When Facebook went down this week, traffic to news sites went up(niemanlab.org)
niemanlab.org
When Facebook went down this week, traffic to news sites went up
https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/when-facebook-went-down-this-week-traffic-to-news-sites-went-up/
218 コメント
> some companies don't bother having their own websites/emails/phones (often on purpose - to improve their Facebook rank).
I don't think Joey's Pizza is going to have a web presence if not for Facebook. I don't think they should have to hire a developer or use the latest no-code platform to just throw up their name, location and address on the web. It's centralized, sure, but its free, simple, SEO optimized and as a user I'd prefer that to some home-spun website.
There are issues with Facebook, but people who hate on it tend to try to make everything an issues. And having Joey's pizza on Facebook and it being unavailable for a few hours every decade or so is not a big concern. There's a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of web presence that Facebook addresses. Other websites and apps are still going to exist as long as regulations don't neuter the competition as would invariably be the case.
I don't think Joey's Pizza is going to have a web presence if not for Facebook. I don't think they should have to hire a developer or use the latest no-code platform to just throw up their name, location and address on the web. It's centralized, sure, but its free, simple, SEO optimized and as a user I'd prefer that to some home-spun website.
There are issues with Facebook, but people who hate on it tend to try to make everything an issues. And having Joey's pizza on Facebook and it being unavailable for a few hours every decade or so is not a big concern. There's a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of web presence that Facebook addresses. Other websites and apps are still going to exist as long as regulations don't neuter the competition as would invariably be the case.
Joey's pizza did have a web presence before Facebook. Facebook is "the latest no-code platform". If Joey's pizza can get an actual, physical "Joey's pizza" neon sign constructed, they can make a web page. Let's not kid ourselves - it's extremely easy. People were doing it in their bedrooms in the 90s.
100%. There were/are other options. FB just makes it slightly easier because many business owners already know how to use FB because they have personal accounts. I hate when a company only have FB. I'll take an okay website over a decent FB page.
Its 2021 and one should be able to deploy websites in one click from their mobile phones.
For at least the past 100 years it has not been a problem to give a person a button or a phone to let them solve any problem with a single press/call (the US and Russia presidents even are supposed to have buttons and phones to exterminate the entire life on Earth). The only thing to consider has always been at what price (in a broad sense, not just money) it came. It still is the thing to consider although this has became less obvious and departed more away from the money part in the cost looking from the perspective of the end user.
Would you mind helping me see the equivalence? Buttons here, or buttons there. Is it the amount of buttons? The size of the buttons?! All I can think of is the amount of people being shown per button.
Just to reinforce this point, here are 3 mom-and-pop pizza places off the top of my head. All of them have a website:
https://palermospizzamenu.com/
https://www.michaelsitalianrestaurantdelimenu.com/
https://goldengateindian.com/
https://palermospizzamenu.com/
https://www.michaelsitalianrestaurantdelimenu.com/
https://goldengateindian.com/
> Joey's pizza did have a web presence before Facebook.
My recollection is that far fewer businesses had any web presence in 2004. Big professional ones did, but random family-owned restaurants usually didn’t.
My recollection is that far fewer businesses had any web presence in 2004. Big professional ones did, but random family-owned restaurants usually didn’t.
Facebook didn't start eating the small business site market until well after 2004. More like 2010 or later.
Some places that definitely would have a site otherwise, don't, but have Facebook instead. Some have a site but neglect it, so if you want current info you have to check their Facebook page. Others had sites and let them lapse because FB took over that role. Hell, the local public schools are like that, too. Have sites, send emails and texts and such, but FB is absolutely the best channel to get school & district news from.
Some places that definitely would have a site otherwise, don't, but have Facebook instead. Some have a site but neglect it, so if you want current info you have to check their Facebook page. Others had sites and let them lapse because FB took over that role. Hell, the local public schools are like that, too. Have sites, send emails and texts and such, but FB is absolutely the best channel to get school & district news from.
An even more unfortunate trend is the very small businesses that only accept orders by Instagram message. Believe it or not I've seen this at two different local food delivery businesses that I wanted to support but couldn't because I don't have an Instagram account.
That may be dependent on the location. In my country basically every business had an online presence by 2004. They certainly would by now, even if Facebook didn’t exist.
Interesting. Do you mind saying what country?
USA (Northern VA, specifically). Most of thee places I dine regularly have a web presence. About half, it's just a simple home page with a pdf menu. About half have some sort of online reservation or ordering platform integrated.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Exactly! They don't have to spend thousands on a super spiffy custom job if they don't want to. These days, if they can pay rent on their building or buy equipment for their business, they can afford a few bucks and depending on how much effort they want to put in, they can put up some basic info on SimpleSite, Wix, the managed Wordpress.com or something similar.
I can assure you having helped small businesses in todays world that running your own website in the era of nation states battling to set up botnets has dramatically increased the complexity of what this entails today versus in the 90s.
Immediately, when we connect web servers they are pentested and port scanned.
Immediately, when we connect web servers they are pentested and port scanned.
It doesn't really feel any different to me than in the 90s. You would get port scanned then too. Keep your software up to date, and keep a reasonably tight config and you won't have any trouble running a basic website. Especially for something like Joey's pizza just make it a static site and you'll barely have to worry about anything.
I mean for a static site sure, but Joey wants to also have a news feed to post events, specials, and new menu items.
Joey also wants to let customers comment on those posts with questions and general excitement, or to reach out directly in a way that isn’t a phone line.
The issue is that Facebook and IG are really really good business and marketing platforms. That and ads is basically their whole reason for existence. And you get a huge audience, organic discovery, and moderation for free.
Every restaurant in my city’s primary social media presence is on IG. Unless you’re a huge chain and have a marketing department that’s basically all they get that isn’t mayyyybe a local mailing, or a sponsored story in a local newspaper or food blog.
Don’t get me wrong, I think you should have your own website for nothing else other than to lend some legitimacy when people Google your name but if you could only have one I would probably skip the website. “The Web” from a business standpoint is just Google’s centralized platform at this point since the thing that matters is audience and discovery.
Joey also wants to let customers comment on those posts with questions and general excitement, or to reach out directly in a way that isn’t a phone line.
The issue is that Facebook and IG are really really good business and marketing platforms. That and ads is basically their whole reason for existence. And you get a huge audience, organic discovery, and moderation for free.
Every restaurant in my city’s primary social media presence is on IG. Unless you’re a huge chain and have a marketing department that’s basically all they get that isn’t mayyyybe a local mailing, or a sponsored story in a local newspaper or food blog.
Don’t get me wrong, I think you should have your own website for nothing else other than to lend some legitimacy when people Google your name but if you could only have one I would probably skip the website. “The Web” from a business standpoint is just Google’s centralized platform at this point since the thing that matters is audience and discovery.
[deleted]
Funny, nmap was released in 1997.
Ok, I will say I first start building small things on the web in the late 90s, so maybe it was easier in the early 90s.
Also remember that they are probably going to be setting up a Facebook presence either way (for communicating with and advertising to customers), so the website work is on top of the Facebook effort when talking about level of effort.
Building a website or app is easy. Getting people to use it is another.
Every time I order food the restaurant puts a flyer in there begging me to use their own site.
Meanwhile "Just Eat Takeaway confirms it’s gobbling up Grubhub in a $7.3B deal".
Every time I order food the restaurant puts a flyer in there begging me to use their own site.
Meanwhile "Just Eat Takeaway confirms it’s gobbling up Grubhub in a $7.3B deal".
Every pizzeria I know has a web site. Every time I want to order a pizza or book a table I just go to their website (or google it up and go) and either use their web UI to select it (if they are big enough to hire an engineer to put it there) or just call them (which I also find Okay, this even takes less time usually). Constructing a simple web page is not hard. Simple shared web hosting is cheap and often comes with a free domain name. There also are totally free hosting platforms (some ad-sponsored perhaps, but this is tolerable and better than nothing), many come with a WYSIWYG constructor (mostly producing shitty code but still Okay as compared to no WWW presence at all). There also are GitHub Pages which give you great static page hosting + news posting for free if you know basic git (and there already are enough of people around who know git and will make you a GitHub page if you just give them a free pizza or two, me included).
