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Evan Prodromou

"Facebook was better in the Platform era (2007-2011), when third-party developers could add widgets to profile pages, and in-stream interactive experiences."

Anonymous poll

Poll

Strongly agree
88
31.5%
Somewhat agree
123
44.1%
Somewhat disagree
37
13.3%
Strongly disagree
31
11.1%
279 people voted.
Voting ended 16 Dec 2023 at 16:50.
15 Dec 2023 at 16:50 | Open on cosocial.ca
25 comments
Evan Prodromou

This is not a cleverly-masked referendum on Threads.

15 Dec 2023 at 16:51 | Open on cosocial.ca
David Megginson

@evan It was so sad back then watching all the misguided, would-be entrepreneurs trying to build businesses on top of social-media platforms (as if the big companies would ever leave money on the table for them). Ditto for affiliate programmes for Amazon, Expedia, etc.

15 Dec 2023 at 16:54 | Open on mstdn.ca
penryu
Brian Sullivan
Brion Vibber :blobcatcoffee:​

@evan somewhat agree, but not because of those widgets :D

15 Dec 2023 at 16:55 | Open on bikeshed.vibber.net
Brian Danger Hicks

@evan Then as now my timeline was clogged with stuff I didn't want to see, but at least they were things my friends actually thought I might like to see, and I had tools to hide them that actually hid them.

15 Dec 2023 at 16:59 | Open on teh.entar.net
xChaos

@evan platform era means Farmville era? ;-)

15 Dec 2023 at 17:00 | Open on f.cz
GEM is truly truly outrageous

@evan i feel like everyone forgot this ever happened

15 Dec 2023 at 17:10 | Open on oldbytes.space
GEM is truly truly outrageous

@evan anyway facebook was better when it required a .edu email

15 Dec 2023 at 17:17 | Open on oldbytes.space
Elton Carvalho

@evan Strongly Agree. I miss Farmville.

15 Dec 2023 at 17:18 | Open on bertha.social
Steve Scotten

@evan I answered “strongly agree" even though I'd phrase it as “was less awful” instead of “better”. On some days that would be enough to switch my vote to “somewhat" but I strongly agree with the proposition that it was less awful then. Or awful in a more palatable way anyhow. Like, the poison had a tasty sugar coating.

15 Dec 2023 at 17:42 | Open on makersocial.online
Gabe Kangas
@evan As somebody who built handfuls of different types of widgets, “Facebook apps”, and liberal use of the Facebook API for a living, at the time it felt “better”, but in many ways it was actually worse because we weren’t looking at it with a critical lens. There was a time where I was sending every kind of OpenGraph-compatible action to Facebook for aggregation purposes (Gabe listened to N songs using X, Mary played Y game Z times). Meaning the shady stuff Facebook does now to collect data they didn’t have to do back then. I happily volunteered that data for free.
@evan As somebody who built handfuls of different types of widgets, “Facebook apps”, and liberal use of the Facebook API for a living, at the time it felt “better”, but in many ways it was actually worse because we weren’t looking at it with a critical lens. There was a time where I was sending every kind of OpenGraph-compatible action to Facebook for aggregation purposes (Gabe listened to N songs using X, Mary played Y game Z times). Meaning the shady stuff Facebook does now to collect data they...
15 Dec 2023 at 17:45 | Open on social.gabekangas.com
The_Gibson :veilid:

@evan why are you asking a question that would normally be for a focus group?

15 Dec 2023 at 17:50 | Open on hackers.town
Evan Prodromou

@thegibson do focus groups often ask questions about products as they existed 15 years ago?

15 Dec 2023 at 19:16 | Open on cosocial.ca
Evan Prodromou

@thegibson regardless, I think one thing that's going to be interesting on the fediverse is how we build and support client apps. I think client developers should be able to make small incremental changes and integrate them into the rest of your social experience. That kind of ecosystem reminds me of the Facebook Platform, which was dynamic, chaotic, fevered, and weird. I wondered how other people thought about that era in social networking.

15 Dec 2023 at 19:18 | Open on cosocial.ca
Evan Prodromou

@thegibson another technology pattern that might be similar is the Greasemonkey one. WordPress plugins are somewhat similar, but usually take on bigger chunks of functionality than I'm thinking of, and of course only work on WP.

15 Dec 2023 at 19:19 | Open on cosocial.ca
Evan Prodromou

@thegibson OpenSocial was a open standard for having this kind of social platform experience. Parts of the standard became ActivityPub.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSoci

15 Dec 2023 at 19:22 | Open on cosocial.ca
The_Gibson :veilid:

@evan I think we have had that phase here over the last 7 years. And that era was fun.

But normalizing facebook’s track record over their intervening period is giving them a pass for behavior that is not unlike a supervillain or a massive organized crime syndicate that endangers people, communities, and frankly, entire societies.

I am a little shocked that anyone can consider their involvement with anything to be a net positive.

15 Dec 2023 at 19:25 | Open on hackers.town
jack

@evan it was better in that era but not because of third-party apps. the third-party apps (Joe McAcquaintance has invited you to play Super Pirate Candy Cove Battles!) made the experience Worse

15 Dec 2023 at 17:52 | Open on strangeobject.space
one2seven

@evan #Facebook was never any good & still is rubbish

15 Dec 2023 at 17:56 | Open on kolektiva.social
Ashley (she/they)

@evan Facebook has always been absolute poison

15 Dec 2023 at 21:58 | Open on mastodon.online
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