Seconded. I found that I didn’t lose anything by leaving Facebook. The “social network” I thought I had was just a list of names I was familiar with and begged the question about any real relationship which had manifested. I had many relationships which were paper thin and folded the moment I left Facebook.
"I had many relationships which were paper thin and folded the moment I left Facebook."
I can second this. Even good and old friendships that went the same way. Turns out I don't actually miss those people. I much prefer life by finding things out by bumping into people and keeping my relationships face to face. I don't want to have to absorb things with the crowd like a legitimised voyeur.
I wish we were all off facebook. When I read these constant articles about its privacy problems and how its now enmeshed into the fabric of our society, it makes me think "how did a WEBSITE become mandatory for living ones life?"
That's a weird place to put your goalposts (why isn't it at video calls? or phones? or cars? or walking barefoot to your house?), but subscribe to whatever idea lets you feel superior, I guess.
I politely disagree but I think your viewpoint is valid.
(I don't understand why you're downvoted, so I upvoted you.)
But now: It used to be really fun to have online discussions with people who I used to know in real life, but because "life happened," I didn't get to see very often. That's why Facebook used to be fun, and why I politely disagree.
But, again, I think your viewpoint is totally valid and shouldn't be downvoted.
> “People think they have a level of privacy they don’t. Why don’t they give me a choice? Let me pay a certain amount, and you’ll keep my data more secure and private then everybody else handing it to advertisers.”
I think advertisers are offering more money ;-)
Maybe the taxes should be higher for companies that make money from selling data.
It’s great for people who went in on Snap at its bottoming out. But Snap itself is volatile. A year ago or more it had an earnings where it rose 50% on the day.
The stock was in an insanely bad spot at the beginning of the year. It’s either an anomaly or shows again that Snap is really volatile, but not volatile enough to get really high for long. Also a lot of stocks were down (though not that much) at the time. Snapchat stock is doing okay. It isn’t going triple again or anything. It’ll be lucky if it stabilizes at IPO public opening price ever again.
Edit: I do think it’s entirely possible Snap goes up 50% again or something from where it is now for a short period during some earnings. I don’t think it’ll stay at that level for long any time soon though.
It's rather unrealistic to consider those alternatives enough to replace everything all the features contained within Facebook can accomplish.
Facebook has discussion forums, rich messaging, groups and events, classifieds, image and video editing/enhancement, and many more features all bundled into one platform. You'd probably need 15 other websites and services to replace it.
If we just had truly protective privacy laws and standards we could just use Facebook and enjoy what it is capable of doing without guilt.
I don't have a Facebook, never have, so take any opinion I give with a grain of salt. That said, a lot of us really need to come to the realization that these are social networks. They are not called private networks. So even if you pay, it is highly unlikely that you would get privacy.
And please everyone, if only for the protection of your own privacy, consider thoughtfully whether a company promising "Private" "Social" networks makes any sense? Like dish washing detergents that promise to make your dishes virtually spotless, there is no promise at all actually being made.
These networks are fundamentally about sharing. Once you share something with someone, you can't really control what they are going to do with the screenshot of it. You're at the mercy of the mob.
The only real protection you can get is not from companies, but by having the government make a HIPAA like law with real teeth in it that punishes personal information sharing for commercial purposes. No real need for any new companies, because the new companies will just do the same thing. Pass a law that starts throwing people in prison for sharing, or receiving illegally shared personal information for commercial purposes, and you stop all of that nonsense in its tracks.
When I was a Facebook user (closed my account six years ago), I was mindful about what I shared. The privacy concerns that eventually prompted me to close my account were not due to the information that I willfully shared, but rather, due to Facebook's behavior collecting more information about me (and about others, through me) that I was not intentionally sharing.
E.g., tracking users across the web at large, building shadow profiles of non-users, trying to obtain information about non-users through users, etc.
In my observation, most Facebook users share way more personal information than I ever did. Which makes me wonder, given how much information people are sharing willfully, why does Facebook feel the need to try to secretly collect even more information?
You can share photos and videos and comment on them easily with Google Photos (or iCloud/Apple Photos).
Not sure what Facebook offers families more.
Facebook is great if you want to go beyond families and follow what your long-lost fourth cousin or way-back-when classmate from twenty years ago has been up to. I really wouldn't bother using it for immediate family.
I don't friend family on fb, so we ended in that situation when g+ shut down. I have used e-mail with multiple receivers a couple times, but in general people seems reluctant to answer them.
I don't have a good suggestion, except if we could find somewhere to run a private forum.
The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square for my local community. It's where people go to discuss the community's political challenges. So many important dialogs about local issues happen on Facebook, and it's the only real way to be a part of those conversations. Things like zoning, planning, city and county budgeting, ordinances, and so on.
If I leave, not only do I lose the ability to participate in those conversations in a significant way - I lose awareness that they're even happening. The newspaper (what's left of it) certainly doesn't cover them. I have many friends who I see on a regular basis in person, but we don't always talk about all of them. And when we do, it's often inspired by conversations that were already happening on Facebook and a continuation of the conversations happening there.
We need a good replacement for this piece of it. Having an accessible, local town square where all the local activists, citizens, and officials can interact and dialog about local issues is really invaluable.
Then people should meet at the town hall and talked, this kind of stuff got done before facebook. And people where just as busy, bringing kids up going to work etc.
Maybe they should. And maybe people should handwrite letters like they used to. But even if it might be what they should do, it's not what they are going to do.
Discussing and taking part of a topic online is also about seeding motivation, it's as important as actually going to a place.
Plus, having the ability to plan, discuss, reference, lookup etc - _while_ discussing something, saves a ton of time and effort that would be wasted when speaking face-to-face.
Nextdoor comes to mind, but not necessarily a local online town square which I agree with your comment that a source like that is invaluable to keep up with local issues.
I've seen too many stories of people discovering their neighbors are racist/classist assholes on Nextdoor to want to participate. Leave me a few illusions about the inherent goodness of people.
Must be a geographical issue. I’m very active on next door and I’ve never seen such behavior. Sure there are a few spats like recently about fireworks but I’ve never witnessed anything “racist” or “classist”. I understand this is anecdotal, my experience might not match others.
Probably. I live in Seattle and people seem to frequently complain about having to see homeless and other "undesirables" in their neighborhood. I love it when their posts also include stealthy photos of the offenders in question. /s I've seen neighbors who live in my same building posting this sort of crap. Obviously there are a lot of issues to address in the city, and people should certainly find ways to do that, but I find it really maddening when people pile on and and take out all of their frustrations on a single person.
(SF Bay Area here) I personally enjoy watching almost every ND convo degrade into which person is the biggest victim (race, class, and so on). Bothered me at first, but now it is sheer entertainment
It seems like we are all royally screwed if policy is now being decided on and only through facebook. I have never had a FB account and will never have one. It seems extremely crazy to be required to go through a bunch of legal terms of service just to participate in government. In fact it may be illegal technically.
I totally agree with you. And I'm very scared of the day a job, the school my kids go to or whatever important life activity will require me to have a facebook, whatsapp, linkedin, twitter or whatever account. We need something to replace these, possibly a federated, open standard, but I guess even the self hosted forums of yore were much better than this.
