Facebook Competitor Orkut Relaunches as 'Hello' (bloombergquint.com) 103
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
In 2004, one of the world's most popular social networks, Orkut, was founded by a former Google employee named Orkut Buyukkokten... Orkut was shut down by Google in 2014, but in its heyday, the network had hit 300 million users around the world... "Hello.com is a spiritual successor of Orkut.com," Buyukkokten told BloombergQuint...
"People have lost trust in social networks and the main reason is social media services today don't put the users first. They put advertisers, brands, third parties, shareholders before the users," Buyukkokten said. "They are also not transparent about practices. The privacy policy and terms of services are more like black boxes. How many users actually read them?"
Buyukkokten said users need to be educated about these things and user consent is imperative in such situations when data is shared by such platforms. "On Hello, we do not share data with third parties. We have our own registration and login and so the data doesn't follow you anywhere," he said. "You don't need to sell user data in order to be profitable or make money."
Buyukkokten said users need to be educated about these things and user consent is imperative in such situations when data is shared by such platforms. "On Hello, we do not share data with third parties. We have our own registration and login and so the data doesn't follow you anywhere," he said. "You don't need to sell user data in order to be profitable or make money."
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Really?
Again?
I thought we were Pastis.
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We had coffee and crème brulée last night at Pastis [pastis.se]. Nice place.
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yes
Re: Say Hello to Google's Team of Attorneys (Score:1)
Please conduct the test as you propose and then report back to us the results.
Thanks.
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Why the fuck would anyone be trying to sign up to yet another social media platform.
Don't worry. You probably can't.
'United States of America' is greyed out in their dropdown list. Additionally the App Store tells me their app is 'incompatible with all your devices'. I have a Google Pixel. Sounds like bad programming or deliberately blocking US users because of some stupid arbitrary thing like sign-up limits. Meh. Fuck 'em.
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I think you should turn the question around and ask were some groups of people have the traits you cite. According to Professor Gregory Clark, there was a persistent selection of some population subgroups over 20 generations up to about 1800. http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.ed... [ucdavis.edu]
That's the same number of generations and selection pressure that the Russians used to change the personality of wild foxes into tame ones.
Not that selection will matter very much in the not so distant future when we have complete con
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On the app store, are you looking at the India-only version?
Relevant link: https://m.hello.com/en/downloa... [hello.com]
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It's blocked by Facebook.
Uninstall that and try again.
If that doesn't fix it, suspect that I'm full of shit.
How about I keep my data to myself (Score:5, Insightful)
Posting my status updates and photos into yet another company's database doesn't appeal in the slightest. Put aside for the moment that they could be bought up and have their privacy policy changed. The inevitable data breach will expose my data in the end. There's a lot of talk about how Facebook sells our data to third parties. But how about why they are keeping it for so long in the first place?
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There's a lot of talk about how Facebook sells our data to third parties.
Facebook says they *DO NOT* sell your information.
They *GIVE IT AWAY TO ANYONE WHO WANTS TO ADVERTISE ON FACEBOOK*.
Big difference!!!
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giving in exchange for something, i.e. paid advertising IS SELLING.
I think the Facebook's attempted sleight-of-hand here is they are claiming they are not selling the user data itself, they are selling the advertising space. The user data is being given to those clients, but Facebook is trying to pretend it's okay if it's a "complimentary service" and not technically billed.
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The user data is being given to those clients
No it isn't. The clients specify the profile of the users they want to reach, and Facebook uses the data it has collected to place those ads. They do not sell the data to their advertising clients, they only sell access to specified segments of their users.
They would be foolish to sell the data itself, since they could only sell that once.
All this, of course, is not considering leaks.
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As the Cambridge Analytica case shows, they do sell access to the data. Maybe not your actual photos, but things like your name, gender, where you live, where you work, who you know and the nature of your relationships with them, your political views and affiliations, what stuff you are shopping for right now etc.
They can sell on-going access to it because their customers are interested in how people's behaviour and views change over time. They want to target individuals and then see what the result of thei
Re:How about I keep my data to myself (Score:4, Insightful)
As the Cambridge Analytica case shows, they do sell access to the data.
Facebook did not sell any data to Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook allowed university researchers limited access to user data. This was done at no cost, so there was no "selling". Those researchers then used the limited data with screen scrapers to get additional information on users, and then one or more of the researchers (not Facebook) passed the information on to Cambridge Analytica in blatant violation of their agreement with Facebook.
Facebook was certainly careless and incompetent, but they didn't "sell" data, nor did they intend for most of the user data to be seen by anyone outside Facebook.
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Who pays? (Score:2)
Their pledge is "user first", but the relevant method to forecast privacy behavior beyond words is economy: who pays?
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User is always the product.
