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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

Queue the onslaught of "I haven't used Facebook in.... years!" comments. You're probably already hitting the down-vote button.

I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN? Maybe it has to do with the software engineers tending to be less social and introverted, therefore a social service appears to have less worth? Just speculating.

As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach.

If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github.

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    > I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN?

Well, for starters, the article posted went through many reasons why one might find Facebook hostile, and therefore be very much against it. Anyways, that's not really why I wanted to reply, so here:

    > As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike
    > any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids 
    > grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share
    > with my family when something great has happened. It's 
    > absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes 
    > close to its reach.
    > 
    > If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel 
    > devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom,
    > all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke
    > a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google
    > and maybe Github.

Now, this is HN so I imagine while I'll come off as very negative, this sentiment isn't all that strange. The problem I see here is that you seem to think you need Facebook to have these same connections. If you want to reminisce on old photos, you can just as easily save them locally. If you wanted to have conversations and save them later, you could use a messenger that isn't trying to mine your data while pulling your heart strings. And yeah, a lot of this type of advice comes off as "there's another product for everything," and "don't put your eggs in one basket," and all that, but there's actually a really strong point here that you're overlooking.

Facebook isn't necessary for any of those experiences. In fact, you state how you wouldn't be able to see your friend's kids grow up, or comfort your friends when they lose someone they love. But was Facebook really the only way for you to do that? It seems to me like you're attributing to Facebook quite a few characteristics that aren't really there. Ditching Facebook and actually meeting with people or staying in touch with the occasional phone call is a hell of a lot more personal. As for all of your memories, fortunately you still have those in your brain. They don't need to be in an advertising archive to be more real.

"If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github."

Hey! What are the odds you and some other user commenting here both have such similar experiences?! You should connect with them on Facebook! Maybe Github?

I don't care at all whether people want to sell their lives to a company. If they want to use Facebook, they're free to do so.

What I care about is Facebook creating a shadow profile on me, even when I explicitly go out of my way to block them.

If it would only affect those people that are on Facebook, I wouldn't give it a second thought. But it doesn't. It also affects those that want nothing to do with it, in part through the people that are using it, and that is the major reason for all the Facebook hate.

I share your concerns about losing Facebook data of the past, but frankly you didn't address any of the concerns that were listed in the article.

The issue is what they do with our data and whether you'd be comfortable letting them use your data this way. It's also due to their shady practices like not disclosing changes to privacy policy. This is especially worse with non-technical people like my mom using their platform. Who knows what kind of bs they're peddling onto her wall.

I think it's awesome that people are finding ways to get off Facebook. It's like getting out of a heroine addiction or something:)

>didn't address any of the concerns that were listed in the article. ..

>The issue is what they do with our data and whether you'd be comfortable letting them use your data this way

I believe that I have addressed these issues by still utilizing the service.

They're well known to the HN community. They're not new. They just don't matter to me. Nor to most of the rest of the market, because billions still use it.

That's totally fine, as long as you are aware of the problem and decide that it doesn't matter to you. But they have the moral(legal?) obligation to let us know how they're using our data.

Do you mind if I word for word quote your above to see if I get downvoted too? I want to repost with just the last two paragraphs to see what happens. I'm curious how this post would have been received without the intro.

Copy/Paste away! :)

Ha thanks, I just want to see if people are just AntiFacebook or not because reading your post the third and fourth paragraph really resonated.

Heh, must be a divisive comment. The points are just oscillating between a positive [2] and negative [2] range..

I think only the first two paragraphs are controversial, I am sitting at 9 points on my post (which is the exact same) but someone else may have upvoted, or someone who saw this might have upvoted. IDK but it's an interesting experiment.

Agree, great experiment. Thanks for sharing the point total.

31 points as of 10 PST. Very interesting. I may do this more in the future and write something about it, I appreciate your help!

i'm extroverted and the only facebook product that i interact with regularly is messenger. i use it because my family uses it. i treat my wall (and instagram profile) as write only. i don't get notifications or interact with anyone, but i do post.

facebook has its uses (i've had acquaintances reach out for help in the past), so i keep the account, but i have better ways of connecting to the people i love. weak connections are meh imo

i use instragram because i like their mobile photo editing tools, but i'm sure i can find a suitable alternative. i'd prefer to publish them somewhere where i can easily (and obviously) include the cc-by-sa license info.

honestly, i get very little out of these products. there's no way i can care intimately about 500 people. the people i do care about are the ones that i keep in touch with on snapchat or via sms/im. discussions are often overly emotional and barely stimulating. reddit was better for a while, but i spend most of my online time on gnu/social these days.

i would be super happy if facebook, google, and github burnt to the ground. there are better, decentralized and non-corporate options out there that provide adequate service and are actually aligned with my interests.

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