There are numerous alternatives that could (and hopeful should) replace FB - through what is referred to as the FediVerse - specifically via Pleroma, Mastodon, GnuSocial, etc. While admittedly mastodon is the platform that gets the most mindshare (and most users access the fediverse through it), it is not the only one...And much like email, users employing mastodon as "their tool" can communicate with other users who might employ other tools like pleroma, etc. Users have a choice! And, this federated universe is all aligning on open federated standards like ActivityPub [1]. So, yeah, there are options already in existence...and, the challenge is less technical, and more: "how do you get YOUR network of friends/family onto the fediverse?" Well, the migration has already begun, so it should only be a matter of time...
That seems extremely exaggerated. What’s illegal about private citizens choosing to use a service like Facebook to talk to each other?
If you want to “participate in government” nothing stops you from showing up to town or county council meetings, planning commissions, and so on, or from sending letters to your elected officials, or a phone call, or running for office yourself.
At which point it stops being private and becomes public instead though? And what to do after it happens? Discussing town policy isn’t something that should be kept behind a gate, and especially not Facebook.
> At which point it stops being private and becomes public instead though?
When the actual decisions are being made there. Many places have “open meeting” laws that require decisions be made out in the open.
Facebook is not the ballot box, it is not the county council, it is not the town meeting. It’s just a place where people can choose to talk to each other.
> Discussing town policy isn’t something that should be kept behind a gate, and especially not Facebook.
This is what freedom of association and freedom of speech is though. If your neighbors choose to talk to each other through Facebook, Nextdoor, a google group, an email list, a BBS, or in their own living rooms, you shouldn’t be able to stop them from doing that, whatever it is they prefer to do.
You still need to have a city council meeting etc... my guess is that FB just helps get the conversation going. My problem with FB townhalls is that it just degenerates into politics, gun rights and trolls. You also get out of towners weighing in usually as trolls. I think the local newspaper is better forum.
What if our very own public Libraries had the ability to host local communities' dialogs etc. One of the things that it would protect is "freedom" of speech and it would be a better platform for communities to voice their concerns etc, without the fear of having their data mined or even have their voices or issues removed, because it was offensive.
Of course it would not be a perfect platform, but as an American, we need to start understanding and protecting the liberties and rights our own Constitution is providing us.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted - but I really like the idea of public libraries hosting community social networks. Librarians have traditionally been fiercely privacy conscious and they could provide an archived platform for local government as well.
When I bought my new house, I got to join the neighborhood Facebook group. That’s where all the news happens. They used to have a listserv, but the on onboarding is better / easier on Facebook and you get more features than a listserv - because everyone is already there plus threaded comments.
I really wish it were somewhere else so I didn’t have to log on. I’m just not sure where else it would be and still see the same level of engagement.
>The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square
Yep, but most social platforms are not really tuned to being a town square, and instead are optimized for feeds and stirring emotions. They often rewarding behavior that's counterproductive to finding common ground. We need platforms like DinnerTable.chat [1] that is built around the idea of bringing people together across the spectrum and localities. DTC is an open community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one with others to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements. It's been my passion project for the last two years, and since beta, we've been growing steadily.
I'm not disagreeing with you (I've never used this service you linked) ... but what becomes "the town square" has nothing to do with how optimized or tuned it is for that purpose. People are gonna do what people are gonna do, and if you want to be involved with certain people, you gotta go where they are.
Thanks, we're in the process of connecting directly with different communities. There's a few towns in California that we're working with to bring local civil debate topics to the platform. It's actually been a common topic of feedback for many of these towns that it's hard for people to discuss policies in a physical location because of time constraints, as well as traveling across town during after work rush hour traffic. Facebook groups/pages are often used for local community discussion, but they are not in practice 'town halls' where people talk about policies and are able to work through differences of opinion. There's a lot of research out there now that shows that Facebook and Twitter have had very little success in fostering cross-viewpoint discussions, mostly due to the platform mechanics.
Ah, thanks for that feedback. Would you like to try your hand of writing a better summary here? It would be appreciated, as it's hard to improve from just a single word criticism (cringe).
Can you elaborate on the source of the cringe? I went to read it based on your description, hoping for a dose of cringe. In the end, I did not detect it.
To me it seemed like a decent introduction to a tool designed to help get people take a look outside of their bubbles.
> to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements
Who's looking to "playfully challenge perspectives"? and "[unlock] achievements"? Discussions aren't generally a game, but this seems to pitch it that way. I don't know about you guys, but I think more often than not, discussions are a generally stressful thing that people do because they must. The description might benefit in changing to a somewhat more serious tone.
Also, talking of "unlocking achievements" gives the project a manipulative kind of feel. The description states what it offers to people, and in that is the mention of being able to obtain fake internet points in the form of achievements. Is fake internet points supposed to motivate one to join the project?
Anyway, I'm just trying to expand on what's probably cringey. It's still good work.
Ah, let me see if I can add some details and re-adjust the wording:
"DTC is a community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one to challenge ideas. The experience is fun and quirky as users control talking virtual avatars and rate each other on their politeness. Achievements are earned for good behavior (via similar techniques Overwatch uses to curb aggressive behavior), while toxic behavior is flagged to be reviewed by moderators. Good behavior is also rewarded with points that allow further avatar customization and new environment unlocks."
It’s this mainly. It’s not cringe because it’s stupid, it’s cringe to me because i think it’s naive. Baking in the playful aspect makes me imagine that the person creating this has this vision in his head that people are friendly and that playfully challenging each others perspectives will result in anything. People are invested in their perspectives and they aren’t going to change them — not in light of facts, logic, threats or playfulness. This guy thinks that playfully challenging perspectives is going to scale to more than a handful of people? It’s naive. Maybe I’m reading it wrong but that’s how I read it.
Also, the achievements angle is also cringe for me because achievements are a buzzword fad that makes me think the person behind this thing is not a very deep thinker, doesn’t appreciate the fact that it will look bad to advertise the achievements, and maybe is a person who has trouble thinking for himself and gets swept up into actually believing fads.
If I were going to write a description it would be something like this: a platform where people are given the opportunity to refine their opinions based on civil discussion with the assistance of a tasteful incentive scheme.
It seems to bring down to earth a bit. Reading criticism that is so personal can be upsetting. I genuinely hope that I have in no way upset this person. We all learn these hard lessons from time to time. I know I’ve had more than I can count.
when I think of a local facebook group for a neighborhood its a bunch of people helping each other or complaining. stuff like "we're those gunshots, road xxx is closed so is taco bell, my cat is missing, hey this event is happening this weekend, im having trouble making rent this month." it works, because everyone is on it. network effect + a lack of baked in structure.
MeetUp got very expensive and their tooling is very disappointing. They used to be great for small social groups (I ran a quite popular one for boardgames and bars) but they got too enchanted chasing Enterprise-y recruiting events and their pricing model got all sorts of crazy.
Facebook serves similar functions in my area, and is the best way you can find out if paving/waterline work/etc are causing street closures, or if wrecks or similar are causing a closure.