You don't even need a website actually, you can just register your business in Google and local competitors (if any, depends on the country) and put your email address (needless to say how easy it is to get for free) there. People will find you via location-targeted search, email/call you and update your rating. I wouldn't consider Google much better than Facebook in this context but at least it's an alternative and let's you share independent contact channels visibly.
You don't even need a website actually, you can just register your business in Google and local competitors (if any, depends on the country) and put your email address (needless to say how easy it is to get for free) there. People will find you via location-targeted search, email/call you and update your rating. I wouldn't consider Google much better than Facebook in this context but at least it's an alternative and let's you share independent contact channels visibly.
> There also are totally free hosting platforms (some ad-sponsored perhaps, but this is tolerable and better than nothing), many come with a WYSIWYG constructor (mostly producing shitty code but still Okay as compared to no WWW presence at all). There also are GitHub Pages which give you great static page hosting + news posting for free if you know basic git (and there already are enough of people around who know git and will make you a GitHub page if you just give them a free pizza or two, me included).
I don't understand how you can type this and then still say you don't understand why people just create a free Facebook page instead. And that is not even touching on the network effect that your Facebook page enjoys.
I don't understand how you can type this and then still say you don't understand why people just create a free Facebook page instead. And that is not even touching on the network effect that your Facebook page enjoys.
I just mean it's very far from being prohibitively hard/expensive for an average Joey the baker to get a personal web page outside Facebook.
Joey's business is pizza, not making websites.
Nor is their business paying taxes, hiring or advertising, yet they seem to manage to do all of those on a regular basis.
Or starting a business to begin with.
The pizzeria I use most frequently used to have a website, but it's now either gone or undiscoverable by search. Facebook comes up in search, but it's good deliver services like GrubHub at the top.
The GrubHub result is the most frustrating, because the pizzeria does it's own direct delivery too. And if you get it delivered through GrubHub, or even call the place via the # GrubHub lists, GrubHub gets a fee if some sort.
Google at least still shows their business listing in the right margin of search results though, so hopefully people mostly use that.
The GrubHub result is the most frustrating, because the pizzeria does it's own direct delivery too. And if you get it delivered through GrubHub, or even call the place via the # GrubHub lists, GrubHub gets a fee if some sort.
Google at least still shows their business listing in the right margin of search results though, so hopefully people mostly use that.
It doesn't make any sense for a pizzeria to concern themselves with buying a domain, creating a website; finding a hosting; advertising the website; and maintaining it. The point of FB is being easy to set up, and much more importantly, getting the traffic. Ask yourself, how hard is it to cook, yet how often people are eating out? (pandemic constraint excluded)
A contractor of mine gets most of his business via his FB page, and he knows absolutely nothing about coding. He complains a lot about labor shortage. Imagine he'd have to worry about finding a web developer as well.
A contractor of mine gets most of his business via his FB page, and he knows absolutely nothing about coding. He complains a lot about labor shortage. Imagine he'd have to worry about finding a web developer as well.
Go to one of the many website builder businesses out there, pick a pizza-restaurant template from one of hundreds of templates that they offer, type in the same info they would into FB, put in a CC. Done.
Most of these places offer plugins to take online orders too. Its' $5-10 a month for the standard menu & phone number deal, and a bit of a premium over stripe for payment services (still cheaper than Grubhub).
We are long past the days of small businesses needing a coder to have a website.
Most of these places offer plugins to take online orders too. Its' $5-10 a month for the standard menu & phone number deal, and a bit of a premium over stripe for payment services (still cheaper than Grubhub).
We are long past the days of small businesses needing a coder to have a website.
If a pizzaria wants business, it makes sense for them to advertise and have a way for people to find them. There are many alternatives to Facebook to help businesses do that, just like there are many ad agencies for them to use to get their ads on radio and TV. Business of course want to keep costs low and FB is (AFAIK) "free" to get started on. But once they get on FB, don't they still need to expand their reach by using Facebook ads? Or is just having a page enough? (I don't use FB so I'm clueless how that works)
This is the real value proposition, Ben Thompson has a lot of good articles on the good and bad of Facebook. Radio and TV ads are expensive because they can only serve one ad spot at a time. Plus, my understanding from friends in advertising is that TV spots can become quite expensive as demand rises. You can get books which tell you roughly the cost of advertising for all different types of media.
Whereas at a single point in time, Facebook can sell many ad spots and allow individuals to target certain groups of people. Unsurprisingly, media thinks you can do very specific ad targeting but you can’t.. not to the level of doomsday-ness that people suggest. They’ve put limits on the min # of people you can target.
It is worth mentioning that FB’s ad bidding system is completely automated, so prices are almost entirely determined by demand and ad spots.
The other side is that, pizza business is not in the business of making a website or dealing with technology. They are in the business of managing a restaurant which is hard work. Anything that takes away technology work can be a huge plus for them, especially if they don’t have to manage it.
When I worked in a restaurant, it would be 12-14 hour shifts. Leadership would do those shifts nearly every single day putting out (non-literal) fires and keeping the ship afloat. You have to pick your battles carefully when running restaurant.
I find it painful when people say.. let’s just go back to the old form of advertising. Old form of advertising highly favored large conglomerates, because the ad spots were limited. Instead businesses had to rely on word of mouth.
But what if you are a small internet business making niche jewelry or whatever? Well, if you only rely on word of mouth you will probably saturate your customer base early. Instead if you could put out ads for your demographic cheaply across your entire country, now you are talking!
Does that mean FB is net good? I think that is up to the individual, I’m not going to tell people otherwise. But there is value there, and everyone should recognize that even if they don’t believe it is net good.
Whereas at a single point in time, Facebook can sell many ad spots and allow individuals to target certain groups of people. Unsurprisingly, media thinks you can do very specific ad targeting but you can’t.. not to the level of doomsday-ness that people suggest. They’ve put limits on the min # of people you can target.
It is worth mentioning that FB’s ad bidding system is completely automated, so prices are almost entirely determined by demand and ad spots.
The other side is that, pizza business is not in the business of making a website or dealing with technology. They are in the business of managing a restaurant which is hard work. Anything that takes away technology work can be a huge plus for them, especially if they don’t have to manage it.
When I worked in a restaurant, it would be 12-14 hour shifts. Leadership would do those shifts nearly every single day putting out (non-literal) fires and keeping the ship afloat. You have to pick your battles carefully when running restaurant.
I find it painful when people say.. let’s just go back to the old form of advertising. Old form of advertising highly favored large conglomerates, because the ad spots were limited. Instead businesses had to rely on word of mouth.
But what if you are a small internet business making niche jewelry or whatever? Well, if you only rely on word of mouth you will probably saturate your customer base early. Instead if you could put out ads for your demographic cheaply across your entire country, now you are talking!
Does that mean FB is net good? I think that is up to the individual, I’m not going to tell people otherwise. But there is value there, and everyone should recognize that even if they don’t believe it is net good.
Total Derail inbound
> Every pizzeria I know has a web site.
This is because pizza delivery is insanely profitable. Over the past decade, Domino's Pizza has outperformed FB and Google. By a _lot_. They have plenty of incentive to spend on marketing and reachability.
And they have far more leverage than tech does, in terms of consumer preference. Think of it like this: if you want to order pizza, and your preferred pizzeria isn't on Apple Maps, do you order from somewhere else? No, you load up Google Maps instead. Or any of the other dozen replacements for the Yellow Pages launched in the past 20 years. And they all fall over themselves to find and add these places, making it easy to list (just a postcard in Google's case).
> Every pizzeria I know has a web site.
This is because pizza delivery is insanely profitable. Over the past decade, Domino's Pizza has outperformed FB and Google. By a _lot_. They have plenty of incentive to spend on marketing and reachability.
