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    This doesn’t change anything, the only people who care about this are in tech circles. Everyone will forget about this in two weeks.

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      I don’t agree. It’s personal anecdote, but at every group event I attended over the holidays a non-tech person talked about how they were deleting Facebook from their phones or closing their account entirely. And a more recent survey had 7.5% of Facebook users claiming to have deleted their accounts in respond to the Cambridge Analytica stories. We’ll see what’s in Facebook’s 2018 Q1 10-K at the end of April, but all the signs I’ve seen point to a significant hit and no signs towards grown in user count or engagement.

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        recent survey

        How did they choose their sample and how was the survey conducted? A red flag that immediately comes to my mind is that these 7.5% of people claimed to have deleted (not deactivated) their account. Either:

        1. Toluna got their terminology mixed up, and these people actually deactivated their account, since the delete account button is hidden.
        2. These people really mean they deleted their account.

        I’m inclined to go with 1 because nowhere in the article is there a statistic of people deactivating their account. They only mention deletion and updating privacy settings. Seems kind of weird to me. If I’m correct in this assessment, then this undermines the integrity of the survey. If they can’t get that right, then they probably didn’t pick a good sample to begin with.

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          It was through a Facebook quiz. :)

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            Hmmm… I agree that Facebook’s self-serving differentiation between “deactivate” and “delete” is problematic in actually determining people’s responses. But challenging the integrity of the survey seems a step too far.

            Shit, Mark himself in the quoted article says they haven’t seen a meaningful number of deletions, which he doesn’t quantify or compare with deactivations. He’s taking advantage of the same fuzziness that they created.

            You’re probably right. Many people don’t realize that deactivate isn’t delete. But, presuming the survey-folks are doing their jobs, having that many people INTEND to delete their account is a meaningful measure of sentiment. Maybe not earth-shattering (it’s not 50%), but given how entrenched Facebook is right now, it rings as important to me.

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              I’m sorry, but I’ve been on the Internet way too long to just take what I read at face value. Based on my experience, people/publications (especially relatively unknown ones, like the one that was linked) blow things way out of proportion to get clicks/views. There is no indication as to how the survey was conducted, so I’m going to assume the worst, because that’s usually what it is.

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                Hey, I used to be a social studies teacher. I’m all about skepticism in sources. I’m not sure I see reason to put zero stock in their ability to call 1000 people, but hey, fair enough.

                Edit: Hah, then I duckduckgo-ed Toluna, the company who did the survey (according to the article). Evidently it’s paid online survey-taking. That doesn’t necessarily mean they fudged anything, but I’m sure that’s not representative of the population as a whole. Touché.

                What would you suspect that percent of deleters (or maybe including “intend to delete but got unintentionally stuck at ‘disable’”) is then? I’m one of five I know, and the only one in the tech industry.

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        I’m a solo-preneur, so I’m definitely not qualified to answer the questions here, nor the the one I’m posing:

        I wonder what the “coding bootcamp bubble” has to do with this. Did the common denominator for “junior” become lower (or maybe just different) during this time?

        Caveat: I went through one of those bootcamps and used it to start my business, but my (modest) success right now is much more based on my domain-related knowledge/experience/network and not my web dev ability. I’m not trying to crap on bootcamps (clearly), but I have a hunch this may have contributed to it.

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          There’s also the thing where programming was/is seen as a hot job, mostly because it’s one of the few jobs adults haven’t figured out how to completely ruin yet.

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          Wow I couldn’t agree more with his assertions around e-mail. I’m seeing a generational divide happen, ADD youngsters are telling me “Email is awful!” on a fairly regular basis now. WHY? I’ve yet to get an actual, viable, useful answer.

          Mostly what I get is “It’s so 5 minutes ago”.

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            This is a good point. Email and Slack are just communication tools. The workplace is full of low-quality communication because most workplaces are low in quality: inept management, no real desire to motivate people, stupid projects, and crappy ideas. The problem never was email itself. Nor is it Slack per se.

            It’s like the common comment about dating sites: the sites are a solved problem, but people are broken.

            Now, Jira is evil and should die in a taint fire. That’s just an objective fact.

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              I’m on board with your core sentiment here, and broadly characterizing a generation as suffering from a disability isn’t much better of a rationale than those “youngsters” are giving you for not liking email.

              (Having spent a decade as a teacher and middle school administrator before venturing into dev work, I’m well aware of the very real challenges of keeping the attention of people younger than me…)

              Not trying to poke you in the eye (metaphorically or otherwise). Just saying… 🍻

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                What’s doubly amusing about your choice of wording is that I am in fact blind in one eye and low vision in the other, so go ahead and poke away as long as it’s the left side :)

                And, to address the meat of what you’re saying, you’re right. I had no business being cavalier about the term ADD. Thanks for pointing that out.

                I need to find a new turn of phrase to describe the ever shortening attention span of humans :)

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                  Haha… Well clearly I stepped in it there with my choice of metaphor. 🤦🏻‍♂️

                  Agreed. We definitely need a better shorthand for shrinking attention spans…

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                My main issue with email is that unless everyone uses the same email client and email client settings things become a mess. Some people add replies at the bottom of the chain, others at the top. Some people use HTML email, some don’t. Some people have signatures 8 miles long.

                It’s just so darn messy.

                What I like about instant messaging is that it is quicker, (to me) more organized, and most of his arguments against it are mostly due to not knowing how to set status. If you don’t want to be distracted set yourself to “do not disturb”. I haven’t worked with a team where this was a problem (assuming you do eventually answer questions).