I feel like this isn't so crazy of an idea, but any can't the city host it's own website with forums and everything? This could enable easier and more clear threading than Facebook, and you can look through history and pin topics/announcements. The library could be in charge of hosting it and archiving everything (isn't this already something libraries are supposed to do? The archiving of local news.) There's plenty of free software to do this too.
There are so many variants that could be done off of this too. A federation of these servers, as towns help one another balance and archive data. Or help communication between towns. I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
>> I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
That's why I suggested a group of technologically savvy people undertake the challenge to devise a system that is trivial to implement.
Cost likely isn't going to be much considering a small town isn't going to need much bandwidth and since many do already run websites (albeit shabby).
Maybe a fork of some wiki application can act as a digital townhall library? They usually publish meeting notes on their websites, so why not on a wiki platform, many of them have discussion pages and you could add open sections for public suggestions and it could act as an archive or library for town information. It's just the matter of taking it seriously and giving it an appropriate budget like they do with any other public structure or organization. But if it proves to be valuable component of public organization it would be budgeted and administered appropriately.
I think an app like Telegram or Signal should fill that place. FB is too feed algorithm driven. For a townsquare like requirement, a chat group should be sufficient.
To me, Facebook provides enough value that I don't feel the benefits of deleting it outweigh the benefits of keeping it.
Without it, I have no connection at all to some of my old friends. While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while.
LinkedIn fulfills this desire in some ways, but I don't typically connect with my "outside-of-work" friends on LinkedIn. Plus, LinkedIn has its own host of privacy issues, so it's not really a great replacement in the sense of improving privacy.
There are also the useful community aspects. I often find out about local events through Facebook. I suppose Meetup or similar sites could replace that function. But my friends also use Facebook's events to organize parties and stuff - I don't know any good alternative that's nearly as convenient.
I'm not convinced that deleting your account helps all that much anyways. You do make it harder for Facebook to listen in from your phone and things like that, but I'm sure they still keep a detailed profile on you. And you can get those benefits just by deleting the mobile app, without deleting your account.
I think the better reason to delete Facebook is the mental health issues with the whole spotlight effect or whatever that's called (where you only see the highlights of other people's lives which makes you feel like your life is boring). As long as you regulate your usage in a healthy way, I think whether you delete your account or not doesn't make much of a difference.
For now I just throw on a handful of privacy extensions (uBlock Origin, PrivacyBadger, Decentraleyes, Facebook Container, etc.) and accept that Facebook is going to know many things about me.
As a point of reference - my age group started using Facebook around middle school. So I have a lot of "friends" that I would have no way of keeping up with otherwise, and I'm not used to not having that ability. I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people. My parents, for example, have a couple old friends from whom they haven't heard anything in many many years. That concept doesn't mesh with the lifestyle I grew up with. It's not that there are many specific people I want to keep up with all the time - it's just nice to get random updates on random people you used to know well.
> While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while.
Why do you choose not to call them and ask them how they are doing? I must admit, I do not really understand this "seeing how they are doing" statement, it confuses me as to why someone would spend time on facebook to see how another one is doing, but would not make the call to ask. Maybe I'm misreading it and the seeing part is the more relevant one.
Edit: anyone care to clarify what was downvote worthy about this comment? did it not contribute to the discussion in some way? if the answer is yes, I don't know why it didn't contribute to the discussion.
- Sending a post about your holiday experience to Facebook, vs.
- Calling a friend, engaging in small-talk about your holiday experience and how they've been lately.
Sure, you won't be able to tell all your 1276 "friends" about your holidays, but the people you do talk to will actually be/become your friends. It's quantity vs quality. Personally I've decided that it's more important to me to have a few dozen really good friends in my life, instead of hundreds of people that passively take part in my life, thinking they know me, never really interacting with me in any meaningful way.
> They're also light on social interaction.
> Calling a friend, engaging in small-talk
Do you see the irony here? The small-talk you're describing in a Facebook post is just as socially-anemic as the small-talk you'd have over the phone.
If I want a deep conversation with somebody, I can message them on... FB messenger or something. Again, a form of communication easier to initiate than a phone call that they might not be able to pick up.
I don't see the irony. How is it "socially-anemic"? It is in my opinion obviously much more social to talk to somebody on the phone than to post something on Facebook. Even 1-to-1 chat as you mention is much more social (but loses an insane amount of nuance and emotion), but still much less so than a phone call (but I also chat of course).
Or do you consider everything that is not face-to-face "socially-anemic"? Are you saying that conversations via chat are deeper than on the phone?
With a Facebook post one is essentially just dumping a complete story on the masses for them to consume. It's not personalized and people cannot interact by asking questions in between, or by adding their own stories ("Oh, I loved that part of the movie! Did you also think it has a deeper meaning to it?", essentially steering the conversation into another direction), or show you that they don't want to hear about something, for example.
> Personally I've decided that it's more important to me to have a few dozen really good friends in my life, instead of hundreds of people that passively take part in my life
That's a false choice, though; while I don't use FB, everyone I know who does still keep a few good friends that they meet and talk to regularly. You and I could be scrolling our FB feeds right now, instead of reading HN, without taking time from our existing friendships.
Actually just wrote an edit to address this but I'll repeat here - I think it's a generational thing. It's not really about keeping up with specific people - when I want to do that, I just message them like you say (side note - in my experience people in my age group don't tend to have many people's phone numbers). Basically, I grew up using Facebook, which meant I've always had these constant life updates from people I know. So I've gotten used to it, and feel like I'd be losing something without it. Objectively, I think my life would be unaffected if I really were to delete Facebook, but I enjoy having those updates nonetheless. To be clear: these updates are usually information I wouldn't bother to find out otherwise.
It's sort of like watching the news - realistically a lot of news doesn't affect our day to day, but it's just interesting to see things happen. Like yesterday USA won the women's world cup. Did that have any impact on my life? Not at all, but it was nice to hear about. In that sense, Facebook is like a more personalized feed of news that always features people I at least used to know. It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again, but at this point I only check Facebook a couple times a week so I don't worry too much about it.
It's not entirely a generational thing. I'm a lot older than you (Facebook became available to non uni students when I was 30) however, I've moved around a lot. Different countries, different US coasts, etc. As a result my friend group is spread over different continents and across different social classes—things that make picking up to go visit or reach out for a simple phone call pretty difficult.
FB has been a great way to not only maintain contact with people but to reunite with people I knew in childhood and adolescence that would have otherwise been lost to me. I don't spend much time in the app at all, but I appreciate being able to reach out or to offer emotional support (congratulations, condolences) in ways that would be impossible were I working my way through a phone book every month or so.
> It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again
For all we know, human groups have always used gossip as a way to bond. I guess these Facebook updates are addicting because they are a good implementation of something humans have always felt the need for.
This makes sense. I figured out what confused me in your initial comment: to express the thing you described I would have used "see what they're doing" instead of "see how they are doing". For some reason the latter form is associated in my brain with caring and so, active interest.
> It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again
You might be interested to read an article⁰ where Sean Parker stated that they consciously designed Facebook to be addictive, by exploiting "dopamine-driven feedback loops".