And they have far more leverage than tech does, in terms of consumer preference. Think of it like this: if you want to order pizza, and your preferred pizzeria isn't on Apple Maps, do you order from somewhere else? No, you load up Google Maps instead. Or any of the other dozen replacements for the Yellow Pages launched in the past 20 years. And they all fall over themselves to find and add these places, making it easy to list (just a postcard in Google's case).
Rather why a pizzeria would want a worldwide presence? Do they ship pizza worldwide?
Google and competitors are reasonably good at showing web sites and contacts of local businesses and also displaying them on a the map.
They are discoverable by walking around your neighborhood. Unless you want to order from someone beyond your neighborhood.
You’re never in a new neighborhood with limited time to wander around? Do you always keep up to date with every shop in your local area? There are dozens and dozens of establishments within walking distance from where I live. And yeah, what if you do want to order from a bit further away?
To ask what the point of being on Google is because people can find you by walking seems almost deliberately obtuse.
To ask what the point of being on Google is because people can find you by walking seems almost deliberately obtuse.
If Joeys Pizza is only available on facebook then how do non-FB users find out about it? I dont have FB and anytime someone sends me a FB link I get a sign up page and no way to view what is being sent without signing up and logging in.
Assuming everyone has FB is part of the problem. Joeys Pizza doesnt need anything other than a static page with a menu and phone number/address.
Assuming everyone has FB is part of the problem. Joeys Pizza doesnt need anything other than a static page with a menu and phone number/address.
So they went from zero Internet presence to "almost everyone". All without paying a dime and from an interface that grandma could use. They do not understand what a static page is. They might not even know the difference between a Facebook page and an actual web page, to them it's still "you can find us on the google".
If Facebook shuts down tomorrow or everyone suddenly starts thinking that it's evil enough to stop using, Joey's Pizza is more likely than not to go to yet another centralized service just like Facebook. You just can't beat free and easy with the open web.
If Facebook shuts down tomorrow or everyone suddenly starts thinking that it's evil enough to stop using, Joey's Pizza is more likely than not to go to yet another centralized service just like Facebook. You just can't beat free and easy with the open web.
They should have "paid a dime" to establish a web presence. Fiverr and similar sites are widely available. I'd be surprised if one couldn't get a "business card" minimal web presence for $25+several $/year thereafter.
After a certain point, a business must switch from a "graphics design is my passion" style logo to something inexpensive designed by a (semi-)professional to be taken seriously. Why is web presence any different?
After a certain point, a business must switch from a "graphics design is my passion" style logo to something inexpensive designed by a (semi-)professional to be taken seriously. Why is web presence any different?
> They might not even know the difference between a Facebook page and an actual web page
Yes, this is a problem. I have never met such people though, but I believe they exist.
> You just can't beat free and easy with the open web.
You can make free, easy and open without Facebook.
It's far from impossible to make a nice app which would let you choose a template, some customizations (way more flexible and probably even easier than Facebook at the same time) and put a website on any dirt-cheap shared PHP hosting which supports FTP, SFTP or Git. I could make it myself if I had some time to spare, people would just have to sign-up at GitHub, click and get a page there, and even a QR code to put on their door/cards :-). But even if I made it I doubt many people are going to use it - Facebook is too popular already and it also provides them with an easy way to advertise.
Any (or almost any, perhaps really poor governments exist, I dunno) government can also easily afford to contract a shared hosting provider to give every citizen and every small business a simple web site. This would be a win for the government as they would hugely improve their nation digital independence this way.
Yes, this is a problem. I have never met such people though, but I believe they exist.
> You just can't beat free and easy with the open web.
You can make free, easy and open without Facebook.
It's far from impossible to make a nice app which would let you choose a template, some customizations (way more flexible and probably even easier than Facebook at the same time) and put a website on any dirt-cheap shared PHP hosting which supports FTP, SFTP or Git. I could make it myself if I had some time to spare, people would just have to sign-up at GitHub, click and get a page there, and even a QR code to put on their door/cards :-). But even if I made it I doubt many people are going to use it - Facebook is too popular already and it also provides them with an easy way to advertise.
Any (or almost any, perhaps really poor governments exist, I dunno) government can also easily afford to contract a shared hosting provider to give every citizen and every small business a simple web site. This would be a win for the government as they would hugely improve their nation digital independence this way.
When I moved, I found my new pizza places (all local restaurants really, plus my mechanic, where I get my hair done, etc.) by walking around, word of mouth from my neighbors and guys putting menus around my mailbox. Whether these places are on the web anywhere, let alone Facebook, probably has just a small effect of people being able to find them. I mean, if Facebook didn't exist, people would still be able to find them.
I have recently given up on buying food from plenty of places that only supported platforms I wasn't on.
Looks like it was a trendy thing to hop into a platform and turn every other channel off until recently. The worst that I've seen was at the start of the pandemics. But at least around here, the trend seems to have completely reversed. On the last few months I haven't find any place doing it.
Looks like it was a trendy thing to hop into a platform and turn every other channel off until recently. The worst that I've seen was at the start of the pandemics. But at least around here, the trend seems to have completely reversed. On the last few months I haven't find any place doing it.
You're telling me this link doesn't work for you?
https://www.facebook.com/lilwoodysseattle/
It works fine for me without being logged in to Facebook.
It works fine for me without being logged in to Facebook.
Top third of a page has a login/sign-up section. Which means what I'm looking for isn't immediately visible (phone number/menu). And having been to FB and had issues before I no longer longer even click the links. To be honest I can't remember the last time I saw a FB link in my Google search results, it's usually a link someone has sent me
A static website can't be updated trivially with recent news or specials. It also won't have things show up automatically in front of the eyeballs of people who have previously engaged with that website.
You can Google Joey's Pizza and their phone number is listed right there. Also, someone helpfully posted an image of the menu for you, just click images in Google search.
They would, there are lots of local online platforms where they can have an online presence. In my country it's services like TakeAway, Deliveroo, Uber Eats that bring in a lot of revenue for smaller restaurants. If you don't want to hire a developer or local web development agency you can use Wix or any of the other website builders to create a small website for your business. If your company has a recognisable name, it's easy enough to get a fine ranking in Google's search results. I think we'd do fine without Facebook.
Besides the very plausible DIY solution suggested by a sibling comment, Joey's Pizza can go to something like wix.com and pay $23 / month for an account that even lets you accept online payments. Seems like it pays itself if even only a handful people order directly through you rather than via food delivery apps each month.
Maybe I'm misreading this, but... If the question is about having a passible non-FB web presence (without implying on-line ordering) - then Joey's Pizza is almost certainly on Yelp, TripAdvisor, MenuPix, YellowPages, Google Maps, and a whole host of other web sites.
Other sorts of small organizations, which might make FB their main web presence - it'll vary, but generally a "Joey's Pizza" is the best case scenario.
Other sorts of small organizations, which might make FB their main web presence - it'll vary, but generally a "Joey's Pizza" is the best case scenario.
I don't get this. I cannot remember ever not finding a business I wanted to contact because they were only on Facebook and I don't use Facebook. Sure, sometimes I only am able to find a phone number, but you know what, that is a great tool to use to contact a business.
Google already does it for free and it is far more practical than a Facebook (cough, AOL) page.
We just need to again, accidentally discover/create whatever it is that's going to cater to the masses without handing control to a dysfunctional sect of humans.
We just need to again, accidentally discover/create whatever it is that's going to cater to the masses without handing control to a dysfunctional sect of humans.
They still should have an email address though and almost certainly a phone number even if only for Whatsapp and SMS.
Even for small business that have nothing to do with tech, it is important to have redundancies.
Even for small business that have nothing to do with tech, it is important to have redundancies.
So shifting Joey's Pizza's presence from a social network to a website just shifts the power from Facebook to Google.
We cant win!
We cant win!
Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Seznam, DuckDuckGo, Runnaroo (dead but a very successful experiment, I found a number of local business through it, paid them over €100'000 in total and got great jobs done).
> Facebook is an abomination which ate up the entire Web in some 3rd-world countries.
