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by macksd 1716 days ago
And your own social network will fail because of network effects. If Facebook can be as terrible as they have been and retain their users, it's really because of their users that they're being propped up with a successful business. I gotta say at that point even I start thinking they owe their users more than a free market exchange would imply.

Not to mention we're talking about them sending a pretty formal legal threat. Would you philosophy in this case not be "if you don't like their browser extension, don't use it?"
2 comments
riffic 1716 days ago
> network effects

If you're building a new social network today, it makes sense to tap into an existing social graph so you can bootstrap your network with an existing ecosystem. Michelle Lim made a great case for this in her post here:

https://www.michellelim.org/writing/into-the-fediverse/

These protocols exist today. This is a W3C recommendation as of 2018-01-23:

https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-activitypub-20180123/

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new_guy 1716 days ago
> And your own social network will fail because of network effects

Speak for yourself. Not everything needs to be 'planet scale', I run a few social networks and they do just fine.

And I agree with Facebook in this case, if you have someone come into your house with the sole intent of burning it down, of course you're going to kick them out. It's no different than dealing with trolls or other bad actors.

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macksd 1716 days ago
Burning down Facebook? What on Earth are you talking about? It makes it easier for users to remove their own accounts across multiple services. It's a common interface to features the social networks themselves provide. This is the opposite of a bad actor.
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smoldesu 1715 days ago
Fun argument, now try asking Apple why they're against Jailbreaks if they "technically provide the same services the phone could already do"?
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macksd 1712 days ago
I certainly think the same argument applies, FWIW - I don't think Apple is being reasonable if they ban people from services for fixing their own devices or other people's devices. Not sure if you were implying I would feel differently about that instance.
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