because now that I think about it more and more, I cannot think of a single reason why I would log into facebook. Even when I occasionally use messenger app, that's entirely separate from the facebook app now and has been for a while, plus whatsapp/telegram/discord is better anyway, so what is my incentive as a user to even log in to facebook? Who is that site even for anymore?
I used to get value out of some private groups, support groups - but those have slowly become infested by bots/trolls in a weird way that I can't really prove but the experience for me at least has been increasingly poor over the last few years.
All this is to say it does not surprise me that facebook aggressively protects its moat - someone over there realizes the power of habit/compulsion, it's clearly baked into their app and UI and everything about that ecosystem. Long gone are the before-times where app growth was focused on making a compelling user experience, we're in pure extraction mode now that pretty much anyone that will ever make a facebook account already has made one.
I have similar story. Recently facebook forced me to enable 2-factor auth but adding SMS did not work for me for a whole week and I just deleted the app. Later I opened facebook from mobile browser and added SMS as 2nd factor and now I have opened Facebook from mobile browser only once in more than a week and I don't miss it much. It was the only "social" network I used besides reddit and hacker news
I'm not sure why this isn't considered anti-competitive behavior. Once a communication company has 1-billion users perhaps we need to classify them as a more of a utility and hold them to stricter standards of openness.
> why this isn't considered anti-competitive behavior
Considered by who? Setting aside the 2021-2024 Lina Khan anomaly, the US Federal government has not enforced anti-trust law for decades, and the States do not have enough power to create their own anti-trust laws. We also just elected an extremely big-tech-friendly government, so that won't be changing for the foreseeable future.
He has three hundred million reasons to "cozy up" to it. Trump believes (and not without evidence) that he lost in 2020 because of $300M+ Zuckerberg spent on electing Biden. Really difficult times could be ahead for Meta - Trump is extremely vindictive. I strongly suspect Musk will be "cozying up" to the next administration similarly in 2028, or outbidding everyone else again. Neither Zuck bucks, nor Musk bucks bode well for democracy, IMO.
They definitely do. On both Twitter and Meta related products, posts with links in them get heavily downranked in the algorithm. It's why so many influencers have the link in the first reply instead.
And yeah, it's definitely a bad thing for the internet. Honestly, I wonder if someone could argue it's an anti-competitive behaviour that should be banned?
Facebook also exposes less of a business page now unless you are logged in. This is a problem because for some reason many businesses only update their Facebook page and not their website. Social media has become increasingly hostile and closed off.
As an aside, Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments criticizing Apple for not innovating and trying to lock users in is laughable in the face of Meta’s complete lack of innovation and user hostile practices.
I am happy to avoid any business, club or anything that thinks it's reasonable to have their opening hours, or any information on Facebook only (or Instagram for that matter).
What free speech? Facebook always reserved the right to control what is published on their platform. Facebook has never been about "freedoms" of any kind, why is this recent news surprising in the least?
1) It's "surprising" because this is super vindictive unless they're doing it for very good, specific reasons (otherwise it's just competition killing)
2) "Reserved the right" doesn't mean a given thing isn't censorship, especially not at the scale Facebook operates at
Free speech has never prevented a private company from policing their own platform and Facebook especially does not promise "free speech".
Just like "state's rights", "free speech" has always been a lie told by those who want only THEIR speech to be free, which is why you can say the N word on twitter and not get banned or blocked, but if you say "cracker" you may be downranked
You seem to be referring to the United States' First Amendment, whereas freedom of speech is a western liberal value. The parent comment was pointing out that Zuckerberg does not uphold the value.
Readit News
I used to get value out of some private groups, support groups - but those have slowly become infested by bots/trolls in a weird way that I can't really prove but the experience for me at least has been increasingly poor over the last few years.
All this is to say it does not surprise me that facebook aggressively protects its moat - someone over there realizes the power of habit/compulsion, it's clearly baked into their app and UI and everything about that ecosystem. Long gone are the before-times where app growth was focused on making a compelling user experience, we're in pure extraction mode now that pretty much anyone that will ever make a facebook account already has made one.
Meta admits it deleted links to decentralized Instagram competitor Pixelfed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42694547 - Jan 2025 (3 comments)
(apparently they've fixed it now)
Considered by who? Setting aside the 2021-2024 Lina Khan anomaly, the US Federal government has not enforced anti-trust law for decades, and the States do not have enough power to create their own anti-trust laws. We also just elected an extremely big-tech-friendly government, so that won't be changing for the foreseeable future.
And yeah, it's definitely a bad thing for the internet. Honestly, I wonder if someone could argue it's an anti-competitive behaviour that should be banned?
More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixelfed
But link your (forced) Oculus account to Facebook? That's a ban (yeah, automatically flagged, but still)
Or any number of unspecified community guidelines violations
Or accounts getting hacked constantly
As an aside, Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments criticizing Apple for not innovating and trying to lock users in is laughable in the face of Meta’s complete lack of innovation and user hostile practices.
If I am not supposed to know, why even try.
Tech is hard, it's difficult for us to understand how hard.
1) It's "surprising" because this is super vindictive unless they're doing it for very good, specific reasons (otherwise it's just competition killing)
2) "Reserved the right" doesn't mean a given thing isn't censorship, especially not at the scale Facebook operates at
"It's time to get back to our roots around free expression."
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/its-time-to-get-back-to...
Just like "state's rights", "free speech" has always been a lie told by those who want only THEIR speech to be free, which is why you can say the N word on twitter and not get banned or blocked, but if you say "cracker" you may be downranked