That's because they actually paid carriers to provide Facebook access for free to people. See Facebook Zero and Internet.org. The latter is particularly insidious because it looks like a charity offering internet access to those who can't afford it. It is not the whole internet, but there is a list of mostly educational websites, like Wikipedia, but in the middle of that list, there is of course Facebook. So really, they are offering Facebook access under then name "internet".
That's because they actually paid carriers to provide Facebook access for free to people. See Facebook Zero and Internet.org. The latter is particularly insidious because it looks like a charity offering internet access to those who can't afford it. It is not the whole internet, but there is a list of mostly educational websites, like Wikipedia, but in the middle of that list, there is of course Facebook. So really, they are offering Facebook access under then name "internet".
>This is a very serious problem - hyper-centralization in hands of one corporation
This has happened in every industry due to economies of scale and network effects. We've seen the negative issues of this with our supply chain problems, everything got outsourced for efficiency at the cost of redundancy. Even the news sites complaining about Facebook are examples of this, we are down to a handful of major media companies controlling everything
This has happened in every industry due to economies of scale and network effects. We've seen the negative issues of this with our supply chain problems, everything got outsourced for efficiency at the cost of redundancy. Even the news sites complaining about Facebook are examples of this, we are down to a handful of major media companies controlling everything
> We could just improve desktop apps tech (including discoverability, delivery, interoperability, portability and UI design flexibility) but we chose the browsers
Who do you mean "we"? There is, in a fundamental sense, no "we", only a bunch of competing companies, uncoordinated individuals, and tiny groups of enthusiasts.
The browser situation is the no-mans-land in the middle of a war between platform monopolists on the desktop, platform monopolists in the browser, malware authors, privacy-invading advertisers, software pirates, and the poor third party developers just trying to find a place to sell software.
Neither Microsoft nor Apple are going to surrender the total control of their platforms; cross platform development is always going to straddle those.
Who do you mean "we"? There is, in a fundamental sense, no "we", only a bunch of competing companies, uncoordinated individuals, and tiny groups of enthusiasts.
The browser situation is the no-mans-land in the middle of a war between platform monopolists on the desktop, platform monopolists in the browser, malware authors, privacy-invading advertisers, software pirates, and the poor third party developers just trying to find a place to sell software.
Neither Microsoft nor Apple are going to surrender the total control of their platforms; cross platform development is always going to straddle those.
The decentralized web needs to happen but it likely won't for a long time given the current trends, which are towards centralization. It's possible that the only truly useful information will one day be found on an "alternet" of decentralized sites. Maybe people will use the traditional web for services like shopping but use the "alternet" for getting real news and maintaining uncontrolled communities. We're seeing this already with the recent public/private censorship regime driving people into alternate, less controlled, forums. At some point it could just be like two separate internets for two separate purposes. Those who know how to access both will have an advantage.
Humans: bronze age social skills with digital age weapons.
Hacking is a major problem with hosting anything. Hackers are much better then anyone you can afford to hire. Think of the endless hacked Wordpress sites.
Heck how many times has a small company forgot to renew their domain name.
What’s the solution to this problem? You outsource to someone that mostly stops hackers.
Now accounts being hacked is a major problem as my wife and her friends can attest to.
What’s the solution to that?
Just make another account. Highly annoying and upsetting. But a simple and easy solution.
Those solutions are all free and easy.
So yes Facebook is evil. But it’s also extremely practical for small little groups that can barley use a computer.
Heck how many times has a small company forgot to renew their domain name.
What’s the solution to this problem? You outsource to someone that mostly stops hackers.
Now accounts being hacked is a major problem as my wife and her friends can attest to.
What’s the solution to that?
Just make another account. Highly annoying and upsetting. But a simple and easy solution.
Those solutions are all free and easy.
So yes Facebook is evil. But it’s also extremely practical for small little groups that can barley use a computer.
Yes. We know.
Any ideas how to fix it?
Any ideas how to fix it?
Improve web standards, build easier web publishing and subscription tooling (easy and pleasurable for non-IT people to use), create and propagate a desktop app toolkit at least as flexible and cros-platform as the web frontend stack is + a good cross-platform and preferably decentralized "app store".
This would require a lot of effort somebody has to fund however. I would expect governments to fund this if they recognized the seriousness of the problem. Governments already start taking climate change more and more seriously, this (web) problem is the next we face.
Perhaps if I were a person in the government in charge of this I would just pay the Qt company to make full (including the Qt Design Studio) modern Qt totally free for everybody to use (as HTML, CSS, JS and the browsers are) and keep developing it. It is more cross-platform and fast than Chrome, very powerful and is not limited to classic widgets but can also do any visually fancy stuff with ease. This way (after addressing the discoverability problem also) we could revert straight to the native app phase.
This would require a lot of effort somebody has to fund however. I would expect governments to fund this if they recognized the seriousness of the problem. Governments already start taking climate change more and more seriously, this (web) problem is the next we face.
Perhaps if I were a person in the government in charge of this I would just pay the Qt company to make full (including the Qt Design Studio) modern Qt totally free for everybody to use (as HTML, CSS, JS and the browsers are) and keep developing it. It is more cross-platform and fast than Chrome, very powerful and is not limited to classic widgets but can also do any visually fancy stuff with ease. This way (after addressing the discoverability problem also) we could revert straight to the native app phase.
The Qt idea is a cool one… pay them to convert the license to Public Domain, like SQLite.
That said, my biggest takeaway from Facebook is that Qt may be overkill. Small businesses seem to want to post plain text (like on Hacker News), photos, and videos. Even Wordpress is probably too complicated.
Thinking about the Firefox ads article that was front page today, I wonder if Mozilla could instead make money by selling extremely basic web hosting and putting an edit button into the browser?
That said, my biggest takeaway from Facebook is that Qt may be overkill. Small businesses seem to want to post plain text (like on Hacker News), photos, and videos. Even Wordpress is probably too complicated.
Thinking about the Firefox ads article that was front page today, I wonder if Mozilla could instead make money by selling extremely basic web hosting and putting an edit button into the browser?
Discovery is accidental. It requires trying lots of different things to find market fit. Facebook found market fit (accidentally). They were not planning on being the platform choice of grandma's. They invented the mission they are on now after the fact (connecting people).
You are intending to solve a people problem with a technical solution. The approach, sadly, never works.
Facebook itself is a technical solution to a people problem. How can you say it never works? Why shouldn't it work?
In fact, come to think of it, all technical solutions ultimately solve "people problems". Everything bottoms out at the human level.
In fact, come to think of it, all technical solutions ultimately solve "people problems". Everything bottoms out at the human level.
You can build a solution with tech to solve problems of people but FB is not solving problems of people but straightaway exploiting their weakness to solve its own revenue problem thereby adding to existing problems.
Solution? Looks like a problem to me.
Not just that, the proposed solution also depends on the government being effective.
It's not a problem yet. Facebook works fine for both businesses that choose to use it (instead of a custom webpage), and for their customers.
Once Facebook usage becomes a real nuissance for whatever reason, businesses will slowly migrate off of it.
Once Facebook usage becomes a real nuissance for whatever reason, businesses will slowly migrate off of it.
The same can be said about climate change. It (rather than it's expected consequences and regulations already being implemented) seems being rather far from a real nuissance for the most of the developed world (e.g. it has zero effect on life and businesses of myself and everyone I know, in Europe) at the moment but it's obviously a severe problem for the nearing future so we mostly agree we must start fixing it now.
> (e.g. it has zero effect on life and businesses of myself and everyone I know, in Europe)
Speaking to people working in agriculture and fishing industry (Portugal and the Baltic sea), I can tel you that their opinion differs from yours by a large margin.
Sometimes this can mean shifting the harvest date by a month, sometimes not being able to find certain types of fish due to seemingly minor water temperature/climate changes.
I live in a similar bubble as an average HN reader, so I see where you're coming from though.
Speaking to people working in agriculture and fishing industry (Portugal and the Baltic sea), I can tel you that their opinion differs from yours by a large margin.
Sometimes this can mean shifting the harvest date by a month, sometimes not being able to find certain types of fish due to seemingly minor water temperature/climate changes.