You're also constraining yourself to updated from people who use FB. What about the rest of those people? If you want to get updates (and update) multiple people, why not create an email list and blast all your friends and family? Or maybe a text message?
There is a quite a large difference between the two.
Calling is an active interest. It requires specific action from the caller, and potentially interrupts the callee (which may or may not be desirable).
Facebook and other social media allows a more passive interest. The information about how the person is getting on is passed on, but the "caller" isn't needing to worry about disturbing the "callee" and the callee is not interrupted.
Sometimes we don't call because we don't care, we don't call because we don't want to impose.
This passive information forwarding replaces to an extent the part of the "village" culture that has been lost a bit as our populations have grown more and more densely packed yet the people we care to "follow" are often spreading geographically further apart. Because not everyone knows everyone, the "oh, did you hear" conversations don't spread as they once did: there are wider air gaps (filled with signal noise, i.e. the rest of that dense population) between the connected nodes in the network.
Of course social media is emulating the worst parts of that village culture grape-vine, as well as the useful parts...
Not the person whom you're asking, but to me a phone call is extremely invasive, and it feels awkward to call anyone that is not a really close friend or relative. And I also don't particularly like to be on the receiving end of such a call. A text is much better, but still more awkward and invasive than Facebook for people that are just acquaintances that you see very seldom.
I think it's a generational thing. I'm 36 and I see that most people over my age accepts phone calls to nonclose friends or acquaintances as normal or even desirable, as you do, while most people under my age instinctively avoid them.
You want to have a vague idea of other peoples lives, people who don’t matter to you in any real way, and you aren’t even getting the real status, just the image they want to project through the social media distortion lens. So you decide to sacrifice your privacy and mental health for it. Makes sense.
> I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people.
It's actually the opposite for me. Facebook started nine years after I graduated high school. I was on it in the first year by using my college alumni email address, but most of my high school friends didn't show up until about five years after I joined.
And let me say that it's been amazing for me. I got to reconnect with a ton of people I'd lost touch with! We chat on messenger sometimes, have lots of interactions in each other's comments, and I get to see all the posts about their kids and what they are doing these days.
Some of these people were really good friends in high school but we had no easy way to keep in touch (no cell phones, only phone number we had was their parent's land line, etc).
I would be really sad to loose touch with them again by ditching Facebook.
Yeah, I could collect their current contact info, but as has been said elsewhere, Facebook is a more of a broadcast medium. If I have an update about my life, I'm not going to call 15 people to tell them about it. I'm going to put it on Facebook and let them see it when they have time.
it's just fearmongering pointing the finger at facebook. If you're that worried about eaves dropping then you shouldn't have an apple smartphone or an android smartphone or any kind of smartphone. I think the chances are pretty remote that they're recording you.
The aggregation of local events on Facebook is second to none. I tried leaving that behind and found I was missing out on a litany of events not broadcast elsewhere. As long as that holds true, I maintain a spartan, unconnected, minimal account there.
I imagine a good number of people are like me and would like to close their Facebook account, but are afraid of losing that circle of friends and family that they have no other easy way of contacting.
A useful feature (albeit one that Facebook would never, ever implement, as it would facilitate people leaving their platform) would be to have closure page with a final statement or forwarding address, e.g.:
"I've decided to close my Facebook account. You can still reach me at: myname@emailprovider.com"
You still have Facebook now, no? What stops you from sending your email or phone number to anyone who needs it but doesn't already have it and then canceling it?
You can continue to use messenger if you deactivate it. I used a Selenium script I found on here a few weeks ago to delete everything I’ve ever added to Facebook and then deactivated my account. I don’t appear if you search for me, and I doubt that deleting your entire account does anything different from deleting everything individually. It’s probably not deleted at all ever, knowing FaceBook.
you could just close and not delete. it's very easy (too easy imo) to re-open a closed facebook account.
or do you mean the people with whom you don't regularly contact but might one day? i've found this is sort of an unwillingness to close doors type thing, hanging on to things that cannot be hung on to (especially true of more vagabond types, travelers, movers etc. who have a lot of these connections in areas they don't live).
the truly important people you can FB message with contact details, wait until they ack, then proceed.
There's always email, text, IM, phone, video call, meatspace/IRL conversations. I think the utility of FB is you can passively absorb updates from people without needing to contact them specifically. And send updates in the same way.
But if you can't find the time/inclination/energy to keep in active contact with someone, no matter how infrequently, does a real relationship even exist with them?
Woz admits that there are benefits to FB. What he's talking about is the privacy angle. So what's the optimal usage pattern here to enjoy the benefits and still keep your privacy safe?
I think it's actually pretty straightforward with regards to FB.
First of all if you find yourself scrolling through the news feed for anything that isn't relevant to your daily life, the argument is more about mental health than privacy here to stop excessive use like that. Same for Instagram, it's highly addictive, but you'll find you don't really need it in your life.
Secondly, use an alternative messaging platform for the small group of people you tend to talk to very often and closely with. Preferably encrypted. For everyone else, it matters a lot less that people might spy on your conversations so just be careful to not talk about radical or illegal things. The benefits of FB messenger are pretty nice in terms of convenience, but if you don't like having to censor yourself get the other person to join WhatsApp, signal, or iMessage.
Thirdly, if you're using FB in the sort of community oriented way with groups and the like, continue to do so freely! There's nothing wrong with doing this on FB, it's a great platform for that and rarely is your privacy going to be violated in this way. And if you think it might, then there are alternatives like a group chat on Signal, or an anonymous/private message board. Those are more sensitive cases which surely exist but I can't think of many situations where one needs to go to these lengths.
I think the way FB and IG make money incentivizes them to violate your privacy through clicks tracking. This only works if you're on the platform like a zombie, clicking for hours on news or influencers or whatever. Maybe some of that truly is useful to you, for example my girlfriend follows a lot of people who do physical activity and exercise routines on IG. And from a privacy perspective maybe it's not even that big of a deal, but I think most people might find they don't need to waste so much of their time on these apps anyway.
So at least for the case of FB, it isn't too hard to protect your privacy the ways it really matters and still get the benefits of FB apps.
- It is how I know what's going on in the lives of all of my friends. While the bulk of us still live within 20 miles of each other, we might see each other once a year (if that) because most of them are married with grade school aged children and when they do have free time, they're using it to take family vacations or day trips. With Facebook we know what is going on in each other's lives and still interact just like we did in high school, shooting the shinola on each others posts just like we used to in the hall between classes.
- As a strength athlete, it is how we find out about events. Take strongman, there are 200~ ish of us that are all mutual friends with the bulk of those being here in the United States. When someone creates a new FB event page for a competition, you find out about it because you see "friends a, b and c have expressed the are going/are interested in going" or someone tags you "you going to this?" or when the person putting the event on creates it, they tag 20-50 people that they know are likely to either compete or volunteer to work it. And during stuff like Arnold, those that are of the caliber to actually compete at the Arnold, we get play by play from the people competing and their coaches/handlers and those of us that aren't competing but went. When Jessica Fithen won the SHW championship belt in 2017, I was messaging her congratulations (and getting a reply) from my bedroom in Indiana about a minute before the online online feed even got to it.