Indeed. Monetizing these incredibly popular social platforms is the most distasteful part of the process. Sell users information, or tolerate intrusive advertisements.
Given the recent telling-if-you-read-between-the-lines Congressional (capitalized reluctantly) debriefing of the facebook's founder, pay-for-play social media is under consideration... folks who spend US$100+ on cable they almost never watch are bristling at the mere thought of paying dollars a month for the hundred hours they spend each month
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even a site... hello.com only talks about downloading some fucking "app". I have no phone. This is bullshit. And not a word about it in the summary... Retarded news.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
I have no phone. This is bullshit.
They evidently feel that you, as a member of the PC-using minority, are expendable.
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I have no phone. This is bullshit.
They evidently feel that you, as a member of the PC-using minority, are expendable.
Fair enough given they are even more expendable as yet another social media platform. But if PC users are a minority then what does that make iPhone users with an even smaller userbase?
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A smartphone app lets them track your location, see your cell number, email address, grab your friends list, etc.
A desktop browser gives them none of that information.
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Worse, it's probably an app with an HTML/Javascript based UI. Good luck distracting people at work, if it's not available on PC.
Ucking Fapps (Score:2)
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Google Wave failed. Apache Wave is also dead as of Jan. 2018.
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Apart from being a bloody mess and having a horrible UI, in what way was Google/Apache Wave even "distributed"? At least in its Google incarnation, it seemed to require centralized servers and maintenance.
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Even in its Google incarnation, it could federate with any server that implemented the protocol (much like email) - you didn't even need to touch Google's servers. The UI was only one implementation. Of course, UI was the hardest part of designing something like that and probably failing that is what killed it.
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That just means that multiple service providers could offer the service; it doesn't make it a distributed service.
Re:distributed or "nope" (Score:4, Interesting)
To use an identifier that I own and can port to another provider without their cooperation. For example, something based on a domain name that I own, as with email. A large number of email providers, for example, allow me to point my DNS records at their server and use them to handle my mail. This dramatically reduces lock-in, because if I don't like them I can just point the DNS records elsewhere.
To be able to extract all of my data in a standard format. Again, with email I can move between providers by just pointing an IMAP client (including a command-line tool like imapsync) at both and telling it to move my data.
To use a federated open protocol, so that I can communicate with users who do not use the same provider. Again, with email I can communicate with people who host their own service, people who use an employer-provided service, people who use a free service such as GMail or Hotmail, without any problems.
To be supported by multiple implementations. With a single implementation of a protocol, you have no guarantee that it's actually documented well enough for anyone else to use and you have no guarantee that it doesn't expose implementation details by accident. Equally importantly, if there's a single implementation then there's nothing stopping the developers from pushing the UI in a direction that I don't like, because there's nothing for me to switch to. Again, with email there are a load of different clients (native and web-based) that I can use, so if one annoys me then I can switch without losing any of my data.
Diaspora appears to be pretty close to this. The federation protocol is mostly sane and has a few implementations (though putting an extreme copyleft license on the reference implementation wasn't such a great idea), though the client-server part of the protocol doesn't seem to be very well documented or possible to support with different implementations. Ideally, I'd want to see a clean separation between client-server protocol and web UI, so the web interface is just that: an interface that talks to a back-end server as a separable component. Again, this improves competition because someone else can easily decide that they hate the UI, write a better one, and reuse all of the back-end code.
Oh, and in an ideal world it wouldn't involve PHP. Anywhere.
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To use a federated open protocol, so that I can communicate with users who do not use the same provider. Again, with email I can communicate with people who host their own service, people who use an employer-provided service, people who use a free service such as GMail or Hotmail, without any problems.
In a federated protocol, other providers can refuse to communicate with a provider that they deem abusive. SMTP servers, for example, often use RBLs to refuse messages from dynamic IP addresses on grounds that the vast majority of home MTAs are spam zombies, not especially technical home users who host their own service on a home ISP. Instead, they accept messages only A. from data centers (on port 25) or B. from their own subscribers (on port 587 with authentication). So how does a provider convince other
which "Hello" ? (Score:1)
Unfortunate deployment method. It refuses to be available unless I install it on a smartphone, but I must get a download link by sending an SMS text. If I go to an app store for software that's been vetted as safe to install, I counted eight diferent apps named "Hello" before I gave up trying to find a safe version of their software.
We don't sell your data... (Score:1)
Yet.
Eventually they all sell your data. There's just too much money at stake.
Orkut was so popular... (Score:3)
That it eventually got shut down, and nobody cared.
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That it eventually got shut down, and nobody cared.
They are hedging their bets on the idea Facebook's time in the sun is ending. Social networks were folding before because Facebook became the de facto one. Now with a mass exodus possible, someone wants to be the "place everyone moves to".
