Zuck: You're still using non-Facebook websites ... I'll put an end to that

Wait

Doesn't Facebook own Oculus Rift? So he's giving out a competitors product? That's not good business sense. But I suppose a Rift and a PC powerful enough to support it is too expensive to just be giving away.

Facebook AI? They already determine what you see on Facebook with their timeline filtering, soon morons will get ALL their information from Facebook (actually, sadly, I think many already do). US News sources are terrible enough, now imagine letting Facebook filter that crap first. "Please, Facebook CNN AI Bot, read me the news of the day."

No thanks Facebook. No thanks.

Memory Server Error

I could have sworn Facebook claimed it was not about commercialism when it was new. Maybe I'm remembering it all wrong.

How about nope.

Back to the BBS days?

Is that where we're going?

Sure HTML5, JavaScript and video makes for a richer experience than VT220/ANSI escape sequences and animations rendered out of the IBM PC Extended ASCII character set, I though the Internet was meant to supersede all that?

Great scott! We're going back to the future!!

Credit where it is due....

I have to applaud the fact that Facebook are making so many of these initiatives and software systems open source. Although I fear I might need psychiatric treatment, it actually felt good having something positive to say about Facebook.

Of course it is now up to developers put this open source kit to *good* use......

Sexism does not "Bring people together"

If Zuckerberg really wants to "bring people together", I suggest he stops funding disgusting sexist organisations like code.org that actively work to stop young boys taking up computer science.

Walls, not bridges

Hey Zuck, old chap,

There are simple means of foiling your dastardly plans. Firewalls, DNS walls, stonewalls, and my favourite, the peat wall.

When the main work of my life is complete, there'll be a wall (well, perhaps a bog) of peat between me and you. And I'll be on the whisky side, thank you very much.

Until then, the three badgers I have trained to flummox the on-line community will be earning their chow.

El Badg #2

60 Billion ?

"There are now 60 billion messages a day sent via Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp"

And of this number, how many have an information content significantly greater than zero ?

Chris Cosgrove

Nope

Haven't got it.

Never had it.

Never will have it.

Never missed it.

Hi there :) we've missed all of you defectors at the Farmville commune. Come back to us now all will be forgiven and find out what your friends are saying about you. If you don't have time to play that's ok just unblock your location and we'll send an angry mob of nearby villagers to provide you with encouragement.

"The second plank of Facebook's strategy to get everyone onto its social network

is the use of artificial intelligence, or rather, throwing AI at people and hoping it impresses them."

Before you know it, half the people on your friendslist won't be real people and none of them will really be friends.

Wait..

And if users hate auto-play Flash ads --

-- then surely they will love "...AI software systems that can use Messenger to communicate with Facebook customers."

It may be a bit of a challenge for extension devs to come up with proper blockers for AI bots, but I have all confidence that they will rise like trout to the writhing bug. uBlockZuckerBot, perhaps?

What's the point of a book full of faces?

Interesting set of posts - mostly by people who don't use FB at all/regularly who never will - kind of reminds me of my wife's midwife - she'd never had children and was in her 60s but she'd read all about it so knew all about the process and the pain...

I do have a FB acct - but I don't use the app on my phone, nor do the chat system where is can filter my text conversations (but if I was really worried about that I guess I wouldn't use Gmail either...?)

Like lots of people, I use it to keep in contact with a large number of friends and family who are now scattered all over the world - with very few exceptions I'm actually friends with people I have actually met in RL(tm) first. For that, it is vaguely useful. As long as you don't live on it, it's not too bad.

Given FB has bought Oculus I suspect their long term plan is not Social Media and VR (there is already a 'Social VR' app for the Oculus powered Gear VR after all) but Social Media and Augmented Reality.

The Sci-Fi writer side of me plots a path into the future where we're all wearing transparent screen AR glasses - news, satnav directions, the price of the thing we're looking at in the window of the shop (if there are any physical shops left) and the special offer in the shop three doors away for the same thing - who paid FB to run an campaign promoting this (or more likely 'online at the FB Store') etc are all overlaid on the real world by an FB powered engine.

This engine will be managing and studying us all (even if you're not on FB, you will still be interacting with people who are) - not only where we are and what we're doing - but what we're looking at, how long we linger, how we feel when we're looking at things (you don't just 'like' things on FB any more - you have the option to 'love', 'haha', 'wow', 'sad' and 'angry' at things too - so it's already started - but of course all those of you who don't/won't use FB might not necessarily know this...) - all of this will be crunched into useful data that will either be used by FB directly to sell us stuff or the collated data will be sold (by FB) to others...

Facebook is a tool...

Yes, also run by a tool!

Like any tool, you need to have a reason to "own it" and a reason to use it. I do a lot of photography in my spare time and FB has been a superb way for me to meet other photographers, both online and then in the flesh. I've got to talk with some of the biggest names in UK landscape photography, got invited to be part of some business ventures to sell images and even sold my own images to people I've met on FB.

That's where my interaction with FB stops. I don't do anything but discuss photography with fellow photographers. I reject all friend requests unless the person has a profile that proves they're interested in photography, anything else and I'm not interested as they'll quickly get bored of me and I don't need their non-photography crap clogging up my time. I have about 100 trusted "acquaintances" and that's it.

FB can be useful, just use it sparingly if you have a need else stay away!

AOL called

They want their glory days back.