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Comment by eknkc | Hacker News Reader

This might be just me but,

On facebook 'friend' mostly means someone you met once, your colleagues or those people you went to high school with and lost connection etc. Also, even at the age of 35, I feel I have some "uncool" family connections there. I can't image what it's like for teenagers. Facebook friendships don't mean anything for most of the people.

Therefore, I don't want to see their babies taking their first steps. I just don't care. Those who I care, I follow on other platforms actually.

Not sure how this will play out.

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I hate to say, so why don't you remove them from your friend list if you don't care? Why have a stranger on your list? The "met once and I add you to FB" is kind of weird.

I keep my FB to people I have good relationship now and in the past but may be not actively talking to each other. That's okay, because occasionally we would comment on each other's latest update. Have a positive attitude toward using FB.

Because mostly, I don't care that much at this point. Facebook is "that thing" now.

I'm not sure but I guess this was what they encouraged? I remember going to places and meeting people, they'd pull up their phone and add you as facebook friends. And you'd accept. Not anymore though.

Also, on the UX front; "unfriend" is a pretty strong word. Just leaves a bad taste when you want to click on it :). And unfollow stuff came out so late that the train had already passed.

I feel like unfollow / hide is perfect for this.

I realise that in an ideal world us humans wouldn't click a button and we'd get the prefect endorphin-releasing content 24/7 but at the moment we have to make a bit of a conscious effort and use the tools we are afforded to make the experience better.

If you enjoy Facebook and want to keep in contact with "aquaintances" just spend 20 mins unfollowing and you'll find Facebook is a much nicer place!

I did that regularly. Twice per year I pruned my FB lists. Nowadays I have but 25% of max. friend-count left.

That for me works much better. Non the less does FB loose more and more appeal to me. Trivial BS being shoved down my throat is just not valuable to me.

This era of massive commoditization of everything is detrimental. Nature put pressure on things, expressing value you cared about. I can't say Fb is useless, some people were able to reconnect, maintain long distance relations ..

Let's not glorify "nature's pressure." I kind of prefer having 3 kids that I expect to live to adulthood instead of having 8 as nature intended and playing the odds.

This. I keep my friends list neat by taking a look at today's birthdays. When Facebook asks me to write something on a person's wall for their birthday, I can make a quick decision on how important that friendship is to me. For those I don't feel a need to keep around, I unfriend (or perhaps just unsubscribe/hide) them.

It's nice because I don't have to embark on some great friend list culling as a major event, but I do get to trim the list with some frequency.

People who know how to use Facebook like Teenagers usually mute people they don't care about from their feed. Also people heavily control the privacy options of photos the share.

It's entirely possible to post racey photos for your close friends while still appearing like a golden child to your family FB friends.

Facebook has had these option forever and they are used.

Why not just use snapchat instead of setting up all those options? Plus, if they ever change the way they do their privacy settings, everything is exposed

Facebook is more like a phonebook of people you know (either wellish or by blood). Next generations of users aren't going to use it to broadcast unfiltered things simply because their parents and grandparents are on it. But that doesn't mean they won't use it. It's not 0 sum. You'd use it to notify your grandma you're graduating for example, or any non risque communication. I know, doesn't stop idiots on there, but for the most part, Snapchat and Instagram are better vehicles for expression and social validation.

Teenagers use facebook?

The "teenagers are leaving Facebook" meme has mostly been proven wrong. It's more that teenagers are splitting their time with other apps like Snapchat and Instagram, the latter of which Facebook owns.

In my experience it is that teenagers never start on facebook. Sure, many have accounts for SSO purposes, but they just don't use it. I have 4 of them in my house all with iphones and only the oldest (18) uses it sporadically.

Kind of funny how people are just figuring that out as soon as Instagram is less in vogue

What next, a Fox news expose on how snapchat can be used for sexting?

I've long wanted a type of hidden tagging / categorization system that friends can add to each other's photos or posts.

If it's tagged "baby" or "religion", for instance, I could have that filtered out. Would make it 1000x more enjoyable to use.

You can create filters using the FB Purity extension.

There's a couple of issues with it though, namely allowing an extension to view / modify your account as a security risk, and it breaks periodically as Facebook changes layout / css names

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