If the King is dying, a new battle for the throne is about to begin.
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I was a fairly active Orkut user when it came out.
If memory serves, the problem was that language requirements weren't enforced. Apparently Orkut was very popular with Brazilians, so most groups were overrun by Portuguese speakers -- even groups that had English listed as a requirement. English speakers abandoned Orkut, and the platform was forgotten by North American media.
Too much competition (Score:3)
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Isn't MeWe a Chinese site? [alltechasia.com] ...yeah, I'm sure they really take user privacy seriously... e_e
Authentication (Score:2)
And if they value privacy why do they require an email or phone number to sign up?
Through what other means do you expect users to receive a synchronizer token to reset their authentication credentials?
intrinsically defective (Score:2)
The idea of a centralized service for building social networks is intrinsically defective. Social networks should be distributed, with no single point of failure or control, no single point to monetize users, and no single point to compromise privacy. What we need if we really care about privacy and individual control is some combination of web-of-trust, digital signatures, blockchain, and peer to peer networking.
Re:intrinsically defective (Score:5, Insightful)
Social media need the network effect [wikipedia.org] to succeed. Facebook has grown big because many people can find their friends there (and then acquire fake friends)
If they want to grow they need to work on a social media interworking protocol - so that you can link to people who use different social media platforms. They will not become the next Facebook, they might succeed as one of a federation of social media platforms that all work together. Facebook will refuse to interwork with other SM platforms until it finds that it is loosing users to the SM federation.
It already completely failed for me (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no web version of it to use on a computer.
If I'm sitting in front of my computer already, I don't want to have to use my phone just to access a site.
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"On Hello, we do not share data with third parties. We have our own registration and login and so the data doesn't follow you anywhere,"
I don't think the founder understands the internet.
By requiring us to have an iTunes account or a Google Play account in order to download the app, he's effectively forcing us to share our information with Apple or Google and get us flagged as Hello users.
Not allowing us to download the app and install it as a third party app (at least on Android) was a very deliberate decision on his part. Me thinks this guy's PR firm simply noticed the PR disaster that Zuckerberg just went through and decided to capitaliz
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>"There is no web version of it to use on a computer."
Yep, I came to comments to post that, myself. I can't believe it! A phone app ONLY? If you want to leak ALL your data to some company, forcing an "app" is the best way to do it right now.
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Mild critiques eventually become endorsements (Score:2)
While true that's an incredibly weak criticism of Hello (nee Orkut). In time that could change, and this critique would suggest that somehow makes Hello worth considering.
A more thoroughgoing critique is that Hello just another central-point-of-censorship/tracker regardless of what their current terms of service and/or developer promises say. Switching from Facebook to this or some workalike is switching masters or switching parties who spy on you, not gett
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File drops and bouncers (Score:2)
IRC has that, it’s called hyperlinks to whatever you want( its up to the client to implement tho)
To what server would the client upload said media in order to produce a hyperlink? IRC server software distributions tend not to bundle a file drop for use by the server's members. This means each user has to lease web hosting for the file drop.
I will admit that IRC lacks ( at last most networks) a server side chat history but thst is a limitation that will dissapeer if enugh users wantit I think.
ZNC is one popular example of an IRC proxy program called a "bouncer" that remains connected to an IRC server and saves chat history on behalf of a user so that the user can view it once he reconnects to the bouncer. But IRC server software distributions tend not to
um (Score:3)
Available only as a smartphone app.
There's likely a reason for that; to get permissions it would not get on a PC. No thanks.
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probably half the world, PC is still one of the most common ways to access things like facebook. Perhaps if you got out of your basement you might learn the world doesn't revolve around your insular usage patterns.
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There's likely a reason for that; to get permissions it would not get on a PC.
Are you using Lynx? On a modern browser you can consider yourself lucky that this post doesn't turn on your webcam and start recording your Slashdot session.
Try Foxsake.com instead. (Score:2)
If you're looking for a new social network that really does respect your privacy, try http://www.foxsake.com/ [foxsake.com] .
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Privacy Statement? (Score:1)
I can't find it on hello.com, but Google can:
https://hello.com/policy/privacy/
(excerpt)
Information that We Share with Third Parties
We will not share any PII that we have collected from or regarding you except as described below:
Information Shared with Other Account Holders. As part of our Services, any Account holder may view your profile information, which includes your name, gender, location of interest and profile picture. You may also choose to share additional information, such as age or birthday. Your
As a former Orkut user... (Score:2)
...and city channel moderator, I'll say this: it won't work. People left Orkut to get on Facebook for a reason. If you never used it, think about MySpace rebranding itself and trying to become relevant once again.
no way (Score:2)
Mobile only (Score:2)
Bye