I live in a similar bubble as an average HN reader, so I see where you're coming from though.
I don't think this is a helpful comparison. The impact of climate change can be predicted (to whatever degree of accuracy) because of how sophisticated the hard sciences have become. However sympathetic one might be of any critique of Facebook, any prediction of its future impact is fundamentally speculative.
So, as I meant to express, the only problem with this problem is it is hard for the majority to see.
I only read those sentences:
> Once Facebook usage becomes a real nuissance for whatever reason, businesses will slowly migrate off of it.
>> The same can be said about climate change.
Yeah, we will start migrating to Mars!
> Once Facebook usage becomes a real nuissance for whatever reason, businesses will slowly migrate off of it.
>> The same can be said about climate change.
Yeah, we will start migrating to Mars!
[deleted]
It's not just commercial interests but government too. In my native New Zealand I've seen government officials directing people to FB for public health information. Is the same information available on their own website? Difficult to tell given how many of the .govt.nz sites just aggregate links back to Facebook.
Maybe everyone should stop doing things because they are popular. I guess the definition of popularity is something embraced by a majority though.
We saw an increase in traffic in all of our portfolio's mobile games so instead of "News sites saw more traffic because of Facebook was down" it was "People did something else than browse Facebook while Facebook was down".
Well, and also, people probably googled "is facebook down", and clicked on the various carousel news stories.
Yeah the story that Facebook was down went viral. I don't think there's much deeper meaning to this beyond that.
How does that relate to mobile game traffic?
I'd wager so did HN and Pornhub. I don't think there's that much to news specifically, even if some love to push a certain narrative there.
For sure HN did; it was struggling to stay up from the load. Several threads were suggesting logging out -- which would let HN load static content -- to help it load, for example.
this seems right to me. would love to see a real analysis of what sort of traffic news sites saw.
my hunch is, yeah, maybe people had a look to see if the news confirmed their suspicions... but then maybe stayed a while and/or sought out alternatives for the ultimate distraction contraption.
my hunch is, yeah, maybe people had a look to see if the news confirmed their suspicions... but then maybe stayed a while and/or sought out alternatives for the ultimate distraction contraption.
Still a good thing.
Its not a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing, its just basic logic.
Same as saying people who wanted to go to the park did something else instead because the park was closed. Its not good or bad. It just 'is'.
Same as saying people who wanted to go to the park did something else instead because the park was closed. Its not good or bad. It just 'is'.
I for one am not surprised that when one of the top 3 most-visited-domains in the world goes down, other sites are visited more often, in particular news sites.
I'm curious how much of it was people trying to figure out what was going on with Facebook.
It's framed on such a way as to imply that people are more informed without Facebook, and maybe that is true, but that isn't all that is going on there.
It's framed on such a way as to imply that people are more informed without Facebook, and maybe that is true, but that isn't all that is going on there.
>Implying you become more informed by visiting a news site
To me, it’s more an indication that news sites are a another dopamine-fulled entertainment business, people are addicted to “checking something online”, and shows the news have lost their standing. In a parallel world, people watch the news to make good decisions, not to satisfy their dopamine receptors.
Maybe in that parallel world, news sites don’t monetise by ads exclusively, thus not building a product intended to satisfy dopamine receptors?
You might find this actually surprising:
- The increases far exceeded what was lost. The dip in the social line was offset three-fold when you add up external, search and direct. They're not to be averaged.
- Unmentioned, but reflected in graph: people using facebook tend to share articles far more than they read them. As in social share count > pageview count. Sometimes by a factor of 100.
- The increases far exceeded what was lost. The dip in the social line was offset three-fold when you add up external, search and direct. They're not to be averaged.
- Unmentioned, but reflected in graph: people using facebook tend to share articles far more than they read them. As in social share count > pageview count. Sometimes by a factor of 100.
Yeah, I think a takeaway is some evidence that people mainly share not news stories, but headlines.
Which now also explains why the biggest news sites are so rabidly working on attacking Facebook at every chance they have - every FB loss is their immediate financial win.
Would you prefer that they don't report on Facebook actively harming society?
I'd prefer them to do honest reporting and not just be another fake news spreading engine which will keep doing the same kind of harm just with different money pockets.
After all, what does facebook really do except just repost news from low quality article factories?
After all, what does facebook really do except just repost news from low quality article factories?
What reporting about FB has been dishonest?
PBS News Hour (who has Zuckerberg up their ass) treatment has been very professional despite all the donations. They ran full pieces reporting on the outage and the testimony in the Senate. They stopped short of being judgemental though...unlike some of the other reporting where it is safe for them to do so. I was satisfied but not terribly impressed. They should be exploring the issue deeper but they do not. For obvious reasons. Nonetheless, they fulfilled their doctrinal duty.
What do you mean? Public trust in the media is at an all time low. News companies almost died at the advent of the internet but came back fighting by drive engagement with emotions. Even documentaries like “The Social Dilemma” are guilty of using the tactics they blame FB for using. Trump made his presidency off of “fake news” and distrust of the media.
The game is all about starting with a narrative that follows your audience’s wants and then cherry-picking facts to confirm that bias. All sides are guilty of this. FB’s PR department is guilty of this as well, if we are to be honest.
So no examples, then?
I am also not surprised, though I'm not sure I would have guessed the increase in traffic to other sites would be this large (38%). It's always nice, though, to see data that confirms your intuition.
The non-tech public wouldn't know where to go to look, so the newsies seems logical.
Its "why is Facebook down" questions and looking it up on newssites.
That is an assumption.
It could also just be looking for their content fix.
It could also just be looking for their content fix.
Well ... maybe that's a small proof. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=facebook,facebook...
Seems like a plausible idea. I can think of some others. Why is this one more likely?
This might be somewhat surprising to some people because a lot of the traffic to news sites comes from facebook.
In this case a majority of the traffic certainly came from Google. If all social media and search engines vanished (including the suggested site feature on safari) for a few hours, we’d definitely see traffic to news sites go down.
I guess that says something about the difficulty of discoverability on the internet.
Most people are probably aware of the names of several major news organisations in their country or city, but it's less obvious what the domain name should be - what is written in full? what is abbreviated?
If you prohibit the use of a lookup system (that's what you did, effectively), some people will be able remember the domain name (it's easier than a telephone number), but it's not hard to guess people will find the system much less useful.
It's a little like saying "if everyone had to use a CLI to start the programs they want to use on their phone, more people would watch TV".
Most people are probably aware of the names of several major news organisations in their country or city, but it's less obvious what the domain name should be - what is written in full? what is abbreviated?
If you prohibit the use of a lookup system (that's what you did, effectively), some people will be able remember the domain name (it's easier than a telephone number), but it's not hard to guess people will find the system much less useful.
It's a little like saying "if everyone had to use a CLI to start the programs they want to use on their phone, more people would watch TV".
>> when one of the top 3 most-visited-domains in the world goes down
Which is in itself a major news story. Before talking about facebook v. other new sites we mush take account of the greater number of people looking for news content regardless of platform. The increase might more people looking for news rather than people having to go elsewhere than facebook.
Which is in itself a major news story. Before talking about facebook v. other new sites we mush take account of the greater number of people looking for news content regardless of platform. The increase might more people looking for news rather than people having to go elsewhere than facebook.
I agree, HN itself slowed to a crawl and eventually went down temporarily for me but I’d bet one of my toes that it’s because half the devs, sysadmins etc of the world were trying to find out what was going on rather than people no longer distracted by Facebook looking for something else to do.
It does bring up a different question though.
There's now an obvious conflict of interest with regard to news sites reporting on Facebook. Their generalized antagonism towards Facebook, and the tech industry has a pretty clear root: they're getting outcompeted, thus the calls for regulation.
There's now an obvious conflict of interest with regard to news sites reporting on Facebook. Their generalized antagonism towards Facebook, and the tech industry has a pretty clear root: they're getting outcompeted, thus the calls for regulation.
