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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000

"And really you can't opt out of Facebook. I'm not on Facebook but there are a lot of drawbacks in my offline world. No party invitations, no updates from my friends, people stop talking to you, because you're not on Facebook. So it has real life implications."

I've never experienced this. Perhaps if you are some ultra-socialite, yes, but I have a couple close friends and we reach out to each other in various ways which mostly don't involve facebook. I think this is a phrase that just gets repeated without people actually thinking about their own situation.

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Just because you've never experienced doesn't mean it's real. I have experienced it.

That isn't a result of Facebook, that's a result of inconsiderate friends. There are a couple friends in my group that aren't on Facebook, so we text them.

If all of my friends (coworkers, work friends, casual acquaintances) are using Facebook for events, and I'm the one insisting they contact me directly, then I feel like I'm being the inconsiderate one.

Agree. My son went through this. A HS sailing team arranged a party on Facebook. My son isn't on Facebook and was left out. Bad? Yes. Should the team not have done that? Sure. Should the coaches have intervened (if they even knew)? Of course.

But it still happened. Damage done.

Really? I wouldn't think this of a friend not on a particular social website or if I myself was the one on a particular social website.

I guess I'm old (mid thirties) and rely so heavily on text et al

A reasonable analogy would be someone who didn't accept texts and insisted on party invitations (and communicating) through post or in-person visits. It's easy to say "Well a real friend would make the time to drop by", and that's perhaps a consistent definition of "real friend". But the fact remains that there's a whole host of pleasant social interactions (many of which others would define as "real friends") that you'd miss out on if you only relied on more inefficient communications technologies.

I'm not a heavy Facebook user, and I've considered deleting it multiple times, but each time I couldn't convince myself that there was any advantage to doing so over just using it as an inbox. Particularly with things like the News Feed Eradicator Chrome extension, I can basically pretend that all the irritating parts of Facebook don't exist when I check my messages and events. Having a single place where all the members of a group can see and share information on their own schedules is infinitely more convenient than trying to hack together the same thing over multiple bilateral communication channels (i.e texting/calling). Sure it would be better if it was federated, but given that there is no such widely-used solution, it's not hard to understand how people refusing to participate in FB groups can be fairly perceived as being the inconsiderate one (or else being left out altogether).

What if they didn't have a phone? would you take the time to write them letters? wouldn't your interactions be much different? That's the point.

At what level of saturation does the person opting-out of a communication medium become the more difficult one? The majority of people in the US have a social media account.

Well, it's plausible, but the most natural case is that acquaintances use Facebook as a low-touch way of staying in contact.

I admit if I wanted to be friendly acquaintances with people, then Facebook is probably the best way to do so.

However, close friends share information without using Facebook. I call my close friends on their birthdays. My acquaintances, I'll +1 the long thread of "happy birthday" messages on facebook, just like everyone else.

tl;dr: Facebook is unnecessary but useful.

I am very conscious that I've stopped inviting semi-friends who aren't on Facebook to my events. My closest friends I'll still invite in person, but it's so much more effort to invite someone not via Facebook that in the marginal case it easily tips them from "may as well invite" to "I can't be bothered".

From my friends and family i'm the only one not on FB or Whatsapp,i'm listening every week why i don't join so the can send me update sand invitation cause every time the have to remember that i'm not on their lists/groups and that they have specifically phone/text me about family/friends/celebration/news. I've missed several friends dinners cause no one thought about the "hermit".

If someone stops talking to me or befriending because I'm less on facebook or not visiting the site at all, then by all means please I definitely want to lose that "friend".

When people say "friends", they often don't mean just in the "Friends Will Be Friends" sense, they also mean it to include "acquaintances I'd like to keep in touch with", "cute people I'd like to get to know better", "ex-coworker who I got well along with", etc.

My workplace has said unfriending someone on Facebook is considered bullying. I deactivated Facebook long before that rule for work reasons.

But I do find since then I am socially isolated. I'm not a social person at all (4 years since I went out anywhere) but the one good thing Facebook did was keep me in the social world.

I know I've missed a few wedding invitations, gatherings of friends, lots of things I find out about later but things I'm sure I never will know about.

It sounds like you need to create an anti-exclusion committee for people without Facebook, since your company seems to promote that kind of thinking.

Doesn't that just mean you have to revert to circa 2000 norms? I.e. call a random friend once a week or so, to catch the news and ensure your social stickiness?

My pre and ~2000 social norm was IRC. Just not a fan of this "out" thing.

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