[postmaster]

> For Facebook you need an account to even see the large majority of content.

For Facebook you only need an account to see content that the user / page has deemed not public. This has nothing to do with Facebook and everything to do with the owner of the account / page that publishes the content you're wanting to see.

https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/

Do you need to be logged in to view PUBLIC posts or comments on that page? No, you don't. Now if you were trying to visit Mark Zuckerberg's personal profile obviously, yes, a very large amount of content is NOT going to be visible to you.

This is no different than every other site out there. Sure, you can read the news and comments posted on this (https://news.ycombinator.com/) webiste, but you most certainly CANNOT post comments without having an account.

[craigsmansion]

> For Facebook you only need an account to see content that the user / page has deemed not public.

Or want to view public pages without them being covered by some obnoxious "See more of PAGE by logging in."

Yes, it's the account owner's fault for using Facebook in the first place. But they're likely always logged in, and so are most of their visitors, so they're only marginally aware such problems even exist.

Blame that can be squarely placed at Facebook is exploiting such gaps in knowledge from their users to pressure non-users into signing up.

> This is no different than every other site out there.

This is vastly different from almost every other site out there, except for a few big players. The Internet is still a huge place, at least for the time being.

Facebook is a major erosive force on the Internet as it tries to quietly subsume and privatise it, and using it to publish content on is contributing to the demise of one of the few globe-spanning projects our species ever managed to get right.

[postmaster]

> . . . being covered by some obnoxious "See more of PAGE by logging in."

> . . . pressure non-users into signing up.

These days you'll see similar examples by visiting any forum. Want to see some code, or a link someone posted? Sorry! You have to login or register.

> This is vastly different . . .

OK, OK. I'm sorry. This is most certainly, however, similar to any other website out there that uses real identity; don't let me get everything muddied by trying to compare real identity web to the anonymous web.

> Facebook is a . . .

Lol? I don't even. There's so many die-hard Facebook haters out there. Go build open source applications that do what Facebook is offering and does it better and before you know it the company should be gone. I'm solely basing this on the amount of comments I see for people coming out against Facebook, rather than ever for it (or even just playing devil's advocate). It seems to always be a circle jerk.

[type0]

> Go build open source applications that do what Facebook is offering and does it better and before you know it the company should be gone.

I can't imagine that would ever be the case. People hate on facbook for being behemoth that it is. No kind of open sour project would defeat it unless it is backed by the same amount of money. Who would dare to finance such an effort?

[AnthonyMouse]

> Sure, you can read the news and comments posted on this (https://news.ycombinator.com/) webiste, but you most certainly CANNOT post comments without having an account.

Many sites allow anonymous posting. Even those that don't, you can create an "anonymous" throwaway account. That doesn't work for Facebook because an anonymous throwaway account would have no friends and no more access to anything than not logging in at all.

You don't need what Facebook is doing for access control. The alternative is to post encrypted content and only give the key to people you want to allow access to.

Probably what that really needs to be popular is support for encoding a decryption key into a URI which isn't passed to the webserver but rather used by the client's browser to decrypt content from the server.

[tdkl]

So Facebook, much freedom : http://i.imgur.com/fW7yHG2.jpg

[type0]

Here is my poem:

The web is free, you can whatever you like.

The Zuck does whatever he likes.

We can do whatever we like.

No one can do whatever you like.

Freedom gain, freedom pain.

Facebook make, facebook take.

Open source, opean sauce.

Kitchen sink, pidgeon pink.