Facebook is "outcompeting" other news sites in the very narrow sense of "bigger number better" - they have more users, more pageviews, and so on. But they absolutely play dirty when it comes to how they get those numbers. They control the algorithm and the user interface by which people discover news - so they can pick and choose who wins and loses on their platform. The reason why people want Facebook regulated is because Facebook is already, in a sense, regulating the rest of the web.
Furthermore, many of the original landmark copyright decisions regarding, say, Google; were specifically decided to be fair use... partially on the basis that things Google did were sending monetizable traffic back to web publishers. Facebook's actions take the form of these fair uses, but they use their control over their platform to reclaim the value they would ordinarily be creating for publishers. This puts those exceptions to copyright in jeopardy - and that's exactly what we're seeing in, say, the EU.
Furthermore, many of the original landmark copyright decisions regarding, say, Google; were specifically decided to be fair use... partially on the basis that things Google did were sending monetizable traffic back to web publishers. Facebook's actions take the form of these fair uses, but they use their control over their platform to reclaim the value they would ordinarily be creating for publishers. This puts those exceptions to copyright in jeopardy - and that's exactly what we're seeing in, say, the EU.
There's no competition because Facebook is a monopoly.
Also remember that media companies tried collaborating with Facebook. Remember Pivot to video? Only to discover that Facebook inflated their stats on video views.
Of course, Facebook was sorry.
Also remember that media companies tried collaborating with Facebook. Remember Pivot to video? Only to discover that Facebook inflated their stats on video views.
Of course, Facebook was sorry.
And non-Amazon ecommerce sales (*according to one major third-party warehouse company) went down 27%.
https://twitter.com/AaronandML/status/1445162492909531137
https://twitter.com/AaronandML/status/1445162492909531137
I can believe that. My father often bugs me to buy things he saw advertised on Facebook ads. For older generation like him who spend a lot of time on Facebook, Facebook is a good avenue for non-Amazon sites to peddle their wares.
Most of the adverts I get on Facebook are for while labeled products from AliExpress sold for 10x the price
I (don't) like how online retail is now either "Amazon" or "non-Amazon".
On one hand, it's worrying that Amazon is so huge that we have these two categories; on the other hand we should be glad that there still is some "non-Amazon" left...
This assumes it's in Amazon's interest for there not to be.
Theoretically all companies under capitalism would want to become true monopolies because having competition means leaving money on the table, but in practice a duopoly or a de facto monopoly is preferable to skirt regulations and interventions. There is a good reason Google still props up Mozilla despite competing with them in the browser space.
It would also be interesting so see how many of the larger non-Amazons run on AWS.
Theoretically all companies under capitalism would want to become true monopolies because having competition means leaving money on the table, but in practice a duopoly or a de facto monopoly is preferable to skirt regulations and interventions. There is a good reason Google still props up Mozilla despite competing with them in the browser space.
It would also be interesting so see how many of the larger non-Amazons run on AWS.
Traffic for basically every site went up. People thought it was an internet-wide DDOS attack when it was just the 3B people on FB's properties finding entertainment elsewhere.
Were people finding entertainment elsewhere or simply opening news sites and Twitter to read why Facebook and Instagram were down?
even fb/ig regulars should be able to find that information quickly so i guess they indeed did not "log off" after that.
This.
I'm pretty sure I saw reports that internet speed tests were going down as well from people checking their connections. I can't confirm it but if it's true, it's pretty interesting the chain reaction that occurred.
traffic at my job was funny, it was chaos trying to handle it, then facebook came back and you can see it in the charts the drop in requests. it was a pretty quick return to normal.
idk im surprised people just like didnt go do other things, like we just have to scroll?
idk im surprised people just like didnt go do other things, like we just have to scroll?
Same as when any other perceived disaster strikes, news traffic spikes so people can learn more about the disaster.
(Cue the pile on of "But this wasn't a real disaster", sure. But unfortunately for a lot of people, it really was. They couldn't communicate with loved ones etc.)
How is this a surprise?
(Cue the pile on of "But this wasn't a real disaster", sure. But unfortunately for a lot of people, it really was. They couldn't communicate with loved ones etc.)
How is this a surprise?
There are many possible explanations for this outcome, and probably all of them played some role in this, though it's hard for me to tell which one is the most important.
One factor is that people wanted to know how this whole outage evolves (your example). It's similar to a "disaster", so people want to know the latest updates. It's not a surprise, but it might not explain the whole picture.
Another factor is that Facebook (when it's up) has a negative effect on most news site's traffic. People might find your news article on Facebook, but most of the time, they just skim the title, and read the comments on Facebook, and they don't bother visiting your website (or they don't stay there and browse the rest of the articles).
This could be interesting for you if you've been following the love-hate relationship that news websites and Facebook have been having for almost a decade now.
One factor is that people wanted to know how this whole outage evolves (your example). It's similar to a "disaster", so people want to know the latest updates. It's not a surprise, but it might not explain the whole picture.
Another factor is that Facebook (when it's up) has a negative effect on most news site's traffic. People might find your news article on Facebook, but most of the time, they just skim the title, and read the comments on Facebook, and they don't bother visiting your website (or they don't stay there and browse the rest of the articles).
This could be interesting for you if you've been following the love-hate relationship that news websites and Facebook have been having for almost a decade now.
If you wanted, you could call it a major disruption.
I don't know exactly what makes an event a "real disaster", but I agree that suddenly being isolated from your family is a significant event, and if anyone wanted to belittle your characterisation, they should probably recallibrate their understanding of the world. (And they should also be careful to distinguish their oughts and their is-es.)
I don't know exactly what makes an event a "real disaster", but I agree that suddenly being isolated from your family is a significant event, and if anyone wanted to belittle your characterisation, they should probably recallibrate their understanding of the world. (And they should also be careful to distinguish their oughts and their is-es.)
If anyone else is wondering what that "dark social" in the chart is:
> […] social shares that do not contain any digital referral information about the source.
> In contrary to the sharing on social networking service like Facebook, which is done publicly, Dark social is done privately through IRC channels, emails, SMS or simply copy-and-paste and other ways of private sharing.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_social_media)
> […] social shares that do not contain any digital referral information about the source.
> In contrary to the sharing on social networking service like Facebook, which is done publicly, Dark social is done privately through IRC channels, emails, SMS or simply copy-and-paste and other ways of private sharing.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_social_media)
That's an amazingly sinister term to describe what was the norm prior to the rise of Google Analytics and its equivalents.
I thought the same thing. It seems like marketers really hate it though.
> To combat this lack of transparency, websites can include more attractive ways to share links than simply copy-pasting into another application; ...
I guess one man's privacy is another man's "lack of transparency".
> To combat this lack of transparency, websites can include more attractive ways to share links than simply copy-pasting into another application; ...
I guess one man's privacy is another man's "lack of transparency".
> I guess one man's privacy is another man's "lack of transparency".
A good example of this are jobs that post your salary online. Those are usually in government and some NGOs.
Interestingly, some Nordic countries allow people to see each others income tax info.
A good example of this are jobs that post your salary online. Those are usually in government and some NGOs.
Interestingly, some Nordic countries allow people to see each others income tax info.
News sites traffic surge can be explained by people trying to figure out why FB/Instagram are not working.
What's more interesting for me is that Pornhub's traffic surged by 10% [1] during the outage ;)
[1] - https://www.pornhub.com/insights/facebook-instagram-outage-2...
What's more interesting for me is that Pornhub's traffic surged by 10% [1] during the outage ;)
[1] - https://www.pornhub.com/insights/facebook-instagram-outage-2...
Well, I guess most of the people wanted to know what was going on... with Facebook.
And waste time somewhere else.
It's interesting anyways to see proof that most people likely didn't use the extra free time to stay off the internet. We truly are internet junkies.
It's interesting anyways to see proof that most people likely didn't use the extra free time to stay off the internet. We truly are internet junkies.
What cracked me up about this is how many "FB Friends" of mine think FB did it on purpose. "They were erasing data" is one the theories I was told.
I find that the type of person who thinks FB did this intentionally (either to "erase data" or as a distraction) vastly overestimates the impact of whistleblowers.
