Because I think my attitude represents a huge chunk of Facebook's users
A common mistake people make here is to think they represent the majority. Hacker news is a very small community.
A common mistake people make here is to think they represent the majority. Hacker news is a very small community.
Your statement is true in general. But tptacek (the author of the parent comment to your comment) did not write his comment as one HN insider speaking to others, but as a technically aware Facebook user to others. My personal observation of Facebook user behavior (including my many Facebook friends who are not at all hackers) squares with his. My favorite kind of link to post on Facebook is any well written link about security issues with Facebook. My friends read those, and share them with their friends, and most of the friends are reasonably cautious in how they use Facebook. We still have a good time. I don't see Facebook advertisements because I run a general ad-blocker on my browser. I don't sign up for Facebook applications in general. I just have good conversations (much like this one with you) with friends who know me in real life, about links that we find interesting.
It's not hard to untag yourself from dodgy photos, leave silly groups, clean up your profile and put professional contacts in a restricted list. Most importantly though, I've come to the conclusion most people expect you to have dirt on Facebook. If your boss wants to be your friend on Facebook and doesn't get why you won't actually share any personal info with them... well, good luck to you, but my professional contacts all seem to understand (and often reciprocate for the same reasons).
That photo you untagged yourself from but your friend is in so mutual friends can still see it - I'll agree that's a problem, but not worth throwing a hissy about. We "lost our privacy" the day the camera was invented.
Baseless generalization. There's some age correlation there, no doubt, but I know people over 30 who use Facebook as enthusiastically as the most social of high-schoolers, and I know people under 30 who won't touch it. At least among the technically inclined, Facebook usage style is more a matter of personal disposition than age. It's stupid to say nobody over 30 has anything useful to say about the site.
And the over-30-year-olds I know who make minimal use of Facebook? They have plenty clue "about how Facebook actually works", thank you; due to their years of experience I find them often more clueful than the most voracious teenage user. They just choose to use the site differently, or not at all, regardless of their level of understanding.
I myself am well under 30, by the way, lest you accuse me of an age group bias.
Also, your conception of "real users" sure sounds an awful lot like a minority group of users who use it heavily.
Why don't you tell us how we would go about doing that?
Have a read of this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070720160253/http://blog.pmarca...
The author was over 30 and he's now on the FB board.