Facebook's 'Closed Silos' Pose Challenges To Open Web 77
An anonymous reader writes: The growing trend of closed content silos -- publishing platforms that require a login in order to view the content is a step away from a more open web. Back in December of last year, Facebook launched its own in-app browser, which is basically a web-view that loads links you tap on using the Facebook app. Although in-app browsers may be convenient for some, such features are primarily designed to keep users inside of the application for a longer duration, which translates to more advertising exposure (and, thus, more money). This kind of feature can be challenging to the goal of keeping the web open, not only because the feature overrides the end user's default mobile browser, but also because it keeps users in a closed ecosystem (versus exploring the web). Additionally, the Instant Articles feature doubles down on siloed content by working with publishers to make articles available nearly instantly within the app, loading much faster than they would through a mobile browser. This sounds good, and it is convenient. But it also sets up a path for monetizing content that would otherwise be viewable outside of the closed silo, and, because you're using the app to browse the web inside this silo, there are privacy concerns. Unlike using a browser such as Firefox or Chrome, which has a private browsing option, a user of Facebook's in-app browser does not have the same privacy control. It's no secret that Facebook has been trying to create what appears to be a closed version of the internet. The social juggernaut's Free Basics initiative, for instance, offers users with free access to select websites. Facebook gets to be the gatekeeper of the platform. This is something that didn't sit well with some privacy advocates in India, who played an instrumental role in banning Facebook's initiative in the country. Facebook is not just a social networking website where people go to talk with their friends and family, Facebook has become a mammoth platform that offers the ability to upload videos (mimic YouTube), and send money to your friends (mimic PayPal) among other things. It is almost scary to see the rate at which Facebook is expanding and trying to absorb everything that comes in its way.
Facebook is its own closed silo (Score:1)
Remember what happened when that one guy asked to see what they had on him? [nytimes.com]
They have a scary amount of information on you. And they want more.
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Even creepier was their response [deviantart.net].
The thing about technology (Score:2)
Re:The thing about technology (Score:5, Insightful)
This type of thinking comes from business people's side: instead of creating individual products from ground-up, create and control a whole platform. When you control the platform people do business on, you own the market. Google didn't create their own proprietary OS because its markets would've been too narrow; instead they created a platform that extends over numerous manufacturers. When the manufacturer's and app developers succeed, Google succeeds. When the manufacturer's and app developers fail, Google doesn't. It's a one-sided win position they got themselves in.
Amazon isn't selling everything themselves, instead they got a platform that allows sellers to join up and they get a slice of their profits, but don't fail themselves if the sellers go bankrupt. You can hardly be relevant in e-commerce unless you have some kind of presence there, and this is a bit worrying since they can bar a business from utilizing their platform.
Private corporations are people when it suits them best. They get the benefits of being considered "people", but pretty much none of the downsides apply to them. Corporations enjoy freedom of speech, but they don't have to apply this fundamental right to their services. A news platform, like Facebook's, has no obligations to publish a story by a publisher if they don't want to. When all the readers are concentrated to that particular platform, it becomes increasingly difficult to exercise freedom of speech as a publisher. Facebook would effectively control the news we read.
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Failbook already controls the news most of its products read. ... erm, genial, idea blew its mind and so on.
A typical product glances at the screen a couple of times per minute in order to read what shit its contacts have taken, what selfie was uploaded, what genital
THAT is news for most of failbook's products.
Re:The thing about technology (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook = AOL? (Score:5, Interesting)
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People really didn't wise up to AOL, AOL failed to bring customers a broadband experience to match what they had been able to provide under dialup. The iPhone walled garden shows that there is nothing dead about a walled garden model... as long as the experience matches the expectations of the users.
Honestly, its good to be able to get out to the Internet, but a lot of people prefer the simplicity and functionality of a curated model. There are certainly "meta-dangers" to having a closed ecosystem, but th
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And still - there are people who don't bother with facebook. Can't be bothered, have nothing particular to say. "Social" webpages are boring.
And the kids will leave facebook when the next big thing comes around. Facebook will stagnate like anything else in popular culture. Elvis is not the king anymore - hasn't been for a long time. So will fb. You get big - you may rake in money and be the whatever everybody talks about/purchase/uses - and then you're old.
Facebook is already not the same for the kids. Not
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I disagree. Even if all the younger people abandon FB, it's going to take a very long time for it to die out. The older people aren't dying off that fast.
AOL isn't even really dead yet: there's still tons of people who have AOL email accounts for some odd reason. A lot of them are old-timers who got those accounts in the 90s and just never gave them up. Now of course, AOL doesn't make nearly as much revenue as they used to back then, because their ISP business has mostly dried up due to broadband choice
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Certainly Facebook will not die out.
But they'll reach the level of irrelevance of AOL before much longer. Like you say, AOL isn't even dead yet. Facebook won't be, either.
But kids figure things out, and they don't want to be on Grandma's platform except for those rare occasions when they want to look at pictures of Grandma's new poodle.
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Again, I disagree. Unlike AOL, Grandma will continue using Facebook for years to come. And their middle-aged parents will too. Unless something comes along which is so compelling that all these older people switch over to it (or FB does something so bad that they abandon it), it's likely all these middle-aged-and-up people could be on there for decades, being very active users. AOL isn't like this, because when it became nearly impossible to use the internet with dial-up and broadband services became mo
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It's also full o
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Maybe as society starts to care about privacy and security, they'll wise up about facebook too?