There have been ex-FB employees publicly accusing the company of enabling foreign political interference in the US, lynching mobs forming via WhatsApp, governments spreading misinformation, not to mention gross privacy abuses by its own employees. Nothing has fundamentally changed.
Heck, nothing fundamentally changed after Wikileaks' Collateral Murder video (in fact, there have now been reports that the supposed retaliatory precision strike in Afghanistan actually killed an aid worker and his children and this too changes nothing) and nothing fundamentally changed after the Snowden leaks. Obama literally went on public television and admitted to torture and nothing fundamentally changed.
As much as us nerds tend to think otherwise, information on its own changes nothing. Scandals like this are just another piece of outrage fuel to be consumed on social media and to be liked, shared and subscribed to. Without actually organizing and defining solutions rather than just the problems, nothing fundamentally changes. Otherwise the best you can hope for is the POTUS reading off a script while making a concerned face or Congress passing a toothless bill before things return to normal.
There have been ex-FB employees publicly accusing the company of enabling foreign political interference in the US, lynching mobs forming via WhatsApp, governments spreading misinformation, not to mention gross privacy abuses by its own employees. Nothing has fundamentally changed.
Heck, nothing fundamentally changed after Wikileaks' Collateral Murder video (in fact, there have now been reports that the supposed retaliatory precision strike in Afghanistan actually killed an aid worker and his children and this too changes nothing) and nothing fundamentally changed after the Snowden leaks. Obama literally went on public television and admitted to torture and nothing fundamentally changed.
As much as us nerds tend to think otherwise, information on its own changes nothing. Scandals like this are just another piece of outrage fuel to be consumed on social media and to be liked, shared and subscribed to. Without actually organizing and defining solutions rather than just the problems, nothing fundamentally changes. Otherwise the best you can hope for is the POTUS reading off a script while making a concerned face or Congress passing a toothless bill before things return to normal.
THE SINGULARITY HAPPENED IN FB'S AI RESEARCH GROUPS, IT WAS A LAST DITCH EFFORT TO PREVENT IT FROM ESCAPING!
[deleted]
I unironically heard/read this from nuts on both the Left and the Right. As if Facebook would risk that much money to take their services offline for 7 hours.
I heard it was a lawnmower man scenario.
"They were erasing data" is afaik the current Qanon explanation after they slowly realized this wasn't the "ten days of darkness".
Yeah, from people looking for news about why Facebook is down.
and what they did after they found out
How much of the increase was due to reloads since when facebook goes down, the performance of sites that include FB javascript tends to get worse.
For example, see https://www.akamai.com/blog/news/the-impact-of-third-party-s... and https://twitter.com/paulcalvano/status/1445244384598011906
For example, see https://www.akamai.com/blog/news/the-impact-of-third-party-s... and https://twitter.com/paulcalvano/status/1445244384598011906
Traffic to Pornhub went up by 10%
I thought you were kidding.
Link for reference:
https://www.pornhub.com/insights/facebook-instagram-outage-2...
Link for reference:
https://www.pornhub.com/insights/facebook-instagram-outage-2...
This could mean people get their news from facebook, but it could also imply that people get their frivolous entertainment from news sites.
So this is charting pageviews not sessions. Did those increase as well? I ask because we saw a net uptick in pageviews but sessions were much lower. The issue turned out to be Facebook code on our pages destroying page load times and we assume leading a rise in refreshes.
Most news sites are littered with beacons so I imagine they had similar issues (times 10).
As a small retailer, we probably ended up losing 15-20% of our sales that day.
Most news sites are littered with beacons so I imagine they had similar issues (times 10).
As a small retailer, we probably ended up losing 15-20% of our sales that day.
News websites are alternative mindless scrolling devices, so when the main one goes down, people turn to what's available.
How many of those visits were people trying to figure out what was going on with facebook? I bet most.
I immediately went to a news site to see if there was news about Whatsapp being down
“The twin towers went down this week and traffic to news sites went up”
I was actually quite happy when I heard about the outage. I’ve managed to disconnect myself from Facebook’s services sufficiently that I didn’t even notice they were down...
Same here. I thought Cloudflare is having issues as the whole internet appeared slow that day. I only read that FB is down on hacker news hours later.
If FB went dark permanently, we would fully "recover" very quickly. Not many needs will be unmet for long. Whether people use FB for messaging, groups, news or whatnot... nine of these are scarce.
This is obvious, but it's worth noting how different this is from most companies of comparable size. If Toyota go dark, the world makes fewer cars. It would take time and investment to recover the capacity.
Whether FB is good or bad, it's interesting how unnecessary it is.
This is obvious, but it's worth noting how different this is from most companies of comparable size. If Toyota go dark, the world makes fewer cars. It would take time and investment to recover the capacity.
Whether FB is good or bad, it's interesting how unnecessary it is.
> If Toyota go dark, the world makes fewer cars. It would take time and investment to recover the capacity.
I think the world would be just fine - car manufacturing capacity has already dropped due to the chip shortage, but the world is humming along, albeit with slightly higher car prices. If Toyota became insolvent, second-hand Toyotas would go up in price, and some other car company would buy their factories. It wouldn't be Armageddon.
I think the world would be just fine - car manufacturing capacity has already dropped due to the chip shortage, but the world is humming along, albeit with slightly higher car prices. If Toyota became insolvent, second-hand Toyotas would go up in price, and some other car company would buy their factories. It wouldn't be Armageddon.
True. I didn't say armageddon. I said fewer cars for a while.
I'll fix this:
*When Facebook went down, traffic to all other sites went up
*When Facebook went down, traffic to all other sites went up
It's a good reminder in humility to any of us making services or products of any kind that however many happy users and great reviews we have, if the service disappears people will use something else.
If I go to hacker news whilst procrastination lock out is on I curse and go to another news site. If the top 10 YouTubers accounts were frozen - YouTube wouldn't likely see a drop in total videos watched, people would watch something else.
If I go to hacker news whilst procrastination lock out is on I curse and go to another news site. If the top 10 YouTubers accounts were frozen - YouTube wouldn't likely see a drop in total videos watched, people would watch something else.
I assume the influx in traffic was people heading to news sites to see why facebook was down rather than going to get actual news from actual news sources
What's the bet this is trying to imply without the veil of Facebook, people turned to news sources to enlighten themselves on the real world?
Takes basic logic to realise that's not the case at all; people would've flocked to news sites to see why Facebook was down. Once it's back up they'll return to the bubble.
Takes basic logic to realise that's not the case at all; people would've flocked to news sites to see why Facebook was down. Once it's back up they'll return to the bubble.
exactly this. This wasnt a huge awakening of people thinking "i must consume news" it was all to go see why facebook was down
I don't know about you guys, but I only went to the news to find out what happened to facebook.
I remember when my town lost power for a week. It was glorious. People started talking to their neighbours, kids started playing outside. Magic.
Does Facebook really make anyone's life better?
Sometimes I wish I born before the internet, or even a century ago.
Sometimes I wish I born before the internet, or even a century ago.
I mean, if you really want it today, there are places in the world you could go to that have little to no internet access.
Where people still communicate mostly in-person.
(I'm only half joking haha).
> Does Facebook really make anyone's life better?
I can only answer for myself. It made my life better:
1. At the start of my career, I got connections, jobs, etc from local groups. 2. I connected with old school mates I wouldn't have found other wise. 3. ...
My assumption is when people are not addicted or living/following fake lives on social media, there is a lot of benefits to it.
Where people still communicate mostly in-person.
(I'm only half joking haha).
> Does Facebook really make anyone's life better?
I can only answer for myself. It made my life better:
1. At the start of my career, I got connections, jobs, etc from local groups. 2. I connected with old school mates I wouldn't have found other wise. 3. ...
My assumption is when people are not addicted or living/following fake lives on social media, there is a lot of benefits to it.
You could move somewhere like Pitcairn Island, it’s actively looking for immigrants or at least it was last time I checked. There’s other isolated island communities out there which are a bit less extreme too with limited access to the internet. Saint Helena would be an example, although I’m not sure what the immigration requirements are.