There just isn't a way to replicate either of those things without a social media platform. I like know what is going on in my friends lives even though we just don't get to see each other that often. Do we trade some privacy for that? Sure. Do we waste more time on the platforms than we should, for the most part yes, but considering I do get to see what is going on in their lives without having to schedule months in advance an hour where we might get to cross paths if something doesn't come up, then it is worth it to me. And with the strength sports thing, we might be in the same location once a year, even those that are here in Indiana with me we might see each other a few times a year because we are spread out 120-200 miles but Facebook lets us bust each other's chops and support each other and carry on just like we do in person on our phones all day long.
A few weeks ago I was at an event volunteering and had a couple people walking by me "hey Mercer!" that I've never actually met but have this genuine friend/camaraderie connection with because we have this digital space where we are there for each other and do bust each others chops in a fun way.
I just passed my two year anniversary with no FB, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat and I've never been happier. I convinced my wife to cut the cord about a year ago and she completely agrees. For me it was an addiction. I was compulsively checking FB many times an hour to stay caught up with people. This was after culling my friends list multiple times. Turns out, life goes on just fine without a constant water hose of relationship/political drama.
Ultimately, it is no more difficult to stay in touch with my real friends than it was with FB. I rely on text, phone calls, and emails. Occasionally, I will use LinkedIn to touch base with people, but primarily, I just text/call. And honestly, it's great.
Searching FaBIGWA just sends me to this thread, and I'm struggling to decipher what is in there. Looks like Facebook... And a whole lot of other stuff I can't glean.
Same, but I can attest that you can do it without deleting your accounts too - just delete the apps and remove bookmarks. I have family that still use social and removing myself would make it difficult for them since they like to post about us.
I don't think Woz's payment solution to "light" social interaction is not really feasible though.
This is great for you! Keep in mind though that some of us never fell in to the trap of compulsively checking FB constantly. I am quite certain that dropping FB wouldn't move my happiness barometer in either direction, it's just not a big enough part of my life to matter. I would lose touch with some people that I'm not keeping very closely in touch with anyway, and that's about it. This is like a recovering alcoholic recommending that everyone who drinks at all should stop immediately and entirely - it's not that it's bad advice, but not everyone is in the same situation.
Same here. I use messenger occasionally to speak to some friends who use Facebook almost exclusively for that - I stopped posting anything or paying attention to the feed thing years ago.
Same here, moreover: I've got friends and acquittances in Serbia, Bulgaria, Germany, UK, US, Spain among other countries, as well as through several states in my home country. Given that I have lived in 6 different cities around the world, and have made good relationships on each of those, I really like maintaining a "thin" contact thread with them.
Facebook does this really well for me. Before Facebook, I would have to "remember" to send an email, a MSN chat or even a postcard (around Christmas) to some of them. And the typical conversation through chat went "q: hey, anything new", "a: no.. no really". With FB I see when this people have had a noteworthy moment, and I can interact with them on that, even if it is just to say a quick hello.
I personally never got on; life is fine without. Do yourself a favor and just get rid of it all. You can communicate personally with people fine over other methods; the idea of "broadcasting" your thoughts is better accomplished by a blog (where you have freedom to express your thoughts rather than cramming them into small snippets); the idea of sharing every moment of your life (e.g. what you had for breakfast, accompanied by a photo) is unnecessary and psychologically unhealthy.
One notable exception I'm considering making: a read-only twitter account to follow security professionals. I have seen most people with lists of recommended security pros to follow, and I figure it could serve as a sort of free, meta-bulletin for security. Haven't done it yet, but considering.
I would do the same but I have a board games club which is organized via Facebook....and I have one or two friends who still organize events through FB. Otherwise I would certainly shut my account.
I do not post photos or interact with others except occasionally through messenger. I have started unfollowing everyone although I do enjoy Humans of NYC.
Instead of cutting off those social media, we should post as many fake stuff as possible to mess around their big data, AI/machine learning algorithms.
Do people really care what Steve Wozniak has to say on anything these days? He did some excellent hardware work in his day, but not sure that carries much weight on Facebook usage in 2019. He just seems to be a reliable rent-a-quote for journalists to go to when up against a deadline.
I respect Woz and his contributions to computer science. Tbh tho every time I see an article like this it makes me scratch my head. It’s always something along the lines of “Woz says you should do something that has been old news and most anyone who would care is already doing or agrees with”. It’s not that he’s wrong. It’s just... why is this news? He’s just making a very safe statement for the audience being targeted.
It makes news for a couple of reasons. (and assuming this isn’t a rhetorical idealistic question about what is and isn’t news…)
1. He’s a notable technologist (or whatever term you’d prefer to use for someone who is seen as intrinsically linked with the rise of computation tech)
2. It’s Gizmodo, they’re not exactly looking for revolutionary stuff here.
3. It’s your standard confirmation bias as well. Most people who read the article probably already have fairly strong anti-facebook-usage feelings to begin with. This reaffirms their stance and belief by presenting someone who isn’t a dickhead as being on the same side.
All of the above leads to a click and a comment, which is good for the ol’ bottom ad-dollar :D.
Yeah I guess I just expect more out of the guy (Woz). To be fair, he doesn't owe me or anyone else shit. It's just a let down to see him never take a firm stance on anything until it's very very safe to do so.
Left 4 or 5 years ago for employer/work reasons. Had a couple of hundred friends, and a started few groups that accumulated thousands of members. Not surprisingly, everyone I mattered to managed to find me and reconnect via email, sms etc. I don’t miss it at all, and I’m happy I don’t waste time like that anymore!
Community argument is compelling, but there are so many ways for communities to stay in touch now. I don’t think it has to come at the cost of so many Facebook negatives (privacy, addiction, mental health, etc.)
The community argument isn't actually compelling. It creates "ghost-like" relationships, where you don't really know someone anymore and haven't for years, but act like you're still best friends, with occasional empty comments or likes. It's like eating cotton candy for dinner and acting like you have the energy a good steak would have given you. Many of them don't have email though, and phone chats are often difficult to coordinate. I think occasional visits is probably the best way to keep in touch with people you don't live near and thus see regularly. And if neither of you can manage to schedule that, then maybe there's no real connection there after all.
How can you do occasional visits if you don’t live nearby? A lot of people I know live across the country or in the middle of America or outside the US. Even seeing all of them occasionally would be very difficult. Unless you mean every few years? But that’s barely anything.
It seems to me life is meant to be lived most with the people you live near. No matter how much technology improves the ability to communicate long distances, it's never the same as being with those people. So maybe it does mean visiting only every few years, and maybe even less often. It's hard when those people are family though, because then you have a permanent connection with them. But sometimes friends drift apart (physically) and you make new ones (locally) instead, and that's okay.
I wonder if reddit and facebook can be compared, because I go on reddit a lot, even though I only read comments, save wallpapers and articles to read later, I very rarely upvote.
Question for people who have nuked Facebook: what do you do about a job that needs you to have Facebook for, e.g., API keys or group moderation? Did you just create a new, “friend-less” account and transfer the credentials over to it?
