Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/12/goodbye-libra-hello-facebook.html
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Eh, even if I don’t end up using Facebook Pay, not doing some stupid and wasteful blockchain thing that uses exactly zero features that you need a blockchain for is a good thing. So they’re basically just copying Paypal this time. At least that makes sense from a technical perspective, even if everything else is a trainwreck.
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Facebook is planning to start rolling out Facebook Pay on Messenger and Facebook in the US this week. It will initially be available for fundraisers, person-to-person payments, event tickets, in-game purchases, and some purchases from pages and businesses that operate on Facebook’s Marketplace.
So. It will be adopted by the seedy underbelly (drug dealers, etc.). Which is sort of fine by me.
But the larger problem becomes that being on Messenger or Whatsapp or whatever else, you’re going to be flooded by scammers trying to bilk you. Great. Just what I wanted.
I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s some BS “bug” or “erroneously rolled out feature they were testing” which tries to force you to put in a payment method. Messenger and facebook already have regular “Glitches” which try to get you to add more friends by blanking your feed and friend list.
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Yeah, this sounds like a fairly standard and boring payment processor just like all the others. Possibly convenient for people who are heavily using Facebook tools, but nothing to get terribly excited about either way.
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Sure, but to be honest, no one really cares. They should be glad I don’t call it the pos social media app.
Thanks. Just figured I should clarify since the authors of this site keep making that weird claim, which isn’t true.
Of course the goal is to make their panopticon of information about you even more valuable because they will have access to information about your actual buying habits. There is a REASON that I use cash whenever I can.
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This seems familiar. Where have I heard something like this recently?
This has lots of implications for privacy, surveillance, taxation, and fairness
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Now that it can be used at Points Of Sale, you officially can.
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Ha! At my old job, one of the products was point-of-sale software. It was a PoS, all right. I’d guess that, somewhere in the world, it’s crashing right now (and probably still running on Windows XP).
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Sweet. I plan to avoid it everywhere you plan to bring it. May be the best human being win.
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If Libra was Bitcoin for idiots, then Facebook Pay is Libra for morons. How stupid does someone have to be to entrust their financial transactions to this rotten company?
Only the stupidest criminals will use Facebook Pay. Zuck will hand over any records that the cops want as long as they say “please” – no warrant required.
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Oh, also?
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At some level, facebook “suffers” from a combination of too much money and market saturation. So they keep buying other businesses and starting new projects while talking about “synergy” to persuade Wall Street that they are still a “growth” company. Because only the prospect of future growth justifies their inflated stock price. In a saner financial world*, they would just settle in and write dividend checks with that money.
*edited to add: One where the stock price was based on anticipated returns, rather than speculation of higher stock prices.
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