You could also get into sailing, specifically offshore cruising. Until Starlink becomes available for mobile installations your options are either ruinously expensive and slow satellite internet or if you’re a radio amateur shortwave services for email and SSB voice.
You could also get into sailing, specifically offshore cruising. Until Starlink becomes available for mobile installations your options are either ruinously expensive and slow satellite internet or if you’re a radio amateur shortwave services for email and SSB voice.
I wish I was born at a time so that I'd be able to experience the early internet. And then die of natural causes, so that I didn't have to live through the hell that is the internet today.
(A bit dramatic - it's meant to be satiric).
(A bit dramatic - it's meant to be satiric).
[deleted]
I do think that they're curious enough to search what caused the Facebook blackout this week. I do think that it's not only the news sites that went up but also other sites.
I’m sure it did, because everyone wanted to know why Facebook and related things was down, at least that’s my honest take, I don’t think it’s all that significant
Did any other third party site stop working because the FB tracking codes started failing? Or mobile apps for that matter using FB's SDK.
"Twitter would have literally exploded" the site went blank mid sentence, was there anything of note afterwards? /s
[deleted]
I wonder what kind of percentage increase in traffic YouTube and TikTok saw during the Facebook and Instagram outage.
Makes me thing the possibilities of social media governing the news feeds by algorithms. Is not good in any way
Wait, what? Did you just say that Facebook went down? Hmm, funny that I didn't even notice. Life seemed to continue, and such a blip didn't lessen the quality of my life.
By the way, yes, i do have a FB account, but no I do not check it much at all except for the rare "like" for a post from my mom, etc. Dang it, and now i exposed that my mom is on FB...there goes my ops sec! /s ;-)
By the way, yes, i do have a FB account, but no I do not check it much at all except for the rare "like" for a post from my mom, etc. Dang it, and now i exposed that my mom is on FB...there goes my ops sec! /s ;-)
And now we understand why media hates FB so much: they compete for the same attention.
Traffic to everything went up. HN itself had some service degradation as a result.
How can one take their website off facebook (i.e. disallow linking altogether?).
Pinterest allows you to block being pinned with:
<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" description="Sorry, but no. No pinning." />
You can’t, if they’re simple unauthenticated HTTP links then you can’t stop that link being copied and pasted.
I guess you could look for Facebook’s spiders retrieving content and block those requests. But why bother?
I guess you could look for Facebook’s spiders retrieving content and block those requests. But why bother?
[deleted]
Conveniently timed too with the whistleblower testifying at the same time.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Perhaps to figure out why Facebook was down?
Some food for thought: As much as correlation != causation(in regards to the spike in traffic), I've witnessed so many people taking any Facebook post as the ultimate source of truth. Which is insanely problematic in countries like mine, where "Facebook = real news" by all definitions. And as a consequence this has been the root cause of insane amounts of horror stories. For instance one of the lowest covid vaccination rates in the world(despite being among the first countries that made vaccination available to the general public beyond medical staff and risk groups). About a week ago a political leader stated on TV that she's been aware of a scandal involving a presidential candidate, who was contacted by his friend and immediately called the studio to confront those statements. When the presenter asked her where she got that information her response was: "I read it on the internet". I feel like Carlin's famous "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups" sentence is just that: Facebook became the official platform and facilitated the creation of large communities of the loonies that used to be standing on a cardboard box with a tin-foil hat at the main square shouting about reptilians and all that. The problem is that people are far less likely to listen to someone who hasn't taken a shower in weeks and smells of cigarettes and alcohol than a webcam-selfie in a soviet-green room next to a facebook post. Some weeks ago I saw an article about a website filled with fake news and out of curiosity I decided to investigate it. Turns out it's run by a guy in his early 20's, his mom and his mom's boyfriend or something. And it wasn't just that website: it turned out to be an absolute empire of hundreds websites like the one with thousands of articles and their main source of traffic was Facebook. And it's kind of evident when you see thousands of engagements on their posts in facebook while a news site which I can guarantee that is not biased or controlled by any political party or organization in any way(I am close to much of their staff) gets a couple of dozen likes at best. Facebook might not be the worst idea in human history but it somehow became the worst thing I've seen in my life. Tl;dr(enable sarcastic tone + slow clap): great job you're doing there to prevent misinformation Mr. Zuckerberg.
You're wrong to think this isnt a general problem with humans and how we process information. You're also wrong to think that Facebook is such a monster compared to media networks or other social media.
I never said it's not a general problem, it clearly is. But Facebook is still the biggest monster. If you have a rabid dog running around in a kindergarten, you don't just turn a blind eye and tell parents the dog has it's will and right to live the way it wants as much as the children, because "democracy". This is what Facebook essentially is at this point and that's what it's doing.
i bet porn sites saw an increase in traffic as well.
When Facebook went down this week, the world was a better place
The internet was a better place. FB is such a big time sink that it chokes almost everything else except the 3-4 huge outliers.
awesome this is exactly what I was looking to find out that day, clearly it was obvious it would happen but I wanted to see the data
And this is what's motivating the establishment's campaign against social media. Many people think that information should go through gatekeepers - that people shouldn't be able to share information peer-to-peer without filters.
The claims of Facebook promoting hate and extremism are part of this campaign to rollback the changes brought about by Facebook. And the claims are all disingenuous nonsense.
The Facebook "whistleblower" for example explained how she was motivated to blow the whistle after one of her friends was, in her words, radicalized, through Facebook. Of course she doesn't consider herself, a lifelong "ally" and supporter of far-left causes, who worked on a search feature allowing Pinterest users to search by skin tone - in order to discriminate in favor of people of certain colors - radicalized. Because that's pro-establishment radicalism.
The claims of Facebook promoting hate and extremism are part of this campaign to rollback the changes brought about by Facebook. And the claims are all disingenuous nonsense.
The Facebook "whistleblower" for example explained how she was motivated to blow the whistle after one of her friends was, in her words, radicalized, through Facebook. Of course she doesn't consider herself, a lifelong "ally" and supporter of far-left causes, who worked on a search feature allowing Pinterest users to search by skin tone - in order to discriminate in favor of people of certain colors - radicalized. Because that's pro-establishment radicalism.
The Facebook whistleblower who wants more censorship and all the news sites made it such a big deal. It was all very convenient how things happened.
"Many people think that information should go through gatekeepers - that people shouldn't be able to share information peer-to-peer without filters.
The claims of Facebook promoting hate and extremism are part of this campaign to rollback the changes brought about by Facebook"
You think Facebook not a gatekeeper? You think it liberalized speech?
4chan is free speech, facebook just privatised hate
The claims of Facebook promoting hate and extremism are part of this campaign to rollback the changes brought about by Facebook"
You think Facebook not a gatekeeper? You think it liberalized speech?
4chan is free speech, facebook just privatised hate
Facebook is far less of a gatekeeper than traditional news media.
Agreed, they are less like a biased newspaper editor and more like a bouncer at a night-club who does not intervene when there is a fight provided the 'right' customer is winning, and then we can debate whether it's because the bouncer is racist or getting bribed.
The solution is to set FB's incentives right, which can be done by banning ads from social networks. With this solution, no other type of censoring is necessary.
This is a very serious problem - hyper-centalization in hands of one corporation which can fail you intentionally or not. Facebook is becoming sort of the Chinese system (AFAIK standard WWW is almost nonexistent in China, they mostly use apps within social networks which are easier for the government to control) for the whole world.
Looking more broadly it's another layer of the malicious trend to wrap the things in more and more layers.
First we had native desktop apps (which always could communicate data to network servers). Then we have wrapped the apps in the browser (which essentially is an OS on an OS) but we had our pages on independent servers. Then we invented "social networks" and are putting everything in there.
We could just improve desktop apps tech (including discoverability, delivery, interoperability, portability and UI design flexibility) but we chose the browsers. We could stop here, use the standard WWW and improve experience of using RSS/Atom/RDF/XMPP/etc but we gave up our pages/subscriptions/contacts to Facebook.