Got a fake account for that “benny van gisteren”. Funny to translate in dutch. It is a saying for “i am not a fool”). Did not use it for years now. Most companies have a specific account which can be used. Also not into building that social crap.
Even if you want to keep a personal account, definitively don't use it for work purposes! We created a shared FB account for registering an app, and just manage it like any other company account.
I deleted FB 4 years back and at that time I had around 1000 'friends' on FB. Needless to say I didn't miss a thing and life has been only better.
But there was one subtle interesting thing I noticed that nobody missed me on FB. Nobody was like, "wait, where did that guy disappear".
The people who mattered were always around me and are still around me.
Only after deleting FB I realized what a cancer FB was. I hear it has become even more cancerous.
The only thing I seriously want to give up is this Whatsapp app, especially because it is now FB product. Otherwise, the way I use Whatsapp, it doesn't pose much problem.
People might notice but just not saying anything. I notice when occasionally someone is not on FB anymore. I rarely point it out. Because the reason is always the same one or two reasons.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 245 ms ] threadI can second this. Even good and old friendships that went the same way. Turns out I don't actually miss those people. I much prefer life by finding things out by bumping into people and keeping my relationships face to face. I don't want to have to absorb things with the crowd like a legitimised voyeur.
I wish we were all off facebook. When I read these constant articles about its privacy problems and how its now enmeshed into the fabric of our society, it makes me think "how did a WEBSITE become mandatory for living ones life?"
(I don't understand why you're downvoted, so I upvoted you.)
But now: It used to be really fun to have online discussions with people who I used to know in real life, but because "life happened," I didn't get to see very often. That's why Facebook used to be fun, and why I politely disagree.
But, again, I think your viewpoint is totally valid and shouldn't be downvoted.
I think advertisers are offering more money ;-)
Maybe the taxes should be higher for companies that make money from selling data.
Facebook goes through all the data of Facebook users I know.
So I am sure I am tagged on photos and they might already know a lot about me.
And that's what I think is most evil about Facebook. Even people without an internet connection might have a profile.
Where would families migrate to for communication/collaboration/community? The closest free alternative is of course Instagram, owned by Facebook.
Who can build a privacy oriented alternative that charges and also gains a sufficient network effect?
Disclosure: I own a small amount of $SNAP.
The stock was in an insanely bad spot at the beginning of the year. It’s either an anomaly or shows again that Snap is really volatile, but not volatile enough to get really high for long. Also a lot of stocks were down (though not that much) at the time. Snapchat stock is doing okay. It isn’t going triple again or anything. It’ll be lucky if it stabilizes at IPO public opening price ever again.
Edit: I do think it’s entirely possible Snap goes up 50% again or something from where it is now for a short period during some earnings. I don’t think it’ll stay at that level for long any time soon though.
Facebook has discussion forums, rich messaging, groups and events, classifieds, image and video editing/enhancement, and many more features all bundled into one platform. You'd probably need 15 other websites and services to replace it.
If we just had truly protective privacy laws and standards we could just use Facebook and enjoy what it is capable of doing without guilt.
And please everyone, if only for the protection of your own privacy, consider thoughtfully whether a company promising "Private" "Social" networks makes any sense? Like dish washing detergents that promise to make your dishes virtually spotless, there is no promise at all actually being made.
These networks are fundamentally about sharing. Once you share something with someone, you can't really control what they are going to do with the screenshot of it. You're at the mercy of the mob.
The only real protection you can get is not from companies, but by having the government make a HIPAA like law with real teeth in it that punishes personal information sharing for commercial purposes. No real need for any new companies, because the new companies will just do the same thing. Pass a law that starts throwing people in prison for sharing, or receiving illegally shared personal information for commercial purposes, and you stop all of that nonsense in its tracks.
E.g., tracking users across the web at large, building shadow profiles of non-users, trying to obtain information about non-users through users, etc.
In my observation, most Facebook users share way more personal information than I ever did. Which makes me wonder, given how much information people are sharing willfully, why does Facebook feel the need to try to secretly collect even more information?
Scary.
Not sure what Facebook offers families more.
Facebook is great if you want to go beyond families and follow what your long-lost fourth cousin or way-back-when classmate from twenty years ago has been up to. I really wouldn't bother using it for immediate family.
I don't have a good suggestion, except if we could find somewhere to run a private forum.
If I leave, not only do I lose the ability to participate in those conversations in a significant way - I lose awareness that they're even happening. The newspaper (what's left of it) certainly doesn't cover them. I have many friends who I see on a regular basis in person, but we don't always talk about all of them. And when we do, it's often inspired by conversations that were already happening on Facebook and a continuation of the conversations happening there.
We need a good replacement for this piece of it. Having an accessible, local town square where all the local activists, citizens, and officials can interact and dialog about local issues is really invaluable.
But a couple people leaving Facebook isn't going to lead to it.
Plus, having the ability to plan, discuss, reference, lookup etc - _while_ discussing something, saves a ton of time and effort that would be wasted when speaking face-to-face.
[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
As much as I would like this to be true, they said the same thing about XMPP.
If you want to “participate in government” nothing stops you from showing up to town or county council meetings, planning commissions, and so on, or from sending letters to your elected officials, or a phone call, or running for office yourself.
When the actual decisions are being made there. Many places have “open meeting” laws that require decisions be made out in the open.
Facebook is not the ballot box, it is not the county council, it is not the town meeting. It’s just a place where people can choose to talk to each other.
> Discussing town policy isn’t something that should be kept behind a gate, and especially not Facebook.
This is what freedom of association and freedom of speech is though. If your neighbors choose to talk to each other through Facebook, Nextdoor, a google group, an email list, a BBS, or in their own living rooms, you shouldn’t be able to stop them from doing that, whatever it is they prefer to do.
Of course it would not be a perfect platform, but as an American, we need to start understanding and protecting the liberties and rights our own Constitution is providing us.
Peace.
I really wish it were somewhere else so I didn’t have to log on. I’m just not sure where else it would be and still see the same level of engagement.
Yep, but most social platforms are not really tuned to being a town square, and instead are optimized for feeds and stirring emotions. They often rewarding behavior that's counterproductive to finding common ground. We need platforms like DinnerTable.chat [1] that is built around the idea of bringing people together across the spectrum and localities. DTC is an open community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one with others to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements. It's been my passion project for the last two years, and since beta, we've been growing steadily.
[1] https://dinnertable.chat/about
To me it seemed like a decent introduction to a tool designed to help get people take a look outside of their bubbles.
> to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements
Who's looking to "playfully challenge perspectives"? and "[unlock] achievements"? Discussions aren't generally a game, but this seems to pitch it that way. I don't know about you guys, but I think more often than not, discussions are a generally stressful thing that people do because they must. The description might benefit in changing to a somewhat more serious tone.
Also, talking of "unlocking achievements" gives the project a manipulative kind of feel. The description states what it offers to people, and in that is the mention of being able to obtain fake internet points in the form of achievements. Is fake internet points supposed to motivate one to join the project?
Anyway, I'm just trying to expand on what's probably cringey. It's still good work.
