Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

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<my first and hopefully last facebook rant>

I never joined facebook, myspace, or linkedin and have no intention of ever doing so.

About once a week, a friend of mine tells me I really ought to join facebook, and every time, I ask them why.

Lots of reasons, they tell me. To get reaquainted with long lost friends. To find out what others are up to. To let others know what you're up to. etc. etc. etc.

To which I say:

If we lost touch, there was probably a reason.

If you want to tell me something, email me or call me.

If I'm not important enough for you to single me out outside of a social network, then I don't want to know.

If I want you to know anything about me, I will tell you.

If I want to market myself, I will, in a manner over which I have control.

If I want to find something out, google is my friend.

I do not want anyone to know who I am, what I'm up to, or who I communicate with unless I specifically tell them myself.

I never thought of myself as a privacy prude, but it seems like every week people are bitching about facebook privacy problems. What did you expect?

I realize I'm in the minority here at hn, but I still don't get it. What's the big deal about facebook? And what did we ever do before?

</rant>

> What's the big deal about facebook? And what did we ever do before?

Facebook has solved two standing problems for my social groups. Your friends and acquaintances may be using it similarly, without you knowing it. Or maybe not.

1. Easy and effective photo sharing. It's easy to upload pictures and tag the people in them. If someone uploads a photo with you in it, you will get notified. The end effect of this is that everyone at events, outings, and parties gets copies of the photos taken there.

What did we do before? For many of my social groups, nothing. Those photos were not shared. For two of my social groups, we set up dedicated sites for sharing our photos.

2. Event planning. The events interface works as well as any other I've seen. And if everyone is already on Facebook, it's not as annoying as evite or some third party site where people don't have accounts. I had a friend that refused to get a Facebook account for years and we always had to call or email him separately from the rest of the group. This created more work for the event organizer (which was perceived as somewhat rude) and messed up the attendee counts, because he wasn't in the RSVP numbers from the Facebook event.

What did we do before? Played telephone tag and sent group emails. This works fine for smaller events with just a few people, but it doesn't scale past about 5 or 6 people. It also doesn't work in the tell-your-friends-to-invite-their-friends scenario where you still want RSVPs from everyone.

Those both sound like good use cases for a Google Wave.

Many of my friends handle social planning exclusively through Facebook/Twitter/FourSquare/Buzz/etc. Not having accounts on these sites would be akin to not having email/phone w.r.t. social life.

In fact, my use of all these technology is probably equivalent to email or SMS for a group of friends that is email-based. What is your opinion of people who refuse to get an email?

What is your opinion of people who refuse to get an email?

Not the same thing. Having an email address does not require any privacy tradeoffs.

I don't know anyone who "refuses" to get email, but I know a lot of people (believe it or not) who don't have computers. But they have phone numbers. I have to remember to leave them a voicemail when I email everyone else. In those cases, consideration > inconvenience.

I agree with your point of view, and it is the one I hold. I don't like that Facebook et al. ask me to give up my privacy, and I want a better option. In the meantime, if I want to get invited to events with friends, I must have a Facebook account. I don't want to debate privacy implications, I merely wanted to answer your "I still don't get it" remark.

You don't get it because your social circle doesn't live and breathe Facebook. For me, refusing to get a Facebook account would be the same as refusing to have an email account to you. Try talking to some middle schoolers or high schoolers - they are even worse than myself.

Again, I want to stress I do not approve of Facebook's stance on privacy and I do not disapprove of your stance on the platform or its usefulness - it is useful to some people, not all.

we lost touch with people for no other reason than keeping up with where they were was annoying and hard.

I was reminded of this:

"There's nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can't see or hear or touch a man, it's best to let him go" ~ East of Eden

After reading this, I lost all guilt about losing some old friends due to moving around the country.

thats pretty depressing to me, most of my friends parted ways after finishing university to go travelling or get jobs. since then some have managed to move back to the same place and I see them almost weekly, some I visit or they come visit me reasonably regularly. Some I havent seen in 4 years but know I will see again.

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