As a society we do that rather well. The typical stuff you see shared on Facebook is no different from any conversation you'd overhead on a crowded train. The vast majority of the posts which aren't clickbait are in open discussion to people in general that the posters know, and in every system there's idiots who don't understand the implications of keeping sensitive information private. That's not Facebook's fault.
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Better the peasants wait another few years for access to the Internet than never get it because a few corporations have taken control of how it is accessed.
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This is what happens... (Score:1)
...when you install systemd.
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The next version of systemd will have a built-in Facebook login. The version after that will integrate Facebook itself.
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Lately, I even see people posting here on Slashdot directly from their facebook logon credentials.
Ripped from the files... (Score:2)
...of 'Duh' magazine.
Was this news to anyone? My tech illiterate wife knows this.
If they haven't already (Score:2)
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It channels all the useless, benign people into a ...
conveniently accessible voting bloc? That would be quite a lot of people.
In-app apps! (Score:1, Insightful)
The modern app appers at Appbook know that only apps can app apps, which is why the Appbook app app lets you app apps while apping other apps!
Apps!
Even Hollywood has given up control to Facebook (Score:2)
Even huge companies like movie studios are now sending people to Facebook. The last trailer I saw even assumed you knew the Facebook logo and only showed "[Facebook logo]/name-of-the-movie" for the URL.
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I think they mean like if movies and ads ONLY had an AOL logo as the only way to connect to them.
They might have been like that, of course. I wouldn't know.
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The last trailer I saw even assumed you knew the Facebook logo
Oh no! The plight of the first world is so terrible!
The less I Use Iit, the More I Like It (Score:5, Insightful)
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Facebook is Internet Lite. (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, it's the Internet for people not skilled enough to set up a web page, a blog, a mass email system, or find games for themselves.
It will always attract the laziest and stupidest users - which will always outnumber the intelligent and privacy valuing users.
But it will never take over completely, and the rest of the web will continue to exist for everyone that isn't that lazy and foolish.
If by some miracle, Facebook dies, an equivalent will rise up to serve the same lazy, unskilled user base.
Speaking of scary... (Score:4, Funny)
... It is almost scary to see the rate at which Facebook is expanding and trying to absorb everything that comes in its way. ...
Like systemd? ;)
Yeah, but on the upside, Oculus (Score:5, Funny)
So you can see your walled garden in 360 degrees.
"like, like" (Score:1)
Today's Facebook is tomorrow's MySpace (Score:2)
..or AOL, if anyone still remembers that one.
Free Product (Score:2)
I don't see a problem with Facebook offering a limited set of services for free. Nobody is forced to use those services. Will people be encouraged to? Sure. Will they be only allowed to use Facebook forever until the end of time? No. Other businesses may try this model, or someone might want access to the wider Internet and purchase access.
I don't see the "evil" here, I don't see how anyone is being harmed. Facebook built a product and they want people to use it.
"Privacy advocates in India" (Score:2)
"Privacy advocates in India"
OK, be honest:
The only people in India posting about not giving limited free Internet access to the poor are those who already have Internet access. We didn't see the opposite side of the argument because it turns out poor people with no Internet access have a hard time posting things on the Internet.
Amazing, isn't it?
Gotta keep that caste system alive!
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Of course, one way to preserve a caste system is to build data silos and restrict the lower castes from accessing anything not in said silos.
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Of course, one way to preserve a caste system is to build data silos and restrict the lower castes from accessing anything not in said silos.
Given that they have prevented Facebook giving the poort devices, and they have prevented Facebook from giving the poor limited Internet access (which they could pay to expand by using a paid Internet plan, rather than the free one, and for which the device itself, which Facebook was gifting them, is the largest outlay required for participation)....
Aren't the lower castes *already* restricted from accessing anything not in those silos ... and also anything in those silos ... by not having any freaking acce
It's the rebirth of online services. (Score:3)
A few years back I came to the simple conclusion that this is basically the rebirth of online services at a new level. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon (to an extent) - they're all just bascially ye olde mid-90ies Compuserve or T-Online. We've come full circle, with the net-neutrality debate and all that.
So far that I've even considered dropping out as a web professional alltogether.
Once the meta-level is up to speed and the geeks and nerds start using namecoin for DNS and some avantgarde mesh networking it will be another cicle of 20-30 years before it all evens out agian.
I say whatever. We'll live.
First world luxury problems.
What exactly is the downside here? (Score:2)
Faceborg (Score:2)
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Two downsides are that a company that has a clear interest in influencing your visiting patterns and content choices now has both total control of your browsing (potentially since they wrote the browser) and total knowledge of your browsing (potentially, since they wrote the browser and could be sending your browsing history through a sidechannel to their own servers where they can analyse it).
This is a monopoly situation and will probably lead to abuse of monop
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In the free internet that Facebook wanted to offer, you simply closed the app. That's all it was, an app. You still had normal 'net. You just only had limited connectivity while in that app and any data that was served through that app was served for free. To get out of it, you just closed the app and used a different one, a regular browser, or whatever. It didn't limit anything. It didn't prevent anything. It just gave data, to select sites, for free. In theory, anyone could get into that list of select si
mod me baby (Score:2)
Who cares (Score:1)
It's not as if it's hard to avoid the walled garden, use the mobile site via a browser with protections built
facebook? (Score:2)
my kids say facebook is for old people. they and their friends don't use it.