"DTC is a community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one to challenge ideas. The experience is fun and quirky as users control talking virtual avatars and rate each other on their politeness. Achievements are earned for good behavior (via similar techniques Overwatch uses to curb aggressive behavior), while toxic behavior is flagged to be reviewed by moderators. Good behavior is also rewarded with points that allow further avatar customization and new environment unlocks."
Does this help?
Also, the achievements angle is also cringe for me because achievements are a buzzword fad that makes me think the person behind this thing is not a very deep thinker, doesn’t appreciate the fact that it will look bad to advertise the achievements, and maybe is a person who has trouble thinking for himself and gets swept up into actually believing fads.
If I were going to write a description it would be something like this: a platform where people are given the opportunity to refine their opinions based on civil discussion with the assistance of a tasteful incentive scheme.
It seems to bring down to earth a bit. Reading criticism that is so personal can be upsetting. I genuinely hope that I have in no way upset this person. We all learn these hard lessons from time to time. I know I’ve had more than I can count.
when I think of a local facebook group for a neighborhood its a bunch of people helping each other or complaining. stuff like "we're those gunshots, road xxx is closed so is taco bell, my cat is missing, hey this event is happening this weekend, im having trouble making rent this month." it works, because everyone is on it. network effect + a lack of baked in structure.
There are so many variants that could be done off of this too. A federation of these servers, as towns help one another balance and archive data. Or help communication between towns. I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
Of course it could... but with tight public budgets it would likely be implemented so poorly as to be useless.
What about the US Digital Services? A WPA program for 21st century?
>> I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
Without it, I have no connection at all to some of my old friends. While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while.
LinkedIn fulfills this desire in some ways, but I don't typically connect with my "outside-of-work" friends on LinkedIn. Plus, LinkedIn has its own host of privacy issues, so it's not really a great replacement in the sense of improving privacy.
There are also the useful community aspects. I often find out about local events through Facebook. I suppose Meetup or similar sites could replace that function. But my friends also use Facebook's events to organize parties and stuff - I don't know any good alternative that's nearly as convenient.
I'm not convinced that deleting your account helps all that much anyways. You do make it harder for Facebook to listen in from your phone and things like that, but I'm sure they still keep a detailed profile on you. And you can get those benefits just by deleting the mobile app, without deleting your account.
I think the better reason to delete Facebook is the mental health issues with the whole spotlight effect or whatever that's called (where you only see the highlights of other people's lives which makes you feel like your life is boring). As long as you regulate your usage in a healthy way, I think whether you delete your account or not doesn't make much of a difference.
For now I just throw on a handful of privacy extensions (uBlock Origin, PrivacyBadger, Decentraleyes, Facebook Container, etc.) and accept that Facebook is going to know many things about me.
As a point of reference - my age group started using Facebook around middle school. So I have a lot of "friends" that I would have no way of keeping up with otherwise, and I'm not used to not having that ability. I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people. My parents, for example, have a couple old friends from whom they haven't heard anything in many many years. That concept doesn't mesh with the lifestyle I grew up with. It's not that there are many specific people I want to keep up with all the time - it's just nice to get random updates on random people you used to know well.
Why do you choose not to call them and ask them how they are doing? I must admit, I do not really understand this "seeing how they are doing" statement, it confuses me as to why someone would spend time on facebook to see how another one is doing, but would not make the call to ask. Maybe I'm misreading it and the seeing part is the more relevant one.
Edit: anyone care to clarify what was downvote worthy about this comment? did it not contribute to the discussion in some way? if the answer is yes, I don't know why it didn't contribute to the discussion.
Compare:
Sure, you won't be able to tell all your 1276 "friends" about your holidays, but the people you do talk to will actually be/become your friends. It's quantity vs quality. Personally I've decided that it's more important to me to have a few dozen really good friends in my life, instead of hundreds of people that passively take part in my life, thinking they know me, never really interacting with me in any meaningful way.If I want a deep conversation with somebody, I can message them on... FB messenger or something. Again, a form of communication easier to initiate than a phone call that they might not be able to pick up.
Or do you consider everything that is not face-to-face "socially-anemic"? Are you saying that conversations via chat are deeper than on the phone?
With a Facebook post one is essentially just dumping a complete story on the masses for them to consume. It's not personalized and people cannot interact by asking questions in between, or by adding their own stories ("Oh, I loved that part of the movie! Did you also think it has a deeper meaning to it?", essentially steering the conversation into another direction), or show you that they don't want to hear about something, for example.
That's a false choice, though; while I don't use FB, everyone I know who does still keep a few good friends that they meet and talk to regularly. You and I could be scrolling our FB feeds right now, instead of reading HN, without taking time from our existing friendships.
It's sort of like watching the news - realistically a lot of news doesn't affect our day to day, but it's just interesting to see things happen. Like yesterday USA won the women's world cup. Did that have any impact on my life? Not at all, but it was nice to hear about. In that sense, Facebook is like a more personalized feed of news that always features people I at least used to know. It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again, but at this point I only check Facebook a couple times a week so I don't worry too much about it.
FB has been a great way to not only maintain contact with people but to reunite with people I knew in childhood and adolescence that would have otherwise been lost to me. I don't spend much time in the app at all, but I appreciate being able to reach out or to offer emotional support (congratulations, condolences) in ways that would be impossible were I working my way through a phone book every month or so.
For all we know, human groups have always used gossip as a way to bond. I guess these Facebook updates are addicting because they are a good implementation of something humans have always felt the need for.
You might be interested to read an article⁰ where Sean Parker stated that they consciously designed Facebook to be addictive, by exploiting "dopamine-driven feedback loops".
⓪ - https://www.axios.com/sean-parker-facebook-was-designed-to-e...
Calling is an active interest. It requires specific action from the caller, and potentially interrupts the callee (which may or may not be desirable).
Facebook and other social media allows a more passive interest. The information about how the person is getting on is passed on, but the "caller" isn't needing to worry about disturbing the "callee" and the callee is not interrupted.
Sometimes we don't call because we don't care, we don't call because we don't want to impose.
This passive information forwarding replaces to an extent the part of the "village" culture that has been lost a bit as our populations have grown more and more densely packed yet the people we care to "follow" are often spreading geographically further apart. Because not everyone knows everyone, the "oh, did you hear" conversations don't spread as they once did: there are wider air gaps (filled with signal noise, i.e. the rest of that dense population) between the connected nodes in the network.
Of course social media is emulating the worst parts of that village culture grape-vine, as well as the useful parts...
I think it's a generational thing. I'm 36 and I see that most people over my age accepts phone calls to nonclose friends or acquaintances as normal or even desirable, as you do, while most people under my age instinctively avoid them.
It's actually the opposite for me. Facebook started nine years after I graduated high school. I was on it in the first year by using my college alumni email address, but most of my high school friends didn't show up until about five years after I joined.
And let me say that it's been amazing for me. I got to reconnect with a ton of people I'd lost touch with! We chat on messenger sometimes, have lots of interactions in each other's comments, and I get to see all the posts about their kids and what they are doing these days.
