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Comment by apphacker | Hacker News Reader

I don't care if they do better. It's not pointless quitting, I now no longer have Facebook in my life. That was the point. "Challenging them to do better" has a strange assumption that somehow we all stand to gain if we can just make sure they get it right next time, or maybe the time after. They're not our friends, they're not an Oxfam, they're a business with a shitty product. I don't challenge Johnson & Johnson to get them to make a better band-aid, because frankly, I don't give a shit. Same with Facebook.

>"I think that we owe it to the users to challenge Facebook to live up to a higher standard, regardless of what we as individuals may gain or lose from their choices."

People need to learn to think for themselves and live with the consequences of their choices. It's not rocket science.

Just a weird article.

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+1 -- a crappy product that is nothing but a thin veneer over an enormous database of private information that they are selling for profit.

I think the product has already proven itself to be valuable...

In what way? So you can be lazier while maintaining a larger social network? I think Facebook depersonalizes relationships even more so than the email/twitter/IM communication methods.

I dont miss it. There are a few email addresses on there that I wish I had written down, so I guess there is some value, but is that value worth the wasted time getting sucked up in a live status stream (or worse: Your data in such stream)? Looking and commenting on peoples wall? Gossiping? Its a trashy medium, just like the tabloid medium before it, only with different recognizable people and with your life on display as well.

Facebook isn't the product. You are. Advertisers are the customers.

"... I don't care if they do better. It's not pointless quitting, I now no longer have Facebook in my life. ..."

But your friends might and that is the problem.

If I quit, Facebook immediately becomes less valuable to my friends. The only value Facebook has to the vast vast majority of its users, is it's ubiquity.

I did quit Facebook.

My friends did not switch en masse to some other service I was using; they still organise parties on Facebook.

A few people quitting Facebook only makes it less ubiquitous at the margins.

"... My friends did not switch en masse to some other service I was using; they still organise parties on Facebook. ..."

That's the scenario I'm thinking would happen. You are but one leaf on the social tree of your friends.

The most powerful thing you can do regarding any service or product is to vote with your wallet ... or in the case of Facebook, with your subscription.

When Facebook loses one user, the quality of their network drops ... insignificantly from a single user, but when speaking about multiple users quiting, then you've got a network effect.

So ironically (thinking about TFA) if you care about the quality of their service the most effective thing you can do is to just quit using it. That will send a message more powerful than bitching and moaning about it in blog posts.

"... The most powerful thing you can do regarding any service or product is to vote with your wallet ..."

It is a big mistake to overlay a monetary system on your friends. This is one aspect users are really getting riled-up with, "monetising friends".

Facebook isn't like a band-aid though, it's more like your local cable company. You don't have to pay for cable, but then you don't get to see all those tv shows that are only on cable. Maybe you can buy them on dvd when everyone's stopped talking about them.

Similarly, you can quit Facebook (and I have). Now I have friends I can't interact with online, because we don't have any websites in common any more.

Why do you need to go through a web site to communicate with your friends online? Don't you have an e-mail?

My friends don't use e-mail socially.

What do you mean by "socially"?

You don't have their e-mail address? Or they don't look at their inbox? Or certain specific activities are done via Facebook, while others may be done via e-mail? And most of all, why? Why did they chose Facebook over e-mail?

More generally, I'd like to know what they use Facebook for, and why.

We all use e-mail for password reset e-mails, order confirmations e-mails, etc. For communicating with friends, we just use it for one-on-one communication that wouldn't fit into a text message.

We tend not to share e-mail addresses. Different people use different services (LiveJournal/DreamWidth, Facebook, Twitter, Monochrome, etc) to different extents. Parties get organised on LiveJournal, Facebook or Monochrome.

I don't use e-mail socially because it's a terrible medium for group conversation.

OK, I understand better. Just a point left:

> [e-mail sucks at] group conversation.

Maybe you actually meant that web based mail sucks at group conversation? Or that e-mail sucks at live group conversation? If so, I agree.

Now, if you actually meant what you wrote, I disagree for 2 reasons: (1) in my experience, forums and mailing lists are basically the same, once filters are set up. (2) centralizing most of my communications to one gateway is far more manageable than having to check several web sites. 2 inboxes is one too many. E-mail notifications help, but at this point, I'd rather use e-mail directly.

Two reasons why I think e-mail sucks at group conversation --- not just web-based e-mail, not just live group conversation:

1. You can't edit past e-mails. This means that if you change the date or venue of your party, I have to discard the original e-mail and preserve the new one instead.

Whereas if it's a Facebook event, you update the details, I get notified about the change automatically, and the original, now incorrect details don't exist anywhere any more; I can't refer to them by mistake.

2. Most e-mail clients suck. Most of my friends are not IT geeks, so most of my friends use an e-mail client that sucks. Which means many of my friends use an e-mail client that doesn't have decent threading support, or makes it too easy to reply-to-sender when they meant reply-to-all, or doesn't properly elide quoted text, or etc.

Which means most of my friends suck at group e-mail conversation. And therefore it sucks for them and me.

I realise that group social e-mail conversations work for you, but they don't work for me.

Your reasons sound valid. Thanks.

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