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                  It doesn’t have to be messy. HTML versus not should be transparent to you (I use mutt for work) - the top posting problem is a larger issue, and I blame Google and Microsoft. They’ve attempted to make mail act like IM.

                  There is only one true way to respond to email messages, and it was defined in RFC-1855

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                    I’m not saying it has to be messy, I’m just saying it is in the real world. And while I could start sending mail that complies with RFC-1855, I still have to deal with everyone who sends me mail and doesn’t comply to any standard.

                    HTML versus not should be transparent to you

                    How? I use outlook at work because I need it for meeting requests, shared address books, etc.

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                      So, wait, you’re complaining about HTML email because you choose to use a GUI client?

                      Fascinating, captain :)

                      I too use Outlook/Exchange for meetings, but that’s all I use it for. My mail pipeline is fetcmail/procmail and mutt and it works famously with Exchange. Google it and see :)

                      Your point about not being able to control unruly senders is valid, but I’m not sure that merits throwing the baby out with the bath water.

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                  Email has good properties, but I see many problems with email that other tools avoid:

                  • With email, it’s harder to jump into an existing conversation. You can’t just visit a link and read the existing conversation. You have to wait for someone to post something new to the mailing list, or ask someone to forward you the discussion so far. And then you have to read the previous messages with a zig-zag path – read top to bottom within each message, but read the list of messages bottom to top.

                  • The culture of email suggests that you surround your message with salutations and sign-offs. In most environments, every time you write a new email, you have to write “Hi John,” or “Greetings all,” at the beginning, and then “Thanks, Rory” or “Sincerely, Rory” at the end. It takes time away from writing the content of the message, time that is usually not worth the signaling it provides.

                  • In some companies, emails have signatures at the bottom that repeat information you already know such as the contact information of the company. It requires more scrolling and mental filtering to see the actual content.

                  • Emails have a sending delay and require writing subject lines. This makes them less appropriate for messages that should be sent in real time, because they are relevant to a real-time conversation. For example, if you are telling a coworker about a relevant blog post and why they should read it, it’s better if you can just paste the URL into a message with them and they get it instantly.

                  • Emails can’t be edited. If you make a stupid typo or forget an attachment, you have no choice but to either accept the error or to send another email with the correction. If you send a correction email, all readers have to manually apply in their heads your described patch to the original email – no one can apply the fix so the others don’t have to. And if someone else sends an email with a subject line that is revealed to be irrelevant, you can’t change the subject line to focus future discussion – the best you can do is send a correction email.

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                  Good start… now what about templating alternatives like Telegram’s Instant View? Millions of links being sent over IM every day are being rewritten into new templates created by a third party. Sure, it addresses the speed / mobile accessibility concerns, but it’s also very heavy-handed backend processing that’s a black box to users.

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                    We are currently running a $315,000 competition to create Instant View templates for news websites and blogs. Everyone is welcome to participate.

                    That’s a lot of $s for something which is run by… who exactly again?

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                      Google AMP doesn’t exist to solve backend issues, though. That’s a separate concern, I’d say.

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                        Before clicking your link, I was unfamiliar with Telegram and Instant View, so take this with a grain of salt…

                        Isn’t this just another version of the same thing? Doesn’t an Instant View prevent clicks to the host domain?

                        And, conversely, isn’t this all a consequence of business models riddled with terrible ad networks? Dropping AMP or Instant View or any other scraper/viewer doesn’t fix that weakness.

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                          More like mix of Facebook’s Instant Articles and Reader Mode from Safari/Firebox (also Pocket). It doesn’t require special markup to put on webpage but it has crowdsourced rewrite rules that remove cruft from webpages. It loads processed webpages from their server though, unlike Reader modes.

                          At least Telegram leaves links posted to chat as is, looking like links, with underline, leading to original URL, and adds “Instant view” button alongside, which looks like button and opens instant article popup.

                          BTW, their rule language is crappy.

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                            Telegram is/was important in the recent Iran riots.

                            For example: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/01/irans-telegram-revolution-216206

                            Unlike Twitter, millions of Iranians use Telegram in their everyday lives—around 40 million monthly users in a country of 45 million overall online users, according to the latest ITU statistics.

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                              To my understanding it is - just a different content/service provider that wants to create a platform to give the same experience to its users. There are some differences in the implementation by telegram and the effort that needs to be put by the sites developers, but it is still served by cache that is kept on their servers. In this point you’re getting a good experience loading, say, Medium articles in Telegram - but you don’t get the same experience outside of it.

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                            Wow I love the Sad Mac screensaver. Using it :)

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                              Right?? Sad Mac is such a great throwback. Makes me long for some pixelated flying toasters as well…

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                              I’m a novice at this, so I’m wondering if someone can help explain to me…

                              I would’ve expected this news to be a relief for folks who were disconcerted by the prior license, and it seems like that’s not the case. Many other open-source frameworks use the MIT license (Rails, Phoenix, Vue, Angular) and I haven’t seen similar consternation (though it’s possible I just haven’t run into it).

                              Is the continued skepticism because the MIT license still isn’t the best choice? Or because Facebook/React threw away trust with their original license, and MIT is open-ended enough that there isn’t reason to think Facebook’s motives have sufficiently changed? Something else?

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                                This was an exciting read up until the point where I looked SameSite up on caniuse… http://caniuse.com/#search=samesite

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                                  On the other hand adding SameSite is very likely to be a one-line change in your code and can be deployed in addition to your existing CSRF protection.