Some of these people were really good friends in high school but we had no easy way to keep in touch (no cell phones, only phone number we had was their parent's land line, etc).
I would be really sad to loose touch with them again by ditching Facebook.
Yeah, I could collect their current contact info, but as has been said elsewhere, Facebook is a more of a broadcast medium. If I have an update about my life, I'm not going to call 15 people to tell them about it. I'm going to put it on Facebook and let them see it when they have time.
Maybe an alternative would be to setup a dedicated device with no video or audio for all your dealings with evil empires.
A useful feature (albeit one that Facebook would never, ever implement, as it would facilitate people leaving their platform) would be to have closure page with a final statement or forwarding address, e.g.:
"I've decided to close my Facebook account. You can still reach me at: myname@emailprovider.com"
or do you mean the people with whom you don't regularly contact but might one day? i've found this is sort of an unwillingness to close doors type thing, hanging on to things that cannot be hung on to (especially true of more vagabond types, travelers, movers etc. who have a lot of these connections in areas they don't live).
the truly important people you can FB message with contact details, wait until they ack, then proceed.
But if you can't find the time/inclination/energy to keep in active contact with someone, no matter how infrequently, does a real relationship even exist with them?
I think it's actually pretty straightforward with regards to FB.
First of all if you find yourself scrolling through the news feed for anything that isn't relevant to your daily life, the argument is more about mental health than privacy here to stop excessive use like that. Same for Instagram, it's highly addictive, but you'll find you don't really need it in your life.
Secondly, use an alternative messaging platform for the small group of people you tend to talk to very often and closely with. Preferably encrypted. For everyone else, it matters a lot less that people might spy on your conversations so just be careful to not talk about radical or illegal things. The benefits of FB messenger are pretty nice in terms of convenience, but if you don't like having to censor yourself get the other person to join WhatsApp, signal, or iMessage.
Thirdly, if you're using FB in the sort of community oriented way with groups and the like, continue to do so freely! There's nothing wrong with doing this on FB, it's a great platform for that and rarely is your privacy going to be violated in this way. And if you think it might, then there are alternatives like a group chat on Signal, or an anonymous/private message board. Those are more sensitive cases which surely exist but I can't think of many situations where one needs to go to these lengths.
I think the way FB and IG make money incentivizes them to violate your privacy through clicks tracking. This only works if you're on the platform like a zombie, clicking for hours on news or influencers or whatever. Maybe some of that truly is useful to you, for example my girlfriend follows a lot of people who do physical activity and exercise routines on IG. And from a privacy perspective maybe it's not even that big of a deal, but I think most people might find they don't need to waste so much of their time on these apps anyway.
So at least for the case of FB, it isn't too hard to protect your privacy the ways it really matters and still get the benefits of FB apps.
- It is how I know what's going on in the lives of all of my friends. While the bulk of us still live within 20 miles of each other, we might see each other once a year (if that) because most of them are married with grade school aged children and when they do have free time, they're using it to take family vacations or day trips. With Facebook we know what is going on in each other's lives and still interact just like we did in high school, shooting the shinola on each others posts just like we used to in the hall between classes.
- As a strength athlete, it is how we find out about events. Take strongman, there are 200~ ish of us that are all mutual friends with the bulk of those being here in the United States. When someone creates a new FB event page for a competition, you find out about it because you see "friends a, b and c have expressed the are going/are interested in going" or someone tags you "you going to this?" or when the person putting the event on creates it, they tag 20-50 people that they know are likely to either compete or volunteer to work it. And during stuff like Arnold, those that are of the caliber to actually compete at the Arnold, we get play by play from the people competing and their coaches/handlers and those of us that aren't competing but went. When Jessica Fithen won the SHW championship belt in 2017, I was messaging her congratulations (and getting a reply) from my bedroom in Indiana about a minute before the online online feed even got to it.
There just isn't a way to replicate either of those things without a social media platform. I like know what is going on in my friends lives even though we just don't get to see each other that often. Do we trade some privacy for that? Sure. Do we waste more time on the platforms than we should, for the most part yes, but considering I do get to see what is going on in their lives without having to schedule months in advance an hour where we might get to cross paths if something doesn't come up, then it is worth it to me. And with the strength sports thing, we might be in the same location once a year, even those that are here in Indiana with me we might see each other a few times a year because we are spread out 120-200 miles but Facebook lets us bust each other's chops and support each other and carry on just like we do in person on our phones all day long.
A few weeks ago I was at an event volunteering and had a couple people walking by me "hey Mercer!" that I've never actually met but have this genuine friend/camaraderie connection with because we have this digital space where we are there for each other and do bust each others chops in a fun way.
Ultimately, it is no more difficult to stay in touch with my real friends than it was with FB. I rely on text, phone calls, and emails. Occasionally, I will use LinkedIn to touch base with people, but primarily, I just text/call. And honestly, it's great.
I highly recommend cutting the cord.
(only exception was the Go I recently sold and the Quest I might get in near future)
Ask your doctor if happiness is right for you.
I don't think Woz's payment solution to "light" social interaction is not really feasible though.
this is exactly why I deleted all my friends before I deleted my account.
Twitter in particular has become a toilet, and there’s nothing about it I don’t miss.
Get back in touch with the real world, you’ll be a lot happier.
Facebook does this really well for me. Before Facebook, I would have to "remember" to send an email, a MSN chat or even a postcard (around Christmas) to some of them. And the typical conversation through chat went "q: hey, anything new", "a: no.. no really". With FB I see when this people have had a noteworthy moment, and I can interact with them on that, even if it is just to say a quick hello.
One notable exception I'm considering making: a read-only twitter account to follow security professionals. I have seen most people with lists of recommended security pros to follow, and I figure it could serve as a sort of free, meta-bulletin for security. Haven't done it yet, but considering.
I do not post photos or interact with others except occasionally through messenger. I have started unfollowing everyone although I do enjoy Humans of NYC.
1. He’s a notable technologist (or whatever term you’d prefer to use for someone who is seen as intrinsically linked with the rise of computation tech) 2. It’s Gizmodo, they’re not exactly looking for revolutionary stuff here. 3. It’s your standard confirmation bias as well. Most people who read the article probably already have fairly strong anti-facebook-usage feelings to begin with. This reaffirms their stance and belief by presenting someone who isn’t a dickhead as being on the same side.
All of the above leads to a click and a comment, which is good for the ol’ bottom ad-dollar :D.
Community argument is compelling, but there are so many ways for communities to stay in touch now. I don’t think it has to come at the cost of so many Facebook negatives (privacy, addiction, mental health, etc.)
I see usage among my circle of even older folks fading fast. Updates are way less frequent.
Having said that, I kinda miss it being an option, for some of these folks I'll probabbly never know what is going on with them again.
But there was one subtle interesting thing I noticed that nobody missed me on FB. Nobody was like, "wait, where did that guy disappear".
The people who mattered were always around me and are still around me.
Only after deleting FB I realized what a cancer FB was. I hear it has become even more cancerous.
The only thing I seriously want to give up is this Whatsapp app, especially because it is now FB product. Otherwise, the way I use Whatsapp, it doesn't pose much problem.